What Technological Improvements in The Next 10-15 Years Will Change Our Lives?

What technological improvements that most people will use, be affordable and available/accessible in the next 10 to 15 years?

Electronic cars? Supermarkets with no checkouts? No cash? Robots? Flying cars? Affordable commercial space travel?

Comments

  • More than likely all medical intervention will be based on your genetic markers, in other words everything will be cured around 2035-2040 according to Kurzweil.

    Also by Kurzweil immortality by 2044.

    • -4

      Sorry I don't know much about this.

      I thought all diseases would not exist in new babies born by eliminating them from all future DNA? It will be possible to do the same to all living humans too?

      • It's too complicated to be explained by me, look up Ray Kurzweil and his Singularity hypothesis.

      • +39

        That's not possible because
        1. not all disease is 100% genetic-based
        2. your genetics changes as you live
        3. new diseases emerge all the time
        4. ethics, cost, safety issue
        5. conspiracy theorist

        • -5

          Our own Immune system holds the answer to every biological threat now and in the future. Read Immune by Philipp Dettmer if you want to take a deep dive.

          https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/1529360684

          • +21

            @garetz: Yeah bs, anyone who studied a little bit of immunology or even biology would know.

            • -2

              @MagicMushroom: New things are being discovered all the time, knowledge of immunology is constantly evolving, what is known today is much more than even 5 years ago. A lot of areas of study are having a lot more invested into them, immunology is just one of those areas of study.

            • @MagicMushroom: careful now boxing in to modern literature

              science is there to be challenged

          • -2
          • @garetz: @garetz: Koooooorz ge sacked

          • +8

            @garetz: Personally I don't look to youtubers/actors for my scientific info.

          • +2

            @garetz: Our own immune system is also a (profanity) because it's attacking my perfectly healthy joints for no goddamn reason.

            • +1

              @FracturedArse: That's quite rude of it

            • +1

              @FracturedArse: ouch one of my best friends in high school had that, it wasnt much fun

        • How do your genetics change?

      • +2

        there are some ethical issues with eliminating diseases for "all living humans",
        eg. do you treat all people in prison serving life sentences,
        so that their 'life sentences' will mean staying inside jails even longer (because they don't get "sick" or "old")

        • +2

          voluntary euthanasia

        • I guess those people will probably choose to exclude themselves from medical treatment and go out naturally. Imagine someone with a couple hundred year sentence……

      • +5

        Our most crippling modern diseases likely involve a dysfunctional immune response. MS, dementia, arthritis, IBS, stroke, etc etc etc.

        Bacteria are fast evolving multi drug resistance, we will soon encounter bacteria that is resistant to all modern antibiotics - setting us back 100 years.

        Viruses have always been almost impossible to treat, overpopulation and mass farming have created pathways for animal viruses to take new hosts. Now we even have our friends up north weponising animal viruses directly.

        Eliminating inherited disease from DNA is exciting, but involves a host of ethical issues. There is no guarantee that you won't be introducing new problems - everyone's DNA is different, and includes different faults. unless we start making clones there will always be new problems.

        There is also the issue of certain groups who will use the technology to enhance their children with physical and intellectual advantages as we enter the post modern feudal age.

        • +2

          If you watch Gattaca this is what that story is about, awesome movie!!

    • +1

      There won’t be much immortality if you get run over by a (driverless) bus in 2044. Or am I missing something? Let’s make it a steam (I mean hydrogen) roller.

      • I dare say the ratio of deaths from preventable or age related situations are far more likely than complete bodily destruction type events.

    • -1

      Pharma corporations will not want this to happen

  • +21

    Hoverboards.

    • +7

      Finally.

      • +3

        It's been a long wait.

    • +10

      Unfortunately we have entered a different timeline.

      Biff will be Prime Minister next year.

    • +2

      Dear science…

  • +4

    Covid immunity

  • +35

    Daily covid boosters

    • +26

      Taking the piss.

      First of all, this all depends on if there's another major war by Western Nations (USA, UK, Germany, etc etc). If there is, innovation will be stopped, and himanity will take three steps back. The new stuff that will get invented will be for military applications. And we will take some time to brush it off, especially if it is a confrontation with Russia, China, India, or Brasil. We may even never fully recover if new-age weapons are used, or they deploy nuclear arsenal.

      Hopefully that doesn't happen. And also we don't have to go into a proper/horrible pandemic, or famine, or suffer catastrophic losses from the climate (global warming not withstanding). So fingers crossed.

      Let's round things off, say we're in 2020 and 15 years ago would be 2005, whilst 15 years later would be 2035.

      From then to now, we've had little tech-evolution everywhere, but not really a revolution. Where we have seen revolutions are: smartphones, wireless communication, electric cars, reusable rockets, lithography improvements, PCR and CRISPR.

      Where I think we will have revolutions:
      - Super-insulation
      - Battery technology
      - New computing paradigm adopted (trytes/trits instead of binary bytes/bits), using a three-state (positive, neutral, negative charge) Quantum Computer design
      - Contextual Software or "General AI" in everything
      - More focus on fairness, the planet, space travel

      So how will those upcoming revolutions affect the way we live?
      - A permanent, International Space Station will be functional on the Moon.
      - First astronauts will land on Mars and comeback.
      - Corporations discover which asteroids are most profitable to try to catch and mine for Raw Materials
      - We will be able to afford to eat Pork, Beef, Lamb, Chicken, Fish, and Seafood… thanks to artificial manufacturing of these. Either printed off, plant based, or industrial-grown like laboratories. Call it "ethical meat" or whatever. Regular meat becomes more expensive than inflation rates.
      - Five Dimensional (5D) printers become a thing, where you can not only choose the 3D shape and size, but also the colour, texture, smell, taste and change properties based on pH, temperature, etc.
      - Using new-age compounds like Aero-gel we will be able to make far more efficient thermos, eskies, freezers, fridges, cars, and even insulated rooms/apartments.
      - Efforts to greenify our cities worldwide, clean our rivers, filter our air, and basically terraform parts of the Earth. Carbon Capture will become mainstream.
      - Wearable flexible Synthetic-OLED will change our sense of fashion, and relationship with tattoos.
      - AI-Gloves that will offer its users a (somewhat) realistic sensation of tactile, when the user pairs it and interacts it with their phone and tablet.
      - More powerful gadgets, that hold their charge. Will cause evolution across all industries.
      - No Robots, but dedicated devices which will do Automation /Internet Connected in everyday things. So we will lose most repetitive and basic human jobs. Everything else will become more efficient with the use of specialised technicians maintaining them.
      - Subscription services for everything (you'll own nothing and be happy).
      - Your AAA-titles will work on your phone, laptop, TV, Car by playing it on the cloud, and it will be good enough thanks to lower latencies and better compression/decompression
      - Your nation will have a new fiat currency, that's based on newer powerful cryptocurrency. Most places will stop handling physical money.
      - Weather predictions will get faster and more accurate as we have clusters of stations, balloons, satellites getting more and more data
      - Schools will be only about Socialising, Lunching, Physical Education, while the bulk of it becomes online classes for children
      - Automated cars and Robo-cabs become realised, starting first with Self-Driving Trucks across highways into depot stations. Every new car will have mandatory Dashcam, and required for insurance purposes.
      - IVF will become available for regular couples, and genetic diseases will be controllable (based on the laws/ethics)
      - Energy will become much cheaper, but our demands for it will increase. It will be cleaner energy, and we will see places like Australia use Solar energy to creating Hydrogen Fuel and export it.
      - Aviation will embrace hydrogen once more (Hindenburg lol), whilst battery-electric will dominate everything else, probably using a Solid State Graphene battery.
      - Digital Self, where your own account would be able to track your fluid intake, exercise actions, and foods ingested. And perhaps using smartToilets to know the composition of your waste. And lots of other things too like, art, work, schedule, and socials.
      - Cost of living will skyrocket in the most expensive nations. The issue of low birth rates will become a huge problem. The middle-class will almost be non-existent. So while inequality within nations will rise, the inequality between nations will get smaller. As old and current technologies eventually get adopted there. This leads us to help lift 3 billion people out of abject poverty (to normal poor) in Africa, India continent, and Asia.

      • +5

        I see how all these new technologies could arise, but be restricted to the wealthy few.

        Climate change will accelerate resource scarcity and inequality, even in the wealthy nations none of us will be able to access these technologies.

      • Brazil would never seriously go to war (it’s completely alien to the culture of the country) - only if survival was at stake and there was absolutely no other choice. Also, Brazil has numbers but it doesn’t have the equipment, machinery, training nor technology to fight a big war

        • Their militarized police force, and rampant gangs tell another story. Not to mention the greed of their politicians and corruption. They have a young population, they have the numbers, and the means to obtain weaponry. So if things were serious, they would be a poor opponent to underestimate.

          Even still, if they're not directly involved in conflict but if it affects them, it will have deep international effect. They export a lot of goods. So disruption there affects many companies, many nations and many people. That was what I was getting to. They are one of the "superpowers" of the world, in a roundabout way.

          • @Kangal: "Their militarized police force, and rampant gangs tell another story. Not to mention the greed of their politicians and corruption"

            when it comes to going to direct war or not, no, it doesn't. as I said, the people there have zero leniency towards accepting big wars / conflicts. but I agree with everything else you said - though it would be interesting to watch what Brazil's weak diplomacy / conflict management would do in case of an indirect conflict.

      • this all depends on if there's another major war by Western Nations (USA, UK, Germany, etc etc). If there is, innovation will be stopped,

        Actually, the sad reality is that some of the biggest leaps in technology were inspired by war

  • +2

    Augmented reality - where objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, across multiple sensory modalities. Google and Apple will be leaders in this space, along with Samsung and car manufacturers. Think Pokemon Go but in many facets of life.

    • Will. Need Google Glass

      • in 15 years will Google Glass still be based on the MicroOptical Corp design that was already about 15 years old when Google Glass released? (they changed it from plugging into a VGA port to phones, I still have my original MicroOptical set somewhere in storage)

    • Still requires people to have a device in order to access it = simply not going to happen in a useful way for the foreseeable future.

    • It is more likely MS and/or Meta will be the leaders in this space. either way it is pretty unlikely in the next 10-15 years. Processing power and device complexity makes this very very expensive, far more so than VR. Eventually we will get their but I think we are still looking at beyond 15 years for it.

      • Metaverses will be rendered by $RNDR.

        $RNDR will ensure that GPU prices go parabolic when it's fully adopted.

        • unlikely, that really just is another solution in search of a problem by blockchain enthusiasts. It doesn't offer anything here, especially in an environment where you need realtime rendering and processing as even milliseconds of latency make it unviable.

          • @gromit: The smartest nocoiners in the world said 13Y ago that this magic internet money would fizzle out and die.

            It did the opposite. It went from zero to a $2T Mcap in 12Y.

            $RNDR may or may not be the one but the concept is solid. GPU miners will look for new passive income when Ethereum PoW dock with PoS. They may as well switch the algo from PoW to rendering.

            The price of GPU will keep going up thanks to decentralized rendering.

            • @rektrading: They also all said blockchain was the future of everything, nearly all blockchain companies and ventures have failed with the exception of crypto coins. The problem with blockchain is the waste, overhead and lack of reason to exist outside of crypto coins. Nearly every place blockchain can be used there are more efficient means of doing the same thing without the complexity.

              • @gromit: A blockchain without a native 🪙 is just another permissioned network.

                It's only useful for the company that owns it and its purpose.

  • -5

    Given the "most powerful" man is allowed to say: Thank you Mary you did it. This means intelligence is a burden to make you depressed.
    So I would say beer bottles from high tech plastic, less culture anyway and a situation similar to South Africs……

  • +4

    Electronic cars? Supermarkets with no checkouts? Don't we have both of those already? Not that they're that common.
    No cash? Cash isn't going anywhere, but it's certainly much less common than it once was.
    Robots? If you mean the kind we see on SciFi shows, humanoids doing chores etc. No. If you mean greater automation, sure.
    Flying cars? No. However, things like drone services between key locations, that is a possibility.
    Affordable commercial space travel? No. Eventually, sure, but in 10 years? No.

    Has much really changed since 2000? I'm leaning towards no, not really. Nothing life changing anyway. More just slight differences in what we already had. I'd be very surprised if anything life changing happens in the next 10 years, when so little has happened in the last 20.

    • +3

      I mean mobile phone technology has been pretty life changing in the last 20 years hasn't it?

      • There were mobile phones 20 years ago, even smart phones like Blackberry. Before that, various other portable digital devices doing much the same thing.

        What has changed is that it's gone from mostly business use to being more widespread and affordable. I can't say it's changed my life, I barely use mine, but I take your point.

        Rather than the technology itself changing much, just minor evolution of existing products, I would say it became cheaper and so more commonly used. I expect much the same in the next 20.

    • +6

      The year is 2031. All disease has been cured by nanobots, AI completes most traditional work tasks in some form, all international conflict is settled through Rollerball, and Miley Cyrus is the world's most beloved operatic star.

      Skylex: "Gee not much has changed."

      • +1

        Rather than nothing having changed, my point was that the technology itself is not new. I did however acknowledge that it had become more widely used. Even children have them now. As do the poorest people in the world.

        Most of the things you mentioned are (intentionally?) ridiculous. AI is used in a number of work tasks today, and that will no doubt continue in future. Sure, curing all disease would be life changing, but it won't happen in 10 years.

        • +1

          The year is 2031, all disease has been cured by nanobots delivered by mobile phones. Robots of the kind that were in car factories in the 80s now have upgraded chips that allow them to process complex legal analysis and desktop processing while also making cars that run on solar panels the size of a thumbnail. Miley Cyrus is the President of the USA.

          Skylex: Well we had mobile phones, car factories, solar panels, and Miley Cyrus when I was but a young man! Where is the innovation?!?

          • @jacross: Let's consider a more realistic scenario for the next decade. Electric cars are not new. They are currently expensive, perhaps even kept intentionally and artificially expensive in the Western market. The infrastructure is not adequate enough for mass market appeal.

            It's not inconceivable for that to change in 10 years. Some countries are even banning the sale of new pure ICE vehicles. So electric cars will become more common. Will that change anyone's way of life? No, not really.

            This will be my last comment to you, but feel free to come up with more gibberish and a new quote that has nothing to do with what I said.

            • @[Deactivated]: Oh just to come back to this as I randomly was reminded of it. Essentially what I was trying to convey to you was that you unfairly dismiss incremental improvements that over time add up tremendously. To use the smartphone idea, comparing the 2000 blackberry to modern smartphones is completely and deliberately disengenuous. Modern smartphones are amazing and complete science fiction stuff back in 2000. To suggest otherwise is to not be taken seriously.

              I say all this as someone who doesn't have a smartphone anymore by the way.

              That's one thing. The advances we have made in so many areas over the last two decades are out there and extraordinary (cancer treatments as another example, you would go 'oh well we haven't cured cancer' but say that nonsense to those who are alive because of the extraordinary advances that have been made), but it just comes across as you are deliberately uninterested. These so called 'little things' do change people's lives in massive ways. Your definition of 'change anyone's life' is absurdly narrow.

              Edit: OH MY GOD THE SELF DRIVING CAR!!!! I'm not even actually researching anything. I'm not even trying and I can think of things. Come on man. I dare you to respond and say that self driving cars aren't an innovation for people with disabilities. I double dare you.

  • I dunno.. you tell me.

    • +31

      You really are the cross fit vegan of crypto

    • multi interoperability financial network

      Did you mean local banks using blockchain technology?

      • When was the last time you went to a local bank to pay bills or to do some online shopping?

    • +8

      https://xkcd.com/538/

      “ unconfiscatable”

      Lol. There’s been multiple instances of Bitcoin being confiscated by law enforcement already. There’s no such thing as assets that can’t be confiscated while humans own them and can access them.

      It’s certainly possible everyone can lose access to digital goods though, usually the owner.

        • +9

          You’re so certain of yourself, but so very wrong, it’s amazing how little you know about the one thing you spend all your comments proselytizing.

          https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/us-seize…

          https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-seizes-23-…

          There’s hundreds of instances, in the first instance they literally yanked away his laptop while he was logged in.

          It’s so common there’s literally a rule book for law enforcement on how to do it. (Because surprise, there’s been cases of corruption where the temptation for officers to take the money themselves has been too much).

          ‘Self-custody’ is only as secure as the opsec of the owner, which is basically universally terrible, even when it’s good it’s proven to be insufficient.

          • -3

            @[Deactivated]: Thanks for the links.

            Those wallets were custodial or they had access to the private keys.

            Here is one that is self-custody.

            Prosecutors Confiscate More Than £43m In Bitcoin From Fraudster Who Won't Reveal Password
            Jess Hardiman

            Published 11:59, 06 February 2021 GMT
            | Last updated 12:00, 06 February 2021 GMT
            https://www.ladbible.com/news/news-prosecutors-confiscate-mo…

            A bitcoin stash worth $68 million was seized by German police but the owner has refused to give up his password
            [email protected] (Kevin Shalvey) - Feb 16
            https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/a-bitcoin-stash-worth-6…

            • +5

              @rektrading: No they were not, the Silk Road wallet was self custody. There’s a literal book about how it was seized.

              You can be jailed in Australia for 10 years for not disclosing a password.

              obviously they ‘ had access to the private keys’, they simply break into or are provided (under duress, trickery etc) the passwords required to gain that access. If no one has the keys, no one, not even the owner can access it.

              Just because something is mathematically almost impossible it doesn’t in the real world that it’s impossible because a squishy human is the weak point.

              And your link is showing they confiscated it, in that case they might not have access, but the confiscation still happened, so even in your one example you’ve disproven yourself.

              • -5

                @[Deactivated]: The miner in this case went to jail, served his time and if he still has the private keys $85M richer than when he went in.

                And your link is showing they confiscated it, in that case they might not have access, but the confiscation still happened, so even in your one example you’ve disproven yourself.

                Confiscation means that they have private keys which they don't.

                • +4

                  @rektrading: That’s not what confiscation means, the original owner no longer has access, which if you read the article you linked, they do not, they went to jail, lost access permanently if they even had it. And again, that’s just the one example you cherry picked, while I provided several where they do have the private keys.

                  You’ve simply made up your own definition that according to you, if they obtain the private keys, it’s no longer self held, but if they don’t and the original owner loses them as well, it’s not confiscation…. Again, there’s many examples where the original owner has been relieved of their access to bitcoins that only they held the private keys to until that point, and many more where they have simply had their hardware wallets and all equipment taken and lost access completely.

                  And that’s on top of the usual way that people simply accidentally lose access.

                  Even though I’ve provided a multitude of evidence which you haven’t refuted any of, that your base assertion is wrong, despite attempting to move the goal posts.

                  • -3

                    @[Deactivated]:

                    Prosecutors in Germany have confiscated more than €50 million (£43m/$60m) worth of Bitcoin from a fraudster… who's refusing to give them the password to unlock the money.
                    https://www.ladbible.com/news/news-prosecutors-confiscate-mo…

                    The miner has the private keys and chose not to tell them.

                    • +1

                      @rektrading: Read it again. It’s likely he doesn’t know and he’s lost access to it anyway even if he did know. In that one example, which again, is pointless because I provided multiple examples you’re wrong and even if what you’re saying is true for that one example, and the article (you didn’t read) is wrong, you’re still wrong.

                      Law enforcement don’t need to obtain access for the definition of confiscation to apply. And again, many examples where they did.

                      • -1

                        @[Deactivated]:

                        erman prosecutors reportedly are holding about 1,700 bitcoin confiscated from a bitcoin miner, **but the man won't give them his password to unlock the cryptocurrency. **
                        https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/a-bitcoin-stash-worth-6…

                        Prosecutors in Germany have confiscated more than €50 million (£43m/$60m) worth of Bitcoin from a fraudster… who's refusing to give them the password to unlock the money.
                        https://www.ladbible.com/news/news-prosecutors-confiscate-mo…

                        Both articles say that the miner who's refusing to give them the password to unlock the money. and the man won't give them his password to unlock the cryptocurrency.

                        The miner has been to jail, has the private keys and can do whatever they want with them.

                        That is unconfiscatable.

                        • +4

                          @rektrading:

                          Authorities then took the decision to lock the wallet.

                          If you read it. He doesn’t have the keys either.

                          And again strawman, I showed multiple cases where it was confiscated. Can’t confiscate something if he doesn’t have access to it already. You’re chasing down your one example that even if it was what you say, still doesn’t prove you right.

                          Now the guy has no bitcoin and a longer sentence than if he had been able to make restitution. It’s lose/lose. He likely doesn’t have access to a computer or the right to leave the country, and in Australia just not handing over the password is a crime punishable by up to 10 years in jail. Kind of a pyrrhic victory even in that case.

                          • +3

                            @[Deactivated]: It should have twigged for you when the crypto-diehard started inventing new nuances and definitions for already existing words ("And now, like a modern philosopher king, I wonder out loud, but what really is 'confiscation' anyway?". You can walk away a win.

                            • +3

                              @CrowReally: Yeah It’s when posting an quote that is literally;

                              Prosecutors Confiscate More Than £43m In Bitcoin From Fraudster Who Won't Reveal Password
                              Jess Hardiman

                              To prove it can’t be confiscated…. It’s in the headline! His lack of awareness is fanatical.

                              • @[Deactivated]: They have is bricked cold storage.

                                The assets are on the network and the miner if he was smart enough to back up the keys can restore the wallet from anywhere in the world.

                                • @rektrading:

                                  if he was smart enough to back up the keys

                                  To what though, they will have seized all his physical property, and a few years in prison will spell the end for just about anywhere you could hope to back such a thing up online, especially without that also becoming accessible or seizable by authorities.

                                  It sounds like it was an online wallet or single hardware wallet and that’s it. And again, pointless because of the numerous examples of where such things were confiscated anyway. A simple ban from leaving the country followed by close surveillance means any attempt to try and retrieve backed up keys will make them available to law enforcement. Least of all law enforcement has moved on since 2018 and they now put such targets under surveillance before arrest, to obtain passwords etc.

                                  • +2

                                    @[Deactivated]: The government think they are very smart, but don't think for a second the cops get everything the person owns. It's ridiculously easy to create multiple wallets, hide the private keys offsite somewhere, maybe even hidden in plain sight, and simply send funds to it on a regular basis, while keeping what's called a "hot wallet" with funds that are left to be confiscated in the case where they are caught. the cops get the thief's sacrificial wallet, they do a little victory dance back at the station and after a few years jail the person can simply load up their real wallets and still have access to all the cash again, free and clear. If they are even smarter, they would move to a different country with said funds and retire. a ban from leaving the country is only going to happen if they think you are still hiding money. its trivial to send money to tens of thousands of addresses from one single seed key. good luck trying to confiscate it all.

                                    • @ProlapsedHeinous: Someone with $85M can buy a one-way ticket to anywhere in the world and live the rest of their in luxury.

                                      • @rektrading: You can’t do shit if you’re unable to leave the country. People have had billions and wound l up spending life behind bars or being killed. If anything it makes you a target who has to spend their life looking over their shoulder for a kidnapper looking to beat your crypto out of you like a pinata. You’re the perfect kidnapping target, you can pay your own ransom and possibly still die.

                                    • @ProlapsedHeinous: The government aren’t very smart but they have police, prisons and armies, and if you think your OPSEC can stand up to that you’re wrong or one of a mere handful of people.

                                      There’s people not getting out of jail, and 99.9999% of people are too stupid to do even the basic strategy you outlined. And the reality is most sentences are more than the extremely minor one in this example, in my example the perpetrator isn’t ever leaving prison, and they got his billions.

                                      Hiding private keys (that you can get again) while theoretically possible, does require a lot more future planning, way more than most people do. Most people never get back any surrendered electronic equipment, online accounts you have to be extremely careful to not have them linked to you, and the sort of ways you can do that have a high chance of not surviving several years without being moved. You can try digging a hole, but even that’s no guarantee. At the end of the day, the person is the weak spot.

                                      Note that at least with Bitcoin it is extremely obvious if you’re transferring money regularly to another wallet, it’s all public, so with access to any wallet you’ve used it becomes pretty obvious if you’re not giving up everything.

                                      And even if you serve a sentence, keep a low profile for years of parole, then skip the country to somewhere you can access it, you have to pick a bit of a shithole and never travel again to avoid extradition or seizure.

                                      Because basically theoretical money is useless, you lose your freedom you’ve arguably given up something much more valuable in exchange for something you may never see again.

                                • +1

                                  @rektrading: Agree with rektrading.
                                  Confiscate means seizing so it cannot be accessed by the original person.

                                  Please note that if you have the address and the private key, you do not need anything else- there is no physical Bitcoin asset to be seized- it is just a transaction on the ledger.
                                  And the ledger is bring hosted on a decentralized network that records the ownership. So, unless they can change ownership of an address (in which case confiscate would make sense), the wallet can simple be restored and accessed by the original person from anywhere in the world that has internet access. Mind you, the law enforcement can tag and track the transactions as you try to move funds, but very little to actually take ownership without having access to private keys.
                                  Of course, if they get access to the private key, they can do whatever, as there is no additional check to link you with the private keys.
                                  What can be seized is the physical things like laptops or even centralised bank accounts or assets in cryptocurrency exchanges.(exchange only says IOU this amount of crypto currency- remember, not your keys, not your cryptocurrency. And they may link your identity to the assets.)

                                  If you have the private keys and the address, you can access your funds.

                              • +2

                                @[Deactivated]: This doesn’t prove that Bitcoin is comfiscatable… it just proves that the person reporting on the situation doesn’t understand how crypto and crypto wallets work.
                                I don’t mean this as an attack or an attempt to “catch you out” but do you understand how they work? It might be profitable and enlightening to investigate a little further with an open mind the immutable and self custodial benefits of this technology

                                • @mitchalbrown: Yes, I have done IT/cryptography/cyber security at a tertiary level. I understand the mathematics of it, people still fail to understand the practical reality that 99.9999% of the time systems don’t break because of the mathematics but because of humans making mistakes. Betting on technology to solve human problems is a failing bet. Maybe read the examples where it was confiscated (and resold) because of physical surveillance allowing them to obtain the keys. And again, you end up in prison the fact that you theoretically have something is irrelevant.

                                  • +1

                                    @[Deactivated]: I think i need to concede your point here to some degree… Yes, a human if layed siege to can give up his keys and allow his funds to be comfiscated… the ability for these individuals to have their funds comfiscated were through no shortcoming of the bitcoin security protocol. These individuals can't be bypassed like with an email account or bank.
                                    If these individuals chose to not reveal their keys and do the time they would be able to shawshank out of the place and live their best lives if they still had access to their seed phrase.
                                    I think this whole debate takes away from the beautiful fact that if we are not criminals doing the wrong thing and we are just normal people who have lost faith in the fiat system, we now have an option to lessen our reliance on it, to escape our wealth being eroded by poor government policy which only serves the elite… one could always argue that eventually we need to "cash out" into fiat to use our bitcoin for anything but if we are talking futuristically which is the point of OP's question… the price of crypto assets will become more stable as markets mature and bitcoin or even someting even better which subscribes to it's redeeming attributes, will become a safe haven for wealth from governments and their devaluing of it.

                          • @[Deactivated]:

                            Authorities then took the decision to lock the wallet.

                            They locked the wallet doesn't mean anything. The assets aren't in the wallet. It's on the network and can be restored from anywhere in the world.

                            He doesn’t have the keys either.

                            The article isn't saying that he doesn't have the keys. It says he refused to tell them the keys. They assume that he has forgotten or lost them.

                            As police made repeated (and failed) efforts to crack the code to access more than 1,700 Bitcoin, the man simply refused to break his silence, a prosecutor in the Bavarian town of Kempten said.

                            Prosecutor Sebastian Murer told Reuters: "We asked him but he didn't say.

                            "Perhaps he doesn't know."

                            The scammer was sentenced to more than two years in jail for covertly installing software on other computers to 'mine' or produce Bitcoin.

                            • +2

                              @rektrading: Again, you’re both making a completely baseless assumption that a person who has had all their physical possessions confiscated and imprisoned for years has access to private keys they would need to have stored somewhere they could access. It’s not exactly realistic to assume they have a copy anywhere. Regardless, did some further digging and it doesn’t look good for your example (keeping in mind numerous other examples disprove you as well):

                              500,000 euros have already been redeemed
                              As early as 2018, the public prosecutor was able to sell part of the 1,800 Bitcoins in the possession of the computer fraudster: 86 units of the digital currency were not password-protected. With this they redeemed around 500,000 euros, the money flowed into the state treasury.

                              https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/50-millionen-euro-auf-b…

                              At the end of the day it’s about opsec, and it’s likely they have simply forgotten their password, the same thing that causes most people to lose access to their crypto. That and the irreversible fraud. Turns out seizure is a feature, not a bug of the normal banking system, because the weakest link is always the human, and more people suffer from crypto. A pit of human misery.

                              • +2

                                @[Deactivated]: The private keys don’t matter too much if you have the seed phrase. Your wallet doesn’t exist on the confiscated computer or hardware wallet, it is an address that exists on the public ledger. One simply buys a new ledger and sets it up using the seed phrase and is able to set a new password on the wallet. Without the seed phrase or the private key/password a wallet can not be “locked”

                                • +3

                                  @mitchalbrown: "But Sir, the article says the police "confiscated" and locked the wallet". Surely that must mean that they now have the 🪙 in their possession.

                                  There is a story going around about Anthony Antonopoulos and how he was questioned by the TSA at the airport.
                                  The TSA heard that he had 🪙 and told him to empty his pockets, luggage and show them.
                                  He said he couldn't because they're intangible and only exist on the network.
                                  The TSA had NFI and insisted that he comply with their request.

                                  People that have NFI still think that 🪙 can be confiscated like cars, cash, stonks, gold, bank accounts, real estate, jewellery, etc.

                                  Satoshi, which is smarter than most people through about this 13Y ago and designed it to be unconfiscatable.

                                  • +1

                                    @rektrading: Can’t wait for a collision in the hashing algo to be discovered and your liquid assets will turn to steam and evaporate lmao

                                    • +1

                                      @2024: I’ve never heard of this possibility… you got some sources?

                                    • @2024: Hodlers have nothing to worry about.

                                      The Internet would be screwed if the SHA 256 were hackable.

                                      • @rektrading: Collisions are not impossible

                                        The internet would not be screwed. Would just move on to another hash. We’ve done it before.

                                        Infact, the NSA publishes guidance on securing IT, among their recommendations is going beyond to SHA384

                                        Do they know something we don’t?

                                        • -1

                                          @2024:

                                          The internet would not be screwed. They would just move on to another hash. We’ve done it before.

                                          This network is buidl on the Internet. It can fork/upgrade faster than the Internet.

                                          People that keep thinking the network will fail can enjoy seeing it grow bigger every year.

                                          • +1

                                            @rektrading: Within 60 years computers will be quick enough to brute force a collision, rendering it all worthless

                                            Definitely not for the long game

                                            I realise ya’ll referring to SHA256

                                            My point I’m trying to make is that hashes come and go

                                            • +1

                                              @2024: I'm trying to understand what you are suggesting… If sha256, which is the main security hash currently used on the internet to secure data becomes hackable… all other applications on the internet will move to a stronger hashing algorithm… but bitcoin wont?

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