Recent news events re: Bitcoin ...
Displaying poll results.17902 total votes.
Recent news events re: Bitcoin ...
UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch). -- Andy Tannenbaum
Upon recommendation from... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Trust and the Man (Score:2)
While you jest about Hot Wallets I think this really is the issue with Bit Coin. Specifically the incidents with bit coin lately have revealed first of all how robust the underlying system is, while also revealing how vulnerable the commerce mechanisms that wrap it are. It make you realize what you are paying Visa it's percentage for. Not the transaction mechanism, which bit coin shows is cheap, but the transactional security. If I send my bitcoins to someone either for payment or for "safekeeping" (
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
It's hard to explain Bitcoin to Kleptomaniacs because they always take things. Literally.
Re:Bitcoin is hard to explain... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to explain Bitcoin to Kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.
It's hard to explain Bitcoin to Kleptomaniacs because they always take things. Literally.
Isn't it always grand on the internet when someone posts a joke, and then someone responds with the same joke, only phrased more obviously for his fellow, less subtle readers to laugh at and congratulate themselves for being smarter than the original poster who obviously wasn't witty enough to make the same goddamned joke first.
Yeah, that's always awesome.
Re:Bitcoin is hard to explain... (Score:5, Funny)
I come to slashdot to learn proper punctuation and grammar.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Look whose talking. You obviously dont know how to spell youre.
Re: (Score:2)
Muphry's law has come up so many times in this discussion it's not even funny any more.
Re: (Score:2)
Given the choice of an obvious typo, or an incorrect homonym you picked the typo to criticize.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, then Slashdot ate the "..." UTF-8 character, once again.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
beta is no joke, that's serious damage to the business
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's easy to explain.
When you're talking about bitcoin, what you're really talking about is math numbers. There's a public ledger, and computers, and then you get a coin, but not a coin coin. It's numbers and letters which mean coin, and it's basically equal to one "money".
Oblig. [penny-arcade.com]
US dollar (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:US dollar (Score:4, Insightful)
It has value because the government of the USA says so.
No, it has value because both parties of the transaction says so.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Easily worked, even by stone age technology, as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It has value for five reasons:
1) Dollars are considered legal tender by the U.S. government for all debts public and private.
2) OPEC oil is quoted in dollars, so it creates demand for the U.S. dollar.
3) It's the world's reserve currency.
4) Everyone in the U.S. is already using it.
5) You can't just print them yourself.
Other than that, yeah, it's just a fancy piece of paper.
Re: (Score:1)
5) You can't just print them yourself.
Unless you are Lim No Song , nephew of the supreme leader of North Korea , Kim No Dong .
Re: (Score:2)
It has value for five reasons:
1) Dollars are considered legal tender by the U.S. government for all debts public and private.
2) OPEC oil is quoted in dollars, so it creates demand for the U.S. dollar.
3) It's the world's reserve currency.
4) Everyone in the U.S. is already using it.
5) You can't just print them yourself.
1 isn't true the way people think it is. I can't pay my rent with cash, for example, and my landlord is free to price my rent in Euros or Bitcoin.
2 is entirely false. The currency markets are so much bigger than the oil market that it just doesn't matter what currency oil is priced in. Even if you want to buy "June oil" in "June Euros", the currency futures market is quite liquid.
4 is the main one. It doesn't matter what we use for currency, as long as the network effect is there. Currency is "the most
Re: (Score:2)
I can't pay my rent with cash, for example, and my landlord is free to price my rent in Euros or Bitcoin.
You most certainly can pay the rent you owe in cash. The land owner just doesnt have to keep renting to you.
What happens if the land owner doesnt accept your cash for the rent you owe? Well if he wants payment he will have to take you to court, at which point the court will make him take your cash because its good for all debts, including your debt to him.
Even in cases where you have a contract to pay by some other method, as for example you might have a contract to perform an action in exchange for so
Re: (Score:2)
why can airlines require credit card payment and refuse my cash if I wanted to pay for their overpriced stuff in the air?
My guess is that since you haven't bought it, there is no "debt." IANAL, but I suppose that here in America, I could demand that you pay me in Rai stones [wikipedia.org] if you haven't bought anything yet. But if you come into my restaurant and have dinner, go to pay with dollars and I say, "I don't want dollars, I want Rai stones," there could be a problem.
But I'm just guessing.
Re: (Score:2)
Any transaction can be refused if the parties don't agree on method of payment. You technically could demand Rai Stones for the dinner in a self-service bar where you pay at the counter upon receiving your meal. Of course you won't get many customers and some may be outraged but legally you're in the clear.
OTOH, you can't refuse dollars for debt. If someone comes to your restaurant, order a dinner, eat it, and you bring a bill for 4 Rai Stones, they may pay you in dollars instead. They got their meal, they
Re: (Score:2)
It is legal tender for those debts, but it isn't required that all debts accept it. Something that ISN'T legal tender for all debts is sex (in certain locales, others may allow it). You aren't legally allowed to pay for a debt with sex.
Re: (Score:2)
1) Dollars are considered legal tender by the U.S. government for all debts public and private.
Eh, point taken, but that is a phrase that occasionally does not mean what it appears to say to a layperson. For example, why can airlines require credit card payment and refuse my cash if I wanted to pay for their overpriced stuff in the air? Well, "all debts public and private" has a rather technical meaning....
It's not a debt until there is an irrevocable transfer of goods or services. It becomes a debt when that happens, until you provide compensation, and at that point, they must accept legal tender as payment. On the other hand, the "cash price" could be 10x or 100x the non-cash price, so it's ambiguous.
An example of a storefront which does not accept cash is "Split Bread", a sandwich shop located outside the front doors of the Metreon, in San Francisco: http://splitbread.com/locate/ [splitbread.com] Because you must pay bef
Re: (Score:2)
...why can airlines require credit card payment and refuse my cash if I wanted to pay for their overpriced stuff in the air?
Well, technically, and since this is \. I can be technical, the airlines are not refusing to take Dollars. They are just unable to process paper and coin transactions. Just like they could say you can't use American Express to pay, if they found that the business cost of doing so is more than the business benefit of being able to access those cards.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, US dollars have an incredibly high demand. The first
Re: US dollar (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: US dollar (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Value is a product of both supply and demand (human desire as you put it). Given the same demand, scarcity will raise prices, over-supply will lower them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You cannot exchange diamonds for things of value -- unless you count things of very low value. There is no market accessible to the general public where you can trade diamonds.
Re: US dollar (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, diamonds are valuable because a corrupt, immoral industry has been running propaganda campaigns to convince us of their value for generations.
That could be said of any commodity, gold, silver, oranges, etc. Society drives the value of commodities via supply and demand. If you can create demand for a limited supply of something, you're going to be rich and most likely turn corrupt.
Re: US dollar (Score:4, Informative)
* Women smoking as a symbol of feminine power and equality
* Bacon is a great breakfast food
* Communism is bad and should be feared
* Fluoridated water prevents cavities
* The 1954 Guatemalan coup, a model that is currently being used in the Middle East and the Ukraine.
There are many more. Of particular note is that Goebbels used Bernays' template to generate popular German support for the Holocaust, in a very similar fashion to the way American sentiment is being moved against Muslims.
But the demand for diamonds is purely a result of his paid promotional work for De Beers.
Re: (Score:2)
By that logic diamonds would have had little to no value before the 20th century. That is patently false and can be shown to be so by the historical record. Bernays may have had some influence on the current cultural position of diamonds but they have been valuable throughout history.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, historically speaking, diamonds were indeed a rarity back in the pre-19th century. During the late 19th and early 20th century disposable income became the main barrier. However, we've since left those periods and we are pretty filthy with diamonds and cash to toss at them. So I'm guess lacking a third quality to really drive up prices, the industry would instead just rehash the first two to begin with. One, making diamonds seem rare by distribution control. Two, by making your cash have less pur
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, diamonds are valuable because a corrupt, immoral industry has been running propaganda campaigns to convince us of their value for generations.
1: Control supply.
2: Run propaganda campaign to increase demand.
3: Profit! (Note absence of ??? step)
Re: (Score:2)
Its the exact same reason why you work hard when you own a part of the company you work for, vs. one you just get paid at. You have a sense of entitlement (ownwership) that you're working hard for your own (and others') good. The US economy revolves around the US dollar in very substantial ways. Nobody wants to see themselves or everyone else fail, so 'a dollar' stays relatively static within the bubble of comfort. Outside the bubble of comfort where USD isn't the universal trade tender, one must be realist
Re: (Score:2)
I'd argue that you really need a non-insignificant portion of the company to work harder. I used to work for a rather large company and received options and also participated in the stock purchase plan. But my little blip of ownership wasn't enough for me to work any harder than I already did. Sure, I liked it when options vested and/or the stock price went up.....but I looked at that as "vacation money" or "new toy money" and not as a reward for working harder. Had I received options in the realm of t
Re: (Score:2)
I have trouble understanding why the US dollar has value.
Because the government that issues it has the most powerful military force in human history, by almost-if-not an order of magnitude.
This isn't a political comment, I just really don't understand why everyone agrees that bits of paper have value.
Not everyone does, but when the guys insisting it has value have a few hundred predator drones, a few thousand Marines, and more ICMBs and satellite platforms than you can count pointed directly at your asshole, you tend to acquiesce, since the alternative option kinda sucks.
I heard something one time about this ancient concept known as the "gold standard," but I think that may
Sniffing too much gun oil (Score:2)
But China could have a bigger one in a decade if they work at it, yet that's not going to make people respect it's currency any more than today.
Also think about the 1920-30s when US currency was so well respected that when the US economy crashed it had global consequences. The US didn't have such a huge military back then.
Try thinking about trade instead of guns. I'm sure you'll work it out.
Re: (Score:2)
People like it.
It's the network effect in action.
Re: (Score:2)
Why does the US dollar have value?
Same reason anything has value: supply and demand. The supply of dollars is essentially determined by the Fed, and demand is driven by its ability to buy things (think: why do you want money?). At the intersection of supply and demand, you have the "price" of a dollar, found just like the price of a bushel of corn or a neglected Beanie Baby.
So, how does a Bitcoin come to bear the price it does? Supply and demand again--except supply is controlled by an algorithm instead of the Fed, and demand is driven m
Re: (Score:2)
Well, among other things, the only form of currency the US government will accept for the payment of taxes, etc, are US dollars. Think about casino tokens: why are red chips worth 5 dollars? Because within the casino, those tokens will be honored for $5 worth of goods, services, or wagers. And you can exchange another currency (dollars) for a red token at the rate of $5/token. If you were say, stuck in the casino indefinitely, and the casino decided that it would no longer accept anything other than chips i
Re: (Score:2)
The dollar has value because the US military is sitting on top of resources that American corporations will turn into goods that people can then buy with US dollars. The number one good being oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
What is hard to understand about that?
Tangentially, the Russian currency is appreciating because of their actions in the Ukraine. On the subject of beliefs, it appears that the world believes that the Russians are going to be able to secure their gains. At least in so far as the
Re: (Score:2)
Because every American has to pay taxes in US Dollars, which means 310 million people in the US need the damn things. Many expats need them, too, because the IRS taxes global income. If your salary is more then $98k you need to pay US Income tax, which means you need US Dollars. If you're gonna need a bunch of dollars every April 15th anyway, it makes sense to use dollars for most of your economic activity.
So the guys boasting about the US Army are kinda right, because the US Army coulda been called in if t
Re: (Score:2)
Not to mention not just barter trade but delays in timing are resolved. You can't keep fresh corn to pay your heating bill in January for example. Having a non-perishable store of value is very convenient.
changed my view of it for the better (Score:3, Interesting)
Who would have thought, when Slashdot first posted about Bitcoin, that in just a few years we'd be seeing a story about it on the cover of Newsweek, stories on all the major news networks, etc. Despite all the flaws and nitpicks you can make against it, it is rapidly growing in popularity (especially with younger people) and many are fascinated (and a little confused) by it.
When I come to slashdot, all I see are negative comments about how "it can never work" voted up. Go to Hacker News, a tech site with a much younger audience, and it's a totally different story. I think the older crowd here is more prone to point out flaws instead of seeing the potential.
Re:changed my view of it for the better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You are correct (Score:2)
My understanding was that you used to be able to exchange them for USD. Most places stopped that and then only did the Euro. Now they won't do that anymore. Is there a place to exchange bitcoins for cash anymore? If the answer is no then it sounds very much like a Ponzi scheme. Someone keeps telling you that you have plenty of money but good luck trying to withdraw any.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You forget this is an audience of engineers. They tend to think outcomes are more important then process.
And the probable outcome of Bitcoin is gonna be the first few investors get incredibly rich, as they bought in for chump-change; with subsequent iterations of investors making less and less (as Bitcoin can't have the same % appreciation from $500 that it did from $5); with the very last set losing their entire investment when some asshole figures out how to use a quantum computer to hack the entire syste
Re: (Score:2)
It's just disingenuous to call it a Ponzi scheme. "Ponzi scheme" is being used not as an
Re: (Score:2)
Dude, this is America.
We call Social Security a Ponzi Scheme despite the fact that it's not legally possible to be the last guy to receive a Social Security check. SS is funded by a tax on wages, so as long as somebody's making wages SS Beneficiaries will get checks. It's possible (and actually pretty likely) that the returns of this generation of small families will be lower then the return to previous generations who routinely had three kids, because three kids = three salaries to tax, but nobody is gonna
Re: (Score:2)
We call Social Security a Ponzi Scheme despite the fact that it's not legally possible to be the last guy to receive a Social Security check. SS is funded by a tax on wages, so as long as somebody's making wages SS Beneficiaries will get checks. It's possible (and actually pretty likely) that the returns of this generation of small families will be lower then the return to previous generations who routinely had three kids, because three kids = three salaries to tax, but nobody is gonna lose all their money.
That's actually funny. I hadn't thought of it but social security is a Ponzi Scheme, just a government-mandated one. It's not that you put money into the system and you get the money back out when you retire. Rather, you put in money to pay people who have already put money in, and when you retire you get paid by new people putting money in. The reason a Ponzi Scheme collapses is that people stop putting money into it. The difference with SS isn't that it isn't a Ponzi Scheme, but rather that you're legally
Re: (Score:2)
You hadn't heard that comparison before?
All the intellectual conservative activists were throwing that analogy around 8-10 years ago when Bush was trying to privatize the system. It was just accurate enough that no amount of ridicule would get them off it, but not accurate enough to convince the House to take up the Bill. See the thing about privatizing Social Security is that all the current tax revenue is used to pay for benefits, which means that if you want to put social security money into people's pri
Re: (Score:3)
This. Back in Janurary a client of mine and I had a few meetings. He wanted their company phones to get a push notification every time someone filled out a form on his website. But during our conversation he talked about some friends of his who were into bit coin mining and said we should go into a venture. And I said no. I think I mined 4 bit coins through a pool once many years ago, mainly because I've always been fascinated by various distributed computing things over the past decade and was interes
Re: (Score:1)
There are plenty of ponzi schemes out there utilizing bitcoin just like there are ponzi schemes utilizing every other currency out there. That doesn't make any currency itself a ponzi scheme.
Bitcoin is one awesome piece of technology, nothing changes that, how that technology is used... well that varies.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
No. The older crowd has seen its share of Ponzi schemes and economic bubbles and is simply less naive.
I will second that. The other inevitable thing about Bitcoins is that they will end up regulated and they will not remain anonymous. That's what will happen if Bitcoin is going to be successful at all as a global currency. Only idiots trust their money to anonymous, uninsured and unregulated financial instruments. The only people that make money with those instruments are the greedy and the corrupt. And before anyone says anything about businesses legitimizing them by taking payments, why wouldn't a busines
Re: (Score:2)
No. The older crowd has seen its share of Ponzi schemes and economic bubbles and is simply less naive.
Yet they're all in on Social Security..
Yeah, they've arranged it so they are on the top. They must be fools, getting money from social security.
Re: (Score:2)
Even disregarding the profound changes that a distributed, decentralised and free wealth transfer system can afford us, let's talk money.
I have made upwards 40,000$ from being an early adopter, from an investment of ~80$. Naive me.
Note how you express your wealth in dollars...
Re: (Score:1)
Flaws like all your money disappering are really quite serious.
Re: (Score:2)
Your money only disappears if you give it to shady people to hold for you.
Re: (Score:2)
Or if you have it on a hot wallet, and your computer is infected by a trojan. Or you have it all stored in a medium that fails. Or if you use it to buy something, and that something never arrives. Or you give it to non-shady people to hold if for you, and they are big enough to be a target for hackers.
So it's all good as long as computers don't lose data, and the entire meatspace around computer security has no flaws. Good luck with that.
Re: (Score:2)
I do somewhat agree with what you're saying, but actually none of your points are specific to bitcoin. You could make all the exact same arguments you just did for dollars too. Maybe not the physical paper kind, but credit card numbers, bank account numbers etc etc. As for physical paper, there's nothing stopping you printing out your bitcoin wallet key and keeping that securely instead of in computer memory.
A failing in computer security and failing to make backups all amounts to the same potential for los
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but there're systems in place to protect you if you lose that shit in a real financial system.
I left my wallet on the bus in August. I lost a debit card. I realized it wasn't coming back when a $32 charge at Marathon showed up. So I cancelled the card, and contested the charge. It was a hassle, but I got the money back.
With Mt. Gox Bitcoiners are basically screwed. The week before Mt. Gox stopped letting people take money out they were praising Bitcoin's lack of government regulation, now they're dema
Re: (Score:2)
Most of your arguments could be said if you keep sums of cash around.
.. and sure enough, most people don't keep large sums of cash around, for precisely those reasons.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
The younger crowd just wants it for Silk Road.
The older crowd already has reliable local dealers ;)
Silk Road (Score:2)
How did that thing even work? You pay someone then agree to meet somewhere to complete the transaction? Sounds like a great way to get robbed.
Re: (Score:3)
No, you pay bitcoin then they'd put the drugs in a box and wrote your name and address on it and handed it to the government -- the postal service! Or maybe FedEx or something I guess...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably a lot of us, but we probably expected different articles about a giant ponzi scheme collapsing instead.
missing option (Score:2)
"...has me even more convinced than ever that my money is not safe in the hands of others."
Missing option (Score:2, Flamebait)
Sometimes a thing is just a thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoins exist. I don't judge their existence. They are just an idea with some possible uses. Bitcoin fans remain insufferable and delusional.
The ones under my mattress are safe (Score:3)
Nothing I have heard has suggested any basic flaw in the cryptocurrency concept, or even the protocol design or software implementation for Bitcoin itself. The failure of some Bitcoin exchanges bears no more relation to the viability of Bitcoin than the failure of a bank would to the viability of a national currency (arguably even less, at least for proponents of the theory that fiat currency is inherently unstable).
Banks sometimes fail. Bitcoin exchanges, being immature businesses with little experience of implementing technical security or financial risk management, will fail more frequently. The wise will spread their risk between different stores of value, so as not to be exposed to any particular institutional failure. This could well include keeping your own wallet, in a USB stick under the mattress.
Re: (Score:2)
You're ignoring a major part of reality:
When banks fail you only lose money if you've got an account with more money then the FDIC insurance limit (currently $100k).
That's one advantage of a government-controlled currency with mature institutions. The second advantage is it's value can;t actually go to zero because somebody will need it to pay taxes. OTOH another theft on the scale of Mt. Gox and nobody is gonna want Bitcoins anymore.
So much negativity? (Score:2)
I find it interesting so many people took a negative view of Bitcoin, even before all of the bad press of late.
Of course, if you made up your mind from the start that a decentralized, universal, digital currency was a bad idea -- I guess anything negative that's said about it after that would just bolster your original opinion.
As some of you have pointed out, it's really only a few years old. It's going to take much longer to refine it into something more workable for the typical user. I could easily see it
Skeptical (Score:2)
Paper currency - it's valuable because governments say its valuable and millions of businesses accept it.
Gold - its valuable because its historically been valuable, quantities are limited, and it's exchangeable for paper currency.
Bitcoin - its valuable cause bitcoin miners say its valuable and some very dodgy businesses accept it.
Bitcoin - no, thanks
Re: (Score:1)
"The source of its value is its limited amount: Normal currency - partly; Cryptocurrency; yes; A stick with my name on it; yes."
This line is problematic. A cryptocurrency's value is partly determined by its finite amount, not entirely. There are currently (and never will be) enough whole Bitcoins to go around for 1:1 ratio of a Bitcoin-to-humans distribution. So why aren't they currently worth a lot more than they are currently worth?
Re: (Score:2)
With the value of 42coin going down every damn hour, I'd stay the hell away from it. Or buy all you can.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You could already bump the "success if lost" number for Bitcoin. After recent hack of Bitcurex.com, Bitcurex returned all stolen assets to the customers (using own reserve). I must say they dealt with the hack quite gracefully.
Litecoin is dead! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
very meme. much reference. wow.
Re: (Score:2)
Couldn't. Not could. sheesh.