On July 14 2012 13:56 royalsu wrote:
What you take for granted as basic computer literacy skills is not possessed by a majority of the population in the world.
I JUST told you that OBVIOUSLY this is not a currency for everyday people.
On July 14 2012 10:34 taco wrote:
Since when is me saying that Bitcoin is fine equivalent to saying that it is the perfect medium of payment for everyday people?
On July 14 2012 13:56 royalsu wrote:
Consider this scenario: I log into my bitcoin account online, make a transfer, then get distracted by a phone call and forget to log out of my browser. Someone ends up transferring all my money out. I can't trace this transaction and there is no authority to call. At a bank this simple scenario doesn't cost me my net worth.
What makes you think
A) We're discussing online Bitcoin accounts when I specifically specified a specific offline method of protecting your bitcoins
B) It is desirable to have a system online wherein you can see that someone transferred you the money but their controlling authority
just allows you them recall it (After you for example gave them your TF2 hats having received payments)
(This problem is why people avoid PayPal when selling online goods, I got scammed for >$200 in total this way on PayPal anyway)
C) You're going to keep your entire net worth in a single wallet file managed by an online service? These people are the types of people that should not get into bitcoin.
I am the owner of zero bitcoins typing this because it doesn't have practical applications for me so I'm not some biased promoter of BC.
The biggest thing that irks me about bitcoins is that they're not backed by anything. The only reason anyone would accept them is because people trust that other people will accept them too. If people suddenly decide that bitcoins are worth shit, then they are worth shit. The people that converted all their savings into bitcoins at the end of May 2011 were pretty sad by November.
What is different with dollars?
1) The government has big guns and can force people to accept the money.
2) It's not really that different and you have a chart like the above with dollars as well. This is actually one of the problems a decentralized currency should try to solve.
If you really want to decentralize currency, it should be backed by actual commodities. Imagine we all pay each other in oil. Even if merchants suddenly refuse to accept oil as payment, you would still be able to sell oil to gas stations. Oil is a real thing. It has value of itself, even beyond the fact that people use it as a currency. So the price could never crash.
Using just ONE commodity would be a terrible idea because that would make the value of your currency really vulnerable to say a new oil well being discovered (which would make the price of oil drop and thus the value of your dollars). You could take the top 20 or top 50 traded commodities and set the currency value to a set amount of each thing. The commodities will shift in price relative to each other, but the whole thing would be pretty stable. Whenever you want, you can trade your currency for those commodities at the bank.
Of course we can digitize the basic idea, you don't need to go to a bank and get an actual basket of stuff, but you could electronically gain ownership of some stuff in some warehouse and trade it on the market for another currency that you do like. With - if you want - a bank handle that all for you, so you don't need to actually go to the market yourself. Whenever you get tired of "commodity coin", trade it in, all without leaving the comfort of your computer chair. The currency would be issued by banks that have a contract with you saying that they'll always exchange your eletronic coins for ownership rights to the stuff in the warehouse and as a convenience, also offer to convert into whatever currency you want. Not many people will use it, but the possibility will keep the currency stable.
So, you say, that is a huge cost to maintain a stable currency, we need to store shit in warehouses and keep it just in case someone wants to trade it in. and yeah, that would be true. But you can take the idea a step further, and just use futures as backing so we never actually leave something to rot in a warehouse and still keep the core idea of the money being backed by physical goods. Make a workable currency for the modern age on that idea and I'll get excited.
Right now, for bitcoin, you're really just speculating that a lot of other people get excited about bitcoin and then sell all your coins before they realize how dumb they are. People that own bitcoins now have something to gain by promoting it.
Bitcoin is already a currency that everyone in the world will be able to use. NordicBitcoins is releasing prepaid bitcoin cards in Africa and Asia. The majority of people who will use Bitcoins will not understand the building of cards that Bitcoin is built upon as they will only understand that other people are accepting this form of payment and then copy their behaviour. The point of a good currency (i.e. liquidity, low-variance stability) is that everyone should be able to use it easily, quickly, and efficiently. Bitcoins was definitely NOT OBVIOUSLY built for a subset of people but in its current implementation only hacker nerds SHOULD use it.
still would of been sick to acquire some bitcoins back in 2011
I've also been unable to find any logical refutation of why their planned stagnant money supply won't lead to massive deflation and lock up their economy. My reading over the weekend lead me to believe Bitcoin's long-term workability is a ridiculous notion.
How can any bank afford the risk of making loans in a deflationary currency? How can people pay back loans when every unit of currency they earn is going to be harder than the last?
I mean the whole thing is based on austrian economic thinking. what a joke and then they also have no way to enforce the austrian's hail mary, "no fractional reserve banking". its just an absurd system and its going to hurt a lot of people if its use continues or especially if it grows.
they're launching attacks into the third world now!!! this rly upsets me
people involved in bitcoin have no shame at all, or they are ignorant. this is currently nothing more than a pyramid scheme for early adopters and a play-market for people to trade on. there hasn't even been a proper proposal to redevelop a sustainable way to keep the currency honest once the incentive of mining new coins goes away. the current setup basically guarantees that the block chain system will become compromised.
one of the main developers has stated that they are working on a redesign, but what is it? whatever way they attempt to fix the problem,
1. might not work
2. no matter what, will be a huuuuuuuuge change to bitcoins economics
~
(basically, bitcoins are slowly "mined" by people dedicating (vast) quantities of computing power towards work on the "block chain" This block chain mining (ie its development over time) is coupled with the way that bitcoin log of all transactional activity is built, which is the very core of the bitcoin idea and allows the community to be sure that no one is double spending coins and etc. its the foundation of its continued circulation. If there ever comes a time when the block chain's processing power has more than like 50% of it coming from one user/organization/whatever, the integrity of the central log becomes compromised)
~
But they haven't had any public discussion to cr8 a workable plan at all for what they're going to do after like 2020 or whenever the last bitcoin is scheduled to be mined.
And this has nothing to do with all of the actual economic problems of the premise of a currency w/ a stagnant supply
introducing this system to the 3rd world is completely irresponsible and predatory. seriously scum of the earth stuff.
On March 27 2013 16:18 CamilaPunt wrote:
so this is all due to cyprus? getting interesting!
No certainly not just because of cyprus. There have been lots of news in the past months with Bitcoin oriented Startups receiving funding from big VCs and companies like Reddit, Wordpress, Megaupload, Wikileaks... all accepting them now.
Is bitcoins legit? Can someone explain this to me like I'm a total dumbass please? All I remember is negative stigma around this. Some LP member screwed someone then went AWOL, and some LP guy lost a hefty amount of dollars in it.
On March 28 2013 10:50 Arirang wrote:
Is bitcoins legit? Can someone explain this to me like I'm a total dumbass please? All I remember is negative stigma around this. Some LP member screwed someone then went AWOL, and some LP guy lost a hefty amount of dollars in it.
Depends on how you define legit. As I mentioned earlier there are now quite a large amount of merchants or sites accepting them, plus one ipoker room and one room out of the former micro gaming network let you deposit in bitcoins as of now. The LP member you're talking about probably is Amir Taaki Im not hundred percent sure what exactly happened there but AFAIK he didn't screw anyone intentionally but rather didn't secure his website accordingly. He recently appeared in a short report of the guardian which you can see here where he definitely doesn't seem like he ran away with a lot of money.
When it comes to the negative stigma I guess its just like everywhere else as some people tend to have strong opinions about topics which they don't have the slightest clue about while refusing to put effort into researching it.
To be fair though the whole system of bitcoin is very complex and it can be hard to wrap your head around it when it effectively creates something out of "nothing".
And that guy who lost that amount is certainly responsible as well as online wallets aren't exactly the safest place to store them.
Legit means this. If you get scammed out of $10,000 worth of BitCoins, would you be owed $10,000? Or they would just kick you out of the court room and say WTF is bit coins? The whole point of gov controlled currency is that you can settle claims by the currency. Specially in an extremely volatile and shady market like BitCoin this is very important.
In US everyone is happy as long as all the prices are rising. Unless its crude oil - Marc Faber
Going out of my lurker status again just to say that in my book Amir is a giant asshole, almost Howard Lederer style.
he is still responsible for 5000 of my missing bitcoin which is half a million now in current rates.....
He was given the responsability to secure a exchange and just released the whole source code, which resulted in a huge theft because THE PASSWORDS WERE IN THE SOURCE CODE.
This is equivalent to be in charge of the funds of a bank and just giving the keys to everyone.
What annoy me the most is he is still taking no responsabilities whatsoever and keep going in medias and stuff acting like a prophet for bitcoin.
He did not do anything for us (the creditors) so I just want say loud and clear that he is an giant fucker and if I ever hear of him rolling around in a rich car or buying himself a house I think I might act in a stupid way since any money he might own is ours in the first place.
When confronted with his responsabilities he stated that he does not really care if rich people lost money cause LOL THEY HAVE ALREADY MONEY.
Any interview or public intervention he makes should be about how he is fucking sorry for everything and how he feel so bad and trying to redeem itself. It is not.
Well yeah of course not.
Anyways I hope you at least reinvested and got the best out of the recent spike.Also wasnt there some liquidation process going on that you get some of it back?
Not really. I was too angry to reinvest and then again I did not really have liquidity at that time.
I still have a few bitcoins left (lets say 1/10 of what I lost) which help to ease the pain.
The liquidation process is under way but I dont know how many times and how much I ll get back from it. I dont get my hopes too high as it seems a lot of money and bitcoin are missing.
On March 29 2013 07:00 capaneo wrote:
Legit means this. If you get scammed out of $10,000 worth of BitCoins, would you be owed $10,000? Or they would just kick you out of the court room and say WTF is bit coins? The whole point of gov controlled currency is that you can settle claims by the currency. Specially in an extremely volatile and shady market like BitCoin this is very important.
Now that you mention it, there likely is a large amount of bitcoin activity that is driven by the very uncertain nature of what type of legal treatment they will get if/when the time comes..
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