This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Guest Post: What Every Libertarian Should Know About Bitcoin
Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Tom Woods Talks Bitcoin... Fantastic Interview
Soon, whether via Bitcoin or whatever comes next, it will be possible to strip banking away from bankers, and money away from governments.
From a recent article in the Spectator titled “How Bitcoin Could Destroy the State”
Support for Bitcoin amongst Austrian economists is growing by they day and in this interview, the highly admired and respected Tom Woods, discusses Bitcoin with Erik Voorhees of Bitinstant (a popular, rapid way of converting fiat into BTC). This interview very poignantly addresses many of the layperson’s concerns about it that I have heard over the past several months. Remember, despite the price rise, Ben Bernanke is still creating the equivalent of 75 Bitcoin markets every month with his money printing.
This worth every single minute of your time.
»
- 47631 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
What happens when some pimply faced kid figures out how to hack bitcoins and create a few digits? pfffftt. I'll stick with g.o.l.d.
Yes, Bitcoin could destroy the state. Or the state could destroy Bitcoin. I wonder which it will be...
Check out Instawallet: https://instawallet.org/
They seem to be having some problems right now. I'm currently getting this message:
Down for Maintenance
We have detected a security breach. Services are temporarily suspended until we have thoroughly investigated the situation. We will resume services as soon as possible.
Please do not send funds to your address for the time being.
Stay tuned for further updates, thank you for your understanding.
some people *still* seem to be unclear about how bitcoin works
obviously, you wouldn't want to invest in some sort of digital black box you don't understand.
but still.
it's not rocket science.
Maybe this will clear things up. If it's not crystal clear after you read this, maybe bitcoin's not for you.
The steps to run the network are as follows:
1) New transactions are broadcast to all nodes.
2) Each node collects new transactions into a block.
3) Each node works on finding a difficult proof-of-work for its block.
4) When a node finds a proof-of-work, it broadcasts the block to all nodes.
5) Nodes accept the block only if all transactions in it are valid and not already spent.
6) Nodes express their acceptance of the block by working on creating the next block in the chain, using the hash of the accepted block as the previous hash.
Nodes always consider the longest chain to be the correct one and will keep working on extending it.
If two nodes broadcast different versions of the next block simultaneously, some nodes may receive one or the other first.
In that case, they work on the first one they received, but save the other branch in case it becomes longer.
The tie will be broken when the next proof-of-work is found and one branch becomes longer; the nodes that were working on the other branch will then switch to the longer one.
ok, that pretty much wraps it up.
plus, it's all open source.
the intrinsic value and security of bitcoin should now be obvious to every investor.
What's a node?
What happens if the world economy shits it pants and the internet goes down?
If the shit goes down and the Feds have to bring down the hammer, the energy grid will be the first thing taken out to prevent communication over the former US states. Bye Bye bitcoin
If energy grid is taken out, you can say good buy to almost everything. I hope the NPPs have enough diesel to sustain the power outage.
http://evoorhees.blogspot.com/?m=1
Some of Eriks early writings...
To each his own.
Linux fanbois cheer Bitcoin, spend all day on SecondLife, FaceBook and playing Gods of War, think gold is a barbarous relic.
Seems like the elite have done a good job at dumbing down a niche crowd.
Spoofing servers is the oldest trick in the book. Virus in your USB stick and wave your wallet goodbye. There is a counterparty and you don't even know what his name is.
Let them rejoice in fake binary money (same as bits on a bank's computer). I prefer protons and neutrons, tightly packed in an atom, as in 47 protons and 79 protons (with their respective neutrons each).
I'm keeping all my money in tulips.
In two lips? Or in two sets of lips?
Hmmm....there's an idea.
Of any group, libertarians would know god damn well what lengths the state would go to crush an alternative currency. And to think such a currency that relies on something so vulnerable to the state as the Internet could overturn the international banking cartel is simply naïveté. The state could and would crush it overnight if it posed a real threat. To believe otherwise is to fatally underestimate your enemy.
Fascinating. This is more fiat than fiat -- the Mandrake Mechanism writ large, creating a bubble of NOTHING.
NO WONDER THERE'S NO COUNTERPARTY RISK. HA! HA! HA!
The speaker is deeply conflicted. This is a scam, and an awful lot of people are going to get burned. I guess you have to witness a MLM pyramid or some other con in order to recognize such things. Central banksters aren't accumulating BitCoins. This is just another parlour trick -- convincing the children that nothing is something.
Someday, sheep are going to get tired of being sheared, but not this day, apparently.
It is interesting to see how bitcoin polarized the ZH crowd.
The visionaries of the new market VS the preparers for the old market collapse.
Market likes visionaries, and rewards them, not preparers.
"It is interesting to see how Ben Bernanke's Dried Turds polarized the ZH crowd.
The visionaries of the new market VS the preparers for the old market collapse.
Market likes visionaries, and rewards them, not preparers."
Your "argument" could be used to defend a market of trading using Ben Bernanke's Dried Turds. That's because it's not an argument, it's just an ad hominen attack.
Fafni mi ga ledo!!!
I suppose you also endorse carbon offsets.
"Visionary," my ass.
If you think I'm pro-nwo you should stop using mushrooms and get to the gym... Mens sana in corpore sano...
You're a poor judge of character.
Interesting to see how you can ONLY buy silver or buy Bitcoin. I mean you couldn't possibly own both of them. And of course to be a real silver stacker you must hate bitcoin and believe that all new technology is from TPTB and branded with the mark of the beast LMAO!
BTW, Bitcoin does not rely on the internet to store your wallet and the grid and the public internet is not going down. Not a chance. America is not the center of the world and it does not control the internet. USG and others can make all the stupid fucking laws they want against the mighty Bitcoin, they are POWERLESS in the end.
The idea that the government cannot go after any kind of digital currency is totally ridiculuos. The vulnarable point is exchanges and the government can simply ban the selling digital currency for their own currency in their jurisdiction. Then to exchange your bitcoin for real money (pardon for the terminology) you need to have the offshore (regular money )account which is easily controllable. The alternative is "to meet somebody in cafeteria" (good luck on that one). Another point is that buying and selling whatever are taxable operations (with capital gains and losses) and if you do not pay taxes on that just remember that your transactions are (forever) publicly available. It is false to assume that operation of the bitcoin network s tantamount to working inernet:it requires very substantial computer resources (would you be willing to wait several hours to verify the validity of your bitcoin payment, say, on gas station?).
I frankly getting tired with growing security measures imposed by regular banks (especially, in places like HK and Singapore)
and they are not doing this just to waste their resources. The assumption that such an open and complex system as bitcoin network gives you a safe way to transact and preserve value is just simply wrong.
I would not touch this bullshit with 10 feet pole.
Bollucks most bit coiners are also into metal that is why we relentlessly keep telling you about it....and Tyler shows real spine by giving the tech a fair hearing.....
the dinos here who wish for another gold rush are blindly missing on the new ASIC shovels that are booming AT THIS VERY MOMENT
last i talk about it
A nerd using Windows and a USB stick, LOL.
Please, spare us the ignorant bull.
You are conjoining at least 3 different kinds of people in there, hacker-types (in the old-fashioned sense of the word), online chronic socializers and gamers.
I do agree that a nice little virus or trojan would make a great way to steal Bitcoins, not to mention that it's certain that mainstream Operating Systems like Windows and Mac OSX have weaknesses and backdoors which are known by (and probably been put in place at the behest of) large governmental entities. Not only that, but there already are criminal groups with their own hackers (the nasty black hat -type ones) who for money will use phishing and keyloggers to get bank access and credit card codes from the ignorant and I bet they will move into Bitcoin stealling as soon as it's worth their time.
By the way, that Linux you mentioned has far fewer viruses and much lower danger of state-sponsored backdoors than the mainstream close-source Operating Systems, so it would make for a better platform to keep one's Bitcoins.
That said, as one of those (long, long, long time) linux fanbois (maybe fangeezer is closer to reality) with quite a bit of know-how in the IT Security sphere (bit of a white-hat here), I'm sticking to physical PMs for long term wealth preservation. As it so happens, my expertise in Economics and Finance (I also worked in that Industry) is also making my Ponzi-scheme senses tingle when it comes to Bitcoin.
The Unabomber wrote an essey on this (in prison). He argues that the entire modern civilisation is built on one thing only: electricity. Take that one out and we are back even further than the dark ages, because we don't have an infrastructure for the dark ages' economy (blacksmiths etc.).
The Grid is not everything, eliminating all electricty would be difficult. Or to look at it the other way, there are many ways to produce electricity.
Only ancient things are of real worth and value... things the Universe made, not man.
.
Nothing New Under the Sun,
History is just repeating itself...
Not to mention, who's the shady designer behind this bitcoin?
.
A Troll? Shill? CIA? Zuck?
Or a good guy for the benefit of the people?
Imagine if it is CIA, how easy it would be to Cyprus them. The protesters wouldn't know where to go.
BINGO!!! You wouldn't even know who to complain about. The fact that nobody is certain where this thing originated is making me feel queasy.
it's one of the most important features of BTC that it's irrelevant who created it, and that only the math behind it is relevant.
if you're planning to kick a dragon, then you better do it in the dark. once you're seen, you quickly turn into breakfast.
actually, if we get to know who made BTC in the near future, then it will discredit the abilities of the person, or the group, to a large extent.
"it's one of the most important features of BTC that it's irrelevant who created it, and that only the math behind it is relevant."
What's relevant here is Godel"s Incompleteness Theorem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_incompleteness_theorems
Read the protocols to the wise men of Zion and that should make everyone wonder who really is behind this. There will have to be a replacement for all currencies. Just as Cyprus was a template for bringing down EU debt maybe bitcoin will serve as the new world currency instead of SDRs. What better way to fool the sheep. A Trojon horse indeed??
Actually, it would be impossible to confiscate other people's coins. For anyone.
Unless of course they broke several standard, very widespread cryptographic algorithms and decided that the best thing to do with their new-found discovery is to monetize it by first making another breakthrough, the innovative Bitcoin protocol, a very elaborate protocol, publicize it, implement it, help it start, wait 4+ years for it to grow and then decide it is a good moment to finally cash out whatever they can exploiting their initial discovery. Something tells me someone with such a discovery would either: 1. earn a lot of respect by publishing his initial discovery (and then maybe get on to making the other innovation - the cryptocurrency, but with a working, reliable cryptographic algorithms and earn a shitload more respect on top) or 2. attack some existing system that uses the same standard cryptographic protocols and monetize that. All of this looks extremely unlikely.
Learn the basics.
In my limited research, "Satoshi Nakamoto" could be Neal King, Vladimir Oksman or Charles Bry...or all three...they applied for the patent.
A patent on a "currency"...I'll leave that right there, with all its implications.
I'll state again for the record, I'm not opposd to anyone using the credit system known as bitcoin...but its not money. Its designed to be spent not saved. There can be no expectation of "savings" relying on a third party in this world. I have zero problem with off the banker controlled grid private transactions just realize what it is.
Its not real money.
I have just invented a new and better medium of exchange, I am going to patent it and call it "BUBBLECOIN!" Beat a path to my door.
EXACTLY
The guest on Wood's show CLAIMED other digital currencies are controlled and managed by central parties. What's to stop an infinite number of digital currencies from coming out that work like BitCoin and without being managed by a central party? Unless he could patent the entire concept, and the guest mentioned nothing about that, the answer the guest gave sounded like rehearsed obfuscation.
And how, exactly, would you convince millions of people to invest millions of dollars into hardware to accept your knock-off currency, especially if it provides no benefits over the established bitcoin?
The realization that there's nothing to stop other digital money from diluting value, that it's not safe from that, is what would make me stay away from it. It may get to where a lot of people put a lot of money into it before that realization hits and the bubble pops. Too much uncertainty for me. As far as I know the only way digital money could guarantee no competition is if that was mandated by govt, what people are fleeing from.
What's to stop lots of people from trying to get on to the next big speculative money? If BC was $1600 an ounce and gold was $101 an ounce now, we might be talking about the big rise coming in gold. Another digital coin at a near zero price sounds like free money.
WTF? How can a bitcoin weigh anything? I thought a bitcoin was ethereal and transitory. Your last sentence caused a Mt.Gox sized pain in my cranium.
People can speculate and gamble on whatever they want; the question is, how do you get people to build currency exchanges and payment processing systems, and get retailers to accept your new coins?
@nmewn
And in the same breath, if you knew the individuals or individual that created bitcoin - you'd be pointing out some human flaws in their character - just to make some hyberbolic point against bitcoin in general. No wonder he disappeared, I wouldn't want to talk to you either.
@nmewn, tt has it exactly right.
Furthermore it doesn't matter who 'Toshi is at all. The integrity of the system isn't dependent on character, it's dependent on math.
There is, in effect, a billion dollar "honeypot" - if the math is crackable, we'll soon know. [Hint: this is damn unlikely.]
Would I personally bet half my net worth that the math is uncrackable? Yes. In fact it's more secure than the banking system.
Does this mean it's a store of value? No. In this you are correct; BTC is no store of value. Just a unit of exchange. Still a useful thing.
The current price of BTC means that "miners" are hard at work.
Since bitcoin mining is computation and computation is electricity, bitcoin values should arb out to the price of electricity - bitcoin is effectively "energy backed currency".
The liquidity situation is so horrible (right now terribly overbought) that the store of value thing just doesn't work. When it gets to a trillion and there are deep and liquid exchange markets, it may serve as a decent proxy for a pure energy backed play. But that's a long way off.
Further the level of comments in this thread leads me to believe that bitcoin will have a very tough row to hoe, given that almost nobody understands it well enough to even criticise cogently.
There is NO WAY I would have any of my money in something that some guy can just CREATE out of THIN AIR with just a few clicks of his mouse
Oh, wait...
And especially if it was stored somewhere where it might be just stolen.........(um like a bank account?)
well, at least I want there to be something like GOLD backing up the value of the money
(crickets chirping....)
NOW
If only they hadn't FINANCIALIZED and FRAUDED the PMs with their rehypothecation and leasing and naked shorting and paper gold issuance schemes...
"In fact it's more secure than the banking system."
That betrays objectivity.
The funny thing about traditional money is that can't actually disappear (aka be Corzined), since it never really goes anywhere.
However, since there are very few people who understand this, it makes Corzining someone else's money quite simple.
So can a bit coin disappear? And if not, why not? And if so, then why is it "more secure" than the banking system?
All of your money is in your own "vault". You are the weakest/strongest/only link as to whether someone can steal/vanish your money.
@ TT & lewy,
I've made my point. Its not money. I've also said here and elsewhere that it could be useful in certain situations, just like a debit or credit card.
But just like those two things (lines of credit or debit) I prefer credit over debit as once someone gains access to your debit they can unload your account into their pocket.
As opposed to real money, where they would have to unload my BODY into a dumpster before they would even have a chance to take it.
Its not money.
As Karl Denninger puts it: "A negative-coefficient "mining" system (designed to get exponentially harder as more is produced until it reaches effective infinite effort for each unit of return -- e.g. exhaustion) is inherently backward.
Productivity improvement makes the generation of sustaining wealth easier. What this does is redistribute at the outset a grossly-larger proportion of the whole to a few people.
Gee, sounds an awful lot like our current crooked, rigged system!"
It's a pyramid scheme. The sheer number of ways it can be hacked, taxed, regulated, shut down etc makes it insane to put real money/wealth into it. If you still believe that the Central Bankers and Governments of the world will let you get away from their monetary systems, then I've got some ocean front property to sell you in Iowa.
Honestly how the fuck can you explain to you people what man what pseudo name , what team doesn't,t matter a damn every line of code is transparent. If your dog can optimize the block chain that improvement will be adopted by the community. You fuckers are so used to smoke and mirrors the concept of transparency cannot be explained to you ...I give up......!!!!!
I'm more into the pragmatic. Since people write that bitcoin isn't meant to be a store of wealth, but rather a medium of exchange, what, exactly, can I buy with it.
That's when the Governments will take notice.
They're pretty good at crushing money laundering too.
Ahem... the universe made men, therefore everything made by us is made by the universe. Would you now claim that you, as a man, were not made by the universe? Or that you never ever made anything that exists in this universe?
The Obama admins Internet security bill allows the govt to shut down the net at will for as long as they choose and to "inspect" all private networks and those networks are required to "share" information as requested .....empty or erase all bit coin accts?
E.M.P.
You could back up your wallet on paper. That would survive and EMP. Your funds at the local bank might suffer from an EMP pulse, though.
Extremely Misguided Post?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-21/us-begins-regulating-bitcoin-will-consider-virtual-transactions-money-laundering#comment-3361414
Right. If the power grid goes down, then bit coin goes down, and so does the online banking at Sun Trust, Wells Fargo, etc.
PM's require no power to store. Just a shovel, and some creativity, to get them there.
Of course the grid is going down. How else can we starve out the urban collectivists? Nuclear cook-offs? Who cares...this is going to be a MAJOR RE-SET.
If the grid goes down/enonomy crashes/gubment takeover etc. - wtf is a duffel bag of gold going to do for you?
If collapse is your end-game Pb is the only metal you should invest in, and beans your only currency.
Dramatic much?
@XenoFrog
They'll shut down the entire electric grid for bitcoin? What a laughable hyperventilated theory you have there.
Please, point to past precedent where they did the same thing. Wow, it is like you're not even trying anymore.
Bernanke: "Quick, bitcoin is reaching a $1 billion market cap, lets do $500 Billion in damage to the world economy to stop bitcoin!"
I agree - i'm questioning the doomsdayers here that think owning gold will be better than owning BTC in a collapse situation. Those comparrisons are just silly.
If the internet goes down your bank goes down, your credit cards go down, the ATMs go down, your debit card goes down, everything goes down except cash, precious metals and barter.
Your Bitcoins can still be stored on your computer, tablet or thumb drive and exchanged person to person.
the computer you just wrote "what's a node?" on, is a node, if it participates in the bitcoin network.
Yeah, the NSA,DHS and IRS have
"nodes" so you don't need to worry about security. They have your back.
They have the nodes and they have the drones. No worries there.
Alchemists, tulip bulbs, and shares in the South Seas Trading Company - all rolled into one Bitcoin
What's a rocket science, I'm a garbage man.
Niiice.
Until they turn the power off. Your ideas that require other things to exist for them to work, they are not fool proof. My silver will be around long after your PC dies and the Buttcoin disappears.
And when they turn the power off, all the spent fuel ponds overheat, the water evaporates, the zirconium cladding melts off, the slag melds together, reattains criticality, and all the water in all the world becomes radioactive, killing all life. Sounds like a bit of an overkill, just to wipe out a niche virtual currency.
I bet interest in bitcoin will die off proportional to the drop in bitcoin price when the bubble pops. 90% drop in BTC price = 90% drop in interest in it.
I'm with ya, pretty sure mine can withstand hurricanes, tornado's, EMP's (natural or man-made), doesn't require electricity, passwords, encryption...basically anything else but me and the party I'm doing business with.
Besides, I thought the idea was to kill digital global currency? Seems there's a lot of "faith & trust" being put into this internet infrastructure staying up & running these days...lol.
Alchemy?
I do not understand what exactly people are planning on buying and selling during an extended outage of either the power grid, or the Internet. If you are worried about food, water and heating fuel for winter, you should just prepare accordingly.
If the Internet or power grid is down for months or years, buying a new car or some random consumer goods seems like an awfully low priority to me.
Computers & i-shit would be dirt cheap wouldn't they?...I could come out on the other side owning them all...lol.
Because I had real money ;-)
Look Matt, just know what you're getting into and keep your eyes wide open in your zeal to bypass the bankers & the prying eyes of the state.
Wireless mesh networks
alright im sure im not a bitcoin guy, i wish i was but still not......so please excuse my ignorance, hell i just figured out how to set my clock on the vcr,.....so am i to understand that it could bee seen as a line with dashes, and each dash has so many spaces to fill before the next dash can be built?
.... but, but, but Mike Pento's IT department thinks the network can be hacked and bitcoins can be counterfeited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1POVoi9NPk
Now I tend to be more concerned about doing business with Pento than about Bitcoin.
Yeah. I was amazed when I heard that too.
Pento's IT department must be a bunch of crotch-scratching nit-chewing baboons. He probably throws them a new tyre to play with and they think that's the Christmas bonus.
the intrinsic value and security of bitcoin should now be obvious to every investor.
I wonder how secure Bitcoin can be when the governments of the world have the technical capability and every possible motive to shut it down.
Since each node broadcasts its IP address to all the other nodes, there is no problem whatsoever for a government to determine what nodes are active at any given time and to simply block all internet traffic from/to them. Block Step 1 and the rest of the steps become impossible. And Bitcoin comes to a screeching halt.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Network
Then go ask the google oracle how to
hide your ip...
Or how to block an ip...
Or how to use Tor...
... maybe youre just too lazy to perform your due diligence.
Or maybe you're scared that big bad big brother will spank your pee pee for trying to keep whats rightfully yours.
Grow a pair and get on Board...
Or may your chains rest lightly and posterity forget that we ever called you brother...
(with love.... If your on ZH then youre not watching the current 'merican idol and I love you for that brother)
Every client has a copy of the blockchain, it would be hard to delete any harddrive, flashdrive, CD/DVD-ROM ... in the world which contains a copy of the blockchain.
I think there are roughly a million or so nodes right now.
Exactly. And that's why you can't pretend to have 100 bitcoins by changing your copy when you only have 7. Because 999,999 copies of the blockchain say you have 7, so your attempt to spend 100 is rejected.
I think there are roughly a million or so nodes right now.
yeah, its obvious to me you drank the kool aid
yeah, its obvious to me you drank the kool aid
I don't like Bitcoin because when the price goes up above $1,000,000 per BitCoin I won't be able to buy more unless I sell some first.
Bitcoins are "scored" to the eighth decimal which is called a satoshi. So when BTC gets to 1 million dollars per bitcoin you will be able to trade a penny for a satoshi. HTH.
What happens if some nodes are disconnected from the others and transactions aren't relayed between them for a significant amount of time (eg: a country disconects from the outside world)?
Nodes automatically resynchronize when they reconnect.
Yeah, but imagine these nodes mine some coins and then reconnect to find the same coins where also mined by the other nodes.
If you mine without being connected to the network then you are just playing with yourself - in other words you get NO spendable bitcoins
Sorry but what you just said is inconsistent from a logical and software design point of view.
Simply put the entire network is constantly changing with, at the very least, some machines which are sometimes nodes turned-off at times and new ones joining. So the whole network is NEVER available to any node and it cannot be that any node (including a mining one) requires access to the entire network for anything since at any one moment it's not possible to know the size of the whole network and some nodes will be down.
So you have to be able to mine without being connect to the whole network.
I'm pretty sure that the network has been designed taking in account the possibility that multiple nodes mine the same bitcoin roughly at the same time, for example using signed timestamps in mined bitcoins. However any such scheme would have to be designed so that one of the miners is the "winner" (i.e. the confirmed owner of a mined bitcoin) and another looses the bitcoin it mined, simply because otherwise people would be able to abuse this to produce an infinite number of bitcoins.
In a scenario as described by the parent poster (i.e. a long running network split) not only does the likellyhood of the same bitcoing being mined in both networks increases, the "looser" bitcoins might have already been used in one or more trades. What happens then?
You're wrong - what I just pointed out is the real possibility of the internet being temporarily split into separate parts (remember that asian undersea cables rupture, sometime ago?), with each of them continuing to function independently.
The mining would still be going on in each part, and the trading too, which means it would be a real problem once reconnected, if there was to be an hash collision.
So how would the algorithm solve that problem without harming any of the (innocent) parties - that if they ever though of that real possibility (and from your answer, it seems they didn't)?
This will work great until the electricity goes out.
Then not so much...
How well does your fridge work without electricity?
No power for your computer or to recharge your phone?
Seems like you would have a lot of serious problems...
Maybe, just maybe, I don't want my transaction TO BE FUCKING TRACED ! Or recorded FOREVER...
Just spitballing...
engrave the details of it in your tombstone
What's an 'intrisic value'?
Do you remember when the FBI locked up the guy who invented PGP encryption? NSA couldn't crack the code. So they threatened this guy with a life sentence for a fabricated crime... UNLESS HE PUT IN A TRAPDOOR (giving NSA / the govt. access to communications using PGP. ....then they set him loose. I think MIT is involved with bitcoin and MIT does a lot of govt. work. So my point is unless i know who / what is really behind bitcoin I am skeptical. Plus i heard the guy who invented it got out of it. Again no one knows who that secret person is or if he is a madoff protege... In addition if the amount of bitcoin is limited it seems like a form of cloud based gold. And last what about when big brother shuts down the net... or seizes all bitcoin accounts. You know if Google, Microsoft, Facebook and all the others who owe vast back taxes weren't cooperating with big brother maybe then.. Meantime ill stay on the sidelines.
Shows what you know. The Bitcoin is open source, it would have been hacked already if possible.
Yes, something that hasn't happened is proof it won't happen like nuclear weapons and a sit-com featuring Seinfeld...
Stop with the "can't happen" shit people...
yes.
and, using the same logic, alchemists have been trying to turn lead into gold.
just because they haven't succeeded yet, doesn't mean it won't happen.
so, beware, people!
alchemists are scheming right now to turn thousands of tons of lead into gold, it's not safe to keep money in gold!
Silver, Bitchezz!
I thought the alchemists succeeded? So, GLD isn't real gold? Only bits in cyber,,, ah,,,forget it. I'll just get some GLD bits and put 'em in my node wallet with the virtual coins. Wonder if Disney Land takes 'em?
Hey Amazon, when you start taking bit coins, how will you get the California Board of Equalization to accept them for sales tax remittances? It is, after all, the business that is held liable for those. CBE has big locks and chains, and Moonbeam doesn't play fair when his Commune is short changed.
This is getting interesting, sort of.
Lead can be transmuted into gold, and 20th century scientists were the first to have 'officially' achieved this, you ignorant twat.
ok, mr smarty-pants:
what is your cost-analysis for nuclear fusion transmutation of 1g of lead into gold?
and if it can't be done for less than the price of 1g gold, then why would anyone do it except as a scientific curiosity?
and if it's not economically feasible to create gold this way, why bother to bring it up - how is your comment at all relevant to the discussion?
"Stop with the "can't happen" shit people..."
It's called Faith, and it can't be overcome with Reason.
You have to experience the FAIL firsthand.
Open source can be very hackable and trojan filled. People may be downloading wallets from the wrong distribution sources and unknowingly have hacked 'open source' versions on their computer right now. You can at least be sure that there are people working day and night to find exploits in the software and eventually people will get a hack of some sort, that's just the nature of software.
But any big time oligarchy that's going to attack bitcoins will do so when they are worth a lot more, if the goal is to destroy them to stear people back to the bankers system, its best to wait until a lot more money has been pumped into them so there's a lot more confidence to be lost when people loose their 'savings/investments/future funds'.
They don't have to kill the internet or turn off the power, they just have to destroy the confidence that's currently filling the balloon up.
It won't be long until we get stories of exchanges selling bitcoins instantly but having days...then weeks....then month long delays as people try to convert them back to currency all to learn that the exchange has Maddoffed, Corzined or flat out stolen everyone's money and the users are left with neither bitcoins or currency. Buying them cheap and holding them for a big payday down the track is not what they should be used for. They should be bought to be spent or traded but the greedizilla monster has latched onto them and people are wide eyed counting their chickens before they've hatched.
That will be a big blow to confidence and it won't take any end of world scenarios to achieve.
Correct, this happened in 2002 with OpenSSH: CERT® Advisory CA-2002-24 Trojan Horse OpenSSH Distribution. Open source is good, but not infallible. There is no way to reverse the transaction once it has occurred. Knowing about the Trojan after the event and with your Bitcoins gone is no consolation...
Overview
The CERT/CC has received confirmation that some copies of the source code for the OpenSSH package were modified by an intruder and contain a Trojan horse.
We strongly encourage sites which employ, redistribute, or mirror the OpenSSH package to immediately verify the integrity of their distribution.
I. DescriptionThe CERT/CC has received confirmation that some copies of the source code for the OpenSSH package have been modified by an intruder and contain a Trojan horse. The following advisory has been released by the OpenSSH development team
The government is already soooo "into" bitcoin.
Don't be naive!
absolutely a great point! and one that many here, especially critics, don't understand.
bitcoins aren't for saving, they are for spending.
store your wealth in silver and gold.
buy bitcoins when you want to spend them.
>>
What happens when some pimply faced kid figures out how to hack bitcoins and create a few digits? pfffftt. I'll stick with g.o.l.d.
>>
Not a Bitcoin advocate, but this particular question does not vary from . . . "what happens when some pimply faced kid figures out an easy, low energy way to pack some protons onto sodium nuclei and create gold?"
75 bitcoin markets or 2 silver markets every month.....I'll take the PHYZZZZZ you should to.
Agreed. But it's a false dichotomy. You can own gold, silver, bitcoin, food, ammo, and LP gas, all at the same time! Oh, and also some spare toilet paper! I'll go with "All of the above, please."
Double post
What happens when some pimply faced kid figures out how to hack bitcoins and create a few digits?
LOL... You guys are really freaking out over this.Why does BTC terrify you so?
What happens if he pulls out a metal detector? Or noses around your house while visiting your kid of grandkid? Or.....
Should we run away from everything unless every possible risk has been countered? That's impossible for gold too.
A much bigger risk would be a Corzine style manager in your bank.
The U.S. Government will shut down the U.S. based exchanges on which Bitcoin transactions are made based on violations of the Homeland Security legislation relating to financial transactions passed after 9/11. Bitcoins just need to get big enough to warrant this. Also, the Government will make it next to impossible for any significant company transacting business to accept Bitcoins, thus drying up any acceptance or demand for the currency(assuming that there ever was significant demand). For a consumer, that would mean you would be unable to buy anything common to ones daily life using Bitcoins. Not food, autos, housing, utilities, airline tickets, vacations, entertainment, electronics, clothes, services etc. Bitcoins would be reduced to oddball services and illegal goods, but even then the Bitcoins would soon be worthless if general acceptance has been severely damaged. Try paying drug dealers with something that was worthless to them. Other developed countries would follow suit.
Why would this be a Homeland Security threat? Because a terrorist holder of Bitcoins could theoretically sell them in the US for cash to fund operations or use the Bitcoins themselves to fund operations, without the knowledge of the Government because Bitcoins are designed to evade reporting requirements.
@ Zodiac: My point exactly.....see my comments here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-01/bitcoin-hits-101-doubles-cyprus...
I don't knock the concept behind Bitcoin at all, but I do feel its days are numbered.
The only thing I knock on, are the Bitcoin proponents comparing it to Gold.
Gold is Tangible, Bitcoin is not.
Gold has a 6,000 year track record as money.
Gold has 'unique' metallurgical qualities that make it desirable to virtually ALL people, of all cultures.
I could drone on....but I digress.
And Bitcoin is only used in the United States?
And not a decentralized global network?
And Americans can't simply use a foreign exchange?
Didn't say it wasn't........but I'm not going to trust that which I cannot hold in my hands, or lose in boating accidents.
Also, since I do live in America, I do have to concern myself with government attempts at controlling things I'm considering as investments.
As an aside, I have a friend who plays professional poker. He was really active on one of the poker sites (I think it was pokerstars); When DotGov intervened there, he lost $75,000 in an instant.
No amount of rhetoric will convince me that Bitcoin is something for me.
All of the "Bitcoin Uber Alles" crap I read on these BTC threads just reminds me of:
a) A Pyramid scheme
b) A Penny stock pump&dump
c) The Greater Fool Theory
You guys can wax philosophic all you want, but it's not going to change my mind. I applaud the fact that you guys have strength in your convictions, but I'll pass on Bitcoin.
Fuck BITCOIN... You're part of the PROBLEM... [NOT the 'solution']...
I didn't realize BitCoin was Jewish.
I junked ya for being obtuse.
I upped him for making me ROR!!!
I seconded that!
I greened Francis and Schmuck R for delivery and comedic timing. that was great.
(and I'm thinkin bitcoin, like ETFs, bleeds demand off PMs so I'm agin it.)
That's all well and good, but my "node" keyboard just went under water on that last swig of teddy bear tea!
I didn't realize BitCoin was Jewish.
+ 100 -- Brilliant!
That seems to be the main problem.
It's not Jewish, it's Japanese...errr...Russian....ahhh...Keiser?? or...ummm... well??? But it's 'open source' so therefor completely bullet proof as all open source software ever invented has been and always will be!
open source isnt a guarantee that it's perfect.
however, if something is open source, and there's an opportunity to make $millions by hacking it, it's pretty darn likely that it would have been already.
"Cross over children. All are welcome. All welcome. Go into the BitCoin. There is peace and serenity in the BitCoin."
One of the Paul's will be next to endorse this and the school of Paulsuckerfish will turn on a Bitcoin as one unit and follow along.
Seriously? Am I the only one who's old enough to get RCD's Poltergeist reference?
No, fuck you!
@francis "off the rails" sawyer is sure grumpy about something.
And I thought he stacked precious metals? Wonder why he puts all this effort into bitcoin rabble-rousing. Surely a dedicated pillar of the community has other things to do, like gushing posts to hedgeless horseman about his home made cheese.
I guess he's in between meds - maybe his doc is trying out new prescriptions to keep him out of his office. At least he didn't go on his usual diatribe, with < insert race > being the sole factor in the world's woes.
my dear i can't figure out how to put my bitcoin in your garter
ROTFL!!!...just swipe your card in the slot, its the latest thing ;-)
"Yoo wan sucky sucky Joe? That be 0.0033 bitcoin! You pay now, we wait for blockchain to update!!"
May not be a banker killer but it'll be a boner killer.
At best, Bitcoin is just a way for the same financial fraud to continue. I've seen articles about bitcoin hedge funds, bitcoin private equity firms and the other day an article about a company starting a bitcoin dark pool. I didn't want this shit at $4.50. I didn't want this shit at $7. I didn't want this shit at $17 or $22. And I certainly don't want it at $106. It's not fighting the power, it's just another way to steal fire away from gold & silver.
Sorry, Lost, they already stole the shine from the PMs. Leasing, rehypothecation, naked shorting, new issuance games with paper gold, London fixing games...those are just a few of the ways they've financialized the PMs. Do you think the gold price should be DEAD FLAT aftyer Cyprus? Sad but true.
If I am paid in fiat and then have to buy bitcoins, then what is the difference?
If I am paid in fiat, and then have to buy gold, then what is the difference?
I can exchange fiat for real money without anything but my appearing in person and by mutual agreement.
Or even buying an orange from a roadside vendor.
No one knows but the two parties and no one should care (unless they're despicable little statist twerps) and no electricity or internet or electronic devices or IP's or caches or history or cookies were involved.
Its like it never happened...because it didn't.
If you use a new one-time address for each transaction, there is no reason for anyone to know about your bitcoin transactions, either.
there's a few advantages.
first, you can get paid directly in bitcoin for products and services, instead of being paid in fiat, and it is not tracked / not taxed.
second, when you have bitcoins, they are not subject to hypothecation or cyprus-style bail-ins like a bank account is.
third, when you use bitcoins to purchase something, the IRS doesn't know your buying silver with your bitcoins, the ATF doesn't know you're buying an AR-15, the DEA doesn't know you're buying a joint or a box of fine cuban cigars.