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Head Of Fortress Recommends Investing In Bitcoin
At first glance, when the CIO of Fortress Investment Group says:
"Put a little money in Bitcoin...Come back in a few years and it’s going to be worth a lot."
One might think, the firm that manages $54.6 billion is advocating the end of the USD as we know it... Or is this more muppetry at work?
“Put a little money in Bitcoin,” Novogratz, principal and co-chief investment officer of macro funds at Fortress, said at a conference held today in New York by UBS AG’s chief investment office. “Come back in a few years and it’s going to be worth a lot.”
Novogratz said he sees Bitcoin growing as a payment system, especially in developing nations. Novogratz said he has put his own money in the virtual currency, without specifying how much. He has not invested in Bitcoin on behalf of Fortress, which managed $54.6 billion as of June 30.
“I have a nice little Bitcoin position,” Novogratz said. “Enough that I’m smiling that it doubled.”
However, color us a little skeptical at his advice...
Given that Bitcoin may ultimately make firms like Fortress - that rely on fiat specie - redundant, then doesn't the endorsement of Bitcoin by one of the world's largest Private Equity firms reek of the ultimate failure of BTC as a monetary construct, and seem much more to be merely an attempt by the firm to herd even more momentum chasers into a trade (ostensibly one for Novogratz P.A.) that will be then unwound with Bitcoins ultimately converted into the same dollar they are supposed to replace?
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Just like how Greenspan nailed it with housing. ? http://hedge.ly/16453n8
Far more important than "investing" in Bitcoin is USING Bitcoin.
"Put a little money in Bitcoin...Come back in a few years and it’s going to be worth a lot."
I already have that same strategy working for me with my Bitecoin investments. It's kind of like Bitcoin but it allows the investor to check the quality of the investments by gently biting them between your teeth. On second thought it's nothing like Bitcoin...
I know what you mean. Except all my bitcoins were lost in that most unfortunate boating accident.
bitcoins are InvisIable...........you can leave them on the front porch or in the driveway and no one will steal them
on a side note, Ill bet the author of this post is buying PM's hand over fist
"on a side note, Ill bet the author of this post is buying PM's hand over fist"
I have no doubt whatsoever that you are correct.
The head of Fonestar also advises investing in Bitcoin.
muppetry. LOL and you wonder why I come here 100 times a day. for everything else, there is faggotry bitches.
word of the day: Muppetry. Now go and use it in your everday life.
I had been saving my BitCoins in a jar and tripped. Glass, 1's and 0's all over the place.
How so? I happen to know about boating accidents all too well and have lost many assets to the bottom of various lakes over the years but I have never figured out how to lose bitcoins due to my boating ineptitude.
Easy. Put Bitcoin wallet on Laptop, bring Laptop on boating trip.
ZH made this up,just to observe the Pavlovian behaviour of the STACKERS. Hang on it turns out it wasn't a whistle in Andy Maguire's mouth.
Actually it's the NSA that's observing our Pavlovian behaviors... and our STACKING is keeping the global PM miners gainfully employed.
That makes us patriotic JOBMAKERS.
Not just the miners, but the dealers as well. FedEx and the like get their small cut of the action also. The way things are looking, I´ll be using some of my stack to keep my own employees employed.
Well which one is it? I haven't logged in for quite awhile. I could no longer take this ridiculous argument. You can not have something as an investment and as a currency. It makes things tricky. Like hoarding. Don't give me the free market crap. Free market theory doesn't work so well when the masses are dumber than shit. The idea that it's an investment because one day it will be a currency is laughable at best. On that note maybe trade in your Iraqi dinars for some btc. For the record I do not dispute the integrity of the BTC system nor the mathematics behind them. It is so clearly a Pyramid scheme. I don't even take issue with it being a pyramid scheme. I take issue with it being treated as something it will never be. An long term investment or a currency.
Love the grasping at straws in this "article". They manage billions yet they're fools? Is that the best you can do?
I know its common advice to fade a Goldman reco, but the backbending in this post is a bit ridiculous.
If the dollar tanks Bitcoin is the first thing the Fed/Treasury will close down.
Bitcoin is the first thing the Fed/Treasury will close down
And pray tell... how might they do that?
*tumbleweed*
On a different note, I notice ZH are now against alternative currencies when it comes to BTC? But Gold is fine?
Very pointed.
Very pointed indeed..
[Esc] , it's part of the psychology of the crowd. Most of the people here are still part of the herd mentality regarding BTC. I stated this a number of weeks ago on another thread. We are still in early adoption phase in terms of BTC. But maybe not for very long...
It's good to spread it out you know.
Many ZHers don't believe in capitalizing from much except PMs and/or doom. ;)
If you want to make money trading bitcoin, that's one thing. However, in a SHTF scenario, which is the most liquid asset that preserves wealth? I have nothing against bitcoin, it's a great idea and I hope it succeeds. However, I find it is dangerous to advocate it as an alternative currency because it simply exists as data. If your internet service, or power, or hard drive, or any number of critical points fail, you're screwed.
Who am I kidding though. It's not like any government has ever shut down the internet...
It is not a currency. It's a protocol to facilitate credit transactions over the internet that can be trusted without the need of a third party.
Well, to address your second point first, the fact that BTC "simply exists as data" is one of its strongest features. You can (encrypt and) back up your BTC on a laptop, a memory stick, a cloud service, or any number of other storage devices, located in your pocket or on the other side of the world. Much as I like the shiny stuff, it's not nearly as easy to protect.
As for the SHTF scenario, that depends on which SHTF scenario you're thinking of. If civilization collapses all over the world, repressive gov'ts shut down all network connections everywhere, mobs chase bankers down the street with pitchforks, fire and brimstone, cats and dogs living together, etc., then no, your stack of BTC probably won't help.
On the other hand, if (as seems likely) TSHTF in a more localized way, a few BTC could be a really good thing. If you lived in Cyprus, and had your bank account frozen and looted, or in Argentina, and woke up to find yourself subject to capital controls, you'd probably see the attraction.
And if you wanted to move your wealth from one country to another, you wouldn't have to worry about any of this nonsense about declaring currency in the excess of $10,000, or about a luggage X-ray picking up all those dense bits of metal, or about larcenous baggage handlers, or...
The shiny physical stuff isn't any more difficult to "actually protect".
Even of you backup your bitcoins with pen and paper, they are only safe as long as the NSA can't break into your computer and compromise your wallet and spend your bitcoins before you realize the IRS wanted some "tribute" from you, and the rest of the bitcoin world readily and happily admits you are no longer the proud owner of said stash of bitcoins.
If the government wants to come after "you" they will. They have over two hundred years of experience in developing methods to successfully extract physical and fiat wealth from disgruntled debt serfs
The experience honing their methods at extracting digital wealth is more limited, but if SWIFT, ACHAs, Visa/Mastercard/Amex, Western Union and the MTAs, or even the Equity and Derivative Exchanges are any guide, it's a question of when the benefit of devoting resources exceeds the cost of doing so (in their not-so-humble-opinion).
The long arm of the law isn't handcuffed by the self-identified vulnerabilities of wiki post, or even the boundaries of the "digital" world.
I would grant you that if one was a "little fish" they might be more safe for the time being... but since that has to be qualified by not using Microsoft, Apple, or Android products; not using any backup "service" like Carbonite or Google; disabling a lot of web functionality that many people find important to their online "experience"; not connecting to certain networks with any computer that might house their bitcoin "data"... the list goes on, and on, and on to the point of rendering such a statement meaningless.
Gold is money. Bitcoin is essentially backed with the same stuff the rest of the world`s currencies are backed with. Nichts.
CH1 - By federal government order. You have clearly forgotten the confiscation of gold in Americas past.
Bernanke: "The enemy* of my enemy** is my friend. I love the divide & conquer routine"
Fuck you, Ben!
* Extreme Gold Bugs
** Cyber-currencies
Did the Twinklevoss brothers join Fortress?
Regardless of the Twinkie Bros, this is game on, my friends. Social acceptance of BTC within the main stream Financial community is progressing at warp 9. Damn it all! Couldn't they have waited a few moar months?? Shit.
all fair questions, but also could be more disinfo-- either way, the premise of being decentralized & now being claimed: China now bigger than MT Gox raises more suspicion i.e. how does a limited supply of currency remain "decentralized" & not subject to one big market player?
Easiest way for China to kill the USD is drive up bitcoin to $100,000 in a month. Ben can't print bitcoin.
pre-supposing that China wants to kill the USD, what's to stop the fed/banking cartel to start buying up BTC-- like an arms race of sorts which then negates the whole concept of BTC or at the very least decentralized currency
what's to stop the fed/banking cartel to start buying up BTC
WOW - that would be wealth transfer in the right direction for once!
not sure I follow-- if they can print unlimited dollars to buy BTC, why not just buy up the whole supply or any other country for that matter? How would that be a wealth transfer in the right way?
But they can't print unlimited dollars. And even if they did buy up all of the bitcoins, then someone could create another digital currency like Litecoin. And the Fed will have to print money to buy up all of them.
Hey. That's a great way fto get the Fed to destroy the dollar.
The Fed buying up all Bitcoin implies everyone is willing to sell their coins, but limited amount are willing to sell when the price is going to the moon and beyond. The price is set at the exchanges, by amt of willing buyers and sellers at said exchanges. Fed buy-up induced appreciation will limit sellers, liquidity will dry up and force price to the moon; Fed can't just go and buy up all Bitcoins.
Even with these flash-crashes in Bitcoin, the 'weak' hands actually believe enough in Bitcoin to hold them- by so understand the philosphy, architecture, etc., and even if they live in the moment for a quick buck, they quickly buy back into bitcoin because they don't want to be left behind when the money train leaves for $300 and beyond. Apart from the mega-bubble during spring 2013, any flash crash has rebound very quickly.
"if they can print unlimited dollars to buy BTC, why not just buy up the whole supply or any other country for that matter? How would that be a wealth transfer in the right way?"
I have BTC and if Ben wants them he's gona pay me a lot of money for them ----> wealth transfer in the right direction
But Ben isn't going to do this. If anything the government (or FED) will first inflate bitcoin buy buying a shitload of it at high prices and then dumpiing it all burning all investors on the way down and torching their confidence.
but the wealth transfer comes back via circle jerk towards dollars-- thus illusory wealth transfer-- your 2nd point I can see, but not that I'm against BTC-- just doesn't make sense.
i only put my money in golds and silvers... cause i'm a programer with 25 years experience (longer that internets).
A much wiser investment. Keep stacking and let the fools bet on the get rich quick schemes.
XenoFrog , out from the bushes to pronounce BITCOIN dead for the 7th time.
Never pronounced it dead, even now. There will always be some true believers willing to catch the knife.
Looks more like we had most knife catchers in gold and silver over the last year.
Your hands are bloody from all that gold and silver you've been catching. ;)
What gold and silver? I lost all mine in a boating accident.
LOL
Well let's hope you can find it when it comes time to spend the stuff. Assuming any businesses choose to accept gold. Tens of thousands of businesses already accept Bitcoin.
Also, let's hope you can get your gold through the TSA checkpoints. I hear they have a little technology called "metal detectors" nowadays.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sorry Xenofrog, but you have to learn "Scam", then "Ponzi", then "Pump and dump", then "Junkies", then "safehaven", in Madarin and Cantonese RIGHT NOW!
RUN XENOFROG RUN!!!
You just might lose control of the narrative, Xenofrog, if you don't.
I think we all should take investment advice from you, especially seeing how dead-right you were in regards to BTC collapsing in the wake of Silk Road's disappearance.
LOL
parare, thrust, set, match
I'll wait right here while you find the quote.
How do you even show yourself in Bitcoin threads anymore? Never missing an opportunity to pad your reputation on the subject as being 100% XenoWrong for quite a long time now.
You'd think he would have created a new account by now.
I've been around longer than you, and will be around long after you lose your bitcoins when a hard drive crashes or you misplace your flash drive.
I have my Bitcoins stored as a memorized phrase in my head. With a backup paper wallet at an undisclosed location.
Can you do that with your metal? Oh, wait. You lost it in a boating accident. Hilarious. Haven't heard that joke before.
Alsenhimers will deprive you of that bitcoin then. Gold is shiny... you'll find it.
It's quite enjoyable how you just declare that I was proven wrong about something and expect it to be fact.
What was I wrong about?
Bitcoin is still the scam it was a month ago, a year ago, etc. It'll still be a scam a year from now no matter what the amount you manage to con an idiot out of to purchase one.
The "scam" is doing for free what Western Union charges billions of dollars to do - transmit money to anyone in the world, instantly.
Nice to see you two fucking PM trolls at once here at ZH. Just fantastic.
nty.
"Put a little money in Bitcoin...Come back in a few years and it’s going to be worth a lot."
.....in your mind".
yes. It's called the subjective theory of value. Ever heard of it?
Keep dreamin', little dreamer...
2011: 4$/BTC
2013: 200$/BTC
"Put a little money in Bitcoin...Come back in a few years and it’s going to be worth a lot."
Yeah, that statement's about right....
2015: 10,000$/BTC
2017: 50,000$/BTC
OMG if this trend line continues we'll all be billionaires! Hurry up and cash out of that worthless gold and silver and get into this investment so that we can get rich quick!
Wow, Xeno's finally found the light! x_x But the figure's you've posted are actually possible. Gold will also probably make some gains. Has anybody ever told you that it is not an either/or proposal?
Nah, I'd never recommend dumping all of your eggs into one basket. I own BTC, I own PM. I'd never own just one store of value in anything. Each has their pros/cons.
You're trending a bit high. That looks more like what most anti-Bitcoin posters think what will happen to gold when the dollar collapses. I'm looking at a more realistic projection of
2015: $800/BTC
2017: $2500/BTC/1 oz of gold
A lazy couple of grand in there after the next scandal (hacking/political interference/legal issues/can't buy hard drugs with it anymore) probably wouldn't be a bad idea I reckon.
I buy scratchies on my birthday too.
part of a well balanced portfolio in the new normal
Bitcoin, because it is such a pillar supporting the material economy.
How long is this insanity going to last...
Try to bribe the gunman who wants your food with a Billion-dollar Bitcoin when the power goes out...
What if the 'power' does not go out. What if the 'power' stays on?
Not dissin you, just sayin.
What if my real life production gets wiped out due to monetery expansion.
I have to try to protect myself and those who support me.
I have about ten times my bitcoin money in ammo. And bitcoin is about .5% of my portfolio. It was .3% last week. I'll take that any day of the week, and twice on Friday.
...or try to bribe with the 10k or 100k gold piece... that he can't eat. Shit gets that bad, it's back to basics. Beans and bullets.
Bitcoin ... another pure fiat product brought to you by the fine people who brought you fractional reserve banking. Trust the Gnomes of Zurich ... you have no choice.
Fiat (latin) means "let it be" (in case of legal tender by order of a government). Bitcoin is the opposite of fiat.
Where can I get a decent analysis and explanation of what bitcoin is? I have a hard time to get around this one. What is a bitcoin backed with? Who controls that? How is it created?
here is a picture of my bitcoins
get it?
Got it, especially after a grid take down or when the internet kill switch is enacted
Really? The Internet. Gone? All of it worldwide? Electricity too? I'd better watch mad max again so'z I can brush up on my metal-work skillz.
Putz.
'....and when they have killed all the fishy wishy in the rivers....
then they will realise they cannot eat bitcoin...'
Google. What is it?
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency. The technology is based on Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Bitcoin is secured by a decentralized network of "Miners" who are performing computational work in addition to gathering and collating Bitcoin transactions. Anybody can be a Miner although specialized powerful computer equipment has become standard. That computational work protects the system against malicious. The power that Miners bring to bear is called the hashrate and is currently about 33,000 petaflops. This is more powerful than 1000 supercomputers and constitutes mankind's single largest computing endeavor. I guess you can say this is what bitcoin is backed with and that Miners control it. To make changes to the system requires consensus among a majority of the Miners who have a vested interest to not mess with the system. Miner's are rewarded with freshly created bitcoins for the work they do. The size of the reward decreases over time until there are 21million bitcoins in existence. More information available: How does Bitcoin work?
Thanks for that. But then, what sort of wealth is generated through this "computerized mining" of bitcoins? What are these computers working on? How is wealth created by having super computers mining bitcoins? The whole thing makes no sense to me. Looks like another big scam where powerful players can buy supercomputers and take over the production of bitcoins.
I like the touch of my gold and silver. Like Ron Paul says, I can put gold in my pocket.
No wealth is created. It would be nice if the Miners were doing some useful work besides securing the network. But that is not the case. Bitcoin's Value is set on the open market. My ticker for Coinbase is currently displaying $193 for a Bitcoin. Trust in the Bitcoin system is a big part of this Value. Some other positive points that help determine value is their scarcity (only 12 million coins currently available) and usefulness (transfer nearly instantly worldwide, divisibility, and protections against confiscation).
If that is the case then it is just another fiat currency. It is hard to see a world economy based on such a currency. It makes no sense. It's a virtual fantaisy.
I'll keep my gold and let the fools invest into bitcoins.
You can own both. It's not like you're buying anti-matter. I've done pretty well exchanging BTC for the shiny.
Perhaps there are some confusion on terms. Fiat currency to me means State issued currency. Perhaps you mean currency that does not have intrinsic value? I am of the camp that says nothing has intrinsic value, value is determined in the exchange or consideration of an exchange.
And what is wealth? Wealth to me is actual goods and services, for instance sandwiches and health checkups. I, too, cherish and posses PMs but I don't consider them wealth. I recently read that the industrial demand for gold (i.e., wealth creation demand) would support about $200/oz whereas production cost is running somewhere around $1200/oz. The rest of gold's value is convention and trust.
Most of the features I cherish in gold I also find in bitcoin. But bitcoin adds many exciting features that Gold cannot do well. The main feature Gold has going for it above bitcoin is its track record. Bitcoin has only been around a few years, so it's hard to argue with that.
the rest of gold's value is the millions of man-hours spent extracting it from the ground and refining it.
say one guy in 50 got a good hit during the Gold Rush.
say all those guys worked 50 hours a week for 6 months. one guy found 10 ounces.
the gold doesn't just represent that one guy who found the cache's work.
that gold represents the TOTAL 60,000 man-hours that were spent finding those ten ounces.
and we haven't even gotten to the assayers and the refiners yet...
make sense now?
Not in the least. You are asking me to value 49 guys working 50 hour weeks and finding nothing? I refuse.
Since you can't eat it or warm your home with it, Gold represents what can be exchanged for it going forward. The past doesn't matter.
How does this relate to wealth?
It's not about wealth generation, it's supposed to be about wealth preservation or at least a valuation hedge. The TPTB gambling degenerates are turning it into a Forex animal. Unfortunately it looks like that's BTC soft underbelly.
Think Bitcoin more of a worldwide infrastructure of money, which is fast, extremely cheap and counterfeit proof. It will revolutionize money like the railway revolutionized transportation or the internet telecommunication. You can own a piece of it instantly and you don't have to wait on Wall St for an IPO.
Looks like another big scam where powerful players can buy mining companies and take over the production of Gold.
How is wealth created by having corporations mining gold? Just because gold is mined by large corporations does not mean I can't own and cherish gold, right? Gold miners sell their gold to recoup operation expenses and make a profit. Ditto Bitcoin miners.
In Bitcoin's earliest days they were mined on ordinary personal computers. Then people found it more profitable to run the mining process on graphics cards. Now specialized computers are supplied and sold to satisify the demand for stronger mining capability. This is just market forces at work. It would not be profitable for me to get into the gold mining business right now (unless I found an untapped vein!) but I sho' like to posess gold, nevertheless. Why? Because I can exchange my gold for something useful and expect to be able to do so at some time in the future as well. Ditto BTC.
1. The NSA and their counterparts around the world have broken many, if not all, of the internet security protocols and the encryption algorithms they are based on (See The Guardian, NY Times, also RSA’s warning to customers). This is the basis of TEMPORA, ECHELON, and their many analogues used by AUSCANNZUKUS (The ‘Five Eyes’ partnership).
2. The argument that AES-256 and other encryption protocols would require a super-computer working longer than the age of the universe to break is a red-herring. It is based on the fatal assumption that the encryption algorithms in use have no inherent or purposefully designed weaknesses that can be exploited as a ‘back-door’. Brute force attack is not the only path to success. An excellent article by Adam Young of the Mitre Corporation, that addresses the whole issue of ‘back-doors’ and ‘trap-doors’ can be found here www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-05/bh-us-05-young-update.pdf
3. How secure are random number generators. How about exploiting at the compiler level itself, or below?
4. The argument that AES is open-source, and therefore any backdoors would have been discovered by now is another flawed argument (See fate of many other broken open-source algorithms). Also, the open-source may be ‘secure’, but is your implementation secure?
5. BTW, Bitcoin uses SHA-256 hashing algorithm, developed by the NSA. Incidentally TLS, SSL and SSH also use this hash algorithm, which as stated in #1 have all been compromised by the NSA.
6. Do you understand the selection process for commercially available encryption ‘standards’?
7. How about the words of the Turing Award recipient, Ken Thompson, warning in 1984…”You can’t trust code that you did not totally create yourself; especially code from companies that employ people like me. No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code...I picked on the C compiler. I could have picked on any program-handling program such as an assembler, a loader or even hardware microcode. As the level of program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect. A well-installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect.”
From some of the pros that follow Bitcoin:
In addtion, a quote from Bruce Schneier:
So, we hard-fork and upgrade our clients and the "problem" doesn't exist. No big deal.
Longer key length does not necessarily improve security, as I'm sure you are aware. Many other factors involved. Thanks for the feedback. Cheers.
http://www.weusecoins.com/en/
Bitcoin is computer code.
There are two ways to obtain Bitcoin. You either "mine" it, or trade other types of money for it.
In the beginning you could use your home computer and download a Bitcoin client that gave your computer a complex equation to solve. Once your computer solved the equation you were awarded a block of Bitcoins. As more computing power is thrown at "mining" Bitcoins and more are mined, the problems get harder to solve. There is also a set limit of Bitcoins and it is supposed to take something like 20,000 years to solve every problem and mine them all.
Most of the easy Bitcoins were used on the Silk Road or sold off when the dollar value went from a few cents to a couple bucks. High end video cards were the best suited to mine Bit coins at that time. Even if you bought a $900 Nvidia Titan video card and a $2000 server class CPU, you would never mine a Bitcoin today.
When Bitcoins started going crazy in value people started buying dedicated RISC computer systems designed specifically for solving Bitcoin blocks. Last year these systems cost $250. When Bitcoin went above $100 the companies building them raised the price of the cheapest unit to $2500 to cash in on Bitcoin mania.
Most Bitcoin miners are buying the computer systems to mine coins and sell them to momentum chasing investors hoping the data they traded $200 for, will be worth $400 in short order.
Supporters of Bit coin will tell you that there are all kinds of vendors taking Bit coin for payment. The reality is that just about everyone in Bit coin is in it because the value went from $10 USD to $230 USD in a year.
In reality nothing really backs Bitcoin, other than the belief it is worth something. Which doesn't make it much different than the Dollar or any currency for that matter.
Again Bitcoin supporters will tell you its different because of the limited supply. But that isn't really true since Bitcoins are infinitely divisible. The smallest accepted division of a dollar is one cent, but Bitcoins could go to one trillionth of a Bitcoin.
Bitcoin supporters also believe one Bitcoin should be worth something like $750k dollars to match other currencies. They believe this not because of any real value, but by comparing the total supply of dollars to total available Bitcoins.
Here you go:
http://evoorhees.blogspot.com/2012/04/bitcoin-libertarian-introduction.html
http://konradsgraf.squarespace.com/storage/On%20the%20Origins%20of%20Bit...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE
Thanks to all of the above. I knew I could count on the ZeroHedge community to help me understand a little more what Bitcoin is. I still have my doubts. When I see Central Banks around the world increasing their gold reserve it tells me that what ever will replace the fiat dollar will be linked in some form to gold. So I'll stick to the PM's. I find the whole Bitcoin experiment interesting but not convincing enough.
In my opinion, TPTB created and developed Bitcoin.
Electronic fiat... what a great idea.
No more paper cash anonymity.
Think about it.
lol.
For all intents and purposes, BTC is aanonymous. They didn't catch DPR because Silk Road used BTC. And, why would TPTB create somethging that they can not control?
Bitcoin would be outlawed already if it wasn't true. Believe what you wish.
I almost never post but I would say that Bitcoin's pseudo-anonymity is limited by the fact that new transactions must be announced by some single node on the internet to the broader P2P network. Of course, this node has an IP number in the general case, and so can be traced to a physical address or city. This single aspect of the protocol would be the key to any large scale effort intended to understand what the purpose of each transaction is. By design, transactions do not currently carry any sort of manifest that identifies humans or their purpose; only the use of public key cryptography to establish a provable transfer of value from some earlier public keys that held value that is now being spent.
The whole thing is fascinating in the way that it wastes both bandwidth and electricity. The fact that it is a giant fuck you to all bankster-run-governments is pretty swell. What we need, of course, is a digital currency that is actually backed by a legitimate and transparent government. Perhaps there will be competition someday in this regard.
2 tiny small points here: you can hand off your signed transaction to be broadcast by anybody running a node in any city. You don't have to broadcast it, you can hand it off to a miner to be inserted into the next block he/she solves (if you are willing to wait until then). The main annonymity risk is the ability to trace back through the transactions based on a known address.
TOR network adds layer of anonomity to Bitcoin.
Why they should create something they can't control?
My 2¢...
I would think it a bit redundant to hold bit coins for the means of capital appreciation, only to at some point in the future, convert it back into the very entity in which I'd be hedging against. Both PMs and Bitcoins can likely accomplish this.
I would consider bit coins for its primary intentions, which is to use it in exchange for goods and services.
I would agree that precious metals is a great long-term hedge against inflation (i.e. insurance policy to protects one's labor); and also hedge against a loss of infrastructure that can deliver bitcoins.
(Hedging a hedge?- this is getting deep)
BTC can purchase gold. Seems a nice angle given wild swings generated by amusing news stories.
Hmmm, but can AU purchase BTC?... Just had to sound amorphic.
The advantage BTC has over AU is divisibility and transferability. It's primary disadvantage is its vunerability to its infrastructure.
Actually yeah. The company I looked at DO accept gold for BTC. Not that I could see any scenario where I'd actually do that.
i have purchased about several ounces of gold and a bunch of silver from amagimetals.com using my bitcoin. flawless transactions and they have great prices. with the appreciation of bitcoin my $1350 ounces costs me about $800. fiat -> bitcoin -> gold/silver.
ZEROHEDGE, MEHR FERVERITE BITKROIN BWRROG
I wouldn't recommend anyone invest in bitcoin. It's still way too early. But if you have an opportunity to use bitcoin to make a purchase instead of fiat, and you use fiat, then you are actively "voting" for the fiat system to continue.
Choose wisely.
Yes a currency that relies wholly on machines and computers. When the machins fail, the system fails. Then it's all about survival. Bitcoin would seem to be the wet dream of the governments, globalist, single currency wonks and most of the "opponents" of bitcoin. Perhaps Bitcoin isn't what they want, but the same thing that is under total control of the IMF, United Nations etc... A digital currency that replaces all other currencies only it will be "their" idea and completely under government control. Total record of every monetary move made by every single human. No shadow economy, no "under the table" work, nor any other "off the record" transactions that governments seem to frown on. In the next decade all will be revealed. Or not...
Congrats, welcome to the club.
This is the charge I've been leading, when I reported back in April that HSBC was advertising cyber currency (where YOU are the data and currency rolled into one), with their posters at select non-US airports.
Arrest Loyd Blankfein, End the Fed and buy BitCoin.
<--- I understand that BTC is an enemy of the Fed*, and even though I love PM, I'm happy to cheer for "the enemy of my enemy"
<--- I understand that BTC is an enemy of the Fed*, but I love PM and therefore refuse to cheer for "the enemy of my enemy"
Point being, you don't have to use or even "like" BTC. Just be happy that it's doing its part at fighting the Fed and other CBs. There's no need to see it as a "zerosum" game of using either Gold or BTC. There's nothing to keep a person from having a mix of both -- depending on tactical circumstances and preferences. I submit that if you can't jump over that "shadow", then it says more about you than BTC. Just so we're clear on who has what angle on the topic.
* THE most corrupt privately-held cartel of fiat currency in the world.
http://evoorhees.blogspot.com/2012/04/bitcoin-libertarian-introduction.html
"Bitcoin enables you to place your trust in an unregulated cryptographic environment governed by infallible mathematics. 2+2 will always equal 4, no matter how many guns the government points at the equation."
If anyone wants to know who invented bitcoin I am going to unveil who Satoshi Nakamoto is....
Al Gore. Al Gore invented bitcoin.
And he's super cereal.
.. because the intertubes are so high fiber!
If you are a republican, things just got more complex. John McAfee is now the republicans Healthcare computer specialist.......
So Al Gore has competition.
Now all things off if the Democraps extradite McAfee to face his possible charges in murder invistigation in central America...
Is MacAfee the Rep HealthCare specilaist or is he just telling the truth regarding the largest fuck up in US Federal history. Y'know...right behind the Dept of Education and the Dept of Housing and Urban Developemnt.
I was just joking, apparently he was called. I read somewhere that he should MSFt CEO. Now that would be a shakeup...
IOW... another Al Gore Rhythm.
He'll be here all week, ladies and gentlemen. Try the veal!
in 10,000 years bitkoin will be the dominant currency.
and you'll be dead.
Maybe, but now we have Bitcoin.
In 10,000 yrs insects and lizards will once again rule the world.
Mankind... what a flop!
Michael E. Novogratz is a principal and a member of the board of directors of Fortress Investment Group LLC and Co-Chief Investment Officer of the Fortress Macro Fund and the Drawbridge Global Macro Fund. Mr. Novogratz joined Fortress in 2002 after spending 11 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was elected partner in 1998. Mr. Novogratz serves as a member of the New York Federal Reserve’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets. Mr. Novogratz founded and serves as the Chairman of the Board for Beat the Streets, a non-profit organization which builds wrestling programs in New York City public schools and is also the Honorary Chairman of USA Wrestling Foundation. Mr. Novogratz is Chairman of The Friends of the Hudson River Park. He also serves on the board of the Acumen Fund, NYU Langone Medical Center, Princeton Varsity Club and The Jazz Foundation of America. Mr. Novogratz received an AB from Princeton University in Economics, and served as a helicopter pilot in the US Army.
http://www.fortress.com/AboutFortress/Leadership/Board.aspx?id=9
Yea. This guy loves bitcoin. uh huh. How The Fed Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bitcoin?
A soveriegn nation of any influence needs to be able to control its own currency.
You bitcoiners are playing games, as investments, which is just fine, but don't pretend any more than that.
I guess that excludes France and Spain from the ranks of sovereign nations.
Sovereign nations are so 19th century. I'm pretty much over that meme. I left the country of my birth many years ago and never looked back. I am just looking out for number one: me. Bitcoin is a worldwide peer-to-peer currency based on cryptography and a well defined supply. Maybe it will be the start of a distributed sovereign nation of individuals. Gold could also suffice, I suppose, but don't the Central Banks already posses a large share of it? And I always lose my gold shavings when I go and buy a coffee. Power to the people, y'all.
"Maybe it will be the start of a distributed sovereign nation of individuals"
YES! This is foundational to the secessionist movement by individuals, to be independent in every way possible. Too many think of secession on a large scale but it is far better to start off small, I.e you personally, and grow the cause of liberty. For that reason Bitcoin has an appeal to me much like using FRN's.
Bitcoin just a cover for money laundering and illegal activities.
The lunatics that think its a decent replacement for the almighty dollar are just a side show.
I disagree with your premise that Bitcoin is just a cover but let's look at that for a minute...
Money laundering to me is a post-crime: The original crime has already been committed. Why not go after the original crimes rather than build up an expensive system that invades everybody's privacy and dignity, hassles them and produces false positives? If simple math defeats the gigantic anti-money laundering apparatus, gosh, we might have a problem here?
And then the label Illegal activities, for instance prostitution and drugs? Labelled by whom? Why? Since when? By what right? And what are you going to do to stop it?
You, sir, are either a shill/troll, or you know shit about Currency creation, central banking and FRB.
Otherwise you'd realize that the original and real crime is the very creation of our Post-1971 USD. And you'd realize that it is a FAR worse crime.
Although it is probably true that "money launderers" (actually "CURRENCY launderers") are not exactly exemplary/model citizens of personal or social virtue, they are no worse than the scumbags with Ivy League degrees who are running the Fed's fiat Ponzi.
Please don't just regurgitate Ponzi punchlines, and get educated on how things (and currency supply) really works. YouTube provides some very informative and eye-popping clips. E.g., Crash Course by Chris Martensen, or Mike Malone. And then let's talk again.
" Bitcoin just a cover for money laundering and illegal activities"
This is the view of a true Statist. So why are you even here on ZH? I suppose that you condem the Founders of the united States for their anti-government, anti-tax stance? Hmmmm?
I don't remember Tyler being so suspicious about Private Equity firms (or TBTF banks) endorsing gold :D
Buying bitcoins is making a bet that the internet will be working in the near future. It's a better bet than assuming that the Fed will be working in a couple of years.
It would actually make a ton of sense for ISPs to charge their customers in Bitcoin. That way the Internet can continue as normal even through a complete currency meltdown.
Sounds sensible and cool, but let's be realistic and practical: the ISPs are largely large firms. They'd get their corporate nuts cut off by the Fed's henchmen (FCC and IRS), before this came about.
The Fed won't stand for ANY competition from cyber currencies until they come out with their own. This is emotionally hard to digest for most people, but it is true and it is coming.
It's bigger than that. Whoever developed Bitcoin figured out a way to monetize the entire network we all live with - the internet, the electric infrastructure, all of it.
Buying Bitcoin is holding a piece of the monetized network.
"firms like Fortress - that rely on fiat specie"
Say what?
Somehow adopting sound money will put investment management firms out of business?
And how about that earlier pair of charts, with the misleading scales making a minor drop from $200 to $175 look comparable to the gain from $1 to $240?
Key part: "Novogratz said he has put his own money in the virtual currency, without specifying how much."