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Senate Grills Bitcoins - Live Webcast
"Beyond Silk Road: Potential Risks, Threats, and Promises of Virtual Currencies" is the title of today's Senate hearing (from Homeland Security) on th eperils of Bitcoin. We are sure the exaggeration and exasperation will run high as Government offers up its Financial Crimes (and missing and exploited children) directors, and the de-centralized unregulated crypto-currency faces them down...
Live Stream (via Senate)
Witnesses
Panel I
Jennifer Shasky Calvery
Director, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Mythili Raman
Acting Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division
U.S. Department of Justice
Edward W. Lowery III
Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Investigative Division
U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Panel II
Ernie Allen
President and Chief Executive Officer
The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children
Patrick Murck
General Counsel
The Bitcoin Foundation, Inc.
Jeremy Allaire
Chief Executive Officer
Circle Internet Financial, Inc.
Jerry Brito
Senior Research Fellow, The Mercatus Center
George Mason University
The best "brief" summary of what is Bitcoin...
Here is coindesk.com's color on what to expect...
Given the title, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Silk Road features heavily in some testimony. In particular, Mythili Raman, acting assistant attorney general for the US Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, uses it in his prepared statement as an example of why regulation of decentralized currencies should be “sufficiently robust”.
Anonymity vs privacy
Silk Road, the online black marketplace taken down by FBI investigators in October, highlights “challenges investigators face when they encounter these systems, some of which may ultimately require additional legal or regulatory tools,” Raman said, singling out the difficulty of accessing customer records as one of the most significant challenges facing law enforcers dealing with virtual currencies.
Ernie Allen, president and CEO of the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, is also worried about anonymity in virtual currencies. In his testimony, he will voice his concerns over the use of virtual currencies including bitcoin for child pornography and sex trafficking payments.
“In our consultations with law enforcement worldwide, we have heard the argument that there is a difference between privacy and anonymity. Law enforcement leaders embrace the broadest possible privacy protections for individuals, but emphasize that absolute internet anonymity is a prescription for catastrophe,” he says. “Our challenge is to find the right balance.”
Other testimony challenged those concerns about anonymity, though. “Anonymity is also a two-way street,” says Patrick Murck, general counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, in his prepared statement.
“A top dealer on Silk Road was actively working with federal law enforcement, the anonymity of Silk Road making it easier for them to make undercover drug deals and subsequent arrests,” he explains.
Murck also has some feedback for those that hold up Silk Road as an example of bitcoin’s dangers, cautioning against tying bitcoin and Silk Road too closely together. He cites the Genesis Block’s analysis of the contribution that Silk Road made to bitcoin pricing.
In late December 2010 and early 2011, people buying bitcoins to make Silk Road purchases may have spiked the price from $.30 up to $.80. The price was then boosted by mainstream media attention, before settling at around $5, he says. Further price spikes were unrelated to Silk Road, and even its takedown in October had little long-lasting effect.
“The less this colors public and policymaker assessments of Bitcoin, the better,” he argues in his testimony. “Criminals do turn the beneficial instruments of society to their ends. But overreacting to this simple and obvious fact because Bitcoin is exotic and new could delay Americans enjoyment of Bitcoin’s benefits, which are vastly greater than its potential costs.”
Decentralized vs centralized currencies
Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and director of its Technology Policy Program, testifies that a decentralized currency like bitcoin would in any case be less appealing to online crooks than a centralized digital currency, like Liberty Reserve, which was taken down after its founders were arrested.
“While of growing concern, to date, virtual currencies have yet to overtake more traditional methods to move funds internationally.”
“Serious criminals looking to hide their tracks are more likely to choose a centralized virtual currency run by an intermediary willing to lie to regulators for a fee, rather than a decentralized currency like bitcoin that, as a technical matter, must make a record of every transaction, even if pseudonymously,” Brito points out.
Brito compares centralized digital currency Liberty Reserve’s estimated $6bn in crime-related revenues to under $200m in drug sales via Silk Road. He adjusts the Silk Road revenues down from the oft-quoted $1bn figure to reflect bitcoin value over the entire period.
At least one regulator seems sympathetic. FinCEN director Jennifer Shasky Calvery points out in her testimony that virtual currencies have yet to overtake more traditional methods to move funds internationally, whether for legitimate or criminal purposes.
“Any financial institution could be exploited for money laundering purposes,” she points out, adding, “While of growing concern, to date, virtual currencies have yet to overtake more traditional methods to move funds internationally, whether for legitimate or criminal purposes.”
Inter-departmental collaboration
FinCEN itself is hard at work, and several FinCEN virtual currency experts gave a comprehensive presentation on the topic to an audience of Federal and state bank examiners at an FFIEC Payment Systems Risk Conference, Calvery says, adding that the agency also works with the FBI, with the Treasury Cyber Working Group, and “a community of other financial intelligence units”.
This inter-departmental collaboration is an important strut of the government’s approach to law enforcement in virtual currency, says Raman, especially in the context of the Government’s Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime. The Department of Justice works closely with FinCEN and the State Department, and it was this relationship that enabled the co-ordinated targeting of Liberty Reserve, he says, adding:
“Such coordinated actions are integral tools in combating illicit finance. Investigations into illicit virtual currency businesses therefore often require considerable cooperation from international partners.”
He highlighted the fact that the Liberty Reserve takedown involved co-operation between 17 countries.
The Foundation is eager to talk up its relationship with regulators, even if Murck finds “details on which we might quibble,” such as the Foundation’s desire for a notice-and-comment process before FinCEN issued its new virtual currency guidance in March. However, the Foundation has found federal regulators welcoming on the whole, he says.
Harsh words for state regulators
He reserved harsh words for regulators at the state level, however, particularly calling out “one state regulator”, which he said issued 22 subpoenas to bitcoin-related businesses, and made TV statements about “narcoterrorism”. He’s referring to New York’s Department of Financial Services, who made that statement on the air.
“Irresponsible public statements like these make it more likely that legitimate bitcoin businesses will relocate to more welcoming countries,” Murck said.
However, he added that he saw positive signs among both state regulators and banking executives, indicating that greater understanding is coming.
Calvery echoed Murck’s conciliatory overtones, talking about an outreach effort to court the bitcoin community. FinCEN met with the Bitcoin Foundation in late August, and has invited it to present to a Congressionally-chartered forum, the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG) scheduled for mid-December.
Jeremy Allaire, founder of merchant payment services firm Circle Internet Financial, which recently received $9m in funding, also wants a collaborative approach to regulation. He identifies several dangers for an unregulated bitcoin community in his testimony, including tax dodging, fraud, and terrorism. Illiquidity and volatility are two other dangers, he warned, predicting wild price fluctuation if central banks and institutional investors are not able to act as market-makers in bitcoin.
“I believe we are at the forefront of another twenty year journey of Internet-led transformation, this time in our global financial systems, and the opportunity is to foster that economic change while simultaneously putting in place the safeguards that only government can enable,” he says.
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Bitcoin was probably created to take pressure off PMs. There are numerous things that can be done to eventually undermine it. Competing virtual currencies. NSA tracking of bitcoin users. And it depends on the internet as now configured. 100 years from now do you really think the internet will have the same structure? By contrast, 100 years from now do you think gold will have the same structure.
Was thinking before this hearing: either they attack or they are behind it.
It's easy to think that, but remember, bureaucrats are always decades behind the curve. The third possibility is, this thing is beyond their control.
Bureaucrats may be behind the curve, but I would not be at all suprised if various banking leaders and senators were holding bitcoin privately as a risk asset.
Until literally a week ago, it wasn't worth enough for them to bother.
Going forward however-- I definitely agree.
you have a very solid point.
This has got to be the truth. On a day when Gold is down 1% and bitcoin is up 20% with bitcoin volume 66,000 coins one wonders where all of the real money in the world is going.
I think people are getting too much aluminum and barium in their brains... (barium get it lol)... bitcoin is not real... it's a computer program that you trust like the government. gold/silver has to be mined, minted and therefore although it can be manipulated by currency, there are physical limitations to this. Bitcoin is anymans market... winklevoss and their minions can control it by simply being the bigger fish.
In otherwords unless you own 10,000 bitcoins now already and bought in at the beginning, you are simply a scared fish buying someone elses profits at this point.
Gold and Silver have and always will be the future of true wealth. Every human in the world knows this but some of us academics and computer geek types think that computers will save you. Real gold is real - and it's going for a steal right now. Everyone is not paying attention so on ebay this morning 1 troy ounce of South African gold went for $1050 and physical gold is getting cheaper which is exactly what the money men want - they just don't want us buying it and most of the investors buying bought up when it was higher.... this is the accumulation phase of gold.
If you think Bitcoins jump was big today, wait until there is a digital/fiat crisis and gold/silver have 100%+ days. Those days will come and until then, keep stacking. Bitcoiners - enjoy watching those bits on your screen and remember, you have to convert them into fiat to use them :)
BitCoin is NO silver/gold replacement, anyone who thinks that is Rob Ford. However, bitcoin is not just some fad. Think about it. You want to send a payment to someone in another nation immediately... you can do this without a bank using bitcoin, without filling out tons of forms and non-sense. Just one person to another, across the world... can't do that with gold. You migh not even be able to get across the border with your gold if the time comes.
paypal? Look the world is split into countries for a reason, there is a reason one is not supposed to do it. Just because the people want it doesn't mean they will get it. normally they 'get it' as in 'to serve man' but not in the way they want it to - look at the parabolic chart
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zi1gBBWzv
kind of a crazy silverish looking chart but more importantly, why trash your dollar value - go ahead and conver them into BtC - it will make the rest of us dollar holders more wealthy and of course those that sold you their BtC - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahahahahaha
(thinking of the BtC seller that just sold 2 BtC they bought for $10 or even less and then turning around and buying an ounce of pure earth mined gold or going buying a 3D printer or something cool)... such a beautiful way to make profit silly tards had it coming to them.
Any buyers at BtC now mark my words will be sad little slivers. If BtC goes to $2000 or even $1000 - you can truly call me the unwisestwizard.
Fucking bureaucrats.
You did not mine that bitcoin!
Fuck it.. I just bought $3000 and placed an order for another $5000 today.....I have no idea why, other to say Fuck You to Somebody.
i hope youve got a securit plan for your wallet.
now sleep double well :)
Soooo +1, smoke! Laughed aloud!
Meanwhile today, as reported by the Telegraph, Scotchman David Cameron wants to ban wanking off to images of sexy women. Time to invest in sleeping pills folks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10457726/Embarrassed-husbands-will-have-to-discuss-plans-to-watch-online-porn-with-their-wives-says-David-Cameron.html
First a nice clean overview. Jonathan has a quick review of what, where, how and when about BitCoin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXmIeOL0QPg
And a much longer explanation of step by step with more hands on screen capture approach. Very step by step and don't be afraid to use the pause button and rewind to get what you need out of it. Which is a bit coin, or part of one at least. At least, you make a wallet and fool around with it to kick the tires.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7opj5-32hw
Some nice instructions, ummmm, some of it is a bit technical but written cleanly enough to hit the steps described. Plus the author has a nice description of what you are looking for when using your wallet or mining a bitcoin.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/08/how-to-mine-bitcoins/
And that's it. About the same amount of time to open a bank account. The pool option for BitCoin mining is important to understand for larger organizations with immense amounts of capacity called workstations. You'll probably need to talk to the person running the service desk first about this depending on your ever greening policy and amortization schedule.
BUT...for those of you that put the capital investment into the equipment are more than likely going to find a nice ATi card or a solid nVidia already in it.
This is a BtC profit calculator. Your PM needs this and the bean counters.
http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/
This is a list of hardware and how fast it makes a BitCoin. Your Service Desk manager and the Asset Manager need this.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
Most of the middle tier office computer equipment already comes standard so all of your organizations are ready to go as soon as you want to implement.
If looking for muscle to tank BitCoin, say if you are a bank/investor. There are larger/faster card options out there to reuse all those 5U boxes you get charged through the nose for when disposing of them. The techs gut them and slap a couple of the cards in the old 5U's. The capital investment of old amortized equipment starts to pay for itself.
When doing the analysis on a corporate/community/business scale keep an eye on Network utilization and QoS services. You will eat data, but soon with the Quantum technology platforms it'll be moving at the speed of compressed light. It's really neat stuff.
What about power consumption of the desktops? It's using the draw already from the floor, use the profit calculator to determine the ROI or even cost recovery against the annoyance of equipment amortization and maintenance. Doesn't matter which way it goes, it shouldn't cost a dime if using available resources. Meets the criteria of good/fast/cheap in one change if understanding that it can be a method to self fund your organizations as they stand. If the machine is on and costing you money, turn it around and make it pay you back. Make it work with you instead of being a boat anchor and plan on better equipment soon. The carrot is there to move technology a head. If the Planck law of computing is standard on this, it'll just end up exponential, there is a definite likelihood of improving how power is made as well.
First though, just play with it and fool around with the bitcoin you generated with the steps above. No limit to how many wallets you can make, either, so you can send BtC from one wallet to another. Just like you can take cash out of one wallet to another.
Or use a phone app to keep BtC on hand. Search for BitCoin wallet on Google and get it ONLY from the iTunes or Android Play store. They are free. If looking around at fancy wallets, make sure you review it first. There are good alternatives with all sorts of fancy stuff in them.
Or write the BtC address on a piece of paper.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_to_set_up_a_secure_offline_savings_wallet
If anyone has questions in any language I am willing to bet there is someone local that can help out. Google BitCoin Setup YourLocation. There are lots of folks working on it out there that have been working hard for a long time and are committed to this. All shapes and sizes, all countries, all races and you all own it together. Leaves room for a lot of good things to happen in an open future with a fresh start with minimal disruption and all the resources everyone has at their disposal.
time to dig up an old aurora post:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-24/demand-gold-combibars-soaring#c...
Aurora Ex MachinaBitcoin is as safe as a Nun's knickers during a violent mob riot in Eygpt at this moment;
Two things to think about:
1) All of the major attacks have been on the processing / banking side of Bitcoin, for obvious reasons (or social gaming, but that's boring, and hardly unique); all of them have shown a total ineptitude and naviety in the face of real criminals that is a total laughing stock. They're being raided by my 14 year old cousin, and only because she's bored.
2) If I leased one of the ten new super-computers in this world [legally available] based on using large amounts of GPUs, how long would it take me to generate the next 1,000 years of BitCoins, given their coding and generational limitations? Answer:Not long, not long at all. i.e. your creation method is hugely out-dated and based on a normative computer model that anyone with resources can ignore.
~ If you don't think it's of major interest to people, think again - what do you think is more likely: the Russian mob wanting to use it to launder money, or the US mob wanting to stop you from using it to protect the credit card industry?
Again: the Geeks who champion this are far too nice, safe and white priveledge to imagine the angles. Major battle-ground in those deepnet abyssal trenches. When you hear the rumours, suddenly Mr Jimmy Saville and co seem so provincial; both sides seem to use the same play-book of fear, control and abuse.
Comment:
The "real" BitCoin will come (and indeed, probably is already ready to go), but it sure-as-shit ain't being run by Geek cowboys in their Libertarian Unix Nirvana.
Their future? Thus.
"2) If I leased one of the ten new super-computers in this world [legally available] based on using large amounts of GPUs, how long would it take me to generate the next 1,000 years of BitCoins, given their coding and generational limitations? Answer:Not long, not long at all. i.e. your creation method is hugely out-dated and based on a normative computer model that anyone with resources can ignore."
Aurora's #1 is a valid observation. But #2 is blatantly incorrect. It's so incorrect it's clear Aurora doesn't know anything about the internal mechanics of bitcoin, so I'll explain:
1. there are only another 100 years of bitcoin generation left, and the reality is that most bitcoins will be mined within the next four years.
2. The bitcoin network has substantially more compute power than supercomputers.The amount is staggering. For perspective, the top 10 supercomputers in the world ( http://www.top500.org/lists/2013/11/ ) have a combined power of 132,400 teraflops. It takes about 12,700 floating point operations to do one hash, so these top 10 computers can do about 10 terahashes per second. Today the network hashrate is 4,420 terahases per second. E.g. the top 10 supercomputers in the world combined amount 0.2% of the bitcoin network hash rate.
Indeed the bitcoin network had six times combined power of the 500 fastest supercomputers back in May: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-network-out-muscles-top-500-supercomputers/
3. Even if you could magic gather 100 times the compute power of the top 500 supercomputers -- e.g. 20% of the current network performance -- all it would result in would be a slightly higher than average amount of bitcoins being mined for two weeks, at which point the difficulty adjustment would neutralize the effect of the added capacity.
4. Every bitcoin mined has to be accepted by the bitcoin network, so it's not possible to mine in a vacuum or fake the mining difficulty level. Simply put, the computers have to put the work in, or the bitcoins get rejected, and this validation is performed by every single client in the bitcoin network. No amount of hand waving at supercomputer rentals is going to make someone suddenly able to mint bitcoins at rates even 10 times normal, let alone generating the entirety of the remaining bitcoin stock in the timeframe of "not long, not long at all."
aurora had a reply for that:
Aurora Ex MachinaSigh: another person who doesn't understand that Time / Space are the same plane. Ugh.
The point being: it'll take anyone who has studied the market, and weighed the costs of a super-computer [Tier 0] to move that 2140 to 2030. Based on our CURRENT technology. And what do we know about the last 50 years and Moore's Law?
DERP.
The "1,000" years was a joke about how Empires usually catagorise themselves [see further: Fourth Reich]: further more, the people behind BitCoin are so fucking retarded it's not funny. See above for the instant reasons why. Oh, look! There's my Dragon 32k computer from the late 1980's! That'll take a 100 years to mine my bitcoins!
[And no; even using recursive algo's to artificially raise the time delay between n and n+1 won't work, if you want to get technical, due to doubling]
Fact of the matter. Putting a shitty time "guess" on your currency, without even realising [and trust me: go search through the "BitCoin Genius realms" for my simple hack] that it'll crash earlier...
Is rather like forming a Federal Reserve in 1913 on Christmas with no-one to vote for it.
Same life-time; if they're lucky, which TPTB will make sure they're not. Oh, and the people running BitCoin? Muppets.
You could use every GPU on the planet right now and might make it to 45% in 34 years using planck's law. Then the crypto gets exponentially harder. The equipment to finish the remaining bitcoins have not been invented yet, nor will they be for around 25-30 years. The porno industry certainly won't drive technology change and gaming used to but there is such a thing as market positioning. If you've got your customers buying new platforms every three months you would meet the GPU needs of BitCoins.
Have fun making one, it's not as easy as you think it is.
And you are right about the next migration, it won't be done by a bunch of Electron Cowboys and Garage hackers. It'll be done by kids way smarter than any of us in three generations from now that will be given a decision if there really is a need to even have money. This is breathing room so everyone can catch their breath and figure out what just happened.
Know what happens when you jam the breaks on in a car on the highway? An accident. Know what happens when you have time to put on the blinker and slow to a stop? You get to catch your breath and assess the situation then correct a problem.
Also don't discount the need of historical review. It's something that's never been offered in an economic startup, which is a migration, it's a very earth thing, we've got the knack for making jumps like that as a planet and not even notice. This is the most fundemental change to human intereaction since the printing press. In fact there has never been a precident on the planet ever historically.
All of you are the first people to see it and be part of it ever. Most importantly, contribute to it collectively. Changes the understanding of capital and fills those nasty gaps on how to move from a planet to a space faring race. Don't get me wrong, fiat will eventually pop up on another planet some millenia and the whole thing will start again. But for now, use the technology as what it is. Just like any money...except you get to make some with stuff you already own. For free.
Seriously dudes, trim the fucking comments down. Your target should be 140 chars. LESS IS MORE!
Over.
This isn't twitter.
Happy?
CPL - funny thing about rastageek is something to consider - you forget that you project your vision of the future. There could easily be EMP, natural disasters, any number of things to set us back. Plus there are many other modes to consider. if 99% of the wealth is in the hands of 1% of the population and they fooled you about the mission to the moon and they fooled you about weather weapons, what is to say they can't fool a geek on BtC - it's controlled by the majority holders now who will do what the money masters say.
They may believe in you and do what you want, but their vision of the world is how it will be. BtC may or may not make it but this parabolic move today and in the last few weeks and even this year to widely adopt it is a bit dangerous. The price differential here on the ground for reality is not matching the BtC - no matter how many blocks of GPU are coded or what technology needs to be invented - a baker bakes bread and buys wheat and their price has not changed.
What BtC basically is a ton of early adopter geeks using a system of money that avoids fractional reserve banking but unintentionally creates a loathed banking class of ultra tech savvy folks that are easy targets for tons of gov't agencies. They use this info to further rip off the masses and those of us that have more 'street smarts' - knowing in fact that weather weapons and of course superior naval and space/air force are the keys to total domination. The dollar will be beaten up and so will gold/silver but in the end they will protect their currency and their system with their weapons despite the cries to make BtC this or that.
BtC may be the future and I wish i had 200 myself back in the day even early this year. But when one says that and acts on it, emotionally it is a sign of a turning market - my predictions BtC $200 by years end. just my 2 cents.
Thanks for the info.
I don't know IT, hardware or applications.
You said, "No limit to how many wallets you can make, either, so you can send BtC from one wallet to another. Just like you can take cash out of one wallet to another."
Does that mean you can creat a shitload of wallets and cycle bitcoins perpetually, creating bitcoin transactions that get mined by someone's gear? Anyway to generate enough fake traffic to benefit your accounts?
Sorry, if these sound like dumb questions, and they may be, but your statement about no limit to how many wallets got me thinking outside the box a bit.
And one last thing, I don't know IT but I know parabolic. How does one short bitcoin? Or, get a protective put if you are a true believer?
Think if you had a BtC and owned five wallets. One dollar only goes in one wallet leaving four empty. Or if you have five bank accounts (a wallet really, bank manages it) and one BtC. The BtC only goes in one account. Works just the same as any money.
There are no dumb questions. The idea of being debt free and fooling around with the idea to get the process going is part of it.
You can't short a bitcoin unless you can borrow one from someone willing to loan you one. Just like anything you want to short. Remember once the debt is moved under BtC, you'd hang yourself attempting to pay back the coin. It makes usury impossible and opens the door to fair lending practices and deal makers. It puts power back in the builders, makers and dreamers hands.
No function for credit unless lending your computer cycles to someone else's pool, options are open for using contributed pools to join forces with someone else to make BtC generation faster (more hands carry the load). Say a family wants to pool their machines. Think pool party when talking pools. Make a pool, add the machines to the pool and all the machines work together to generate a coin.
BtC's are incredibly fungible, they are capital only instruments. One BtC is one BtC, not 1 BtC turned into 9 - 10 - 50 dollars in fractional reserve. Try doing that, and you need however many you promised at that time. In a trade situation that's called chasing the rising wall.
On a side note...the BtC that the FBI seized from the sting a month ago is now valued at the entire department's budget.
The FBI is now solvent for the first time in it's history by the action of doing it's job and shutting down a black market sales pit that sells anything on the planet. They got their department paid for catching a crook, like they are supposed to do. The carrot is on the right side of the donkey now. As adoption winds up, you'll see other businesses, governments, community groups adjust as well.
Thanks for the reply.
I'm sure you are a holder of some amount of Bitcoin so enjoy the ride. Hope you don't get whiplash too bad.
Back to killin' snakes
I have the 15 I made doing a contract. The 200 I bought years ago for around 2 bucks a pop, I bought a hard drive with it. Most expensive hard drive I've ever purchased and it still crashed. lol
Right now setting up project plan for a rig to mine for the local food shelter. Then the local schools because they have computer labs that are on and doing nothing. Then the elders council, because they have a bunch of computers with decent video cards and are also doing nothing. Then city hall. Then the cop shop. Fire department. Hold library how to sessions. Etc, etc, etc. Until the process is down cold.
This is how I'm going to invest long term for everyone in my community because I live here. I'm going to pay it forward with no capital investment on anyone's behalf, propose the change and I get to tinker with things I like to play with...and I'm good at setting up. It's going to be busy, no pay but I am going to make damn sure that all the people in my area have the option, plus continue to share ideas on how to improve it.
The faster the migration is done, the sooner I can get back to regular business of building neat systems for all sorts of people so they have an easier time at work. Just like I was doing before, because it's what I like doing for a living or I wouldn't have been doing it for 25+ years. The lack of capital doesn't spook me, either I've been flat ass broke building something from nothing before.
Most IT folks in the 80's and 90's weren't paid with money, it was dinner and a bottle of plonk. Friend calls you up. "Hey wanna come over for dinner?" Instant computer from nowhere before the first beer. lol The actual pay in IT was between a salary range of 'nothing' and 'squat' during that time. If you wanted rent, you hussle. This time at least there are way more techs and eyes and the Internet. It's as about as open as it gets. I suggest that people contact their Geeky family friend for Dinner and wobbly pops, everyone has resources now to leverage this.
ya mon, geeks run de world mon... you are no better than a fed reserve chairman, hooking us all up to the borg. take your block chain and smoke it mon.
You make a good point - several good points - and I wish I had 100 BtC or 1000 for that matter. The problem is I am a believer and I don't own any. I don't want to nor will I be happy if or when my dollar can't buy BtC - though I get your point of a dollar insolvency creating a huge gap up in BtC - something must be causing this...
I really do think it's a distraction from physical ownership of precious metals. It's a burdon to own them and the markets are geared to price them in as real money. I fear for ditigal currency holders. The FBI will as quickly transfer the money to USD and then go after BtC as they would 'adopt' Btc - though they probably sold a few of them and kept a few and then play the wave like the rest of the big bag holders.
Black Box capital pooling their resources to soak investors - then each other. The dollar will be reigned in as more and more go into stocks and speculative investments like BtC and even gold - those dollars are destroyed - which helps bring down part of MIII or something like that from an economics stand point. IT is very easy for the money masters to adopt something and then price control it. I doubt most people will pay $1000 for a BtC though $100 seems reasonable whereas last year $10 didn't.
IS it here to stay? We'll see when their is a liquidity crisis - if BtC goes to the moon, then we know all of the arabs have some and then Gold/silver hopefully too will be also on that ride... :) hopefully.
I think Btc Should bubble back down to the $100 range honestly for more adoption to take place... that is the only way to shake in new customers though they may have all the money they need.... who knows the future -
BtC - $781 one month ago, $167 - one week ago - $300 - one day ago - $487 -
look just cause the government is promoting it - who do you think is selling the BtC right now? Gov of course to people that want one because they said so - then they will drive the price down to nothing and buy them back up - kind of brilliant if you ask me!
It's so bad to think that the BtC could be valued at $800 per coin from nothing a month ago - how could this value even be right? Only to those currently holding them in USD - there is mathematical way it's possible - bread is not 8x it's amount. These government ninny's are funny about how they express their greed - greed is greed though - say silver's run up to $50!
I wish i could short it :) but there will be a rush to the exit and when there is hope you can sell them.
I'm finding Mr. Shasky's testimony to be pretty interesting...
I agree. How many times did s(h)e say "actor"?
Man . . . these statist clowns are stranger than fiction.
700
ALMOST TIME TO BREAK OUT THE BTC $700 HATS!!!
EDIT: Um, $800 now...
In all seriousness, I think that this hearing should put the Bitcoin people at ease. This was not the "We must regulate!" sort of propaganda that I was expecting. They flat out said that Bitcoin was legal, that current laws suffice, and that no additional regulation was necessary.
bitcoin to the moon!
sheep are going to get slaughtered.
This thought crossed my mind before they started the hearing: either they attack it and demonize it OR they are behind it and this is a publicity stunt.
Agreed this is 100% PR, you can be sure that POL's have already been given BTC, ... they're all in on the game,
The good news is there are 1,000's of crypto-currency's out there, and lite-coin is where smart nerds are now.
More worried about the doing, not saying.
Apparently its BTFATH in bitcoin $750 ,
About Bitcoins :
Two Cornell Univ. IT professors have found that the Bitcoin mining meme is now dominated by "dark pools" of HFT mining who have pooled their algos to get huge competitive advantage; which will give those mining oligarchs a monopoly position on supply of Bitcoins and its they who will decide down the road WHO joins the MIner's club.
So...even for virgin electronic money we stay in Jurassic Park.
Whats new in this world.
Then it's time to get organised and build a pool. Most of our laptops have more GPU power on the consumer end than the CPU tanks. The HFT folks have to stop to retool and migrate. All anyone in the public needs to do is start a pool and all start handing out flyers for a community to run in a pool together.
Ignore what banks are doing, there are more guys on the street right now from IT thanks to layoffs for ten years. Tonnes of smart people all over the world thanks to the expansion of service desks and managed services. Just takes some chatting. Again, I put a quick how do worksheet above if you want to fool around with it. You don't have to join a pool to make Bitcoins btw, but the more hands working on a block (the crypto piece) the faster it figures out the block and the faster a bitcoin is generated.
Community can be more powerful than the largest piece of Iron in a server room. It's built to be fair and equal opportunity plus reward cooperation/distributing the load.
Will that be cash or Bitcoin, Madame?
I dunno about you, but I'm pretty disappointed in the half-time show...
What a crap :protect the children through government?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/police-attempt-to-murder-kids-when-mother-flees-arrest/
Clean environment through government regulation?
http://www.treehugger.com/ocean-conservation/navy-admits-war-exercises-will-kill-hundreds-whales-and-dolphins.html
Pentagon the biggest polluter by far. Depleted uranium in Falluja leaving halve the children with birth defects?
And this guy claims that because of government regulation, we can breathe the air?
Soviet union had government regulation, look how great their environment became. As if you give someone a license to kill, he will immediately become caring and loving.
Wait governments killed 260 million people in the 20th century.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
crackpot
Tulip casino in action.
eTulip.
Perhaps an undercover govt action in order to contract CB balance sheets.
I posted this on another page earlier today but it’s been erased. Very weird. So I’ll post it again.
I cannot avoid but to think that BTC is just a distraction/set up aimed at herding investors away from physical gold. BTC is like a shining light attracting those of us who hate TPTB and want to establish a honest monetary system. When the time will be ripe, TPTB will snap its finger and outlaw BTC with the flick of a pen writing a new set of laws. And those who invested their hard earned savings into BTC will lose everything and TPTB will have succeeded at 2 things: 1) millions of dollars will have been invested away from physical gold for a prolonged period of time, 2) Those who oppose the Money Masters will be taken to the cleaner and loose everything.
When I see China’s, Russia’s and so many other central banks hoarding gold, it tells me that at one point in the future, gold will shine again.
I don’t hate BTC. I think that the concept is great. But I can’t help but think that a lot of people will end up being hurt by it at some point in the future. And I hate to think that the Money Masters are actively using BTC to divert investors’ money away from real physical gold and silver.
You can't avoid being PARANOID!!!
Serious. I posted it and when I returned a few hours later to see if there were any comments, I found that my post was no longer there. That's the first time this happens to me on ZeroHedge. Is the NSA hacking ZeroHedge's site to delete comments they do not want to be posted? At the point where we are at, who the heck freaking knows. These bastards have an army of rats working for them (and paid with our taxes fucking hell).
Your lucky they only deleted your post's, ... usually when I question the ZeroHead 'gods', they delete my account.
Three things you can't talk about on ZH, AIPAC, BIS, and Gold Pumpers (BTC exchanges),... all is advertising, and most of the post's come from the broker/advertisers themselves.
BTC is largely a racket, where the exchanges charge a fee to HOLD your 'coin', and the miners have to BUY HW that never will pay for itself. There are many ways that advertisers can make money.
Make no mistake ZH only exists to get advert revenue, and mentioning this fact will get you deleted, or tying their gig to gold, and btc ... same-same, . bit-bucket hell in no time.
They're going to let people believe in it, put money into it, then crush it.
Asset confiscation by any means; mandatory healthcare insurance, an Executive Order to outlaw Precious Metals transactions, or crushing Bitcoin by hook or by crook.
I don't want it, just observing the patterns of the kleptoligarchy.
Why does it seem like this lawyer..?
Is asking many questions..?
Throughout the entire sentences...
"Two Bits" used to equal 25 cents. Now it equals $USD 1600...............awesome!
My general rule is: If something goes up really fast, sell it.
I don't know what the ultimate price of BTC will be. But my experience is that high velocity ramps up are soon followed by even quicker ramps down.
There is no way that governments are going to allow BTC to become currency. They can easily enact and enforce a digital currency tax of say 50% when anyone wants to buy or sell BTC or exchange them for physical goods. Of course, BTC could become the defacto currency of the black market and of failed states like Venezuela, Argentina, and Zimbabwe.
you clowns think us gov run world already.. just bunker up in your trailer and turn off the internet!! Russia, China, Iran use BTC and not give a fuck.... BRICS shit on the dollar
I doubt that Russia is going to appreciate BTC replacing the ruble any more than China is going to appreciate BTC replacing the yuan. The reason virtually every country in the world is using a fiat currency is not because their citizens like them. It is because governments insist on them.
Iran is a borderline failed state, so yes, they might end up using BTC.
I didn't say replace.. I said trade between themselves instead of dollars
Societe Generale strategist Sebastien Galy said Bitcoin is an example of "how far and aggressively greed can push a deeply inelastic market."
That shooting in Paris ........
Ain't it just like a banker to confuse greed with a thirst for FREEDOM from their stupid banking games.
Sebastien, what is your "strategy" for extracting your head out of your ass?
yes how dare the people try and find an alternative to getting raped by inflation and financial crime.
Sounds like the "Bitcoiners" testifying in the 2nd half are all for clear rules in how to track, regulate, tax, and report specific people with their transactions. This flies in the face of every comment made by the pumpers on this blog. They are not directly related to the bitcoin manufacturing/mining software, however, they are directly invoved in the function of the exchanges.
I love the idea behind it. My worry is it will be co-op'ed much like the "Tea Party" was within a couple months of inception.
Regulatory framework is the meme of these hearings.
Also, what would it take for the NSA or other group to sniff packets and add a couple extra 0's or 1's to effectively cancel all trade in cryptocurrencies (Effectively "salting" a tranaction much like a tungsten plug)? I admit I'm not up to speed in the computer sciences... serious question!
Still stacking but watching the digital coins from the sidelines...
Feck, if only I hadn't smoked all my BTC.......I could've taken the next 4Q's off as a 'sabatical'.
haha me too, never regretted smoking so much until the price went crazy haha.
Who is the hot asian chick in the audience?
what's with ZH putting up a 'Bitcoin Banned' image on the article. I watched the whole thing and it's not banned.
Someone said ZH sold out to ABC news and I'm starting to believe it. This site is much more watered down compared to a few years ago.
its right at the bottom of each page
Copyright ©2009-2013 ZeroHedge.com/ABC Media, LTD;
I remember looking into bitcoin in its formative stage. BFD I said to myself.
The bitcoin fad is sumpun else. Yowzer!
I don't give a shit about bitcoin and I don't give a shit what anybody has to say about it. Keericed almitey
You said it, mon.
Nobody fucks with the Jesus!
I smell a rat.
i have some very rare tulips I am willing to trade for bitcoins. I'll even go so far as to throw in some shares of the Missippi company
i have some very rare tulips I am willing to trade for bitcoins. I'll even go so far as to throw in some shares of the Missippi company
In exchange for your tulips would u accept equity in Studebaker or Enron?
BitCoin, best IPO ever! LULZ
all these degenerate statists starting to realise their precious income from the tax slaves is at threat from bitcoin.
fuck them all.
Why would money launderers use bitcoin when they can get a much cleaner deal with a long time established and respected route such as HSBC ?
The question will be in a year is why did they ever use them?
Patrick Murck, "A top dealer on Silk Road was actively working with federal law enforcement, the anonymity of Silk Road making it easier for them to make undercover drug deals and subsequent arrests,” he explains."
And when federal law enforcement decides that buying and selling "Snickers bars" outside of government knowledge/control will also require such cooperation, then the crypto aspect is lost.
Of course no one has to cooperate: I think that Stasi said the same thing.
Btc currently at 711.~
God Fucking Damnit.
Bitcoin is not Anonymous - MYTH #1 promoted by zero-head, NO BTC is NOT 'anonymous', it is considered 'open source intelligence' by the CIA. In other word's BTC may exist only as a means to track 'black-market' transactions.
Jeff Garzik notes:
If you visit the bitcoin wiki page on anonymity [2]], the first sentence is
- While the Bitcoin technology can support[link] strong anonymity, the current implementation is usually not very anonymous.
With bitcoin, every transaction is written to a globally public log, and the lineage of each coin is fully traceable from transaction to transaction. Thus, /transaction flow/ is easily visible to well-known network analysis techniques, already employed in the field by FBI/NSA/CIA/etc. to detect suspicious money flows and "chatter." With Gavin, bitcoin lead developer, speaking at a CIA conference this month, it is not a stretch to surmise that the CIA likely already classifies bitcoin as open source intelligence (no pun intended).
Further, if Silk Road truly permits deposits on their site, that makes it even easier for law enforcement to locate the "hub" of transactions.
Attempting major illicit transactions with bitcoin, given existing statistical analysis techniques deployed in the field by law enforcement, is pretty damned dumb." (private email, cited [3])
BTC breaks US$1000 on BTC-C.
How many Divisions does Bitcoin have?
h/t J.V. Stalin dusmissing the Pope of Rome.
Bitcoin is actually an Orwellian vehicle that would allow governments to monitor all financial transactions. Bitcoin is often touted for its anonymity, but the transparent nature of the blockchain means every transaction is potentially traceable. Even if each transaction is only associated with a key, armed with enough information, certain organizations would eventually be able to connect the dots.
How the Bitcoin 1%'s manipulate the currency
Stanislav Datskovskiy:
" One of the world’s greatest cryptographers, Adi Shamir, published the following analysis:
- "We discovered that almost all these large transactions were the descendants of a single large transaction involving 90,000 Bitcoins which took place on November 8th 2010, and that the subgraph of these transactions contains many strange looking chains and fork-merge structures, in which a large balance is either transferred within a few hours through hundreds of temporary intermediate accounts, or split into many small amounts which are sent to different accounts only in order to be recombined shortly afterwards into essentially the same amount in a new account.” (source: Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir, Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph.
Most bitcoins are, in fact, in the hands of a very few people. Are you surprised? I’m not.
We also learn that, of the approximately 9 million bitcoins which currently exist, less than 2 million actually circulate – that is, change hands with any appreciable frequency:
- “It is remarkable that 97% of all owners had fewer than 10 transactions each, while 75 owners use the network very often and are affiliated with at least 5,000 transactions.”
And it would appear that most of the non-circulating coins are in the hands of a very small number of people – who, one may reasonably suspect, were involved from with building and propagandising Bitcoin from its very beginning. So, who are the lords of Bitcoin?
...
The most damning fact revealed in the paper is not the extreme top-heaviness of the Bitcoin ownership pyramid, but rather the elaborate lengths to which the hoarders went in order to conceal their existence from “rank and file” users. Think of it! Hundreds of thousands of shill accounts, with vast rivers of wealth moving back and forth – for one purpose only: to deceive. None of it was done by accident.
the btc 1% dodgy stuff indeed.
still nothing compared to the crimes of the fiat 1% thus far however, but give it time :)