BitCoin
 

It's a fascinating technology designed as secure, unhackable and untraceable virtual P2P currency. The underlying tech and security mechanism is very interesting. I like it for it's potential revolutionary implications. :)

http://www.bitcoin.org/

I have about 10 bitcoin's right now

I'm going to starting running the process. There's more and more people taking them for tangible goods. We'll see. It's interesting because it doesn't really fit neatly into existing theories of money. It's "fiat" in that it's not backed by anything tangible, but has scarcity rigorously built into the system and cannot be arbitrarily inflated/deflated.

:kali: This is a BitStickUp gimme your BitCoins or you're gonna get BitBlasted with my BitGat, this is fun.

I wonder how long this will last before the Feds step in. Stealing is only illegal because the Feds hate competition.

Bob

Subversively undermining governments through counter-economic revolution is fun. All the cool kids are doing it.

They will start with saying it's a "CON". Then they step in to protect us.:smack:

Not long

Senators seek crackdown on Bitcoin Currency.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7573T320110608

However, the the currencys depend on a P2P Tor network, and they won't take that down. Why? The feds use it for their own secure tunnels and it only works if there are tons of nodes on the network. It's wonderful when you can poke them in the eye with their own stick.

Go Fu*k yourself Chuck. (Schumer, not you Chuck. lol).

And Reuters can't even get their facts straight.


A, it's more like $30 now. B, no. They can be generated. C. No. You can earn through your own business. It's a currency. It facilitates trade among market actors. But it is gloriously untraceable and has nothing to do with governments at all.

Nakamoto-san :hail:

Wooo, oh okay never mind.

So each of these cyber coins are worth 30 bucks WTF?

They're traded on an exchange so price can vary like anything. There are actually some people who have built highly optimized render farms just to do the mining to then sell the coins, which are then used in a totally anonymous and untraceable way as money.

I want some give me. Can I get em from my phone?

It's illegal and it looks like a lot of people were using them to buy drugs. Surprise, surprise. Google the silk road + bitcoin.

BitCoin is used for a lot of things already. The Silk Road is just a pretense. Not that I care anyway. They're concern is competition to legal tender and money systems that make it easy to evade taxes. The gubment has shut down various forms of digital currencies in the past. The difference is those had centralized clearing houses which could be in some form physically seized. This one doesn't at all and will be far harder, maybe impossible to stop itself. We'll see how it goes. It's kind of unique in the history of money and difficult to clearly evaluate.

Eventually people will have to be able to cash out. They'll be able to stop financial institutions from doing that.

That's the point. The are more merchants and vendors selling goods and services denominated in BitCoin all the time. If it can reach some scale, and previous alternate currencies were well on their way before being shut down, it will be a sub economy with its own, fairly untouchable money system. No need to exchange. Awesome. :bandit: It really is some new territory.

It wasn't a Bitcoin fail it was a user fail that left their wallet.dat unencrypted and out in the open. Its like saying your bank failed because you lost your debit card. and lost all of the money out of your account,

The article is typically misleading. Even so you didn't read it beyond the headline or didn't understand what you were reading.

"BitCoin" and it's underlying decentralized network for control of money supply (the object of the technology), did not fail at all. NO ONE has found or even theorized a way to forge a coin or otherwise manipulate the supply. Do you understand this point?

Unencrypted Wallets (accounts) were robbed and a massive attempted conversion to cash was halted by the exchange, causing a short term panic on that market. That's it. Nothing more. Considering that security risk can be stopped with merely encrypting one's wallet, it's not even a systemic problem of any kind to be concerned about.

From the legal (and citizen boot-licker side) it is clear though, plenty of long knives out to try and stop BitCoin because the system is far more robust than anything tried before. As it becomes increasingly used as money directly, rather than trade to/from currency, it will be considerably stronger. The only thing events like this really show is that it is getting some scale and that's a good thing.

Fact: The stock market has had actual massive systemic transaction failures in the past.

Fact: The dollars in your bank account are losing purchasing power at a steady clip. It's a kind of stealth robbery via Cantillon effect.

Fact: Not one (1) fiat currency in human history has stood the test of time.

Am I psychic or what?:judge:

Maybe not so psychic. Where there is value there are thieves. :nutkick: :judge: Like I said, the fact people are targeting the "currency" for crime only means it's actually useful.

Ben,
Do you have any bitcoins and if so how exactly does one acquire and spend them exactly? Links please and remember I am retarded so dumb it down for me.

I have a few. You can get bitcoins a few ways.

#1 You can get them for free (free = the cost of running your computer)

http://www.bitcoin.org/

Go there and download the bitcoin app and your computer will start mining.

#2 You can buy/trade them from an exchange service.

https://www.bitcoinmarket.com/
https://bitmarket.eu/
http://liliontransfer.org/ << A big exchange
http://www.mtgox.com/ << also A big exchange

Lots more are here
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

So, if I'm getting this right, you can basically mine free money? How does that equate to real dollar value?

Ultimately if you think of it in terms of dollar value, you're missing the point of the "money" and of why the government finds it dangerous.

Moreover, it ain't free if you have to spend hundreds of hours of CPU time to generate the coins. There's quite a lot that goes into a theory of money here of why BitCoin is an interesting idea. It has characteristics that make it unique in history. It is virtual, that is not backed like a traditional commodity money, but is an intensely and systematically constrained supply. So it meets a key criteria of scarcity, but not of inherent (original use based value).

My interests are that it is a systematically constrained money supply, that is immune to arbitrary increase in base money stock, and two, works on a peer to peer network which, unlike other attempts at creating competitive currencies, including digital currencies, is highly resistant to government attack because there is no central clearing house or physical entities to attack. (The government is a real monopoly that uses guns and cages to protect its racket.) This is quite a finger in the eye of the man and is a step in the direction of establishing resilient financial institutions for Agorists in particular.

Correct. 2 is the point, particularly as direct use as money. 1 is only the mechanism of creating the supply in the first place.

There's an outside chance that if adopted and used more expansively, the relative value of BitCoin to USD could go sky high.

Yeah if its free to get how will it ever hold a value?

For those interested in understanding monetary theory at a deep level, why BitCoin is kinda unique, and why fiat currencies have the repeated problems they do, I suggest:

The Theory of Money and Credit

It's heavy, but look at just the index and follow a subject if it peeks your interest.

I just wanna say to all the people with the "if it's free to make how does it hold value" mentality: Ask the federal reserve, they've been doing it since 19...seventy...something. Look at the back of your USD currency, that shit is legal tender, it holds no actual value.

What? The full faith and credit of the United States isn't good enough for you? :smack:

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford

What people really don't understand is that CB Fiat money is a kind debt instrument. It is fundamentally different than a commodity money (i.e., real money). BitCoin is a unique case because it is Fiat but there is no central anything and there is no arbitrary human control of supply, so while not commodity backed itself, it resembles far more in common with a commodity backed money and total free banking than any major existing currency. Which is why governments hate it.

We will only have a finite amount of bitcoins about 200 million I think. So at some point you will no longer be able to get bitcoins for free.

AIR the design is structurally limited to about 21 million units. The Mining algorithms were simply a method of growing the supply at a limited rate that did/does require time and effort (not free really). Anyways, though technically fascinating the mechanism for the creation of the supply is not the point. Use of the coins as money is the point. Secondarily, the whole system is a test of methods to completely bypass mainstream financial institutions and support non-compliant markets in a robust manor.

I have had it running for like 3 days and don't have one it is stuck at 133758 blocks WTF?

Do you have generate Coins selected in the settings menu? How many hashes per second are yo processing?


Nevertheless, like I've said a bunch of times. It's not free or easy! You may run for weeks and weeks before you pick up any. It's an emulation of prospecting for gold. You might get lucky and pick up a bunch in a hurry, it could be months. The point of this algorithm is to give a distributed constrained release of units into the market. If you want a guaranteed way to get some, offer your service as an electrician, or maybe some ammo :pot_stir:. Then with your EARNED money you can buy some LSD and put it in Sean's diet coke the next time you see him. Something fun like that.

You can always join a mining pool and split the bit coins

Perfect, exactly my point, it's already better than the crap we use :lmfao:

We shall overcome.

Not only can you have LSD shipped to you using Bitcoins, now you can reserve rooms at a major hotel.

http://hojomaingate.com/blog/now-acc...for-your-stay/

I don't know if you've been following BTC valuation but it has exploded recently. They're at about $80/BTC. Even some banks have started getting involved and the treasury has got their panties in a tight little wad over it being unregulated. Yeah. Suck a bag dicks fucktards.

They might be able to regulated transactions in/out across exchanges, but they can't touch direct (P2P) usage. They're powerless.

Make that $91.25. Market cap is now past $1 billion. I remember when these were just a couple bucks. Hell a year ago they were like $10. Now, I didn't buy in, kind of wish I did!

The rate of adoption is pretty rapid. Remember, while government can intervene to constrain exchanges, it can't do a damn thing to curtail P2P/direct usage of BTC. If BTC is broadly adopted, the need for exchanging to other currencies like USD falls dramatically.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles...to-main-street