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Tornado Lazers posted:What determines a buttcoin's value at any given point in time? I understand if there's small supply and large demand the price will be higher I guess, but by what mechanism? It's determined by what someone is willing to buy it for. That's why this happens:
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May 24, 2011 06:49
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Aralan posted:No lie, I'm now strongly considering mining for bitcoins so I can buy hundreds of slim jims. How long does it take to mine up 2.799 BTC? A day... if you buy $1200 of extra computer parts first.
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May 24, 2011 09:32
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peak debt posted:Couldn't you "rediscover" the numbers of a lost bitcoin with more mining? Nope! Once the file's lost the money is gone forever. Once someone else has the file they can take all your money and give it to themselves.
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May 24, 2011 14:14
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Oh and don't forget, if your wallet file is stolen and the thief uses it, it is indistinguishable from you using it.
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May 24, 2011 14:27
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d3c0y2 posted:How did you draw the conclusion "we need to go back to the gold standard" from that article. You can just as easily undervalue your currency on a gold standard system. Don 't forget that no major country ever PROVED they actually had enough gold to cover all their currency. tiananman posted:I'm not advocating for anything. The dollar is a dead man walking without me advocating for another gold standard. I don't think it would work either - mostly because the United States doesn't have any gold, nor does it have anywhere near the wealth to procure enough gold to backstop what's left of the dollar. Yo genius, the paper ISN'T the value or the actual money. We do not back the dollar with paper. All major world currencies are backed by their own economies and the collective buying power of their home governments, and indirectly, by the fact that America et al have big rear end weapons and if you don't play by our rules we might invade you or bomb you! Also LOL if you actually think the dollar will collapse without all of the western world collapsing. See how good your lovely real estate is after the apocalypse when you ride your mutant slaves to the Archduke of Illinois to by gasoline with a chunk of your land!
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May 25, 2011 07:33
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CAustin posted:Why is there so much vitriol being thrown at this? 70% of the posts in this thread basically go "Bitcoins are stupid, and people who use them are stupid, libertarian, nerdy nerdlibertarians." Ok, we get it, you don't like the nerdy McNerdcoins. If you think it's such an incredibly dumb idea, why are you getting so worked up over it? I kind of get the libertarian thing, but what's with the constant juxtaposition to nerdiness? We're pretty much all nerds here, in case anyone hasn't noticed. Do you get mad at people who point at a lovely car and laugh at how dumb it looks for getting "worked up"? Cuz that's basically what people are doing here.
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May 25, 2011 07:39
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An anonymous drug marketplace with bitcoins is about the easiest place to scam on.
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May 25, 2011 19:20
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Unguided posted:Why would you need to buy gasoline when you ride mutant slaves? Do they drink it? You only ride the mutant slaves when you don't have enough gas for your Mad Max knockoff car.
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May 25, 2011 20:14
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Atom posted:If you control enough of the BitCoin market, and do a significant number of "perfectly-legal" transactions through bitcoins, at some point it becomes economically viable to back them yourself with real currency, as a casino backs its chips. The laffer curve argument was settled decades ago by people who thought for 5 seconds - it's impossible because there's way more factors to tax revenue than just rate of tax.
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May 25, 2011 20:59
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Baddog posted:other way around... Ah yes just go through the intermediary of: PATH A: Buy a lot of computer equipment, wait a few months to get a decent amount of Bitcoins, pay using those bitcoins PATH B: Use existing computer equipment, wait a year to get a decent amount of bitcoins, pay using those bitcoins PATH C: Buy Bitcoins by putting your money through several intermediaries from real world money to bitcoins, pay using those bitcoins
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May 25, 2011 21:22
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Baddog posted:Until the US government declares it illegal to buy bitcoins and starts seizing the accounts of everyone who facilitates the exchange, then path C is perfectly safe. Except, you idiot, you said using Bitcoins REMOVES intermediaries when in fact all 3 ways to use it add intermediary steps, and PATH C adds the most!
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May 25, 2011 21:44
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peak debt posted:No current national currency is backed by anything but promises. And while some governments make a bigger effort to back their currency and others do less, all of them have a breaking point where they simply cannot guarantee the value of their money. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock . And that was back when the dollar was actually 20% backed by gold, it's now deeply into 1%. The US Dollar has 0% gold backing. That's been true since the 70s. National currencies are backed by national economies and to a somewhat smaller extent national militaries. Baddog posted:Fishmech, the only thing anyone can prove is that you purchased or sold bitcoins. And who cares about that, because 'lol fake money'. Except you again explicitly said that Bitcoins remove intermediaries when it in fact adds many more! Quit backpedaling like a doof!
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May 25, 2011 21:53
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Baddog posted:There are no intermediaries for whatever "sensitive" activity you want to use them for, which is the important stage. And if it catches on, you might never need to convert them to another currency. There is a big intermediary at both ends, the multiple intermediaries to get real money into fake money for you and fake money into real money for the other guy (because drugs aren't free to produce). It will also never "catch on" since there is always the need to have a bunch of intermediaries to get your money into it - or are you dumb enough to think farmers and gas stations and power companies are going to take payment in bitcoin? I'm not angry at all!
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May 25, 2011 22:02
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ORIGINAL GANGSTER posted:USD->BTC has fees and intermediaries, but BTC->BTC doesn't. The BTC need to eventually go back to Euros/Dollars/Rubles/Zlotys. This is because noone can pay for most basic necessities of life (electricity, food, water, fuel) in Bitcoin. If you buy something online with real money all there is your bank -> credit card company -> their bank - it's that simple. Compare to getting money into bitcoin to start: Your bank -> possibly a credit card company -> dwolla -> mtgox -> the guy who sells you bitcoins And then the other guy eventually has to do the reverse.
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May 25, 2011 22:07
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If there's anywhere in the world where you can buy internet access, electricity, water, fresh food, fuel, and heating/cooling wit h only Bitcoins then it has a chance to be viable as an actual currency. If you still have to cashout to real money at any point to pay for the cost of living then it's just a dumb way to transfer money with the use of a lot of intermediary agents on both ends (buying in and cashing out).
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May 25, 2011 22:26
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eSports Chaebol posted:Who knows, an ancillary currency could become a Thing people have practical uses for. For all the intermediation involved, it's still distributed and anonymous, which isn't possible right now with any other currencies. It might not be likely for bitcoins ever to much more than a curiousity, but it isn't inconceivable that it could stabilize into some role even though that role probably won't be cyberpunk money. The thing is, it will therefore always maintain a need for people on both sides of transactions to at some point go through a series of steps to put real money into bitcoin and eventually take real money out of bitcoin. This honestly nullifies a lot of its supposed "convenience".
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May 25, 2011 22:37
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SuperMxyz posted:I'm assuming it's too late to start mining and actually have it be worth the electricity as of now, correct? You can do that but only if you shell out a cool couple thousand dollars on mining hardware first.
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May 25, 2011 22:54
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Peven Stan posted:I don't know if I can be pro or con on this when the very fact that it exists is giving me so much entertainment. That describes most "hardcore" Bitcoin miners.
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May 26, 2011 05:00
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angrytech posted:Really? I didn't realize that there were actually kids who were that stupid. I legitimately didn't realize that bitcoins had any market penetration with 15-year-olds. God drat it, children ruin everything. Frankly for a kid who has their parents buy them computers and pay the electric bills it's a no lose situation. They can mine away on bitcoins and maybe get something out of it since they don't pay for anything in life.
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May 26, 2011 07:06
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BulletRiddled posted:I know, I'm just helping point out that the whole thing is a lot more complicated than "turn on the computer and money comes out". Also, all these things people keep bringing up that are dismissed as trivial right now are going to become pretty loving signifigant once the value of the coins start to really dip. The value doesn't need to dip even. Every hour of every day it gets harder to generate bitcoins cuz the network adjusts the difficulty and more idiots pile on processing power.
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May 27, 2011 22:30
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raezr posted:Can't wait for the very last bitcoin to be made Luckily no stores accept bitcoins outside a very few on the internet! My PIN is 4826 posted:Keep your bitcoins on a reliable online wallet service or run a mobile version of the client, scan a QR code displayed near the till or something that sends you the receiving address for the business and send them the payment. The bitcoin wiki addresses the fact that you'd have to wait a few minutes for confirmation of a valid spend by saying "just trust your customers to not be scamming you".
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May 27, 2011 23:15
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raezr posted:If I steal everyone's bitcoins can I be prosecuted? If you stole someone's bitcoins noone could prove you stole them!
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May 27, 2011 23:21
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thehustler posted:It really wasn't a case of them jumping in without thinking at all, I don't understand why there's such a backlash. The problem is treating it like an investment instead of the internet lottery!
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May 28, 2011 02:27
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raezr posted:Is there any place in the bitcoin economy for people who don't have a personal computer to store their money on? Or are poor people and children not allowed in the technotarian utopia of the future? Just get their parents to buy computers and internet for them. - Bitcoin Wiki, 2011
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May 28, 2011 16:23
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I don't want to make my phone only have 1 hour of battery life thanks to constantly running bitcoin either.
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May 29, 2011 00:58
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Pedrophile posted:Everyone I know with a phone number currently owns a phone, I don't see what the big deal is with poor people not having phones. There are no bitcoin apps for Android or iOS let alone other smartphones and of course none if you don't have a smartphone.
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May 29, 2011 01:06
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homeless snail posted:https://market.android.com/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet&feature=search_result It also seems to constantly crash, and I'd bet a lot of cell networks don't keep port 8333 open for bitcoin.
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May 29, 2011 04:45
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evensevenone posted:No, because what you'd have to have then is some central authority awarding the coins, which defeats the whole purpose. Yes, making bitcoin useful defeats the purpose. Wreckus posted:Imagine if your cash was stored at your house instead of the bank! And I can hack you. copy your wallet, and send all your cash to me in a way that you can't prove you didn't do it.
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May 31, 2011 07:18
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evensevenone posted:Yes, because it is completely impossible to securely store data online. LMAO if you think most stuff stored online is stored proper secure.
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May 31, 2011 08:46
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Wreckus posted:Oh poo poo, nobody thought to consider electricity when designing Bitcoin. Welp, back to the drawing boards. If you steal my cash or from my bank account, there's ways of getting it back. IF you steal my Bitcoins it is impossible to take them back. Martin Random posted:Wire transfers are irreversible. That's 100% false! Try again moron. Wreckus posted:You mean like charging 2.5% of a debit card transaction that costs .000000002 cent to process? There is nothing stopping people from creating a consumer protection system for Bitcoin (Clearcoin is an early example). Nothing except the fact that chargebacks are impossible and the currency is anonymous of course.
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May 31, 2011 16:14
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Martin Random posted:They are reversible in certain circumstances. That is technically true. However, wire transfers between two legitimate parties where both agree to reverse the transfer are not the circumstances we are discussing. When they are used to steal money, they are typically done in a way that is not reversible. That money will be gone, gone, gone. I don't know what else to say. Are you familiar with "lawsuits" and "police"?
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May 31, 2011 16:33
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Martin Random posted:You just called me a moron, and this is your follow up? If I've got a friend in China or Russia and I wire your poo poo into my vortex of overseas bullshit, are you going to call the police? Are you going to sue me? How? It was policy in 2007 that anything under $75,000 would be beneath the notice of federal prosecutors, so you aren't getting the government to chase this poo poo for you. Good luck financing a private lawsuit to get your money back. Yes there is this thing called "laws" and they work in "reality". Also, you can just block wire transfers from your bank account if you want to be a Paranoid Patrick about it all. Wreckus posted:There are layers of protection that you can build on top of the Bitcoin system... just like how we've built an entire financial industry on what was formerly gold-backed currency (Which can easily be stolen forever, lost, etcetc, like Bitcoin). Drop a chunk of gold, someone else can grab that chunk of gold. Because it physically exists. Same with cash. Lose your Bitcoin private keys, Bitcoins gone forever.
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May 31, 2011 16:49
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Wreckus posted:Bitcoin supports 8 decimal places on the currency. Lose half of the entire Economy worth of Bitcoins? The price will adjust and people will be trading in μBTC. People trading in microbitcoins while the people who didn't lose Bitcoins have their money go from 500 bitcoins to 500 million microbitcoins. Great idea. This is what people are talking about when they say Bitcoins are extremely prone to hoarding and hyperdeflation. It's less secure because it can't be taken back. If I steal your real world wallet, you could chase me down or have someone else chase me down and get it back. You can keep 500 secure copies of a bitcoin wallet but if anyone ever copies your private keys a single time they can vanish all your money to them and you can't do poo poo about it. peak debt posted:Gold price went up by 300% in the last 5 years too. The only reason people nowadays buy it at 90$/ounce is because they "know" they're going to get 20% more when they dump it again next year, not because they actually see any value in it. That doesn't have anything to do with the fact that if you lose bitcoins, they're gone forever, whereas if you lose physical things like coins or gold or paper money it can eventually be found (although bills will eventually rot if you leave them too long in the elements of course).
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May 31, 2011 18:50
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Martin Random posted:Keep your private keys somewhere safe, physical, cloud, or whatever, and encrypt it. This is not rocket science. Don't put it in a computer at all - inscribe it in an aluminum luggage tag and encase it in cement, then bury it. Do whatever crazy poo poo you need to do, go to whatever lengths you feel the need to go to. If the use of them becomes widespread enough, I'm sure services will spring up to insure them or to offer you the kind of super-insane security you're seeking. Your private keys need to be inside a computer at some point to use bitcoins. This is because it's a decentralized online fakemoney instead of soemthing that you can hold in your hand. Basically your argument against "bitcoin can be hacked" is "make it impossible for your bitcoins to be used by removing the keys necessary to use them from your computer" Data loss is inevitable, backup services suddenly go out of business, and the more places you put the same data the higher the chance that someone can get to them. Many people have already permanently lost bitcoins, taking them out of the pseudoeconomy forever.
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May 31, 2011 19:18
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Martin Random posted:If by "inside a computer" you mean that you need to type them into a computer somewhere to facilitate transactions, then yes, eventually, no matter where you store or hide them, to use them you'll need to dig them up and put the key into the validation network. Now, the fact that you need to have the private key on the computer to use bitcoins, the fact that that means its potentially vulnerable, and the fact that once someone grabs a copy they can irrevocably take all your bitcoins with no recourse - this doesn't add up to anything to you? You see with the traditional banking system for online purchases, if you use a credit card online and it gets stolen: you dispute the charges, you're not out money. Relatively similar with a debit card, though it takes more effort to get the money back which you will have actually lost when the card was fraudulently used. With bitcoin, if your wallet ever gets exposed, your bitcoins can be permanently taken with absolutely no means to get them back. That's not an impossible standard to hold an online "currency" to, bitcoin makes it impossible and can't fix it. There is plenty of malware out there that sends off all files it finds with what looks like financial info out to random criminals who control it, they could easily swipe wallet files too and freely use them.
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May 31, 2011 19:49
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perianwyr posted:Objects that contain value in and of themselves are destroyed or lost irretrievably all the time; I'm not sure that this is as useful a line of criticism as you are making it out to be. Your bank account doesn't vanish if you forgot to backup your computer and the hard drive gets fried. Gold or silver or even bottlecaps don't vanish if a password is forgotten. More importantly, if someone drops a truckload of cash and coins into a volcano, the world doesn't lose that amount of money forever, it can be replaced. Bitcoins by design can't be replaced, the design calls for 21 million max and many have already been lost although they still count towards the max.
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May 31, 2011 20:02
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Wreckus posted:Unlike the ultra impossible to inflate central banking system Inflation is not bad. If you think it is, you're an idiot or already insanely wealthy and don't want anyone else to get rich too.
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May 31, 2011 21:11
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Martin Random posted:If they get the private key, they can take all the bitcoins in the particular account linked with that private key, from my understanding. So you admit Bitcoin is insecure especially versus the real people money system? Aces! Wreckus posted:It takes a bit more than teenage angst and a compiler to fork the block chain. Any fork would not be accepted in transactions on the main blockchain unless the person generating it could out-generate the main bitcoin network... this means they'd need more CPU power than the entire primary grid. You don't need to out compute its peak if you can disrupt the network for a sustained time period drastically lowering its computing power.
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May 31, 2011 21:13
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Wreckus posted:You would have to unplug the Internet (or large sections of it) to do this. Bitcoin is potentially vulnerable to DDoSing its mining pools to lower the overall network strength. But people are already writing fail-over scripts in their miners so they can switch to other pools/solo when there is a disruption. (Because the mining pools are getting DDoS'd). All you need to do is gently caress with traffic on the Bitcoin port. Disrupt and slow != completely shut down. Absurd Alhazred posted:Inflation is bad if your wages are set by a dollar standard and are not adjusted for inflation. Strangely enough, raising your numerical wage isn't as easy as it is for a supplier to raise his prices. Currency needs to inflate as long as the economy is growing at all. Steady-state is in practical terms impossible, deflation is bad for anyone with any kind of debts and encourages hoarding, and hyperinflation leads to zimbabwe/weimar germany. This is why all major countries seek to establish a stable low rate of inflation.
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May 31, 2011 21:38
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It is also why when pay is not adjusted for inflation, workers get screwed over by growth (like what's happening right now). But this isn't really the place to have a serious discussion about economics, is it? They'd be more screwed over by deflation or hyperinflation though, which is the point.
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May 31, 2011 21:44
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