theflyingexecutive posted:

yo heresiarch if u aren't already logged out, get well soon buddy

uranus posted:

what i hack your wifecoin, can you then both be charged with adultery?

BeOSPOS posted:

I think in true buttcoin/libertarian fashion if someone stole your carcoin and car then you congratulate them for their hard work in making the system/network safer. and then laughing it off nervously saying, "haha, ok guys, I learned my lesson, gimme my car back. please, guys. please"

Adix posted:

a sad post from a good poster

quote:

We have presented the first method that correlates pseudonyms
of Bitcoin users behind NAT with the public IP address of
the host where the transaction is generated.
(...)
The cost of the deanonymisation attack on the full Bitcoin network
is under 1500 EUR.
(...)
We demonstrate that the use of Tor does not rule out
the attack as Tor connections can be prohibited for the entire
network.
(...)
Yet another feature is the lack of authentication within the
network, which requires the nodes to blacklist misbehaving
peers by IP. We figured out that very short messages may
cause a day IP ban, which can be used to separate a given
node or the entire network from anonymity services such as
proxy servers or Tor. If the Bitcoin community wishes to
use Tor, this part of the protocol must be reconsidered.

Greyhawk posted:

so i just stole this from butt reddit

quote:

Ok, let me get this straight: I like Bitcoin. With all the Western Union ad memes I just get annoyed; why? Because I think Bitcoin is not (yet) a good contestant or even alternative for WU.

From a consumer's perspective;

Contestant A: Western Union

Send actual USD. Input $100 in the system, and pickup $95 on the other side anywhere in the world.
No AML docs required below a certain amount.
Above a certain amount you need to show ID. No registration required though.
The cash received is 99.9% guaranteed not to be counterfeit cash.
No risk of getting ripped off inside the WU office - unlike localbitcoins.com transactions.

Result: $95. Took about an hour max.

Contestant B: Bitcoin

AML/KYC verified Accounts needed at an exchange. ID, Proof-of-residence, names, sometimes a selfie.
Both parties need to have Bitcoin wallet software.
Transmitter pays a small fee.
Receiver runs counterparty risk from that moment.
Receiver needs to wait a few blocks before able to transfer to exchange. (hour?)
Receiver needs to transfer to exchange, wait 6 confirmations or more.
Receiver exchanges to USD pays fee in the 1% range.
Receiver does USD withdraw (pays fee).
Receiver needs to wait a few days for the USD over wire/swift banking system.
Optional: Receiver does a cash withdrawal from bank account. Pay fee.

Result: $96-ish (estimate) after paying fees (3 to 4 times), and average volatility both ways after about 3 to 5 working days.

Alternative would be - localbitcoins for cash- but that would have even worse fees, and still requires you to leave you home might as well use WU

Again, I love Bitcoin - but the industry is not mature enough to go fight a behemoth like WU.

Come on guys, let's stay realistic......

Edit: I just know I'm going to get downvoted for writing this, but we really should focus on fixing the problem (making Bitcoin suited for money-transmission disruption) instead of looking the other way.

quote:

Just to give you a real life example. I had to pay recently to 2 different people about $300 each, one in Philippine and one in Vietnam, I wanted to use Bitcoin because I already had (otherwise I would had used kraken, which doesn't require any ID for these amounts). They didn't even know about Bitcoin, so I created an account for them in the first exchange market I found in google in their respective countries (2 minutes each including email verification), I sent the BTC to their exchange wallets and explained to the one in Vietnam how to withdraw to his bank account, while the one in Philippine directly told me his bank account number and name (long term relationship so he trusts me), so I did all the steps. Both of them received their cash in their local currency in their bank account, next day for the one in Philippine and about 2 days for the one in Vietnam.

It took me less than 30 minutes of non exclusive time, because I was doing other things while I was waiting for the confirmations, and from now own they will accept Bitcoin as payments, they both agreed it was very convenient.

I can tell you that if they didn't accept the transaction in BTC I would had hired someone else to do the job. Now think of someone who has to do 2 or 3 transactions like this per day, can you imagine wasting your whole day from the your office/home to the WU office, queue up, fill forms, back to your office/home ...

You could say that this is not the $100 example you are talking about, but this example was real.

quote:

While we are nitpicking

-and pickup $95 on the other side anywhere in the world.

Need to change clothes, do hair, make up (if female), put on shoes, go to car/bus/train/taxi/metro (costs money), get to wu, get in the row, get money and go back, while i'm chilling at home without all the hassle and i receive my money with bitcoin.

You don't have to sign up on the exchange at all to buy bitcoin, i can buy pretty much instantly from https://www.bitonic.nl without any id, and who sais the receiver wants to cash out the bitcoin to usd? This is send bitcoin and receive bitcoin that's it.

quote:

Nevermind that most of the world doesn't give half a poo poo about the USD anyway, just most of Reddit since Americans are the majority demographic.

quote:

It would be a very bad thing for Bitcoin if it were as good as WU right now. That probably sounds crazy, so bear with me while I explain.

There's a famous book called The Innovator's Dilemma which introduces the concept of "disruption". Like most subtle and technical concepts, disruption has been warped by pop culture to mean almost the opposite of its original idea.

In the original formulation, the key aspect of a disruptive technology is that it is worse than the incumbent technologies. An innovation that makes something better would be merely a "sustaining" innovation, which the incumbent companies will coopt and use for their own benefit. We have a prejudice that big companies cannot grasp new technologies, but the history doesn't bear that out. Big companies are extremely good at using their giant piles of cash to do anything that will be better for their sales, including adopting new technology.

Instead, the way disruption happens is that a new technology is invented that is worse than existing technologies. It's slower, more expensive, less efficient. But because no two technologies have exactly the same properties, there are some quirks that make the technology interesting for new use cases that the old technology couldn't cover. Eventually, the new market might grow to eclipse the original.

An example: personal computers were worse in every way than minicomputers. They were slower, more expensive per cpu, and more expensive per MB of storage. They couldn't run any of the existing software, and weren't powerful enough to be shared by multiple people. Businesses that sold minicomputers to other businesses had absolutely no interest in personal computers.

But, they had the interesting property of being small, and cheap-per-unit (even if more inefficient). This was not at all useful for existing customers, who had plenty of space and cared about efficiency rather than unit cost. But it meant that a small group of hobbyists were interested in what you might be able to do with it in a person's home.

Hopefully, Bitcoin is in the same place. It's currently worse than real money on almost every metric. It's more volatile, less secure (from a real world hacking perspective), less convenient, more expensive. The experience of buying something with Bitcoin is much worse than a credit card. If I'm wrong, then we should expect banks to coopt it. They'll realize it's cheaper, or faster, or whatever, and start offering their centralized version of it to their customers.

But if I'm right, then banks will be forced by economic common sense to ignore it, while we nerds play with the part that's new: trustless decentralization. Maybe we'll be able to build a whole new market for new types of activities, the way personal computing did.

Personally, I think our best bet to do that is with smart contracts, and the possibilities of decentralized organizations and truly "programmable money". But regardless, we need to claim our own turf before we can possibly be better on theirs.

trucutru posted:

Need to change clothes, do hair, make up (if female), put on shoes, go to car/bus/train/taxi/metro (costs money), get to wu, get in the row, get money and go back, while i'm chilling at home without all the hassle and i receive my money with bitcoin.

QuarkJets posted:

That carcoin was mostly a lot of wedding gifts plus my family's life savings, please give it back

quote:

This place is dead to me. I am completely ashamed. (self.Bitcoin)
submitted 6 hours ago by 13-23
Don't care, downvote me again if you don't care about being someone of integrity. This section is in need of a wake up call. The WU bashing is completely over the top. It is a disgrace and injustice to the bitcoin community. I am as big of a bitcoin supporter as anyone else, but this is making me hate their supporters. I can't even post in this section anymore. The fact that the mods allow an entire front section to be covered with posts smearing a company is beyond ridiculous. I have to believe this place is full of immature 19 year olds. That's really the only way I can believe it's possible for this much stupidity to be going on. Time to grow up.

surebet posted:

Same Great Paste posted:

my mind still can't quite accept that there's an adult human on this earth capable enough to wed a human female but still thinks "hey hacker gj on stealing my life savings but i learned my lesson give it back now k" has any chance of working.

Linguica posted:

pay out bitcoin as bitcoin??

BobHoward posted:

^^^ just gonna assume that with those keywords i shouldn't click

Heresiarch posted:

i figure this is the place to say this: i'm logging out of literally everything except email for a while for brain-related reasons, starting now

bucketmouse posted:

you would be correct, it made me angry in under 5 seconds

killhamster posted:

here are some terrible loving people

https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%40fergusonlibrary%20AND%20bitcoin&src=typd

Heresiarch posted:

Well, that was unexpected.

I feel sort of like a guy in the hospital who's just received a card signed by all of his co-workers.

Thanks to everybody for the kind words.

Same Great Paste posted:

my mind still can't quite accept that there's an adult human on this earth capable enough to wed a human female but still thinks "hey hacker gj on stealing my life savings but i learned my lesson give it back now k" has any chance of working.

trucutru posted:

Bitcoin: worse than real money on almost every metric.

Heresiarch posted:

i figure this is the place to say this: i'm logging out of literally everything except email for a while for brain-related reasons, starting now

if anybody needs to, you can contact me through our nsa handlers

bucketmouse posted:

stay safe antibitcoin ghost

FCKGW posted:

according to their court case butterfly labs was started with just an $8000 investment and the rest of the millions the company earned in income was strictly from pre-orders.

theflyingexecutive posted:

yo heresiarch if u aren't already logged out, get well soon buddy

EL BROMANCE posted:

'achievements in bitcoin'