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Hector Beerlioz
Jun 16, 2010

aw, hec
When I was in Vegas I saw a sign on a bar that said they accepted bitcoins. That is my only real life experience with the currency.

Thank you for reading.

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Serrath
Mar 17, 2005

I have nothing of value to contribute
Ham Wrangler

Blurry Gray Thing posted:

"You best start believin' in Bitcoin stories, Miss Doctor."

*Walks into the moonlight*

*Is actually a bitcoin mining rig*

"Yer in one!"

The story I posted is really funny in just how reasonable it is to someone who is trying to act in good faith. I know about Bitcoins because of threads I've read on SA but it's something I could see someone who is financially ignorant falling for if you show them the right combination of magazine articles, news reports, and graphs and figures.

She hasn't introduced him to any of her friends yet... I'm hoping to meet him eventually, he sounds like a treasure; this is the tip of the iceberg

The Bible
May 8, 2010

the black husserl posted:

goons have been talking poo poo about bitcoin for years but it just keeps getting more valuable and legit. please explain.

Bitcoiners are willing to give each other more money for bitcoins than they used to, but you still can't really buy anything with them, except illegal poo poo.

They've actually gotten considerably less legit. Go look at any list of places you can spend bitcoin and 90% of the list is obsolete.

max4me
Jun 15, 2003

by FactsAreUseless
regarding this doctor story.

I bet the dude has a big dick.

Also I bet his plan is to pay back the loan with money to get back the coins as they will just go up and up. so in his mind rather than sell 6K worth of coins now and then pay 12 K to get them back later. He can have the money pay it back and then get the profit from his coins.

I miss atlas he was funny.

bird food bathtub
Aug 9, 2003

College Slice

The Bible posted:

Bitcoiners are willing to give each other more money for bitcoins than they used to, but you still can't really buy anything with them, except illegal poo poo.

They've actually gotten considerably less legit. Go look at any list of places you can spend bitcoin and 90% of the list is obsolete.

Think of it this way; if you divide a given number by an ever smaller and smaller number, the portions left are bigger and bigger. Until you try to divide by zero then everything goes to poo poo.

Bitcoins are going "up in value" because Bitcoiners don't understand the concept of market depth. An ever smaller and smaller circle of gullible idiots are passing bits back and forth, sometimes*. Mostly it's wealthy Chinese looking to dump their currency and get dollars from those gullible idiots who are hoarding for the future, because like half the bitcoin processing power or something is owned by a few people in China. So sure, a Bitcoin was sold here and there and there was a number attached to those sales. What you cannot do is take the value of the very, very few Bitcoins that are sold and multiply them by every Bitcoin in existence then proclaim that to be the price. This is, of course, exactly what Bitcoiners do.


*Mostly not though because deflationary currency encourages hoarding, or some crazy poo poo some filthy fiat economist once said somewhere so it must have been a conspiracy and a lie to deprive you of your Bitcoins DON'T BELIEVE IT up uP UP TO THE MOON!

eric
Apr 27, 2004
Lipstick Apathy

Serrath posted:

The story I posted is really funny in just how reasonable it is to someone who is trying to act in good faith. I know about Bitcoins because of threads I've read on SA but it's something I could see someone who is financially ignorant falling for if you show them the right combination of magazine articles, news reports, and graphs and figures.

She hasn't introduced him to any of her friends yet... I'm hoping to meet him eventually, he sounds like a treasure; this is the tip of the iceberg

Tell her to to buy (if she can actually spend them) some Amazon gift cards from a place like gyft then sell them on a gift card reseller site. She'll lose like 10% but at least she won't lose all of it.

Michael Bayleaf
Jun 4, 2006

Tortured By Flan

Parallax Scroll posted:

BUTT coins lmaooo

Bwahaha.

EorayMel
May 30, 2015

WE GET IT. YOU LOVE GUN JESUS. Toujours des fusils Bullpup Français.
KEEP CALM AND BITCOIN ON

bottom of the barrel posted:

I wrote my first computer code when I was 8 years young. Mathematics is the language I speak and trust. Enter the emerging idea of Bitcoin. I discovered this exciting open source technology in 2010. Together with my business partner, Valery Nebesny, we realized this new way of processing and transferring assets could actually make our world a better and fairer place for people everywhere — in developed and developing countries — all through the use of math, cryptography and thoughtful programming language based on the fundamental value of trust. Fast forward 5+ years, and the world of Bitcoin has advanced beyond our wildest expectations and continues to be a dynamic innovative ecosystem that is evolving every day.

[...]

I believe in Bitcoin. I believe in the Blockchain. I know that the vast potential is just being realized. We wish Mr. Hearn all the best as he commences his work with our friends at R3CEV. It is important that we respect various input but simultaneously resist the temptation to give Mr. Hearn’s voice too much weight.

Bitcoin is not an instant payment network and not a fancy replacement for PayPal or Visa. It is first and foremost a decentralized system, which sacrifices speed in favor of security. A key feature provided by decentralization is permissionless entry for users and developers — and it is thanks to this component that Bitcoin has grown into much more than a currency and has become a platform for Blockchain innovations.

Most importantly, Bitcoin is a new world created for anyone — especially for someone like me — who didn’t grow up in a world where “trusted emissary” was a reality and the idea of “asset security” was something other people in other parts of the world enjoyed.

I believe in Bitcoin because I believe in democracy and I believe in open societies. And as Winston Churchill once said: “Democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all the others.” Open source projects are not perfect, but they unite the best and most innovative thinkers, and I am honored to be a part of this mission.

Three Olives
Apr 10, 2005

What if Hitler invented the BMW i3 Subcompact Electric car?

revmoo posted:

3) The Bitcoin TV show guy who wanted to host a conference in Pattaya and then it came out he was a huge pedo

This will honestly be one of my life's happiest memories. Bruce Wagner used to be a huge loving deal in the Bitcoin community, dozens if not hundreds of national interviews, he was one of the most important public faces of Bitcoin.

Then I found out he was a convicted con-artist, shared it with this forum and the Bitcoin community drove a bus over him and said I was driving it because I was a homophobe. Seriously not kidding, the Bitcoiners hated me because me, super human being, lost count of how many guys I have slept with somewhere around a hundred wanted to ruin Bitcoin because their public face was gay.

eric
Apr 27, 2004
Lipstick Apathy

Three Olives posted:

This will honestly be one of my life's happiest memories. Bruce Wagner used to be a huge loving deal in the Bitcoin community, dozens if not hundreds of national interviews, he was one of the most important public faces of Bitcoin.

Then I found out he was a convicted con-artist, shared it with this forum and the Bitcoin community drove a bus over him and said I was driving it because I was a homophobe. Seriously not kidding, the Bitcoiners hated me because me, super human being, lost count of how many guys I have slept with somewhere around a hundred wanted to ruin Bitcoin because their public face was gay.

how dare you!

Howard Beale
Feb 22, 2001

It's like this, Peanut

Logansryche posted:

Second Life is the worlds largest interactive world where users can do alot of the things they normally would not be able to do like build, script, create images, become a business owner, realtor, photographer, etc...

business owner, realtor, photographer, talespin copyright holder...

Comfy Fleece Sweater
Apr 2, 2013

You see, but you do not observe.

Strategic Tea posted:

So let me get this right you can have dirty fiat backed by the military and industrial might of a superpower or you can have bitcoins backed by the ability to perform completely pointless calculations?

Well, that's not fair, when you say it like THAT...

a misanthrope
Jun 21, 2010

:burgerpug::burgerpug::burgerpug::burgerpug::burgerpug:
hey guys check this out:

buttcoin


:lol:

Michael Bayleaf
Jun 4, 2006

Tortured By Flan

A misanthrope posted:

hey guys check this out:

buttcoin


:lol:

Meow we're talking

Cuntellectual
Aug 6, 2010

Serrath posted:


My question is, how screwed is she?

Sounds like she's landed a real charmer.

Slightly Absurd
Mar 22, 2004


I had a roommate a short while ago who was ALL ABOUT the bitcoins. He had this grand financial plan of saving up enough to have 10, because one day a coin will be worth 10k, and all the charts say it's true! How could the charts lie? Look at them!

Every day was a bit of a laff though. For some reason, he really wanted to try and convince me I was wrong about bitcoins being a silly startup that would be quickly overtaken by something more stream-lined and effective. Almost every day he'd offer me some silly news, about how regretfully he had to sell a bit of bitcoin, only to find the value rise quite a bit soon after he sold. Or he'd tell me about how he bought a bit, and how the price immediately plummeted. Then on other days he wouldn't have news for me, but I'd grill him on recent news of hackings and frauds and whatnots [oh my]

Kinda suspected the dude might've been involved in a bit of a dumb cult before, but it seems very much like bitcoins are culty. All the enthusiasts seem to have whipped themselves into this fervor that they're all going to be "early adopter millionaires," and that anything contrary to that is blasphemy.

Mr. Unlucky
Nov 1, 2006

by R. Guyovich

Maldoror posted:

Use tor browser

Go to site selling all kinds of cool weed and acid and other drugs

Add to cart

Pay

Bitcoins?

Need to install bitcoin, then go to exchange and exchange cash for bitcoin.

The bitcoin install needs 20 gigs because it works by storing every transaction ever made on every client.

This is a lot of work for my weed I added to my web cart. But I guess it's better than getting killed buying from a dealer in the hood?

Curse you, weed!

you should probably use a weed website that doesnt require you to pay in bitcoin it is a lot better.

poverty goat
Feb 15, 2004



Maldoror posted:

Bitcoins?

Need to install bitcoin, then go to exchange and exchange cash for bitcoin.

The bitcoin install needs 20 gigs because it works by storing every transaction ever made on every client.

This is a lot of work for my weed I added to my web cart. But I guess it's better than getting killed buying from a dealer in the hood?

Curse you, weed!

all you do is make a coinbase account. its like setting up paypal and you can buy/sell bitcoins instantly

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...

vyst posted:

If bitcoin is not real is our money real?

None of us are real. We are the figment of an autistic boy's imagination

Luxury Communism
Aug 22, 2015

by Lowtax
im just gonna say it bitcoin would have been cool if it was just internet fun money with a playful anti-authoritarian bent but jesus christ that community

Tuxedo Gin
May 21, 2003

Classy.

requesting link to federal agent having to say buttcoin

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

EL BROMANCE posted:

Logansryche is my all time favourite buttcoin artist and I'm not surprised he has yet another hair brained scheme based around donations (that won't make him jack poo poo).

Not knowing anything about SecondLife though, I'm quite confused as to what the $2,000 he wants will go to.

Sounds like server maintenance of these Fur Valley sims. These are private sims, so maintenance for one sim can be anywhere from $75-$295 per month, depending on the level of performance and how much traffic you want to handle. The thing is that Fur Valley that he wants to restore was something like 43 sims, which would at least be $3,225 per month for all low-impact sims.

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...

Tuxedo Gin posted:

requesting link to federal agent having to say buttcoin

CARL

MARK

FORCE

IV

gschmidl
Sep 3, 2011

watch with knife hands

Alan Smithee posted:

None of us are real. We are the figment of an autistic boy's imagination

And that boy... is Jaden SmithAlbert Einstein.

CAMP FARTING ROCKS
Jan 14, 2005

quote:

This transformation is by far the most appalling thing I have ever seen, and the result is that I no longer feel comfortable being associated with the Bitcoin community.
lol that it took a market catastrophe of this size to see that the disgusting Randian user base was inevitably going to eat itself.


Also wasn't it literally always the case that as soon as 50% of the [whatever the bitcoin marketplace is measured in, I don't speak the kind of ridiculous nerd that this article is translated to] was controlled by a single consortium it would destroy itself?

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Stick Figure Mafia posted:

"our cameras stuck in demo mode" is a reference very few people still get
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBfeLdjNVKY

Just wanted to tell ya that I downloaded a copy of this song way back when you first made it, and occasionally listen to it over the years when I see a bitcoin article in the NYT or just need a laugh.

text editor
Jan 8, 2007
ex-bitcoin-developer mike hearn addresses his status as a part of jew banking conspiracy:

mike hearn posted:

A small followup

I got a lot of feedback on my last article, both positive and negative. Most of the negative feedback was in the form of conspiracy theories about me, rather than addressing the issues raised. That’s disappointing. Here are a couple that seemed more popular than the rest.

I sold the last batch of my coins in December, a few days after the second “Scaling Bitcoin” conference. Since that time I haven’t had any positions in any cryptocurrencies, long or short, and no way to make profit or loss off anything that is happening to Bitcoin.

Some people suggested that there is some sort of banker conspiracy, because after I privately concluded Bitcoin wasn’t working I took a job with a startup that’s looking at how to apply distributed ledger technology in the existing financial system (R3 CEV). This isn’t a secret: there were stories in the press about it in November. It was also mentioned in the New York Times article. I didn’t mention this in my post because R3 is not a Bitcoin company, or even a cryptocurrency company, and there is no “BankCoin” or “R3Coin”. So this is really nothing to do with them and conspiracy theories are just a waste of time when there are more serious issues to consider. Todd McDonald said it best on the official R3 blog:

quote:

The resulting kerfuffle has led to a few quite detailed (and somewhat enjoyable) conspiracy theories on The Internets, mainly saying that R3 instructed Mike as part of some coordinated ‘attack’ on Bitcoin. If only we had such control over a brilliant mind like Mike. He is a programmer after all …

… How can the whole thing not make you tired, no matter what ‘side’ you are on? And as I have mentioned before, this concept of one side or one approach ‘winning’ over another, or that there even is a contest, baffles me. Success for R3 (or any of the handful of companies in this space) does not need to come at the expense of Bitcoin. It is more likely that traction for either camp would be a massive positive for the other. Put simply: I personally own (a small amount) of bitcoin AND also think that Bitcoin holds little merit for large, regulated financial institutions as it is currently constructed. In the words of William Goldman, “nobody knows anything” but it doesn’t stop us all from giving it a go.

I see things the same way. Bitcoin competes with some things banks do but a big part of banking is about lending and trading, and those activities would still occur even in a world where Bitcoin was the one global currency. It’s not a zero sum game, banks and Bitcoin co-exist, and R3’s fate is independent of Bitcoin’s.

So to be redundantly clear: I wrote my article because I knew the story in the NYT was coming (and had told my colleagues about it) but wasn’t sure what it’d say, so I wanted a chance to put things in my own words. I wasn’t asked to write, or paid to, nor can I financially benefit from doing so in any way. The timing was chosen by the NYT.

By the way, if you’re interested in smart contracts, block chains, ledgers, etc, Todd’s blog post has some links to some other interesting reads from around the web.

https://medium.com/@octskyward/a-small-followup-aa399a83acbb#.3ig5dbwwi

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3
Nov 15, 2003

Serrath posted:

Any lawyer that doesn't laugh in her face with this story is probably scamming her themselves. I posted the story because it was funny; she's lost the 6k and I think she knows she lost the 6k. Dunno what she plans to do with the bitcoins that are apparently in her name but who even knows if they're in her name; I mentioned a few points raised in this thread to her about ownership and she started to pale and then start googling things on her phone.

She'll be fine, $6k is an expensive lesson but this sort of life lesson is priceless.

So she'll not even go to small claims court over this if she doesn't get the money, despite this sort of thing being exactly when small claims is for?

bollig
Apr 7, 2006

Never Forget.

revmoo posted:

3) The Bitcoin TV show guy who wanted to host a conference in Pattaya and then it came out he was a huge pedo

4) That time the CEO of Mt Gox FOUND $80 million in bitcoins he had misplaced

5) The guy that lost $9 million in bitcoins when he threw his HDD out

6) People lost millions of dollars from "brain wallets" because their chosen "password" was a dictionary phrase

7) That time Newsweek went against all sense of journalistic integrity and human decency and exposed some random japanese dude as Bitcoin's creator because they were rebranding and needed a huge scoop

I'm forgetting a ton of other stuff as well. Bitcoin is ALMOST as funny as Star Citizen.

God I remember #3. "I will only, only, only do this in Pattaya." "Dude why?"

8) I think there was this person going around tipping people's posts on Reddit and the amount he was tipping, on the surface, was an amount that you could withdraw. But with automatic fees and stuff was too little.

Probably Infected
Feb 17, 2010
College Slice

Rasta_Al posted:

One day, I began to read an article about how they work, but I'm not a big fan of fairytales.

This is probably the best explanation on how buttcoins work:

rjmccall posted:

look, it's simple. you have a Happy Burger brand fast food establishment, and sometimes kids come in and want their Happy Burger brand Happy Kiddy Burger, which according to the Happy Burger brand franchise operating instructions is supposed to be 4oz of usda utility grade hamburger lightly grilled and pressed into a poppy seed bun with two slices of mild pickle and a slice of tomato and a piece of iceberg lettuce and the name of the kid written on the top in half an ounce of Happy Burger brand special sauce about which the less said the better

so naturally what you do is, you post an ad saying, cooks wanted, please bring your own grill and meat and bun and pickle and tomato and lettuce, we'll supply the sauce

and you get an applicant, and you send him down to the Hall of Cooks, which is a featureless infinite plane that you keep in the unlit basement of your Happy Burger brand fast food establishment. and you tell him to just keep making burgers and handing them up, and if he hands up a burger that satisfies your standards, you'll pay him a bonus, which is $100,000, plus the price of the burger, which is $.50

now the cook can't see too good down there, and he keeps handing up burgers that are more like pickly meatballs with a swastika painted on the side in tomato sauce, but as long as the meat's cooked the health department won't shut you down, so you keep taking them and dutifully handing down briefcases of cash with a few quarters tossed in. and the cook's pretty happy, even after you summarily declare one day that you're only going to pay $50,000 per burger in the future

so the cook calls in a friend, and she sets up in the Hall of Cooks and starts handing up burgers, and now you're getting acceptable burgers faster than you can sell them. so you raise your standards a bit, and you insist that burgers have to be on a bun, and that cuts production back down to a manageable rate. but the cooks are still pretty happy, even after you cut the burger bonus again to $25,000

this goes on for a while, and now you've got a hundred cooks down there, and you've started demanding that they spell out the kid's name correctly, and that's not easy. so now they're not just making burgers to your increasingly exact specifications, they're racing each other to be the first to get the kid's name right. but you're still paying $5,000 a burger, and apparently the cooks are still happy, because more and more keep showing up

you get curious one day while you're squeezing into your franchise past the giant mountain of rotting discarded hamburgers, and you head down to the Hall of Cooks. the last time you came down here, there were only six cooks, and they were just standing around in a disorganized circle; but now they're organized into these large groups. in one of them, you find your first cook, and he shakes your hand. "remember when we'd just started out and i was lumping up store meat by hand and cooking it on that tiny old george foreman?", he laughs. "that was before figured out cookie cutters and rolling pins." he's standing at a huge professional-grade charbroiler with twenty-four different patties arranged on it; suddenly, in a single efficient flash of movement, he flips them all over. of course, the dull glow of the grill isn't enough in the utter blackness of the Hall, and most of the patties end up on the ground, which you suddenly realize is a lot spongier than it's supposed to be. also, doesn't the ceiling seem lower? you shake it off and head back upstairs to start taking orders, wondering when it'll be the right time to cut the bonus to $1,000

it's been another year. there are tens of thousands of cooks in your basement. you're rejecting burgers for sloppy handwriting. you're rejecting burgers for having too thick a slice of tomato. you're rejecting burgers for excessively clustered poppy seeds. seven months ago, the cooks started building floor-to-ceiling ovens with internal robotics custom-designed for making Happy Kiddy Burgers; now there are whole fields of them, each making ten thousand burgers a second. of course, it's still pitch-dark down there, and the cooks aren't exactly susan calvin, so almost all of those burgers get added straight to the end of the Great Greasy Mountains, but it's amazing how quick they come now. you overhear a few of the cooks talking excitedly about the orders they just placed for massive new ovens from Barbecue Labs. you don't know how any of them can afford this when the burger bonus is only $100

three months ago, you politely asked whether they could start making the adult Happy Burgers, too

for an entire day, all the burgers had your name written on top in poison

Tipps
Apr 18, 2006


party in the front

business in the back

Probably Infected posted:

This is probably the best explanation on how buttcoins work:

Except with bitcoin, >90% of the cooks plan on stealing the burgers and running away at the first convenient opportunity, the owner of the restaurant is a pedophile, and the customers are ordering burgers just so they can trade them for drugs in the alley behind the shop.

Tipps fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jan 19, 2016

Dial-a-Dog
May 22, 2001
I don't see how that's different from a normal burger store?

Fuck da Mods
Jun 27, 2013

fina get poz'd? :cabot: :gizz: :baby:
i dont "get" bitcoins which means i am not autistic

Germstore
Oct 17, 2012

A Serious Candidate For a Serious Time

gently caress da Mods posted:

i dont "get" bitcoins which means i am not autistic

being autistic is necessary but not sufficient to get bitcoins.

Syd Midnight
Sep 23, 2005

bollig posted:

8) I think there was this person going around tipping people's posts on Reddit and the amount he was tipping, on the surface, was an amount that you could withdraw. But with automatic fees and stuff was too little.

Woah, what just happened here?

Syd Midnight fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 19, 2016

WhyteRyce
Dec 30, 2001

Hector Beerlioz posted:

When I was in Vegas I saw a sign on a bar that said they accepted bitcoins. That is my only real life experience with the currency.

Thank you for reading.

The Sacramento Kings accepted it in the team store for like half a season. I managed to get a shout out during this guy's report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGI8p9Xxxs

Estranged On The Range
Oct 18, 2015

Professor Shark posted:

Man Bitcoins are like sort sort of cursed poo poo, everything they touch turns out bad

Those people were morons long before they got mixed up with bitcoin

revmoo
May 25, 2006

#basta
lol you guys remember when the Dogecoin redditors sponsored a nascar driver? That was hilarious

Three-Phase
Aug 5, 2006

by zen death robot

gnarlyhotep posted:

Those were heady days indeed



Man that is one upset furry businessman.

I want to find the photos of that hilariously dangerous Chinese mining operation, with open-air 400V busbars over all the equipment racks.

Three-Phase fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jan 19, 2016

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Serak
Jun 18, 2000

Approaching Midnight.

revmoo posted:

lol you guys remember when the Dogecoin redditors sponsored a nascar driver? That was hilarious



The one definable social good provided by bitcoin

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