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I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that the currency is created with out either a tangible substance backing it or an exchange of goods/services/labor. It also sounds like the whole economy has a pre-planned, built-in aristocracy. You can create coins simply by having an expensive, powerful computer. If there is actually a finite number of these coins, then there is a zero-sum game and the people with the most powerful computers literally create wealth and have an absurd level of control over the exchange rates. The value of a coin is literally different for someone with the infrastructure to create these coins than it is for a merchant or consumer attempting to engage in an equitable exchange of goods/services/labor.
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May 23, 2011 20:41
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ReverendFaux posted:Only 21 Million coins are to be released through 2040. Right, so the handful of people with computers powerful enough to create the coins have an obvious incentive to horde them, making the few they allow into circulation more "valuable". They don't even have to invest to make their wealth more valuable. Lack of circulation alone makes them "richer".
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May 23, 2011 20:47
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Stoatbringer posted:I'm generating a coin right now, somehow. Soon I'll be rich and if you're lucky I'll wave to you from my huge yacht. 
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May 23, 2011 20:52
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Julius Milkwhite posted:Ill give you 21 million bitcoins for that! It is still worth more than all the BitCoins in existence because actually labor was required to create it. It doesn't sound like anyone is actually interested in this psuedo-currency having any connection to an exchange of time/labor.
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May 23, 2011 20:58
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Sly Pistachio posted:I just made $120 selling 15 Bitcoins I generated in a week with my AMD graphics cards so... this magic Internet money is pretty great. For now. It's obviously not going to last forever. I do feel pretty Congratulations, you are a grifter. I know it seems OK because you took money from other greedy FYGM'ers who are also looking for free money, but you are still part of the problem.
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May 23, 2011 21:23
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ymgve posted:Also, don't believe you are untraceable with this. A transaction starts when you send info about that transaction into the p2p network, so if someone monitors large parts of the network they can in theory find out you were the origin of that info. It's like the real debate here is which side of this scam is more flawed; the economics or the privacy/cryptography.
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May 23, 2011 21:32
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ChubbyEmoBabe posted:Against: Everyone who knows what a 6+ year old knows about economics. You forgot the other For: People who really believe there is a "trick" to making money without labor. i.e. anyone who has ever involved themselves in pyramid schemes or MLM. Unfortunately, this is a HUGE number of people.
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May 23, 2011 21:50
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lil mortimer posted:Could somebody simplify this for someone who's an idiot when it comes to math, finance and computer science? If I understand it correctly (which I might not), somebody had an idea to make a new coin. To make sure the coin can't be counter-fitted he made the etching of the coin incredibly intricate and unique. Then he told everyone exactly how to make their own coins. However, only people who have expensive coin-making tools (i.e. high-end computers) will be functionally capable of making the coins. This would theoretically make the coins scarce and thereby make them valuable. In theory, the people who make these coins can exchange them for goods and services. This assumes that the people who accept the coins initially recognize them as having value AND holding value over time. Once in circulation the value of the coin stabilizes and becomes a consistent representation of labor over time (which all money is supposed to be anyway). In practice, the guy that invented the coin actually made a crap load of them before he told others how to make them. Then those who made them themselves found that nobody recognized the inherent value of the coins. To get the coins into circulation someone started the rumor that the coins have more value than is immediately obvious to the common man. Other people, hearing the faux-secret that an undervalued coin existed and believing themselves to be smarter than the common man start buying the coins. They then sell the coins to other people who consider themselves smarter than the common man (but aren't quite as smart as the first buyers). Suddenly the price of the coins starts rising as a larger and larger number of people who think they are smarter than the common man compete to prove who is the dumbest among them. Meanwhile, the guys that print the coins (especially the first guy) waste a ton of fossil-fuel generated electricity creating the objectivly valueless
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May 23, 2011 22:18
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The Russian mafia seems like it would benefit from operating on a barter system. 1 8-year-old Romanian girl = 1 miniature giraffe
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May 23, 2011 22:40
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Stroh M.D. posted:A few nomadic cultures still translate wives to goats or camels. At least as far as dowry is concerned. I'm aware, and this is something else that anyone considering getting involved in BitCoin should be well aware of. One of the selling points seems to be the anonymity...allowing the currency to be used for transactions that you don't want governments to know about. While we would all love to believe that these transactions are mostly innocuous poo poo like drugs and stolen cars, it is also human trafficking and weapons. You might be all excited that the value of your BitCoin portfolio went up because they are trading at $6 instead of $5. At the same time, the value of a blowjob from a child sex slave just went down from $6 to $5 and her owner sure isn't going to eat that cost.
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May 23, 2011 22:55
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