Bitcoin Forum

except speculative bubble.

bitcoin need killer applications, disruptive innovations, not just better than traditional.

I think bitcoin as a payment system is fine, but it will be really difficult to win a significant market share in the payment market. Yes, it may be cheaper in some circumstances, but better things will not automatically win, as currency has strong network effect.

Actually, every corner in this world need drugs to getting high. why not someone just create a copy SR, make it open source or sell the source code at a reasonable price, and make sure the code is easy to translated into different languages, so all the ppl around the world can get heroins easily.

I believe if the code on how Silk Road operates was released, whatever tricks that keep it going would not be as useful.  They have the formula for how to make Coke, except no copyright protection, so understand if they are secretive.

Bitcoin will become more of a payment option for people when it becomes more necessary or useful to do transactions that way.  Natural user growth is happening, people in it for trading moving out while people who like it for tech, political, or whatever reasons stay in.

If the market calls for more Silk Road type things, it would happen, but I think the opposite is happening, governments are just becoming more relaxed on caring about drug use.

use yes, distributing? no

I agree that Silk Road was the best thing that ever happened to Bitcoin. Unfortunately, it was also Silk Road that attempted to kill Bitcoin. $31 to $2.46 you can lay directly at their door for their response to some idiots who said some worthless words on TV.

Is it possible to have another SR?

I think there already is I was told.. black market or something or other. Its not exactly difficult to make ofcourse there will be copys lol.

It's easy to build software. It's hard to build reputation. Silk Road could not be easily replaced (hell, it already has someone trying to compete).

does SR have multiple language versions? if so, that would be cool. but such market need localization.

That's what I was wondering. Also I think it -may- happen when people off real gold bullion for BTC.  The "Silk Road" for Gold.

Being able to anonymously turn wealth -> btc -> drugs was a boom.  The same thing for Gold could be a bigger boom.

It has always struck me that Bitcoin could be very useful as a medium for transferring many things, but particularly PM's, across the world.  Provided that there are parties in both locations who want their PM's in the other.

A transaction could be 'ratcheted in' is what I mean.  So, if we are doing 10 Krugs, some BTC is transferred, then one KR is handed over and BTC (plus some more) is transferred back.  Rinse and repeat until the transaction is done.  No one party can rip off the other party for anywhere near the total value.  Could be done with other types of money than BTC, but Bitcoin is probably the best choice at this time due to the speed, robustness, and privacy properties that it has.

A bonus is that it would not be illegal (as far as I know...and if it is, it shouldn't be.)  Should work as long as the exchanges are open so that, of course, a person left holding BTC as the result of a ripoff would not be high and dry.

I even registered a domain name the other day in case I someday decide to build a platform to facilitate this class of transactions.  Likely I'll never do it though.

Stupid question but you mean you can actually buy gold in rather better quantities or that it is difficult for people to do so?

@johnj: do you mean something like http://coinabul.com ?

@tvbcof: pm  ???


It is a petty that a lot of the most promising applications are illegal or morally objectionable (and I do not mean porn).

Some countries like China regulates transferring money very strictly. They even have policy on exchange (limit the amount of USD being exchanged per individuals/business)

I dont know what their governments can do to block bitcoin, but i'm sure as hell they can shut down any btc exchange operating in their countries.

Er, yeah.  Do they deliver the physical goods?  In that case, why doesn't he do more advertising  ;D

(also, I believe cryptoX will be doing this as well).

The silk road was around for longer than BTC, and there was quite a time of overlap before the boom.

But people who want to buy gold anonymously?  That's big money.  Not just your teenager trying to get high for the weekend.

For the system I was thinking of, I'm not expecting that it would be an exchange or anything resembling one in a structural way.  It would be more of a place which would assist in laying out plans and schedules , and provide users with an ability to review one-another's performance.

The system I am thinking of would bend over backward to avoid any sort of tracking, and would not provide any escrow-like services or deal with user's money in any form.  Possibly it could check things out in a block-explorer manner, but that's about it.  Escrow services could be arranges with third parties if they are desired by the participants.

A different (but related) class of problem then exchanging something like Krugerrands on a 1-to-1 basis would be something like this:

 - I want an old motorcycle engine that can only be found in Thailand and I want someone there to go through a sequence of steps including locating a shop, finding out prices for various kinds of work, commissioning the work, arranging shipping, etc.

 - I would be happy to pay incremental fees as the work proceeds, particularly if it were clearly layed out and agreed upon up front.  If a suitable item cannot be located, the transaction can stop, but the party in Thailand will have gotten some reimbursement for his efforts.

 - If things are proceeding well, Bitcoin would allow multiple transactions per day so the whole thing could be expedited relative to other solutions if things are going smoothly.

A framework such as I am envisioning would allow me to obtain hopefully valid feedback on the person I'm dealing with (and he on I) in addition to helping lay out and agree upon a plan of action.  Common things would probably develop templates and require not very much work at all.

The ability to transfer funds worldwide without major timing, fee or regulation issues is a killer feature. Combined with the ability to store value, Bitcoin is incredibly awesome for pretty much... everyone.

Everybody who sells software online, virtually the entire financial sector, and websites with donations, hell most of the internet longs for something like Bitcoin. Silk Road is nothing more than a little media hype that becomes meaningless if Bitcoin ever gets serious.

+1

+1 agree

I think when multiplue signature implemented, more serious business will come to Bitcoin.

Apps too. I'm still fantasizing about a p2p prediction market.  :D

Other practical applications where I believe Bitcoin has serious value in ways existing payment systems just don't work or have large fees - that just haven't yet been realized:

1.  Getting around the restrictions imposed by banks, such as for gambling transactions even where they're legal.  (e.g. PokerStars offering bitcoin poker)
2.  Remittances (families sending money home to Mexico etc.), save on the hefty fees, assuming the BTC exchange rate can become stable.
3.  Anything a bank wire is good for (due to its relative irreversibility), without the bank wire fee.  (For example, buying gold and silver, or any other scenario where someone wires good money as a show of good faith as opposed to doing check/ACH/etc.)
4.  Anything Western Union is good for, without the Western Union fee.
5.  Anything where foreign exchange is a factor (such as import/export of wholesale goods... if you're going to be trading a foreign fiat currency, BTC is no more difficult).
6.  Pornography, both legal (e.g. someone who doesn't want to share their CC# or personal details with a porn site, such as for fear of getting persistently rebilled or receiving unwanted communication), and illegal (such as in countries where all porn is strictly forbidden)
7.  Online pharmacies, for same reason as #6
8.  As a way for citizens behind oppressive firewalls to buy themselves access to personal unpublished VPN services.  (e.g. instead of trying to GPU mine, any John Doe in USA can receive bitcoins out of thin air just for running something on his router that lets someone in China forward traffic off his IP).  This would be valuable because China can automatically block all the tor nodes, but can't really block every John Doe whose IP is privately given to a small number of paying customers in China.
9.  Sort of like #8... As a way for communications equipment to negotiate and buy communications services on an automated basis.  Example, a cell phone or internet access that can roam absolutely anywhere, because a client can pay its own way anywhere without need for any sort of agreement or reconciliation with a wireless carrier.  Services such as pay-as-you-go WiFi - where anyone can provide or consume services - would be possible.  This would be the over-the-air equivalent of shoving quarters in a pay phone.  A radio-frequency device could simply broadcast offers to pay X BTC for delivering message Y to recipient Z, and any device that understood the offer could accept it.
10.  Antispam stamps.  Put a Bitcoin private key in a message header, guaranteeing that the recipient can be paid for receiving it if he so chooses, and a server can whitelist the message on that basis alone.  If the recipient doesn't redeem the private key (e.g. they don't consider it spam), the sender can eventually take it back.

There are also some more illegal applications that I believe could drive the fundamentals behind Bitcoin even if I obviously can't condone them.  For example, bitcoin enables anonymous racketeering and extortion.  The sniper guy who ran around Washington DC a decade ago demanded funds on his VISA, if he could have demanded Bitcoins he would be far less traceable.  In addition, I seem to regularly read in the news about Internet cafes being busted as being gambling operations.  Bitcoin would enable plausible deniability for such operations, because a single internet cafe could sell bitcoins (or could send people across the street to buy bitcoins) and offer internet services where people are encouraged to gamble bitcoins at some preferred gambling website, without any provable link that the website has any relationship to the internet cafe.  Obviously I don't think that these things are good for the world, but they are something I consider inevitable in that the "cryptocurrency genie" is out of the bottle, and something I still consider reasonable to factor into my sense of what my bitcoins are worth in terms of what someone will pay for them.

Yeah the only problem is that several of those uses you stated are illegal. If you're talking about all uses; practical, illegal or otherwise, then yes they are all extremely useful.

Bitcoin itself could simplify many processes, but all it needs is an extremely simple way of purchase for more usage.

Most of what casascius said would be legal (in most places).  And I think he has just touched on the tip of the iceberg.

Casascius is spot on. As for the morality... well, we are who we are. I've been thinking about a scratch-off Bitcoin Bingo game for raising money for charities. There are so many possibilities.

Is anyone else surprised no one has coded an assassination market on Tor/Bitcoin yet? http://www.reddit.com/r/HackBloc/comments/i10zt/is_anyone_else_surprised_no_one_has_coded_an/

Would you care to expand on that? Was this to do with the 2 opportunistic US politicians who said they wanted to shut down Bitcoin? What was SR's response?

I like SR, though I have never used it. What is there not to like about Pareto efficiency?

Online Bitcoin poker would be hugely killer if someone set it up right. Hundreds of thousands of people stopped playing online poker when the US government passed the Safe Ports and Harbors act that outlawed credit card payments for online poker.

Silk Road actually shut down for several days. When it came back up, new user registration was disabled.

Sportsbetting is a killer app. But not in the way it has currently been implemented. Is there a way to make sportsbets matched between users that are embedded in the blockchain and then correctly graded and paid out by the network/miners? Perhaps this is an idea for an alternate cryto currency? sportsbetcoin.

It is possible, could be implemented with distributed contracts. The tricky part is that SOMEONE has to call the bet, so it can't be 100% decentralized. We could have multiple "bookies", each voting for a multisignature transaction. Further reading here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47122.0 (I consider sports bets to be a subset of prediction markets)

The good news is that we won't need yet another alternative cryptocurrency for this. Multisignature transactions are already available on testnet, and may be available for general use soon. Once that has been shown to work, we can expand from there. If I had the skills I'd be coding this myself right now.

I see this as THE killer app for bitcoin:

http://www.mondonet.org/

It doesn't have to be mondonet specifically though.  It could be any network that must fulfill all of the following 10 properties (quoted from the mondonet website):

    DECENTRALIZED
    UNIVERSALLY ACCESSIBLE
    CENSOR-PROOF
    SURVEILLANCE-PROOF
    SECURE
    SCALABLE
    PERMANENT
    FAST
    INDEPENDENT
    EVOLVABLE

I would go as far as saying that any network that has all the properties stated above, cannot be and could not be built before the invention of a p2p cryptocurrency.