1) Full disclosure, I am a site pro at SealsWithClubs.eu - the only bitcoin poker site - and I am heavily invested on Bitcoin working long term.
2) I tell everyone that I introduce to BTC that IMO there is a 25%+ chance of total technical fail. A list of possible ways this can go down, and of course I cannot conceive even half the reasons:
-- massive cracking of the "uncrackable" public / private key cryptography - "It's cryptography that can't be hacked!" scares the shit out of me. Possible solution: massive team of dedicated, super-smart programmers on this shit 24/7 and working for good. Need Linus Torvolds and shit.
-- massive technical fail of the blockchain - real world weed-induced 1-of-a-possible-100000 scenarios: China starts to hate BTC b/c it frees their citizens and lets them gamble and get drugs and shit. China likely controls a super-duper headshot botnet - likely more valuable than nukes at this point in human history - and they decide to take out Bitcoin. They can likely get that shit done by 3pm the next week. uber-botnet, brute force 3x the current nodes and start to corrupt the blockchain. without much technical know-how on how the blockchain works i'll just bet theoretically china could fuck up our awesome distributed DB if they tried hard enough. So could USA, and so could Isreal & a handful of other countries. N. Korea has even been getting in the game recently, and seem to be good enough to fuck up a S. Korea bank recently.
-- I hope the above ramblings at least illustrate the point that there are such numerous ways this can all go boom instantly.
I just hope those dedicated neckbeards are working for good, and working 'round the clock. I just read somewhere this was the largest distributed software something - either largest network or largest software project. I hope some bill gates types or warren buffets or Soros or someone comes in and tries to help legitimize us before they kill us - we need those nerds and beards and scientists and software engineers on that client and defending against the constant shots ppl are taking at it and developing the solutions for shit like "satoshi dice just made the blockchain 20% bigger" and other scalability issues we must face quickly. Anyone got metric for how many programmers on the sourceforge project? is it well taken care of?
Messing up the blockchain would only work for so long. All that would have to be done is the blockchain becomes 'frozen' at some point in time and then ported to a new client that plugs up the vulnerabilities. Everyone gets their coins back (or whatever coins they had at the freeze point). As for the crypto being broken, that's a whole other issue. Folks, I cannot stress this enough. The blockchain is not going to blow up. Even if the Satoshi client blew up at some point due to scalability issues or some other reason, the blockchain isn't going anywhere. There is now $100 million in that blockchain. Those who have Bitcoins have a significant vested interest in having the blockchain survive. It will survive anything short of the cryptography itself being broken. |
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It's really hard to predict what will happen in the next 4 months, but in my opinion Bitcoin is still in a bootstrapping phase and will be there for a long time. Bitcoin has 4 main uses right now (besides speculation) in this bootstrapping phase: 1. Gaming tokens. Bitcoins make for great online gaming tokens because of instant or near instant cash outs and the fact that they are borderless and greatly divisible. Poker alone could be a multi-billion dollar opportunity, but there are plenty of opportunities for other non-gambling games. http://bitcointerror.com has a really novel concept where you win Bitcoins for each in-game kill. 2. Black market/grey market sales. Like it or not Bitcoin is great for black market sales because of its anonymity (after tumbling) and the fact that there are no chargebacks. 3. International transactions. Bitcoin can be used as an intermediary medium of international exchange between countries that have capital export controls, or to avoid banks that have extremely high fees. In this regard, the Bitcoin exchanges of each fiat currency become international exchange intermediaries. 4. Long term wealth storage. Bitcoin costs nearly nothing to secure, store or transport and cannot be confiscated by governments. If one can handle the volatility, it can be used for long term wealth storage. Unfortunately, I don't think online retail sales are there yet. The reason is not because of merchant problems. I think bit-pay and mtgox can probably provide merchants with enough tools to integrate bitcoin checkouts and allow them to mitigate risk by selling the coins immediately. The problem is on the consumer end. There isn't a huge incentive for consumers to acquire Bitcoins right now. The cost (or at least perceived cost) of acquiring them is going to be greater than the cost of just whipping out a credit card. Furthermore, holding bitcoins for any significant amount of time carries risk. A consumer would have to buy the bitcoins and get some kind of discount with the retailers to make it worth their while, and then spend them all rather quickly before they had a chance to drop in value. Bitcoin is going to have to bootstrap from the rather menial niches it can worm its way into for a long time because the cost of acquiring Bitcoin and the volatility is not going away anytime soon. |
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25000BTC from someone who left wallet unencrypted last year. about 58000BTC from the linode "hack" (I think, someone may need to correct me). about 200000BTC currently from Bitcoinica (I'm classing bitcoinica's funds as stolen until they refund people). Oh, and we have shroedinger's ponzi (BTCST) over in the lending section, which has liabilities of well over 200000BTC. So I'd say at least 85000, could go as high as a million by the end of the year  I wouldn't call BTCS&T stealing. Anyone with half a brain cell knows that could be Game Over at any time. |
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I was expecting DEFCON pictures. Is that so much to ask for for someone who has 5-10% of the entire bitcoin economy in pocket?
Someone correct me if I am wrong but I don't think electronic devices (including cameras) are allowed inside. |
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Good luck-- I share your view that coming up with better ways of playing zero-sum games is not the way to make the world a better place.
The fact that this statement is coming from the 'lead developer' of Bitcoin does NOT make me feel good about the future of the Bitcoin project. Shows a complete ignorance of markets and economics. Epic epic epic fail.  The fact that Zhou thinks that such markets are a 'zero sum game' as well means that it is a good thing he is getting out. He doesn't even understand what he created. Sad. Personally I think the bitcoin economy would be useless if the only thing going on is currency exchange. A healthy bitcoin economy includes vendors and customers, everyday commerce. I am not sure how there could even be a situation where the only thing going on was currency exchange. Even in the earliest days of Bitcoin when it wasn't being used for much of anything at all, people were still speculating on its future potential value. That is legitimate speculation and that is more than just currency exchange. I myself realized the potential value of Bitcoin early on and threw some money in at $1.44, saw it rocket it up to $30 and crash back down. I still have my original coins because I think Bitcoin has even more potential in the future. But to go even further, even just straight up gambling is not a zero sum game. People gamble for a variety of reasons, but the bottom line is, they feel that on any given 'roll of the dice', risking their money at that point in time is worth it. Hence, even if Bitcoinica was straight up gambling (but I doubt that it was), it still wasn't a 'zero sum game' because the people involved thought that it was providing value to them at the particular time that they decided to use it. As for a 'healthy' economy, I would personally like to see a lot of those things, but maybe the economy won't include much of those things. Perhaps Bitcoin will turn into some digital form of gold hoarding where people just buy them up to stash away some hidden wealth for a period of time. Who knows? In any event, no aspect of the Bitcoin economy, or really any economy is a 'zero sum game' as far as I can tell. People derive value from all kinds of crazy places, and if they are happy, that has all kinds of positive secondary effects. |
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Good luck-- I share your view that coming up with better ways of playing zero-sum games is not the way to make the world a better place.
The fact that this statement is coming from the 'lead developer' of Bitcoin does NOT make me feel good about the future of the Bitcoin project. Shows a complete ignorance of markets and economics. Epic epic epic fail. The fact that Zhou thinks that such markets are a 'zero sum game' as well means that it is a good thing he is getting out. He doesn't even understand what he created. Sad. |
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can some or all of the payment of wages be made using bitcoins if the employee requests?
Of course!!! We actually pay one of our freelance programmers in Bitcoin, and it was his idea! If you think about it, besides for the fluctuations, being paid in Bitcoin is the only way you know your gonna get ALL your money without the gov't and your employer snipping parts away News at 11: "A currency exchage operator has been shut down pending a federal investigation to determine whether the company was using an underground currency called Bitcoin to enable their employees to evade taxes..." |
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First indicator that someone has no idea what they are talking about: they think difficulty drives price.
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So the strategy here is to sell low and buy high. Sounds like a winning plan!
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Bitcoin Shrinking - The Long View
This is not a thread about the speculation of bitcoin's future, these are the facts. Contradiction alert. |
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A bit late to the table, aren't they?
Heh, I should of looked further down the board. My apologies. Wasn't talking about your post, was talking about Wikileaks taking so long to accept Bitcoin.  |
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A bit late to the table, aren't they?
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...can't pay in BTC for the registration fee...?
W
We need to develop the tools so Event Brite can accept BTC.  |
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There is a Bitcoin hackathon going on this Saturday June 18th in San Diego, California. A co-founder of DivX Jordan Greenhall will be there. http://bitcoinhackathon.eventbrite.com/Last bump! Event is tomorrow! Use this discount code for half off: AIC50 |
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Don't worry people, the official Bitcoin client will be obsolete soon enough, just like with BitTorrent. Gavin and Garzik are figure heads. If they came out with an official client that enabled government regulation, everyone would just switch to a 3rd party client that didn't have it. So party on!
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I didn't predict Bitcoin, but I did predict an Internet based monetary revolution: http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=433I just thought it would have been gold backed digital currencies like e-gold. Bitcoin or other decentralized cryptocurrencies beat those by far though. It looks like the monetary revolution is under way! |
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bitcoin is not a company that can be put out of business
Yes, but the exchanges, which are an integral part of the Bitcoin economy can be. |
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Gavin has to be a conforming, tax-paying adult for the sake of the project. Leave him be.
Gavin is a figurehead at this point. However, if he can placate the terrorcrats for awhile to allow the network to strengthen, then that's good. |
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