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Wow. Neither Dr. Posen nor his interviewer seem to really understand bitcoin. They will soon enough.
It was sort of like listening to two four year olds talking about scary monsters.
The part about Dr. Posen's "Bitcoin Police" was priceless. LOL.
This may be the best example to date that some mainstream economists are no longer laughing, but are beginning to identify bitcoin as a threat. The problem is that economists like Dr. Posen are the ones advising governments and forming policy.
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Interestingly, at the end of the discussion Assange makes an early reference the concept of bitcoin-based 'subcurrencies'.
Some believe this will become the predominant model for future crypto-currency innovation. Much as Google, Ebay and Paypal quickly filled their respective niches in a new landscape, bitcoin is rapidly becoming entrenched as a defacto standard. The eventual fate of the current 'alt coins' is less than certain. Instead, future subcurrencies may appear to fill specific needs, fully or partially backed by bitcoins, much as the US dollar was once backed by gold.
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"MintChip" was a non-starter almost from day one. Soon after the initial announcement there was someone who claimed to be a developer/insider who swore the whole system was not anonymous at all, and had backdoor/tracking access (not too surprising, being a government project).
Nobody will use it, even in the unlikely event it's ever launched.
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and also he does not mention that this 3-7% exisits only on low vlume like 10 btc.
That is why I was upset that he did not mention this point which is obvious from bitcoin-analytics.com which screenshot he used.
But as I can understand that this misunderstanding is widespread that was the point of the arbitrage table which depends on different volumes 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000
100% true. Anything aside from MtGox has very shallow depth (at least up until now), so it can be very misleading. |
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Bitcoins absolutely can be confiscated by a government the same way that Cyprus confiscated Euros.
The Euros were in the bank and Cyprus forced the bank to hand over the Euros which it controlled.
If you have Bitcoins in a "bank" (like MtGox or any service which actually holds the private keys themselves), then the government can force the "bank" to hand over the Bitcoins that are rightly owned by depositors.
Saying Bitcoins can't be confiscated is the equivalent of saying that USD/Euro/etc can't be confiscated when it is buried in a jar in a location that only you know about.
Exactly. Very important distinction. Any bitcoins held in an online account with Mt. Gox, Coinbase, Tradehill, etc. are never more than a court order away from confiscation (or being frozen). No different than a bank account, paypal balance, etc. - A much different scenario than having private keys properly secured offline. |
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The overall take-away is certainly quite positive (for Seeking Alpha): "In my humble opinion, bitcoin is no bubble but a novel and a genuine asset class, the valuation of which is not yet clear. Ignoring this asset class will be very expensive as bitcoin and other peer-to-peer-ledger-accounting currencies backed by maths and computing are here to stay." The ongoing arbitrage opportunities with bitcoin are significant compared to other markets. For example: the relatively constant 4-7% differential between MtGox and BTC-e USD/BTC rates would be unheard of in other markets. He doesn't mention the part about having to wire money to anonymous russian account holders, however.  |
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"Virtually Every Market Is Trading At Very Artificial Levels"
-Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian, 4/17/13
When a leading private bond holder (~2 trillion) makes that assessment, it would be negligent to not evaluate every other currency/store of wealth option including bitcoin.
The article seems to be more a commentary on the positive aspects of community-based currencies/commerce than any specific criticisms. This is a positive change from 6 mos. ago where virtually every bitcoin article focused on or at least mentioned silk road, money laundering, etc.
Recent estimates put silk road traffic at far below 1% of bitcoin transaction volume (probably less than the % of cash used in illicit trade?), so the tired, innaccurate arguments of 'bitcoin = bad people buying bad stuff' no longer apply any more than they do for cash.
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Not that it matters, but it seems that bounty has been claimed three days after wallet was mailed out, and five days before it arrived into my mailbox...  OI! Matters quite a bit. I'm trying to figure out WTF might have happened. I messaged you privately with details. As for the bounty even though it's no longer on the wallet I'd still pay up of course. Good luck! When you do find out how the keys were compromised please let us know so similar risks can be avoided. |
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The heat recycling argument is weak, imho. As long as mining is profitable, miners can perfectly not bother using or recycling heat. That's what many industries do. They often don't give a crap about their waste products, as long as their main activity generates money. That's one of the main reason why pollution exists, imho.
... if you're mining indoors in a cool climate you're already recycling 100% of the heat generated. Without even trying. Or you could heat your hot tub and have a pretty good crack at a Darwin Award - depending on the implementation, of course. |
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Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
The first half of this article reads completely differently than the second half.
Up until "the Cyprus-Sarajevo spark is catching fire." comment that ends the first webpage, and seems like a great closing statement, the article is very positive and supportive of Bitcoin.
When clicking the link to read the full article the piece does a 180 degree turn and turns sour.
Also, the 2 halves of the article seem to be written in different styles as if written by different authors!
Anyone agree?
Yeah. Something just doesn't seem quite right. The peculiar, stilted style reads more like an 10th grade school assignment (C-). The writer works a little too hard to make weak, unsupported points sound profound, and they just comes across as ignorance with a veneer of awkward self-importance instead. Speaking of weak, unsupported points... Did anyone else read the super-scary-dangers-to-the-financial-world "white paper" on his bitmint.com site? Here's a highlight so you won't have to: "In recent years it became clear that Swiss banks and other financial havens for unlaundered money are no longer effective – owing to an aggressive US treasury campaign. Hundreds of billions of dollars were consequently withdrawn from these institutions. Reportedly, big chunks of this wealth have not surfaced anywhere. Some experts believe that the financial black hole where these funds are hidden is dark crypto money." i.e: Somewhere there is a super-duper-secret "dark crypto money" system capitalized to 100's of billions of dollars.  Litecoin? namecoin? LOL The writer clearly hasn't got the slightest idea, conceptual or factual, of what he's going on about. |
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Good evening crypto-currency evildoers...
lol. Pretty good chance that would slip past the editors too (if there are any) at "American Banker". The "bitmint" site actually looked like a spoof at first glance, but sadly it appears to be a delusional 'business idea'. But remember: " Bitmint is Bitcoin done right" ... or maybe " done real good"? |
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..I'm surprised BBC didn't expose how bitcoin could also be facilitating the anonymous, illicit trade in 100W light bulbs, which are now banned in some places, including Canada! |
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Next up: "How Five Real Photographers Think About Digital Photography's Future"
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Dr. Krugman explaining the merits of gold over bitcoins. So it's come to this. Priceless.
Interestingly, gold is down almost 10% against bitcoin so far today (4/15/13). Bitcoin has been a great hedge against pretty much everything so far this year.
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More (ridiculous) press coverage about bitcoin mining power consumption...
The thermal output of a 1kw bitcoin mining setup is exactly equal to the thermal output of a 1kw electric heater
In other words: In a climate/season where mining heat output can contribute to heat your flat, house, etc. and your normal heating is electric, your net mining power cost should be basically zero. Ever notice that in northern climates large office towers etc often leave the lights on 24/7, and office PCs are rarely turned off? Well, it's because it just doesn't matter much from either a power usage or conservation standpoint. In fact, these factors are always taken into account when hvac systems are designed.
In any event, the electricity consumed by the fraction of banking infrastructure soon to be displaced by bitcoin is probably orders of magnitude higher than mining operations ever will be.
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Basic thermodynamic facts seem to get lost in these (often ridiculous) arguments about bitcoin mining power consumption:
The thermal output of a 1kw bitcoin mining setup is exactly equal to the thermal output of a 1kw electric heater
In other words: In a climate/season where mining heat output can contribute to heat your flat, house, etc. and your normal heating is electric, your net mining power cost should be basically zero.
In any event, the electricity consumed by the fraction of banking infrastructure soon to be displaced by bitcoin is probably orders of magnitude higher than mining operations ever will be.
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The best part is where Nick Colas replies that getting paid in bitcoins would actually have been a pretty good deal so far.
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Hey - wait a minute - I was already working on a project to own 1% of bitcoin... these guys stole my idea!
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