A few years back someone had a site selling Egold or something of that sort. The Feds or Secret service, one of those agencies came in and arrested him for trying to offer another currecy in the USA. This surprised me at the time because I did not know something like that was illegal. I thought about it and it made sense that the US government will not want other forms of currency and the reason is that another currency, that the USA can not control, will be a total threat to the USA.
Therefore, if I had a site selling in another currency like bitcoin, I would personally be waiting for the Feds to come crashing through my door and seizing everything. It is a matter of time before this would happen in my opinion. The USA will not play around with this.
Anyone even thinking of accepting bitcoins on a traceable site in USA is absolutely crazy.
* sigh * hence, the Newbie Forum. Bitcoin is not a currency, as defined in statute. e-gold was: their mistake. you're correct about the threat part - although i will posit that Bitcoin is much more threatening to banks and other financial mega-institutions than it is to government. of course, that's if one cares to make the distinction. many don't - and a case can be made for that. read more. buy some Bitcoin. play on the markets. have fun. |
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I'm not sure what "inaccurate observation or assumption" in my paper you are referring to. I stated that the enforced limits (like indeed transaction fee) are not optimal ones. And that I think that they should definitly not be under control of a small group of developers.
That is a central fallacy throughout your paper. The entire community accepts or rejects bitcoin changes. They vote by choosing which bitcoin version to run on the network. Open source means anyone can fork the code at any time, if the community feels developers are going off into insane-land. that is a fallacy, i agree. but for me (and others...), the central fallacy is in a section-head: 3.7 Current distribution is unfairoh. that again... i am not an 'early adopter', having begun my quest for Bitcoin in march. i begrudge nothing to those who saw, believed and risked the earliest. i will take what i earn, happily. i will not steal from those whose vision has proven to be clearer than mine. |
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Gurgaon sounds like a fascinating place. i'd imagine that somewhere between the marginalrevolution article in the OP and the wikipedia article, lies the truth. the slums sound interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/world/asia/09gated.htmli've always followed slums - they're one of the purest reflections of a city's life-essence. the greatest cooking in the world has always come from slums... of course, in india the caste system is still somewhat entrenched - especially away from the capital (n.b., not capitol) cities - so inequities of opportunity (not the giving of the unearned to those who haven't earned it, mind you) are easier to deal with, and the Kshatriyas seem to be doing as well as ever. i wonder if they brought in any of the surviving city planners from the Brasilia project to help with it? |
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So it's generating BitCoins automatically?
no. you have to go to the menu for that and click the 'generate coins' checkbox. that's assuming you still can with version 0.3.22, and assuming that's the version you downloaded. it doesn't matter though - generating coin using a CPU (which is what that checkbox uses) in the client is a waste of time. you won't ever get anything. that's been the case for months. i think you want the Mining Forum... |
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it means you've installed the client correctly.
it has downloaded the entire blockchain.
and you haven't sent or received any Bitcoin.
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I would contract the CIA (or whoever) to make the operators of the largest exchanges "disappear" and leave all bitcoin users with the impression that said operators ran off with everyone's money. Any new exchanges would have already lost all trust before they even opened.
mmmm... that's unlikely. and probably counterproductive as far as CIA is concerned. Bitcoin could be quite useful to them. it may already be. no. my thoughts on any attack against Bitcoin are that a major bank would be the most logical organizer of such a thing. the money involved would be relative pocket-change - but what they stand to lose is huge. i have to believe the banks see that, by now. |
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and importantly, all you other lurkers need to start talking to help drown out the noise from the naysayers. Hi, my name is Ben and I am a bitcoin evangelist.  hi ben. i am too, although it may not seem like it from this post. thing is, there's some very serious money out there that is threatened by Bitcoin - and while i definitely see the tremendous advantages of Bitcoin, and am somewhat convinced that it may already be too big to stop, i'm not going to stick my head in the sand either. i would dearly like to see some 'enthusiastic' moderation on this forum - and maybe some kind of blogswarm notification process so those of us who care to could go to other sites and refute the clearly organized FUD that has been popping up more and more frequently. in any case, welcome. |
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well lemme see here. 1.) i think the first thing i'd do, if i wanted to destroy Bitcoin (now who would want to do such a thing?), would be to buy a bunch of them. i would buy those Bitcoin at times calculated to drive the market up fairly quickly. i might play a little bit with creating noticeable patterns in the markets, for cover. all i'd need for that would be some money. it's a thin market - i wouldn't need that much, if i were one of the players who is spooked by the idea of Bitcoin. 2.) i would invest in massive amounts of mining hardware, and bring it into the network gradually. why? follow along... 3.) then i would avail myself of some blogging software (which i have posted about elsewhere - "online personna management" software, here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13344.0 ). i would create many new personnas here, and on other forums that have impact on Bitcoin. i would not neglect various open news forums like yahoo, etc. i would begin to snipe at Bitcoin wherever a mention of it appeared. i would create polarization. 4.) i would enlist the aid of various political and news figures to begin a campaign against Bitcoin. that's certainly a well-established infrastructure... 5.) after that - and in concert with my turning up the volume on the blogging personnas i was using to disparage Bitcoin - i would start a sell-off calculated to drive the price down massively. by then i would have enough Bitcoin, acquired slowly so as to appear as in keeping with the rapid rise of the currency. 6.) as soon as it appeared confidence in Bitcoin was permanently eroding, i would begin to pull all the hashing power off the network - "oh no!" people (and especially my blogging surrogates) would say: "it's the end! all the miners are leaving, and the network will be insecure!" 7.) at that point i would wait for a perfect moment, and execute an attack on the network to fork, or in some way harm, the blockchain - putting back all the hashing power i'd pulled off, and adding a ton more i'd had held in reserve. i think that's called strategy. and it might be what's happening now. just a thought... |
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yes. quite possible. easy, in fact.
see the documentation for TrueCrypt - and especially that part relating to 'plausible deniability'.
EDIT: although, for crossing borders, it is simpler and even more secure to email wallet.dat to yourself in encrypted form. or to have an internet wallet with enough (but no more than enough) Bitcoin in it for your trip...
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mintaka speaks the truth, there will probably be a rise on monday, however if you do buy then you should be looking to get out fairly quickly as I don't think it will be sustained for long. If your looking for a long term investment wait 2 weeks+ until the hype subsides. Also everyone on this forum has a motive, including me, so make sure you do your own research.
it might be a good idea to incorporate the hype-factor into your investment strategy. at this point, i honestly don't think the hype is going away in a couple of weeks. maybe in a couple of years... |
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Like that one I guess it was just a matter of time that price would drop, however I don't agree will all the folks claiming bitcoin's exchange rate will be 5$ in a few days  What I don't like about this price drop is that it might scare away shops that accept Bitcoin.. What can you currently do with bitcoins besides hope to sell them (for USD) to someone else for more (USD) than you paid? That's where you miss the point. I can't wait for a proper well thorough liquid Bitcoin economy. Already I can buy stuff on numerous sites. I have bought someone's EP before and loved it! I'd buy a lot more, if I was inclined to find something I like. For me, sitting in a country like South Africa, our exchange controls are strict. We were only recently (last year) allowed to withdraw from Paypal. This is why I absolutely love Bitcoin. Yes, I have a credit card, but Bitcoin is just so much more easy. In fact, I wish Bitcoin was here a lot earlier, 'cause it makes digital payments a breeze. U.S.-centric Bitcoiners would do well to gain insight from posters like NielDLR. i agree (speaking from the US, but not US-centric). Bitcoin is most useful in the world. in any ( any) given country, not so much. an effective end to the money-changers. how valuable... |
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that's a really tough question.
it's also a good reason to be a miner - i never think about that...
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Where can I get bigcoins? What's their exchange rate? Can I mine them? ;P
Am I paid 2.1 dollars every time I get one because of the negative exchange rate, fi it is relative to BTC?
nope. you have to earn them. and all this time you thought the men in porn movies didn't get paid as well as the women... |
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release of 1% causes a 110% price drop....
Check your math, a 110% drop would mean the price went negative. AIIYYYEEEE! you mean people will pay me to take their Bitcoin? bring it! |
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 It's called the ATI-Mach64 GX. It can put out a total of 9 teraflops, which translates to 5 or 6 Gh/s. They will be in stores in September. I am accepting donations for further details on where to pre-order. ME PAY U 1000 BTC 4 MORE INFO PLZ!!! It's a 10G-SW16LC-6C2ER switch line card, http://www.myrinet.com/news/SC06/Fool. oh. yeah. i used to have an ancient remote access server with a serial card that looked a lot like that. oh well. memory's going, i guess... |
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old serial multi-port card...
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where I'm from, lottery winnings are taxed 50-65%
this is why we really need to be able to sell specific coins in the client. given that i pay my taxes, and given that capital gains tax will treat these two cases quite differently: 1.) i mined a block in march, when Bitcoin was at 86 cents/BTC, and sold that block when Bitcoin was at $31; and 1.) i mined a block yesterday, when Bitcoin was at $20, and sold it today at $20. i would really REALLY like the option to provably sell under the second scenario - saving my older (and subject to higher tax) Bitcoin for another time. |
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if you look through blockexplorer, you'll see that the 17,000 BTC transaction which precipitated this correction was made up of very old (2009 & 2010), mined blocks, with no internal transactions. i'm reasonably sure this was a very early adopter. How can you tell through blockexplorer what coins were involved in an MtGox transaction? I'm sincerely asking. I guess I assumed that internally to MtGox you weren't necessarily selling the coins you sent in. go here: http://blockexplorer.com/address/155kHCZstYaosoGRxthF1zsZFVFheVFPLSthen click on the blocks, one at a time. nice detective work Jaime. so an early adopter miner was responsible for the selloff starting at 20 and taking it down to 13? the doom and gloomers got their wish. it wasn't my work. i only noticed it. "i stand on the shoulders of giants..." ~Bernard of Chartres |
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17k blocks... somebody got married and bought a house, or divorced and bought a Ferrari over a third of a million USD... maybe both!  |
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