This is the most sensible thing I've heard anyone in a position of authority say about Bitcoin yet. I applaud Mr. Andresen for having the guts to say it. Someday, Bitcoin will be a magnificent tool to financially free the people of the world. However, someday isn't today. We can't allow our greed and personal desire for success to overpower logic and reason. The more people we invite to use Bitcoin today that are disappointed with the experience (for whatever reason) the fewer the number of users we will have tomorrow. Slow and steady wins the race. I'm sorry I ever believed you were just a puppet of the business community. That's obviously not true because they have to hate this viewpoint.
Sensible , but too far possibly? What is wrong with suggesting non technical people to make a small investment with mutisig and insured services like circle and coinbase where they take on the security responsibilities? He didn't say don't use Bitcoin. The idea that Bitcoin is for people willing to take the risk and have enough knowledge to be sucessful needs to be presented. All the businessmen want is expansive growth because profit hides there. Wise businessmen will realize that profit will be short lived. Actually, he did tell people not to use it unless they are technically proficient according to the article: “It actually is dangerous and people should be aware it’s like the early internet,” he tells the Financial Times. “If you lived through time, you remember lots of press articles came out saying don’t give internet companies your credit card details. But the internet grew past that. Bitcoin will be the same way. Over time, I will stop saying to people, ‘Don’t use it unless you’re technically proficient enough to keep your computer secure’.”
I applaud him for his intentions and honesty but I would suggest this is going too far as I would be comfortable recommending my luddite mother invest a couple thousand on the side and store it in the insured multisig vault with coinbase. People should diversify their investments and that includes partially investing into Bitcoin. P.S.... perhaps the author was quote mining him and left off the part where he recommended non-technical people to use regulated and insured mutisig solutions? You just clarified what I said. Currently, Bitcoin is not for the faint of heart investor playing with tomorrow's morgage payment. It's not for world travelers that need to ensure they have enough money to safely travel. It's not for going to the grocery store with three kids in tow. It's an experiment that hopefully will lead to all of the above someday. When you get screwed by a company they will likely lose your business forever and you will give a negative report on that company to everyone that asks about them. Why should anyone want Bitcoin to suffer the same fate? Tell them the truth now and they will trust you tomorrow. |
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What gives Bitcoin its value? Its utility, transaction cost and independence from the current establishment.
Supply and demand? No, that controls price.
Surely, as more merchants accept Bitcoin, more bitcoin gets sold for $$ driving the price down. The lower the price, the more people will panic and sell their BTC or trade it for goods, thus reinforcing the cycle. If that were true all economies would fail. In order for people to spend Bitcoin at merchants they need to come from somewhere. People purchase btc with fiat, spend them at merchants, the merchant exchanges for fiat. The only variable skewing this cycle are miners creating new coins. Current mining revenue is about 1/60 of current USD transaction volume.
I am getting to the point now where I am so tempted to sell my own BTC. I don't normally waver on things like this, I believed Bitcoin had a bright future, but my belief is shaken now. It's an investment not a religion. If you don't have enough extra money for a risky investment then you should definitely sell.
I can't see anything in the near future that will increase the demand side of the equation....
I can't see the future at all. If you learn how to start doing that please let me know. There's a few stocks I have had my eye on...
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This is the most sensible thing I've heard anyone in a position of authority say about Bitcoin yet. I applaud Mr. Andresen for having the guts to say it. Someday, Bitcoin will be a magnificent tool to financially free the people of the world. However, someday isn't today. We can't allow our greed and personal desire for success to overpower logic and reason. The more people we invite to use Bitcoin today that are disappointed with the experience (for whatever reason) the fewer the number of users we will have tomorrow. Slow and steady wins the race. I'm sorry I ever believed you were just a puppet of the business community. That's obviously not true because they have to hate this viewpoint.
Sensible , but too far possibly? What is wrong with suggesting non technical people to make a small investment with mutisig and insured services like circle and coinbase where they take on the security responsibilities? He didn't say don't use Bitcoin. The idea that Bitcoin is for people willing to take the risk and have enough knowledge to be sucessful needs to be presented. All the businessmen want is expansive growth because profit hides there. Wise businessmen will realize that profit will be short lived. |
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This is the most sensible thing I've heard anyone in a position of authority say about Bitcoin yet. I applaud Mr. Andresen for having the guts to say it. Someday, Bitcoin will be a magnificent tool to financially free the people of the world. However, someday isn't today. We can't allow our greed and personal desire for success to overpower logic and reason. The more people we invite to use Bitcoin today that are disappointed with the experience (for whatever reason) the fewer the number of users we will have tomorrow. Slow and steady wins the race. I'm sorry I ever believed you were just a puppet of the business community. That's obviously not true because they have to hate this viewpoint.
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Maybe there needs to be a Bitcoin Mining Foundation with free membership and some perks for pool owners so you at least have the ability to communicate with them before a major change.
You must be trolling. No, just making the point that there is no organization or consensus that unifies the miners like the org that unifies the businessmen. They can't even contact all of them anymore. |
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Centralisation in every aspect is what i read here. Well done folks. That was quite fast.
No, you truly don't understand. It's becoming more decentralized. The more time that passes the greater the number of unknown and unavailable miners. Good for decentralization - bad for communication. Without communication there can be no consensus. Without consensus there can be no fork. |
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Those are pretty big assumptions. You could also say that if law enforcement found Bitstamps server in the trunk of your car they could prosecute you for theft. Chances are, if Bitstamp was really hacked, the hacker would not have been stupid enough to use an IP from his living room computer or put Bitstamp's server in the trunk of his car.
You are right, they would probably use some kind of IP masking service (like, tor, VPN or hack their way into a SOCKS5 proxy, although the latter may allow you to be tracked to your "real" identity. The hacker would obviously need to somehow have the private keys of bitstamp's hot wallet in their possession in order to sign and broadcast the transactions that sent their bitcoin to their bitcoin address. If those private keys are still somehow in the hackers possession then they would be implemented in the theft Yes, believing that a hacker would not at least attempt to hide his identity would be similar to a bank robber not wearing a mask. Even the dumbest bank robber wouldn't do that. |
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The fork will not happen without miners' explicitly signaling consensus by updating the version number in the blocks they create. But a miner can rollback to running a node that does not implement the hard-fork in just seconds, should there be any doubt that the hard fork might not succeed. So just like in March 2013 when v0.8 blocks were ahead by a wide margin that didn't mean that side would ultimately continue as the longest chain. Firstly it assumes that miners are driven to much by economics and to little by politics than is probably true. I'm sure that most of the miners who count these days have every likelihoods of looking out days or weeks into the future and taking a monetary hit for a future enduring reward. If that were true, p2Pool would be among the top 3. You are making the case that miners do control the outcome. If a large share of miners decide not to implement the change then it doesn't happen. If they upgrade and fork anyway (which I know wouldn't happen without consensus) then they would need to "rollback" when they realize the hard fork did not succeed. Hard forks were a different story when you could just make sure Tycho, Slush, eleuthria, Graet, LukeJr and Inaba were on board. It's more difficult today and will become increasingly difficult in the future. Maybe there needs to be a Bitcoin Mining Foundation with free membership and some perks for pool owners so you at least have the ability to communicate with them before a major change. As the mining distribution stands right now, I see about 37% of the hash rate that you may not even be able to contact or easily contact. |
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i hope we get follow up info on how many take them up on the offer...
could be a smart ploy to get staff to spend more wages in store lol like bar tenders who get one free drink after work ;p
My guess? None. The price is too volatile right now for this. This is when to buy when the crowd is scared. I wouldn't say that is true when you are dealing with people's paychecks. If you are earning a living then you want the money you receive from your work to have a stable value. It might be a good idea to have a certain portion of your paycheck be bitcoin but not the entire amount Even taking a small amount of their paycheck in btc would be great. They get the option to try out Bitcoin without opening an account anywhere and learn first hand how easy it is to use. I'm convinced that anyone using btc for an online payment, even once, will see how easy it is and be inclined to keep using it. The downside I've always seen is getting the btc in the first place. These people don't have that problem. I guess that is fair. However I really don't think it is that difficult to open an account at someplace like coinbase and buy bitcoin in regular amounts based on how much free cash you have every week (or however often you get paid) No, it's not that difficult but it takes some effort. Having it given to you every two weeks by your employer takes zero effort. |
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We've already handled a fork years ago... when changing database cores.
It's no big deal.
Yeah, it's no big deal. Until they send Pieter Wuille to make a thread telling us all what went wrong. lol |
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Sorry I'm late to the party.
I have a few facts I would like to correct. Make what you will of it.
12. Special thanks to the words of encouragement from the people in this thread.
Thanks for showing up and clearing up the issue with the truth. I would have been disappointed if you didn't show. You're efforts over the years deserve our support. Good luck with your fight. |
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Bitcoin theft is difficult to prosecute. Even if law enforcement tried to buy the coins from you at a localbitcoins deal they couldn't prove you were the thief even if they cared enough to try. Being in possession of the stolen coins does not prove you hacked into Bitstamp. There isn't even any proof that Bitstamp was ever hacked. You could claim they owed you the money and finally sent it to you and it's your word against theirs. You could claim whoever stole the money must have accidentally sent some of it to your address and you didn't know it was stolen. There is simply no way to prove the address holder is the thief after one transfer of the coins. At this point the coins have been transferred. Hope of finding the thief with proof positive is gone forever using just the coins address. They don't even need to be mixed to be usable. I've done lots of fast trades using LBC and no one has ever paused for a minute to look up the source of the coins or even at the description of the address on blockchain.info.
You selling the stolen coins may not be enough to prosecute someone for hacking Bitstamp however it may be enough for probable cause to get warrants to look into you further by law enforcement. I assume that Bitstamp has some kind of logs of the hack, including the IP address of the computer(s) that were used to connect to their hot wallet. If a connection could be made between the computer(s) that were used to hack Bitstamp and you then it could be proven that you hacked them. This is especially true if law enforcement were able to find Bitstamp's private keys to their hot wallet or some other code to transfer their bitcoin to the address all the stolen coins were sent to Those are pretty big assumptions. You could also say that if law enforcement found Bitstamps server in the trunk of your car they could prosecute you for theft. Chances are, if Bitstamp was really hacked, the hacker would not have been stupid enough to use an IP from his living room computer or put Bitstamp's server in the trunk of his car. |
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Control of Bitcoin rests in the hands of miners when you're talking about a chain fork.
And miners are essentially paid employees/contractors. The Economic Majority is who the miners work for: http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majorityNow what isn't being appreciated is exactly how risky it is to miners to adopt changes that have the potential to put them mining on the wrong side of a fork. Let's say you run an exchange (e.g., BitStamp), hosted (shared) E-Wallet (e.g., Coinapult), or merchant processor (e.g., BitPay). If you start accepting bitcoins from miners (which become spendable after 100 confirmations) then you are taking on the entire risk of loss if the proposed fork fails to maintain the lead. So maybe to protect against that risk you reject any deposits or purchases that include coins that are tainted from post-fork coinbases. That immediately kills fungibility. The miners won't want to take on the full risk themselves and begin to dump their newly mined post-fork coins at a discount. Pretty soon the unchanged side of the blockchain fork gains hashing power and begins to snowball. The writing is then on the wall. Maybe 24 or 48 hours later, the proposed fork that initially had "wide support" is no longer the longest chain. Now when that happens you have havoc wreaked because certainly this was an outcome that some fraudsters were hoping for and the two chains look nothing alike -- with many, many coins spent differently between the two sides of the fork. I'm not saying I wouldn't like to see a bigger blocksize. I'm just pointing out that a hard fork will require a huge collective leap of faith -- and even this sole promise of dissent might be sufficient to torpedo that forking effort. I was thinking more about the opposite direction. For the sake of argument let's say MP owns all of the unknown hash rate and 35% of the known. He has no intention of upgrading and there ends up being two legitimate bitcoin chains. What do you suppose the outcome of that would be? A lot of money lost I'm sure. Just as Slush and eleuthria lost money during the .7 to .8 upgrade someone else would too. But that was fixed quickly by the dev team in a rather frenzied session of downgrading and damage control. What would happen if half of the current mining power decided not to cooperate? |
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i hope we get follow up info on how many take them up on the offer...
could be a smart ploy to get staff to spend more wages in store lol like bar tenders who get one free drink after work ;p
My guess? None. The price is too volatile right now for this. This is when to buy when the crowd is scared. I wouldn't say that is true when you are dealing with people's paychecks. If you are earning a living then you want the money you receive from your work to have a stable value. It might be a good idea to have a certain portion of your paycheck be bitcoin but not the entire amount Even taking a small amount of their paycheck in btc would be great. They get the option to try out Bitcoin without opening an account anywhere and learn first hand how easy it is to use. I'm convinced that anyone using btc for an online payment, even once, will see how easy it is and be inclined to keep using it. The downside I've always seen is getting the btc in the first place. These people don't have that problem. |
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Interesting idea. I never would have guessed that Satoshi was a swallower with a sweet little ass.
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Gonna come down to double digits. Buy for 80$ later in the year. Maybe even 50$.
Can you motivate that statement with facts? You cannot predict something, based on what you have been seeing on the slowest months of the year. People tend not to make huge investment decisions during Dec/Jan -- Holiday seasons.  You're right Dec-Mar people usually spend all of their disposable income paying off crappy little plastic gifts they gave people they don't even really like on Dec 25. I gave a friend a kindle fire for Christmas and it took her exactly two days to sit on it and break it in half. I haven't even paid the credit card bill I used to buy it yet. FML |
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New wealthy elite?  ahahaha Talk when/if Bitcoin is ever at 10.000k and i am still holding 200coin then i have a few bob but far from a wealthy elite lol Wealthy elite own billions we are mere middle class wanna b's if you only have 200 you will not likely be "elite" in this world 200k though you would be sitting pretty  That depends entirely on how long you plan on living. If you were cryogenically frozen with a paper wallet and are revived 150 years from now you could be holding a large percentage of the one world currency. |
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People value security above any political ideology ...
Shall I insert the obligatory Ben Franklin quote here, or would that be gratuitous? I think I know the one you're talking about, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Don't waste it on him. He wouldn't understand it anyway. Just do what I did and put him on ignore. |
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Roger and I have not seen eye to eye on every issue. We've sent angry PMs to each other over a personal difference of opinion. I still have the PMs. I'm not, however, going to disregard his contribution because we don't always agree. Too many people in this community are willing to throw a brother away when they're down. It just ain't right.
He is some guy who bought Bitcoin and is trying to make a profit via the incentive system that is set up. He is not a "brother" and nobody agrees to join any "community" when they use Bitcoin. We are not "brothers" and Ver is not "down." He gave up his citizenship and now he can't attend a Bitcoin conference and spout misinformation to promote his fantasy agenda. Who cares? It is a positive for Bitcoin to get this nut job off the agenda of serious Bitcoin conferences. Wow, you really are a horrible human being. With supporters like you who needs enemies. Bitcoin isn't the community I'm talking about you fool. The users of this forum are and unfortunately you're a part of it. Regardless of their agenda his support helped this group of people advance Bitcoin. He is down. The tax authority of a ruthless country is chasing him around the world to steal his money because they need money to impose their will with force on the entire world. I've never said this about anyone here before, even the trolls, but listening to your pompous ramblings makes me sick to my stomach. Why don't you go fall off the edge of the earth. You do still think it's flat, right? |
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Bitcoin theft is difficult to prosecute. Even if law enforcement tried to buy the coins from you at a localbitcoins deal they couldn't prove you were the thief even if they cared enough to try. Being in possession of the stolen coins does not prove you hacked into Bitstamp. There isn't even any proof that Bitstamp was ever hacked. You could claim they owed you the money and finally sent it to you and it's your word against theirs. You could claim whoever stole the money must have accidentally sent some of it to your address and you didn't know it was stolen. There is simply no way to prove the address holder is the thief after one transfer of the coins. At this point the coins have been transferred. Hope of finding the thief with proof positive is gone forever using just the coins address. They don't even need to be mixed to be usable. I've done lots of fast trades using LBC and no one has ever paused for a minute to look up the source of the coins or even at the description of the address on blockchain.info.
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