Please do be gentle as I'm a total noob with regards to Bitcoin and indeed the inner workings of currency itself. Over the last twelve months, I've heard numerous figures bill decentralized currency as one of the components that would form a better social environment on an international scale. Max Keiser in particular seems to be particularly supportive of the notion, yet never fully elaborates as to why cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin would be favorable to the way things are now. What I'm asking is, how would the use of decentralized currencies be preferable to the current system of banking? How would it's mass use make my life better than it is now? Why should we as a people throw our support behind this cause? Thanks in advance for your answers and helping to educate me on this topic.  I'll be gentle since it's your first time. I'll even give you a kiss first.  You asked a key question with, "how would the use of decentralized currencies be preferable to the current system". Decentralized in this case means controlled by the people and not one overseer. That's not really even difficult to understand when you realize that you are being controlled using your money. You can't tell the government not to do something because by the time you vote for the change the deed is done. What if the government had to ask you for money to do something before they could do it because they aren't in control of the money? Greedy businessmen determine the direction of the economy. That power would shift to you unless you voluntarily release that power by releasing your private keys. Sometimes individual governments screw up so bad that they screw the whole country and with it the people of that country. I bet the people of Greece wish they had all of their money in bitcoins a few years ago. Examples like that exist all over the world. What would it feel like to live in a world where the people really controlled the government? Take away their money and you'll find out. Would life really be better? I can't answer that without a crystal ball. I can say, from watching current events for the last few decades, that I believe it can't be worse than what we have now. |
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You're all making Bitcoin sound like an electronic penis, up and down, up and down, up and down. We need bitviagra so it can stay up forever.
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I don't get that.
The first sentence in the Bitcoin white paper. "Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." Pretty clear to me. Straw man This method has been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly in arguments about highly charged emotional issues where a fiery, entertaining "battle" and the defeat of an "enemy" may be more valued than critical thinking or understanding both sides of the issue. |
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I learned fiat currency is suck & privacy is very important But Bitcoin is less private than cash in your hand. If I pay someone in person with a stack of 100s that transaction isn't broadcast all over the world for anyone to analyze. If I go to localbitcoins and trade in person I'm trading with everyone on the planet. Governments should love it's money tracking potential. I'm surprised the U.S. government isn't sponsoring a Bitcoin float in the Thanksgiving day parade. |
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All the while they are holding their clients money hostage. How would you feel if you had rent to pay and your bank told you they had to fix their software before you could withdraw your money? I bet you'd be looking for another bank pretty damn quick. It's funny how people tolerate excuses in Bitcoinland that would never be tolerated in the real world. I guess people don't really see Bitcoin as money.
Bitstamp is not a bank. If their customers didn't use it like a bank they wouldn't have had all those coins in their hot wallet and it would have been a much smaller loss. it doesnt matter one bit ,if they cant secure a hot wallet properly they should not be in the business of holding hundreds of millions of dollars of btc for their community,the excuse/result would be the exact same if the cold wallet got "hacked" too and everything was gone ......... this "hacked" bullshit get thrown around way too much and too easily with no more or less no reprecussions to whoever was in charge and either did it or let it happen ........ That's the kind of reaction I would expect to see in the RL if an entity was holding my money hostage but for some reason in Bitcoinland it's "all good". I don't get that. We sit and brainstorm constantly about furthering mass adoption and can't understand why it's not happening. Ummm, I think I understand why. lol |
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All the while they are holding their clients money hostage. How would you feel if you had rent to pay and your bank told you they had to fix their software before you could withdraw your money? I bet you'd be looking for another bank pretty damn quick. It's funny how people tolerate excuses in Bitcoinland that would never be tolerated in the real world. I guess people don't really see Bitcoin as money.
Bitstamp is not a bank. If their customers didn't use it like a bank they wouldn't have had all those coins in their hot wallet and it would have been a much smaller loss. I know it's not a bank but the concept is the same. Call it an investment brokerage if that makes you happy. If the brokerage ever held my money without allowing me access to it and did not get my permission beforehand they would never see another deposit from me. |
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bistamp eta long way off
still no sign of them opening up
if I remember well, they have talked about reopening on 12 January ... or I remember wrong? no one have info about reopening date? just look here: https://twitter.com/BitstampThey said 24-48 h. But after testing the system they started from anew. All the while they are holding their clients money hostage. How would you feel if you had rent to pay and your bank told you they had to fix their software before you could withdraw your money? I bet you'd be looking for another bank pretty damn quick. It's funny how people tolerate excuses in Bitcoinland that would never be tolerated in the real world. I guess people don't really see Bitcoin as money. |
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That's what I tell homeless that try to bum from me in San Francisco (there's a lot of them), sorry I don't carry cash - only bitcoins.
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Once upon a time there was a guy named Bob.
-snip-
The End.
Thanks, it was a good read, and I hate Bob! You make some cool effort to keep us away from alt-coin scams. I just have one complaint though: I was 30 yrs old when I started reading that; and when finished, I was 36. I've watched Bitcoin from the beginning and can tell you Bobs no different or bad then all of the early "soldiers" of Bitcoin. They were all here just to pump the coin, hide the truth and make big cash fast. Replace Bob with Erik Voorhees, James McCarthy or any of the early Bitcointalk preachers and you end up with the same thing. The coins aren't bad, the devs are doing their jobs but the preachers and pumpers are only here to line their pockets. Most people are only using Bitcoin to line their pockets. They sure as hell aren't here because they give a shit about the ideals of Bitcoin. It is a little like reading the forum version of "War and Peace". |
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I'm surprised Bitcoin has as many devs as it does.
I'm not. In addition to the two developers who are paid by the Bitcoin Foundation and the many volunteers, aren't there others who are paid by BitPay and other companies that have an interest in seeing Bitcoin succeed? How many client downloads are we up to now, 5-10 million? VLC media player has well over a billion downloads. For just a movie player that's pretty impressive because there are dozens of different movie players. Bitcoin is still just a newborn infant.
They don't compare, at this point Bitcoin is still in its infancy. While it doesn't currently have mass adoption like VLC media player, it does attract people who are far more able and willing to contribute code (to Bitcoin Core or to other related projects) than your average person who simply wants to watch a movie would be. I wouldn't exactly call VLC "just" a movie player either. It may be the best media player I've ever used and it's definitely the best cross-platform media player I've ever used, working almost identically on Windows, Mac and Linux. It's one of the first things I install on any computer I own even if I don't plan to use that computer primarily for movies or music. I guess I should have said as young as bitcoin is development is funded. It has paid devs that should be killing themselves improving it. I said Bitcoin was still an infant but in another six years I expect it to be as least where vlc was at in the early 2000s with a couple hundred volunteers, 7-8 thousand commits and a half billion downloads. If it's not something is wrong with the idea. I chose vlc for comparison because, like Bitcoin, it's a great project whose time has come. |
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I'm surprised Bitcoin has as many devs as it does. How many client downloads are we up to now, 5-10 million? VLC media player has well over a billion downloads. For just a movie player that's pretty impressive because there are dozens of different movie players. Bitcoin is still just a newborn infant.
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There's a few things in life that you shouldn't do because it usually ends badly. Don't let a stranger drive your car, watch your house when you're out of town or hold your bitcoins. The words bitcoin and bank don't go together.
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You can't even pay for it with cryptocurrency. lol
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I learned that reality, facts and proof have little to do with personal beliefs. Actually, christianity taught me that. Bitcoin just reinforced it.
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Stop comparing it to MtGox. That just shows, that you guys have no idea, what you are talking about.
I am not 100% sure, but there is no evidence that would suggest, that customers will have to pay for that incident.
In business the customers always pay eventually. When I was operating my business and my electric rate went up or delivery costs went up my prices went up. That's the nature of business and why a McDonalds hamburger isn't still 15 cents. In your case, it was your future customers that ended up needing to pay higher prices. They were also notified of such changes ahead of time. In the case of stamp it will be their existing customers that will pay the piper Ok, so? Someone has to pay and in business it's always the customer. yes, the customers will pay the price for trusting the Bitstamp's platform. I am very curious to see if they will really open tomorrow IF not, a big fiasco will begin. It will be MtGox 2 or reloaded(as you prefer) If they do open it will be to the worst bank run in the history of Bitcoin.  Hold on, elections are coming to Greece in a couple of weeks. What do elections in Greece have to do with the bitstamp hack? He mentioned about the worst bank run in the history. I believe the worst bank run is coming in Greece after electing SYRIZA party. Explain more? I said the history of Bitcoin but I understood what you meant. |
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Miners CAN NOT switch if GHash decides to act maliciously. Since GHash is mostly cloud mining nowadays, the hashrate is actually owned by GHash and then resold to miners.
and GHash is 10% of the total nowadays. Good job missing the point. GHash had 51% yes? Ghash is mostly cloud mining yes? It has already happened in the past, there's absolutely nothing to stop it from happening again in the future. PoW is centralized and insecure, with the additional drawback of causing Bitcoin value loss and energy+hardware waste. But aren't the people of the world supposed to hold hands and sing "end oppression using Bitcoin"? Bitcoin self corrects because we all love each other and won't allow one evil power to take over. Even if someone gets all the control they won't do anything because they will not profit then, right? lol  Let's praise Bitcoin and save the world |
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Can one of you geniuses tell me why this isn't effecting the market at all. Why would it? The total number of bitcoins hasn't increased significantly, so their price would not fall due to inflation. The customers of Bitstamp cannot dump their holdings of bitcoins in a panic, because their accounts are frozen. The hacker cannot cash in in a hurry, because he will be tracked and will crash the market, losing the value of most of what he has stolen. Yes, the hacker will eventually have to cash in, which would put a downward pressure on the price. (It would also probably cause wild altcoin fluctuations relative to the price of bitcoins.) However, Bitstamp also has to recover the missing coins from their own funds, in order to reimburse their customers, which would put an upward pressure on the price. All in all, the two would mostly cancel each other in the long run (and would it be irony of Bitstamp ends up buying back the stolen coins from the thief, without realizing it), so the price fluctuations would be caused mostly by speculators and not by the theft. The hacker will probably sell large amounts of stolen coins via Localbitcoins at a discount, but this will not impact the exchange-quoted price directly and immediately. Plus, it's much riskier for him, so it probably won't happen any time soon. That's what I'm talking about. I would think speculators could use this as an opportunity. |
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Why would the government do this other than to mess with him? Is it because of his connection to Bitcoin or because he renounced his citizenship? If you renounce your citizenship you can't go to the U.S. anymore?
It's because he clearly and admittedly renounced his citizenship for the purpose of not paying U.S. taxes. That bolded part is important. We don't need any conspiracy theories here, it's been U.S. policy for many years that if you renounce your citizenship for the purpose of not paying U.S. taxes you are not to be admitted back into the country. Eduardo Saverin (co-founder of Facebook) is likely in the same boat, since he also clearly renounced his citizenship to avoid taxes. Of course, it could also have something to do with the fact that Ver was convicted of selling explosives on eBay, that's something I'd think most governments (not just the U.S.) wouldn't take too lightly.. but no, let's forget about any plausible explanations based on long-standing U.S. laws and policies and just assume it's a conspiracy against Bitcoin. But he owns MemoryDealers in Silicon Valley. How can he avoid paying taxes with a business based in San Jose? He still pays taxes. |
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I wasn't really thinking about wise people. I was talking more about day traders and speculators. What do day traders care? Up, down, doesn't matter to them as long as its changing. I wouldn't expect them to care but I would expect them to react. The expectation that day traders would likely have is that once bitstamp opens back up people will want to sell their bitcoin for fiat in mass. This is actually counter-intuitive because they would probably be able to withdraw bitcoin faster then they can withdraw fiat I would agree that people with accounts elsewhere will very likely withdraw bitcoins. Those people that don't have an account elsewhere or the ability to get one will need to withdraw fiat. It's going to be fun to watch this unfold. |
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If the U.S. blocked all idiots from being in the country there wouldn't be a government. |
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