"To enjoy freedom, [...] we have of course to control ourselves." --Virginia Woolf
+1 We must be wise in how we choose to use Bitcoin. Businesses bqeing totally hands off regarding how they let others use their services could lead to consequences they did not predict nor desire. That could bring unwarranted restrictions for all of us. |
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Bitcoin is free speech; what is a Bitcoin transaction other than rule based editing of a shared public ledger? If I shout loudly my private key, and a terrorist hears me and creates a ledger entry increasing the number of bitcoins associated with a private key known only to him, am I funding terrorism? Anyhow, bitcoin (in the US) is money now: http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/08/06/Bitcoin.pdf |
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This makes an apt comparison. Remember 15 years ago when credit card identity theft bankrupted people? I mean, it used to be the card holders fault that the credit card network was so insecure. Now, most credit card companies eat the cost of this insecurity.
Please think about this for a minute! No credit card company is 'eating up the cost of insecurity' ever. They merely redistribute the losses of their insecure system to the people who receive payments who then pass it on to the consumers. I actually find it kind of funny that you picture credit card companies as someone who is kinda like 'eating up' costs to society, hence doing us some sort of good, while all they're eating is your and my money because they can do so because our leaders granted them monopoly to do so. Ever heard about the Stockholm syndrome  ? Joe Hey joe. Did you have a credit card 15 years ago? You are right to point out the trivial: they don't "eat it" they distribute it (again, a presumption...but it's not worth the time to discuss). The non-trivial point is that the individual card holder used to be on the hook for fraud. |
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Hi. Sorry for posting this again here but I think it fits under bitcoin discussion and under mining speculation. Maybe with a few more views someone will have an idea of what's going on. Feel free to delete this if you feel it is inappropriate to have posted it twice. Anyway! I just wondered if anyone had noticed that a lot of the blocks that are relayed through various ip address nodes are actually being mined by the same user: 1BxD2VLE95n7ZeVJSy3uoiJ5WdR72jWj5fIf you have a look they have a lot of bitcoins already and are generating around 4 blocks a day. Anyone have any idea who this is? More ASIC developers but this time they are keeping them all for themselves? Quite scary that one person or group has this much power and they are possibly not even on the radar like ASICminer. This was normal a few years ago...it's an artifact of a still small network (small number of asics, that is). When I did better than this with my laptop, I didn't think it was scary or bad...I was supporting the network. |
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This makes an apt comparison. Remember 15 years ago when credit card identity theft bankrupted people? I mean, it used to be the card holders fault that the credit card network was so insecure. Now, most credit card companies eat the cost of this insecurity.
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Miners are the working class of Bitcoin. ASIC miners are the greedy 1%.
I used to CPU mine...while we all know someday we're gonna need super high power computers to run a huge network, we simply don't need that much processing power right now. That said, the more powerful hashing devices we create, the more we need them to protect our network. If someone decided to make an ASIC back when I was mining with my laptop, they'd have owned the then rather puny network (and might not have cared if they trashed it...bitcoins weren't worth anything back then). |
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SRO's are part and parcel of every industry. Think American Bar Association, American Board of Radiology, etc...most likely, these organizations (including DATA) will have only indirect influence in your life.
Most likely, but it is because of PCI's pain in the ass requirements that TxT Paintball does not accept credit cards. I don't understand. ? |
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Yeah. Or, you could just insist on having his contact info. Give up anonymity and gain instantaneous transactions. Low tech, but easy.
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I believe there were several early highlights of vulnerabilities including some sort of x-ray or such imaging device. At the time it was just a cool thing to have and Bitcoin was worth about $10/BTC so such extreme attempts were dismissed.
I imagine I would likely only buy them for cold storage or as gifts. Not for actual trade.
I took radiographs of the original BitBills cards. Notta chance of getting the private key with those using standard body radiography equipment. A Casascius coin would be much more difficult than a BitBill unless Mike is using some crazy ink with an absorption peak near the k edge of iodine. |
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OP -- good points. I'd add to be sure to make it work best for mobile platforms (who wants a computer anymore these days anyway? The days of the computer are numbered).
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SRO's are part and parcel of every industry. Think American Bar Association, American Board of Radiology, etc...most likely, these organizations (including DATA) will have only indirect influence in your life.
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But without the exchanges will it not create disorganization in terms of who wants to buy and who wants to sell.. as well as making it harder for the USD/BTC transaction to take place as large scale as the exchanges?
Without the ability to exchange, yes. Exchanges, perhaps not. There's another group of geniuses working in this issue. See my link above. |
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OP has a good point (thx clean up crew!). Bitcoin is worthless if too few people own it. That's part of the genius in bootstrapping this whole thing.
I started mining with my laptop over 3 years ago not because Bitcoin was valuable, but because the system provided ideological motivation. Things moved to the "hey, I can buy drugs with this stuff" type of motivation and Bitcoin grew as it expanded to this new, more populated user base. Now we are entering the third wave where significant financial gains are motivating smart business people to set up real industries around the technology. It's this maturation and entering the day to day lives of normal people that will drastically increase the value of Bitcoin. But it will take time (like 10 years, not 10 weeks).
I'd also add that the value scales not solely with the size of the userbase (a temporary phenomenon), but also with transaction volume. A technology that could never handle more than 7 transactions per second isn't worth much.
Mathematically, I would say Price = k*(u/sqrt(1+u^2))*T^b where k is a constant that depends on the currency you're buying bitcoins in, u is the # of users (scaled), T is the transactions per second the network is doing and b is the constant you throw in to look smart later.
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Bitcoin doesn't use encryption.
Right, just spending them does. |
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The field is wide open. I want the best person possible representing me. Get the word out!
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Detective Phinn, you've been serving the community for quite some time now...are you interested in running?
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