I cannot in any way understand why anyone gives a flying fuck about what that dying dinosaur of a walled garden does. With the way they operate as a company they ought to be completely irrelevant in this world  You have a very unusual definition of dying dinosaur, as Apple is both growing and profitable. Maybe I'm underestimating peoples joy of being sodomized. Android hosts 99% of mobile malware and even flagship android phone buyers are often left out on upgrades. The android upgrade problem is do bad the majority of android devices are out of date. So who is getting fucked more? Apple does a very good job at screening their apps against malware, apps with "hidden" charges and useless apps (one example of this was the app that cost $999 and was basically a bright picture of gold, and literally did nothing). In the process of doing this they also censor things they do not like. It is somewhat of a tradeoff. I was pretty pissed, like most were, when Apple wouldn't allow Bitcoin Apps on their ISO devices. Clearly many were extremely upset and started to even destroy their IPhones. That said, what you hit on is bringing up an important issue - Security. I have yet to buy a Smart Phone, as my Ipad is enough of a time waster, though useful at work. The latest I heard on a podcast (Think it was Epicenter Bitcoin) is that Apple is allowing wallets but might not be allowing Apps that allow the buying and selling of Bitcoin. (Local Bitcoins, Coinbase? Correct me if I am wrong). So, this battle might just be getting started. I can see Apples perspective if they are being careful legally. But if it comes out that they are being self interested or the like here (which doesn't look to be the case with the latest bans), then they just opened up a mountain of problems. Its about sharing I think part of the issue is consumer protection and part of it is they do not understand Bitcoin fully. Since bitcoin transactions cannot be reversed once confirmed by the blockchain (and really once they are sent to the network) if a person makes a mistake or is scammed then they are simply out of luck. I think that a large amount of bitcoin related thefts have more to do with social engineering and less about security. Apple likely wants to tread lightly before allowing people to download an app that could potentially hold thousands of dollars of a user's money that could be stolen and would be no way to reverse a theft. Thanks for the explation. Funny, I am unhappy with some of the apps I buy, some don't work well or at all, albeit rarely. I never even get a reply. I think apps should come with a 1 hr trial or the like. A 1 hour trial would be an interesting way to do things. I know that a lot of games on iTunes app store have both free (paid for via ads) and paid versions. I would suggest checking the reviews prior to buying a paid app, especially when it is not from a larger dev. |
|
|
|
|
President Obama has not done anything good for this country or the economy.
|
|
|
|
beetcoin has been flagged as a sarcasm-user by the forum's automated screening system
User Beetcoin has received a warning, and his post has been uploaded for safekeeping into the NSA database. Further sarcasm will result in a complete ban on internet communication. But seriously, this story is hilarious. There is no limit to how far governments will go to maintain power and control even in the age of limitless internet communications. I don't think the secret service wants to "ban" sarcasm but rather use it to help detect if something is a serious threat or not. If someone were to make a threat of some kind that is not serious then the Secret Service could use limited resources to investigate and prevent a threat that did not really ever exist while one that was serious could not be looked into due to their limited resources. |
|
|
|
Well when the government dont get their income from taxes anymore they will just find another way.
I think we dont know half the things they probably have in mind to get the money.
When there is a will, there is a way.
What ways could they have up their sleeve? That is what I'm mostly concerned about. The don't need any new ways. Not paying taxes is already a crime, whether you transact in dollars, in euros, or in something else. If you earn bitcoin and do not pay taxes on that, they can take your car and house and/or send you to jail. Or do you think that they cannot find out about your bitcoin income? Dealing strictly in bitcoin would make it very difficult to sufficiently track a person's income. This is especially true for people who do a lot of "side" work as they could simply provide a different address to send payment to for each payment. A person could easily tumble their coins to hide the fact where they originally came from (a particular employer who could then trace them to the employee). |
|
|
|
|
If you were to multiply their average daily trading volume by ~.5% then you will calculate their revenue.
To calculate their costs is more complicated. They need to pay for support (likely their biggest expense), network access, cloud computing, AML/KYC staff.
|
|
|
|
|
The US dollar is based on the faith in the US economy.
bitcoin is based on the faith of the security of the network.
|
|
|
|
|
Gox's collapse were not specific to Japan. It would be likely that Gox would have happened regardless of where it was based.
|
|
|
|
This fork would not replace Bitcoin, but it would coexist with it. Many people will move, subdue to government control and in time will be robbed by government "for he greater good". Some will see this coming, return to original Bitcoin, maybe even avoid any loss at all. Others would stay and loose.
Maybe the government fork would offer good ratio between freedom/privacy and security and would work just fine (for some people).
If you are careful you can spend pre-fork coins on *both* chains. Most likely once the majority decides one fork is better than the other they will cash in the coins of the other fork, and likely kill it in the process. I don't believe 2 forks can coexist for long on equal footing. I for one would take a guarantee of 1000$ up immediately to cash out and keep my coins on the original fork. If everyone does that the gov is down a lot of fiat money, has gotten a stack of pretty worthless crypto coins, and the original bitcoin still survives. I don't see any gov being stupid enough to try that. Well except maybe if they mandate their crypto coins to be legal tender and start paying employees with it, but then these crypto coins would be nothing more than fiat in disguise. You would usually have a short period to do this and it is generally accepted ahead of time that a fork will be accepted, at least in the case of Bitcoin. |
|
|
|
I apologize for the fact that the thread referenced above is cluttered by offtopic, and I have not and will not have time to clean it. So if you want to know what is the latest research about the topic, you will have to read it yourself, and skip the clutter. If you have any other thread in mind that deals with the same topic in any depth, please tell me. Just today I finalized the statistical analysis of the MtGox leak, which confirmed many of the prior results, but will probably lead to reconsideration of previous total number of Bitcoin users (2.0 million) which will be revised downwards to closer the number of non-dust addresses. And please, don't mix large addresses with large supposed holdings. They have so absolutely nothing to do with each other that it is not even funny. You mean I have to read your whole thread to get your methods? You don't even name sources for your informations. And what has the data of Gox to do with anything? The data that was leaked from GOX had each user listed separately (it gave every user a unique number) so it was possible to trace and link addresses together as being owned by the same person. |
|
|
|
|
This sounds a lot like socialism.
If everyone had a guaranteed income then why would anyone work?
|
|
|
|
|
If you do not need historical data, but only wish to compile current data, you could build an API to automatically save the rate every x seconds to a spreadsheet.
|
|
|
|
Plus, ask the guy who bought in 2009 and kept holding until now? Return of investment of 1 000 000 - how is that for store of value?
A store of value is usually considered something that has a stable value. If the price of something goes either up or down too much then it is considered a poor store of value. Your example is what a very good investment would be. |
|
|
|
So I'm in the middle of setting up shop online, I have one store running and gearing up to begin marketing, two more on the way. I'm not doing it to become rich, for me it's an experiment. How hard or easy is it to be in business using only BTC? And what problems would I encounter on the path to setting up shop? I'm having a great deal of fun working through the process, and here's my thought for the night:
There are a lot of intangible goods on the market for 99 cents US. Give or take, let's talk about one dollar or one Euro spends. eBooks and MP3s are the two I'm focussing on, but it could be mobile apps or DLC or anything low cost. Lots of things are being sold, right now, for a dollar or less. Now, I'm drawn to BTC as a "fee-less" transaction, but in truth if I'm going to be in business I will probably need a payment gateway, and they are going to take fees from me. Fair enough. So I offer a direct method as well, it takes a little longer to get your files but it's completely free.
Except it isn't. For a Good Time (TM), please add a miner's fee.
At some point, 0.0005 BTC was an insignificant amount of money. Now? It's 7% of a 99 cent sale. Seven percent.
It turns a 99 cent buy into a $1.07 buy.
Let's say BTC gets to $250. 0.0005 BTC is now over 10% added on to the price.
Let's say BTC gets to $1,000. I think it will. 0.0005 is now 50 cents. On a dollar spend, the customer would have to kick in another 50 cents.
So, I'm interested to hear from folks on exactly how this is supposed to be sustained as a reasonable fee? There may be a part of the spec I'm missing, but to my mind, a fixed fee amount (as opposed to a percentage) is going to be unsustainable except for larger purchases. None of this is going to stop me from doing what I'm doing - I'm having too much fun - but if I were seriously in business to make money, I would be getting very scared about offering virtual goods for under 0.05 right about now.
has anyone else thought about this, or do I have some part of the math wrong? I'm curious to hear from the community as to the impact of this fee over the next two or three years on the price of intangibles, or, for that matter, cup cakes.
What you could do is allow buyers to pay you $5 or $10 at a time and then give them as much credit, people could buy 5 songs at a time buy only have to pay one TX fee. Another solution would be to use coinbase and encourage people to work with them. I know that many people are against coinbase as they somewhat centralize bitcoin but you can send money without miners fee (they pay the miners fees) to you. |
|
|
|
Maybe, but good news for litecoin and dogecoin. Since treating btc like property rather than currency (like the IRS is pushing ... and of course the international bankers are behind this), then it will only promote the increased use of litecoin to act as the "currency". The guidance never uses the word bitcoin, specifically. It says "virtual currencies" and, if I remember correctly, E-Currencies. I don't see any reason to think Litecoin, Dogecoin or any other alternate crypto currency would be considered any different. It would actually decrease the value of the alt-coins as the reporting requirements are much higher now but there are still no uses for them. |
|
|
|
Hopefully soon it will be able to be taken from a BTC ETF |
|
|
|
Fraud is an area severely under-appreciated and crucially under-funded. I think folks probably thought the banks/paypal solved the fraud problem but in reality as we know, it's pretty rampant everywhere. I think there's space for a few enormous anti-fraud companies on the scale of Symantec for example in different areas of security. It's an area I think that hasn't seen innovation in terms of the business model since McAfee and anti-virus first appeared.
Just look at the lending section of the forums and you will see how many clear examples of fraud there are. Granted the lending section does have many legitimate requests. |
|
|
|
It's not really profit, it's like if I gave myself a $1,000 loan and charged myself interest. The interest I collect on myself really isn't profit, it's just passing from one hand to the other.
The US citizens end up with a huge debt and the Fed makes a huge profit. It's faux profit. Who is the profit going to? The profit is in keeping the interest rates low so the banks make money. The profit isn't in the interest income itself. It's not faux profit. It is the interest on printed money, so basically it is stealth-taxed from all holders of the US$, both domestically and internationally. And who is the largest holder of treasuries? You cannot make a profit on yourself. The federal reserve does not draw any money from the treasury nor are it's costs included in the budget. It's costs are paid for by interest it receives from it's portfolio, and any excess interest that it receives above it's budget is given to the treasury. The interest that the government pays on the bonds owned by the Fed is essentially interest paid to itself. The goal of the federal reserve is to provide price stability and maximum employment to the economy via interest rates. |
|
|
|
Here is my concern: to control a corporation, you need to own more than 50% of the shares. To control bitcoin, you currently need only 2.4% of the bitcoins in existence Your flaw in your concern is what it would cost in terms of fiat to "buy" this attack. This percentage will likely stay flat over the long term as the price per TH/s (or other unit of hashing) will be valued against the value of the coins a TH/s will be estimated to mine. What you really want is to have the numerator to be a large as possible (network hashrate times cost per TH/s). 1/2 of this number is the cost to successfully launch a 51% attack (ignoring the fact that when you start to purchase a lot of mining capacity the price of miners will likely increase). |
|
|
|
Are there (more or less "mainstream", so no prediction markets or things like that) financial instruments available that can be used to hedge against a rise in interest rates? In other words, something which correlates positively with reference interest rates (of the ECB, for instance). What can be used to achieve this?
I have absolutely no experience with these things yet ... but am sure someone here has. A wild guess would be some leveraged bet on bonds. But I'm not sure how strong they really correlate with the precise reference interest rate.
You can use TIPS (treasury inflation protected securities). They are treasury bonds that pay a fixed interest rate plus an amount equal to inflation. This would not be a perfect hedge against rising interest rates, but generally inflation and interest rates do rise and fall together, at least in the long term. |
|
|
|
|
If you are interested in investing n crypto currencies then you should invest in bitcoin and bitcoin alone.
Pretty much any other investment in alt-coins is nothing more then speculation and really should not be done for any period other then the short term. Also alt-coins networks are much less secure then the network of Bitcoin.
|
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
