If you have been on the speculation subforum for long you will know it's probably true, other than that some of the FUDers, rather than being paid, may have vested interests in the old system themselves. e.g., check out this guy here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=28488 Why did he show up only after Bitcoin crashes? If he is not interested in Bitcoin at all, why did he feel it's his business to spread all kinds of "doom and gloom" to the most fervent believers of Bitcoin? Why does his website contain nothing but FUDs? Do you believe he did all this just because he was, like he claimed, concerned that people will lose money to Bitcoin? Shilling is an industry, you have to see it to believe it. |
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What's the media keeps trying to tell you is the stupid will win, and the revolutionary and advanced will lose.
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Another point: You can use your address as your proof of identity for any membership program-just sign a message. The financial industry has tried unsuccessfully to implement things like "one card, everywhere", now with Bitcoin, the infrastructure is already there, and you can do it without giving away your privacy.
Oh yeah, it can even be used as some sort of decentralized OpenID!
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+1 XRP are worthless yet they are already exchanging them as if they have value. The definition of worthless is having no value. But if they are being exchanged for value then they are not worthless are they? You mean to say that they are worthless to you. That does not make them worthless, it just means that your subjective valuation of them is zero. What is to stop regulators from shutting open coin down? This is the first productive statement that you've made and one that is finally worth answering. Nothing stops regulators from shutting OpenCoin down. I think the source code would be published at the point, since according to one of the developers there is something to that effect in his employment contract. It is definitely in OpenCoin's best interest to lose all control they have over Ripple as soon as possible. I believe they are working hard to achieve that goal. "Is manipulation so bad?"
Yeah if you are the one being manipulated at the potential gain of another.
Its easy to avoid getting manipulated by OpenCoin's XRP operations - simply don't invest money in XRP! Where did you get the idea that you have to put all your money into XRP in order for Ripple to be useful to you? Okay you are obviously only wanting to see one side of the coin. The fact that ripple can be shut down is enough reason not to use it. Condoning manipulation shows your true colors. Show me where I indicated putting all of ones money into ripple ? Now you are just making shit up that I didn't say. What every loser thinks before being manipulated:" I am holding the same asset as the big players, it's guaranteed profit!"..... |
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holding however billion they are holding onto as a company or private individuals should be a big concern to anyone wishing to adopt. Just the opposite. I'm glad OpenCoin is holding a bunch of XRP, because if they do well then I'll do well (I own XRP as well). This aligns their interests with mine. Excuse me, but this is pure madness. Right now XRP's are being traded at roughly 54 XRP per $1. That's crazy. I mean, 50K XRP where handed out to anybody asking, and many users bought forums accounts to obtain hundred of thousands of XRP's, if not millions. Well, today the 50K XRP's given away to anybody who asked are worth roughly $1,000. Heck, just to try it out, yesterday I bought 10BTC of XRP myself, and that's more or less the quantity of XRP's I got for my REAL btc. That's crazy, pure speculative mania. This would mean that Opencoin has TODAY a potential gain of +$1B (yes, billion), when their software is still in Beta phase, and didn't prove ANYTHING. Of course they could never "cash out" that amount of XRP's at this stage, there's still no market for it. But still, you can see how insane is this. I always said it from the very first moment: Ripple is a genius idea for their creators, is the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme (for them and only for them). But I foresee something in the future: as soon as they want to "cash out", they have such an insame amount of Ripples that they will crash the market with a super small dump. And, in fact, they are the ultimate manipulator in the XRP market: nobody will ever hold as many coins as they do. But they are also creating a monster: all those accumulating hundred of thousands/millions of XRP's will dump them and crash the market sooner or later... I bet that we will see a steady increase in XRP's prices, there will be a bubble, and shortly after Ripple is finally out of Beta and open to the "grand public" there will be massive XRP dumps everywhere, and the last ones in will be left holding the bag. There is not even proof that it's not a bunch of Opencoin's shills pumping up the price, think about it, you don't know who get the XRPs, how is it distributed, and they made it clear they would not release data about it. |
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I find it really funny that someone registered on this forum will argue for a currency whose total amount in circulation is not even known.
My biggest concern with XRP is not even the "premining", but it's worse than Chinese government transparency, you have no data whatsoever about it, let alone provable data.
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Never finding the identity of Satoshi is by far a better story.
Hundreds of books, fairy tales, myths, movies will be produced... |
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there is only one reason why XRP get destroyed after a tx takes place.
and that is to drive up the value of the remaining XRP, the majority of which just happen to reside with OpenCoin from printing.
That makes sense. From what I can figure out (I say that because I am not really sure) the XRP is really a transaction fee. Instead of saying "we are raising transaction fees" they can just say that XRP's have become more valuable so you should trade your Dollars, Bitcoins, silver dimes, etc. for them. That way they are doing you a favor by selling you valuable XRP's rather than some nasty administrator who always raises fees. You don't even need any mechanism to limit transaction spam with the ledger / accounts based system instead of a blockchain. Use anti-DoS rules (eg, validators would refuse more than 20 transactions from the same IP per ledger). It's just to create artificial demand for XRPs, like taxation having to be paid in your country's mandated currency, and to make OpenCoin Inc rich. Now, there's no problem with people getting rich, but when they are advertising it as a decentralized and open payment system and trying to get the bitcoin crowd to hop in ... From what I can tell Ripple is for those that do large amounts of exchanges like currency exchangers, day trades, international businesses, etc. I don't generally do those things so I don't care what they do. I think it's exactly the opposite, for large amounts of exchanges a validator would be tempted to scam you once and get away, which would be worth the risk.
If they develop a system many people use they are supposed to get rich.
Reason why it's centralized. |
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there is only one reason why XRP get destroyed after a tx takes place.
and that is to drive up the value of the remaining XRP, the majority of which just happen to reside with OpenCoin from printing.
So XRP has sort of a demurrage implemented? On top of that given ripple is closed source they can inflate the XRP supply if they wanted. Wow I rather use the federal reserve system if this is the case. Lol Maybe demurrage is the wrong word. They can inflate, deflate, distribute the supply in whatever way they like(e.g., give a lot to some shills and only very little to honest appliers so they can pull off a "pump and dump") without even being found to do so, as long as they do it cautiously. It's like a mixture of FEDs and Charles Ponzi's wildest wet dreams. |
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If you are in this for speculation, it's important to think why the PMs price went up so much in the last 10 years and how much of it was real, is it really "cheap" now? Ahh yes, you mean the part where they finally caught up to 75 years of US Dollar inflation  You can only repeat "1.5%" for so many years in a row before people catch on. Yup, so they will rise and fall together, either the old system prevails or the PMs will fall further. And the young people hardly give a dime, the real estates are what really matter after all. It is sad that the young people are so interested in buying real estate that no one will be able to afford due to being in the same spot of the "bubble" of all the middle-aged men in my town that bought $450,000 single family homes a few years ago and are now living in the center of town in tiny apartments, having learned their lesson about real estate bubbles  It's another kind of false belief, like those held by the PM bugs. Nevertheless real estates always have some practical values for nearly anyone, not just industries. And yeah, the land supply in America is far more abundant than that of China. |
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How can the mods decide if TF defaults or not? Even if we assume that he did agree to redeem all his IOUs in real BTCs, did he specify any repayment date? He didn't, he can always say he will repay, but probably after a thousand years? I see absolutely no resaon why a scammer tag should be applied, the mods are powerless against him.
The scammer tag should be applied because he engaged in predatory practices to con users out of some bitcoins: 1) He posted in the Newbies forum 2) He made his thread self-moderated so no one could warn new users 3) He specifically told new users to take risky actions 4) He took advantage of new users who followed his directions As it has been stated previously #3 is no different than asking Bitcoin newbies for their private key "to send some coins to them." If this isn't scamming then what the fuck is? What about BFL? In what universe could BFL NOT be considered scammers? Could this have to do with that both BFL and TradeFortress have paid for ads on the forum? No. If he indeed will pay back, then he should not be considered a scammer, the problem is there is no way for the mods to determine if he will, because no repayment date was specified in the terms. I believe you have signed contracts in your life and you should know. |
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Oakpacific, I've heard the "guns and ammo are the only thing that will be important in that SHTF sencario" argument many times and I don't believe it one bit. Sure, there are situations like all-out wars and massive civil unrest where you won't even have a chance to make a transaction. But that is not the only possible iteration of such a scenario, and I'd rather have a chance to buy something off my neighbour than shoot him for it and steal it, does that make sense? In the same way that we tell even the most butthurt bears to keep just one bitcoin in cold storage "Just in case," I think even the most anti-PM "BTC bugs" should keep at least a little physical around in case it's the best way to buy a train ticket to "get out of dodge" during the economopocalypse or whatever it is the blogsters are preaching these days.
I consider it as another way of saying: "You would have bigger things to worry." And if it turns out the price suppression theories are correct, my gold will double in value and my silver will triple in value. Not bad. Don't underestimate the Power of Paper Like Goat I have around 5% of my portfolio in PMs and will keep it that way. No reason to put all my eggs in one basket or even 2-3 baskets. If you are in this for speculation, it's important to think why the PMs price went up so much in the last 10 years and how much of it was real, is it really "cheap" now?
Here's what I've noticed: My dealer went from having most of its coins available for same-week shipping about a month or so ago, to now having 90% of its coins with a 14-21 day delay time. Similar dealers have same issue. However, there are still places you can get metals, there are even still coins at my dealer that will be shipped same week, and I doubt there's traffic jams in front of coin shops in India. It's just that prices are getting to the point where miners and wholesalers are really feeling the squeeze. They're taking a gamble - sell now and risk the market returning to where it was a month ago, or hold a lot of their inventory only to have prices fall further.
I think the effect on the market of the naked paper shorts is not to be underestimated and that is why I personally hold PMs. I don't think, as many "BTC bugs" do, that we are going to instantly transition to a world where BTC is used for every single transaction, fiat completely disappears, and PMs instantly drop in value.
Now I am in China and here is what I will tell you: the banks are pimping the PMs to the grannies, and they have hardly ever sold anything really worthwhile throughout their whole history: why do you not keep something for yourself if you consider it really worthwhile and act as if you can't wait to get rid of it? And the young people hardly give a dime, the real estates are what really matter after all. |
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Why would you need more than one kind of PM, if cryptocoins succeed and gold doesn't become useless?
And especially, why silver? Why not platinum and palladium? Why?
Good question. Two answers: Gold's limited fungibility compared to silver, and silver's history as a currency (3000 years for silver and 6000 years for gold, IIRC.) compared to platinum and palladium. A lot of stackers are the tinfoil hat types. So they have bitcoins for the day when the USD collapses, but what about when the "S" REALLY "HTF" and there are widespread power outages? If the USD and other fiat currencies hyperinflate, gold and silver will skyrocket along with BTC. But if you can't use BTC because you don't have power for a month, and the USD is worthless, well, if you want to buy some of your neighbour's emergency grain supply, a gram of gold is going to buy you about 10 times more than he has and it's barely any more fungible than that unless you have "grains" lying around. A few grams or a half an ounce of silver is better for small transactions. As for history and familiarity, silver (like gold) is familiar (everyone's grandma has a sterling silver set, they know that silver is valuable) but no one's grandma has a palladium necklace that she inherited from her great grand pa the palladium explorer. Obviously that is a really stupid situation that will never happen. But there is a third reason: The folks that think gold and silver prices are actively suppressed by JPM and the like, also have their theories about silver:gold and they argue that "unsuppressed" i.e. without the naked paper markets, silver would provide a much better ROI relative to gold. This is based on the total amount of above-ground gold/silver, etc. Fourth reason: Arguably, silver has far more industrial uses than gold and therefore more intrinsic value. One more thing to add, and that is, there are some communities that have businesses that accept PM. Much like there is a city in Germany with the highest concentration of Bitcoin businesses, there are some areas in Texas, Arizona, Utah, etc., where precious metals are seen as more of a currency than a novelty item on its way out. And here the gold fungibility issue rears its head again. Hopefully I gave good answers to your good question Answer 2, as you have pointed out, is an apocalyptic situation when guns and ammunition are likely to worth more than anything else, and answer 4 still cannot explain why silver is a more ideal investment then many other metals which arguably have even more industrial uses than silver. Answer 1, 3, and 5 concentrate on the belief that silver should worth something more than its industrial value, which maybe held by some groups of people with a certain outlook of the world, which is not my outlook and doesn't make sense to me. The funny fact is: I can already buy way more things with Bitcoin then with PMs, especially after the Webmoney support adds steam and dealextreme to the places I can buy from. Gold certainly still worth something as a sign of wealth and dowry/bride price, but is accepted nearly nowhere as a currency where I live(its fungiblity is actually quite poor compared to any currency other than metals) . Silver? Come on. What I would like to argue is: globally, less and less people will share the kind of faith in PMs with rednecks, thus the price of silver will continue to decline. |
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How can the mods decide if TF defaults or not? Even if we assume that he did agree to redeem all his IOUs in real BTCs, did he specify any repayment date? He didn't, he can always say he will repay, but probably after a thousand years? I see absolutely no resaon why a scammer tag should be applied, the mods are powerless against him.
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Why would you need more than one kind of PM, if cryptocoins succeed and gold doesn't become useless?
And especially, why silver? Why not platinum and palladium? Why?
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Or they could just muster the resources and do it anyway, with no warning.
No unusual mining power growth can escape people's attention, you get the most paranoid bunch of guys in the world here, why bother with additional resources? And it's not even relevant, any prevention against 51% attack has to be implemented such that it's effective against all possible 51% attacks(which you have to do anyway if you can), to just target a particular group of people is ridiculous. They would do it as closely together as possible. They're unlikely to connect one machine at a time to the network. It's an example of a nation. But yes, it could be any nation with enough resources. Exactly, so it's not related to how many nodes are, or even how much hashpower is in China, right? Not to say a 51% attack can only be pulled off by a single node with 51% of the hashing power, not a lot of nodes combined together. So what OP said is not relevant. The OP asked a question. So it's as relevant as a question can be. What I said is relevant: "A government attack is a significant risk. Think about China: they have the resources to pull off the heinous deed." Every word in your sentence I agree except the "significant risk" part. OP asked the wrong question because 51% attack has hardly anything to do with the total hashpower within a nation's border. |
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Or they could just muster the resources and do it anyway, with no warning.
No unusual mining power growth can escape people's attention, you get the most paranoid bunch of guys in the world here, why bother with additional resources? And it's not even relevant, any prevention against 51% attack has to be implemented such that it's effective against all possible 51% attacks(which you have to do anyway if you can), to just target a particular group of people is ridiculous. They would do it as closely together as possible. They're unlikely to connect one machine at a time to the network. It's an example of a nation. But yes, it could be any nation with enough resources. Exactly, so it's not related to how many nodes are, or even how much hashpower is in China, right? Not to say a 51% attack can only be pulled off by a single node with 51% of the hashing power, not a lot of nodes combined together. So what OP said is not relevant. I spoke of "other ways", the fact is that even China tries to play fairly, with its cheap mid-level skilled labor and supply chain and cheap electricity, no other nation in the world can match it in mining capability. |
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Or they could just muster the resources and do it anyway, with no warning.
No unusual mining power growth can escape people's attention, you get the most paranoid bunch of guys in the world here, why bother with additional resources? And it's not even relevant, any prevention against 51% attack has to be implemented such that it's effective against all possible 51% attacks(which you have to do anyway if you can), to just target a particular group of people is ridiculous. |
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A government attack is a significant risk. Think about China: they have the resources to pull off the heinous deed.
I should apply XKCD's famous "$5 wretch" argument here: if an authoritarian government wants to screw you, there are much easier ways to do it than a 51% attack, otherwise if they want to play, they would be very careful to not tip the balance. Like what? Shutdown ASICMiner and Avalon, arrest everyone and scare the daylight out of all the remaining Chinese miners. That's far from the destruction of Bitcoin. They can do what they want in China, but not the rest of the world. No, per the status quo it would have the same effect: right now there is no viable ASIC producer out of China(BFL honestly is not there yet), if there will be at least one in the future, whatever China will do doesn't matter, people can just switch to the out of China producers. If there will not, then the "$5 wretch" attack still works. Even if there were no more ASICs produced, the current nodes would maintain the network. You didn't get me: the "$5 wretch" attack applies because had the CCP wanted to 51% attack the network, the easiest way to do it would be to arrest the ASICMiner/Avalon people for things like tax evasion, and confiscate all their blueprints, drawings, VHDL programs, manufacturing equipments so that they can easily replicate their own ASICs. Why buying/developing your own when you can get them for much cheaper? Besides, given how competent friedcat has been demonstrated to be, it's most possible that he has already correctly assessed the risk. OK. That's another whey they could pull off a 51% attack. It would be so visible that it makes no sense to pull it off at all. Why would they care about visibility? Bitcoin's not a national currency. If they don't care about publicity, I believe they would do it my way, as long as everyone is safe and sound, no need to worry. If they do care, then they would not pull off a 51%. Of course there are all under the condition that China is not interested in Bitcoin itself. Also, it needs to be pointed out that Bitcoin is great because it doesn't care about your political ideology, cultural background, social status and whatsoever, everyone can benefit from it other than possibly the staunchest banking system supporters, it's best not to make too big a fuss out of this if we don't have hard evidence. How can there be hard evidence, if it hasn't happened yet? And you've just given an example of how it can happen. Of course, Bitcoin is revolutionary. But ignoring an issue doesn't make it go away. Example of a hard evidence: friedcat is arrested, in that case everyone better prepare for a Chinese takeover. Otherwise there is no reason to be vigilant just because the world's most populous/biggest manufacturing nation happen to have the biggest number of mining nodes. Or it wll be something like:"people under a different system should not be allowed to touch Bitcoin mining." |
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It doesn't sound like you can allow immediate withdrawal for any two-factor authenticated user while keeping 90% of your bitcoins in cold storage, can you?  evil question: if 90% of the coins are on cold storage what will people trade on bitstamp and mtgox ? also 2fa withdrawal are coming from bitstamp Sure, fair enough, but I would like someone to clarify a bit what this is supposed to mean: Your bitcoins are stored in cold wallet only, and the servers only use watch-only wallet
from https://bitfinex.com/pages/security does that mean in case of any theft happening on exchange accounts, the losses are for you guys to take, or soemthing else? Thanks. |
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