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Other / Off-topic / Would you dare tell people at your bank what you really think of banks?
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on: September 28, 2012, 05:56:09 AM
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I feel strange walking into a branch of my bank. I'm courteous to the tellers, but I can't help but think how much the guys running the joint are raping out of the economy. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to tell them how I really feel about who they are working for at the branch. Would you dare tell the people at your bank what you think of them (assuming you hate banks)?
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6
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Other / Politics & Society / The bureaucratic cost of policing the Bitcoin economy
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on: September 25, 2012, 06:32:53 PM
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One thing I realized when I read that the SEC may be going after Pirate and BTCST is that the bureaucratic cost of policing the Bitcoin economy is going to go up as more Ponzi schemes and other illicit activities are carried out using Bitcoin. As more and more cases end up on the desks of various local, state and federal law enforcement agencies that have something to do with Bitcoin activity, is it possible law enforcement at large will simply start ignoring such cases?
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7
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Economy / Service Discussion / Bitcoin services that could be cons
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on: September 24, 2012, 11:13:15 PM
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I've seen Bitcoin based services popping up that have very skimpy information about who is running the site. They look professional, but they don't have any auditing or insurance to reassure people that they aren't just cons. Take a look at these two sites: BTCJam P2P Lending https://btcjam.com/Bitcoin Venture Capital http://www.btcvc.com/Neither of these two sites have any information to lead me to believe that they won't just run off with any BTC sent to them. These are just two examples, I am sure there are others.
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8
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Other / Off-topic / How does a credit card with a positive balance work?
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on: September 21, 2012, 07:24:17 PM
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I found out the other day that a credit card can actually have a positive balance if you pay more than what is owed on the card. I wasn't able to find out more about this strange fact on Google, and I had some questions about it.
What does the bank do with the funds that make up the positive balance? They don't pay you interest on the positive balance. Do they loan those funds out?
If you don't go below your positive balance, does this still help your credit score?
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10
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Economy / Speculation / What is Bitcoin's tipping point?
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on: September 11, 2012, 06:05:31 PM
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I have a theory and it is fairly simple. As market depth and liquidity of Bitcoin approaches that of gold or silver, it becomes a much more attractive option to those looking for a store of wealth. The reason for this, of course, is because Bitcoin is much more convenient to hold and transfer than gold or silver. So as Bitcoin nears the liquidity and volatility of gold or silver, a rush of more capital will go into Bitcoin as an alternative to gold and silver. The liquidity and volatility of gold or silver is an upper and lower bound as a tipping point for Bitcoin, respectively.
However, Bitcoin would have to start nearing a market cap of billions of dollars in order to reach the liquidity of gold or silver. Is it possible that there is a much lower tipping point threshold that will trigger a large amount of new capital to flow into Bitcoin? I have seen the arbitrary market cap of $1 billion thrown around.
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14
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Malicious Bitcoin Address Rewrites
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on: August 30, 2012, 07:52:25 AM
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Has anyone considered a rather cheap but effective attack on someone using Bitcoin? It seems to me that all someone would need to do to potentially steal a bunch of coins from someone is to simply set up some kind of network sniffer that detects any Bitcoin addresses being sent, and rewrites them with an address from the attacker's wallet. For instance, if I am using Bitcoin at work, a malicious sysadmin could set up a proxy server that automatically rewrites all unencrypted Bitcoin addresses I am receiving with addresses from his own Bitcoin wallet. This wouldn't work for web sites that were loading with HTTPS, but it would work for any other unencrypted traffic it seems. This could be really bad if someone messaged me a Bitcoin address to send a bunch of BTC to and it got rewritten. I bet the opposite could be done as well, where the attacker rewrites all Bitcoin addresses going out. I try to submit a withdrawal address to someone or some site, and it gets rewritten with the attacker's address, so they receive any BTC that gets cashed out. Any way to stop this attack?
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Other / Meta / Bitcoin Discussion threads always getting moved
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on: August 26, 2012, 07:40:07 AM
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Has anyone noticed that half the threads in the "Bitcoin Discussion" sub forum have to be moved? I'm not naming names but some of them are from long time posters who are posting threads that obviously don't belong there (e.g. service announcements). What is going on?  Maybe we need a 'list of shame' for these individuals.
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Economy / Economics / Lending BTC is very risky
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on: August 25, 2012, 10:01:31 PM
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After giving it some thought, I realized that lending BTC is quite risky. It is risky because even under the assumption that a borrower is honest and would repay their debt if they could, a sudden rise in the price of BTC would make it difficult or impossible for borrowers to repay their debt. If you lend to an individual, they will simply default. If you invest in a pass through lending operation, what will happen is a number of investors will try to pull their BTC out. They will do this either because they want to take profits on the BTC itself, or they believe the borrowers will not be able to pay back their loans due to the rise in the price of BTC. The operator of the lending pass through will not be able to accommodate all of the payouts and may only recover some of the BTC from the borrowers.
Interestingly, however, lending BTC can sort of act as a hedge against a sudden BTC price drop. If the price of BTC drops, your borrowers will be able to more easily pay back the BTC plus the interest. So, while the value of your BTC holdings will go down, you will suffer fewer defaults in your lending operation.
Thoughts? Any flaws in my reasoning? Discuss.
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Economy / Speculation / The 'all or nothing' fallacy
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on: August 10, 2012, 05:45:15 AM
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A number of times I have seen people say: with Bitcoin it is going to be 'all or nothing'. In other words, Bitcoin is either going to displace and put out of business all fiat currencies or it is going to 0. However, when people say this they don't really give any support for the statement. I think this is wrong right off the bat. Bitcoin could easily have a market cap of billions of USD on 3 use cases alone: black market/grey market products (e.g. Silk Road), gaming tokens (e.g online Bitcoin casinos), and international transfers (e.g. all the Bitcoin exchanges across the world). Another use case would emerge after Bitcoin had a large market cap and stable price from those 3 markets: long term wealth storage. Wealthy individuals who want to stash away a significant amount of wealth that can't be confiscated by governments or otherwise stolen could put BTC into cold storage for as long as they wanted. They could travel the world and sell their coins to local Bitcoin dealers for the local fiat currency.
In any event, I would like to hear some arguments from people who believe Bitcoin is going to either be 'all or nothing'. Perhaps there is a good argument that I have not heard yet.
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Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Bitcoin Exchange Arbitrage Opportunities
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on: May 15, 2011, 06:20:43 PM
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Has anyone explored or engaged in arbitrage across different Bitcoin exchanges? Suppose on Bitcoin exchange A, you can sell your BTC for $5.50, but on Bitcoin exchange B, you can buy BTC for $5.30 each. So you buy up all the BTC you can on exchange B, transfer them to exchange A and sell them all for instant profit. The problem is what about the confirmation time? The opportunity could dry up quick in the time it takes to transfer the BTC to exchange A. Perhaps some arrangement could be made with someone who already has BTC on exchange A?
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