I believe that the long term future is bright because bitcoin and the case to be made for it in terms of cheap way to remit funds has not even begun to be heard by the vast majority. For example here in New Zealand we have about 4 million people. We have a website called 'stuff' which is the website for the largest and very dominant newspaper organisation in the country. if you search the site for bitcoin you get just 500 results and none of the top 10 items the search throws up really talks about bitcoins benefits. (its all drugs, price collapse from $1000 etc). Yet remittances for example to the Pacific Islands from expats working here is big business. And the savings from using bitcoin can be substantial. eg Currently transferring NZ$500 by the banking system after all fees means in fact on average only $451 of actual value is transferred. Keep calm and carry on.  if you think the existing financial system is not developing their own blockchain to make international transfers competitive with bitcoin you are delusional. |
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[...]
Can someone explain to me (the non techy guy) how Nasdaq plans to play around using the blockchain without using bitcoin? Briefly, how does this work?
I am not even going to pretend to be a tech expert. I just enjoy investing and loitering in this forum.
Simple explanation: 1. Learn that Bitcoin is not the only coin using blockchain technollogy (see altcoints), just like AOL was not the only provider using TCP/IP (see other providers). 2. Understand that AOL is irrelevant to the internet now. 3. ? ? ? 4. Profit! not even that complicated - ANYONE (for a given value of anyone) can make their own coin. What makes you think that the existing financial system is not planning to replace SWIFT with their own coin which they will use amongst themselves to make transfers - reducing costs and rendering the international transfer bitcoin arguement irrelevant. |
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If free energy Bitcoin and all other currencies are worthless,
why?
Free Energy implies infinite energy since demand will scale with price -> price to 0 -> infinite demand.
infinite Energy implies infinite resources, which in turn replies no wants or needs that cannot be instantly gratified at no cost.
No cost implies that currency,assets and ownership are meaningless.
It's a very different basis for an economy.
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I sent a card to the CEO of my company thanking for all of his hard work which keeps me employed.
It's all about thanking the workers today.
Don't forget to thank the shareholders for putting up the capital invested in the business and giving you all a job. |
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why is never not at option?
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By TAKASHI MOCHIZUKI March 16, 2015 9:32 p.m. ET 0 COMMENTS http://www.wsj.com/articles/rakuten-starts-accepting-bitcoin-1426555942Rakuten Starts Accepting Bitcoin TOKYO—Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc. has started accepting bitcoin for purchases in the U.S., adding momentum to the rapid growth of cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. Customers using the company’s virtual shopping mall in the U.S. site can already buy items using the Internet-based currency, a Rakuten spokesperson in Japan said Tuesday. Rakuten executives have previously said the company’s Germany and Austria units will allow payment by bitcoin starting in the second quarter of this year. Many major U.S. companies have already embraced bitcoin, but Rakuten is one of the first major Japanese companies to accept the virtual currency for payment. While many Japanese companies agree that bitcoin is a convenient payment method for both customers and merchants because it significantly reduces handling fees, most of them are reluctant to adopt it due to concerns over possible fraud and authorities’ unclear stance on the regulation of bitcoin. In Japan, Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, collapsed last year and lost customers’ assets worth half a billion dollars, dealing a major blow to the currency’s public image. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, meanwhile, has decided that the government won’t regulate bitcoin and won’t assign any regulatory bodies to oversee the virtual currency ecosystem. While venture companies welcomed the news, executives at larger companies said the move made it difficult for them to start accepting bitcoin because they want a government agency as a watchdog. Otherwise they would face trouble should unfavorable incidents occur. Rakuten has been open and passionate about bitcoin’s potential use, hosting several panel talks dedicated to the subject at a recent financial conference hosted by the company. It has also invested in Bitnet Technologies, a bitcoin startup based in San Francisco. Rakuten’s biggest moneyspinner is its Japanese site, but that isn’t open to bitcoin yet. Rakuten’s chief executive Hiroshi Mikitani said last month he plans to roll out the bitcoin function to the Japanese market as well, although when it would do so is “a trade secret.” adoption bad for bitcoin right? |
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Obviously this is a fantasy thread. I'm not suggesting this will happen.
Spend my time with my friend, sleep with my gf everyday  I also have a generous plan, give a food for the poor and needy as this is a fantasy thread for obvious reasons you can have 7 or 8 girlfriends if btc goes moon. or even 8 or more. your wallet doesn't have limits then lol. Why have 7 or 8 girlfriends - just rent whatever takes your fancy on any given day - no need for any commitment, remember the maxim, if it floats, flys or f*cks rent it. |
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If BTC goes to 10 hundred thousand million dollars I will donate 10BTC to charity, then claim my tax rebate.
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So why the gap between Stamp and Coinbase ? Are stamp being particularly slow on BTC withdrawl at the moment?
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The difference is there is not an unlimited supply of money orders and cheques, there is a limited (albeit massive) supply of satoshi, and they can be recycled and used repeatedly. Should bitcoin have a monetary value, probably, should it be massive, debatable, but that's why there is a market in them.
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still finding the idea that bitcoin has flopped hilarious.
It's not about the coin , it's about the blockchain - stop looking at the "currency" and think about the technology
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wtf you guys. I can't believe you're talking about blacklisting these coins, as if that would be a good thing. No.
That would be one giant leap toward the traditional banking cartel. When you receive payment for something, do you want to have to check to see if any of those bits you got were from these stolen coins (or the thousands of others)? Were they within a couple transactions of these coins? Comb the entire transaction history to make sure they are not blacklisted somewhere? That sounds like a huge burden. Are you going to pay to have someone else do that for you? Those are the only 2 choices.
You want every coin to have special rules attached to it? Oh, this coin can't go to Bitstamp, and that one can't go to XXXX. That makes some coins worth more than others, and it means you're taking a risk every time you buy coins which you can't verify the history of. Fungibility is one of the key properties of bitcoin that make it better than the alternatives. You should not throw it away to maybe make this one guy's life more difficult.
Yeah, it sucks that these coins were stolen, and it's looking like the person who perpetrated the act may in fact be a bad guy. But it's time to shift the paradigm folks. These coins were stolen because it was possible to steal them. Bitstamp made that possible. Traditional money services have high fees to cover this shit, and bitcoin has low fees because it's secure, and you don't need to cover this shit if you're transacting properly. If you do something dumb, it's on you, we're not charging the consumers for the mistakes and inefficiencies of the money transmitters anymore. That's the point of bitcoin.
Bitstamp is in the process of rewriting their entire system from the ground up, to prevent this sort of thing happening again. Can you imagine Visa doing this after the Target hack? No, they keep doing the same thing, because you guys keep paying for their losses. There's no point in them changing anything. Bitstamp had suck ass security, a hacker fined them 5 million dollars for it. Their security (supposedly) will improve as a result. Gox died as a result, and we'd all have been better off if it happened way sooner than it did. Incompetence is not an option in this space, unless you have a shit ton of money to burn.
quite agree. its great the coins can be tracked, and this can probably help in tracing and capturing and bring to justice the perpetrators. traditional law enforcement should enforce the law. in the meantime bitcoin should just carry on being bitcoin and not be concerned about who owns what coins and whether one coin is any less valid than any other. In the real (non virtual) world receiving stolen goods is a crime whether you know the goods are stolen or not, (the goods in question can be banknotes) - if bitcoin can be classified as goods and if the coins can be traced back through the blockchain to the point where they were stolen then they could quite legally be subject to seizure and returned to their original owner in the UK. To avoid this happening to unsuspecting individuals they would need to be temporarily marked until such time until they were received by the original owner when such mark could be removed. |
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if they enable fiat withdrawals and leave all the other things disabled, then all people can do is withdraw.
that would not be in their best interest.
Maybe true, but I have a fiat withdrawal which I confirmed before the service was shut down, and nothing has been processed. That is inexcusable. Bitstamp is holding my fiat which I withdrew Jan 4th, 2015. If you're in the UK, or have an address in the UK, you can file a statutory demand for payment. That starts a 21 day legal clock, and if they haven't paid after 21 days, you can start putting them into liquidation. See: "Make and serve a statutory demand", published by the British government. The UK has tough collection laws. Bitstamp's registered address is: BITSTAMP LIMITED 5 NEW STREET SQUARE LONDON UNITED KINGDOM EC4A 3TW Company No. 08157033 Act now to avoid being caught in another Mt. Gox like situation. If it turns out that Bitstamp is OK, they'll send you your funds, and you're done. It won't hurt them if they pay. Why would I want to do that? If I put them into liquidation I turn my claim on my funds into that of a senior creditor. At that point I am equal to any bank that has lent them money, and junior to any venture capital fund that may have lent them money on a secured basis. In effect my money ceases to become my money and becomes general corporate funds to be distributed equally between all senior creditors, after any taxes, duties and secured creditors have been paid out. So I am likely to get significantly less than I will get if I wait for them to reopen and then withdraw my money. If they have not reopened in a week or so then think again - but right now what you suggest is detrimental. |
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looks like someone at Huobi didn't get the message on where the markets were supposed to go today - poor stamp manipulator.
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Don't people do any arbitrage these days?
+1 Is there something wrong with Huobi or any rumours - 6.7% return looks like a sensible arb. Not a lot of coins to buy on Stamp either. |
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more likely its due to the fact that Ukraine banned bitcoin - worried about Capital flight much?
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"Name and shame"? Why are so many Bitcoiners eager to throw away the fruits of civilized society and take us back to the dark ages? Very clever - you structured your post in a way that implies the people who want to out scammers to limit the damage they can do are "throwing away the fruits of civilized society" without actually lying. Please ignore the troll argument and focus on the legitimate one: if you use your credit card, you can name, shame, and still have your money at the end of it. as more and larger companies adopt bitcoin they will focus on repeat business - not one time scams. Most large companies offer refunds for returned goods or store credits without any complaint. As the number of reputable merchants accepting bitcoin increases the number of "problematic refunds" as a percentage of total transactions will decline. Certainly the economic losses from these types of transactions will be far lower than the economic gains from the reduction in fraud. The volume of transactions involving a disreputable seller is much smaller than the volume of transactions involving a disreputable buyer. A company I am involved with recently deactivated their credit card processor, they have found this has increased their business via bitcoin and with a corresponding decrease in fraud and time wasted wondering whether that payment/order is real or not this translates into increased efficiency. They are currently debating whether they take credit cards in the future or not, but the time savings are so great from not having to deal with the credit card processor I think they should not bother. |
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