|
1862
|
Economy / Economics / Re: Could BitCoin ever be backed by Gold?
|
on: January 03, 2011, 05:27:37 AM
|
Also, bitcoins behave like gold when you want to obtain them. You need to mine them using energy & resources, and the more people is out there mining, the less probability exists you will be the lucky one. Exactly the same as gold: the less gold there is on earth, the more difficult mining becomes, as the "easiest" gold is always mined first and the more difficult one is mined later requiring more resources. Bitcoin is like scarce bullion in many ways...
It's not a matter of "mining difficulty", it's just a matter of statistics. The more gold you extract from the ground, the less gold there is left there. So the likelyhood of finding some gold decrease exponentially. It's the same for any substance hidden in an other. Yes, this is also partially what i meant. The less gold is in the ground, the more difficult it is to mine some gold out of it, as it requires more search, more work, more resources. |
|
|
|
|
1863
|
Economy / Economics / Re: Could BitCoin ever be backed by Gold?
|
on: January 02, 2011, 05:40:35 PM
|
Bitcoins are a commodity; just like USD, gold, silver, oranges, etc... After all, a commodity is merely something that is used in trade or consumption. In particular, bitcoins are an intermediary commodity as their value lies in the ability of the bitcoins to be traded for things of useful value.
This is not entirely true. Bitcoins also have an inherent intelectual value, which is a solution to a complex mathematical problem. Of course, that value is probably not very big, but still. Also, bitcoins behave like gold when you want to obtain them. You need to mine them using energy & resources, and the more people is out there mining, the less probability exists you will be the lucky one. Exactly the same as gold: the less gold there is on earth, the more difficult mining becomes, as the "easiest" gold is always mined first and the more difficult one is mined later requiring more resources. Bitcoin is like scarce bullion in many ways... |
|
|
|
|
1865
|
Bitcoin / Project Development / Re: steganography: Hiding your wallet in a JPEG image
|
on: January 02, 2011, 02:42:51 AM
|
Indeed ! I searched once "apt-cache search steganography" and I had found nothing. Now I see why, the description was in my mother tongue, so I should have written "stéganographie" instead. Thanks, I'm sure this thread will be usefull anyway, for it will allow people to be aware of this tool. FYI, it is present in many of current linux distros' repositories as well. I use Gentoo and i have this in repo. |
|
|
|
|
1866
|
Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: What problem does bitcoin solve?
|
on: January 01, 2011, 11:03:28 PM
|
Tons of valuable will be stolen via social engineering attack before the government have the chance to try out that attack. Thus, users of bitcoiners continue to learn...
Human is almost always the weakest link. sounds like a fundamental conflict between collectivism and anarchism More like conflict of Human vs Machine. When comes to security, social techniques are more effective than strictly computer ones. |
|
|
|
|
1867
|
Bitcoin / Project Development / Re: steganography: Hiding your wallet in a JPEG image
|
on: January 01, 2011, 09:55:26 PM
|
I was starting to write this but I'm getting lazy so I just put the beginning of it, in case someone would like to end it. The idea is to store your wallet, or an encrypted version of it, into an image file. The program creates a quasi identical image, with the data steganographied in it. The data can be retreived by comparing the two almost identical images. Therefore you need to store both images, possibly in two different places on cyberspace. Requires ImageMagick to convert the file in Ascii PPM format. #!/bin/bash
if [[ -z "$1" ]]
then echo "usage: $0 image-file [input-data]" 1>&2; exit 1
elif [[ ! -s "$1" ]]
then echo "$1 is empty or does not exist" 1>&2; exit 2
elif image="$1"; ! identify "$1" 1>&2
then echo "couldn't understand image format for $1" 1>&2; exit 3
else
ppmimage="${1%.*}.ppm"
convert "$image" -compression none "$ppmimage"
data=$(mktemp)
xxd -p "${2:-/dev/stdin}" |
while read -N 2 x
do
n=$((0x$x))
: please continue
done
fi
There is already Linux, open source command-line software for just this: http://steghide.sourceforge.net/Checked, it works. You can use it under windows with cygwin. Also, it encrypts the data with a password, so you are fully protected. |
|
|
|
|
1868
|
Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: What problem does bitcoin solve?
|
on: January 01, 2011, 09:51:06 PM
|
In year 2030, with the help from a branch of government XYZ, a computer virus is released, for a period of several days, it simultaneously hijacks sourceforg website and infected millions of bitcoin client executables, moving funds to other infected nodes before destroying the wallet.dat files. Before bitcoin development team gets the message out and releases a patch, billions users has been impacted and millions BTC have been destroyed.
Tons of valuable will be stolen via social engineering attack before the government have the chance to try out that attack. Thus, users of bitcoiners continue to learn... Human is almost always the weakest link. |
|
|
|
|
1869
|
Economy / Economics / Re: Hostile action against the bitcoin infrastructure
|
on: January 01, 2011, 09:33:48 PM
|
Just to contribute a potential attack methodology...
Wallet eating viruses.
Then people using bitcoin will simply switch to Linux, or have a separate Linux partition just for bitcoin. If you use Linux only with software from signed repositories, it is virtually impossible to catch a virus. I don't think Bitcoin is the ultimate solution.
And that is.... why exactly ? Having any better ideas, or just empty words ? Of course, bitcoin will not exist in its current form forever. As time goes on, it will evolve. |
|
|
|
|
1870
|
Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: What problem does bitcoin solve?
|
on: January 01, 2011, 09:29:13 PM
|
For a irreversible digital currency to survive, it has to be 100% reliable -- I am not talking about individual transactions or storage, I am talking about the whole system.
I am wondering whether following nightmarish scenario can become a reality:
In year 2030, with the help from a branch of government XYZ, a computer virus is released, for a period of several days, it simultaneously hijacks sourceforg website and infected millions of bitcoin client executables, moving funds to other infected nodes before destroying the wallet.dat files. Before bitcoin development team gets the message out and releases a patch, billions users has been impacted and millions BTC have been destroyed.
You just went totally offtopic with this man. |
|
|
|
|
1873
|
Economy / Marketplace / Re: MtGox now accepting bank transfers from Europe
|
on: January 01, 2011, 06:03:49 PM
|
If some bigger players enter the market, we can easily see 10x, 100x fold increases in bitcoin value, as there is not much required to move the market substantially.
What do you mean by bigger players? And 100x value? Not too soon I bet... But seems you have some financial experience, could you please explain some more? Thanks I join the question. |
|
|
|
|
1874
|
Economy / Economics / Re: Questions about Gold, brainstorming
|
on: January 01, 2011, 06:00:46 PM
|
Government printing money = gold to the sky. This is basically what is happening with QE2 and the rest to come. A central bank monetizing government debt is the government printing money.
The only thing that can bring gold down is if the government decided to default on the debt and start being fiscally responsable. Apart from that, everyone nknows that governments are going to keep printing money to pay the debt.
This is only part of the story. Gold can be largely overspeculated, price spikes are likely, so it is not the best investment. Other bullions are safer. |
|
|
|
|
1875
|
Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: What problem does bitcoin solve?
|
on: January 01, 2011, 05:55:56 PM
|
Quoting provides context to those who do not read the entire thread, so I will continue to do it.
I did not say "stop quoting at all". Just quote OVER the message, not UNDER it. Look at your post, now back at mine. Now back at your post, now back at mine. Sadly, your post isn't mine, but if you stopped bloody quoting under the message, it could be like mine. Is that so difficult ? (Also, I am on a horse) |
|
|
|
|
1876
|
Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: What problem does bitcoin solve?
|
on: December 31, 2010, 03:47:05 PM
|
I followed the e-gold saga for some time (some people I know are/were in the digital metal currency market).
I would call it a fiasco for a number of reasons:
1) A number of accounts (as you pointed out) were seized. Depositors lost millions of dollars with no chance for recovery due to the anonymous nature of the systems involved (one of the accounts seized was itself a DGC based on e-gold).
2) Before the government raids, you could in/out exchange e-gold for other currencies with ease. Today, is there *anyone* who will out exchange e-gold?
3) E-gold claims it contacted the U.S. government on several occasions asking if it was subject to KYC rules, and each time they were told they were not subject to the laws (see Doug's blog on the e-gold site -- though you might have to find it on archive.org if it has been removed). Then out of nowhere the government arrested the founders and halted all operations. The founders were given the choice of either acceding to all of the government's demands on how they could run their business, or go to jail.
From what you are saying, it clearly looks like it was not fiasco. Government was simply more powerful and destroyed it. It is not a fiasco of currency itself. If you have army big enough, You can destroy just any non-bulion centralized currency by simply invading the country which issues the currency. ** Also, please stop quoting below messages. It is annoying as hell. ** This is not usenet or email. |
|
|
|
|
1877
|
Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: What problem does bitcoin solve?
|
on: December 30, 2010, 09:16:43 PM
|
If a government currency is always more insecure than a non-government currency, then how do you explain the e-gold fiasco?
E-gold **FIASCO** ? Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-GoldIn April 2007, the US government ordered e-gold administration to lock/block approximately 58 e-gold accounts, owned and used by The Bullion Exchange, AnyGoldNow, IceGold, GitGold, The Denver Gold Exchange, GoldPouch Express, 1MDC (a Digital Gold Currency, based on e-gold), and others, and forced G&SR (owner of OmniPay) to liquidate the seized assets.[15] In addition, a few weeks later, e-gold themselves were indicted with 4 indictments [16] . However, e-gold is still in business, though not accepting new accounts.
(...)
E-gold was tried with violation of 18 USC 1960 in UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. E-GOLD, LTD, District of Columbia court. The court found against E-gold, ruling that "a business can clearly engage in money transmitting without limiting its transactions to cash or currency and would commit a crime if it did so without being licensed."[19] In July 2008 the company and its three directors pled guilty to conspiracy to engage in money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business.[1] The company faces fines of $3.7 million, however, the guilty plea is part of a plea bargaining process in which the DA dropped most charges. Regardless, the company has vowed to continue operations following the new Federal KYC guidelines. One upside of the court case for e-gold users is that the judge has rejected any charges of fraud regarding the e-gold user agreement and has confirmed the veracity of the company's gold reserve audit.
If by "fiasco" you mean being raided by government, then fiasco it is, indeed. Government really hates competition. |
|
|
|
|
1880
|
Economy / Marketplace / Re: donation for good
|
on: December 28, 2010, 02:20:23 PM
|
sex4bitcoins... I see a market already!  Did somebody say that this forum is 99.9% male? Do you mean sex for bitcoins or p0rn for bitcoins ? There is a difference. You know what would suck (pun intended), waiting for at least 10 confirmations  Depends how long it takes you to finish.  As long as the block size is irrelevant Well... *block* size is relevant for 99,9% men and 75%+ women. The rest are either eunuchs or lesbians. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
