My parents helped me make my fake id, an altered photocopy of my birth certificate so I could get my first job a few months before legal age. I was eager to have my own money. Imagine someone like me ending up here.

This sucks. As great as Bitcoin is if people feel it's too complex to use securely they'll shy away from it.

I was contemplating starting a blog to help people secure their coins, answer questions etc. but haven't had the time. Multisignature wallet solutions should help this security problem tremendously. I feel like we're right in the transition from crazy wild west to more predictable, controllable user experience. People say this will be the year of multisig wallets and I expect that's true.


It appears WebCake is malware: http://malwaretips.com/blogs/webcake-virus-removal/

Often people trying to gain access to some facet of a system can piggyback on some existing vulnerability, just as real world viruses can open up the immune system to other bugs. Either way if this person isn't savvy enough to keep his machine free from basic viruses then that explains why he is likely easy picking.

Actually this post proposes bits and ubits are the same name, only that bits is slang.

I like that idea because many feel 'bit' is overloaded (for good reason) and ubit changes things up phonetically without total deviation. It also means the more preferred term can catch on naturally in the marketplace, just as 'thalers' became dollars, became 5 bucks, etc.

Bitcoin doesn't need the Fed in order to appear volatile LOL! It's doing fine with that on its own.

Seriously, though, Bitcoin's volatility is becoming less over time. That's likely due to the size of market growing. Quite simply larger markets tend to absorb shock better and be less volatile. If any outside interest intentionally bought up bitcoins driving the price higher, then sold those coins to try crashing the market, if successful it would likely generate renewed news cycles about Bitcoin, generating new and renewed interest, resulting in a larger market which leads... to more stability. Bitcoin may experience short term bumps and bruises, like volatility, MtGox imploding, etc. but the idea of Bitcoin is what can never be conveniently deleted. The genie is out of the bottle and this thing isn't going away due to non-permanent events.

BitPay seems to be moving forward with actual usage http://blog.bitpay.com/2014/05/02/bitpay-bitcoin-and-where-to-put-that-decimal-point.html

We've had lots of discussion in the past but now that the price is stabilizing with 3 digits it's pushing the community to resolve the issue. This is how adoption begins to happen naturally I believe.

Looks like this idea got some traction at r/bitcoin too http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/24rq1b/%C2%B5bit_proposal_%C2%B5bit_becomes_official_name_for_the/

Looks like bits and ubits lead the way. These could be used interchangeably, no?

I like it. For some reason it looks fun too 

Glad you cleared that up for us.

I don't think this is the alchemy it insinuates. Apparently the bacteria feed on gold chloride a compound of gold and chlorine. So it seems to me the bacteria act more as a gold filter than gold transformer, the gold being already there.


Yes, as I understand a big (or the biggest?) source of the world's gold is in the oceans, but it's not very cost effective to extract. Now there is a way to turn an inexpensive compound which is not gold into gold. However, it's also not cost effective at today's prices and you need a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator to do it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#Gold_synthesis_in_an_accelerator

Do we really want companies scrutinizing our lives this much? How can that not give anyone the creeps?

This is a great question.

Actually Chris Odom's Open Transaction may do just that. I haven't researched into or wrapped my head around it, but OT solves the exchange trust issue with multi-sig via something called voting pools. I highly recommend this video to anyone who hasn't seen it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teNzIFu5L70

Open Transactions may also provide instant bitcoin transactions and easy scalability. I also like it as an open source completely transparent alternative to Ripple. It may be quite promising.

You can buy low value items such as candy bars, coffee etc. using Bitcoin in an instant way by not waiting for confirmation. When you broadcast a valid transaction to the network that can't normally be undone, so it's safe for merchants to accept that type payment. It's certainly possible to make fraudulent transactions when they are not confirmed, but the work and dishonesty required to do so successfully will probably not extend to items under a few dollars.

The core Bitcoin network is set up to keep confirmation time at around 10 minutes per block, no matter how much hash power there is. I doubt this will change. However, I believe we'll see instant BTC transactions in the future via off-chain methods.

You may also be interested in Litecoin, the most successful cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, which confirms 4 times faster (2.5 minutes):

https://litecoin.org/

Litecoin can be bought/traded at BTC-E.

Get away with WHAT?!?

Silk Road was a MARKETPLACE. There were completely legal items on sale there in addition to any "illegal" ones, which by the way were probably of a safer quality than street drugs due to the seller feedback system. It's not up to Charlie to check how people spend their money. He himself wasn't selling anything illegal.

Meanwhile HSBC bank's compliance officer (Charlie is in trouble as compliance officer, since he was head of his company) simply stepped down after a probe found HSBC enabled money laundering to drug cartels and terrorists. What warped world do you live in where you think that's in any way balanced logic?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-16/hsbc-aided-money-laundering-by-iran-drug-cartels-probe-shows.html

Wired just published an article about 'Dark Wallet', Bitcoin money laundering software conceived by Cody Wilson and Amir Taaki noting:

In a statement to WIRED, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network wrote only that it’s “well aware of the many emerging technological efforts designed to subvert financial transparency. It’s certainly our business to be interested and vigilant with respect to any activities that may assist money laundering and other financial crimes.”

Oh, okay! Well FinCEN should be very interested in the following Bloomberg story where no criminal charges for money laundering were ever brought:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-16/hsbc-aided-money-laundering-by-iran-drug-cartels-probe-shows.html



Surely HSBC is within FinCEN's jurisdiction?

I might be missing something, but I think the title of this thread is misleading. The OP isn't proposing any kind of fork, only a naming convention.

I originally voted for satoshi, but then removed and changed to mBTC. I think satoshis is the correct ultimate destination, but if you're talking marketing mBTC would be better. It might even rekindle some of the sub $1 excitement

At the same time I caution about the "so it seems cheap" motive. To me a system with 21 million whole units is pretty sparse when compared to a potential global user base over several billion. That means $400 seems cheap already, and many people are aware of that (note the price stability). There are still about 3,500 NEW bitcoins being created every single day, so adoption IS happening even if not fast enough for some people...

Perfect answer  

What people don't seem to realize is widely adopted technology doesn't have to be best, just good enough and first.

Yes. Any time you add to supply you get inflation. Gold is still really rare, though. All of the gold ever mined would only fill about 2 1/2 olympic sized swimming pools. It's unlikely a really big gold source would be found where all the gold was in one place and fairly easy/cost effective to mine. For that reason ounces of gold available per person wanting them is still really scarce (like bitcoin) and likely to stay that way. Don't even talk about what would happen in a fiat collapse.

Correct.


Alt-coins are more complex. The difference between governmental currencies like the dollar, euro, yen, peso etc. is their usage is for the most part localized. People mostly shop locally (for food and gas). For this reason any currency specific to a geographical region typically dominates the market there. For example, the US, Canada, and Mexico are in close proximity so it's not unheard of to find citizens from each country with a bit of currency from another country. However, in each country the currency which reigns supreme will be the local one, because it can be exchanged the most places.

Cryptocurrency is different as it has no geographic boundaries or ties by default. This means each could theoretically be as good (meaning exchangeable) as the other. There is one thing which breaks the tie and that is size of marketplace. You can't eat money. You can't otherwise consume or enjoy money (besides maybe swimming in it). People hold money for one purpose: to exchange it for something they want more. That means the better their opportunities to exchange it the greater will be their desire to have it. The other side of that is people who offer goods and services for money. The type of money they accept will be the one giving them the biggest market. With cryptocurrencies technically each could access a large market because they are as ubiquitous as the Internet. That could mean merchants might accept many different ones.

Now we see a problem: if all places will accept all cryptocurrencies are they not all the same value then? The answer is no. The reason is because there will be slight differences in exchange value for each different coin. If I would sell a dozen eggs for .01 BTC which is $5 how many dogecoins would that be? I need to get the equivalent of $5, but if something affects the dogecoin exchange rate, like maybe a kittycatcoin launching which takes away some of dogecoin's marketcap then I really don't want to risk accepting and holding dogecoin since I might lose money. Each merchant is faced with deciding which coins would not lose them money. Since merchants are not typically day traders they will tend to stick with whatever they felt would remain stable. This is why many Bitcoin accepting merchants convert BTC to USD immediately, though some keep BTC. Similarly, merchants might accept a variety of crytocurrency, but they would always convert it into whatever they felt held value for them best. This means coins that have a head start, like Bitcoin, will typically keep an advantage, because coins that follow won't be good enough to claim better acceptance rates, unless they offer something significantly better. At the same time, not only do new coins have to dethrone the existing kings, but they compete with newer coins which challenge them as well. In other words it's the fact that alt-coins continue to be created which lets the market easily decide to (mostly) stick with only the top few. That's the situation we see today:

http://coinmarketcap.com/

At some point it will be clear that most of the world only favors maybe 2 or 3 main coins and the rest will be locked in a never ending battle to try escaping from obscurity, that is unless of course something substantially better actually comes out.