[2014-03-21] Gizmodo-What Bitcoin Would Have Been Like If It Existed in the 90s http://gizmodo.com/what-bitcoin-would-have-been-like-if-it-existed-in-the-1548691410The part about backing up your bitcoins on a floppy disk is actually still very relevant today. I actually use both 3.5in and 5.25in floppies as part of my bitcoin backup strategy. Floppies are in my opinion a much safer option than a certain Bitcoin exchange in Japan when it comes to safely storing Bitcoins.  |
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Ottawa bitcoin exchange defrauded of $100,000 in cyber currency http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Ottawa+bitcoin+exchange+defrauded+cyber+currency/9628321/story.htmlOne thing keep in mind here is that the data centre that was breached was owned by Rogers. Rogers is well known in Canada for providing totally abysmal customer service for well over a quarter of a century. To quote from the article David Girard, senior security adviser for Trend Micro Canada, said while many of the attacks against other exchanges have been sophisticated, the way that Canadian Bitcoin’s walletwas accessed shouldn’t have happened.
“The guy at the data centre should have figured out that he was being phished,” said Girard, referring to a method of prodding personal information from a target. “He does everything that the person (online) is asking without authenticating the person by having him tell him his secret password, reveal his identity or call him back on a list of users authorized to be called back. You need to have some way of authenticating when you work in a data centre.” This kind of customer service is typical for Rogers. For example Rogers decided to ground a cable modem by drilling into a live gas line and then refused to do anything about it when advised of the problem. www.ihaterogers.caEdit: They also pick people basically at random and ruin their lives with bogus collection actions. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/rogers-bill-ruins-credit-rating-of-man-who-doesn-t-have-rogers-account-1.1959175 So in your country, who has the power to rewrite the rules for credit bureau? There are strict laws and regulations in Canada with regards to credit bureaus, that is not the issue here. The real issue here is that Rogers is literally in a class by itself when it comes to atrocious customer service, and realistically the only way I can see to deal with them more often than not is to sue them. They get away with this very poor treatment of customers because many people do not realize that taking Rogers to court is in many cases the simplest and less stressful way to deal with them. The individual who Rogers harassed with bogus collections could have avoided damage to his credit rating simply by suing Rogers and their collection agency in court. In the case of Canadian Bitcoins, I would suggest that the owner contact an attorney to explore his options for litigation against Rogers. |
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http://newsbtc.com/2014/03/18/u-s-treasury-official-warns-bitcoin-exchanges-registered-fincen/This is the US treasuring firing a shot across the bow of a few big exchanges that do business without FinCen registrations. This could have very negative impacts on the bitcoin economy until we see legit and regulated exchanges opening to offer those services to the people who would use them. Bitcoin does not need legit exchanges to operate, but it does need them to bridge mass adoption. Legit exchanges are a big part of overall adoption. Also... For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds. One possible outcome of this is that some exchanges simply choose to not accept US persons as customers. I could see BTC-e for example going this route. |
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Ottawa bitcoin exchange defrauded of $100,000 in cyber currency http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Ottawa+bitcoin+exchange+defrauded+cyber+currency/9628321/story.htmlOne thing keep in mind here is that the data centre that was breached was owned by Rogers. Rogers is well known in Canada for providing totally abysmal customer service for well over a quarter of a century. To quote from the article David Girard, senior security adviser for Trend Micro Canada, said while many of the attacks against other exchanges have been sophisticated, the way that Canadian Bitcoin’s walletwas accessed shouldn’t have happened.
“The guy at the data centre should have figured out that he was being phished,” said Girard, referring to a method of prodding personal information from a target. “He does everything that the person (online) is asking without authenticating the person by having him tell him his secret password, reveal his identity or call him back on a list of users authorized to be called back. You need to have some way of authenticating when you work in a data centre.” This kind of customer service is typical for Rogers. For example Rogers decided to ground a cable modem by drilling into a live gas line and then refused to do anything about it when advised of the problem. www.ihaterogers.caEdit: They also pick people basically at random and ruin their lives with bogus collection actions. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/rogers-bill-ruins-credit-rating-of-man-who-doesn-t-have-rogers-account-1.1959175 |
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They are going to pull a Gox on you all.  They cannot pull a gox because of how blockchain is designed. |
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I prefer the following analogy:
Precious metals - Animal powered transportation. For example: Horse and buggy, chariots, elephants, mule carts etc. gold - horse, silver - mule etc.
Fiat currencies - Mechanical ground transportation, steam engines, electric engines, internal combustion engines, diesel engine, etc. For example: GBP - steam engine, USD - internal combustion engine, EUR, CNY, JPY high speed electric trains. etc
Crypto-currencies - Air / Space transportation. For example Bitcoin - aircraft, Litecoin - helicopters etc.
The more I look at Bitcoin and related crypto-currencies the convinced I am that it is gold, and precious metals rather than fiat that will take the bulk of the the "Bitcoin hit". Yes Bitcoin and related crypto-currencies will take a bite out of fiat but the bulk of the wealth transfer may very well come from gold.
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So there are 24 people who claim they have more than 1000000 BTC each for a total well over 21000000 BTC  |
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He claims that he lent 202,000 bitcoins to a mysterious "Big One," but has no proof of such a loan occurring (Shavers depo p. 232). He claims his mystery borrowers paid him every week, and tries to claim several places he never paid current investors from new deposits, not a Ponzi, etc. He claims he repaid 100,000 BTC from his personal funds after Oct. 3, 2012, but can't prove that either. (p. 260.) Whatevs, loser. As for the question about comparison with Mt.Gox, the government alleges that he received "at least 732,050 bitcoins in principal investments." That's much higher than I thought; the common figure was 500,000 in fictional account balances (with much less actual capital due to the absurd interest rates). Of course for the ultimate in Bticoin conspiracy theories Mark Karpeles of MTGox could be the mysterious "Big One" here. What I found really interesting is that: 1) The BTC sales from Mark Karpeles' account ended in early August 2012 just before the collapse of Bitcoin Savings & Trust. 2) The total amount of sales from Mark Karpeles' account amounted to approximately 200000 BTC My source for the above is http://mark-karpeles.com/ before it was taken down. For example consider that Pirate started to get really nervous in late July 2012 and cut off Karpeles from further financing. Karpeles retaliated by defaulting on the entire amount. |
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Hello,
The Monetary Authority of Singapore(MAS), the central bank of Singapore, has just announced it would be regulating bitcoin activity treating it as a virtual commodity rather than as a virtual currency. Singapore currently has a 7% GST tax which is a consumption tax. As bitcoin is not a usual commodity, a strict implementation of GST cannot be applied. It is not expected that there will be bitcoin mining in Singapore. As there is no way to tell if a sales is local consumption (for which GST is specifically aimed at) or for export, I think the only reasonable way is a flat transaction tax, a sort of luxury tax or a 'warning' tax so that in the event when speculators got burnt when Bitcoin collapsed (When ?), the people won't complain and appeal to the government to direct the Bitcoin 'institutions' to indemnify them for losses - just as some over 65 people claimed they were stupid and ignorant when they incurred losses buying into Lehman brother's products. So the tax may be the same 7% as a start.
For industry players, there should be no implementation difficulties. Bitcoin exchanges could just absorb the 7% in their spread. But of course, business would run from regions with higher tax to region with lower sales tax. I doubt there need be any bitcoin havens with no tax. If there is the first country to tax bitcoin transactions, no sane government need ever ban bitcoin. Bitcoin in itself is no evil as simple regulations would ensure that money laundering would be easily controlled as with normal banking transactions. In fact bitcoin will evolved to be a good source of tax revenue if it trades at 650,000 USD/BTC - so why ban it!
Making Bitcoin taxable under a GST or VAT will never work for the very simple reason that Bitcoin will then become the perfect instrument to legally evade such a tax. This is the reason why the UK finally came to its senses over Bitcoin and VAT and Singapore will be forced to do the same. GST/VAT taxes only work because certain items are exempt. Among the exempt items wages, and money are a must. When considering money, anything that is used as money in the economy also needs to be exempt. |
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Currencies would collapse , only people in bitcoin/litecoin gold and silver would be able to preserve their wealth.
Deary me. If the USD collapsed, not that it is going to anytime soon but if it did, then Bitcoin/Litecoin, and all the other junk coins would be worth exactly their weight in gold. Nothing. Bitcoin's value is directly related to their rate of interchangeability to government backed currencies. Not true. Bitcoin is and has been traded in terms of gold. Edit: A collapse of the USD could very easily lead in an increase in the value of Bitcoin in terms of gold. |
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When your battery dies, you should charge your phone then using the charger that comes in its package when you buy one. Have you ever bought a phone before? :)D
This depends on the kind of phone. For a typical Android phone all that is required is a common USB cable connected to a 5V USB source. The latter could for example be provided by a solar panel. Now if you are talking about an iPhone, they require their own propriety cable in order to satisfy Apple's DRM and censorship; however the iPhone case is moot here because Apple has already used their DRM to censor Bitcoin. |
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A good way to get a head of future market moves is to game out important scenarios, i.e. ones which result in market moves. I think WW2b is an important scenario. Here's my WW2b scenario:
Occupied Crimea votes independence from Ukraine.
Ukraine mobilizes military in eastern Ukraine.
Putin invades eastern Ukraine to "protect ethnic Russians".
Ukrainian military retreats.
NATO enters Ukraine.
Ukraine military re-enters eastern Ukraine.
Putin escalates in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine military retreats.
NATO in force.
NATO - Russian air conflict, Russia suffers loses.
NATO - Russian ground conflict, NATO suffers loses.
NATO uses tactical nukes.
Putin nukes New York.
How does this scenario affect Bitcoin?
Are there scenarios in Transdniestra or the Baltics which are more likely to escalate than the more narrowly focused conflict in Ukraine?
WWII??? Its WWIII!! Yes. This is a WWIII scenario. As for Bitcoin the question then becomes how many nodes do you have to nuke in order to knock out the entire network? |
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Hey? Why I am I not on that list... I've certainly lost more than 100 BTC through trading, lol I lot more  (( I understand in order to be on that list one had to be goxed at the end, namely have a non zero balance in either BTC or a fiat currency. |
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How does this deal with key logging malware on the Windows host? The malware will have access to the the login credentials of the GNU/Linux guest so encrypting the /home partition on the GNU/Linux guest will not help. The malware will also have access to any passwords typed into the guest for example to decrypt a Bitcoin wallet.
The proper solution here is to run GNU/Linux as the host and Windows as the guest. This avoids the risk above but also has the advantage of minimizing the risk of the Windows guest getting infected as high risk activities such as email, web browsing etc can be run on the much less vulnerable, by several orders of magnitude, GNU/Linux host or for the truly paranoid on a separate GNU/Linux VM.
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Apple's business model is based upon upon censoring freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and basic civil liberties etc and stifling innovation. Bitcoin is just one of the many things and ideas they have censored. Frankly the fact that Apple has censored Bitcoin is a very strong indicator of how disruptive and innovative Bitcoin is. It does not follow however that Apple's censorship means that Apple will create a competitive or alternate to the idea or product they have censored. The critical thing to understand about Apple is that in many cases no matter whether they chose to allow or censor a particular app in their closed store, Apple will always be in the wrong! because they have no right to be able to make these kind of decisions in the first place. Edit: Here is an example of a recent case of Apple censorship unrelated to Bitcoin. http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/02/apple-didnt-want-this-us-drone-strike-app-publishe.html Does this mean that Apple is going into the drone business? I do not think so. |
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If you had to convert all your wealth to either Bitcoin or gold and keep it there for 10 years, which would you choose? Keep in mind the fact that Bitcoin has only been around for 5 years, and could be fundamentally different in any number of ways in 10 years.
Bitcoin. Here is why Let us go back 110 years to say 1904 and ask the following question: If you had to convert all your wealth to either horseless carriages (otherwise known as automobiles) or horses and keep it there for 10 years, which would you choose? Keep in mind the fact that horseless carriages have only been around for 5 years, and could be fundamentally different in any number of ways in 10 years. By the way humans had been using horses as a primary form of transportation for millennia, yet in a period of 50 years between 1900 and 1950 they virtually vanished form the transportation scene. Will Bitcoin do the same to gold? |
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I would contact a tax professional in your jurisdiction for assistance. They may contact the relevant tax authorities to negotiate an mutually acceptable solution to the lost records. This should serve as an important reminder to never rely on third party providers to store financial information that is needed for tax purposes. Instead one should store electronic financial records on computers under one's control, running Free Libre Open Source Software (such as GNU/Linux), with multiple redundant backups and in a format that is readable by Free Libre Open Source Software.
By the way I expect a fair amount of grief among former MTGox clients over lost / inaccessible records as the various tax deadlines around the world approach April 30th (Canada), April 15th (United States) etc.
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