But... thinking it better...  A CUBE WITHIN A CUBE!   |
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"What is Bitcoin backed by?" It is backed by value. Value is created by people, it is not intrinsic to anything except ideas (opinions). Certain resources (gold, dollars, real estate, stocks, etc) have great monetary value in our society because we look for, or create, certain properties in them when following a particular - the most popular - economic theory at the time. As an example, if we all started to adopt the theory of resource-based economics, widely promoted by Peter Joseph who created the Zeitgeist movie-series, we would value resources very differently. So what makes Bitcoin valuable to people (adopters) in a capitalistic economy? It can be a multitude of reasons: - Deflation is better than inflation
- It is better to have a decentralized power
- Transactions in Bitcoin are cheaper, easier in a digital world
- The Blockchain: a PUBLIC record of every transaction
- I hate Ben Bernanke or the Federal Reserve System
- The security of Bitcoin's cryptography
- Irreversible transactions
- A new economy to start a bushiness in
- Anonymity (if done properly)
- Dude, I can buy drugs like I buy shit on Amazon... awesome
- I don't know, my friend uses it and I just follow whatever they does cause I think they're cool (majority of people)
- I like code
- I like turtle
- Miner: "Free money man!"
- we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years
- Etc...
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$20.40
winner winner chicken dinner! |
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make money/lose money... u guys always have a good time i think this is my favorite thread on bitcointalk  |
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Certainly not promote it... but I'm kinda glad they have the option  |
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I have to say that was a really cool image and a great visual correlation, I could write a whole essay on that one picture! Thank you for sharing. That said, I would revise a couple things though.  Really great either way! Thanks again for sharing!  |
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She's not lookin' so good right now boys...  |
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 WATCHOUT! THERE'S A CLIFF RIGHT THERE!  ... and not enough volume to safely make it to the other side... |
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Bitcoin User Profile:- Smart
- Like conspiracy theories
That's a contradiction. We're enigmatic too |
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 <--New guy, bullish. Who are the known consistently bullish/bearish users in this forum anyway? Any known big institutional traders (outside of Bitcoin) in here? Also, what's the best Bitcoin trading platform? What do you guys use? Danke schon, |
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- Comfortable with taking unusually large risks
- Open to patiently listening/reading about unpopular ideas
 Has there ever been a poll done on "Are you male or female?" Would love to know an actual calculation on that! Yes. See my sig for one of them. Nice! My girlfriend is not on these forums, but she's an active Bitcoin user... perhaps these results have a bias as the polling is done on a forum, correlating more with the profile of internet-forum users than with Bitcoin users. As a whole, I would imagine few tech forums have women on them, even if the technology itself is super popular and widely used. Say, like a forum for Windows-users. Lot's of women use Windows OS, but not very many will join a forum about it hahaha. Then again, perhaps I just have a bias because she's my girlfriend... Did you refer her, or vice versa? Or did you both know about it beforehand? She actually referred me... I know, she's a keeper |
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- Comfortable with taking unusually large risks
- Open to patiently listening/reading about unpopular ideas
Has there ever been a poll done on "Are you male or female?" Would love to know an actual calculation on that! Yes. See my sig for one of them. Nice! My girlfriend is not on these forums, but she's an active Bitcoin user... perhaps these results have a bias as the polling is done on a forum, correlating more with the profile of internet-forum users than with Bitcoin users. As a whole, I would imagine few tech forums have women on them, even if the technology itself is super popular and widely used. Say, like a forum for Windows-users. Lot's of women use Windows OS, but not very many will join a forum about it hahaha. Then again, perhaps I just have a bias because she's my girlfriend... |
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- Comfortable with taking unusually large risks
- Open to patiently listening/reading about unpopular ideas
Has there ever been a poll done on "Are you male or female?" Am curious to know an actual calculation on that! |
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Perfect. Thank you for this! Maybe someone can explain to me what the incentive and consequences are of "ballooning the size of the block chain", and how restrictions would be easily released in the future without any issues. Not to mention, who makes that call? First I've read on the matter, thanks! I don't understand why bitcoin hasn't moved to one of the solutions on that page. Why wait? If we really believe that bitcoin is the future, why delay the inevitable? +1 |
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There are a lot of crazy geek projects out there. Yet the surprising thing with Bitcoin is that it grew into something tangible.
A lot of new and surprising ideas get hyped by the media, and then returned to oblivion. Bitcoin was also hyped by the media at some point, but, maybe, ironically, the fact that drug dealers and other "dark forces" started to use it might have turned Bitcoin into real world stuff.
Lol it seems that every lasting technology truly establishes itself with a niche core of dedicated users, allowing it to develop slowly in a nurturing environment: Facebook had its exclusive Ivy League nerds, ARPANET with their small group of research universities, and now Bitcoin -- sustained by the solid enthusiasm of Heisenbergs, psychonauts, and other system D misfits There are some novel ideas, which could be of increased importance in case the system needs to scale to way more transactions. For example, the possibility to interweave several different blockchains, using special protocols involving multisignature. This would allow to build applications and systems on top of the Bitcoin network, offloading some traffic into dedicated alt-chain networks.
This is a really cool thought! I continue to be amazed, realizing how endless the possibilities are and how great the potential is for this type of money... Awesome. |
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Looking ahead to potential market competition between current and future cryptocurrencies, an adapting traditional payment-processing market, internal and external security threats, and legal issues regarding Bitcoin, an in-depth analysis would be beneficial to potential adopters when determining strength, stability, and other risks of investment. If someone could direct me to conclusive research, that would be awesome. Some Discussion...Competition of Alternate Cryptocurrencies:From what I understand, which is technically very little, Bitcoin's hashing algorithm was not chosen with CPU processing in mind, but instead for security. That being said, Litecoin's hashing algorithm (scrypt?) WAS chosen for having CPU-friendly qualities? Which leads me to ask: Having been developed for traditional CPU processing and thus not using the most secure form of cryptography, is Litecoin not as robust and secure as Bitcoin? I would imagine, if true, this would make it considerably less competitive. So... In this new open source market where ideas lack ownership, will Bitcoin maintain a monopoly on the market, having the right and capability of integrating all of the best aspects of current and future cryptocurrencies? Will Bitcoin, being the first and current best, continue to adapt and evolve to keep ahead, leaving competition to act as a foundation for further implementations? If not, does anyone else believe that there are other cryptocurrencies which are fundamentally better than Bitcoin? Traditional Markets:Certain payment processors are running transactions cheaper than say, BitPays 2.69%. Sure their costs against fraud are huge, and global-transfer limitations allow for a negligible threat of competition in this regard, but cheap innovative services like squareup.com can be very competitive in local markets. I'm not entirely worried about this threat though, but am curious if anyone else believes this area could be competitive still. I'm sure you guys have a lot more to say than I do about this. On the other hand, I believe this what-could-be-massive transfer of wealth we are pulling here will not go down unnoticed, and without some fighting from the existing powers that be. I'm not exactly sure how Bitcoin would face threats against this front, so maybe you guys have some thoughts on this as well. Internal/External Security Issues:"Difficulty is intended as an automatic stabilizer allowing mining for bitcoins to remain only minimally profitable in the long run for the most efficient miners, independently of the fluctuations in demand of bitcoin in relation to other currencies." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Mining_difficultyI'm not worried about a 51% take-over. I'm worried about double-spend issues hindering the growth and adoption of Bitcoin, when transaction verification should be trending towards instantaneous, opposed to every 10 minutes, and a general slow-down in the network hash-rate creeps in as a growing divergence between Difficulty and Mining Revenues increases; possibly as coin-rewards drop and mining revenues are increasingly derived from fee's. Can the Bitcoin network really sustain trillions billions of transactions per day? http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-database/economic-data/12058-payments-volumes-worldwide.html#axzz2IxBZysD7I would imagine, at the very least, the internal trading of emerging Bitcoin financial institutions (private companies, banks, institutions, exchanges, the Paypal's of bitcoin, etc) will develop as they are implemented, relieving much of the burden upon the public mining network, and reducing many double-spend issues as lump-sum inter-bank transactions make up a larger portion of the Bitcoin network's transactions. Effectively, these new private networks will help to reduce mining fee's in the future, which I believe will rise, by bulking their internal-transactions up before sending them off to the what-will-be-massive mining network, who's main responsibilities will become more similar to today's clearing houses. This overall development would help to sustain hash-rates, keep transactions fast, and transaction fee's competitive. http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/01/bitpay-surpasses-10000-bitcoin-merchant.html?m=1You guys most likely have better visions of Bitcoin than this, theories of the future that actually have futuristic technologies - that I have no idea about. I'd like to hear 'em. Either way, why is it every 10 minutes for a block? Why not every 5 minutes? Why every 2016 blocks for Difficulty (I know its two weeks at 10 min)? Why not every 1008 blocks? Maybe evaluating the change in Difficulty at a weekly rate would be a better idea economically? Or how about a self-regulating algorithm to determine the best timing of Difficulty adjustments? Perhaps an automatic adjustment if the hash-rate deviates by 1.6180% from a moving average? Who knows, in the future, little things like this may be important. Legal threats:Currently, Bitcoin does not have any legal status in most jurisdictions, as they say. Therefore, it has no legal threats in any direct way. Bitcoin related ventures being a different beast - which governments seem to enjoy poking at. I'm curious what you guys have to say on this one too. Think we'll face issues in the future? I think I read somewhere that England may have already stated that Bitcoin was perfectly legal. Regardless, do you guys think they may come to regret that statement? I have a feeling the Bank of England might... Ahhhhhhhhh! |
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Solex and mobodick have the right idea. Here's an excerpt from the blog in my signature:
The value of Bitcoin comes from the implementation of a true, public ledger, with every recorded bit of information/data that the economy creates, processes, and stores. The utility of that record is what defines the worth of its currency. Instead of atoms like gold or silver having "intrinsic value", subatomic particles like electrons (and in the future, possibly photons) are becoming the stores of value for our new world. Our global society has been migrating away from the old physical world, to this new age, where information is becoming a more valuable part of our existence. Corporations know that in order to survive they must hire strong ideas, not people. A majority of the world's societies have been participating less and less in the physical world, and more in digital networks, like Facebook, or this blog that you are reading, right now, on the internet. Being able to verify all the accounts and transactions of your world can be very powerful. It can also be scary, which is why Bitcoin transactions include anonymous capabilities.
We are leaving our physical world people, don't stay attached to it...
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