2013-04-17 americanbanker.com - Governments Must Co-Opt Bitcoin to Avert Disaste

[lunarboy]

I really love the fact that after 2 years of addictively reading this forum, I can now read a mainstream so called "high brow" financial article such as this and mentally rip their uninformed nonsence to SHREDS 

Thank you bitcoin

The policy conclusion is clear. Bitcoin should be disqualified as a functional tradable currency. However, a properly regulated, digitized option for the prevailing currency should be rushed to market. If not, Bitcoin will reign, suck in an enormous amount of wealth, and eventually implode, unleashing a financial tsunami of unimagined proportions.

Bitcoin is bad news on many levels. The most obvious concern was proven after the Cyprus crisis erupted: stability. What if people start lending and borrowing bitcoins? If your debt is denominated in the digital currency, and then its price soars, your burden in dollars will be off the chart. How would the debtors ever pay back their debt if overnight it multiplies by a factor of three?

Muppets ! 

[Mike Christ]

This wouldn't happen to be related to that autistic asshole Anonymint, would it?  Seems to reek of it, in writing style, and "mint".

[grondilu]

This wouldn't happen to be related to that autistic asshole Anonymint, would it?  Seems to reek of it, in writing style, and "mint".

He seems to be deeply related to bitmint.com, for what it's worth.

[FreddyFender]

This wouldn't happen to be related to that autistic asshole Anonymint, would it?  Seems to reek of it, in writing style, and "mint".

He seems to be deeply related to bitmint.com, for what it's worth.

When I first ran into Anonymint, I was thinking back on a time when we first met Synaptic... *sigh*
Checked out lots of resources for Bitmint but they all seem ethereal and derpy.

[herzmeister]

This wouldn't happen to be related to that autistic asshole Anonymint, would it?  Seems to reek of it, in writing style, and "mint".

He seems to be deeply related to bitmint.com, for what it's worth.

When I first ran into Anonymint, I was thinking back on a time when we first met Synaptic... *sigh*
Checked out lots of resources for Bitmint but they all seem ethereal and derpy.

to be fair, Shelby Moore/Anonymint's project is something else. It is decentralized, with a proof of work scheme that will destroy users' hard drives. 

[FreddyFender]

to be fair, Shelby Moore/Anonymint's project is something else. It is decentralized, with a proof of work scheme that will destroy users' hard drives. 

+1

[marcus_of_augustus]

The muppets are engaging ... and the fact is they must now come to compete on the geek playing field.

Good luck with that, if people want geek money they are gonna come to the geeks to get it, not the bankers.

Monetary freedom is the salt water that burns these vampires, you can almost hear the hisses in between the lines on this one.

[Mastergerund]

My favorite sentence, by far, was on page 3.

Gideon Samid is an adjust (sic) assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Case Western Reserve University.

What qualifies an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science to write an informed article about banking and finance? I acknowledge that there are many informed autodidacts, and the topics are approachable with some effort, but... this was just nonsense!

[Zomdifros]

[SirWilliam]

Good evening crypto-currency evildoers.

I am Dr. Shalom Sadman, ad junk teaching assistant in the department of Plumbing and Electrician training at DeVry University. I am also a contributing editor at American Wanker, the leading industry magazine among professional wankers. I further own up to having started and owning my own startup: MintBits.com. Our slogan is "MintBits, when Junior Mints are just too big."

I hope you all think you are smart, playing with your digital fire without any digital safety precautions. But it won't be so funny when your actions, through a long Rube-Goldberg-machine-esque series of consequences, eventually lead to our planet earth being annihilated in the coming digital currency laser robot wars.

To those "nubiles" amongst you, without my experience and knowledge in the digital area (I have decades of experience in giving digital examinations to various areas of my students in fact) let me explain to you just what you are toying with. A "Bit Coin" is a digital currency, it is digital in the sense that it is made up of digits and its currency aspect derives from it currently being in the news a great deal. But let's digitally examine this phenomenon more deeply, let's go INSIDE the "rear entrance" and explore the alimentary canal of this currency, so to speak. A Bit Coin is different than a real coin in the sense that a Bit Coin is not real, it is instead made up of "bits." Now, as an expert, I can let you in on a dirty little secret about bits. Two bits...make a quarter.

So let's examine the real valuation of this electric terrorist money. A Bit Coin is made up of 256 bits, which, using my academic knowledge, I can break down and convert into an understandable number of real coins. There are 128 quarters in a 256-bit Bit Coin. 128 quarters make up only 32 dollars. So from this simple calculation you can understand that the Bit Coin is wildly overvalued at current levels. But it gets much worse. The bits we are talking about here will not even get you a shave and a haircut because they are electrified digital bits and therefore can't be payed out in the form of a genuine metal quarter.

On to the safety of using Bit Coins. Now you like to talk about your fancy-schmancy cryptofascist security. But let me make a very valid and relevant analogy at this point to explain this to you laypeople. These Bit Coins are protected by some sort of a code of numbers and digits and such forth. So let's think of another code, The Da Vinci Code for example. Those albino priests thought it was unbreakable and couldn't be cracked, but Tom Hanks sure made short work of it. 146 minutes it took him (it just felt longer) and now the whole world knows the Holy Grail is beneath that damn glass pyramid. Sorry, should have said spoiler alert. So obviously this so-called "very secure encryption" will soon be broken by some nerd with a scientific calculator and then your Bit Coins will all be zooming down the information superhighway into someone else's Bitty Wallet.

What can we to avoid this nightmare scenario? Luckily, I can offer an alternative. The wanking industry would do well to sign a few open-ended contracts with MintBits.com so together we can fight this apocalyptic future with the power of tiny, chocolatey, minty goodness.

Thank you for your attention.

[StarfishPrime]

Good evening crypto-currency evildoers...

lol. Pretty good chance that would slip past the editors too (if there are any) at "American Banker".

The "bitmint" site actually looked like a spoof at first glance, but sadly it appears to be a delusional 'business idea'.

But remember: "Bitmint is Bitcoin done right" ... or maybe "done real good"?

[Zomdifros]

Good evening crypto-currency evildoers.

I am Dr. Shalom Sadman, ad junk teaching assistant in the department of Plumbing and Electrician training at DeVry University. I am also a contributing editor at American Wanker, the leading industry magazine among professional wankers. I further own up to having started and owning my own startup: MintBits.com. Our slogan is "MintBits, when Junior Mints are just too big."

I hope you all think you are smart, playing with your digital fire without any digital safety precautions. But it won't be so funny when your actions, through a long Rube-Goldberg-machine-esque series of consequences, eventually lead to our planet earth being annihilated in the coming digital currency laser robot wars.

To those "nubiles" amongst you, without my experience and knowledge in the digital area (I have decades of experience in giving digital examinations to various areas of my students in fact) let me explain to you just what you are toying with. A "Bit Coin" is a digital currency, it is digital in the sense that it is made up of digits and its currency aspect derives from it currently being in the news a great deal. But let's digitally examine this phenomenon more deeply, let's go INSIDE the "rear entrance" and explore the alimentary canal of this currency, so to speak. A Bit Coin is different than a real coin in the sense that a Bit Coin is not real, it is instead made up of "bits." Now, as an expert, I can let you in on a dirty little secret about bits. Two bits...make a quarter.

So let's examine the real valuation of this electric terrorist money. A Bit Coin is made up of 256 bits, which, using my academic knowledge, I can break down and convert into an understandable number of real coins. There are 128 quarters in a 256-bit Bit Coin. 128 quarters make up only 32 dollars. So from this simple calculation you can understand that the Bit Coin is wildly overvalued at current levels. But it gets much worse. The bits we are talking about here will not even get you a shave and a haircut because they are electrified digital bits and therefore can't be payed out in the form of a genuine metal quarter.

On to the safety of using Bit Coins. Now you like to talk about your fancy-schmancy cryptofascist security. But let me make a very valid and relevant analogy at this point to explain this to you laypeople. These Bit Coins are protected by some sort of a code of numbers and digits and such forth. So let's think of another code, The Da Vinci Code for example. Those albino priests thought it was unbreakable and couldn't be cracked, but Tom Hanks sure made short work of it. 146 minutes it took him (it just felt longer) and now the whole world knows the Holy Grail is beneath that damn glass pyramid. Sorry, should have said spoiler alert. So obviously this so-called "very secure encryption" will soon be broken by some nerd with a scientific calculator and then your Bit Coins will all be zooming down the information superhighway into someone else's Bitty Wallet.

What can we to avoid this nightmare scenario? Luckily, I can offer an alternative. The wanking industry would do well to sign a few open-ended contracts with MintBits.com so together we can fight this apocalyptic future with the power of tiny, chocolatey, minty goodness.

Thank you for your attention.

Lol!

[xcsler]

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

The first half of this article reads completely differently than the second half.
Up until "the Cyprus-Sarajevo spark is catching fire." comment that ends the first webpage, and seems like a great closing statement, the article is very positive and supportive of Bitcoin.
When clicking the link to read the full article the piece does a 180 degree turn and turns sour.
Also, the 2 halves of the article seem to be written in different styles as if written by different authors!

Anyone agree?

[grondilu]

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

The first half of this article reads completely differently than the second half.
Up until "the Cyprus-Sarajevo spark is catching fire." comment that ends the first webpage, and seems like a great closing statement, the article is very positive and supportive of Bitcoin.
When clicking the link to read the full article the piece does a 180 degree turn and turns sour.
Also, the 2 halves of the article seem to be written in different styles as if written by different authors!

Anyone agree?

It is definitely a weird article.  At some point at thought the author was using irony to advocate for bitcoin.

[StarfishPrime]

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

The first half of this article reads completely differently than the second half.
Up until "the Cyprus-Sarajevo spark is catching fire." comment that ends the first webpage, and seems like a great closing statement, the article is very positive and supportive of Bitcoin.
When clicking the link to read the full article the piece does a 180 degree turn and turns sour.
Also, the 2 halves of the article seem to be written in different styles as if written by different authors!

Anyone agree?

Yeah. Something just doesn't seem quite right. The peculiar, stilted style reads more like an 10th grade school assignment (C-). The writer works a little too hard to make weak, unsupported points sound profound, and they just comes across as ignorance with a veneer of awkward self-importance instead.

Speaking of weak, unsupported points... Did anyone else read the super-scary-dangers-to-the-financial-world "white paper" on his bitmint.com site?
Here's a highlight so you won't have to:

"In recent years it became clear that Swiss banks and other financial havens for unlaundered money are no longer effective – owing to an aggressive US treasury campaign. Hundreds of billions of dollars were consequently withdrawn from these institutions. Reportedly, big chunks of this wealth have not surfaced anywhere. Some experts believe that the financial black hole where these funds are hidden is dark crypto money."

i.e: Somewhere there is a super-duper-secret "dark crypto money" system capitalized to 100's of billions of dollars.     Litecoin? namecoin? LOL

The writer clearly hasn't got the slightest idea, conceptual or factual, of what he's going on about.

[blogospheroid]

Can someone brighter than me answer this one?

Is it possible at all to use one-time pads as he advocates, in any form of crypto currency?
Infact is it even possible to use for a digital currency with a central issuer?
Because if the key is sent out from a central location, isn't it vulnerable to man in the middle attacks?

[jbreher]

marcus_of_augustas; SirWilliam.

Insightful, cutting.

So much win.

Thanks.

[SirWilliam]

No, thank you, sir!

I am really pleased by the level of knowledge and intelligence shown here in this thread and in general in this forum. There are a lot of well-meaning intellectuals here and it bodes well for Bitcoin.

[imanikin]

The latest from the BitMint. 

[StarfishPrime]

The latest from the BitMint. 

lol. Never take advice from a youtube commentator with a world map and an artist's rendering of the planet Nibiru on his ceiling