Julian Assange Show: Cypherpunks Discuss Bitcoin

[kiba]

Future NOVA documentary:


Lost Treasure of the ECDSA: Inside the Effort To Recover Lost Bitcoin

[Technomage]

Future NOVA documentary:


Lost Treasure of the ECDSA: Inside the Effort To Recover Lost Bitcoin

+1

[MaxSan]

I have used Bitcoin for quite a while now and I've had a lot of different wallets of different types and I have lost exactly 0 satoshis during the entire time. I may be an exception or "lucky" but I don't think bitcoins are easy to lose. They are easy to lose if you're careless but it is sort of idiotic beyond idiotic to not be careful with Internet money.

Internet money, which is used in the realm of hackers and viruses, is something one should be a bit careful with. There are improvements to be made though, one of them would be easy to use implementations of multisig so that wallets could be easily set up that require signatures from multiple devices to send bitcoins.

This. A bit of common sense goes a long way.

[niko]

Oh come on. Being easy to loose in fact is a problem of bitcoin right now. Reminds me I should refresh my wallet backup

I'm an almost-average Windows user. I've lost zero coins over the past two years. In the same period, I've lost $20.

I did intentionally destroy some coins when I reformatted a HD back in 2010, and didn't care to back up the wallet. I don't consider this a problem, on the contrary: burning government-issued cash in most jurisdictions is a crime. With bitcoins I'm free to do whatever I want, including destroying them.

My coins are reasonably safe in multiple copies of paper wallets, and some of them on bitcoinspinner for everyday use.

[szuetam]

Funny quote:

"Money can disappear from Bitcoin. It cannot work in the long run."

Bitcoin is infinitely divisible.

Is or could become?

[szuetam]

Yes, but you can always add more decimal places.

It is 8 places now and I wonder how "easy" would it be to change it?

[niko]

Yes, but you can always add more decimal places.

Jest 8 places now and I wonder how "easy" would it be to change it?

I assume you meant "just," not "jest." Before making a statement, you could actually do the math and some thinking to come up with a sensible statement. Here, I'll do it for you. There will be a total of 21 million coins. With eight decimals on top of it, we have a total of 2.1E15 indivisible units of account. This is a big number, you know. To put it in perspective, the total of all gold ever mined in the history of humankind is about 150,000 tonnes, or 1.5E11 grams, or 1.5E14 mg of gold. Ever mined. There are fourteen times more bitcoin units than milligrams of gold ever mined. In current prices, one mg of gold is worth about four US cents.
I hope you'll agree that "just 8 places" is not a sensible comment.
Also, wondering how "easy" it would be to change the algorithm implies once again that you have already decided to be negative about something without doing proper research.

[bg002h]

People losing bitcoins will simply be good for everyone else. The value of all other bitcoins go up. This is not a flaw of any sort because bitcoins are very divisible.

So raw eggs would be a perfect currency or at least there would be no problem with them breaking all the time as it makes the raw eggs of others just even more valuable.

Oh come on. Being easy to loose in fact is a problem of bitcoin right now. Reminds me I should refresh my wallet backup

Good money has more than one property. Being divisible is one. Durable would be another.

A wallet is so easy to back up, and you can make as many backups as you wish, that I'm going to call bullshit on "easy to lose" being a problem.

I'd say easy for some to lose. There is no denying that you'll always be able to find someone who can't understand Bitcoin, someone who is careless, and someone who is in too much of a hurry to think about security.

I wouldn't call it a major problem of Bitcoin, but I wouldn't dismiss it outright. Not many people want money that disappears when their POS computer crashes.

[rjk]

There will be a total of 21 million coins. With eight decimals on top of it, we have a total of 2.1E15 indivisible units of account. This is a big number, you know. To put it in perspective, the total of all gold ever mined in the history of humankind is about 150,000 tonnes, or 1.5E11 grams, or 1.5E14 mg of gold. Ever mined. There are fourteen times more bitcoin units than milligrams of gold ever mined. In current prices, one mg of gold is worth about four US cents.

That's a pretty damned cool statistic that I did not know about. Thanks for that information.

[niko]

There will be a total of 21 million coins. With eight decimals on top of it, we have a total of 2.1E15 indivisible units of account. This is a big number, you know. To put it in perspective, the total of all gold ever mined in the history of humankind is about 150,000 tonnes, or 1.5E11 grams, or 1.5E14 mg of gold. Ever mined. There are fourteen times more bitcoin units than milligrams of gold ever mined. In current prices, one mg of gold is worth about four US cents.

That's a pretty damned cool statistic that I did not know about. Thanks for that information.

You are most welcome. I hope this simple analysis convinces people that eight decimal places are enough. Even in an unlikely event that Bitcoin completely replaces gold in the arenas of store of value and speculation, there is plenty of room even for microtransactions.

[notme]

The difference is, it's easier for me, someone who has taken the time to consider security and safety, to secure my Bitcoins, than it would be for me to secure fiat dollars or gold, for example. I don't need to rely on a third party, or invest in elaborate and expensive security measures, to secure value, as long as that value is stored in the block chain.

While this is true now, once people are more aware of bitcoin, you will need the exact same measures to prevent an intruder from holding a gun to your head and making you type in a password and print out a key.

[Mike Jones]

...you will need the exact same measures to prevent an intruder from holding a gun to your head and making you type in a password and print out a key.

It's called owning a gun yourself.

[notme]

The difference is, it's easier for me, someone who has taken the time to consider security and safety, to secure my Bitcoins, than it would be for me to secure fiat dollars or gold, for example. I don't need to rely on a third party, or invest in elaborate and expensive security measures, to secure value, as long as that value is stored in the block chain.

...you will need the exact same measures to prevent an intruder from holding a gun to your head and making you type in a password and print out a key.

It's called owning a gun yourself.

That might help unless they catch you off guard.  Of course, if you have children the guns have to be locked up or you can get slapped with "child endangerment".  Good luck getting to your gun cabinet before he gets you in his sights and tells you not to move.

[Mike Jones]

That might help unless they catch you off guard.  Of course, if you have children the guns have to be locked up or you can get slapped with "child endangerment".  Good luck getting to your gun cabinet before he gets you in his sights and tells you not to move.

If we always assume our attackers are stronger, we might as well start digging our graves.

[AbsoluteZero]

So raw eggs would be a perfect currency .....

Bernanke would be the perfect chicken!

[foo]

Jest 8 places now and I wonder how "easy" would it be to change it?

I assume you meant "just," not "jest." Before making a statement, you could actually do the math and some thinking to come up with a sensible statement. Here, I'll do it for you. There will be a total of 21 million coins. With eight decimals on top of it, we have a total of 2.1E15 indivisible units of account. This is a big number, you know. To put it in perspective, the total of all gold ever mined in the history of humankind is about 150,000 tonnes, or 1.5E11 grams, or 1.5E14 mg of gold. Ever mined. There are fourteen times more bitcoin units than milligrams of gold ever mined. In current prices, one mg of gold is worth about four US cents.
I hope you'll agree that "just 8 places" is not a sensible comment.
Also, wondering how "easy" it would be to change the algorithm implies once again that you have already decided to be negative about something without doing proper research.

Oh snap!