Slashdot Mirror

Bitcoin costs less than it costs to mine it - but only if your paying for the electricity. Own someone else's computer and you can happily mine without worrying about pesky things like electric bills. Hell, some websites will run a miner on your computer while your browsing their web page.

https://99bitcoins.com/webmini...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/l...

The biggest problem with bitcoin is that there is no consideration as to the cost to the environment. Those that are dishonest can better exploit bitcoin than those that are honest.

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin...

what about all of the legit companies that accept Bitcoin?

That is a shrinking list precisely because of the rapid fluctuation of the currency, the ballooning transaction cost and the length of time it takes to process the transactions.

In fact what you will find is that most of these companies are not accepting bitcoin at all, they are transacting in US dollars you are simply using a service like coinbase to sell bitcoin for US dollars that are then transferred to the company. This also comes with a number of caveats and additional restrictions due to the problems with using bitcoin as a currency.

Or the fact that as economies falter and the native currencies turn to dust and banks fail/are seized, people turn to Bitcoin...

Again, when you put this into practise you find the exorbitant fees and long transaction times to be prohibitive. Yes the case study points out that the number of bitcoin users has increased in Venezuela because the inflation is so bad that finding anywhere to park your investment, even if it is as highly volatile as bitcoin, is a relative win.

As the supply of bitcoins becomes exhausted the problem of transactions becomes much worse, the incentive for mining goes away and transaction fees need to skyrocket just to have incentive for the network to continue operating. You are suggesting its practical use is as a currency however you seem unaware of limitations of the architecture of bitcoin.

Ignoring the variety of illegal goods and services which will always have value to others and can be bought with Bitcoin, what about all of the legit companies that accept Bitcoin? Or the fact that as economies falter and the native currencies turn to dust and banks fail/are seized, people turn to Bitcoin...

What specifically does Gold bring to the table? Are you using it to conduct electricity? (Its not the best conductor btw) Or are you using it in your nail polish? (its great you think its pretty... until its not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) Perhaps you mean its ARTIFICIAL scarcity? (Great news, Bitcoin is limited and scarce by design) Or how about cash... what specifically does the cash provide you other than an assumed unit of value? (good napkin? Great way to perform "off the books" transactions....)

Apparently CNN doesn't like to cover news like Argentinians using Bitcoin to protect themselves from their own countries Fiat Tanking:
https://cointelegraph.com/news...

Or Zimbabwes Fiat tanking:
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.co...

Cryptocurrencies have value from at least 4 specific areas:
1) Distributed Work Trust – Transactions are validated through a system of Distributed “Miners” that create a linked chain of parent child relationships leveraging consensus and Entropy of scale to build in protections against Fraud and Forgery.

2) Transactional Integrity – Transactions are signed in such a way as to make them quickly verifiable both in internal integrity to each block, as well as each blocks’ place in the chain to create an immutable sequence and protect against Fraud and Forgery.

3) An Immutable Data Store – Referred to as a “Distributed Ledger,” values can be added to the signed and verified transaction chain becoming part of the distributed, and immutable record.

4) Distributed Logic Processing – Ethereum provides the benefit of executing functions in a Turing complete language across the distributed node and mining network. These functions (commonly referred to as contracts) are added to the chain (or Ledger) as Libraries which will exist so long as the chain does. For reference, “Contracts” are also available in Bitcoin though under a non-Turing complete implementation. Either way these are executable "contract" code libs built into the chain... does your dollar do that?

Why is gold even a competitor? Its like comparing Apples and Teslas.

Its frustrating seeing so many people falling for the lines of a bunch of crooks and fraudsters that are just trying to manipulate markets so they can continue to profit from ignorance.

Some more resources for those that are having a hard time Googling Bitcoin Value and want to learn more:
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin...
http://www.google.com/

That's funny. -> https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin...

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin...

The article states "the server", implying there was only 1. I'd be surprised if the guy actually mined anything, and I don't see any way he made enough to cover the fine. That doesn't even take into account lawyers fees and diminished career opportunities.

The pointless article is still on the front page and Bitcoin is already back over $1000.

Bitcoin has died 119 times so far.
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin...

Refer you to https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin...