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Learn economics and facts before you speak...

Oh, this is going to be good.

- Volatility is COMPLETELY NORMAL and EXPECTED process of adoption of a new distributed currency into a free and open market.

Citation needed.

Fiat is only "stable" due to manipulation to target, see the Fed's own whitepapers on that.

So if you abandon all pretense of manipulation to target, you get volatility. Nice own-goal.

IN FACT, Fiat is extremely volatile when priced in cryptocurrency.

Yes, due to the volatility of the cryptocurrency. Now price either of those in real world goods, like a pizza.

- Blockchain design model itself has NEVER been "hacked". Only the shitware and shitcorps and shitcoins surrounding it has been.

Counterpoint. Unless your "blockchain design model" manages to exclude every cryptocurrency deployed to date.

- NOT your keys, NOT your Cryptocurrency. Read the news... banks get "hacked" ALL THE FUCKING TIME MATE.

Not as frequently as cryptowallets, not without recourse (insurance because thank you state banking laws), and not with the ability to disappear with nary a trace because thank you Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation).

Sounds plenty learned to me.

This "blockchain gaming" sounds like a truckload of horseshit.

I wonder if these new cryptocurrency press releases have anything to do with this:

https://www.coindesk.com/bitco...

Public view?

Your main weakness is recounting. Let's work backwards from electronic for this one.

With electronic voting machines, once you've proven the integrity of the machine, you can prove the ballot set. Everyone votes, the machine displays some kind of computation, and only then do you enter the machine to remove the ballots (digital media copy, whatever).

For provisional ballots cast in-person (wrong polling center, etc.), you load the provisional ballots into your hash set by the same rules, marking them as provisional--and you don't include identifying information in that set. This still exposes identity to the public if your polling center collects only a few provisional ballots (if it's only one, we know whose is provisional), which is the same problem as very few people voting (one polling center here had 67 people vote in the primary, with only three Republicans who all voted for the same candidates, so I can give any of them their exact ballot back. Imagine three people voting in the General by provisional in a pile of 1,600 votes). The solution is to obscure who is voting provisionally.

Under this scheme, ballots are traceable: the central authority publishes each ballot set with its polling center. We can all recompute the hash and prove the ballot set is untampered. They can strike any provisional ballot, so long as they leave its contents up in the ballot set and mark it rejected.

As you note, absentee ballots come in the mail, are paper, are not observed, and so represent a weakness. Disenfranchisement represents a larger threat, so we accept this weakness. On military base and ship, we can actually run the same kind of public election as here, observed by the public of the men on ship--who of course will leak if they're not allowed to record election ballot traces.

So what about paper?

Well, you can slip a piece of pencil under your fingernail and spoil ballots when counting paper in full public view. You can miscount. Election judges can collude, despite the whole reliance on people not colluding (we've seen this in other places).

We perform our recounts days or weeks later, with ballots kept in a secure location. Again: how do I know anyone in the chain-of-custody isn't just a group of 3-5 people who can print a new seal and are fully-willing to collude? Buy a few people off, get them an election pen (remember what I said about pencil?), and they can create a few new spoiler ballots.

In an election with 100,000 ballots, one state here recounted with 3,500 fewer, and claimed they must have just found more spoilers (without explaining which were probably not originally spoilers). We just accept that. Three percent of votes.

See how many avenues of attack we have? Now look at our electronic voting machines. Yeah, hell no. The stuff out there is horrible. That doesn't mean paper is safe; it just means we damned well better move to stronger EVMs if we're going to move off paper.

Candidate wins by 2000 votes and only 1000 advanced votes, why bother counting

Computing whether a candidate won can be...difficult. Take any Smith-efficient system. You have to compute all the one-on-one pairings: if a ballot ranks Bill 1, Anne 2, and Jim 3, then Bill vs Jim is 1 vote to Bill, Bill vs. Anne is 1 vote to Bill, Anne vs. Jim is 1 vote to Anne. These pairings are important.

To get the Smith set, you find out who wins these.

Let's say Bill, Anne, and Jim each get a majority of rankings above Dave and Mary. Dave and Mary categorically lose against these other three. Dave and Mary are out.

Now we have Bill, Anne, and Jim. Bill beats Anne; Anne beats Jim; Jim beats Bill. O

I haven't done much research, but a quick google finds this article that says the current average fee is about 1 satoshi per hop (fractions of a cent) and "the costs of spinning up a node and routing payments via the lightning network are not that high".

Presumably those running nodes that take 1 satoshi aren't doing so at a loss - so I think banks would really struggle to undercut the super-cheap nodes. Maybe a bank can run at a loss for longer than everyone else - but after the banks have killed competition and hike up their fees - the competition will come right on back.

Sex Workers are Using Crypto to Save for Retirement

Given that Ethereum has had a centralized hard-fork and bitcoin has had a mining pool over 50% control, your faith in those coins seems very misplaced...

https://www.coindesk.com/ether...

https://arstechnica.com/inform...

There isn't enough bitcoin for it to be the single worldwide currency. According to coindesk, the market cap of bitcoin is $0.146T, or $146 billion. Apple alone has more cash than that, so it is not feasible for bitcoin to ever be the single worldwide currency.

Nope. Cryptocurrency is here to stay. The price has gone up over $300 in the past few hours and is already past $8000 again.

Citation https://www.coindesk.com/price...

"Arizona Governor Signs Blockchain Bill Into Law" https://www.coindesk.com/arizo...

Do some basic research before spewing nonsense.

Coindesk confirms it

FTFY

And BTW, coindesk uses linux, not BSD ... for what it's worth.

https://www.coindesk.com/the-f...

"We wanted to do a blockchain technology-related ETF, so not another bitcoin fund but something that takes advantage of the underlying ecosystem. So we developed a methodology in-house which measures seven quantitative factors and we run those factors on a universe of publicly traded [data]."

I trust them, they have quantified a universe after all.

Silly goose. What's this "Exchange" nonsense. You're supposed to BUY cryptocurrencies, not SELL them. Go find a Bitcoin ATM and do your part to support the currency revolution. https://www.coindesk.com/bitco...

1/1/2019:
Bitcoin just passed $1m per coin and governments worldwide have banned its use under penalty of death as it's too disruptive to existing economic norms. many "bit billionaires" are afraid of cashing in due to publicity and government scrutiny. Think this is unlikely, look at https://www.coindesk.com/price... (1 year) and do a linear regression of the trajectory. Makes tulips look like sawdust,

Many ways, such as Distributed Hash Tables can even out the block storage load.

The blockchain can already be received from a satellite broadcast: https://www.coindesk.com/block... reducing network traffic costs.

Lots of 'Altcoins' (like Litecoin and Etherium) have improvements; but Bitcoin is the 'stable branch' with only the most proven and conservative changes. So it might be a little old fashioned, with 2015 technology, but it's rock solid.

Well, yeah. I mean, according to https://www.coindesk.com/price/ it's gained over $2000 in value today. But it could just as easily drop $2000 in value tomorrow.

When it fluctuates that much in the short term, there's much less incentive for businesses to use it.

"Oh, I accepted this fraction of a Bitcoin as payment, but it just dropped so much that I lost money."

- or for the holders of Bitcoins -

"Oh, I just spent that fraction of a Bitcoin as a payment for this product, but it just jumped so much that I effectively overpaid for the product."

Apparently the Chinese used to love trading bitcoin for bitcoin

Ok so you've demonstrated that you have no idea how an exchange works. Probably best to stop right there.

There was lots of volume on the Chinese exchanges when there was zero fees
https://www.coindesk.com/real-...

If I trade BTC => Other => BTC, it's still just trading BTC for BTC to inflate the volume.

As to others, here's one: https://data.bitcoinity.org/ma...

That's only showing about $3.5B for the last 24 hours, still a lot but not "over $6" and it includes exchanges w/o fees, which are prone to be manipulated.

I can show you 3 other sites that appear to give different figures, why is that one trustworthy?

Apparently the Chinese used to love trading bitcoin for bitcoin: https://www.coindesk.com/real-... but regardless, moving 'value' from one person to another is trading bitcoin for bitcoin.

Who the fuck is taking bitcoin as a security? That might just be the dumbest thing I've heard this year.

if you needed a transaction to verify a private key with the network how would you ever make a new address to receive? it becomes chicken and egg.

the means of private signing key to public address is well known and does not need to create a transaction to verify. take directory.io ( site seems down, article about it https://www.coindesk.com/bitco... )

any block explorer can check if a address resulting from to a private key has unspent outputs or skip the network traffic by running a local node modified to index unspent output from all addresses ( https://github.com/bitpay/bitc... ) instead just ones which private keys are held in a wallet file, ie default node.

lastly in order to show how difficult it is to brute force private keys look at the large bitcoin collider project ( https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/ ) which is a distributed effort working on a puzzle transaction where coins were sent to numerous address with amounts increasing with number of none zero bytes bits.

Contrary to a PoW-chain absent a +51% cartel

In 2014 a single mining pool reached 50%.
https://www.coindesk.com/51-at...

As bitcoin mining in increasingly centralized on expensive specialized ASIC hardware, as individual/small miners increasingly host remotely (where they don't have physical control of ASICs) where electricity is inexpensive, bitcoin insecurity is increasing.

Bitcoin was designed with the assumption of distributed mining. With many small players contributing to the blockchain, as in the early days when CPU and GPU mining was practical. That assumption of bitcoin's design has turned out to be false, bitcoin is vulnerable.

There's proof of space proposal from the bit-torrent guy. https://www.coindesk.com/proof...

Hint: Bitcoin and other Blockchain-related coins are not regulated by anyone.

Well enjoy it while it lasts cuz the SEC is going to come down on this like a ton of bricks. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.
https://www.coindesk.com/obvio...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

False.

https://www.coindesk.com/ostk-...

"Online retailer Overstock.com is shifting its cryptocurrency investment strategy keeping half of the bitcoin it takes in as payment, the company's CEO has said."

He's expecting this change due to the planned switch-over to proof of stake:
https://www.coindesk.com/ether...
https://www.coindesk.com/ether...
https://github.com/ethereum/wi...

If proof of stake works, it will fix the fundamental scalability issues that cryptocurrencies currently struggle with. It could also implode spectacularly if people figure out how to game the system or figure out a major exploit. It makes sense that he'd be very confident in his course of action, but only time will tell whether he's right or not.

He's expecting this change due to the planned switch-over to proof of stake:
https://www.coindesk.com/ether...
https://www.coindesk.com/ether...
https://github.com/ethereum/wi...

If proof of stake works, it will fix the fundamental scalability issues that cryptocurrencies currently struggle with. It could also implode spectacularly if people figure out how to game the system or figure out a major exploit. It makes sense that he'd be very confident in his course of action, but only time will tell whether he's right or not.

Why do none of these stories contain any information about the real reason he's so confident in his assertions?
https://www.coindesk.com/ether...
https://www.coindesk.com/ether...
https://github.com/ethereum/wi...

Etherium is going to move to a whole new way of handling transactions (proof of stake) that will blow the current methods out of the water...if it works safely. Proof of work is not particularly scalable, but proof of stake is.

As you can see from these coindesk news stories, this planned transition is old news, so I don't get why these stories aren't mentioning it.

Why do none of these stories contain any information about the real reason he's so confident in his assertions?
https://www.coindesk.com/ether...
https://www.coindesk.com/ether...
https://github.com/ethereum/wi...

Etherium is going to move to a whole new way of handling transactions (proof of stake) that will blow the current methods out of the water...if it works safely. Proof of work is not particularly scalable, but proof of stake is.

As you can see from these coindesk news stories, this planned transition is old news, so I don't get why these stories aren't mentioning it.

Not only is Coindesk showing a rebound above USD$3400 but let's not forget that Bitcoin's value was only around USD$1000 at the beginning of january 2017. So it's still up 200% right now. That USD$5000 value was a bubble and it had to burst.

Bitcoin price is at a three week low!

Japan recognizes Bitcoin as a legal form of payment. This helps, not hurt, Bitcoin. If they considered Bitcoin harmful they would not have done that. One of the factors pushing Bitcoin up to such high levels is the Japanese consumer who is now empowered by the Japanese government legalizing Bitcoin.

https://www.coindesk.com/japan...

Bitcoin Surpasses $4,000 Due to Strong Japanese Demand: CNBC
https://cointelegraph.com/news......

The ultimate killer feature is that bitcoin can't be counterfeited or manipulated by a central authority.

Yes, it can. 51% Attack, Majority Hash Rate Attack.

"To date, Ghash.io has twice come dangerously close to obtaining 51% of the bitcoin network's hashing power. The popular pool was able to gain 42% of the network in January, and, just last week, the pool reached a worrying 50%. In theory, obtaining a majority of network power could potentially enable massive double spending and the ability to prevent transaction confirmations, among other potentially nefarious acts. However, despite widespread concern about the vulnerability of the bitcoin network to large mining pools, there remains no easy solution to the issue." Jun 20, 2014
https://www.coindesk.com/51-at...

I wonder if Ethereum will fork to revert the stolen Ether. If so, it ruins any glimmer of hope it had at becoming a legitimate decentralized currency.

Ethereum has already forked due to similar circumstances in the past. Ethereum Classic (ETC) is the original unforked chain that continues to live on under a different management.

no government will adjudicate public or private debts using it

That seems to be changing.

Bitcoin is classify as money in: - Europe (Except France) http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/up... - Japan http://asia.nikkei.com/Politic... - Mexico https://sppld.sat.gob.mx/pld/i... - Afghanistan http://www.coindesk.com/how-bi... - Czech Republic http://www.rozhlas.cz/zpravy/e... - South Africa http://www.treasury.gov.za/com... I don' have links but I heard it's also consided a currency in - Russia, Switzerland and Nigera

Aaah, no, no no no no no no! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

It has gone wrong.

Trump said. "If you have any ideas on that, that would be great."

http://media.coindesk.com/uplo...

The price of bitcoin is more dependent on hacking or stolen wallets than on any monetary policy. It could just as easily fall 20% overnight. If you want to make a bet on inflation, it's much safer to invest in commodities (like oil or gold ETFs) or real estate (like REITs).

Here is some information about a demo that Barclays gave of Corda:

http://www.coindesk.com/r3-corda-demo-barclays-distributed-ledger/

It would appear that the banking consortium R3 is going to build a platform on top of Corda. They are going to name that platform Concord and the WSJ has an interesting blog post about how it all works together:

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/08/24/a-closer-look-at-r3s-concord/

Last I checked there were no conclusive links Paris attacks were funded by bitcoins (one source here http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoi... ). I'm pretty sure it was proven though that the terrorist were breathing French oxygen in the atmosphere though, so maybe we should get the French to start tightly regulating who can breathe over there and who can plant plants that generate that oxygen (you know, since it may be used by a terrorist)?

Would you bother playing the "how do they compare over the past 1- or 2- year period" game, then? In the name of fairness, of course--neither one of us cherry-picking a particularly good or bad 30-day window for either currency, no?

CDN-USD 1 yr: low 1.22, high 1.45

BTC-USD 1 yr: low $209, high $537

CDN-USD 2 yr: low 1.06, high 1.45

BTC-USD 2 yr: low $177, high $665

Would you bother playing the "how do they compare over the past 1- or 2- year period" game, then? In the name of fairness, of course--neither one of us cherry-picking a particularly good or bad 30-day window for either currency, no?

CDN-USD 1 yr: low 1.22, high 1.45

BTC-USD 1 yr: low $209, high $537

CDN-USD 2 yr: low 1.06, high 1.45

BTC-USD 2 yr: low $177, high $665

In other words, Bitcoin is finally getting the attention it deserves from security researchers. And, surprise! It's full of bugs!

I would be tempted to say: "Film at 11" or even "told ya so", but the truth of the matter is, I have suspected for a long long time that Bitcoin was not as secure as its proponents have been saying all along.

I am waiting for the price of bitcoin to fall pretty freaking fast, once everyone realizes hard-earned bitcoins can be stolen from thin air extremely easily, like they have been stolen in the past.

I still think Bitcoin may yet be proven as the tulip craze of the 21st century. Some people will lose their shirts. Things never change (madness and wisdom of the crowds, yadda yadda yadda).

You can mod me down now.

You have made a currency for an underworld of drug & arms dealers, paedophile porn sites and murder for hire. Oh yes, a few people use it for normal transactions too, and it ruins the environment as you have to run computers for a long time to create it.

That's a pretty lame way to frame it. You forgot to mention that it rots your teeth and destroys family values.

American paper money is also the currency of underworld drugs and arms, pedophiles, and murder for hire.

Bitcoin is also the currency of freedom from oppression, freedom from centralized regulation based on political agendas, and massive surveilance.

The American dollar... not so much.

Did you think that the credit cards refusing to allow payments to WikiLeaks was a good thing?

Googling "BitCoin freedom" turns up just shy of a million links.

At least 2000 girls in Afghanistan are being paid in bitcoin for their blog writing and social media skills.

Bitcoin Will Thrust the World Towards Freedom

It is already regulated in places... like Luxembourg

For instance, "blockchain" and "miner" (in the Bitcoin sense) were just added to the Oxford English Dictionary: http://www.coindesk.com/oxford...

There is plenty of evidence that most bitcoin mines are moving to use hydroelectric power and geothermal. They aren't doing so out of a sense of environmental altruism , but simply because "greener" power is less expensive. http://gizmodo.com/why-bitcoin... http://www.datacenterknowledge... https://www.cryptocoinsnews.co... http://dealbook.nytimes.com/20... http://www.coindesk.com/my-lif...

Jobs available backed by 121 million in VC funding- https://21.co/#jobs

Companies investing 121 million in 21INC - https://www.crunchbase.com/org...

More details - http://www.coindesk.com/21-int...

better article - https://medium.com/@21dotco/a-...

Reason Why Qualcomm may be so interested - https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

> They simply contract with a 3rd party bitcoin exchange that provides a payment address to the user

And that is where the risk enters. Many of them have already proven untrustworthy.

                http://www.forbes.com/sites/an...

                http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoi...

                http://insidebitcoins.com/news...

It's very difficult to evaluate trustworthy Bitcoin exchanges in such a shortlived market, and the faud rate seems to be quite high.

http://www.coindesk.com/change...

https://www.changetip.com/how-...

Protip aims at competing with changetip as well:

https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...

Instead of the ridiculous $387m in losses, it looks like closer to $8.1m in losses. http://www.coindesk.com/mycoin... As always, reporters are more than happy to run any title that gets hits, regardless of how likely the situation meshes with the facts.

Instead of the ridiculous $387m in losses, it looks like closer to $8.1m in losses, of which Bitcoin is only a marketing tool to make the Ponzi scheme more marketable. http://www.coindesk.com/mycoin... As always, reporters are more than happy to run any title that gets hits, regardless of how likely the situation meshes with the facts.