Slashdot Mirror

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/

no government will adjudicate public or private debts using it

That seems to be changing.

no government will adjudicate public or private debts using it

That seems to be changing.

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

It has gone wrong.

I'm still waiting for a government or national-bank to issue blockchain-based currency that is backed by a familiar, tangible asset such as gold, silver, or the local fiat currency.

Unlike bitcoin, this would be a "captive" coin and it would not have many of the benefits of bitcoin and the like.

But here is what it would have:

* Stable value: Like currency or metal, a "bit-buck" is worth $1 and it always will be and a "bit-troy-ounce of gold" is worth 1 troy ounce of gold and it always will be.
* Built-in: In most industrialized countries, most people trust the national bank and the government when it comes to currency issues. I'm not saying they should, only that they typically do.
* Like bitcoin, you can trade with it without having a bank account or having to carry cash.
* You can trade "whole wallets" many times in a way that is free of any record-keeping except by the final recipient, who will want to transfer the money to his own wallet and at the same time verify that the wallet he received is legit.
* It's a backdoor to increased use of BitCoin etc.: It would encourage people to install software that make using it easy. Presumably, this software would also work with BitCoin and other non-backed coins, so their use will also presumably increase.
* As "Novelty use local currency" it can boost local pride. Think "college campus bucks" or "state fair dollars."

There is one major disadvantage:
To work right, there must be excess dollars or gold or whatever to cover newly-mined coins, or the coins must be "pre-mined" which means someone will have to cover the transaction costs. To be acceptable to the general public, there must not be any transaction fees. This means that in practice, the state or bank holding the reserves will need to pay the transaction fees or be constanty adding to the "backing reserve" until the coin is fully mined.

Yes, I know there are strong arguments why backing the blockchain with assets helps rather than hurts, but for applications where you need stability, it's a big win.

Check the link, each address starts with 1$n where n is a single word of the song. These are wallet addresses.

He probably used exactly this guide followed it to the letter, or number 1 in this case.

That is kind of funny, because Bitcoins are incredibly easy to trace. Many things are being broken up by the ability to trace bitcoin. The blockchain keeps track of every transaction, so if I record the bitcoin ID, and transfer you the bitcoin, it can be tracked through every transaction to where you finally pull out the money, where it becomes obvious who owns the wallet by the account that receives the money.

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/p...

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/21...

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.co...

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

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

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...

My computer cost me a few trillion dollars you insensitive clod!

Maybe it's Zimbabwean dollars, in which case it means Uber isn't even worth one U.S.A. dollar. I'd be okay with that.

I mean, you can identify wallets, but you can't identify owners of wallets.

Uh huh. Keep believing it. And they aren't even the first ones to unmask bitcoin users.

That coming on the heels of the decentralized web solution coming from BitTorrent, Inc.

Pretty exciting times.

Just to clarify what I'm talking about:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/su...
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.co...
https://www.quora.com/Why-does...
https://news.ycombinator.com/i...
http://www.thefrisky.com/2014-...

Not yet anyways.

6 months ago GHash.IO promised they would
(1) Take steps to prevent accumulating 51% hashing power, including: not accepting new miners, and
(2) They would not attempt an attack, and (3) They would provide cex.io users an option to use another mining pool
(They have apparently not implemented (3) yet).

A DDoS against the pool was reported to occur yesterday, which adversely affected mining.
At one point... their hashrate was reported to have dropped to 7%.
Then BitFury pulled 1 PH/s out of their pool.

Excellent post. BTC haters gonna hate, and I don't understand why.

Funny thing about pooled mining, it's run by the users. User's don't like it? They go away.

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com...
96MH/s hardware litecoin/scrypt miner, $3600.

However, the large mining groups also make large targets. A simple DDOS makes them small potatoes again. http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com... A few of these and the big mining groups will start breaking up.

Not yet anyways.

6 months ago GHash.IO promised they would (1) Take steps to prevent accumulating 51% hashing power, including: not accepting new miners, and (2) They would not attempt an attack, and (3) They would provide cex.io users an option to use another mining pool (They have apparently not implemented (3) yet).

A DDoS against the pool was reported to occur yesterday, which adversely affected mining. At one point... their hashrate was reported to have dropped to 7%. Then BitFury pulled 1 PH/s out of their pool.

On the other hand doesn't this actually put the merchant at more risk? I get my goods, hop in the car, and ten minutes later he finds out I gave him bad bit coins.

Confirmations aren't as important as may have been originally thought...

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com...

It at least brings it into the realms of tolerable/insurable. Double spend is really hard, probably not worth the effort unless its a big (high value) purchase.

I'm sure there are exceptions, but high value purchases are probably worth hanging around a bit longer for, and probably involve some kind of warranty which in turn depends on some kind of identification.

Probably works just fine for the majority of cases, at least right now...

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com...
Has some relevant information.

Hey look! A bitcoin!

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2013/12/17/bitcoin-featured-almost-human-tv-show-set-year-2048/