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Bitcoin Price Crashes
Beardydog writes "Bitcoin trading site MtGox.com has suspended operations for the rest of the day after illicit access to at least one account resulted in a steep drop in the price of Bitcoins on the site. Commenters to the support page for the event are reporting that a list of usernames and associated email addresses and password hashes have been posted online. MtGox are currently planning to roll back all of the day's trading, email notices to all affected users, and require replacement passwords for affected accounts."
Bitcoin is a decentralised computer currency designed by self-righteous Ayn Rand-reading nerds who despise looters and parasites like, er, you. It is used to purchase Internet services, illegal drugs and pictures of naked women holding video cards.
Bitcoin works by an emergent synergy of cryptography, peer-to-peer, anonymity, anarchism, libertarianism, wasting stupendous quantities of electricity, the marketing department at NVidia, the enduring exchange value of tulip bulbs and doing all of this instead of Folding@Home.
Bitcoin successfully harnesses a hitherto-unexploited Internet resource: the vast reserves of unexamined privilege amongst computer programmers. Coins are "mined" by stealing them from people who are able to comprehend this level of computer science but still keep their Bitcoin wallet in plain text on a Windows machine.
The Bitcoin system is robustly designed to continue past the collapse of the US dollar and the world economy, as the Internet, fast computers and reliable electricity are all expected to be readily available when barbarian hordes are wandering the burnt-out post-apocalyptic remnants of civilisation.
It is completely incorrect to describe Bitcoin as a "pyramid scheme." Technically, it's a "pump-and-dump."
Many common products are still inexplicably not purchasable with Bitcoins. "It's as if they don't understand the revolutionary wonder of Bitcoin," says Debian developer Hiram Nerdboy, 17. "I can't get chicks with Bitcoins either. Even with my slickest Pick-Up Artist techniques! It's as if my knowledge of economics and game theory didn't apply to real life. But that's impossible, of course. They're probably just theists. Hold on, I just gotta post to Slashdot about this."
Bitcoin was invented by Internet libertarians, in the spirit of freely-chosen individual interpersonal interactions that will bring about the utter collapse of the oppressive taint of the dead hand of government, in order to make money at your expense.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Enough with this Bitcoin spam already.
Bitcoin is stupid, unneccessary and irrelevant, we don't care for your fucking scam.
Steve Jobs has condemned bit coins to live with flash and hypercard on the island of banished toys, meanwhile electric companies and GPU manufacturers are laughing all the way to bank with your REAL coins.
captcha : payment.
I thought each trade was part of the bitcoin history, so how can you possibly "roll back" trades? I could see sending bitcoin back to where it came from, but both parties would have to agree to everything.
Not a good day for bitcoin.
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=19667.0
f-d thread still awaiting moderation approval.
fsck -t goldfish
I think that maybe its time to hit the drawing board again.
Great idea but I think they need like 1 time key generators or some other level of security layered on transactions.
Found this on the Internet: http://pastebin.com/hN7PxRhc
These are trades are done on a firm's website, with US$ and BTC balances stored on it. It's totally out of the hands of the bitcoin system except for deposits to (and withdrawls from) accounts on the site.
How can they enforce a roll back? Once the bitcoin is transferred out to another bitcoin account, there is no charge back or getting that monkey back. One would assume that any compromised account would have its bitcoins immediately transferred out, right?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The only thing I can think of is that they are rolling back transactions which haven't settled yet (settlement=delivery). Because once they bitcoins held in a MtGox account have been transferred out to your bitcoin wallet, they can't get it back. But while they are still held in MtGox account, the actual owner of the coins is MtGox (much like your brokerage is the actual owner of your monkey while you have money deposited with the brokerage).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
MtGox acts an an escrow service. You send dollars/bitcoins to MtGox, which credits your account, allowing you to make trades on the site. These trades only happen in the MtGox database, so it's possible to roll them back to an earlier state. MtGox only allows withdraws of $1000, whether in dollars or bitcoins at the latest market price.
I've been watching the Bitcoin system/experiment since the beginning of last autumn, and I can't help but feel it's receiving too much attention and increasing in value too quickly for its own good.
I really like the idea of the system and I want to see this system or one like it succeed, but with the extremely quick rise in value since last year and all the attention it's been getting, coupled with the games those with lots of bitcoins could play with the market and the somewhat unknown nature of who controls these fortunes (now in both bitcoin and USD), I felt a devastating crash is unavoidable at $.70 US / bitcoin, much less $17 / bitcoin.
At this sort of insane value, the system is an extremely interesting experiment, but I think it's a huge roadblock for serious adoption.
It also was a poor "store" of value, since transfers between users required extra energy input to extend the hash values - the typical bitcoin cost more to get to its current "value state" than the value it (theoretically) represented. It's probably the least "green" "currency" on the planet.
The bitcoin "fans" out there - this is only the beginning. You ignored all the warnings, now BITE ME!
Time for 2FA authentication to be rolled out over bitcoin operators. The anonymity element makes it a huge juicy target for hackers, they need to start connecting it to something physically offline. I am working on a bitcoin wallet for shieldpass.com access tokens and then mutually authenticating each transaction.
I was wondering that myself, but I think it must justnbe MtGox transactions rather than all BitCoin transactions.
I was a bit worried there. I got the email about Mt Gox being compromised, and soon afterwards my Gmail account stopped working. I'm guessing maybe Google just reset the passwords of everyone who got the Mt Gox email.. because my password isn't the same between the sites.. and Google asked me to change my password when I logged in via a browser.
which is totally what she said
Commenters to the support page for the event are reporting that a list of usernames and associated email addresses and password hashes have been posted online.
accounts.csv is available on rapidshare. I found my own account in the list, so it seems to be the real deal.
Some of the passwords (1764) are stored as unsalted md5 crypts, but most (59247) are salted md5 crypts.
It's going to implode! The Feds are gonna make it worthless! Sell!
Three days ago, I was called "clearly the fucking retarded idiot here" for claiming that this volatile currency would not be traded long. And I was modded down while comments like this one were modded up. "And it is always going up." Oh my how funny that is now that my longtime predictions are coming true.
I think the experiment has run its course. Now that some big player(s) have cashed out at the markets' expense, the faith in this currency/commodity should be just about dried up. "Illicit access to one account?" Your market teeters on the access to one account?! Yeah, I think that's the definition of volatile and holy hell that trader must have everyone else by the balls.
My work here is dung.
Bitcoin people still is waiting a bailout. At least they don't pretend that bitcoins worth something like the formal banks do with the dollar.
Is it just me, or does these comments, and everything surrounding this, AND THE FACT THAT THIS OCCURRED ON FATHER'S DAY, sound suspicious to anyone? I hate to sound like a conspiracy theories, but this sounds an aweful lot like a psy-op to me.
After all, Bitcoin" was not hacked, nor did "Bitcoin" crash (http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ - they are STILL WORTH MORE than the U.S. dollar). It was a SINGLE WEB SITE that was hacked. If the pirate bay was hacked, would you say that "bittorrent" was hacked? Only if you're an idiot and don't understand how bittorrent works.
In Debt of honor, Clancy has the US Goverment ( NS the rest of the world more or less, minus of cursse the evil, medling japanese) pretend like a chain of financial events never happpened.
Oh you mean REAL 2FA? that thing that has been confirmed not to exist?
RSA just felt the sting of that. "something you have" and "something you know" are not two factor, as the server has no idea what you have. When you store an algorithm+seed at the server, all your doing is asking for "something you know" twice. The concept that you can talk to a server that only has one input path, and expect it to receive two factors from two sensors is just plain over. to solve true 2FA, we'll need to COMPLETELY redesign modern computing.
Bitcoins may or may not be anything special, I won't debate that and don't have much of an opinion, but MtGox is just one website that trades bitcoins not some central clearing house.
The other exchanges are trading normally and are generally up right now.
http://www.bitcoincharts.com
The user database of a major Bitcoin to USD exchange was compromised. This, while affecting the Bitcoin economy, and the services that are available to Bitcoin, has nothing to do with the currency itself.
"Mt. Gox", the main Bitcoin exchange, was originally "Magic the Gathering Online Exchange". Nobody really knows who runs "Mt. Gox"; it appears to be one person in Tokyo who's only reachable via email and IRC. (He must be having a terrible night; this all happened around 3AM in Japan.) It's not like there's some real financial institution, or even a funded start-up, behind this. Most, if not all, of the Bitcoin "exchanges" and "exchangers" are somewhat flaky entities. Bitcoin's ecosystem is financially very weak.
Understand that Mt. Gox is not just an exchange. It's a depository institution, like a bank. Customers have balances, in Bitcoins and other currencies, with Mt. Gox. But Mt. Gox is not regulated or audited as a bank or a brokerage, even though it holds other people's money. Accounts are uninsured.
This matters when something goes wrong and somebody gets stuck with losses. Mt. Gox claims they're going to "roll back" transactions to before the theft. But some of the money is already gone, transferred out before Mt. Gox shut down. Mt. Gox is going to have to eat some of those losses if they do a rollback. Do they have the cash? Nobody knows. They're not audited by anybody.
As for the security breach, not only is the entire file of usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords now widely available, so are the unencrypted passwords cracked so far. (One wonders why whomever stole the password file published it, but it may have to do with their needing help from others to crack the passwords.) As a result, TradeHill, another Bitcoin exchange based in Chile, has shut down, to avoid attacks using passwords obtained from Mt. Gox. Right now, there's no way to turn Bitcoins into dollars. (Euros, yes; right now the going rate is EUR11.51/BTC. But that market is very thin.)
Whether or not BItcoins are a good idea, the market ecosystem behind them is far too flaky.
...much like your brokerage is the actual owner of your monkey while you have money deposited with the brokerage).
Bananas not included.
Their they're doing there hair.
of course with the rise of over-the-counter monkey futures trading, you rarely own the monkey at all, instead purchasing a covering position in monkeys at settlement.
It can crash in value. That means it is a real currency and can be attacked by traders at will. Not quite the validation the inventors intended, I gather.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
they can have my monkey - he was throwing shit everywhere.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Futures and other derivatives will not be traded until reliable bitcoin-denominated fixed income instruments emerge. Until then, any exchange would be (albeit tacitly) assuming a role of a FI issuer.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Who didn't see this coming?
those who ignore history something something
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooz.com
Usefulness as a currency is inversely proportional to potential as an investment. BitCoin fans, when you boast that your "currency holdings" have shot up in value by several hundred percent in a year, this is NOT A GOOD THING for BitCoins as a currency. You, Joe Merchant, would have to be a complete blithering idiot to set yourself up to accept BitCoins as a form of payment if deflation of several orders of magnitude is REQUIRED in order for your "currency" to be anything but a niche toy. In addition, credit, the lifeblood of any economy is completely impossible under such conditions; it would be the height of insanity to take out a loan if you had the potential of owing the equivalent of several hundred percent interest after a year. (As in, if you took out a loan for a thousand BitCoins a year ago, you'd be praying for an event like this to happen right now...)
An ideal currency remains relatively stable in value in relation to something you actually want to buy. An illiquid currency that gyrates wildly in value is useless, as it makes proper pricing of goods, services, and credit impossible.
In the end, BitCoins are no more a "currency" than Beanie Babies were. And at least Beanie Babies are cute. (And tulips were/are pretty flowers.) BitCoins are an interesting experiment in cryptography, nothing more.
If you check a competing exchange, you will find that the price of bitcoins has gone from $17 to $13. How does that constitute a crash when the price of a BTC had fluctuated down to around $13 within 48 hours before the breach? This is a security breach that only affected people using MtGox to trade their bitcoins for USD, so the trust in MtGox has been undermined, not the trust in the entire BTC economy. Most traders will likely move over to tradehill.com or some other competing exchange who have hopefully learned some lessons from MtGox's failures. The thing about currency is that if it is not properly secured, it can be stolen. When someone robs a bank or steals a wallet, do we stop trusting paper money or do we just work that much harder to keep it secure?
We asked the monkey for his response to events of the day. "Shocked!" he said.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
I'm supposed to hate electronic voting, but support a wholly electronic currency?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's worth nothing that this 'price crash' was completely artificial, the result of a malicious act, and only really affects the Mt.Gox exchange site. I suppose it probably also affects any sites that set their exchange rate by Mt.Gox, but many don't do that on a real-time basis anyway. I use Bitcoin Market, another trading site, and their prices are unaffected.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
I know we can exclude postings from specific editors from showing up - but there's getting to be a need for the exclusion of certain topics as well. I'd really, really like it if I didn't have to see another bitcoin post again, ever.
Unfortunately adding "bitcoin" as a term to exclude under Slashdot's options doesn't have the desired effect.
#DeleteChrome
This happened at a bucket shop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop_(stock_market)
I have an Mt.Gox account but have never actually used it for anything. I received the following e-mail earlier today.
Gmail also flagged suspicious failed login attempts on my e-mail account, so I had to go through a password reset process on it. Although I used a unique password at Mt.Gox, the attacker apparently is running automated login attempts using the stolen e-mail addresses and Mt.Gox passwords, so anyone using non-unique passwords is likely in trouble.
Do over!
Imagine this headline: Forex.com hacked, concept of USD put into question. Doesn't that sound a bit ridiculous? This was a bad day for mtgox.com and bitcoin speculators, but it does not demonstrate inherent weaknesses in the system of bitcoin.
Should be SO, not OS...:-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Bilderburgers laugh derisively at your attempts to undermine the World Bank, IMF, ECB, and the 'Almighty Dollar' with your pathetic 'currency'. However...Bernie Madoff is intrigued by your ideas and wishes to subscribe to your newsletter.
Sig this!
Im not sure you have looked into https://www.shieldpass.com/ which is using the passwindow mutual authentication method not just OTP's used by the SecureID, I agree the RSA one time passwords are "over" being completely vulnerable to various MITM attacks including phishing etc as the codes contain no information to the user about what exactly it is being authenticated. This is the same problem with many tokens etc where a attacker can inject themselves at various point on the network, mobile or terminal itself with a trojan. *It should be noted however in RSA's defense that in this particular case you refer to it wasnt any of these usual methods they used to defeat the tokens but the fact they didnt airgap the machine holding the secret keys.
If you watch the demo video you can see that the transaction specific information ie could be something bitcoin specific is encoded into the challenge alongside the OTP so the user is informed as to what they are authenticating and the MITM fails. They cant switch challenges and they cant remove the transaction information from the challenge. Being a non humanly communicable key (the visual segmented pattern) they cant easily interrogate the user for key information either.
Its not perfect, for that we would need the server to be able to scan your soul however its cheap, convenient and more secure than the alternatives unless you have a better suggestion.
much like your brokerage is the actual owner of your monkey while you have money deposited with the brokerage.
You owe me a new keyboard.
...Islam? You crow about their power, yet they seem quite impotent against Islam. Can you explain that?
So much as it is a MTGox story.
About a week ago the first rumors of MtGox being compromised by a SQL injection exploit began to circulate.
Here's one of the original claims from someone calling themselves Buttsec from June 14th. Others which I'm too lazy to dig up were more specific and named MtGox explictly:
http://pastebin.com/4NPemHfz
On that very same day, MTGox implemented a $1000 dollar withdrawal limit. Suspicious, right? For the past 3 days, there have been offers to sell MTGox's database of usernames and password hashes. Here's an example:
http://pastebin.com/ui0nusuZ
Today, there is this:
http://pastebin.com/hN7PxRhc
http://pastebin.com/w06pa2mB (there are many of these, the first link gives you the urls if you want to see them all)
This confirms MTGox was indeed hacked. One of the hackers offering to sell this database that came out today had even specifically mentioned that the hole he had used was CLOSED by MTGox a couple of days ago. Today, FINALLY, MTGox admits they were hacked and has sent out emails to all their users. Here is a copy:
http://pastebin.com/9Cx94wzs
In light of all of the evidence (more of which I'm sure you can find on your own), I find it very hard to believe that MtGox was not aware they had been hacked, and yet they've been denying it and operating normally (aside from the newly added withdrawal limit, which they even boast about in the linked press release). In fact, I found one reddit page of many where MtGox users were complaining there accounts had been compromised (There have been many over the past week) and the employee flat out denies that they have ANY reason to suspect they've been compromised:
Here's one such complaint among many: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/i17jd/i_just_got_ripped_off_on_mtgox/
And here's one with an employee denial: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/i2dkn/mt_gox_has_some_serious_issues/
Here's all that (purported) employees posts: http://www.reddit.com/user/MtGox_Adam
Long story short: For the last week (5 days at least), I've been wondering if MtGox had been truly hacked or if someone was just trying to depress the price of bitcoins by spreading rumors. Today I don't have to wonder anymore. What I do have to wonder about is why has MtGox kept silent for the past week when ALL indications were that they KNEW. They fixed the hole, added the withdrawal limit, and yet kept on denying they had an issue when dozens of users complained of account compromises. Rather than admit the issue and try to have it fixed, they apparently tried to keep it a secret. How can we trust any company that handles security issues in this manner?
other USD exchanges are still running fine.
From Bitcoin.org's market table:
Look at those tiny volumes. Total volume for all the little guys is under 0.1% of Mt. Gox, which was trading over 200,000 bitcoins per day. With Mt. Gox and TradeHill off-line, the market is dead. None of those little guys have any significant buyers available.
i thought they said a couple of days ago (when some dude got hacked for 1/2 mil worth) that bitcoin transactions couldn't be reversed?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Noooo! The brokerage can't keep my monkey!!!! I love him!
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
(much like your brokerage is the actual owner of your monkey while you have money deposited with the brokerage.
Everybody got somethin' to hide
'Cept for me and your money.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I was wondering that myself, but I think it must justnbe MtGox transactions rather than all BitCoin transactions.
I was a bit worried there. I got the email about Mt Gox being compromised, and soon afterwards my Gmail account stopped working. I'm guessing maybe Google just reset the passwords of everyone who got the Mt Gox email.. because my password isn't the same between the sites.. and Google asked me to change my password when I logged in via a browser.
Same happened here too. I think its quite an invasion of privacy on googles part.
Remember, most people are stupid
This is untrue, if you actually examine the world people, on average are VERY CLEVER. If "people" were stupid our species would have been wiped out long ago.
Now what people are, is selectively informed. They may not have chosen to be informed about topics you consider important, but it does not mean they are stupid...
I'm sure your average redneck ain't keeping his ammo dry, and your average gun nut (simply for lack of a better term) can't guarantee their storage spot is impervious to floods or broken water pipes
How "sure" are you? Because I'm damn sure you are wrong. Almost anyone I've ever seen keeps ammo in something like an ammo box, which is quite dry and mostly impervious to occasional water. The "redneck" that talks so funny probably knows quite a lot more than you about the care of ammo, and humorously would probably call you an idiot for not knowing the details on this better...
Grow up and realize that people who are different from you are not automatically stupid.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
George Soros still managed to take out the British Pound.
I think that's a little bit of an over-reaction. RSA OTP tokens are still much, much harder to hack than an account without them. RSA was a big juicy target, so it was obvious that eventually someone one end up having them if they could, but my bank account is certainly safer requiring my RSA token than not requiting it (especially since I still need my password).
Without the OTP, a trojan could steal my password, even if SSL can't be broken. With the token, basically key-logging my computer isn't very useful anymore.
Now, it is true that the server needs to know the algorhythm and seed for each token in order to predict the number it should be saying, which means that if the verification server is hacked, it's game over. In fact, it is also true that if you have a number of codes from the token in a row (I forget how many) you can brute-force the seed, which meas that if you had physical access to the token (or I suppose really good long term access to sniff their pin entries reliably) you could also spook their Token ... but all of this assumes a very high value target and a very sophisticated attacker - and none of it changes the fact that that the tokens make things vastly more secure than they would be otherwise.
Also, of course, for example, smart-cards don't require the server to know a key or anything, since they use public/private key authentication. They are more secure, but require a hardware reader. RSA Tokens are for the more casual business user. (Although USB Smart-card type tokens are also available).
Shieldpass is just goofy, and it can be defeated with a Photo-Copier in 10 seconds. I'll take my RSA token, thank you.
2FA can be done right, but it needs tokens to be programmed before being handed out, and a secure server. Here is how I'd do it:
1: One purchases a bunch of unprogrammed tokens.
2: One uses a master key (stored as a nonce) that is kept in a HSM with physically resistant protection, but with the ability to be backed up to another place.
3: The token has an algorithm of taking the time of day (to the minute), XORing that with the master nonce, XORing it with a nonce that is unique to that token, making a hash, and outputting the first 8 characters. These nonces are also stored on the appliance, and are only available to be backed up only via a USB port physically on the machine. The appliance will not let someone dump the goodies from remote.
4: The company programs the tokens, copying the organizational key and an individual key. Then the token is handed to the user. Every 60 seconds, the token XORs the time of day with the master nonce and the individual nonce (both of which are 256 bits), hashes the result with SHA-512, and spits out the first six to eight digits.
5: The user logs on, the logins are validated against the server appliances, and the user is authenticated.
This is not as easy to use as grabbing a bunch of tokens, typing in their serial numbers and mailing them off, but it does provide solid security. The organizational key can be changed to invalidate a block of tokens, or individual keys can be dropped, so a complete compromise of an appliance may require re-adding both the values to tokens, but it won't mean that future keys are compromised.
You'd also discover that a perfectly flat currency, no inflation or deflation, would work pretty well too. While there are some useful functions of a mild inflationary currency, as you've pointed out, there are some disadvantages too. One would be that credit has to be more expensive, in nominal terms, because the creditor needs to make up for inflation. So a perfectly flat, stable, currency would work really well too.
The problem is, there's no way to have such a thing. As the economy changes, the currency must change too, and there's just no way to maintain a dead on stable state. You could go for a status quo target in the long term, but only by swinging back and forth between inflation and deflation.
So, much better to just try and have a small amount of inflation. Works out pretty well in reality.
I'll write my local congressman and get him to introduce legislation providing a bailout of $1 Trillion zorkmids. That should be enough, right?
It even has a narwhal joke at the end. Anyone who watches that video and still thinks there is no potential benefit from the development of bitcoin is an idiot.
This had nothing to do with bitcoin security, it was just a trading site with local accounts that got compromised. If the site had been trading eggs, the story would have been about lost eggs. Bitcoin security wasn't involved.
The only thing that this fiasco highlights is that you should not keep your money (regardless of the type of currency) in the possession of another party. BTC were designed to live in your own private wallet, and that is where you should keep them.
What needs to be done now is to implement exchanges without local bitcoin storage in customer accounts. The whole thing should be as distributed as bitcoin itself, so that a hacked exchange won't matter much.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The simple fact is that one can easily double your bitcoin money - just keep a copy of it after you bought something. Nobody will ever know - and if someone does figure it out, just blame the duplication on Mt Gox.
what bitcoin wants to be, what it wants to do with the idea of money, is actually antagonistic with the way money is supposed to work in society. because IN society is the only way money ever works: even gold has no meaning without other human beings who desire it. if you have a pile of gold, and you are starving, you're doomed. you can't eat it. so what is the intrinsic "value" of gold after all? none, really
bitcoin is a philosophical failure, and is doomed, except for the temporary enthusiasm of a bunch of people who don't even understand what money really is
the more well-functioning, well-policed, transparent, and rich, the society, the more integrity there is, the more confidence there is, and the more value your money has
the simple point is: money IS society. money is an abstract representation of a wealth of a society. everything else is tomfoolery for idiots who don't understand how their fate, and their wealth, is tied inseparably to the society they live in. it is a form of delusion to imagine oneself an island. unfortunately, many idiots do. you're not. sorry. the cash in your pocket is your bond to your society, not your freedom from it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm fucking sick of all the wanna-be "graphic designers" turned web developers because they can't make ends meet. You want to write code? Rule 1: Always assume the user will enter invalid input and check for it. "Oooooooh, look at me! I have a copy of DreamWeaver and 12 credit hours at Hollywood Upstairs Web Developer College! I'm a web developer!"
What exactly do you want it to be based on? The number of Jesus' hairs in the shroud?
Drowning in debt is a wonderful horror story, but anybody who tries to collect on it will be facing a horde of nuke-equipped "non-hostile" drones.
Its not like it is a cancer that increasing destroys everything in its path, its just a paltry concern to be taken care of when we can afford it. Clinton nearly destroyed the US by actually reducing it; and thus transferring power back to the people. Thankfully the clear thinking people of Florida put an end to that loser strategy.
Yes, that innovative fuel source has been just around the corner for some time now. I'm still waiting for my flying car.
Increased agricultural yields are of questionable sustainability. In that, they might be another form of debt, as in borrowing from the future.
Mostly, you can't effectively eat computers, burn computers for energy, or build things with computers, so they are not a basis for expansion.
Limitless imagination was where the debt spiral began; sadly it isn't panning out so well. Knowledge economy will be a nice matching bookend to Tulip economy; leaving people scratching their heads and saying ' were they really that stupid ?'
FIAT currencies cause inflation. The government gets money from the FED as a LOAN with interest. This is very key. US dollars are based on Gross National Product and this is not a stable solid commodity like Gold or Silver and we do not want to go back to that at this point either, would be just as bad as Ft. Knox hasn't been audited in many decades? Why?? No more gold there is why and they don't want to let that fact out. Members and subcommittees in the House and Senate have requested it and been turned away, Gee wonder why (not). Also, GNP in the US, which has gone way down in and of itself can't cover the debt out there now and each time they print "phunny munny" FIAT paper, it only gets worse, due to interest. Again, when the gov't. get money from the FED, it's a LOAN (key point right there) at interest. That creates even more inflation right there, and an inescapable trap of spiralling debt you can't get out of once the debt's large enough. Get it? The GNP isn't anywhere near what the debt is as well. No way out. FIAT systems and central banking are evil. You're a fool if you espouse FIAT money central banking systems, or you are part of it yourself. It's why Andrew Jackson had on his gravestone "I killed the bank" because there was a severe depression in his time also, but he stopped it, because he got rid of central banking schemes in his day. It turned things around. Abraham Lincoln knew about it too, and used 'greenbacks' instead of dealing with central bankers. Small wonder he got shot right? The people in the IMF and all central banks don't think 1-5 years ahead. They think a century ahead, and so they went at it and tried again with Woodrow Wilson. They did so illegally as well, because the FED (not federal at all, just a consortium of banks) was put into law during a time when most of the Congress was on xmas vacation. There was no majority vote. The fed's not even legal, and that makes them all crooks. Woodrow Wilson knew he made a mistake reinstating central banking and said so. Well, look what we have today. It's not just the US either. The IMF is at the wheel now and wants to destabilize the US dollar and is doing so via monetary mechanics and puppets of theirs in government. Why? To put the AMERO into place, like they're doing with the EURO. As Amschel Rothchild (one of the 13 bankers families members of the FED no less which was hidden from public knowledge for decades) said this and with good reason, because it gives you the power of money which is control: "I care not who makes the laws in a nation if you give me control of the money supply". That tell you anything dumbbell? Learn about economics and banking before you shoot your mouth off here again.
You collect a huge pile of wood in your backyard and burn it... this wood can not be used to power anything, to do any work, or even enjoyed by warming the owner. It just has to be destroyed.
Once you've proved you've wasted the wood and it has been burned you get a bitcoin. Repeat the process of waste and get more of them.
No, on average, people are around average intelligence.
Did I ever say anything about intelligence? No, I said Clever. As in, people can figure out the things that are most important to them pretty well.
It's just that may people have different priorities than your own. But by all means feel superior to them even though in different circumstances they would be laughing at you too.
I myself will maintain the awareness that all people are generally clever and avoid the impedance mismatch of thinking they are not and having actions taken I do not expect.
If you happen to be bless/cursed with an intelligence that puts you on the far right of the curve, life is extremely frustrating because almost everyone is a moron.
Well thank god you escaped that trap!
You do seem to have been given a double-helping of arrogance though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The bitcoin thing is a SCAM! Nothing MORE!! Stop posting about it! NOW AND FOREVER!!
It went from $18 to $17, that is not a crash. That will probably have an impact, but more on MtGox reputation than on the BTC price.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Say what you want, bitcoins mean I can buy blow ebay style. :D
I suppose in a way you are correct. In practice, BitCoins are a commodity that you happen to be able to occasionally barter with other geeks. However, they were designed to be a currency. It's right there on the BitCoin homepage: "Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency." It's whole infrastructure is set up as a currency (albeit as a poorly-designed, unscalable, one.) There are lists of merchants for real goods and services that inexplicably have chosen to accept these things.
That said, there are national currencies that wouldn't meet your definition of "universal acceptance"; Zimbabwe individual dollars were good for nothing more than toilet paper prior to the country dollarizing.
Not true. In a deflationary period, loans will simply carry a negative interest rate.
They will "simply" have a negative interest rate?
Outside of a few rare exceptions, there is no such thing as a loan with a negative interest rate. What possible motive would a bank (or investor) have for issuing such a loan? Why not just hold onto the cash?
Even if a deflationary period, retail loans still have a non-zero interest rate. The yen has been deflating for many years, yet retail loans are still not free. (Money from the central bank is essentially free, as it is in the U.S. at the current time.)
The inflation rate isn't something that is just set by a central bank. Were it that simple, well then they might well set it at zero since there are real and psychological advantages to having no inflation or deflation. However it isn't so simple. There are a lot of forces in the market and government that go in to determining what is happening with inflation, and the central bank can then work to try and moderate that.
In particular, they can deal with deflation pretty effectively by simply printing more money. As the definition of inflation is when a given amount of currency buys less, introducing more currency is a fairly easy way to cause it.
So no one person or factor decides it. In the case of the US, the government has a target for what they'd like it to be overall: around 2-3% annually. The Federal Reserve (the US's central bank) then attempts to adjust monetary policy to keep it in that range. Of course sometimes the government decides that something else should take priority, so inflation will vary. Also things can happen in the market that the government has little ability to control that can effect it as well.
Dude they put your monkey to work and he's trading better than they are as we speak.
Liberty.
Is that all an economy is at the fundamental level is trade. I do something, you do something, we trade, that is the economy. Currency just acts like a lubricant, making the trade flow more freely, that is all. It doesn't matter what the currency is, so long as it does its job.
The whole reason we have currency is to deal with the complexities that arise if you try and do anything more than direct barter. In a barter system you very quickly run in to two problems that hamstring an economy:
1) Person A may want something from person B, but person B wants nothing from person A. In that situation you can't have trade. Of course maybe person B wants something from person C and person C wants something from person A and you can then set up a more complex trade but that quickly gets unworkable (imagine if there are 50 people involved in a chain).
2) Person A wants something from person B now, but person B does not need what person A has at the moment. They will in the future though, just not right now. Again, you can solve this with IOUs and the like but it gets complicated, particularly if you have a larger chain of people.
Well currency solves all that. Everyone uses a medium they all agree has value for trade, and it takes care of all that indirection to any level. The levels of trade through number of people and time and be so complex as to be untraceable, and it all works fine because currency acts as a universal store of value.
Of course what this means is that it is just a theoretical construct. It doesn't have to be backed by gold, or computing power, or anything. It just has to meet a few requirements:
1) It has to be something everyone agrees on. Doesn't matter what it is, so long as everyone agrees they'll accept it for trade.
2) It has to be something people can easily exchange. Doesn't do any good if it is something that can't be exchanged easily, even if everyone agrees they'll accept it.
3) It has to actually be exchanged. Currency is useless if people horde it, it only works when they exchange it because when they exchange it, it means they are trading. Doesn't matter how easy it is to exchange or how many people agree to take it, if it isn't actually exchanged it isn't helpful.
That's all. That's why the US dollar works well. Lots of people agree to accept it, it is extremely easy to exchange since there are all sorts of electronic methods, never mind paper, and it is exchanged in vast quantities. That makes it a useful, functional, currency. It facilitates trade and that is why we have currency.
In a Planet Money piece on the market for stolen credit cards last week, they mentioned in passing that Bitcoin is already being used to purchase stolen credit card numbers. If that doesn't attract your government's attention, nothing will.
They also said that they're preparing a story on Bitcoin itself. If Bitcoin survives till the story comes out, that will surely be the kiss of death, in my opinion ...
(this is not a
I don't see where there was a crash in prices. It's down a few bucks but how's that a crash?
All my imaginary currency is pegged to the WOW gold standard.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You do know that's illegal in most states don't you?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
I just fetched the accounts.csv database from http://bit.ly/kE3Q4D to have a look. Even though :p
these SQL attempts seems quite old according to the UserID # (60k user accounts in total), I definitely
would not register on websites that allow this kind of unfiltered input as username
UserID,Username,Email,Password ,,$1$eD2QR9wb$n2ES9mryOwb39m07EdVja1 ,,$1$yh5tknjZ$5Pi3E44d9lC6jmlwtL5250 ,,$1$7OR.qKMW$M1gLES96gr6a/fb/o1ToL. ,,$1$W/mj92FN$SeBF1uKItpztF0Gcpgha71
5358,buttcoin,dfdfalert(\'hi\')asf,$1$Kjl4/2RZ$uPbJRWfoU9Htv0/ov59XO1
5424,asdfalert(\'hi!\')alert(1);xx,,$1$EpbyXlFL$QNCjvgnTMqP2.tkenw5zj/
11488,\"\'alert(1);xx,,$1$NwhuHJeR$gyVFAExehcx4S3WBAsRUB1
11489,\'alert(1);xxx,,$1$N41ZIuOu$PvfQRzO4/N6Wf5ATltD0d1
11573,\\\'abc,,$1$4yvIhU6T$wD5x/g/h98YBiIY8WhHw51
12548,hehehe,asfaf@fasfa.com\",$1$NZ48ESxe$OMi3O9dnz8BYH92tCf.2A/
12551,hehehe\',,$1$USDebpwM$4No7PaNkFl2uQjo6VYt2F1
12553,hehehe\0\',,$1$5G.DrQ9A$IC/7j46weU8GRFoNZSFBy/
12554,hehehe\'waitfor delay\'0:0:20\'--,,$1$T6yRted3$bmSQXQSYrVKqq0JWLyOMJ.
12555,hehehe\')waitfor delay\'0:0:20\'-,,$1$OzcLllL9$ZbXFPAB.Pfjak/VxOIOeE0
12556,hehehe\',0)waitfor delay\'0:0:20,,$1$ZJVxD1Xi$8MuO2/IEK2ITAOiRVH8nD/
12557,hehehe\',0,0)waitfor delay\'0:0:,,$1$TVk6yuVk$IKj5636wmFDwul0J2mtw8.
12558,hehehe\',0,0,0)waitfor delay\'0:,,$1$ldybUNj/$jZ5XJRWM8DsOTM3FU9TyN0
12559,hehehe13505493\' or 1=1--
12560,hehehe13505493\' or 1=2--
12561,hehehe\' and 1=1--
12562,hehehe\' and 1=2--
12563,hehehe\",,$1$Xclf9zYB$kGurv/zPglRMJB1r9mLos1
14241,\'>alert(1),,$1$PoTFQJz1$xElU8oc9SirgVJK0XbsmM0
14251,alert(document.coockie,,$1$YVFDukdP$/BHwJsrWmI9JOjXovblsf/
14506,\'>alert(document.cooki,,$1$ZBETGKJW$AlP4CpuL08s7r77POsJAr1
14507,\'>alert(document.cooki,nicolka2@yahoo.com,$1$0oXznsMK$uHD/ZZYGzOH/Mq6HVNfkt1
16120,\'`\'`\'`\',anon@ymo.com,$1$DeA/2W8j$4v.RQc.x31c874dbX2Y4d0
30966,alert(document.cooki,,$1$XxgD7Yl6$2JeknAMVTJFI2J2xYvfwz/
47196,test\'test\"test,,$1$5KZUN1eP$uODETivdOnRFd1OG1OH59.
49848,\'\"`,,$1$runFY5KO$UFcXfe7nn51pdsf9klybE1
57815,\'1=1=0,,$1$JtAveCLT$kt55L0.ZJmQdttgxzTRHn1
see http://pastebin.com/4cNEgMW6 since /. DOES filter some 'junk' characters.
It does remind me of my mom though, http://xkcd.com/327/
Sincerely,
AnonymousCoward' or 1=1--
Remember when they said BitCoin was unhackable .... yeah.
I have a hard time believing it's really legitimate for them to undo trades. I understand that in general, panicked selling is a terrible idea, e.g. people who didn't sell in panic during the Depression often ended up recouping their money later, while people who sold in desperation typically lost everything, but if people want and are able to find buyers in the situation, why shouldn't they be able to? Especially according to, oh, libertarian ideals?
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
The trading site only allows so many bitcoins to be removed from an account per day. (And money, too.) As such, most of the coins and money are still there, and they just shuffle it back to where it came from. The thief got away with $1000 apparently. (The max $ withdrawal per day.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I'd think a currency where someone can force you to "roll back" any trades you may have made is particularly worthless. Ah, sorry you sold someone something and received BitCoins in return. There was a problem on the server and we took the BitCoins back. Sucks to be you.
What will happen to all the bitcoin miners? They are so smart that they are unemployable!
For the gods sake, people, this website trades bitcoins for a dollar on a regular day, I'm not gonna bet that many who trade or mine bitcoins are using this insane joke of a site anyway. Bitcoins will probably go on. How long it will, no one knows, although I do get the feeling that they'll eventually crash and reinvent themselves under a new model.
- credit is not there for your consumption needs, it exists as an idea so that more production capacity can be obtained.
Credit serves multiple purposes. It is a perfectly legitimate use of credit to enable the purchase of something that I do not have immediate liquid capital to obtain. If I can more usefully deploy my capital (i.e. my savings) elsewhere, why tie up all up in my house or car? If I have to live somewhere and drive something, why should I be unable to obtain a loan to enable me to do so now? If the bank will loan me money at a rate lower than I think I can recover via investment, it is irrational to NOT take the loan. Yes, eventually I have to pay the car or house loan back, with interest, but in the meantime I had use of that cash for whatever purpose I deployed it.
The reason credit is not for your consumption needs is that credit is given to you so that you can pay it back. With interest. I know, this is a revolutionary idea, totally backwards from what an average person in the West is taught to believe, but nevertheless, this is the actual truth.
Holy Straw Man Batman! Just because some people default on loans does not mean that the idea of principal + interest is some kind of foreign concept to the average citizen. They may miscalculate how much that interest is going to cost them (which is why credit cards exist) but that doesn't mean the entire concept is not understood.
If I loan you money, I expect you to pay it back. With interest. If I don't think that loaning you money will result in you paying it back with interest, I won't give it to you. The way I know it's a feasible investment to loan you money is to look at your plan for growing it. So if your plan is to buy yourself a house or a car, I know I must look somewhere else for an investment opportunity, because your house and your car are expenses, not production capacity that could be used to grow my investment (and to make you rich in the process as well.)
The mortgage market and auto-financing market has not always been a sinkhole of capital. A great many bankers deluded themselves about the value of the collateral they were taking an interest in, but that does not make the entire concept of a residential mortgage faulty.
You can only borrow safely if you can be almost certain money won't increase in relative value in the future, and to make a borrower feel truly safe currency value should have a near certainty of decreasing somewhat
- this comes from your complete misunderstanding of what credit is for in the first place (real credit, not government printed nonsense fiat that destroys opportunity to have meaningful investment via inflation and debt.)
In 19 century USA the value of dollar was growing, not falling, yet the economy of USA was also growing very quickly, as innovation and businesses was increasing, not falling.
I'm sure what you meant to say was "...the economy of USA was also growing very quickly, (except for the Panic of 1819, the Panic of 1837, the Panic of 1857, the Panic of 1873, and the Panic of 1893)..." These were steep recessions that made the recent unpleasantness look like a minor bump in the road.
Why would I want to loan you money in currency that devalues? It makes no sense. I only want to loan money in currency that is increasing in value (I am not talking about a bubble, I am talking about free market economy, that is unhindered by insane government destroying the free market to grow itself by promoting monopolies and killing off capital investment opportunities via inflation).
What makes credit difficult is a volitile currency, not necessarily an inflating or deflating one. With an inflating currency, I must simply add my inflation expectations to the real rate of return I would like to obtain. (Although in a deflating-currency environment, this can make it d
Agreed - the solution would be whoever hosted the bank the money was deposited in should purchase BitCoins on the market and deposit them in the accounts where they are missing. Then they can pursue legal action against whoever robbed them.
The whole point of e-cash is to make it anonymous/etc. A decent e-cash system should make reversing a trade impossible anyway - just like a trade with paper money (at best you can try try to hunt somebody down and throw them in jail until they pay you back).
Again, I would not (while in sane mind) loan money in currency that is losing value, it is a losing proposition. I would especially not loan money to anybody at all, who wants to use that money just to spend on products/services and not put it to productive use - build/increase a business, grow the money, so they can pay interest and principal.
Why not?
If you can make a prediction as to what the rate of inflation (or deflation) will be, you can price that into the loan (the debtor will be doing this too.) This is not a radical idea.
And why not loan money for consumption (by businesses or consumers)? If the loan can be repaid with principal and interest, what's the problem?
An economy does not benefit from currency changes at all, as both deflation and inflation cause issues with investment, spending, and credit. An ideal currency is one that does not change in value at all. Barring that, one that has an eminently predicable (and low) rate of inflation or deflation.
You want your investments to increase in value, not your currency.
Whereas if they hadn't done so and accounts sharing passwords were compromised, everyone would be all "stupid users" or "why didn't google reset everyone's password?". Invasion of privacy, wot a joke.
Deflation is the natural response of the increasing market efficiency, so I want deflation - appreciating of the currency value, so that the risks that are taken are all measured and not insane, there is very little gambling, there are no asset bubbles.
Deflation during a bust is a response of the market to the inflation in some asset class, which is driven by mis-allocation of resources.
Deflation during strong economic activity is due to increased demand for investment capital from all sorts of competitors, who are fighting for the customer base, and this is awesome, as this drives prices down for end consumers, that's why in 19 century US, things ended up costing half the price by 1913 if compared to prices in 1800.
You can't handle the truth.
Posting to get rid of an accidental mod.
I love my monkey in a platonic sense, asshole. >:-[
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
I'm gonna high post and whore, so there can actually be a relevant comment in the first half of this page.
Here is a video of someone who was recording a live show with trading software going, so you can watch the crash in real time, and see the effects of the sell order that drove the price down to 0.01 within minutes. Every buy position was filled, but surprisingly the value bounced back up to 14 very quickly even with as big of a bitcoin dump as the hacked account did. Lesson: always have a stub quote in to buy for a few pennies so when the legit flash crash comes, you can get yours.
Idiotic randian economic ideas have nothing to do with libertarianism
There is obviously some subtle distinction here that totally escapes me.
Hey, if credit cards are profitable for the bank at 18% interest, what's the problem? Don't you want profit? What are you, some kind of central banker?
You should deploy your capital where it will make you the most money, given your risk tolerance.
Your larger point that money is a social phenomenon is valid. I like to describe money as "a claim on the labor of others", so money doesn't make sense in isolation.
Even so, that leaves unanswered how we keep score. A physical token of a well known luxury material? A book entry in a government-chartered bank? Or a cryptographically-verified transaction history of proof-of-work hash values? When confidence in banks rose, fiat money replaced gold coinage. The real bitcoin experiment is whether confidence in crypto systems is enough to sustain the bitcoin economy without the help of government courts. If the bitcoin economy matures from the mostly speculative transactions we have seen so far to a more stable role as an abstract claim on others' labor in a diversified economy, then it has as much claim to the title of "money" as anything else. I am not ready to place better then 50-50 odds that will happen, but it could.
no, it can't. because real money is backed by something real. coinage that has no value, has no value. we don't invest coinage with meaning and value just by crossing our fingers, we invest meaning and value in it because it actually stands for something
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
With TradeHill back up and running for a few hours, there's now a functioning Bitcoin market. For a few hours, there was a huge spread between bid and ask prices, and thus few trades. Now the spread has tightened up, and price seems to have settled down around $11.90/BTC. The market remains thin; selling a few hundred bitcoins would crash the market.
It's a dinky market by any standard. The total volume at TradeHill, under $20,000 today, is comparable to a big gas station or a supermarket.
A site that I have an account on that sells plumbing fixtures and parts, was also hacked and my e-mail address has gotten into the hands of scammers. Clearly, plumbing fixtures are a bad idea, and I urge you all to avoid purchasing, using, or owning any kind of plumbing fixture.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
and the central banking system in general. tomhudson keeps getting modded down to, so... proof's in the pudding.
Think of a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 1 year, e.g. if you have 1g in a year you will have half a gram.
.75g. The bank ends up with more than they would have if they just sat on it.
Now it makes sense to loan out some at a negative interest rate. If you "charge" -25% interest, the lendee will have to pay back
Man, you really need that seminar!
The argument for deflation comes down to an argument for a distinction between investments that are "good" or "bad" from a macroeconomic perspective. Your example is to distinguish between a business loan (you say good) and a car loan (you say bad).
This is simply a disguised argument for a centrally planned economy, as it assumes that is there is some authoritative way to tell, ahead of time, whether an investment will raise overall productivity or not. In fact there is no way to tell this in advance.
Capitalism depends on a lot of spaghetti being thrown at a lot of walls, and seeing what sticks. Mild, predictable inflation encourages spaghetti throwing.
Why would I want to loan you money in currency that devalues?
Because the alternative--holding onto a currency that devalues--is even less desirable. Inflation is the stick that keeps people from sitting on cash for years, just waiting for that one perfect, guaranteed investment (which does not exist).
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
tomhudson's @ it again, trolling as ac even though he's got a registered account http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2251220&cid=36497064 as I said he does!
tomhudson's also downmodding myself now, just for his being stupid about FIAT money mechacnics, and for what??
Just because tomhudson's been "down modded here" as flame bait -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2251220&cid=36493790 and the best he can do is troll by ac, and then turn around and use his reg'd "LUSER" account and downmod my post (he & his buddies do this ALL THE TIME -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2245866&cid=36491652 ) where I show how he really operates, and in another where I show he doesn't understand the FIAT money system and its downsides.
(Not too effective, and that only drives my point home further (tomhudson reacts perfectly, played like a fiddle in fact, doing the only thing he understands in effete retaliation))
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2251220&cid=36496574 read that, and learn about central banking schemes and the problems they create via FIAT money systems. You don't understand squat about it.
Where you were caught trolling others as ac replies and telling others to do so with you :
"Wait until he starts on another kick, then reply to him as an AC. It's the new meme". - by tomhudson (43916) on Sunday May 09 2010, @08:29PM (#32150544) Homepage Journal
QUOTED FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1646272&cid=32150544
And for what?
Just because you were shown as technically weak in computing so many times here after you did things like the above to the wrong person:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2230966&cid=36418796
That all you have is your geek angst & tricks like ac stalker trolling proven above, and also downmodding unjustly after doing so, shown by your fellow troll friends here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2245866&cid=36491652 Hmmm, tomhudson?
Which is WHY monetary systems were created, idiot. Less time haggling due to prices being put down and fixed in discrete values. You also need to learn about how FIAT money systems work and their downsides (loaning money at interest from central banks (root of all evil that) & inescapable inflation it creates) here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2251220&cid=36496574 .
People here on this forums also have to learn how YOU PERSONALLY DISHONESTLY OPERATE, troll, stalking & trolling by ac replies, and pulling bogus downmoderations -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2251220&cid=36504100
illustrated by his pal countertrolling http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2245866&cid=36491652 nothing new out of tomhudson & crew... nothing new @ all.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-money-masters/ it will "set you straight" (and Zeitgeist, which "the powers that be" tried to pull from the internet no less, can & will do the same (though zeitgeist has inaccuracies about religion as a form of control, it is SPOT ON about money mechanics & central banking)).
APK
P.S.=> tomhudson, you really need to educate yourself on many things, before you shoot your mouth off & mislead others as well!
... apk
The CPI is currently running at an annual rate of 3.57%, not 10%. And I'm not sure how you equate deflation over the course of the 19th century with constant growth and prosperity. There WERE several recessions, and they were quite severe.
I'm speaking as an investor also... consumer credit has been a perfectly respectable and profitable business for decades. Yes, some bankers made some VERY bad choices about risk recently (without a near-free Discount Window), but that does not negate the entire idea of consumer credit.
My debt right now consists of my mortgage. I win, because my cash isn't tied up in my house, and my bank wins because they are taking in my interest payments. A transaction where both parties feel they have a fair deal is the essence of capitalism. I'm not sure why you insist this is a horrible deal for the investor that currently owns my loan. (It happens to be a Credit Union)
Deflating currency doesn't have a "half-life" If they hold on to their $1, at the end of the year they still have a buck. If they lend it to you and charge a -25% rate, they have 75 cents at the end of the year.
Deflation during strong economic activity is due to increased demand for investment capital from all sorts of competitors, who are fighting for the customer base, and this is awesome, as this drives prices down for end consumers, that's why in 19 century US, things ended up costing half the price by 1913 if compared to prices in 1800.
You are confusing deflation with an increase in productivity triggering an increase in living standards. They most certainly are NOT the same thing. My $300 laptop making a $10M 1970's Cray look like a toy is not an example of deflation of millions of %, it's simply a higher living standard. This is why the "market basket" used to compute the CPI changes periodically. Higher living standard? Good. Decreasing CPI (more than a trivial amount)? Bad. This is why things cost less in 1913 than they did in 1800. If you use an 1800 "market basket" in 1913, of course things look cheaper! If you use a 1970 market basket in 2010, we haven't experienced very much inflation in 40 years. You, making a median income in 2010, could afford far more house, food, technology, medicine, leisure, transportation, energy, etc. than was available in 1970 for a median income. And this is the case despite a CPI-U increase of approx. 445% between 1970 and 2010. Would we be better off if the CPI had not increased at all? Of course! You'll get no argument from me there. But had the historical CPI-U chart been reversed over those 40 years? Economic catastrophe. '74, '79, and '80 would have more than parts of minor recessions due to the cost of capital sending the economy into a deflationary spiral. (In 1932 the CPI-U deflated by 10.8 percent; I hope you are not going to argue that 1932 was a shining example of economic prosperity that should be emulated by future economies.)
Deflation (where a given unit of currency buys you a larger slice of capital and labor) is not a good thing if there is a risk of it going over just a few percent in a year. As I have stated before, inflation can be "baked" into the interest charged for a loan in fairly large amounts. You can certainly bake far more inflation into the rate for a loan than you can deflation.
An example: Lets say your expect your ROI to be 10% (measured in increased economic productivity) for an capital investment you would like a loan in order to purchase. This is not great, but not horrible either. If deflation is expected to hit 8%, you will NEVER even consider making that capital investment because once the bank charges you about 2% for overhead, profit, and risk (and that's low risk and profit pricing for a business loan), the true interest rate of the loan exceeds that of the investment return. If instead inflation is expected to hit 8%, your creditor can simply charge you 10% interest. Your productivity increase nets you a 20% nominal rate of return, you subtract the 2% to the bank/lender, 10% for inflation loss, and you end up with an 8% real rate of return on your investment. With deflation, your real rate of return would have been a big fat zero, because loans cannot carry a negative interest rate.
So all other things being equal, moderate inflation (with the risk of spikes of higher inflation) is far better than moderate deflation (with the risk of spikes of higher deflation.) But ideally, the value of the currency, in relation to the amount of capital, and CPI-adjusted capitial and expenses it purchases should remain constant.
Prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve, when the U.S. went for many years without a central bank, and instead the currency operated on the bimetallic standard, the economy was not some shining example of stability and gradual deflation as the economy grew. It was a volatile roller-coaster that makes our current economy look solid as a rock.
I am so sick of all of these BitCoin plant stories. They are obviously propaganda being pushed with an agenda to encourage adoption of th.... wait what? Bad news? Oh.
Bitcoins are a glorified Pyramid scheme and like all similar schemes early adopters may raise a profit. However they only do this by continually increasing the numbers of people involved. There is no intrinsic value, no underlying worth, nothing is backing them up. 'Trading' them is not investing, at best it is gambling they will pay off before they crash, and at worst scamming.
But what does it mean to be "backed by something real"? Very few currencies are redeemable for specie anymore. And being backed by a commodity isn't enough: Confederate bonds backed by cotton circulated in Europe until WW1, but their value tracked the prospect of redemption more than the value of cotton. Government currencies are backed by courts, who pronounce judgments and settle debt in terms of fiat currency: For a stark example, US account holders on e-gold.com quite emphatically cannot claim their gold, but only a court's judgment of its dollar value. And having courts enforce the value of a currency is not always enough either. The Zimbabwean dollar lost its status as money despite draconian efforts of the government to enforce it and ban alternatives.
But government courts are not the only institutions that can enforce the value of a currency. Rai stone coins on the island of Yap don't have much intrinsic value, and the one that sank to the bottom of the ocean has none but circulates as money just like the rest of them. They are not backed by anything other than tradition and social norms. If social norms are enough to turn a hunk of limestone into money, it could happen to bitcoins, too.
The CPI is currently running at an annual rate of 3.57%, not 10%
- hedonics and substitutions. CPI is engineered to display low number, not to show inflation, which is increase in money supply, not rising prices (just like deflation is not falling prices.)
Real inflation is about 10% per year, I calculate my numbers as opposed to listening to government snake oil salesmen, witch doctors and shamans they call economists..
And I'm not sure how you equate deflation over the course of the 19th century with constant growth and prosperity. There WERE several recessions, and they were quite severe.
- yet dollar ended in 1913 twice as valuable as it started in 1800 and today, it maintains less than 1% of it's 1913 value. This is despite any local busts, which always are good for the economy.
Again, busts are good for the economy, they are the force that balances out the mis-allocated resources, shuts down the failing businesses and frees the resources/credit for new startups.
I'm speaking as an investor also... consumer credit has been a perfectly respectable and profitable business for decades. Yes, some bankers made some VERY bad choices about risk recently (without a near-free Discount Window), but that does not negate the entire idea of consumer credit.
- the entire concept of consumer credit is flawed, as consumers who are in producer economies, have strong purchasing power and do not need to get into debt to buy their stuff, so if consumers en mass need the credit to buy whatever, then the economy itself is flawed already, so any consumer debt in that economy is only exacerbating the problem.
My debt right now consists of my mortgage. I win, because my cash isn't tied up in my house, and my bank wins because they are taking in my interest payments.
- the value of your house will be going down (in most cases, maybe you live in a very desirable area, which are basically New York or LA- because there is plenty of international competition for the homes, or Washington DC - because that's where all the money is today that is not at Wall street).
As value of your houses plunges (in real terms), you will find yourself not winning, but wondering, why are you still paying the high premiums for the property that is going down in price (real terms).
Your bank will lose, as you will run away from your property not to pay the mortgage, and they'll be stuck with more inventory they can't sell.
'm not sure why you insist this is a horrible deal for the investor that currently owns my loan.
- maybe you'll be the lucky one, who'll still have his job even after the US t-bill bubble bursts, but as dollar collapses even your job won't be useful to pay back your debt, which will be inflated away. So your creditor will lose in terms of getting the investment back, and you'll lose as your economy won't support your needs anymore.
You can't handle the truth.
That makes no sense at all. Using constant dollars, in deflation, if the bank started with $1, and just hung on to it, at the end of a year they would have $2. Nominally, they will still have $1.
... has moved freely irrespective of any other matters or the economic climate.
Refering to gold as a value standard bearer is just stupid, its value moves as anything else in a market.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
tomhudson = GREEDY ADVERTISER!!! Proof's below, & thank-you webmistressrachel, and this post shows later below what lengths he'll go to for protecting his pennies (ac trolling & stalking of myself, + libeling myself even):
I really want to stress this to you apk, (and whilst doing so needle tomhudson about it!) trolltalk isn't a forum anymore. It's an advert for TomHudson's...software. - by webmistressrachel (903577) on Wednesday June 22, @01:28PM (#36531394) Journal
QUOTED FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2250914&cid=36531394
This is just like how GMHOWELL's name came up from Jeremiah Cornelius telling me his 1st name was George while JC trolled me no less (that's there in that exchange also)...
MOST amusing how you trolltalk.com fools are "spilling the beans" on one another as I question you people from trolltalk.com, & everytime... lol!
(Hilarious but... that's what you get for being obnoxious trolls whose motivation is GREED apparently!)
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TOM HUDSON'S "FAIL LIST" ON DISPROVING MY POINTS ON HOSTS FILES NUMEROUS TIMES:
(Since HOSTS can block adverts online/adbanners so you get more speed, &, so you are protected vs. malicious content in online adbanners also)
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tomhudson bullshit on HOSTS is outnumbered 30:1 vs. apk evidences:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2087330&cid=35847946
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tomhudson BURNED on DNS vs. HOSTS and CPU cycles/memory & more used on HIS "ideas" vs. HOSTS vs. apk's ideas:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2087330&cid=35879374
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tomhudson BURNED & RAN on HOSTS vs. VIRUSES vs. myself yet again:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2088808&cid=35877448
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tomhudson says "hosts are so 90's" & apk's fellow RESPECTED security person wrote a noted article on them in 2009: (based on his readings of MY posts in forums no less)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2088808&cid=35876806
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And others also...
APK
P.S.=> Which is WHY of course, tomhudson began his tirade to try to libel myself here and stalk me as well on this forums... he hates HOSTS because they can be used to block out adverts online (which in turn, speeds one up massively, and, can protect one vs. malicious code in adbanners too from 1 easily edited text file):
PROOF/EVIDENCES THEREOF in tomhudson calling me the HOSTS FILE TROLL etc. & stating to his trolltalk.com pals to stalk & troll me via AC replies:
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"Wait until he starts on another kick, then reply to him as an AC. It's the new meme". - by tomhudson (43916) on Sunday May 09 2010, @08:29PM (#32150544) Homepage Journal
QUOTED VERBATIM FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1646272&cid=32150544
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#2
HOWTO: trolling the hosts file guy in one easy step
"The next time you see a post by him, just reply anonymously. And to really mess with his head, reply anonymously to your anonymous post, disagreeing with your first anon post (extra points if you claim in the second post that you're him - that REALLY sets him off). He'll accuse you of being me" - by tomhudson (43916) on Saturday April 16, @01:38PM (#35841122) Homepage Journal
QUOTED VERBATIM FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2086424&cid
I give up.
That was a real useful link there. You linked back to the post where you simply stated "inflation is 10%". I'm not seeing your extensive detailed calculations anywhere.
Given your complete lack of referenced facts, I'll just have to go back to those CPI tables, which calculate that the dollar has retained about 3.7% of it's 1913 value, not "less than 1%". That's a pretty big error.