BitInstant CEO Says World Operates "On an Inferior Monetary System"

hypnosec writes "BitInstant's CEO Charlie Shrem and Erik Voorhees were invited to speak about virtual currency at the NACHA (the North American Payments Association) Annual Global Payments Forum held in Rio de Janeiro. At the conference the duo stated that the world operates 'on an inferior monetary system'. One of the more interesting parts of the whole forum was how Bitcoin as a currency and transaction system "works within current legal frameworks." A presentation by Senior Legal Counsel to the Federal Reserve titled: 'The Implications of Dodd-Frank Section 1073' sheds light on requirements that need to be fulfilled by "Remittance Payment Company" (RPC) guidelines. This law requires such companies to disclose a lot of information about money transactions. This is where Bitcoin as a currency and system collide head-on with the law."

Comments

What to use for personal finance

[Makoska]

Since this is related, what do you guys use for personal finance tracking? I used Microsoft Money for a long time, but they don't release new versions of that anymore. Would Microsoft Access be an overkill? What do you guys use?

Re:What to use for personal finance

[Anrego]

I built my own.

It's one of those cases where re-inventing a wheel that has been invented a whole bunch of times made sense. I have fairly simple finances, nothing out there seemed to do what I wanted (either too complicated or too simple or too much of a hassle for what I needed) and by writing up my own app I got exactly what I wanted.

Re:What to use for personal finance

[clickclickdrone]

I don't use anything anymore and dont miss it. I just have two accounts. I transfer a fixed lump sum to the second one each month and all the bills, standing orders, direct debits etc come out the second. Whatever is left in the first is mine.

Re:What to use for personal finance

[hairyfeet]

I'll get hate for saying this but fuck it, get Quickbooks. They now have a free version and its butt simple to use. If you were formerly using MS Money you should have no problem with QB, its even easier to set up and use and there are a bazillion tutorials on the web if you need to do anything fancy. Its quickly becoming my "go to" for customers that ask about money management and they couldn't be happier, not had a single complaint.

Re:What to use for personal finance

[hawguy]

Since this is related, what do you guys use for personal finance tracking? I used Microsoft Money for a long time, but they don't release new versions of that anymore. Would Microsoft Access be an overkill? What do you guys use?

Since this is related, what do you guys use for personal finance tracking? I used Microsoft Money for a long time, but they don't release new versions of that anymore. Would Microsoft Access be an overkill? What do you guys use?

I use Paytrust. I have all of my bills sent to them, and they scan them in and pay them automatically based on payment rules I set. I can categorize each bill and generate reports from that, which is good enough to let me separate my investment property rental expenses from the rest of my personal expenses at tax time. At the end of the year I can buy a CD with my annual activity archived.

For investment tracking, I rely on E*Trade.

This system works for me and I'm not sure what I'd gain from something like MS Money, I don't need to track anything down to the last penny, I don't even balance my checkbook.

Re:What to use for personal finance

[Anonymous Coward]

You could give GnuCash a try.

Re:What to use for personal finance

[ryanmc1]

Mint.com

Re:What to use for personal finance

[jep305]

Nothing wrong with QB if you don't mind paying for it, and the constant barrage of upsells.

GnuCash is free, but you can't have the IQ of a lettuce and make it work.

Re:What to use for personal finance

[hairyfeet]

I'm sorry but that is like comparing a luxury car to a go-cart, no offense. You can manage your entire business with a single QB girl (and they are ALWAYS a girl for some reason, you'd think they had a union or something) and in the home space it'll take care of everything from depreciation to budgeting, there really is no comparison.

Hell if you are gonna use Gnu-Cash you might as well just use a spreadsheet, its really not any more friendly or feature rich, sorry. financial software is just not a niche FOSS devs seem to have much interest in.

Re:What to use for personal finance

[jep305]

I've used both QB and Gnu-Cash to run businesses. I currently run four sets of books on Gnu-Cash. It does everything I need for it to do.

But thanks for the car analogy -- that's exactly what this discussion was missing.

Tracking money

[Geoffrey.landis]

Bitcoin requires computer tracking of every single transaction, and requires distributing the information on each transaction to the public.

At the risk of getting flamed, I don't see how "Bitcoin as a currency and system collide head-on with the law" [requiring tracking of currency transactions]; the bitcoin system would require only trivial mods to do remove the privacy and track the "who" as well as the "what".

Re:Tracking money

[Anonymous Coward]

the bitcoin system would require only trivial mods to do remove the privacy and track the "who" as well as the "what".

That's not how it works. First and foremost, the creation of public addresses can be done entirely offline, without connecting to the Internet and without any information leaving RAM. I can request money to be sent to one of these addresses and only the person sending it knows that it belongs to me as there is no other record of its existence. An infinite number of such addresses could be created and there is no way to tie them directly to me.

Secondly, any such non-trivial changes to the network would require nearly everyone on the network to agree, which is EXTREMELY unlikely given Bitcoin's user base and ideology.

Re:Tracking money

[davester666]

Because NOT tracking who held which 'bills' and what they spent them on is one of the core design points of BitCoin.

It doesn't matter how hard it is to change the system to make it legal. It was explicitly designed to not track some information, which just happens to violate some laws if it is used in certain circumstances.

Re:Tracking money

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it only requires half of all of the computing power in the network to agree, which could easily be a single actor at this point.

Re:Tracking money

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that gives bitcoin value is the privacy. Anyone who signed up for such a fork would be essentially burning money on their power bill wondering why nobody wants to adopt their imaginary currency.

Re:Tracking money

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, as far as I understand it, computational power doesn't much matter as a matter of authority, aside from the mining process. So could you explain that?

Re:Tracking money

[kelemvor4]

So basically, what you're saying is that a monetary system used almost exclusively for illegal transactions was designed to keep criminals from being caught, and the existing users would not like it if it was possible to catch the criminals. Interesting.

Re:Tracking money

[jgarzik]

Incorrect. Even if you have 100% of the network computing power, you still cannot force core rule changes upon users.

Each P2P node validates transactions and blocks on their own, and refuses to relay invalid ones. Deviating from these rules simply segments yourself away from the rest of the network.

With sufficient network power, you may DoS the network, but not force unwanted rule changes.

          - jgarzik, bitcoin core dev

Re:Tracking money

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose there was a country-wide internet blackout.. perhaps due to a civil war with the incumbent government attempting to stop communications...

As various areas set up their own wans, bitcoin would continue to operate but in an entirely fragmented way..

It is possible, during this time, for people to trade the same coins multiple times by trading them in the different fragments..

When the civil war is over and the global connectivity is re-established, that global bitcoin swarm now receives conflicting information.. after all, how could John, who only had 7 coins to his name, have made 5 different 7 coin purchases?

Someone is going to get fucked.. and who that is going to be is determined by a kind of a popularity race.

Now, whats going to really ruin your belief in bitcoin is the fact that a civil war isnt required.. only a cleverly choreographed sequence of backbone and/or router outages.

Re:Tracking money

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Not just interesting. Wonderful.

You could characterize the use of cash exactly the same way. I like paying cash. It would be nice if I could pay cash over the intertubes. If Bitcoin does (the equivalent of) that, lots of people are going to like it for lots of reasons, some nice and some not so nice.

Just like cash.

Re:Tracking money

[Teancum]

Hash codes can still be sent around on "sneaker net" and other ways to ensure that Bitcoins can be transmitted to each other.

You don't need a 24/7 internet connection, all you really need is the ability to get your transactions processed eventually on the global network. Eventually means just that... it just has to be incorporated into the larger chain when it becomes convenient. As long as everybody acting locally agrees upon the values being exchanged there isn't even a loss of value among the bitcoins being exchanged. About the only thing "lost" is the ability to "coin" new Bitcoins and to receive payments for processing transactions as that sub-net will not be participating with the global network until it reconnected.

It is also possible to set up a "local network" that would be processing the payments between users using the regular Bitcoin system. It would need to be noted that such a local network would be in effect a different "bitcoin" currency though in terms of coining new bitcoins and payments received. That is something to keep in mind too.... there can be more than one Bitcoin network. In fact, there is a "test network" that has a different "root block" which is being used only for testing the Bitcoin network ideas and isn't really taken seriously by the rest of the developers as having value. You can set up your own "root block" if you care to only transmit values between close friends. Good luck on getting your own private Bitcoin accepted by anybody else though. In an extreme situation such private Bitcoin currencies certainly could be created (such as an independent Bitcoin network on Mars). There would obviously be an exchange rate between the alternate Bitcoin and the main "Earth" or "global" Bitcoin, but such alternate currencies certainly could be created.

Double spending can't happen because the subsequent attempts at making a purchase (or rather transferring the Bitcions) would be invalidated and wouldn't actually happen. The person "receiving" the Bitcoins might be pissed, but that is between you and the person who thought they were getting paid and didn't. Verification that the 2nd person didn't receive the Bitcoins is public knowledge, as it is in the Bitcoin chain itself and can be verified.

As for how to transmit information about transactions for eventual incorporation into the global transaction chains, you could use a system similar to RFC 1149. This system has been implemented in the past, and certainly could be used for transmitting transaction information instead of just Internet Protocol packets instead.

All of this of course would take somebody who knows the Bitcoin protocol very well, but it isn't impossible.

It is also possible to "print" Bitcoins as paper currency, but that is a whole other subject.

Re:Tracking money

[Teancum]

Not quite. There still is the "Cartel attack" that doesn't require 50% of the computing power of the network in order to become an actor. It is the one kind of attack that could succeed.

The attack goes something like this:

You have a "cartel" that represents a significant fraction of the network (but not 50%). Among themselves they calculate and publish among themselves successful hashes and develop chains of blocks that attempt to out compete the network as a whole. Only when a "competing" chain might overtake the cartel's internal chain would that internal chain need to be published.

The main advantage of the "Cartel attack" is that the cartel is able to capture a large number or even most of the newly minted Bitcoins and transaction fees. On the other hand, there is a risk that the cartel could lose out on a number of those opportunities as well.

As for a single computing facility or "actor" being able to capture 50% of the computing power of the whole network.... I find that highly unlikely. There have been huge server farms that have tried including significant malware bot nets that have tried. The U.S. government as a whole, if it really tried, might be able to get that to happen. It would also require the cooperation of so many bureaucrats that it wouldn't be worth the effort. You would be surprised at how many computers are calculating the hash blocks now.

Re:Tracking money

[Teancum]

Anonymity is not guaranteed with Bitcoin, and it is wrong to suggest that it is. There is some partial anonymity built into the system, but built into the protocol is a way to track where each coin has been spent, so far as what hash addresses it has gone to and where those "Bitcoins" eventually were spent. It is possible to trace each and every bitcoin to the block where the "coin" was generated.

Public hash codes such as something published on a website (including a Slashdot signature) or posted in a public place and has other information associated with that hash code certainly does not preserve any sort of anonymity.

This said, you can move stuff around from a public hash code to a private one rather easily, or do something like move your bitcoins in and out of one of the various exchanges to hide your tracks if that is what you want to do. The real headaches with Bitcoins happen when you try to convert them from one currency to another, and seems to be where most of the actual fraud happens as well.

Re:Tracking money

[AK Marc]

Then can you give the the 3 second description of how I can "own" three bitcoins and buy something from Alice with them, but not be able to trade them again to Bob for another transaction later? And then, how that verification is completely anonymous if Bob were an investigator looking to investigate me (with the assumption that IP address is tied to a person), and triggered an knowingly false trade in an attempt to verify information along the verification chain..

Re:Tracking money

[Anonymous Coward]

Trivial mod but practically impossible to implement - that's the whole beauty of it.

Re:Tracking money

[1s44c]

What you describe is far less of a problem than it seems at first glance.

If any large part of the network continues in isolation from the rest of the network both sides will still be viable, people in both parts will still be able to send and receive coins. When the networks join back the longest block chain, which will be the side with the most miners, will become the 'correct' block chain and be uploaded onto all clients orphaning the transactions that were on the shorter blockchain. The orphaned transactions are not lost but get integrated into newly mined blocks, the dependencies between the various orphaned transactions are sorted out nicely.

There are 2 problems remaining:

1) If the same coins are really spent on both sides of the network split the transactions on the losing side will become invalid and will be dropped. This should not be a problem in practice as clients will be on one or other side of the split, not both.

2) If coins are generated and then spent on the losing side of the two networks all transactions based on those coins become invalid. This is the reason for the 120 block ( 20 hour ) delay between mining a block and having spendable coins. In my opinion this delay should be longer, at least a week.

However entire continents can be bridged with a single VLAN, SSH tunnel, WIFI link, satellite link, dial up, etc. The entire network would be really hard to split and keep split in practice.

Re:Tracking money

[iluvcapra]

Then can you give the the 3 second description of how I can "own" three bitcoins and buy something from Alice with them, but not be able to trade them again to Bob for another transaction later?

Alice doesn't put your Oxytocin in the mail until she sees your transaction confirmed by six or seven nodes on blockchain.info -- the people calculating the blocks are validating the transactions against the rules of the system. Once the money passing to Alice is "spent" on the blockchain, all of the peers processing transactions will see your wallet as empty and any attempt to debit BTCs from a wallet that's empty will be rejected.

This can be broken if you get a peer to accept your transaction, stick it in as block and lie that it's validated; but other peers are seeing your transaction too and computing their own blocks against the truth on the chain. Six or seven different nodes have to agree on the validity of your transaction, and you have no control over which nodes will be able to validate a block containing your transaction. If you got some vast percentage of the computing power on the block chain (not a vast amount of power per se, but a commanding proportion of the total cycles computing transactions), you might be able to get enough confirmations to make your false transaction look valid. And that's a problem, and it's a way that a large single guild could possibly create rule changes, but at his time it's probably not a major issue.

Re:Tracking money

[1s44c]

Once a transaction is accepted into the block chain no other transactions that spend the same coins will be accepted. I may be wrong but I think every client on the network will see that transaction as wrong and not even forward it.

For the second part it's not hard to work out the IP behind any given BitCoin address as long as that address has sent, not just received, coins. Blockchain.info will give this info. Feel free to send your transaction though a proxy, TOR, a VPN, or a SSH tunnel. If you are buying a physical product you need to tell the seller your address anyway.

Jgarzik could give you more complete answers but you wanted the 3 second ones.

Re:Tracking money

[1s44c]

The cartel attack you describe just won't work. You need a longer block chain than the rest of the network in order to get your block chain published and you can't generate that with less than 50% of the network.

Re:Tracking money

[1s44c]

So basically, what you're saying is that a monetary system used almost exclusively for illegal transactions was designed to keep criminals from being caught, and the existing users would not like it if it was possible to catch the criminals. Interesting.

Actually that's almost right. Just keep in mind that criminals are whoever the governments of the world call criminals. Throughout history good people have been branded criminals for doing the right thing, having different ideas, opposing the status quo of the time, or simply for having the wrong religion.

Women who wanted the vote were criminals.
Black people who wanted equality were criminals.
People supporting homosexual rights still are criminals in lots of places.

I do disagree about bitcoin being used almost exclusively for illegal transactions. It's used for many legal things and there are very active marketplaces for all sorts of stuff on bitcointalk.org and bitmit.net.

Re:Tracking money

[Teancum]

Sure you can. It does take a large portion of the network, and in fact it gets easier to do this if you have multiple competing cartels (including some "cartel" members in multiple cartels).

I've performed empirical simulations to see if this works and it seems to work as promised, although it hasn't been rigorously investigated as I would hope to give some specific numbers.

Yes, you need a longer block chain than the rest of the network. The point is once you have a longer chain then you can keep the longer chain going for awhile.

I've mentioned this on the Bitcoin forums before and it has been poked and prodded to death including several people who know quite a bit about the protocol who have supported this assertion. As a conjecture, I have suggested that the minimum size to execute such a cartel and be successful is to collude with about a third of the network.

You also can't be so greedy with this kind of attack as to prevent anybody else from taking blocks, as it does take some dumb luck as well, and you risk losing some blocks by trying to be greedy. You can skew some things to your favor by rejecting some competing blocks or slightly delay competing blocks. If a cartel can be two or more blocks ahead of the rest of the network and stay that far ahead, they have pretty much captured the network for a time.

One way to stop this kind of attack is to have the network reject new blocks that seem to have a skewed time stamp that seems substantially off from the current date-time stamp. That isn't a perfect solution though because the network protocol assumes that there isn't any central time server and that individual clients may have their clocks off by quite a bit. Apparently Satoshi anticipated this kind of attack after a fashion, but even he acknowledged that the lack of an authenticated "current time" schema in the Bitcoin protocol prevented this kind of attack from being completely stopped.

Re:Tracking money

[Teancum]

Oh, it is possible to have at least some of the time a longer block chain than the rest of the network. We are dealing with probabilities here and not just pure deterministic algorithms with Bitcoin. Perhaps only 10% of the time that the cartel would have a longer chain than the rest of the network.... but if the cartel was organized properly it could get more than their "share" of the newly minted coins and transaction fees.

This is sort of a rework of the prisoner's dilemma if you want to know the category of mathematical problems it belongs under.

Re:Tracking money

[AK Marc]

By that definition, I'm not trading my coins to Alice, but giving Alice a key to generate her own new coins.

Perhaps that's where I wasn't getting it. The descriptions always try to make it sound as much like money as possible. But you don't show your dollar to Alice, then she writes down the serial number, then you set your dollar on fire, and she prints her new dollar "copy" of yours.

Re:Tracking money

[Geoffrey.landis]

Trivial mod but practically impossible to implement - that's the whole beauty of it.

Hard to implement? Why in the world do you think so? It's sweet that you think that it's impossible for there to be any invisible tracking, but even if there isn't-- Every transaction is public! Good grief, I can't think of anything more succeptible to decoding via data mining techniques than which transaction goes to whom. Unless you generate a new address for every single transaction, sooner or later there's enough information to decode who any given address tracks back to. And if you do generate a new address for each transaction, that doesn't necessarily mean you're safe either.

Re:Tracking money

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mean to be nitpicky, but has there ever been a time or place where women *wanting* the vote or black people *wanting* equality were criminals (as opposed to women who actually voted, or black people who took certain actions as equals like drinking from a whites-only fountain).

Re:Tracking money

[1s44c]

Ok, you're right. It's only a crime to express your desires in some way the legal system doesn't like instead of simply wanting a thing.

But all progress depends on people acting on their beliefs. Simply wanting a thing and keeping quiet about it never changed the world.

Re:Tracking money

[Rockoon]

1) If the same coins are really spent on both sides of the network split the transactions on the losing side will become invalid and will be dropped. This should not be a problem in practice as clients will be on one or other side of the split, not both.

Clients? Sure. ID's not so much. It is quite trivial to phone my buddy on the other side of the network split and give him what he needs to start trading the coins I am also about to start trading. This idea that "it should not be a problem" assumes honest actors.. what kind of security is that? Its just plain old bullshit that you just tried to sell.

The entire network would be really hard to split and keep split in practice.

I think the AC's point is that it doesnt have to be kept split. I think the AC's point is that it just needs to be reconnected in the right sequence in order to control who wins the race. Remember that most of the network is already ignorant of your balance even without any splits.

Re:Tracking money

[neonKow]

What exactly would be the point of that? That's doesn't seem like anything wrong with BitCoin specifically vs other electronic currency systems. That's just you and your buddy lying to people that you're going to pay them and letting chance determine who you end up not paying.

Re:Tracking money

[Rockoon]

That's just you and your buddy lying to people that you're going to pay them and letting chance determine who you end up not paying.

Did you even read what I wrote?

Controlling who wins the race is not "letting chance determine," its the exact opposite of "letting chance determine." Are you really this willfully blind when it comes to bitcoins that you will assign the exact opposite of its criticisms to those criticisms?

That's just you and your buddy lying to people that you're going to pay them

Not just me and my buddy since the visible chains are lying right along with us.

Re:Tracking money

[1s44c]

1) If the same coins are really spent on both sides of the network split the transactions on the losing side will become invalid and will be dropped. This should not be a problem in practice as clients will be on one or other side of the split, not both.

Clients? Sure. ID's not so much. It is quite trivial to phone my buddy on the other side of the network split and give him what he needs to start trading the coins I am also about to start trading. This idea that "it should not be a problem" assumes honest actors.. what kind of security is that? Its just plain old bullshit that you just tried to sell.

Then it's not a network split in the first place because if you can get voice communications across it many others will be running modems over those same voice lines. BitCoin ( and any sensible software really ) does not assume honest actors. Your attack would only work where the network was split in a way where you were the only guy with a communication channel to the other side.

I think the AC's point is that it doesnt have to be kept split. I think the AC's point is that it just needs to be reconnected in the right sequence in order to control who wins the race. Remember that most of the network is already ignorant of your balance even without any splits.

It might be possible to DDOS internet core routers with the biggest botnet the world has ever seen but the amount of bandwidth it would take plus the fact that BitCoin only needs to get a tiny amount of data though any link and the fact that people will actively create new links means this attack will be practically impossible to pull off. Remember when some jokers with insane bandwidth tried to DDOS the root DNS servers? They still failed. Cutting a decent sized country entirely off the internet would be way harder.

Re:Tracking money

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone sure they know enough about MONEY? I think not even economists know ENOUGH about MONEY. In fact, I know, since I have not published my own basic research on it. They may be confusing concepts... the FIDUCIARY MONETARY SYSTEM is not suboptima (as far as I can see)l, it is the FINANCIAL INSTITUTION MONETARY SYSTEM what is partially arbitrary and subject to betterments and changes. I would stick to PayPal though, and definitely want bigger valued anonymous debit cards and more quick web support to program payments. Now, if they link to compensate against purely online worth-value creation activities... that is another matter! Danilo J Bonsignore

better than bitcoin though

[Anonymous Coward]

yeh, cos bitcoin is so good, it can't be stolen, hakced or just deleted, right? right?

Re:better than bitcoin though

[Anonymous Coward]

yeh, cos bitcoin is so good, it can't be stolen, hakced or just deleted, right? right?

Stolen, hacked, or deleted? Yes, if you're a fool who doesn't take 10 mins to learn basic safety precautions. Same with gold or diamonds or cash... if you're stupid with them, you risk having them stolen or lost. Bitcoin requires a degree of personal responsibility, maybe not everyone can handle that.

Re:better than bitcoin though

[Nursie]

So all the folks running the exchanges and other hacked services, if indeed they were hacked and not just subject to fraud by the owners, were all fools who hadn't taken 10 minutes to learn basic security?

Face it, whatever the security of the protocol, the record of the bitcoin community and the services run by said community is deservedly in the gutter.

Re:better than bitcoin though

[Anonymous Coward]

So all the folks running the exchanges and other hacked services, if indeed they were hacked and not just subject to fraud by the owners, were all fools who hadn't taken 10 minutes to learn basic security?

Um, yes? I can't see why this is so hard to grasp.

Re:better than bitcoin though

[jmcvetta]

A different level of security vigilance is necessary for a Bitcoin exchange operator, than for an individual holder of Bitcoins - because it's a much more tempting target for thieves. Much like a traditional bank requires rather more security than one's wallet.

Re:better than bitcoin though

[1s44c]

So all the folks running the exchanges and other hacked services, if indeed they were hacked and not just subject to fraud by the owners, were all fools who hadn't taken 10 minutes to learn basic security?

BitCoin has now attracted a lot of greedy fools and a lot of conmen just like cash always has. One guy stole rather a lot of BitCoins by offering 7% interest a week. That was obviously a ponzi but very many people fell for it.

Re:better than bitcoin though

[icebraining]

But here's the thing: in the Bitcoin community, those that have poor practices can actually fail!

Re:better than bitcoin though

[Nursie]

Fine, you're saying that the current bitcoin community is, in general, a bad place to put any financial faith (and therefore money).

I agree.

Re:better than bitcoin though

[Nursie]

And take a lot of people's money with them!

I'll stick to the normal economy for now, at least there I have some form of legal redress.

Re:better than bitcoin though

[Anonymous Coward]

Were all fools who hadn't taken 10 minutes to learn basic security?

Basically, yes. The thing is, that financial security is hard. You have people with decades of experience all going after your machine chasing after a six figure reward, and you have to find a way to defeat all of them. With the current (ie. Visa/PayPal/SWIFT/whatever) system, running a financial service takes tens of millions of dollars to set up, and so the millions of dollars needed to implement somewhat decent security are less of an issue. With Bitcoin, however, anyone can start up their own financial service with a VPS for 1 bitcoin ($11) a month. Security, however, still costs hundreds of thousands of dollars at the least to properly implement - nothing can change that. So you have a lot of people who really shouldn't be running financial services trying to do so, and failing. If you had a company with a proper security budget try to work with Bitcoin, I can guarantee you that they will do much better.

newsflash

[etash]

person A trying to sell product X, says all other products are inferior to his product

Re:newsflash

[pswPhD]

person A trying to sell product X, says all other products are inferior to his product

I agree. The words "the world operates 'on an inferior monetary system'" strikes me a bit like Lenin saying Capitalism is a bad idea.

Re:newsflash

[etash]

yeah, it's a standard business practice: you have to convince the potential buyers that your product is somehow better than the other products available .. if you want to earn some .. bitcoins that is :-)

Re:newsflash

[fm6]

In this case, it's newsworthy for its entertainment value.

Re:newsflash

[maxwell demon]

In this case, it's newsworthy for its entertainment value.

I don't know. I mean there are entertaining 404 error pages, but this one really doesn't belong to them.

Re:newsflash

[fm6]

A couple of hours ago, that URL pointed to an article about yet another Bitcoin ripoff. It was a lot funnier then.

Re:newsflash

[1s44c]

A couple of hours ago, that URL pointed to an article about yet another Bitcoin ripoff. It was a lot funnier then.

The ripoff was an exchange service run by someone who was totally not up to the job. All the rules and regulations banks follow to setup web services don't apply to BitCoin ( yet ) so there have been many cases of people setting up stuff only to get robbed because they don't follow sensible security precautions.

The problem is lone idiots setting up web services that effectively handle money.

Re:newsflash

[fm6]

And financial system were lone idiots flourish is supposed to be superior?

Re:newsflash

[supremebob]

What's even more amusing that the #1 currency exchange for his product is still MtGox, which was formerly famous for trading Magic The Gathering playing cards.

Oh, and not only was that site hacked, but that hack was responsible for wiping out 2/3'rds of the currency's reported value overnight. Even now, it still hasn't fully recovered that value.

Wow, this sounds MUCH better than the existing monetary system! Sign me up!

Re:newsflash

[Seumas]

When people first started wanking-off to the whole BitCoin thing with hourly stories on every site, I was constantly shouted down as a troll for commenting on how the whole concept just felt scammy and dirty. That even if it was entirely legitimate, describing how it works to any rational human being would make them instantly feel like that isn't a real thing, but is some sort of a shady ass scheme (and remember those shady fucking things about a decade ago where you could install clients on your computer and "sell processing power to some company" and maybe earn a nickel a month for it?).

Well, I'm not going to be smug about it, but . . . it'a amusing to see the mess they've all created for themselves and how the table has turned as far as public perception. Other than the guys building massive bitcoin farms in some sort of a nuts "I'm going to go be a prospector" sort of way.

Re:newsflash

[makomk]

Correct link.

Re:newsflash

[maxwell demon]

OK, so that's no different than a bank forgetting to lock their safe doors and a thief taking advantage of that to remove all the cash. You would blame the bank which has so bad security, but you wouldn't blame that on the cash the bank had put there.

Just like...

[OldSport]

...Tim Cook says that we are living in a post-PC era. Does it really surprise anyone that people with an interest in seeing things change are advocating for such changes?

legal tender

[digsbo]

People should be allowed to choose any money they want, without having to paxes to their sovereign state when that state devalues its money. Get rid of the legal tender laws and allow competing currencies. And don't give me the BS that it's impractical to support multiple currencies. Travel outside the USA and you see it working all over the place. Even in the Dominican Republic you find cash registers that offer three currency operation.

Re:legal tender

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, Dominican Republic, the economic epicenter of, uh... the Dominican Republic.

Re:legal tender

[MysteriousPreacher]

You'll notice that countries that have widespread acceptance of foreign currencies tend to either be heavily oriented towards tourism and/or have unstable currencies (high inflation typically). Those benefits make up for the additional risk and overhead. What are the benefits for developed economies with stable currencies?

Re:legal tender

[digsbo]

Developed countries with stable currencies? Switzerland? I think it's becoming clear that the dollar and the Euro are no longer considered safe. At least not in the long run.

Re:legal tender

[digsbo]

I'm sorry, didn't answer the question. The benefit is that the citizens are allowed to save money in a safe and secure manner of their choice, instead of in the currency that a cabal of privately-owned banks can devalue when they make bad bets.

Re:legal tender

[osu-neko]

People should be allowed to choose any money they want...

They can. Just no one is required to accept it.

The benefit is that the citizens are allowed to save money in a safe and secure manner of their choice...

There are countries where you can't do this? I can do this in the US.

Re:legal tender

[digsbo]

I am not allowed to store my wealth in gold. If gold appreciates against my country's currency, I am forced to pay a portion of that appreciation in taxes. In other words, because I do not want to store some portion of my money in an alternate money without being forced to pay back to my government some percentage of the devaluation of their money they chose to cause while I was using the alternate money.

Re:legal tender

[Teancum]

It is hard for the government of any country to know how many Bitcions you may have, as they can be stored in a "private" hash key that can only be known to you and recorded somewhere that a government can't discover. If there are laws of this nature that you must live under, it is up to you as if you want to comply with those laws voluntarily or not.

As for how to verify how many Bitcoins you may have or not have without the government discovering that quantity, that may be a bit harder. Not impossible as you could in theory even perform the verification "by hand" without a computer, or with a computer you are 100% certain has no spyware and no government agent would be able to view the calculations, but presumably a determined government might eventually figure a way out in terms of discovering the hash code necessary to find your current Bitcoin balance. It couldn't happen through a "brute force attack" (at least not until the heat death of the universe or the development of large scale quantum computers with thousands of qubits linked together) but a "TEMPEST" type attack on your computer system might be able to find the hash key necessary to investigate the current balance.

I could say the same thing about gold, but you need to take the gold and hide it in your basement or trade it in the "black market" where records aren't kept.

Don't worry. Until about the mid 1970's it was illegal for most Americans to even own gold bullion in large quantities without explicit government licenses and extensive record keeping. Your country isn't alone in idiotic laws of that nature. It wouldn't surprise me to see legislators and parliament members coming up with insane laws that prohibit transactions in Bitcoins and arresting people simply for having the software on their computer... even if from a virus or malware.

Re:legal tender

[digsbo]

You, sir, get it.

Re:legal tender

[AK Marc]

Which is a false dichotomy. Go put your money in shares in foreign companies. Go put your money in a foreign exchange account. I'll be low (or no) interest, but it'll be "saved" in a currency of your choice. There's no restriction on US citizens that they may not save money in foreign accounts. There's also no restriction on Us citizens in the US using only Canadian money for transactions. The restrictions are all on the states printing their own money. If the citizens wish to import foreign money and use that, there's no laws against that (so long as they don't refuse to take USD for debts).

Re:legal tender

[AK Marc]

You are not taxes on gold's appreciation. You are taxed on the sale of that gold for profit. Also, if you were not intending to spend it immediately, you can roll that sale gain over into another investment. And the tax on that gain is the lowest tax rate in the country. I think you are in loonitarian zone, where taxes are theft at gunpoint and inflation is theft at gunpoint as well.

But your words, as stated, are simply false. You are allowed to store all the wealth in gold you wish. There are no rules against it, and no taxes on doing it. Note, you said "store". Then you complain about the rules on trading gold for profit, which isn't storage.

Re:legal tender

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe that the gold defines value rather than the paper currency, when you sell the gold, it hasn't appreciated at all; the cash has devalued so you're simply getting more of it because it's worth less. Taxing this change in exchange rate as a profit means that storing in gold is treated as less legitimate than storing in cash.

Re:legal tender

[Anonymous Coward]

But your words, as stated, are simply false. You are allowed to store all the wealth in gold you wish. There are no rules against it, and no taxes on doing it. Note, you said "store". Then you complain about the rules on trading gold for profit, which isn't storage.

You are allowed to store all the data onto your hard drive you wish. There are no rules against it, and no data corruption on doing it. Note, you said "store". Then you complain about the data corruption when you try to read the data, which isn't storage.

Wait, what?

Re:legal tender

[Anonymous Coward]

"In the long run, we're all dead."

Re:legal tender

[JDG1980]

If you believe that the gold defines value rather than the paper currency...

Why would you believe something that stupid? Gold is just another commodity. Gold prices in 1999-2001 were about $275 an ounce. The current spot price fluctuates, but when I just checked it was about $1770. Does that mean that the price of everything else has gone up in the past decade by a factor of 6.4x? Of course not, don't be silly. Even things that grow faster than inflation (tuition, medical care) haven't gone up in price that fast. Nowhere close.

Re:legal tender

[rubycodez]

many asian central banks are hoarding gold, building reserves. maybe it is you who believes something stupid.

the value of fiat money always goes to zero. gold from five thousand years ago holds value today. gold is real money, dollars are game chits.

Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Blakey Rat]

Bitcoin is useless from a PRACTICAL standpoint. Why?

1) Transactions aren't instant, you have to wait potentially for hours for your transaction to go through and the value in your account to change. (Even transactions between two accounts you own, because Bitcoin isn't smart enough to handle that.)

2) Every device using Bitcoin needs a copy of the Bitcoin database. As of about a year ago, this was 700 MB of data. Every device needs a copy of this. Every device needs to go through this file and parse it. Including your low-power cellphone.

I'm not against the concept of Bitcoin, but the implementation stinks.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[tibman]

My credit card has pending transactions for days sometimes.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

1 - Ten minutes max, usually.
2 - Not true, there are several wallet tools now that don't hold the blockchain locally.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your comments are fair, but not entirely accurate any more;
I agree with them to a degree, and have raised those issues a number of times in the #bitcoin IRC channel on freenode;

The response to 1) is well, sure, transaction confirmations are not instant. So what? Neither are credit-card transactions. They can take days, even weeks to confirm. The banks agree to go with instant-confirmation based on probability. In a real-world implementation of bitcoin, I suspect that people would accept small transactions without 6 confirms. In fact, in a real-world implementation, I think most stores could do a lot worse than go down the "Starbucks" route; you have an automated payment app on your phone (or accessible via the web, or via a payment machine at the counter that uses your card number etc.). This "starbucks" account is filled by bitcoin, by you, at home. Or in store etc. but the point being that you fill it before you need it, 9 times out of 10. Ergo that reduces the need for instant confirms. Since it's only a small amount of cash in your Starbucks account, it mitigates the worries over hyperinflation & governmental interference that running all your finances in this way would raise.
2) Not every device needs a full copy of the database now. They have thin-use clients. I'm not sure on the exact specifics of how it does it, but I know it's supported, and will become "the norm" for most domestic users; I believe the main such desktop app is called "Electrum". The network as a whole isn't endangered as long as a fair number of clients continue to use the whole block chain apps. And a lot of people will. But on your iPhone or whatever, sure, thin-client, instant usage, no waiting on downloading the block chain.

Really, the way to get BTC into common, physical-world use, is to go down the accounts system aka "starbucks". A lot of retail chains are already set up for such a system, small retailers can easily roll their own thanks to the likes of OpenTransaction, and it makes it very easy to get btc into common usage without the worries over physical terminals, having to accept low confirm levels or make customers wait for ages etc.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

1) For low-value transactions (say, $50), 0 confirmations is usually fine. For higher value transactions, 1 confirmation (average of 10 minutes, sometimes more) is pretty good. If you're buying a car or a house, waiting an hour or two for more transactions is reasonable. You'd spend at least that time on paperwork.

2) There are several thin clients now that do NOT require the full blockchain. For example, MultiBit, Electrum, Blockchain.info, various cell phone clients... the implementation depends on the client, but there's more than one way to tackle the size problem.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

>1) Transactions aren't instant, you have to wait potentially for hours for your transaction to go through and the value in your account to change. (Even transactions between two accounts you own, because Bitcoin isn't smart enough to handle that.)

So, it's exactly like debit, credit, and cash, then?

We all know banks can be very slow on debit and credit transactions. How about cash?

Well, that one is slow too. Your cash isn't real until some of several things happen: It is independently verified as real by the bank it is drawn on (In Canada, the bank of Canada would need to verify it), or your bank releases the hold on your deposit (this can be as quick as waiting in line at the bank, or it could take a few days if you deposit the cash at the ATM and it takes time for the deposits to go through a clearinghouse. Even if the bank says it's verified, they still have a while (days, or is it a full month?) during which they can reverse the deal if the bills are found to be fake later on.

>2) Every device using Bitcoin needs a copy of the Bitcoin database. As of about a year ago, this was 700 MB of data. Every device needs a copy of this. Every device needs to go through this file and parse it. Including your low-power cellphone.

Oooo! 700 MB! That's a lot... For my hard drive 20 years ago. Also, I expect an intermediary would appear to help make bitcoin go a little faster (and they would charge a percentage as insurance against transactions that fail and screw them out of money).

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Twinbee]

Thank you. That's automatically put me off BitCoin in future, so I won't be following it anymore (and hence, save lots of time). I can't believe I haven't heard these disadvantages before, and that they don't get even the basics right.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

"(Even transactions between two accounts you own, because Bitcoin isn't smart enough to handle that.)"

It only takes so long because it wants to ensure that the recipient isn't getting conned by a sender using the same bitcoins multiple times.

This is quickly and easily solved by putting more processing systems (miners) online (provided they are independent and not controlled by one organization.)

"Every device needs to go through this file and parse it. Including your low-power cellphone."

Not true at all. All of this can be outsourced. You can setup a bitcoin "server" on your home system that does this and your phone can merely relay the transactions. That or you can pay for a service (or use a free service) that does the same.

It's still in it's infancy. A lot of the problems are not yet solved. That doesn't make them unsolvable.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

tim cook is also a crook ... dont give apple your $$$ you see what they tried already sheish..

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Days before you get to sign the slip?

Those transactions are not actually "pending", the bank is holding your money for a few days to collect interest off of it before passing it on to the next gent.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

> That's automatically put me off BitCoin in future

Glad to see the ignorant and incompetents can still be swayed by an in accurate forum post. Marked you as such.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

You can break bitcoins into the eighth decimal point or so; this gives at the very least enough resolution to buy a cup of coffee with it without need to round.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Fix it kiddo if you're one with a big brain. The world could use it.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Twinbee]

Maybe they can improve, but to have that kind of bloatedness and overhead at any stage (even if it was somewhat exaggerated in the OP's post) is too much for me. I love the concept, but I'm sure others can do it better and more efficient.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Coryoth]

While it's believed the number of prime numbers themselves are infinite (it's not easy proving anything in mathematics with the word 'infinite' in it)

Yes, if only we could prove there is an infinite number of oprimes rather than just believing, presumably from some famous named conjecture. I'm sure any such proof would require extremely deep and difficult mathematics and not be something that is used in textbooks as a first example of mathematical proof as copied straight out of Euclid.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[subanark]

Proof that there are an infinite number of primes:
If there were a largest prime number, p, then p! + 1 is not divisible by any number between 2 and p!. Thus p!'s prime factors are numbers greater than p!.

As for practical upper limit, that is hard to say. Technology improves all the time. If a usable quantum computer came out, it could find a lot of bit coins and greatly devalue the current value.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[raynet]

Here in Europe, the creditcard transactions with Visa Electron are realtime and the amount you pay is immediately taken from your account. If the realtime reservation cannot be made (due to network problems that sometimes happen), you cannot make the payment and the merchant wont sell you the goods. With non-realtime creditcards, the CC issuer and/or bank makes sure the merchant gets her money even if the customer didn't have the funds, thus the merchant can be sure to paid. With Bitcoin, if the transaction can take tens of minutes to be confirmed, you cannot use it to buy anything where you get the goods immediately upon payment, like buying a cup of coffee etc. Or buying a PC from a store and walking out with it. And, worse, with Bitcoin the transaction can be later nullified and the merchant can lost her money. This has already happened once. With debit/creditcards you have some entity you can sue and perhaps get the funds back (or atleast you have a contract that defines who will pay who when transactions are reverted).

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[girlintraining]

Yes, if only we could prove there is an infinite number of oprimes rather than just believing, presumably from some famous named conjecture. I'm sure any such proof would require extremely deep and difficult mathematics and not be something that is used in textbooks as a first example of mathematical proof as copied straight out of Euclid.

I'm sensing a high level of sarcasm here. I can prove that the angles of the three sides of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. I cannot prove that parallel lines never cross. That's the difference between something proven, and something posited. A conjecture is one step below even that: It's something that all the data points to being true, but it can't be derived directly from mathematical laws. In other words, it's a really good guess.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, when free cash transactions can be guaranteed within 2 hours between banks, bitcoin is a dinosaur harking back to the 80's when these things took days.

Also bitcoin takes an apparently random few % of each transaction - when I cashed up it around 15% of my total bitcoin stash just vanished into the ether in 'taxes', and if you tried to send more than about 10 (about £50 at the time) at at time you just got a 'transaction too large' error.. that's just not scalable - business would want to send thousands. (I ended up just about covering the cost of my mining rig + electricity one I'd sold it.. so it was a fun hobby but not one I'd repeat).

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[jfengel]

> Here in Europe, the creditcard transactions with Visa Electron are realtime and the amount you pay is immediately taken from your account.

Doesn't that make it a debit card? We have those in the US, too.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[raynet]

Could be, I was assuming the AC used the fastest example available in his comparison...

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[TeknoHog]

You forgot something: Bitcoin supply decreases exponentially over time.

They're based on prime numbers, which become increasingly rare as the numbers increase.

Can I have some of what you're smoking? The exponential decay curve of Bitcoin supply has nothing whatsoever to do with prime numbers. It is simply a planned feature that after every 210000 blocks produced, the block reward will halve.

Also, as others have already corrected you, Bitcoins are fine for microtransactions. There are currently 8 decimals, with a possibility to increase in the future.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[osu-neko]

Right. Ultimately, BitCoins can become (and in fact have become, to a limited extent) a commodity. They can never really function effectively as a currency.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

What this means, practically speaking, is if the currency were ever widely-adopted, due to limited supply, the price will become so high that most people won't be able to afford them in any quantity, if at all. It also means that microtransactions aren't possible: You can "break" a $20 bill. You can't break a bitcoin.

I believe you're mistaken about the divisibility of bitcoins, see here:
Bitcoin Myths

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[JoeMerchant]

A year ago, processing 0.00001% of the world's commerce was 700MB - how big would it be if they handled Visa's global transaction volume?

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[JoeMerchant]

Here in America the merchant is mostly on the hook for credit transaction problems.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[raynet]

Here I would only accept Visa Electron type cards as a merchant as I would be fairly sure that I would always get to keep the funds.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. People are being robbed and don't even care. It's probably a little more devious that just interest.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[jgarzik]

Wrong on every detail.

1a) Using the "move" RPC command, bitcoin makes an instant transfer between two accounts that you control.

1b) All transactions are published instantly, and available instantly, via the bitcoin P2P network. There are also several websites like http://mtgox.com/ which facilitate instant transfers. After that, you wait on average 10 minutes per confirmation, each of which makes your transaction exponentially more secure. While not recommended, yes you can spend zero-confirmation transactions.

2) Did you bother to look at Android Market before posting? Only full nodes require the full block chain database (2+ GB now). Lightweight software exists for phones, or you can use a web wallet from places like http://blockchain.info/ or http://instawallet.org/

          - jgarzik, bitcoin core dev

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Rockoon]

If you're buying a car or a house, waiting an hour or two for more transactions is reasonable. You'd spend at least that time on paperwork.

Who in their right mind is going to be signing paperwork before the money, or a legally enforceable promise of money, is confirmed and in their hands when talking about very large sums?

...perhaps the same idiot that didnt get a lawyer when you was buying or selling a house.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[sFurbo]

There is an infinite number of primes, the number of primes have got nothing to do with new bitcoins, and you can break a bitcoin into smaller bits. You couldn't get it more wrong if you tried, so I am going to call Poes law.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[maxwell demon]

Who in their right mind is going to be signing paperwork before the money, or a legally enforceable promise of money, is confirmed and in their hands when talking about very large sums?

Who in their right mind is going to pay the money before the signed contract is confirmed and in their hands when talking about very large sums?

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[maxwell demon]

I can reuse cash immediately. There's no need to put it on an account first.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry Blakey Rat, you don't know what you're talking about.

1) Transactions ARE instant. My business accepts BTC payments instantly on a daily basis.
2) Devices can use thin clients which don't require the blockchain.

Do some basic research please before posting.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[maxwell demon]

But you can prove that there are infinitely many primes. And indeed, it has been proven quite a long time ago. By Euclid. There's absolute no need to guess here. And the proof isn't even complicated.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Coryoth]

I thought you might have taken the time to look things up, but apparently not. Let's recap then; Euclid proved that there are infinitely many primes in approx. 300 BC. The proof is very straightforward and has been repeated many times. See here for a canonical example. But wait, there's more. Bored mathematicians have found other proofs, usually perverse ones for amusement value. See, for example Goldbach's proof, or Furstenberg's topological proof.

Perhaps your going to say that those are just a touch hand-wavy and not "derived directly from mathematical laws". That would be a mistake, but we can cover that too: here is a proof that is conveniently completely machine verifiable and traceable back to formal axioms -- specifically first order predicate calculus and Zermelo Frankel set theory (we don't even need the axiom of choice!).

There are infinitely many primes. But don't trust me -- work through the metamath proof in all the gory details if you really still don't believe.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[gl4ss]

cc is for practical purposes instant.
the vendor who you're buying from is instantly promised money by the system(in most cases even checked&verified promise) and you get your purchase instantly.

though if bc was used commonly for everyday things, then for things like coffee you would load up credits on your coffeeshop card with it, same with bus etc.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[zyzko]

> Here in Europe, the creditcard transactions with Visa Electron are realtime and the amount you pay is immediately taken from your account.

Doesn't that make it a debit card? We have those in the US, too.

Yes, but Visa Electron and Mastercard Maestro are always verified, you can't simply spend something you don't have.

Visa / MC Debit have an option to be verified, but it is not mandatory and when used in a non-instant way they will show up on your account either immediately or maybe 3 days later, depending on the chain of payment processing.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[jmcvetta]

Who in their right mind is going to be signing paperwork before the money, or a legally enforceable promise of money, is confirmed and in their hands when talking about very large sums?

Afaik, house sales usually involve an escrow process. Buyer & seller make a contract; buyer puts money into escrow account; seller completes deed transfer paperwork; then escrow company releases money to seller.

No reason this couldn't be done with Bitcoin, or any other type of payment mechanism.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[gl4ss]

yeah it's a debit card. technically you shouldn't be able to overdraw it (it's possible when traveling, to some extent - it shouldn't be though).
but visa isn't really consistent with it's branding nor with it's actual rules globally. it's also supposed to be used only with the chip if possible, but the main point about "electro" part is checking it live if you have enough balance.

but visa electron, when travelling, works exactly like a credit card - whoever is charging it is just supposed to check that it has balance, however all hotels and such accept it as a credit card, metro system booths accept it as a credit card, online vendors accept it as a credit card(steam & etc), american atm's give cash with it as if it were a visa card... because it carries normal visa numbers, you don't really need more than the numbers to charge it.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Teancum]

1 - Ten minutes max, usually.
2 - Not true, there are several wallet tools now that don't hold the blockchain locally.

The ten minutes is the typical amount of time that Satoshi established for generating a block chain. It could be longer or much shorter before a transaction is incorporated. In theory the next block may take even days to be generated, but as a practical matter you are correct that about ten minutes is typical and longer than a half hour is almost unheard of. I have seen two blocks generated less than ten seconds apart, and some that take much longer to be processed.

If you don't bother including any transaction fee in a transaction, it may get passed over until somebody who is generous decides to incorporate your transaction into the block. Most block processors are greedy little capitalists though that will process even the most minor and insignificant transaction with the least bit of a transaction fee, so including some sort of transaction fee is almost always guaranteed to get that transaction included into the next block. Most client software won't even let you inject a transaction without a fee, but it is still possible to send them into the network.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[AK Marc]

Doesn't that make it a debit card? We have those in the US, too.

No. They have credit cards that run as US debit cards, where the "account" they are taken from immediately is the credit account. Because it's taken from a credit account, it's a credit card, not a debit card. A debit card is a "credit card" tied to a non-credit account. The method of transaction is irrelevant to the account at the back end, and the card type is determined by the back-end account.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait until that Bitcoin database grows. 700 meg may not be big now, but that size will turn into gigs, then terabytes.

At least with cash, the customer -> merchant transaction is over with as soon as the bills change hands, perhaps with some validation to make sure they are not fake. Cash swaps hand, receipt goes, end of transaction, and seller is paid... and stays paid.

Not with BitCoins. Way too easy to rip off as previously discussed.

Lets be real here. BitCoins are not even good for doing underhanded stuff like eGold used to be (before FinCEN came into the picture) because of the long and intense audit trail it leaves behind for any law enforcement down to the county dogcatcher can access with a warrant.

What is BitCoin actually useful for?

1: The currency has BIG swings, which makes it useless for something to go against other things in the money market.

2: The currency was rigged to give the original adopters lots of coins, and people coming in far fewer.

3: Clearinghouses being completely trashed by intruders being news.

4: No anonymity.

Other than the geek charm, what can BitCoin give me that credit card transactions, PayPal, or a wad of C-notes can't? BitCoin's transactions are not private, and I'm sure FinCEN is watching those like a hawk, not to mention the IRS.

Want a real currency? Study Chaum, or Tim May's stuff. They use real anonymous currencies built from the ground up correctly for a purpose other than self financial gain.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[ais523]

For anyone interested reading this discussion, I may as well say what the proof actually is, because it's shorter than typical explanations of how easy it is.

Suppose there are only a finite number of prime numbers. That means you can produce a complete List Of All Primes. Multiply them all together, add 1. This number has no prime factors (by definition; none of the primes on our List Of All Primes divide into it), which means it must be prime itself, but it's way bigger than anything on the list so it can't be. This is a contradiction, so the assumption that there are only finitely many primes must be wrong.

(And indeed, this is used as a standard example of proof technique.)

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

you're pretty much an idiot
you know jack shit about math
just shut up

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[icebraining]

Your bullshit is so thick it's not even funny. You got a mining rig but didn't know about the transaction fees? A 10 bitcoin limit? FFS.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

p!

captcha: ignorant

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

"And, worse, with Bitcoin the transaction can be later nullified and the merchant can lost her money. This has already happened once."

A citation for that. please?

I'm unaware of any nullified real-world bitcoin transaction. There've been cases where trades on a bitcoin exchange have been rolled back, yes - although fewer than have been rolled back on, for example, Wall Street. That's not even remotely like what you describe though.

But an actual wallet-to-wallet transaction getting charged back or nullified? I don't think so.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[DerekLyons]

The response to 1) is well, sure, transaction confirmations are not instant. So what? Neither are credit-card transactions. They can take days, even weeks to confirm.

Um, no. Confirmation of credit card transactions is virtually instantaneous. It make take a while for the transfer to take place or the charges to be applied - but that's not the same thing.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[ThosLives]

It's sad that so few people realize this.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

you're pretty much an idiot
you know jack shit about math
just shut up

you're an idiot
you know jack shit about math
now you may shut up

See it's much better as a Haiku

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

I can prove that the angles of the three sides of a triangle add up to 180 degrees.

You'd need Euclid's fifth postulate for that.

I cannot prove that parallel lines never cross.

That's the definition of parallel lines.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[JoeMerchant]

I know, in 1991 I arrived in Germany with my Visa card and could only use it to get cash from certain banks in the center of very large cities, and not for purchases anywhere. I understand it's gotten a little better, but still not accepted the way it is in the US. MasterCard was better in Germany, and the reverse in France.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[tlhIngan]

Ten minutes max, usually.

Is it me, or does this seem like how some HFT will go in and monetize BitCoin? I mean, 10 minutes is usually "good enough", but you can bet someone will see a way to make it instant.

And once BitCoin becomes popular, you can bet the money traders will move in. Unregulated transactions? Check. With 10 minutes between confirmations, you can do millions of transactions in between that get resolved afterwards.

That's the future of BitCoin.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you're not writing these comments from a computer, because you just swore off using something on the premise of "I love the concept, but others can do it better and more efficient."

Sorry, no computer for you, there will be a new better and more efficient one out in a while, but you can't get that one either, because there'll be another one. Same for phones, same for your house/apartment, same for your car... Actually, if you remove all the things where we have made/are likely to make significant improvements, you'll be back in the palaeolithic.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Wonko the Sane]

Is it me, or does this seem like how some HFT will go in and monetize BitCoin? I mean, 10 minutes is usually "good enough", but you can bet someone will see a way to make it instant.

Actually it's just you, because you haven't read the protocol spec and don't know what you're talking about.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[AK Marc]

Gold is a commodity and used to be the most popular currency (it was stopped not for commodity reasons, but practical ones surrounding scarcity and demand for non-currency uses).

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[makomk]

No, ten minutes is the average time it takes for the next block to come along. In practice it takes longer than that to get a transaction confirmed on average because it may not actually get included in the next block.

It's also not unusual for there not to be any blocks for well over an hour, meaning that your transactions can actually take several hours to get their first confirmation. Plus, one confirmation isn't actually enough - there are various attacks that can be used against services which accept transactions after a single confirmation.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[makomk]

1a) Using the "move" RPC command, bitcoin makes an instant transfer between two accounts that you control.

Except that isn't actually a transfer at all, and as one of the core Bitcoin developers you must know that. All the "move" RPC command does is update a note in your wallet which says that a particular number of bitcoins belong to a particular account name. It doesn't actually move any bitcoins - in fact, the bitcoins you're transferring don't even have to actually exist. If you want to actually transfer bitcoins from (for instance) your wallet to your Mt.Gox account, or your desktop to your mobile phone, or anything that goes beyond just adjusting numbers in a file on your PC you have to do it through the blockchain and wait for at least one confirmation.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Errol backfiring]

Ergo: the transaction has not completed yet.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[tlhIngan]

Is it me, or does this seem like how some HFT will go in and monetize BitCoin? I mean, 10 minutes is usually "good enough", but you can bet someone will see a way to make it instant.

Actually it's just you, because you haven't read the protocol spec and don't know what you're talking about.

Sure, it maybe against PROTOCOL, but who's to say it isn't possible? Remember the economic crisis we're in? It's caused by a lot of "funny money" floating around, based on things that don't really exist. Just because it takes 6 confirms to validate a transaction doesn't mean you can't have a bunch of money managers agreeing to another protocol to do "instant confirms" or trading without confirming.

Think "I'll sell you 1 bitcoin now for 1.1 bitcoins in the future" (note: fractional bitcoins are not in the spec, either). Then periodically they'll "settle up".

Just because "official" transactions require confirmations doesn't mean unofficial ones aren't. After all, we aren't supposed to be able to trade stocks and shares 24/7 - the market's only open a few hours on weekdays and non-bank holidays. We seem to have made after-hours trading possible though.

Where there's profit to be made, protocol be damned. Bitcoin's just too geeky for wall street at the moment, but you can bet the quants are looking into exploiting it and offering pension funds and other investments based on "the future of money".

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Wonko the Sane]

note: fractional bitcoins are not in the spec, either

Note: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Where there's profit to be made, protocol be damned. Bitcoin's just too geeky for wall street at the moment, but you can bet the quants are looking into exploiting it and offering pension funds and other investments based on "the future of money".

I truly wish them all the best.

They should note, however, there is no entity capable of printing new Bitcoins to bail them out when their bets go sour.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with bit coin is that there are no mechanisms for changing inflation expectations, as you can with fiat currency. Goofy goldbugs aside, anyone serious knows that's an absolutely laughable way to run an economy.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[TeknoHog]

Bitcoin is still somewhat experimental, and we have never claimed to have the be all end all solution to money. If you have a better idea for a digital currency, you are free to fork the project or start your own from scratch, and see how many followers you get.

Re:Ignoring the theoretical for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Using bitcoin for international money transfer may be superior to services such as western union or moneygram in certain circumstances

Summary of advantages:
- Low, %-based fees
- No explicit currency conversion between real-world currencies (and tight margins between each real-world currency and bitcoin)
- Transparency - you can see the bitcoins being transferred
- Large amounts - you can transfer large amounts without extra security checks / red tape that you get with a bank transfer (and western union / moneygram impose relatively low limits)

I tried an international bank transfer of substantial that was held up for over 3 weeks, with no explanation from the banks on either side as to where the money was.
At least with bitcoin you have services like blockchain.info that provide transparency.

Summary of disadvantages:
- User interface / barriers to entry (need to install client or create account, understand how it works etc)
- Delays (takes time to convert cash to bitcoins if you don't have cash deposited in a mtgox account already)
- Risks of theft / fraud etc
- Slow relative to moneygram etc (still fast relative to some international bank transfer routes though)

Also, international money transfer using bitcoin is of huge value, given that it is fast, transparent and cheap relative to other services, e.g.:

Moneygram - £500 sent to USA (maximum is £650):
Choose an arrival time Fee* Payment method
As soon as 10 minutes** £ 36.00 GBP Credit or debit card
* In addition to the transfer fee, a currency exchange rate may apply. Government restrictions in your destination Country, State or Province may affect your Transfer.
**Subject to availability of MoneyGram agents, hours of operation and local regulations.

Western Union
Selected Service Sending to Sending from
Money Transfer USA United Kingdom
Amount to send £ 500,00
Money transfer fee* £ 37,00
Total estimated amount £ 537,00

The amount you can send per transaction is £ 2500,00 depending on your transaction history with Western Union.

Bitcoin (MTGox)
Maximum amount you can withdraw: £ 10,000 in 24 hours (with verified account, provided you request an increased limit)
Fees: none apparently, except the bid/ask spread which is about 1% - see below:
Lowest Ask Price: £7.24219
Highest Bid Price: £7.23498
So to transfer £500 using bitcoin, it looks like you're looking at c. £5 of fees (the difference between the rate at which you buy and at which you sell) vs. > £35 in either of the other methods
Time for transfer: 4 working days to fund your bitcoin balance (which is a bit of an issue unless you were expecting to make the transfer in advance), but then probably only an hour (or less) to effect the transfer (across the bitcoin network) to the other party such that they *know* they have the money. Once they have sold the bitcoins on the other end, it will likely take them a few business days to withdraw it to a bank account though.
Currency: there is no actual currency exchange except that to and from bitcoin (where the spread is tight), so if I'm sending to USA, the exchange rate is the rate at which I buy BTC for GBP vs. the rate at which I sell BTC for USD (provided the spreads on BTC/GBP and BTC/USD are tight, this is by definition quite small)

So given the strengths it has, I think it would be fair to say that it is useful for non-urgent transfers (or urgent transfers if you keep a balance of cash in your mtgox account) provided you are not concerned about anonymity. [If you are, then you will need to insert an anonymity / remixer step before transferring the bitcoins, which will cost more and slow things down (depending on the size of the transfer and the liquidity of the remixer). ]

Furthermore, for smaller amounts, the transactio

Slow speed of analogue money is the savior

[G3ckoG33k]

The slow speed of analogue money is the buffer we all need, as electronic money move around too fast.

With ultrafast transactions only we would have the stock markets crash every few minutes, albeit after a few hundred millions, or billions of transactions.

The differently paced transactions may be a pain in the rear for stock brokers, but they have saved us all from even more disasters. Slow human brains cannot react within seconds to a system running amok.

Now, go away Bitcoin. It doesn't matter how much you track your Bitcoins. Speed kills. But this time it will be our common, globalized economy.

Re:Slow speed of analogue money is the savior

[Time_Ngler]

A stock market that crashes every few minutes sounds like an opportunity to me!

Re:Slow speed of analogue money is the savior

[Errol backfiring]

With ultrafast transactions only we would have the stock markets crash every few minutes

And the bad thing is? The stock markets are perfectly capable of crashing without Bitcoins and have done so many time in the past. High Frequency Trading is an evil anyway that should have been stopped before it started.

Erik Vorhees?

[the_humeister]

Does he know anything about camp crystal lake?

Articles.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah with "articles" like this Press Release the only thing we all should do is post as ACs with:

Blah blah Blah blahBlah blahBlah blahBlah blah, bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit .

Because all I read was:

"I'm the CEO of wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.

It's not worth thinking about. It's not worth an intelligent comment.

Actually, I even wasted my time answering the parent.

Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

I use bitcoin and it's so much easier than dealing with banks, their bullshit fees, fees to keep money, fees for NFS, fees just for plain not having a min balance requirement met, fees for recieving international money xfers, fees to exchange currencies, fees to send money/ wired or etf even by just cheque. extreme wait times, holidays they are closed, weekends they are closed usually. ..etc etc... Hell, some banks just plain have monthly fees just to have the account, >

Bitcoin it doesn't matter where or when.. click and it shows up almost instantly and fully verified in around an hour or less usually, but certainly less than the near week it can take banks to process deposits or withdraws made on say like a friday night going into the weekend, especially if monday is part of a holiday... it can take ages to get your money. It's spreading, slowly but surely it's still spreading to various online and even brick and mortar store merchants. Especially when they see how easy they can add it to their system and how fast and easy it is to get their money. It also is nice in that it allows easy payment by tablets and smartphones which are everywhere today. just scan the qr code or whatever and enter in the price to pay and all done. in bitcoins or automatically converting on the fly to the currency or currencies of your choice.

I like it. The people that don't are many times the ones who lost money by putting valuable information or wallets with bitcoins in them on new 3rd party website without knowing how reliable or trustworthy they are or were. like bitcoinica? that was nice while it lasted but it was like a 13-15 yrd old or something? what do you expect? OH NOES the site ate my money. Yeah... not a big shocker. but compared to major financial banking or corporation breaches where hundreds of millions of peoples info, credit card numbers, private info.. whatever have been stolen. like SONY having it's ps3 network compromised... I mean billions have stolen accounts compared to the small drop of bitcoin accounts.. and note it wasn't bitcoin that was ever in danger of having it's security cracked... it's the end user trusting unknown third parties.

To in your face

[IgnitusBoyone]

This article show a great deal of pro Bit Coin bias. Sever farms for generating coins may not be common yet, but bot nets are already an issue. However the real stickler point that the Legal Council is trying to get acknowledged in my opinion is the point of Exchange. In this case the point of Exchange from Bit Coin's to USD. (e.g https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox )

For now you can stay anon as long as your jacked in the system and buying goods that people will exchange for Bit Coins (I've personally never been on a website that accepts them, but I may not be paying attention). But the moment you want to trade with someone outside the system you will have to report that exchange to the proper authorities. I think the acknowledgement that BitCoin does have an issue where legal entities can require all sorts of gating protocols at the boarder points is at least worth debate.

Re:To in your face

[Anonymous Coward]

But the moment you want to trade with someone outside the system you will have to report that exchange to the proper authorities.

This is totally false. I can go hand someone cash on the street for Bitcoins sent to my wallet, or wire them money across continents for the same purpose. No reporting whatsoever. It is possible that people are -supposed to- report these things, but Bitcoin doesn't require it in any way.

Re:To in your face

[IgnitusBoyone]

Your missing the point. It isn't that they require it now, but it is easy for legislation to be passed that will require it. Single payer transactions will always be unregulated. Your example is more akin to paying income taxes on your lawn mowing revenue as a teenager. Sure your legally required to, but how can anyone track down that small of a transaction.

I am mostly focusing on the large exchanges which handle multiple transactions a day and have a large public facing advertisement structure bragging about what they do. In the end this is where the bulk of the transactions in and out of the system will come from and they are easy to regulate if they want to keep making money hand over fist. When you start pulling over 250k a year from any activity governments start paying attention.

Still this all requires that you make money the government can track. If you can keep all your transactions inside of bitcoin then you can be as anon as you want, much like your post.

Monopoly money is better than real money!

[Anonymous Coward]

Film at 11!

Re:Yeah right

[Bert64]

And criminals also makes extensive of cash, existing banks, existing money transfer systems etc... Criminals always want to stay one step ahead of the law, is it any wonder they would embrace a new payment system before anyone else?

In the loose sense of "related"

[fm6]

Also related: can somebody spot me $50 until Friday? You know I'm good for it.

Re:In the loose sense of "related"

[Anonymous Coward]

I sent you a couple of bitcoins. I figured I might as well divest them before they get stolen from me. You can pay me back Tuesday.

The black market is...

[istartedi]

The black market is the side that hasn't won and re-written history. Yet.

Digital currency is only as good

[future assassin]

as the network. Network goes and and you're fucked. People need to learn how to barter again and save on taxes and remove the usless currency. To me there's more value in buy/sell type websites than digital currency.

Re:Digital currency is only as good

[Anonymous Coward]

People need to learn how to barter again and save on taxes

In general, countries that have sales taxes or value added taxes officially tax barter as well. In British Columbia, and in Ontario the last time I lived there, there is no sales tax on the resale of used personal items: i.e. you don’t have to pay sales tax at a garage sale/boot sale/flea market.

But if you trade computer repair for plumbing repair, the law says that you are required to collect the service/sales/value add tax for the computer repair and send it to the tax man, and the plumber likewise is required to collect the tax on the plumbing repair.

The government generally doesn’t try to track down and collect such taxes because it would be too much effort for too little return, but the law is clear, and if a significant portion of the populace switched to barter without paying taxes on it, there would be a tax crackdown. The government couldn’t afford not to.

Fiat currencies are on their way to their death.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that you read it on slashdot first :)

Bitcoin, as well as real money like gold and silver of cause, might atleast save some people when the s***t hits the fan.

It's tragic that most people in the west doesn't understand that fiat curriencies, bits of paper with digits on them, are not the same thing as real money, gold. If they did they would protect themselves now while it's still possible. Dollar, euro and the rest are on their way for their destruction, mark my words.

It might take a couple of years more but the current fiat currencies will not be celebrating 50. 2012 it was 41 years ago the gold standard broke down and the bretton woods agrement was destroyed.

Re:Don't squat when you're wearing spurs

[Anonymous Coward]

Given how utterly irrelevant this was to the topic at hand, I was fully expecting it to devolve straight into generic racial slurs (with a few homophobic lines thrown in just for good measure), like what usually happens when the public school kids are left unattended for too long. Now I'm strangely disappointed it didn't, because that just means it was complete gibberish that both came from and went nowhere.

NACHA?!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing NACHA is an "association" and not an "organisation". Imagine the confusion when you arrive at a NACHO conference and only find sushi on the menu!

Re:Yeah right

[slashrio]

Oh man! You won't believe what dastardly devils are using cash for their low and criminal acts.
Drugs, prostitution, corruption, weapons deals, whitewash, all done with cash.
It's an outright miracle that 'the authorities' haven't yet forbidden the use of cash altogether!

Yet again ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... we see everything from the USA's point of view.

A presentation by Senior Legal Counsel to the Federal Reserve titled: 'The Implications of Dodd-Frank Section 1073' sheds light on requirements that need to be fulfilled by "Remittance Payment Company" (RPC) guidelines. This law requires such companies to disclose a lot of information about money transactions.

So, move your financial operations overseas. Don't use dollars.

BitInstant's CEO...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else at first read the headline, 'BitInstant's CEO Charlie Sheen'? WTF?! I thought he was in rehab.

Businesses can be forced to obey the law

[Fred Ferrigno]

Exchanges, wallets, and businesses that accept BitCoin as payment can all be forced to migrate to some "BitCoin+", which ties transactions to a traceable personal identifier. The old network may still exist, but its utility for making significant financial transactions would be crippled.

Re:Businesses can be forced to obey the law

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, better yet, this functionallity can be added alongside Bitcoin, simply by passing laws requiring companies to disclose their bitcoin addresses as part of a regular financial audit.

But wait, don't companies already have to keep careful accounts for legal reasons?

No hope for ACH + Bitcoin now!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very familiar with bitcoin, I ported BitcoinQT to Freebsd (yes, it was very easy to do not looking for props) for my own use I'm one of the paranoid types that builds my clients from source. I am very familiar with ACH- at work I co-created an ACH system written entirely in PHP which has since funded millions of dollars to businesses throughout the USA. What I would like to see is the two systems shake hands and get along. Despite any posts about how hard it is and why it won't happen I simply won't believe its true and I will not believe its true no matter what is said. I also know for a fact there is no REAL solution for this as of yet just jury rigged interpretations on how it should work which still comprises anonymity. I don't care what works for Joe Blow you don't code NACHA files and neither does Joe Blow. Let me say this- Thank You BitInstant! Our robotic overlords have spoken and I suppose the members of NACHA gave them too many ugly glances across the table for this to ever work now. Yes totally just bite the hand that feeds you at least BitInstant looks cool in those cheap looking suits while they show their rear ends on the way out the back door. Superiority complex maybe just a little? Amid all the reasoning behind "problems with bitcoin" really at the end of the day its **** like this.

Re:Fiat currencies are on their way to their death

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a neutron spallation target at Oak Ridge right now made out of gold, platinum, and iridium.

It started out as mercury. There wasn't any gold in that lab when they started out.

We're gonna be synthesizing gold on a mass scale before the end of the century. Think less than 500 USD per kilogram, in 2012 dollars. Let that sink in a little bit the next time you're stroking your physical gold collection, because your grandchildren will laugh their assess off at the thought of "gold is real money" the way we laugh at the fact that the Washington Monument capstone is made of aluminum (because that was the most precious of all metals, dontchaknow!).

The future is so bright I gotta wear shades.

Inferior Monetary System

[Taco Cowboy]

At the conference the duo stated that the world operates 'on an inferior monetary system'.

We live in an imperfect world, and the human civilization, too, is imperfect.
 
Same as the monetary system that the world is using, it is imperfect
 
But to say that the world is using an "INFERIOR monetary system" is to infer that there exists something much more "SUPERIOR" than the one we are using.
 
If that's the case, I would like to know what is it.
 
While I applaud those who have created the Bitcoins (and I do have a few of them myself) and their ideology to offer the world an alternative choice - I simply can't say that the bitcoin ecology is "superior" to the one the world is using, and has been using, for a long time.
 
I do reckon that the world needs a better monetary system, but until I (and many others) can find one, we will stick to the broken one that we are using, thank you very much !
 

Re:Inferior Monetary System

[Errol backfiring]

Or that there HAS BEEN a better system. And our money system has deteriorated tremendously since the second world war. Especially the finance firms were given far too much freedom to just commit fraud, which caused bubbles and the inevitable following crises. In the "first" 18th century, at least a steam engine made things that represented some value. In this "second 18th century", data centres don't produce anything of value, yet almost all money is sucked into them.

If you are from the USA, Roosevelt has placed some half-way decent measures to keep the money system stable. Starting with Nixon, all those measures were dropped. And when the bubble tended to burst even more measures were dropped, postponing and aggravating the resulting crisis. And absolutely NOTHING has been done to stabilize the system again. On the contrary.

Is south america a USA dependency?

[manu0601]

In linked article, the reporter first starts by a rant about the difficulty of obtaining a visa to Brazil, suggesting he has some natural right to go wherever he wants, then:

To my surprise, however, nobody in Rio (perhaps all of Brazil?) speaks any English. Of all the places I’ve travelled in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, Rio was the most difficult to communicate with locals, by far (they’re in South America, right? Shouldn’t they speak American??).

This guy is joking, right?

Re:Fiat currencies are on their way to their death

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you are talking about this: http://www.ornl.gov/info/ridgelines/mercury.htm

It says there will not be any value in the gold. That probably means the cost is very high. It's already possible to make gold but the cost is so extremely high that it makes no sense.

However, It's not the gold itself that is important. It just happens that gold has all the attributes that makes it ideal as money and has become so historically in both Europe, Africa, Asia and America independently of each other.

If there shows up a problem with gold something else will become money.

The fiat currencies will die no matter what, thats for sure. No fiat currencies in history has survived the abuse they take now.

Shema Yisrael!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bitcoin crypto is easily broken by a simple aleph-bet of gematria, because the framework it was not written by a perfectly fluent english-speaking japanese guy (which is an impossibility in and itself), but by the Unit 8200 electronic and cyber warfare command of IDF. As the breaking of Bitcoin crypto is only possible for those well-versed in the magic sum type transmutations of the divine kabbalah, the goyim will never find out already Tel-Aviv knows everything about Bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin is to the financial underworld what Duqu is to the iranian nuclear programme. Do not doubt for a minute that equivalents of Stuxnet and Skywiper exist for Bitcoin, too. The chosen nation knows about everything that happens in this world, because YHWH tasked them to be masters of this world.

And yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

It still sounds like a scam from a bunch of aspies to me.

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used cash for Drugs, prostitution, and weapons deals. It works great, there is no blockchain to worry about and no way to trace it.

Re:Don't squat when you're wearing spurs

[ToddInSF]

It IS relevant to the topic, you're just too stupud to figure it out.

Which is why you're anon, no doubt.

Re:Yeah right

[slashrio]

Exactly.
So, if bitcoin deserves to be outlawed, then also cash.
Oh, wait, that ís already happening. Cash transactions of more than EUR 1,000 are not allowed in Italy.