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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."
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".
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
person A trying to sell product X, says all other products are inferior to his product
My credit card has pending transactions for days sometimes.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
1 - Ten minutes max, usually.
2 - Not true, there are several wallet tools now that don't hold the blockchain locally.
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.
Does he know anything about camp crystal lake?
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.
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.
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.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
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.
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
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.