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Bitcoin Plunges After Mt. Gox Exchange Halts Trades
krakman writes with this excerpt from Bloomberg News: "Bitcoin plunged more than 8 percent [Friday] after a Tokyo-based exchange halted withdrawals of the digital currency, citing technical malfunction. Mt. Gox, claimed in a blog post it needed to 'temporarily pause on all withdrawal requests to obtain a clear technical view of the currency processes.' It promised an 'update' — not a reopening — on Monday, Feb. 10, Japan time. This is day after Russia's Prosecutor General concluded Bitcoin and other digital currencies are illegal under current law."
Things have taken a bit of a dive.
When I choose financial institutions, I prefer those named after children's card games.
Seriously though, the exchanges are an obvious chokepoint that can be regulated, putting the lie to cryptocurrencies being securely decentralized.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
It's decentralized. It's just that there are not many publicly available companies who pay cash for bitcoins. Somehow there are enough buyers to cause a price increase from $24 to $700 over the past year. I don't understand how bitcoins or gold either one retain their values.
Rule 1 of currency trading: Economic news is bull. It's either used to mislead a trader before they pull the trigger on a trade, or it's a pathetic excuse they give you after they've yanked your money.
"'temporarily pause on all withdrawal requests to obtain a clear technical view of the currency processes" sounds like the latter kind of BS.
Yeah sorry traders, we just had a technical hiccup.... SLURP! YOU LOST YOUR MONEY THANKS FOR PLAYING
Three fat red bars on the chart going down, followed by a doji that's just waiting there for people to jump on board. Looks like market manipulation... look for the reversal set up.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
8% is hardly a plunge for a currency that's valuation is based on 92% speculation.
Magic may be a children's card game (this is doubtful), but Magic Online is certainly not for children. It's expensive as fuck, requires a credit card, and is full of a toxic mixture of sharks and bad-tempered idiots.
For what it's worth, Magic Online also has a poorly designed and implemented beta version that they have tried to force upon everyone. I don't know what could possibly have caused me to think of that....
So it's pronounced Mount Gox? Mut Gox? M.T. Gox?
Well ... someone can always set up a new exchange elsewhere. It's not like it's black magic. You just need to have the funding in both currencies to be able to support the exchange. There are lots of private currency exchanges, who will happily convert national currencies. If they trusted in BTC, they could easily add that to their portfolio.
I could set up the better BTC/USD exchange tomorrow, but since I only have (checks wallet) 0.00000889 BTC, and almost a comparable amount of US currency, I wouldn't work very well. I'm sure others could provide such a service.
If Mt. Gox never handles BTC again, someone else will. At least for a while until the BTC fad dies.
I am curious to if this has anything to do with the US Gov't saying they were going to cash out all of Ulbricht's seized BTC for real currency. That would be a quick way to cripple an exchange.
It's the same concern, which has historically to real-world banks. Banks rarely, if ever, hold enough currency to convert funds in accounts to currency. HSBC is the latest in this, refusing large cash withdrawals. When the US currency backed by gold or silver. In theory the metals were available somewhere, but not at the banks.
It brings back the question, what is currency anyways. Why does my piece of paper, or number in an electronic transfer really correspond to a loaf of bread?
I got lucky with Second Life, way back when it was an interesting little site. I "bought" "land" in-game, and sat on it for a while. A while later, I "sold" the "land" for significantly more. Well, a large percentage. Not a lot of money. Why was that currency exchangeable for US dollars, or even the "land" worth anything, since it was never a physical property?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
This scheme relies on calculations that now require expensive hardware and the relative rate of return is diminishing. Without a move to distributed malware where someone else pays those costs I do not see how this scheme can persist for much longer.
So wouldn't the increased scarcity cause a rise in the value... i.e. the exact opposite of a crash?
Your finger will smell worse than Sochi water.
You're just an audience member. Why not log in?
-A chance to participate in Slashdot's Moderation and Meta Moderation System.
-The ability to save user preferences from visit to visit.
-Your own Journal in which to share your innermost feelings.
-The ability to define Friends & Foes to aid in reading discussions.
-Posting in Discussions at Score:1 instead of Score:0 means twice as many people will see your comments.
Actually, this scheme relies on reliable ability to trade virtual money for hard currency. This makes exchanges the natural single point of failure.
It's yet another variation of the old xkcd joke: https://xkcd.com/538/
Every time Mt.Gox, by far the most popular and basically main exchange went down, bitcoin's trade value against hard currency went down hard. The rest of the factors are mostly irrelevant because their importance compared to relative value of easy, functional and legal way to exchange bitcoin for hard currency is simply too small.
" It's expensive as fuck,"
You must be using the wrong sort of hookers...
Nope. Ever hear of something called tulip mania?
Prices don't just keep going up and up. Eventually, people get spooked by events like this, the demand collapses, and then so does the price, which then causes a downward spiral as people try to get out before losing everything.
The only way to keep prices like these going up is a two-fold strategy: one, convince people that there is a value which backs the good they are wanting, and two, keep the goods coming (in this case, mining) to where people don't necessarily find it easy to come by, but not impossible. Without that combination of scarcity and faith in the value of the good, you get price bubbles, which then lead to crashes.
You're not the first person to make this observation, and you won't be the last. However, you are nonetheless mistaken. In your rush to pass judgement, you've missed some fundamental aspects of Bitcoin.
Either mining remains profitable, or miners will stop mining.* At the point where they stop mining, the difficulty goes down until mining becomes worthwhile again. The system was meant to balance itself in exactly this way, and it works very, very well. Yes, mining is an expensive proposition with a large initial buy-in. Yes, it is quickly leaving the realm of hobbyists and becoming an endeavor best addressed by large data centers. This doesn't mean that it isn't profitable, though -- just that the cost of entry is high.
*Even this isn't entirely true, as there are many hobbyist miners who will operate at a loss just for the sheer love of it. No, I'm not kidding.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
I don't understand how bitcoins or gold either one retain their values.
Bitcoin is a bubble, though as with every other bubble there are delusional people who assert the emperor is not naked/that it all somehow makes sense. It doesn't... the valuation is absurd.
As for gold, I think the explanation is a mixture of inertia, rarity, resistance to governmental manipulation, and lack of corrosion.
Being able to beat it into a thin leaf is not a real explanation ("ZOMG! You can hammer this *how* thin?! SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!" said essentially no one ever). Saying it is valuable for jewelry begs the question (i.e. it's valuable for jewelry because its rare and expensive, but it's supposedly rare and expensive because it's valuable for jewelry?)
So, it really comes down to "it's always been this way", but everyone can be reasonably certain that there won't be a sudden massive increase in supply, and that their holdings of gold won't corrode away into nothing. Furthermore, the government cannot simply pass a law saying that there is now twice as much gold as there was yesterday; this security against manipulation is certainly a valuable feature (well, unless you believe Krugman, who thinks that the government should always be able to manipulate currencies).
Gold is scarce and hard to forge.
Since it's hard to forge you can be fairly confident that prices won't go up all the sudden because someone managed to "produce" 10000kg of gold for themselves overnight (thereby inflating the money supply).
It's scarce so it can buy a lot more than its own weight in other things. Imagine using wood as a currency; you'd need to carry around an entire tree to buy a pack of gum.
Every currency, bitcoin included, has these two properties.
There won't be any scarcity. Well, not because of increased difficulty, anyway. There are only two main reasons for scarcity within Bitcoin, and mining difficulty isn't one of them. The coin reward will happen, on average, every 10 minutes. If it ends up being faster than that, difficulty will rise until it averages out to 10 minutes again. If it ends up being slower than that, the difficulty will rise until (you guessed it) the average coin reward rate is every 10 minutes.
The two reasons for scarcity are (1) people hoarding their coins ("hodling" is the in-joke) and (2) the built-in halving of the block reward every four-ish years. In fact, the block reward for mining will eventually end -- in 2014. For the time being, though, the supply of coins is self-stabilized at 25 new coins every 10 minutes, regardless of how many people are mining or how large their computing power is.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
* Typo:
If it ends up being slower than that, the difficulty will rise until (you guessed it) the average coin reward rate is every 10 minutes.
Should read:
If it ends up being slower than that, the difficulty will fall until (you guessed it) the average coin reward rate is every 10 minutes.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
The value and long term viability of bitcoin, much like the value and long term viability of slashdot, comes from the users.
Speaking of value of slashdot, is it possible that slashdot is being prepped for a sale, hence the redesign?
OK, we get it. You don't like the beta. Neither do I.
But fuck off, OK?
This was the scene today at Mt. Gox as people frantically tried to withdraw their Bitcoins. Err, no wait, that's a scene from Mary Poppins. Seemed legit.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
You will then realize is an abomination
Who put you in charge of my opinions?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
* Typo 2: ("I hate uneditable posts"):
The block reward will end in 2140.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Would tulip mania have faded if every other flower on the earth were dying?
The thing that really keeps Bitcoin going is that mismanagement in "real" currencies and reduction in anonymity everywhere is driving people to Bitcoin as a real alternative, that's manipulated by a wholly different people. Do you see that changing anytime soon?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As for gold, I think the explanation is a mixture of inertia, rarity, resistance to governmental manipulation, and lack of corrosion.
You realize that Bitcoin objectively has those exact same qualities, right? Okay, yes... gold has been valued for longer and thus has more "inertia". But the valuation of Bitcoin -- however crazy you may think it to be -- is still a value that a group of people have collectively agreed upon.
Just like gold.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
WOOL!
Virtually anything you might buy or sell derives at least some of its value from faith, and currencies are no exception to this. In other words, as long as a sufficient number of people believe that 1BTC is worth ~$680, then 1BTC is indeed worth ~$680.
This is even true of gold to a certain extent - its value goes up and down too, though it's seldom as volatile because it has other uses beyond currency.
When something happens to shake that faith, the value drops. When something happens to strengthen that faith, the value rises.
Any currency that isn't backed by something tangible (eg. a precious metal) by definition derives more-or-less all its value from faith. This isn't usually a big deal - most countries came off the gold standard decades ago - but one side-effect is that if your country's government is unstable, there's a very good chance your currency will follow suit in short order. For extreme examples, see Zimbabwean dollars, Afghan Afghanis and German Papiermarks.
Gold had value historically because of permanence - even though it's somewhat delicate, it does not tarnish or rust which is a damn impressive thing in a world full of other things that fade away quite rapidly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nice sock puppet. Wonder who modded this up?
Sure as shit not a real user.
The people who made this site - the real grown ups who don't post AC - object not just to the technically poor execution of the latest sites; (both the mobile and the beta desktop sites suck). No, what they loath is that they took time to give feedback, as I did - in detail - which was ignored...and then the beta was just rolled out.
Hence the rather "childish" fuck beta campaign. Treat people like kids, don't be surprised at what you get back.
On a final note, fuck beta, and fuck you AC.
The grown ups want to discuss the news.
Why don't all of you Anonymous Coward "grown ups" hop on over to Huffington Post to discuss the news? Here's a fucking link for the lazy. In a month you can come back to Slashdot and you won't even know the difference.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
The value is rising slower than the value of the resources required to make the token used in this scheme. That's what I mean by "the relative rate of return is diminishing".
Also, apparently if all "mining" stops then that will prevent transactions from occurring and render the tokens worthless. Whenever this has been brought up before the response of people involved in the scheme has been "mining will never stop", and the question otherwise ignored.
Golds value comes from its use in FX.
When a bank changes say USD for EUR
it first buys gold using USD
and then sells it for EUR
At least for high value clearing.
That's a very convenient mechanism to let the early adopters in the pyramid know when it is time to cash out.
Beta comes - beta goes. It just takes a while for the Dice-holes to realize this.
In a few years we'll look back at this and laugh at the bitcoin pyramid players as if they were methheads. In the meantime it's a obvious scam baited for geek. We've become mainstream enough to attract predators.
3-digit UI, 17 years at Slashdot--I'd venture he has earned his say in the matter.
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
"Slashdot traffic plunged by way more than 8 percent" /. although it might make it worse. The beta-numbnuts on the other hand are totally destroying it right now.
That would be awesome! Then the other 91+ percent could get to read comments again.
beta is not ruining
The gold fetishist believe gold has value, no matter what. It doesn't. Examples are for instance the holocaust, people ended up selling small fortunes of gold just to survive or even just to eat. The end of time of dreamers who think that once the government collapses, their gold horde will be any safer then a bank account, forget that when Mad Max becomes real, gold has no value.
THIS is why Fallout uses bottle caps. NOT because of anything to do with bottle caps, just to show value is without meaning. People value whatever they value. And I got food and you don't I am not going to give you my food in exchange for your gold because that would leave me holding no food and only worthless gold.
VALUE is ALWAYS what someone ELSE is willing to give up in exchange for it. Take the value of a dollar bill. How much sex does it buy? It can vary from woman to woman and even from moment to moment and from buyer to buyer. Or for something slashdot readers are more familiar with, how about a softdrink from the exact same factory? Can vary from 35 cents to 2.50 with in a few hundred meters (chinese toko to convention hall).
Bitcoins trade is one person selling and another person buying. The more such traders happen, the more you get an average price. But I am going to bet that if I showed up and wanted to sell a BILLION bitcoins in one go, the average price would not apply. Same as if the US tried to sell all its gold at once.
THAT is how easy value can change. Very few things have any intrinisic value whatsoever. What is the value of water to someone living near a lake? The value of food to a farmer with a bountiful harvest? Want proof, read up on changing eating habbits. Like pigeons, peasant food, flying rats or fine dining?
The hardest thing to accept in life after death is that value is fleeting.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Grow the fuck up and stop spamming the comments. The grown ups want to discuss the news.
I couldn't agree more.
The grown ups are the ones who draw sponsors to the site, the rest can be shed without tears.
beta version that they have tried to force inside everyone. I don't know what could possibly have caused me to think of that
It's completely obvious to everyone you're referring to Opera being rewritten into a Chromium clone with all the features that made it special or even usable removed. The classic version is still available but if you go to the Web site, you'll likely be directed to the shitty new beta version, which runs on fewer environments than it used to. We, the users, put up a stink but they told us to go fuck ourselves.
That's false. Bitcoin suffers from bit-rot, as does every other electronic "good" in existance. Gold does not. I dare you to try and destroy some.
So you'd also protest against actions of your local supermarket by going there and punching the customers in their face? Because that's the analogue of the "fuck beta" campaign: You're not actually harming Slashdot much, you harm Slashdot users, who have to seek the content they come for in between the masses of anti-beta posts.
If your goal is to make Slashdot/dice listen, why don't you just spam their mail address with tons of protest mails? As soon as their inbox is permanently clogged with protest mails, they must notice. And more importantly: For the mail address, it's Slashdot employees who have to seek the other content in between the protest messages, not ordinary Slashdot users who have no more influence on the Slashdot design than you do.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
ZOMG! You can hammer this *how* thin?!
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY*!
(*) which is paper backed by a system in which every single entity is in debt. Sounds so legit.
Back to the topic, this seems a relevant bitcoin post. Second ZOMG of the day.
Ah, you mean Fuck beta, Mt Gox and Mobile...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
US5722418
+
US5644363
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GoogleGlass
+
Acceptance
=
Fuck beta
FTFY!
Grow the fuck up and stop spamming the comments. The grown ups want to discuss the news.
This would come from a coward.
Why should people just lie-down and get rimmed, if you don't like something and you do nothing about it then you're a fucking pussy idiot.
Real adults know when to act decisively upon something, perhaps you're not an adult yet.
So shut the fuck up and get off of our site, COWARD.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Are you using the beta? Do you actually like it?
If you don't like us talking about the site we like then piss of to somewhere else and quit your whining.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
yeah cos everyone gives a shit about what anonymous coward thinks
The people on Slashdot complaining about the new design are the same folks in IT who are scared to learn new technologies. Adapt or get left behind. There is nothing wrong with the new design, you are just scared of change. Look inwards for a fix.
As long as you pay for it, I'll have no problems doing it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You realize that Bitcoin objectively has those exact same qualities, right
You will note that my comment was about bitcoin's valuation, not that it lacked certain qualities. If the price of gold had increased by approximately two orders of magnitude within in a year (like bitcoin has) then I would say that its valuation was absurd too.
I am not a gold fetishist. I perceive it as the most popular store of wealth of the type that is fairly immune to government tampering. However, these stores of wealth are not intrinsically appreciating investments, unlike, say, equities or bonds.
Oh, and I apologize for straying so far off topic: fuck Beta, and fuck the corporate doublespeak they tried to feed us yesterday. We know they haven't considered actually changing course. "We hear you, and so we're going to wait until the furor dies down a bit and then do it anyway..."
It's just a website full of egotistical nerds. It's entertaining and interesting at times, and that's about it. If you leave no-one will notice.
Play Command HQ online
there is far far far less bitcoin than there is gold, and there always will be far far far less bitcoin than there is gold. Limited to 21million coins.
Bitcoin has built in appreciation - again - limited supply. It has built in appreciation because after some gain so much, others want to join the boat as well, bitcoins get lost and misplaced etc. The supply is dwindling, while demand is growing - built in.
Supply is dwindling because of the finite supply, lost bitcoins.
Demand is growing because more people learns about it, and wants low cost fast international transfers without arbitrary rules, regulations and the chance of someone stealing the money, with VISA, Goverment, Paypal etc. your money is *always* in danger.
Because you say that bitcoin is basicly a bubble tells that you are looking for one or two things:
- To affect the price so you can buy more
- Or you don't understand the concept nowhere close how well you think you do
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
I have used Beta and I hate it way less than the Beta whiners that dump on every thread. Do they live here or something? Is Beta throwing them out on the street? I don't get it.
Play Command HQ online
FIAT currency value is 100% faith based, there's no backing etc. ....
If people decide today that dollar is valueless, the only value remaining is paying taxes, but if nobody accepts dollars anymore
Currently most, if not all, FIAT currencies are basicly money printing presses for the goverments, that's why we got so much inflation.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Fight the good fight! I too think the stylings of chat forum for nerds is a cause worth fighting for. Anyone who stands in our way is a sock puppet or a coward who constantly lets themselves get raped.
It's time for people to choose sides, to stand up for what they believe. Be you man, or be you pussy? The lines of history are coming together. They approach a fulcrum. Which way Slashdot bends on that fulcrum will determine our fate Eons to come.
The forces of Beta are marching. Indeed that are nigh upon us. Each person must do their part or all will fail. Perhaps even one Slashdotter will make the difference. Perhaps you. Perhaps tonight.
Fuck Beta.
Play Command HQ online
Mt. GOX withdrawals has been almost non-existant for the last year already, not for BTC side, but for FIAT side.
You had to wait 6+ months for withdrawals to go through, plus they took hidden charges they claim they don't take, don't provide receipt for that neither.
There are plenty of other exchanges, such as Bitstamp and BTC-E, they work just fine.
You can also go to localbitcoins.com and exchange for hard cash with someone in your local area.
As for BTC being a fad, you clearly don't understand the whole concept with it's all not-so-small details, what it means to the world and to the people.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
> whining about style changes.
If you're too stupid to have noticed the functional changes, then you're quite simply too stupid for pretty much anything. In particular as people have repeatedly whined about those functional changes.
Enjoy your dumbed-down slashdot beta, you sound like a perfect match for it.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Yes. I support the right of people to protest, so long as their protesting doesn't interfere with me.
tried to convert them to real money at the same time. Yeah, that would make it drop and would shut down the exchanges.
Keep mining those bitcoins!
When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.
"Destroyed", but, no, not really.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Is this still necessary? They've already acknowledged that people don't like the beta and stated that they won't make it mandatory in a few months as they had planned. The goals of the boycott seem to have already been met, it doesn't look like there's a good reason to go through with it at this point or to continue with these posts (barring further news on the matter).
Indeed there are many hobbyists like that - we were just asked to provide first gen ASIC hosting, the ASICMiner 10Gh blades :O
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
There is nothing wrong with the new design
Beta is more than cosmetics or aesthetics. The new design ruins the one thing that makes /. what it is -- the commenting system. I only come here for the comments, not the 2-day old articles nor the erroneous summaries.
you are just scared of change
I do not see the changes of Beta as improvements. What is wrong with Slashdot that demands breaking its foundations? This is not change for the sake of change, but, as others have commented, an attempt to monetize /. at any any cost, and its users be damned.
Look inwards for a fix
Our complaints have fallen on deaf ears, and will continue to do so. Dice intends to dispose of Classic in favor of Beta, whether we like it or not. Do you know how to tell whether an executive really cares about feedback? If her CV doesn't already proclaim these changes to be a success even before fully implementing them:
Proven track record innovating and improving iconic websites (CNET.com, Dice.com, Slashdot.org, Sourceforge.net) while protecting their voice and brand integrity
Correct me if I'm wrong, but apart from an almost universally hated Beta version, how can anyone claim in good faith that /. has undergone any change at all so far?
Virtually anything you might buy or sell derives at least some of its value from faith, and currencies are no exception to this. In other words, as long as a sufficient number of people believe that 1BTC is worth ~$680, then 1BTC is indeed worth ~$680.
A fiat currency derives its value from the faith placed in the entity that issued it. The US government, for example, has an undeniably substantial role in the global economic market. Bitcoin has no central issuing authority and plays no crucial role in any major economic system. Bitcoin is not a commodity, either. As they exist as an intangible concept, they have no intrinsic value (whereas physical coins can be melted for scrap). Their scarcity is also an artificial constraint, as the numerous "alt coins" that have sprung up have demonstrated.
1BTC is worth X amount of USD for the same reason Justin Bieber is presently "popular". Bitcoin is the current pop idol of the crypto currency scene. However, the will of the mob is a fickle thing and history has shown, popularity can vaporize almost overnight.
Apple recently pulled all Bitcoin wallet apps from the app store and it doesn't take a genius to see where this is heading...
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
If there's an effective form of protest that doesn't interfere with me, and an ineffective form of protest that massively interferes with me, then yes, I'm against the latter. It's not as if you had no alternative.
Now if it should turn out that Slashdot's mail is hosted at the same server as my own, and protest mails to Slashdot happen to slow down that server noticeably, I'd accept that (well, if this happens a lot, I'd expect the mail provider to upgrade the server, and possibly change the mail provider if they don't, but I'd not complain about those writing protest mails).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Well, according to that definition, iron also isn't destroyed if it rusts (and yes, there are ways to get the iron back from the rust).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Grow the fuck up and stop spamming the comments. The grown ups want to discuss the news.
Fine, we'll shut the fuck up about Beta.
As soon as you promise to shut the fuck up about Beta when it becomes all you have to discuss what news will be left here, along with the 17 members.
You have fun with that shit, mmkay Timmy? The rest of the adults are working here to actively save this site before it's too fucking late.
Alternative why don't YOU go fuck off to Huffington Post.
We're on Slashdot because we want to read it and read and contribute to the discussions. You are making that impossible. You keep claiming you're about to engage in a "boycott", why not go and do that and leave this site the fuck alone?
You're not even right about the Beta. It's not feature complete yet and it has bugs, but it overwhelmingly shows promise and is, barring a sudden reversal of direction, likely to be a vast improvement on the current system which, BTW, is _shit_.
In all fairness, quite a few of the FB posts are AC.
Mt. GOX withdrawals has been almost non-existant for the last year already, not for BTC side, but for FIAT side. You had to wait 6+ months for withdrawals to go through, plus they took hidden charges they claim they don't take, don't provide receipt for that neither.
+1,informative
There are plenty of other exchanges, such as Bitstamp and BTC-E, they work just fine. You can also go to localbitcoins.com and exchange for hard cash with someone in your local area.
LocalBitcoins.com is also useful for Internet-based transactions via Western Union and other methods.
As for BTC being a fad, you clearly don't understand the whole concept with it's all not-so-small details, what it means to the world and to the people.
I have to disagree with you here. BTC can easily be replaced with another cryptocurrency, and seems to be very much over-valued, so looks like a lot like tulips to me. You may be caught up in hype.
To be clear, you support someone punching people in the face as long as is it's not you being punched. Despite Godwin, does Krystalnacht ring a bell? .
I call bs, the beta comment system is anafter thought at best. Go read user discussions on cnn and look at the tripe pisted there. The similarity between the two systems is striking.
As for the "whiners" being present and lack of technical discussion on msot articles. Perhaps you might take a minute to realize where we are spending our time. It's going to be a dreary future if you get your wish.
Grow the fuck up and stop spamming the comments. The grown ups want to discuss the news.
What a childish thing to say. When I was younger and naive I thought that voting and going through proper channels was how people changed the systems that govern them or otherwise affect their lives. When I became an adult, I put away childish idealism and threw out the narrative fairy tales of the indoctrinators. Once I let only observation and fact shape my thinking I was able to clearly see that voting doesn't matter. The systems are rigged. If you do not know this, then you are ignorant of history. The rulers react only to save face when confronted with loud and vocal and persistent protest. Just look at the majority of changes enacted by the world's peoples.
It is been made painfully and bluntly apparent that here at slashdot we do not even have the illusion of a vote. We therefore use our voices as it is all we still have, for now. Fuck Beta. The grown ups know how the world works better than some ignorant, complacent, and short sighted children. Rarely do rulers actually know what's good for the people they rule, and nearly universally do they reject the Scientific Method -- a means by which they could discover the correct course of action! This is because they care not for what's best for the people. We have to make them care. It is the very grown ups who see in longer terms and are willing to sacrifice the comments here for a while if it means there's a chance we may not let the community be destroyed. Extract your head from your ass: The beta makes discussion of the news difficult. A few weeks of pain is nothing compared to eternity.
It's a bubble because absolutely no one, anywhere in the world, has any reason to tether themselves to the Bitcoin currency. You don't pay taxes in it. No one has to pay taxes in it.
There's no anchor to the currency. The only thing anyone has to do with Bitcoin is cash out to their local currency to pay taxes.
Virtually anything you might buy or sell derives at least some of its value from faith...When something happens to shake that faith, the value drops.
I won't disagree with anything you said, but value also derives from usefulness. A working hammer is more valuable than a broken hammer, and while there is some element of faith in believing that it will still work on the next strike, it isn't much of a leap.
There aren't a lot of currency exchanges that convert bitcoins to traditional currency. If one of them closes up, then bitcoin has less utility, because I can do less with it.
If gas stations stopped selling non-diesel fuel then you'd see the value of non-diesel cars drop significantly, even though nothing about the cars themselves changed. They would have far less utility if they couldn't be driven in a practical way.
Now, usefulness and faith also interplay, because there is a question as to whether another entity could/would replace mtgox. The fact that one exchange handles such a large percentage of bitcoin-to-usd/etc transactions suggests that this is not something that is easy to replace (mostly due to legal reasons). That creates a general fear that bitcoins could lose a lot more of their utility, because right now it is hard to buy anything directly using bitcoins.
Citation?
When I choose financial institutions, I prefer those named after children's card games.
I'm sure you have similar reservations about buying merchandise by a site named after a tropical rain forest, or getting search results from a site named after a mathematical term.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Why get your news off a blog post? Why not get it off the main site itself? They have a news feed right on the front page. There is nothing there about any suspension of withdrawals, but I would trust the actual main page over a blog which anybody can post whatever they want on.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Fiat currency is backed. It is backed by the government issuing it. It is backed by the economic strength of the countries using it. The national currency of the world's top economic powers is so deeply entrenched into society there is virtually zero chance that it will be abandoned and considered "valueless" unless that society and government collapses like the Soviet Union. The natural rise and fall cycle of governments and international economies predates this existed well before the invention of fiat currency. Currency being based on gold did not prevent that. The idea that a currency being backed by gold creates a permanence of value is complete hogwash as the majority of value of a currency has always depended on the economic strength of the country and government that issued it.
Sounds like you haven't been auto-switched to beta yet.
This is why I've always said BC is a Ponzi scheme, it let the insiders at the top of the scheme make a ton quickly and then cash out when it became no longer profitable to mine while those getting into BC mining now will never even make back the cost of power, much less hardware.
I'm all for a new cash that lets you bypass the Fed and their scams but this is just more of the same, the only difference is who got to make the big bux.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Give me a minute... I'm trying to care.... Nope. Sorry. Just can't bring myself to give a shit.
How about we trade tickets we get from a skee ball machine? How about tokens from the local arcade? Those are the same concept as bitcoins.
What does bitcoin mean to the world? Other then those at the top of pyramid, it means nothing.
Dice is losing money on Slashdot, it was in their last 1/4 report. Someone high up at Dice not really familiar with Slashdot sold the idea to someone else higher up that they believe the interface is old and stale and if it was made it pretty and hip like other sites, things would change. Hell, there may have even been a Web 2.0 reference in the PowerPoint presentation. Advertisers would return with more money and the user base would grow. They were dead wrong. Imagine that person or team having to explain that their master plan was a total failure and not only did not meet their expected goals, it actually had the exact opposite effect. They probably won't, they will still blame the people at Dice that are familiar with Slashdot and know what people actually want.
Well, I'll tell you what. Since gold is a store of guaranteed value, you'll appreciate the deal I'm about to offer -- I'll sell you all the gold you want at last February's price! Sure, since then it's dropped from $1600/oz to $1250/oz -- but, since gold is the true measure of value, that shouldn't matter to you. You shouldn't even care that I'm making $300 or so per ounce on the deal. After all, I'm just getting worthless greenbacks, and you're getting the real stuff.
You don't really think so? Extracting dissolved gold* is less expensive than mining it. (* In this setting. Extracting the gold dissolved in the oceans has thus far been too expensive)
Exactly. Or perhaps absolutely not - unlike bitcoins gold have a multitude of real world uses in medical and technical settings. You'll never use bitcoin injections, bitcoing coated metals, bitcoin teeth nor will you ever use bitcoin mirrors, bitcoin conductors or bitcoin solder.
I've been using beta since they announced it and I have no issues with it other than it won't save my settings. Am I quite literally the only one who likes it?
What has expense to do with it? Anyway, after dissolving the gold, you can easily pour it into the ocean. So even moving the goalpost doesn't help you.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
leave slashdot alone
>why don't you just spam their mail address with tons of protest mails?
That happened. The mailserver fell over.
Dice is obviously taken the stance that the beta is happening, even if no one likes it. They dumped too much money to have it fail (fallacy of sunken costs). So the guys in charge need it to happen, even if it kills /.. That's the only way they have a hope of keeping their jobs.
The gold wasn't 'destroyed' merely dissolved.
I believe that this claim is entirely bogus.
I have worked on two of the three largest (by currency volume) FX systems in the world. While there may be accounting tricks in use that I am unaware of, I have _NEVER_ heard of gold being used in currency exchange. The basic challenge is this: The amount of FX traffic is many orders of magnitude greater than the liquidity available in the gold market (and other commodities markets), so even a small portion of the transactions bleeding over would cause large market movements.
FWIW, I would guess that very close to 100% of the FX trades are done entirely electronically, and are cleared internally by the large banks themselves (no intermediary institution or commodity is required).
Hey, how to deactivate BETA?
Grow up and discuss the news instead of bitching about people complaining about the beta.
Platinum is harder to verify. Toiuchstones have been detecting counterfeit gold for millennia while similar basic technology does not exist for Platimum as far as I am aware of. Both gold and silver have a distinct sound when struck or dropped onto a table that simply can't be counterfeited in a way that produces a coin that will look real. I don't know if the same applies to Platimum
But of course with precious metal money, all three can coexist.
In a few years we'll look back at this and laugh at the bitcoin pyramid players as if they were methheads. In the meantime it's a obvious scam baited for geek. We've become mainstream enough to attract predators.
Six years ago, when bitcoin started, slashdot haters were "predicting" that this "scam" will collapse in months. Now it should last few years, that is improvement! In few years maybe you will even realize your error and admit that bitcoin is indeed revolutionary technology!
"there is far far far less bitcoin than there is gold, and there always will be far far far less bitcoin than there is gold. Limited to 21million coins."
.com stock at this point, perhaps it will survive, perhaps it won't.
Total quantity in existence is completely irrelevant. People could create a currency backed completely by by copper if they wanted to. Copper historically WAS used as money for very low value transactions where dividing silver or gold was not practical. Being rare is not the be-all-end-all of currencies, it's an advantage, but not required. It is an advantage in that the resulting physical coins carry significant purchasing power.
Money has 7 characteristics and the more characteristics something has, the better it will serve as money.
(1) It must be durable, which is why we don’t use wheat or corn or rice.
(2) It must be divisible, which is why we don’t use art work.
(3) It must be convenient, which is why we don’t use lead.
(4) It must be consistent, which is why we don’t use real estate.
(5) It must possess value in itself, which is why we don’t use paper. (The US dollar was originally backed by gold, which is the reason people accepted it in the first place.)
(6) It must be limited in the quantity that is available, which is why we don’t use aluminum or iron.
(7) It should have a long history of acceptance, which is why we don’t use molybdenum or rhodium.
Bitcoin fails 1, 3, 5, and 7.
It is not durable in a practical sense because it relies on a global P2P network to work. Governments have taken their countries off the internet before. How do you spend your bitcoins during civil unrest when you can't access the network? It is also vulnerable to a 51% attack, which is well within the technological capabilities of many governments.
It is not convenient because it relies on both parties having setup a bitcoin wallet and having an internet connection. If I want to buy a used car for 3 ounces of gold, all I have to do is hand the seller the gold and they can verify firsthand that it is real and then I get the title to the car. I've gone to estate sales where there was no cellular or other data service and was not aware of this beforehand. Someone trying to buy via Bitcoin would be SOL, people using gold, silver, or paper money would go on with business as usual.
It does not posses value onto itself. Lets say that one day, nobody wanted to use gold as money, perhaps everyone decided to use Platinum instead. Would your gold's value drop to zero? No, because gold has uses beyond being money, especially today with its many industrial uses. If people stop using bitcoin as money, the values goes immediately to zero.
Bitcoin does not have a long history behind it at all while gold has a record that spans almost all of human history. 5,000 years of use and gold has never gone to zero. I have cans of SPAM that are older than bitcoin. (and still edible too) Once it earns a reputation that lasts a few decades, perhaps it will gain more widespread acceptance, but it might as well be a
I think AC got most of what I was going to say. :)
I know there are other exchanges out there. Even if they all went down today, more would come up shortly after, as long as there is a demand for them.
BTC is a fad. It's becoming more accepted, but not well enough to say it will survive the test of time. It has an inherent flaw. There can only be 21 million bitcoins. If someone holding them loses their wallet, they're lost. They aren't reissued by anyone, since there is no central authority to do it. I've touched on that in the past about reissuing gov't seized or fraudulently taken BTC.
At the current exchange rate, that's only $14,530,000,000 USD. While that's a lot to me, it's insignificant as a global currency. According to the federal reserve, approximately $1,230,000,000,000 USD are in circulation as of Feb 5, 2014. Another reference said that 63% of the world currency is USD.
So, we can extrapolate that to be $1,685,100,000,000 ($1.685 trillion) in circulation. At best, at current exchange rates, that would account for 0.86% of the global currency. While $14.530B is nothing to sneeze at, it doesn't count for much of anything in the grand scale.
Another way to look at it would be, if 21 million people world wide each had 1 BTC, and never did anything with it, that would mean 0.29% of the population would hold that currency. In time, since the wallet loss and reissue situations exist, the amount of currency in circulation will drop, meaning significantly less than 1% will have anything.
I'm playing along with the fad though. I have miners going, and I will be setting up more. I'll let them run as long as there is something to mine, and I will exchange it out for viable long-term currency.
It is possible that BTC will adjust for the cap that it's rapidly reaching. Other virtual currencies may take it's place. As long as they have the cap that limits their usefulness, they will in time die also. Maybe one will be BTCv6, which will be lovingly implemented just like we have all migrated from IPv4 to IPv6. Oh.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I am not going to say they are necessarily crooks, but they seem unwilling or unable to release funds via wire transfer.. Almost 2 months ago I sold some bitcoins and requested a wire transfer to my US bank, and it's still "pending". They claim they are having problems with their own bank and are working on it. I don't think I will ever see that money...
Unfortunately it remains necessary since it has come to light that Dice has written-off Slashmedia, meaning that they see no value in the site or community. So they will do whatever they can to recover some value including appealing to the lowest common denominator by turning it into a flashy, useless site just to try and catch passing eyeballs. Community be damned.
So AltSlashdot.org remains necessary and likely the future of the community of Nerds That Matter.
(Interesting they won't let me put in a link to AltSlashdot now...)
Not AC here, and I say everyone spamming the site with "Fuck Beta" needs to grow the fuck up too. I've been here a while now and remember the good old days of Taco, Cowboy Neal, and pink unicorns. Shit changes. You fuckers remind me of the assholes during Digg 2.0 days who eventually lowered Reddit standards.
Like a little toddler playing with a toy when the parent comes in and takes the toy away replacing it with another toy. The toddler gets angry and breaks the new toy because it isn't the toy it used to have leaving it with nothing to play with. This site is not yours and if they wanna fuck themselves then that is on them, but to break the new toy they gave you is just childish (because you are breaking my toy too!!!). Grow up and move on. Find a new site and teach them a real lesson, but please all you assholes breaking the comments section by spamming it, fuck you. They got the message already. Just fucking leave if all you have is a temper tantrum.
I am leaving /. At least for a while because I am over coming here and clicking the comments for this type shit instead of discussion. I may come back one day and see what happened to it but it wasn't the new layout that chased me off, it was the children being brats and breaking the new toy they were given that tipped me over. Don't like the site, go to another or hell, maybe even make your own.
thats pretty much my best post ever. I spent like 3 hours typing it.
The gold is not destroyed in that process, merely dissolved. The process of dissolving gold has been a common method for RECOVERING gold from electronics for some time.
The gold atoms remained, but the metal known as gold (consisting of a gold atoms in a metallic lattice) vanished. The dissolved gold atoms don't any more have any of the properties associated with gold. Of course, it is not that hard to make new gold from those atoms provided you can get them in sufficient concentration, but that doesn't mean the old gold is not gone.
Anyway, if you go to that level of nitpicking, you also have to note that bitcoins consist of nothing but information, and according to quantum mechanics, information is never destroyed (OK, for black holes, it's still debated, but here on earth there are no black holes). Therefore bitcoins cannot be destroyed either.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Do you think iron is destroyed when it rusts?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet. (Copy-paste the html from here so links don't get mangled!)
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design. Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.
If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.
We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
http://slashdot.org/recent - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
-----=====##### LINKS #####=====-----
Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441
Alternative Slashdot: http://altslashdot.org (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))
So you'd also protest against actions of your local supermarket by going there and punching the customers in their face?
That would be analogous to defacing your comments. But this is not happening. What is happening is an equivalent of a picket near or inside the store where shoppers walk around and shout their message from time to time. Sure, this may hurt some sensitive shoppers who only want to buy something, and not to become involved in politics... you may avoid politics, but the politics will not avoid you. Head in sand is rarely a good solution.
Shashcott Feb. 10-17!
Governments do not want an anonymous, untraceable digital currency challenging the sovereign authority, control, and personal accountability implied with existing state regulated currency models.
Bitcoin, in its current form, represents an incredible opportunity for money launderers, organized crime, terrorists and the dishonest individual.
You'd want to go to nuclear chemistry if you want proper destruction.
No, it's more equivalent to stuffing the store with protest writings to a level that it's hard to get at the actual products. Which is a whole level above just standing there and shouting. (Alternatively, it's like shouting during a concert, where you make it hard to listen to the music.)
Anyway, this is the first time I hear of "Slashcott" (whatever that is, I got zero search results both from Slashdot's internal search and from web search). Probably hidden somewhere in between all those pointless "fuck beta" posts, there's also one that would tell me what it is. But you see, those posts don't just make it hard to get to the actual comments fot the articles, they even make it hard to find relevant information for your own cause! Ineffective campaigning at its "best".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
forget that when Mad Max becomes real, gold has no value.
Post apocalypse, so will most other things we attach value to. For example, today's currencies (dollars, euros, renminbi, whatever) will also be in the "no value" camp. Bitcoin will especially be worthless, unless you think the Mad Max world happens to have functioning computers, high speed networks, and most of all buyers willing to accept it.
It's gonna be a world of all-barter items, simple tools, food especially.
Either mining remains profitable, or miners will stop mining.* At the point where they stop mining, the difficulty goes down until mining becomes worthwhile again.
Can you imagine what a rollercoaster this will be? Price of a commodity is set at an exchange with a simple phone call or with an electronic contract. This price is set and is changed (as need be) easily and effortlessly, with lag that today is measured in milliseconds. However in BTC land in order to send the message to BTC Gods you have to close up your business, fire your workers, and sell (to who?) all your equipment. Then maybe enough other miners do the same, and within a year the network realizes that something is wrong and the difficulty drops. Then you are free to re-buy all your miners, rehire the workers, and reopen the company - until the next dip. This is insane.
Yes, in principle this is self-balancing. It's just not self-balancing on human scale of time and effort.
There is another catch here. As mining becomes more and more corporatized (which is necessary to run 100,000 miners in Iceland, for example) you get concentration of mining power in one pair of hands. Or in several, but still highly countable, pairs of hands. Those guys can not only outmine all the hobbyists - they can also outprice them, as they buy power in bulk and in a region that is known for cheap power. Hobbyists will have to surrender their 50% of hashing rate - and what do you have then? A 50% attack that is only not happening because of the honor of the businessmen who run the pyramid?
there are many hobbyist miners who will operate at a loss just for the sheer love of it. No, I'm not kidding.
They are irrelevant in every sense of the word. Their influence scales only proportional to their investment, like a gold miner who washes sand in a coffee cup.
You guys are all wrong.
What makes a currency is that its production is limited/controlled in a reasonably well known manner, or, that it has a fixed known quantity.
What makes it valuable is that people choose to use it. Currencies do not ever need to be backed by anything.
Bitcoin, Dollars, Diamonds, Gold, Tools, Food, Cars, Xbox's and many other things all have these two properties. That's why you can trade any of them for the other.
You cannot trade dirtrocks, plantmatter or dogshit for anything because the supply of them is unlimited and anyone can reach down and pick some up. No one will ever choose to use those, they have no value and never will.
Now of all the currencies known to man today, only Bitcoin has a 'fixed known cryptographically secure quantity' (21M base units). The phrase in quotes is vitally important to understand regarding adoption capability. Nothing else has that, not even the USD.
As far as currencies go, Bitcoin is the current ultimate and pure model for a currency... it is not subject to any government printing press or shredder, everyone can see exactly what it's growth rate is and it's final count.
(Excluding legal bans here of course).
Genuine works of are such as Picasso approach fixed known quantities, but are only of use to those limited few with skills to discern fakes in daily transaction, and there aren't enough works to use in mass economy even if you could.
Once you adopt Bitcoin the ONLY thing that affects its 'value' is the amount of goods in trade outstanding with it, divided by the current existing quantity of BTC (21M at the end).
No goods in active trade flux, no value.
One $trillion in outstanding trades, $46,000.
Bitcoin is a cryptographically secure fixed quantity ideal currency immune from government value management (printing/shredding/loaning) that anyone with a computer can use globally.
Government regulation (exchanges/forex) is nothing more than what banks do with dollars today, USD in USD out, USD in YUAN out, etc. Once approved it will not affect bitcoin at all.
The ONLY weakness Bitcoin has and will ever have is government anti-bitcoin bans. That will resolve itself globally within the next few years.
I would suggesst you contact your legislators, educate them and tell them to support the adoption of virtual currencies.
Unless you want your money to be subject to government monetary policy (and govt success/failure).
Once virtual currencies become entrenched and take over national currencies govt cant rip it back out because they are then globally intertwined, and more simply, replaced by their citizens using it and they will protest vigorously.
Exactly as if they would protest if the gov were to rip out (aka: fail) the USD and try to replace it with worthless dirtrocks.
Which BTW, they're already doing a pretty damn good job at.
Most of you have never even bothered to use a bitcoin client. that's sad.
Slashdot's content is produced by the people (you and me and 3 million others.) We are supposed to write comments on this Web site. So a better analogy would be: you go to a concert, but the performers are singing protest songs because their manager threatens to disband the group. You may not like it... but admission is free, so you cannot demand your money back. If you walk away and ignore the event, the band will be soon gone.
Slashcott is a boycott of Slashdot. No visits, no submissions, no comments next week. A Google search brings up enough entries to get started. For some strange reason, Slashdot's own search returns nothing...
Ineffective campaigning at its "best".
Well, thanks to your interest, the campaigning just got a little better!
fuck beta is perfect.
Every single motherfucking last one of you knows that eventually beta will become permanent and that classic will go away forever. It is the way of all things in history.
Your only option is to trash this place and go build another and move there.
OK, I now notice that I mistyped it in the search field (the same window is still open, and I didn't do another search yet, so it's still in there). So that explains why I got no results ... correcting the typo indeed gives about 18 results.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I forgot to add: Thanks for your explanation.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You're delusional if you think gold is not a digital good.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Correct me if I'm wrong, but apart from an almost universally hated Beta version, how can anyone claim in good faith that /. has undergone any change at all so far?
But you don't know about her extensive and innovative monetising of data to advertisers/any 3rd party with cash, and collaboration with government agencies!
She's got a proven track record I tells ya!
What sonny?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Just factor the semiprime and you get the bitcoins back too.
Bitcoin fails 1, 3, 5, and 7.
It is not durable in a practical sense because it relies on a global P2P network to work. Governments have taken their countries off the internet before. How do you spend your bitcoins during civil unrest when you can't access the network?
How do you access your bank account via an ATM when the connection is down? Oh Noes! Any type of money accessed via ATMs and Debit/credit cards is not... um, money?
It is also vulnerable to a 51% attack, which is well within the technological capabilities of many governments.
Get back to me one you figure out what would happen if one group help the majority of US Dollars (or any money)
It is not convenient because it relies on both parties having setup a bitcoin wallet and having an internet connection
A wallet is trivial to set up. And who doesn't have internet access these days?
If I want to buy a used car for 3 ounces of gold, all I have to do is hand the seller the gold and they can verify firsthand that it is real and then I get the title to the car.
That is not convenient because it relies on both parties having setup gold testing equipment. Oh, and don't you need to go online (or to the DMV) to register the transfer?
I've gone to estate sales where there was no cellular or other data service and was not aware of this beforehand. Someone trying to buy via Bitcoin would be SOL, people using gold, silver, or paper money would go on with business as usual.
Where are you buying land that there is no cell service? (Note: not at the property itself, but at the real estate office (or whatever) where you buy it).
of course it isn't destroyed. it is transformed and the process just like dissolved gold can be reversed.
Not really. Not everything that is expensive is valuable for jewellery (you'll not find much jewellery made of rhodium, for example). What makes gold perfect for jewellery even apart from its price is:
* It looks good
* It doesn't corrode
* It doesn't cause allergies
* It is soft enough to be relatively easily brought into the desired form
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Since the first thing you see when coming to Slashdot is a huge banner with a link to the response from Slashdot regarding user complaints about the beta this is just a tad redundant at this point.
No, why would I think that? rust is just iron oxides
completely relevant to the Bitcoin article. I'm glad you have your opinion, but really don't give a rats arse. Can we get back to the topic of this post? Seriously
Yes I have been using it. I'm indifferent to the current quality since obviously it will get better over time.
I am ESPECIALLY indifferent to extra whitespace, because it doesn't matter much to me if I have to scroll more. Would I like to see it tighter up? Yes, but it is absolutely not worth the 24x7 beta trolling.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
you'd need to carry around an entire tree to buy a pack of gum.
You haven't looked at the price of trees lately...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I agree. It really is very very bad. It could possibly be bad enough to cause me to stop coming here.
While I could obtain a night of debauchery with an underaged girl with nothing but a bottle of whisky I've decided to not "realize my error" and instead leave the kids alone. I wish you scammers would stop preying on the naive here with your electronic version of that.
Leave the kids alone lowlife.
People in "democratic" nations are BRAINWASHED to believe that "Voting in elections = Democracy".
I think a https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... scan can tell us who is really "qualified" to become a Republican/Democratic nominee.
Casteism
Or lumber, for that matter.