Slashdot Mirror
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."
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))
because guys, you're awfully late to the punch on this one...
"Outdated business models" is code for "I don't like paying for things, but want them anyway"
NOBODY GIVES A SHIT!
Anonymous Coward: says: beta really suck!
Things have taken a bit of a dive.
http://imgur.com/gallery/73IDM...
Slashdot traffic plunged by way more than 8 percent [next Monday] after a group of angry nerds decided to stop wasting time at work looking at Slashdot and be productive, citing a technical malfunction known as "beta." Slashdot management claimed in a blog post that "we're trying something new" and "If you like your Slashdot Classic, you can keep your Slashdot Classic (for now)." It promised an 'update' — not a cancellation of the beta— in the days to come.
Breaking NEWS: aliens from zeta just send us a message saying they are stooping of all abductions that were carried on slashdot beta crew. They explanation: we could just not deal with this IQ level at this time.
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.
Grow the fuck up and stop spamming the comments. The grown ups want to discuss the news.
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
To their advertisers, Dice presents Slashdot as "Social Media for B2B Technology" platform. They ignore the detailed feedback of Beta that they have received in these past months, and they disregard our grievances. They pretend to listen, all while admitting that Classic will be cancelled soon:
"Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready.
What company directs 25% of its users to a partially-working, not-ready-for-production website? A company like Apple can get away with using its customers to test out beta versions, because many of its early adopters are fanboys and suckers. This is how Dice views its userbase.
Beta delenda est!
Comp.misc on Usenet is the new Slashdot. Please change over immediately. If your ISP no longer carries Usenet please use the Eternal September *free* Usenet servers.
See you there, and DOWN WITH BETA.
I am declining to discuss this article.
I will not visit this site next week.
Nevar Forget!
8% is hardly a plunge for a currency that's valuation is based on 92% speculation.
you can probably run Slashdot.
The real users are leaving, only sockpuppets remain.
"boo hoo!" cried a sockpuppet, "stay on topic so the money flows through our penises"
US5722418
+
US5644363
+
GoogleGlass
+
Acceptance
=
????
If history is any sort of an indicator, any rights we sell today, our children must buy back with blood tomorrow
Bitcoin may indeed have plunged after Mt. Gox Exchange Halted Trading.
But not half as much as Slashdot has plunged after Dice failed to halt Beta.
I visit daily. Unless they halt this abomination, I won't be back.
As others have so eloquently put it - FUCK BETA
sucks cox like beta
So it's pronounced Mount Gox? Mut Gox? M.T. Gox?
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.
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.
CA$H GRAB!
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.
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?
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.
* 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
WOOL!
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
It's Working.
At the rate FB posts are being modded down, and on-topic ones being modded up, we appear to have kept a few people at work on Friday night.
Shall we go all weekend? Can they?
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.
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.
I tried using it for a while trying to get used to it. I really did. For reasons emphatically stated by the /. community, the amount of whitespace is distracting to the point of being detrimental to reading/skimming the comments (as well as the comment system is broken). Again, as the greater /. community has said, comments are the main driving force why people visit the site. I read the comments and almost always ignore the story submitted. It's a running joke when I talk to IRL nerd friends to never cite the summary of a /. article. In a sense, the summary is click bait. Sure it could be better, but somehow that is part of the stupid nerd charm the site has.
When /. went to D2, I started poking around for other nerd sites that engendered intelligent comments. I found it in ArsTechnica. They have a different way of running the website, with real editors and it shows. For the most part, the articles are well worth reading. As are the comments. In some respects, the comments are actually better than /. because a wider net of different viewpoints are allowed to be seen/discussed. About a year ago they implored their loyal readership to turn off javascript/ad blockers to allow the continuation of the site remaining free. I considered the options and decided that I valued the service Arstechnica was providing, so much so that I purchased a year subscription.
That is something I've never done with Slashdot. This is the part of the reason Dice wants to get rid of me as a consumer of the content - because I enjoy it for free. In all my 15+ years of frequenting the site (almost daily), I've only once clicked on an add. In terms of supporting the site, I am the worst type of consumer. Dice wants me to leave and be replaced with people who will click on web adverts. From a MBA perspective, it makes perfect sense. I don't agree with it at all - for reasons stated much more succinctly in other comments.
Will I take part in the Slashdot boycott? I sure will. Because I have a vested interest in retaining the wonderful resource of comments that enrich my geek knowledge on a weekly basis. What will happen if it does go to the new Beta design without a massive redesign keeping in mind it's intelligent readers/commenters? It will die on the vine. Just like some other website redesigns. Digg.com being the latest example that affected me.
When Groklaw was shut down, I respected the reasons why. I seriously miss the content of that site. Partly because of PJ's internal integrity, but also because of the people who commented on the stories. To this day, I haven't found anything that even comes close to the level of professionalism and truly meaty content Groklaw had. While the feelings aren't quite as strong for /. as a site, something very valuable will be lost when it goes away. I personally think that's why the community has reacted so strongly against the Beta.
Where will the commenters and the greater community go? To someplace else on the Internet. It is inevitable. The Internet has this built in property to route around flaws and disturbances, so to do online communities. When the Phoenix lands on it's new perch, I will be there, occasionally adding my voice and enjoying the greater wisdom of the community.
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.
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))
to die. I w1ll jam posts. Therefore 4ave an IRC client
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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!
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...)
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))
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.
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.
What sonny?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
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.