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Investor Tim Draper Announces He Won Silk Road Bitcoin Auction
After some speculation yesterday about the winner of the auction for the first block of bitcoins seized from the Silk Road, the winner went ahead and made his identity public. Tim Draper has won the U.S. Marshals bitcoin auction and is partnering with Vaurum to provide bitcoin liquidity in emerging markets. ... Tim offered this in a statement:
“Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies. With the help of Vaurum and this newly purchased bitcoin, we expect to be able to create new services that can provide liquidity and confidence to markets that have been hamstrung by weak currencies.
Of course, no one is totally secure in holding their own country’s currency. We want to enable people to hold and trade bitcoin to secure themselves against weakening currencies.”
"...We want to enable people to hold and trade bitcoin to secure themselves against weakening currencies.” ...wut.
Providing bitcoin liquidity ..... If you have the interest to buy it.
All those coins going somewhere to rot with the rest until more people adopt the idea, and mining is eventually rendered useless, so it becomes a "real" tradeable asset, like gold i guess. When will a candy bar cost .0001 bitcoins?
Hold on a sec ... is he trying to say that bitcoin can help rectify problems caused by weak currencies?
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
"Of course, no one is totally secure in holding their own country’s currency"
Just put the words "Of course" in front of any opinion and people will accept it as fact.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Seriously, in this shady world of bitcoin, where people lie and deceit all the time how can anyone take someone word for granted?
There is zero evidence Tim Draper was the auction winner, except for is own statement, that's not backed up by absolutely anything.
Even more, I clearly remember the days where Mark Karpelles was a great guy, a visionary, an entrepreneur that embraced bitcoin... look at what the "bitcoin people" say about him now.
Promoting a cryptocurrency to help the developing world avoid the pitfalls of its own weak currency? Wasn't that a plot element of Cryptonomicon. If I recall, however, they were going to back all of their cryptocurrency against a mountain of gold (Nazi and Japanese spoils of war).
Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies.
No it does not. A currency that is "weak" is a relative valuation of exchange compared with other currencies. Weak does not (necessarily) equal bad. A "weak" currency benefits exporters and hurts importers. China has purposely been keeping their currency weak for some time now to facilitate their manufacturing exports. Whether bitcoin is "strong" or "weak" depends entirely on what you are comparing it with. (Never mind the fact that bitcoin is ridiculously volatile which doesn't help either) Furthermore unless you plan to actually hold bitcoins instead of using them as a fancy money order spending little time holding them, the relative strength of bitcoin as a currency is irrelevant.
With the help of Vaurum and this newly purchased bitcoin, we expect to be able to create new services that can provide liquidity and confidence to markets that have been hamstrung by weak currencies.
What a load of malarkey. Bitcoin is no where near stable enough nor widely accepted enough to serve this function.
Of course, no one is totally secure in holding their own country’s currency.
I'll take my chances with the US dollar thanks. I trust it FAR more than I do bitcoin.
Bitcoin is deflationary in a world with increasing population. Also BTC has made land grabbers and early adopters rich - it doesnt look like the currency of the future to me.
The other issue is that it cannot be recovered when stolen - this makes the identity theft issue utterly lethal.
If something similar to BTC came about that was convertable to energy or bullion that would be of interest - then the whole digital-only nature of the currency would be alleviated to some degree (a computer/HDD crash can wipe you out is a valid fear).
The other thing that needs to come about is transaction escrow. Some mutually agreed on non-governmental third party should provide escrow for large transactions.
I think that Amazon and others love BTC simply because they dont have to pay a tithe to credit card companies, but credit card companies help us deal with fraud, bad products, identity theft, etc. If you pay your credit cards off in time you get a company that can be helpful in dealing with fraud and identity theft vs nothing.
BTC is like walking around with krugerrands and bearer bonds without security.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
It might work against hyper inflation. But other than, that its kind of worthless. And when you have hyper inflation, governments usually crack down on any kind of currency movement out of the weak currency to try and prop up the local currency.
So this is great, if you think that your currency is going hyper inflationary in a short period of time. I don't think there are many cases in which that would be useful.
Otherwise, if Bitcoin can be called a currency, then its also suceptible to variance in value as we've seen over its lifetime. Teh Mahts don't protect against it losing value.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
In related news, a Sinaloa Cartel spokesperson was quoted as saying, "Thanks, we were wondering who had our money."
If one has a strong currency, then one commands the privilege of the market. That means one would get first pick of new opportunities, new investments, and everyone wants to do business because of that strong currency. What you pointed out is the adverse consequence of having a strong currency--lots of buying power, but limited ability to actually generate new income. Strong currencies benefit the investor class and continues to give them privilege in the market--and to a degree, at the expense of everyone else.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
This is nothing more than a ploy to advertise the company (which I'm not naming on purpose).
That is also how he was able to win. He did NOT bid "X times Y" where X is the price of BC and
Y is the number of coins. He bid "X times Y plus advertising-factor". That's how he was able
to beat everyone else.
WATCH. They will sell these BC within the next 30 days. I know it's a bit outside /. attention-span but that's how it is going to work.
Fortunus dominus
Dear Tim,
Can I have my bitcoin back please. I think you have a few that belong to me.
thanks,
AC
The source of this news is Medium.com, which is a blog publishing platform that allows literally anyone to write anything they like.
This news is very unreliably sourced, to say the least.
It would have been so much more interesting if Captain Crunch was a Bitcoin zillionaire. Yeah, that wouldn't lead to anything *bad*.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
You jerk. Guh.
People at that level talk with purpose, and the purpose is not always conveying well-justified facts or opinions.
Draper is far from stupid. He is already starting to talk his book by giving increased legitimacy to *bitcoin technology startups*, which is his actual investment.
The profits are in the fees in the payment systems.
From which he will cash out profits in cold dollars and euros, and a few bitcoins as a lark.
Bitcoin can't possibly be any kind of stable or useful general currency until there's a bond market in bitcoin. People imagine that transacting for bubblegum or downloads makes for good currency---but that's meaningless trivia. It's the existence and strength of *debt markets*, whether direct (loans) or capital markets (bonds) which truly signal strength, because these instruments are arbitrage through time. The dollar and euro aren't going anywhere because there are trillion $ bond and FX markets behind them.
Draper knows this, too.
When you start to get a bitcoin bond market with enforcable contracts, then it's time to take it seriously.
Quite the contrary, what he plans to do is to exploit weak economies. This is a Soros-style attack on banks, with the clear intention of getting rich while destroying third world economies.
counter-party capability is available, multi-sig transactions ... give it a few months ..third party escrows will pop up ..and you will be able to choose them via free market.
deflationary with an increasing population is a good thing. I think you have deflation and inflation backwards.
identity theft, that is certainly a problem that needs to be solved, but it will be, and I think it will be solved via hardware rather than software. off OS signature devices built into phones/PCs ... probably.
All that being said, I don't think most people grasp what bitcoin will really become ... It is going to become the backbone of the global financial system, side chains, and off chain transactions will make up general commerce and transactions between individuals...those will reconcile on longer timeframes in bigger batches on the main bitcoin block chain.
Think outside the box man, its going to look totally different in 5 years.
ALso ponder Proof of resource based chains. with those (they are being worked on) decentralized mesh networking will finally be possible. imagine the possibilities. Goodbye cable/dsl companies.
BTC is like walking around with krugerrands and bearer bonds in a safe back home and knowing the combination in your head, and or needing your fingerprint for biometrics. ... then what really is the difference?
If someone knows you have it, and they want it, and are willing to use violence, extortion what have you
I wasn't speaking to his intelligence I was referencing his statements that are blatant sales pitch or mission statement type quotes. It's the same thing we have seen all over the internet about how this new idea is going to be great because...bitcoin.
I fully expect he will (has) make a profit off of his investment.
I guess I can be proven wrong if someone explains to me how "no one is totally secure in holding their own country’s currency". I mean I have never really met anyone who isn't totally secure in the dollar.....well except a couple of the nuts who hoard guns because Obama is setting up fema camps.
I know a couple folks who don't have the option of using US dollars thanks to their governments. They are doing a substantial amount of business in bitcoin instead.
In other words that is a backhanded way of saying they are doing something illegal. I've been all over the world including to places where they don't allow free exchange of the local currency into dollars (like China). It is NEVER a problem to do business in dollars. In fact in places where the local currency is a bit shaky (like Vietnam) they actually generally prefer to do business in dollars.
Seriously, I love hearing that. Not everybody deserves to be a Bitcoin early adopter.
"Deserves"? How precious that you think yourself so clever. You go ahead and put your money on the bitcoin roulette wheel. I'm going to put mine in investments that actually do something productive and are a lot more predictable as well. Maybe you'll get lucky and exchange rates will move in your favor... but I doubt it. Your odds are better in Vegas frankly.
as yet another sucker is born.
Draper was responsible for neither DPR's incompetence nor the FBI's theft.
Inflation is the increase of the money supply, this lead to price increase. Bitcoin is great because it is a controlled inflation currency. We all know how many bitcoin are created every 10 minutes and that for the next 100 years. You have no clue how may trillions USD will be printed in the next 10 years.
Public: We believe! We believe! Pump pump pump!
Private: Sell! Sell that shit! Dump dump dump!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Is a bitcoin a number?
Perhaps a bunch of other site that agree you "own" them. ??
Is it a pyramid scheme - earlier mining gets more coins?
If I started my own eCoin what kind of thing would the algorithm or whatever do?
No I am not going to, I have moe constructive things to do.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Were you trying to imply narcotics trade or something like that?
That is merely one of the possible options. There are countries where you cannot legally do certain activities that have nothing to do with narcotics trafficking. For instance in some countries it is illegal to exchange the local currency for dollars because the government is trying to control the money supply. I said they were doing something illegal and that can mean many things.
That's my backhanded way of saying you are wrong. In place such as Argentina, there can be a lot of risk in exchanging dollars under one of the "cambio" signs, and the fees can be quite stiff.
So they ARE doing something illegal and I was right.