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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.”
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 seems unwise to claim to the winner. A lot of people who lost money when those bitcoins were seized will be quite upset with this guy. Considering many of the dealt in drugs, weapons and other illegal material I wouldn't like to speculate what they might do to him.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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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
Having an alternative currency like Bitcoin in a country with rampant inflation 'couldn't hoit'. Especially if dollar purchases are restricted like in Venezuela where holders of the Bolivar lost 56% last year due to inflation. It simply gives the victim of an inept monetary policy a way to preserve the wealth value in an asset more stable than his own currency. Gold and dollars would be better but they are hard to obtain.
Of course, it helps that what he's saying is a fact; no one is totally secure against anything. It's just a meaningless fact.
He could prove it was him by signing a message with the bitcoin address' private key.
If you want to be in the business of offering payment services that accept Bitcoins, then you want to be able to do this underwriting. People will be a lot more willing to accept Bitcoins if you can say 'the value of BTC fluctuates relative to USD, but we guarantee that we will always buy them at this exchange rate. If you use this exchange rate for setting your prices then you will never suffer from these fluctuations'. To be able to do this (and not make huge losses), you need to be able to influence the market price by buying and selling in large quantities and by avoiding selling when the price is too low. Having a large initial stash of Bitcoin helps with this.
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...and mining is eventually rendered useless...
Huh? With bitcoin, the mining process is how transactions are validated. No mining, no transactions. How do you think it could ever be rendered useless?
When will a candy bar cost .0001 bitcoins?
Difficult to say. But you can get candy bars for around .0016BTC (+shipping) from here.
Nope because bit coin is primarily a pyramid ponzi currency. Accruing it's value by the work now required to generate it, whilst those at the very top who created by far the bulk of the bit coins did very little to create those bit coins (the bulk of their effort was in marketing the creation of the illusion). This illusion of later effort has not relationship at all to earlier effort and the main driver that keeps bitcoin going is use in criminal activity. How ever that use in criminal activity also drives theft of bit coin. This is why so many crypto currencies have now appeared, other scam artists trying to be at the top of their pyramid, creating the bulk of their crypto currency prior to release to the public.
So how many coins are there, who holds the most, what effort was required to generate them and, how many were generated prior to release to the public. Crypto currencies are ponzi schemes, you generate value by selling the idea to others who must put more value in, in order for your investment to be worth more, this obfuscated behind the principle that earlier players can far more readily generate coins than later players. So pretty much legal authorities have failed to act on activity that really runs on the border of being a blatant ponzi scheme.
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