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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.”
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.
In related news, a Sinaloa Cartel spokesperson was quoted as saying, "Thanks, we were wondering who had our money."
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
He could prove it was him by signing a message with the bitcoin address' private key.