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Finnish National TV Broadcaster Starts Sending Bitcoin Blockchain
New submitter Joel Lehtonen (3743763) writes "The Finnish national digital TV broadcaster Digita is co-operating with startup company Koodilehto to start transmission of Bitcoin blockchain and transactions in Terrestrial Digital TV (DVB-T) signal that covers almost the entire Finnish population of 5 million people. The pilot broadcasting starts September 1st and lasts two months. The broadcast can be received by a computer with any DVB-T adapter (like this $20 dongle). A commercial production phase is planned to begin later this year."
So how precisely is this useful? It allows both Alice and Bob to confirm Alice indeed sent X BTC to Bob. But if Alice is going to send Bitcoins to Bob anyway, then she need to have some means of uploading the details of her transaction.
The point of the service is you can use cheap and small receivers on embedded systems to confirm transactions, for example for vending machines etc. The mobile internet coverage is not as wide as radio signal, nor is it as cheap.
Regulations said that the banknote you could exchange back for gold, cannot be anymore. Talk about not getting shafted, intrinsic value vs. depending on a system to tell value from useless paper is a terrible deal.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
There's no reason why parts of the bitcoin ecosystem couldn't be regulated.
Finnish TV sending money over the airwaves to their customers? :-)
BTW I had a Scandinavian girlfriend at some time, but I don't know exactly which country she was from, but definitely not from Finland, because each time when we were having sex, she yelled: No, no, I'm not Finnish!
What reason would that be exactly ? As I see it, bitcoin has a number of unique properties, which can offer an advantage over other ways to transfer money. It also has some disadvantages, so it would not make a good candidate to replace current fiat money systems. However, bitcoin can happily coexist with fiat money, and people can chose whichever method they prefer for each transactions. They may still buy their groceries with fiat money, but maybe make an international payment for some software design work in bitcoin.
Intrinsic value is not what keeps a currency strong. Devising a way to prevent cheap unlimited production of new currency is what we need. In the old days money was tied to gold - you can't simply print up more gold. These days the powers that be can steal the value of dollars you hold just by printing a new piece of paper with a big number written on it. The strength of bitcoin is that it is limited by design.
For instance: low cost, quick and easy way to transfer money to a person in another country. Alternatives would be paypal (quick and easy, but expensive), or wire transfer (slow and possibly expensive), or credit card (quick and cheap but not easy if neither party is a registered merchant). Another advantage is the lack of charge back (but obviously that can work as a disadvantage for the other party).
intrinsic value vs. depending on a system to tell value from useless paper is a terrible deal.
There is no such thing as "intrinsic value". All value is relative to human needs and desires, which are not only different for each person, but varies for the same person at different times. You can measure "utility value" for an item, based on its usefulness to people, but that changes over time. For example, horses as transportation have near zero or even negative utility in the modern world, since they cost more to own and operate than even the worst motorized transport, and there are many places you can't even use horses.
In the case of bitcoin, looking only at the digital coin gives the wrong answer. The coin only functions as part of the Bitcoin payment network. It is the network that makes it spendable, and therefore useful. The analogy I make is of a UPS shipping label. By itself it is just a bit of sticky printed paper, of no particular value. As part of the UPS shipping network it is much more useful, and therefore has significant value, as evidenced by what people are willing to pay for a label.
The Bitcoin payment network has utility value, because it can perform a useful function (move value from place to place, fast, with low fees). The digital currency unit within the network has value derived from the usefulness of the network it is part of. By itself the currency unit is as useless as a UPS shipping label would be without the rest of UPS.
It should be evident that a network of relay and processing nodes, databases, user software, websites, and smartphone apps can have non-zero value. We could differ on exactly what the value is, but given how much people pay for similar items elsewhere, I don't think you can argue it is zero.
intrinsic value vs. depending on a system to tell value from useless paper is a terrible deal.
There is no such thing as "intrinsic value".
There is. But it is usually limited to things as potatoes. There is no intrinsic value in gold as many people are misguided to believe.
bickerdyke
In fact, much of it is. There are many many laws on the books that already cover digital currencies. Just ask the people who have been arrested for transacting too much without a licence. Financial regulations and consumer protection laws still apply.
The ecosystem is also self-regulated in many ways. I don't mean in the whole sense of that loaded phrase, but simple things like the rules to create and maintain the money supply and rate of that creation or the fact that you can transact without the need for a bank that needs the oversight. Bitcoin, done right, doesn't have someone else in a position to abuse trust of leaving you money in their hands.
I'm sure there are things that need tweaked, but the "Wild West" notion attributed to Bitcoin has more to do with a lack of understanding of how it works by users than a lack of rules to govern it's use.
And if you think Bitcoin transfers are free, you're conveniently ignoring the non-negligible CPU time involved in verification vs simply changing two numbers in a database.
I never said it was free. Just that it's low cost. So low cost in fact, that I can conveniently ignore it.
Can you explain to me why gold has any more intrinsic value than say bitcoins or dollars? Are you personally able to eat gold?
Are you able to repair teeth, make jewels, or make low impedance contacts using banknotes?
I guess you didn't read with enough attention. Gold has intrinsic value because it does not depend on a system who says "that piece of paper is worth X". It is not the magic material that solves all problems, of course, but losing the conversion to gold is still LOSING no matter how you put it.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Since when is it impossible to buy gold with your money?
If you believe gold has more value for you than money on the bank, just buy it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Your post is insightful and deserves modding up. However, I respectfully disagree with you and AC on whether Bitcoins have value. I claim they do.
IANAE, but it's my understanding that the intrinsic value of money is determined by what a buyer and a seller agree it's worth as payment for something, in a fluid economy with lots of buyers and sellers to encourage fairness. The Bitcoin network provides an infrastructure for transactions in such an economy. But without Bitcoins, you can't participate in it. So, I would say Bitcoins do have value, and they have that value because of the existence of the Bitcoin network. But to say that the network itself has the value in question is to overload the definition of value. At the risk of misusing terms of economics (again, IANAE) I'd say the network has utility (because it offers satisfaction in the use of Bitcoins) but not value.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
There is. But it is usually limited to things as potatoes.
Even potatoes are valuable only in situations where there are people around who are interested in owning/obtaining/consuming potatoes.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I think we agree (mostly.)
Note that I was referring to "a fluid economy with lots of buyers and sellers to encourage fairness." I didn't mean that liquidity leads to fairness, rather that fairness can flourish only in an environment of liquidity, i.e., one with numerous players who aspire to fairness, but who are motivated to pursue it by the presence of their fellow players.
To put it another way, even the noblest among us can be corrupted, but it's harder to succumb to such corruption when others are watching and keeping us honest.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Although USD lost it "gold standard", but replaced it with "lead standard". That is the real intrinsic value. The US government wants taxes to be payed un USD. If you dont pay your taxes, the have a lot of weapons that fires lead that forces you to pay your taxes in USD.
Thas the real "intrinsic value" for USD, that Bitcoins lacks.