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Jim Blasko Explains 'Unbreakable Coin' (Video 2 of 2)
Today, the conclusion of my talk with Jim Blasko (here's part 1), who encourages you to go start your own crypto currency, because it's a fun exercise and because every entrant adds new ideas to the mix. As you'd expect, he's bullish about both his own Unbreakable Coin and cryptocurrencies more generally; how any given given currency performs, though, is an open question: U.S. dollars, Euros, or Yen may not go experience any meteoric rises, but their stability, even with inflation, is a nice feature, and so is their worldwide convertibility.
Regulation, speculation, fraud, and cultural fashions all play a role in making new currencies risky; reader mbkennel yesterday asked an insightful question: "Are you up to loaning bitcoin or something less popular for 10 years?" Confidence in any given currency can be tested with the terms current holders are willing to accept to make loans payable in that same currency. (On the other hand, if large companies will accept it in payment, they've probably got an idea that a given currency will be around next month or next year.) If you've bought any form of crypto currency, what's been your experience, and what do you expect in 10 years? (Alternate Video Link)
Regulation, speculation, fraud, and cultural fashions all play a role in making new currencies risky; reader mbkennel yesterday asked an insightful question: "Are you up to loaning bitcoin or something less popular for 10 years?" Confidence in any given currency can be tested with the terms current holders are willing to accept to make loans payable in that same currency. (On the other hand, if large companies will accept it in payment, they've probably got an idea that a given currency will be around next month or next year.) If you've bought any form of crypto currency, what's been your experience, and what do you expect in 10 years? (Alternate Video Link)
Did this guy suck Timothy's dick to get 2 stories posted? Makes me wonder what Bennett had to do...
Are you rich yet, Blasko? Can we start working on making me rich now, Blasko?
enduring complaints concerning crypto-currency." yeah, i bought BitCoin back in the day. sold it soon, too. made a little coin. kinda like betting in Vegas. for the lulz.
One use for cryptocurrency that isn't talked about much is as a gift certificate.
If a store created a custom BC clone and pre-mined it completely, it could assign them an arbitrary fixed value (1 Slash-Dollar = 1 USD???) and sell them as gift cards. The advantage over a regular gift card is that the buyer can then split them and give the pieces to friends as gifts or even trade them on an "open market" if he wanted to (okay, that's being done now, but you get the idea).
The company that created and pre-mined the cards would be on the hook for all transaction fees. Unlike a "real" currency like BC they could set an expiration date ahead of time or say that "after a certain date, we will charge a hefty fee for all transactions OTHER than through our store" or if the currency is designed to be "short lived," even "after a certain date, we will accept it for purchase at a discount, and this discount will increase each month until the currency becomes worthless."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why has Slashdot posted advertorials for Mr. Blasko for two days in a row now? Man has Slashdot jumped the shark or it isn't disclosure promoted content like it should.
Another scamcoin!!!! Here's how to make your own:
1. Create your own cryptocoin
2. Mine it until a solo operation is no longer feasible and you have millions of coins
3. ???
4. Profit
(On the other hand, if large companies will accept it in payment, they've probably got an idea that a given currency will be around next month or next year.)
I don't think this is the most likely answer. Most likely is that the big companies have an instant exchange set up where a purchase made in bitcoins is immediately converted to dollars, and they charge their customers a small transaction fee in the form of an exchange rate difference.
How is this garbage making the front page
I have developed a cryptocurrency that can never become worthless. Its value is indexed to a real-world service that is available everywhere. Mining for these coins is a deceptively simple process that should only take 15 minutes or so per coin. However, the total number of coins in circulation is limited by the fact that mining can only be done in one location by no more than 3 people at a time. In addition, there is often a refractory period, where no further mining can take place for anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours. Combined with a window of opportunity of less than 16 hours a day, you can see that the scarcity of the coin is a certainty.
This coin, which I call "the Suckit" is tied to the average cost of a quality blowjob by an escort in New York City. "Mining" can be performed at my home between the hours of 6:00 PM and 3:00 AM during the week, and anytime on weekends. In order to receive your Suckit coin, you must, of course, suck it, and quite enthusiatically, at that. If your "mining" activity is successful, a new Suckit will be minted and transferred to you.
Important restrictions apply: No minors (just miners), no infections, no diseases, no shirts, no shoes, and, most importantly, no biting.
Bitcoin and other crypto currencies all have a weakness. They rely upon security of end devices to provide security of the money. Banks have been targets for cyber attacks but tend to have separate networks to secure operations to move money. Security of mobile and desktop are not robust enough to meet requirements to protect money.
I kind of wonder if a group of companies could create a kind of private currency that would be represented as a store credit, say Amazon, Google Play and maybe Alibaba (to pick 3).
They could denominate it in dollars and provide incentives to customers and vendors to accept some of their income or refunds at a dollar premium in private currency as well as making it transferrable to other people (using a cryptocurrency model, maybe) as well as being portable to other core vendors. They could even offer to process transactions for other web site that wanted to be able to accept it.
They might even save operating expenses if it became widespread enough that it allowed them to reduce currency exchange issues. A combination of Amazon, Google and whoever would also probably be deep-pocketed enough that there wouldn't be much risk of the credits being defaulted on.
all the modern crypto-currencies are anti-environment. The more you damage the environment, the more you can make. It won't be until the "crypto" part is deliberately dumbed down and a central authority placed over creation (but not transaction) that they will be anything but "fuck the environment" toys for the nutjob fringe.
It was made environmentally damaging to limit participation. But putting creation to a central authority, and they can keep the creation calculations simpler and easier, but be the only authority allowed to create them. That will harm the environment less, and allow for wide adoption by people other than psychopaths.
Learn to love Alaska
There's little money to be made from an existing ponzi so what to do? Start a new one of course! Announce a new cryptocurrency (while sitting on a pile of easily mined coins), hype it as the next in-thing to gullible libertarian types and exit with a profit. The main question is why /. is stupid enough to promote not 1 but 2 videos about it.