No argument, and likely why scams have and continue to be so prevalent in crypto currencies. It's digital cash, and transactions are not reversible.
On the other hand, it's quite literally programmable money. Escrow systems will make a resurgence. It is entirely possible to build a transaction between you, me and a third party where I commit to a payment, and you commit to ship me a physical item. Once I have digitally committed to the payment, I cannot reverse it on my own. On the other hand, you cannot actually claim the payment on your own. Once the item arrives, I can release the payment to you. Or, if it doesn't arrive, the third party can either confirm or reverse the payment.
Long delays considered totally unreasonable for credit cards and other mediums of exchange are perfectly normal for Bitcoin.
Credit card transactions can be reversed for months after the fact. Bitcoin transactions can be validated ("Yes, the signed transaction received has valid inputs.") almost instantly, and once it is included in the blockchain (Generally in minutes, sometimes as much as an hour.) it is irreversible. Much faster than PayPal or credit cards. As a merchant, if the value of the transaction is small, accepting unconfirmed transactions is an acceptable risk. If it's a high value transaction (For whatever value of "high" you is important to you.) then wait for a couple of confirmations. Chargebacks will never be an issue.
Gold and Euros also tend to be measured in terms of fiat currency. It's a pretty common way of talking about value.
And the price will stabilize, eventually. If Bitcoin is successful, and becomes an easy means of electronic exchange of value, as well as a store of value, that price will be ridiculously high, compared to the current value. If it's not successful, that price will be near zero.
Is the current price a bubble based on FOMO? Possible. Bitcoin has had 4 or 5 bubble events, but the post-bubble price has always stabilized at somewhat higher than the pre-bubble runup, and surpassed the bubble peak after a period of time. Bitcoin works. It does what it says on the label. The question now is whether the big banks and governments can kill it, and I suspect they have been trying hard to do so for some time.
In 5 years, the price of Bitcoin will be in excess of US$100,000. Or less than US0.01. But not anywhere in between. And if it's worth something in 5 years, FSM knows what it will be worth in 20.....
"Tulip mania" was all about speculation in futures prices, not about actual tulips, and has more in common with the sub-prime market crash in 2008 than with Bitcoin.
> P.S.=> Enlighten me - what creates VALUE in bitcoins?
The value in Bitcoins is that they are predictable and virtually unchangeable, and governed by the mathematics in the protocol.
The only way to change the bitcoin protocol is to convince the majority of the market that such a change is necessary and beneficial. It is not possible to (for example) confiscate Bitcoin. It is not possible to change how many Bitcoin are created. Doing such things would require that at least most people involved in Bitcoin (both using it, and the miners creating it) agree to do so. It's not something that can be forced.
These rules and their immutability, combined with Bitcoin being the first to provide such a service has generated trust in those who know about Bitcoin, and that trust in a system of tokens for moving value from person to person has given those tokens value. If that trust by the market is damaged or destroyed, the value of Bitcoin will follow. However, if the market maintains that trust, and more people come to share that trust -- there are a limited number of tokens, so their scarcity drives the value up.
It's the same with dollars -- the small pieces of paper have virtually no intrinsic value. But the market trusts can be reliably exchanged for something else. If the market loses faith in the system of pieces of paper (See Zimbabwe or (more recently) Venezuela, for example.) then the value of those pieces of paper can become negligible.
In a short term power or network outage, Bitcoin will be as available as current credit and debit cards. (Which is to say, not at all.) But gold or silver won't be useful for buying bread at the local supermarket, either -- they'll tell you to come back with dollars, or when the lights come back on.
In an actual, we're fucked global disaster like a Carrington event or a global war that permanently (or nearly so) knocks out major national infrastructure? Bitcoin and banks will definitely be gone. But people aren't going to be interested in pretty metals, either. Trade (such as it is) will be conducted with valuable commodities like ammunition, gasoline and non-perishable food items.
In order to safely view the sun with a welding filter, you need a shade #12 or higher. The certification for those is more stringent than the ISO certification for visual eclipse filters.
Actually, I have seen reports of customers who ordered #14 welding filters (as well as eclipse gear not even intended to be used in any way for viewing) getting the same refund notice.
Vendors selling fake glasses are a problem, but Amazon is forcing this on a huge number of items -- virtually anything eclipse related -- and will be burning far more legitimate sellers than illegitimate ones.
You are already going through the pain of changing your address. Make sure you don't have to do it again some time in the future. Mail providers change policies or shut down, sometimes without warning.
Go ahead, and pick a mail provider that you like. But also go out and buy a personal domain. You'll probably be able to find one you like for $10 per year, and you can find DNS providers that will do mail re-direction for free. Have a wildcard redirect set to send any email sent to the domain forwarded to the new mail address. Don't like the way the provider is now doing things? Get a new provider and email address, and change the redirect.
This (high fees) is definitely a problem at the current time. It is the result of a huge, polarized fight between two major factions of the Bitcoin community. It is a political fight that may well be what kills Bitcoin.
But.
If Bitcoin can survive this (and when it does, the technical reasons for the current high fees will go away) it will have proved that it can survive through a major crisis over protocol changes. If it proves that, it will have proved itself literally unkillable.
The point he is making is that the vastly most common outcome of most bad decisions is.... nothing at all. It doesn't make it a good thing. But it does explain why it is so common.
Drive drunk? Probably nothing will happen. Don't buy insurance? Your house probably won't burn down. Eat uncooked meat? You probably won't get sick.
When the standards for eliptic curve signatures were being developed, the NSA, in response to the submission recommended (without, I believe, much explanation) a slight different set of constants used to define the curves, and those recommendations made it into the standard.
Did they suggest the new constants, because they knew the initially proposed ones had weaknesses? Or because the ones they suggested had properties that would allow the NSA to break those signatures?
Yes, computer security is hard. If you don't securely store your keys, you could lose them. If you don't hold your keys at all, and trust an online company to hold them, you could lose them. Neither of which is the fault of Bitcoin.
And if you add up all the losses due to corporate failures like Gox, et al, you'll get a total that is probably rounding error compared against the frauds committed in dollars for the same period.
Well, I hate to break this to you, but Steam isn't accepting your "actual money", either.
Your bank will provide a service (for a fee) of taking your "actual money" and provides another service (for a fee) of turning that money into an electronic ledger entry that Paypal (or Mastercard or Visa) accept and then they will provide yet another another service (for another fee) of taking that electronic ledger entry, and giving it to Valve.
Cash for internet purchases virtually never happens. One or more intermediaries are always involved. Virtual dollars and virtual bitcoins each have their pros and cons.
The internet started to get popular, but Big Money didn't like the lack of control or some of the shadier practices that went on there.
So America OnLine (among others) was created, and aggressively sold to consumers. And it provided "internet". Sort of. It was a very walled garden. But you did start seeing "AOL Keyword: MOVIE TITLE" and such in advertising and on TV. In the long term, how well did that work out?
Yes, AOL still (technically) exists, but it is not the walled garden it used to be. It's now a pretty standard (if large) ISP. Providing access to the big, bad internet it was meant to replace.
Slashdot Mirror
No argument, and likely why scams have and continue to be so prevalent in crypto currencies. It's digital cash, and transactions are not reversible.
On the other hand, it's quite literally programmable money. Escrow systems will make a resurgence. It is entirely possible to build a transaction between you, me and a third party where I commit to a payment, and you commit to ship me a physical item. Once I have digitally committed to the payment, I cannot reverse it on my own. On the other hand, you cannot actually claim the payment on your own. Once the item arrives, I can release the payment to you. Or, if it doesn't arrive, the third party can either confirm or reverse the payment.
Long delays considered totally unreasonable for credit cards and other mediums of exchange are perfectly normal for Bitcoin.
Credit card transactions can be reversed for months after the fact. Bitcoin transactions can be validated ("Yes, the signed transaction received has valid inputs.") almost instantly, and once it is included in the blockchain (Generally in minutes, sometimes as much as an hour.) it is irreversible. Much faster than PayPal or credit cards. As a merchant, if the value of the transaction is small, accepting unconfirmed transactions is an acceptable risk. If it's a high value transaction (For whatever value of "high" you is important to you.) then wait for a couple of confirmations. Chargebacks will never be an issue.
I haven't seen this since 2010-2011... :)
Gold and Euros also tend to be measured in terms of fiat currency. It's a pretty common way of talking about value.
And the price will stabilize, eventually. If Bitcoin is successful, and becomes an easy means of electronic exchange of value, as well as a store of value, that price will be ridiculously high, compared to the current value. If it's not successful, that price will be near zero.
Is the current price a bubble based on FOMO? Possible. Bitcoin has had 4 or 5 bubble events, but the post-bubble price has always stabilized at somewhat higher than the pre-bubble runup, and surpassed the bubble peak after a period of time. Bitcoin works. It does what it says on the label. The question now is whether the big banks and governments can kill it, and I suspect they have been trying hard to do so for some time.
In 5 years, the price of Bitcoin will be in excess of US$100,000. Or less than US0.01. But not anywhere in between. And if it's worth something in 5 years, FSM knows what it will be worth in 20.....
"Tulip mania" was all about speculation in futures prices, not about actual tulips, and has more in common with the sub-prime market crash in 2008 than with Bitcoin.
Steam?
> P.S.=> Enlighten me - what creates VALUE in bitcoins?
The value in Bitcoins is that they are predictable and virtually unchangeable, and governed by the mathematics in the protocol.
The only way to change the bitcoin protocol is to convince the majority of the market that such a change is necessary and beneficial. It is not possible to (for example) confiscate Bitcoin. It is not possible to change how many Bitcoin are created. Doing such things would require that at least most people involved in Bitcoin (both using it, and the miners creating it) agree to do so. It's not something that can be forced.
These rules and their immutability, combined with Bitcoin being the first to provide such a service has generated trust in those who know about Bitcoin, and that trust in a system of tokens for moving value from person to person has given those tokens value. If that trust by the market is damaged or destroyed, the value of Bitcoin will follow. However, if the market maintains that trust, and more people come to share that trust -- there are a limited number of tokens, so their scarcity drives the value up.
It's the same with dollars -- the small pieces of paper have virtually no intrinsic value. But the market trusts can be reliably exchanged for something else. If the market loses faith in the system of pieces of paper (See Zimbabwe or (more recently) Venezuela, for example.) then the value of those pieces of paper can become negligible.
In a short term power or network outage, Bitcoin will be as available as current credit and debit cards. (Which is to say, not at all.) But gold or silver won't be useful for buying bread at the local supermarket, either -- they'll tell you to come back with dollars, or when the lights come back on.
In an actual, we're fucked global disaster like a Carrington event or a global war that permanently (or nearly so) knocks out major national infrastructure? Bitcoin and banks will definitely be gone. But people aren't going to be interested in pretty metals, either. Trade (such as it is) will be conducted with valuable commodities like ammunition, gasoline and non-perishable food items.
In order to safely view the sun with a welding filter, you need a shade #12 or higher. The certification for those is more stringent than the ISO certification for visual eclipse filters.
Actually, I have seen reports of customers who ordered #14 welding filters (as well as eclipse gear not even intended to be used in any way for viewing) getting the same refund notice.
Vendors selling fake glasses are a problem, but Amazon is forcing this on a huge number of items -- virtually anything eclipse related -- and will be burning far more legitimate sellers than illegitimate ones.
You are already going through the pain of changing your address. Make sure you don't have to do it again some time in the future. Mail providers change policies or shut down, sometimes without warning.
Go ahead, and pick a mail provider that you like. But also go out and buy a personal domain. You'll probably be able to find one you like for $10 per year, and you can find DNS providers that will do mail re-direction for free. Have a wildcard redirect set to send any email sent to the domain forwarded to the new mail address. Don't like the way the provider is now doing things? Get a new provider and email address, and change the redirect.
This (high fees) is definitely a problem at the current time. It is the result of a huge, polarized fight between two major factions of the Bitcoin community. It is a political fight that may well be what kills Bitcoin.
But.
If Bitcoin can survive this (and when it does, the technical reasons for the current high fees will go away) it will have proved that it can survive through a major crisis over protocol changes. If it proves that, it will have proved itself literally unkillable.
You're close.
Bitcoin could be the next HTTP.
https://gcn.com/articles/2017/...
https://www.samba.org/samba/se...
Or something with more details?
WTF....
The point he is making is that the vastly most common outcome of most bad decisions is.... nothing at all. It doesn't make it a good thing. But it does explain why it is so common.
Drive drunk? Probably nothing will happen.
Don't buy insurance? Your house probably won't burn down.
Eat uncooked meat? You probably won't get sick.
http://crypto.stackexchange.co...
When the standards for eliptic curve signatures were being developed, the NSA, in response to the submission recommended (without, I believe, much explanation) a slight different set of constants used to define the curves, and those recommendations made it into the standard.
Did they suggest the new constants, because they knew the initially proposed ones had weaknesses? Or because the ones they suggested had properties that would allow the NSA to break those signatures?
All investment is a gamble. And with Bitcoin, like any other investment -- don't risk more than you are prepared to lose completely.
Yes, computer security is hard. If you don't securely store your keys, you could lose them. If you don't hold your keys at all, and trust an online company to hold them, you could lose them. Neither of which is the fault of Bitcoin.
And if you add up all the losses due to corporate failures like Gox, et al, you'll get a total that is probably rounding error compared against the frauds committed in dollars for the same period.
Bitcoin isn't risk free, but nothing is.
So.... Since gold costs $1,000-$1,200 per ounce to mine, the actual value of gold is $0 to $200?
Well, I hate to break this to you, but Steam isn't accepting your "actual money", either.
Your bank will provide a service (for a fee) of taking your "actual money" and provides another service (for a fee) of turning that money into an electronic ledger entry that Paypal (or Mastercard or Visa) accept and then they will provide yet another another service (for another fee) of taking that electronic ledger entry, and giving it to Valve.
Cash for internet purchases virtually never happens. One or more intermediaries are always involved. Virtual dollars and virtual bitcoins each have their pros and cons.
The internet started to get popular, but Big Money didn't like the lack of control or some of the shadier practices that went on there.
So America OnLine (among others) was created, and aggressively sold to consumers. And it provided "internet". Sort of. It was a very walled garden. But you did start seeing "AOL Keyword: MOVIE TITLE" and such in advertising and on TV. In the long term, how well did that work out?
Yes, AOL still (technically) exists, but it is not the walled garden it used to be. It's now a pretty standard (if large) ISP. Providing access to the big, bad internet it was meant to replace.
s/Internet/Private Blockchain/g
:)