I see where you're coming from, I guess the answer is "yes and no". Right now, yes it is dumb to put all of your bitcoins with a third party unless that person is someone you personally know and trust and whose work you respect. In 10 years, it might be considered dumb to keep them yourself. In the meantime, what needs to happen is a company needs to get large and profitable managing people's wallets enough to have a reputation for excellent security and usability, as well as accountability. Mt. Gox might have been on the way there, but they were too incompetent in their programming. I'm not sure that company will be an exchange though, it might be a dedicated wallet hosting company that charges a fee for each transaction or something like that.
Right now, I don't trust anyone to hold my BTC. In the future that might change though.
Investing in stocks or funds is one thing. Having the bank just outright buy and own and companies that drill for oil, ship it to refineries, refine it into gas, and shipping the gas to gas stations is a major problem. When any company, not just a bank, controls an entire supply chain that is an obvious possible problem (i.e. price manipulation gets really, really easy). When the owner company is a bank then that creates a whole new set of possible issues. That was the entire purpose of Glass-Steagall. The banking system ran just fine with the Glass-Steagall restrictions in effect.
For me, whether or not the scanners might cause cancer isn't even part of the equation (it would be, if that were the worst part). I opt out on principle because I don't believe that the government has the right to scan my body when I'm traveling, plain and simple. I don't care if they scan the bags I have with me, I have that stuff with me knowing that it's going to be scanned. But for them to assert the right to basically check me out without clothing is too far, I don't agree that they have that right and so I don't allow them to do it. As far as I'm concerned, between protest, security theater, and cancer, cancer ranks third on the list of reasons why I don't want to go through the scanners.
I opt for the passive aggression also. I wear my t-shirt with the quote in my signature and wait patiently as I opt out (I have never once been allowed to go through the metal detectors while the nut zappers have been in place).
The way I read it, the medical exemption entitles him to use only the medical detector, not that it necessarily also means he can't have someone touch him.
Thanks for the answer. I avoided it by keeping my drink in my bag as I boarded the plane!
Whoa man, Jesus Christ! The TSA works hard to develop these comprehensive foolproof security measures such as looking for someone holding a drink and then scanning it. Can you please avoid giving the terrorists information that they otherwise could have never gotten if you hadn't posted common sense on the internet? Think of the goddamn children!
Obviously I need to write to my congressperson to push them to write a law that bans you from the internet or talking to people. In the name of security, of course.
I'm not sure how they calculate their liabilities are only $60m either
They reported assets and liabilities for both BTC and cash. In cash, they have around $32million, and owe around $55million (last I heard). For BTC, they have around 2,000, and owe around 850,000.
Thanks to Slashdot, you'll probably have to copy and paste that link text. But look right there, that's the valley caused by the Mt. Gox news on the 25th. Look at how quickly it recovered. By the time I was hearing everything and thinking I should watch for a slide in order to buy low, it was already recovered. The price today is the same rates that we had on the 22nd, before the news about Mt. Gox.
You can see that when Mt. Gox shut off withdrawals on Feb. 7th, that the price on Mt. Gox completely tanked from there. The other 3 exchanges have gone down 15 - 20% since then. This is hardly a grand collapse, and it is obvious that there are a lot of people looking for slides so that they can buy.
The world of bitcoin might not be the land of rainbows and unicorns that you apparently think happens on Reddit, but it's far from the doom and gloom that the critics claim.
I think a solution is possible, although it would be extremely difficult to get Congress to pass rules limiting their power and the influence that others can have over them. I wrote up some ideas about it here:
One thing is certain: whatever legislation we need, the current administration is too incompetent and corrupt to deliver anything with teeth.
I don't think that situation is going to change unless we completely clean out Congress and elect all new people, with term limits for all members of Congress. It would also really help if corporate donations to politicians were illegal, and that all personal donations to politicians were public. There's far too much money in the system for anything to work like it should.
My understanding, which is admittedly pretty shallow regarding BTC, is that essentially the attackers created 2 transactions, but that Mt Gox saw one. The 2 transactions used the same transaction ID, which is the only thing that Mt Gox used to uniquely identify a transaction, when they should have been using more information (to, from, timestamp, amount, etc).
Basically, the attacker would send say 1000 BTC, and then show another transaction with the same ID where they receive 1000 BTC. The first transaction wouldn't actually be valid, but Mt Gox would still send them the 1000 BTC.
If you want to see the actual transactions, check here. First, notice these are still going on today. The stats on top show that that address has received a total of over 788,558 BTC, and the current balance is 0 (they moved it). In the list of transactions you can see one transaction where they send BTC to a lot of addresses, followed by a transaction where they receive BTC from one or a small number of other accounts. Basically, those requests where they receive money shouldn't have happened, but Mt. Gox allowed it. The fact that transactions are still happening means that Mt. Gox is not the only victim.
Someone figured out that there are wallets or exchanges that are not verifying transactions correctly, and they are exploiting that to steal the coins.
I think that BTC has matured enough that there are enough speculators waiting for the currency to drop so that they can buy low. A lot of people took notice when BTC started selling for $1200. Since there is so much more attention given to it now than there was a year ago, I don't think the recovery is nearly as slow as we might expect.
There was a pretty sharp drop yesterday, accompanied by an equally sharp rise. People are watching the price drop and getting in when they think it bottoms out.
Of course, the 1-month graph shows a larger trend:
The trend is definitely downward from the highs in the past, but I think that BTC might have reached a threshold where there are enough people watching it that we might see the price shoot up quickly at any point once big purchases start being made.
When I heard the news about Mt. Gox yesterday, frankly I was expecting a crash, and I was ready with my cash. The dramatic crash that I was expecting didn't happen, though. The small slide that happened had already completely recovered by the time I could have done anything.
Talk about surreal feelings of insecurity. Does Tesla threaten your livelihood, or something? Do you own a dealership? Not a single negative thing you said about the car is objective. In other words, your criticism was slack, vague, inert, and deceptive.
Considering that the majority of their liabilities are in BTC and not cash, it sounds to me like they would love to drive the price down and then buy back the lost BTC. They keep blaming transaction malleability when the fault lies with them.
It's not exactly trivial to loan people money to buy homes or set up businesses or loan money for college.
I'm not sure what you're thinking of, loaning people money is certainly extremely trivial. Creating an interest plan is trivial math. Giving someone money, or anything else of value, with the promise that they pay you back is not exactly a new idea. People have been doing that for each other since before there were banks.
Bankers would love to make you think that what they do is extremely complex, and very important, and you need them. They're just gamblers though, except they don't gamble with their own money. That's the racket.
I'm sorry, but I don't see a reason why I should necessarily need the services of a banker to run my company.
If we're talking reality, then in this reality the bankers have paid the lawyers and the lawmakers to make sure that all of them are needed for everything. But just because that's the way it is, doesn't mean that's the way it has to be. The American financial system is not necessary in and of itself (proof: the world got along fine before there was an American financial system), all of the necessity in the system has been created by the people in the system. We need to bring back Glass-Steagall and take a step back from the cliff.
Bankers should not be in the business of buying and selling companies. A banker's job is to store your money until you need it again. What they actually do is move your money around and take points off the top, and enrich themselves. And yes, without Glass-Steagall they most certainly do buy companies, but that should not be the job of a banker.
Here's the difference: technology CEOs run companies that make things and contribute to society. Bankers earn a profit by moving other peoples' money around and taking some off the top. One of those jobs is necessary for us to progress.
Slashdot Mirror
I see where you're coming from, I guess the answer is "yes and no". Right now, yes it is dumb to put all of your bitcoins with a third party unless that person is someone you personally know and trust and whose work you respect. In 10 years, it might be considered dumb to keep them yourself. In the meantime, what needs to happen is a company needs to get large and profitable managing people's wallets enough to have a reputation for excellent security and usability, as well as accountability. Mt. Gox might have been on the way there, but they were too incompetent in their programming. I'm not sure that company will be an exchange though, it might be a dedicated wallet hosting company that charges a fee for each transaction or something like that.
Right now, I don't trust anyone to hold my BTC. In the future that might change though.
How much "game-changing functionality" can you really work into a fucking coffee machine?
None, that's why he put that phrase in quotes.
Investing in stocks or funds is one thing. Having the bank just outright buy and own and companies that drill for oil, ship it to refineries, refine it into gas, and shipping the gas to gas stations is a major problem. When any company, not just a bank, controls an entire supply chain that is an obvious possible problem (i.e. price manipulation gets really, really easy). When the owner company is a bank then that creates a whole new set of possible issues. That was the entire purpose of Glass-Steagall. The banking system ran just fine with the Glass-Steagall restrictions in effect.
For me, whether or not the scanners might cause cancer isn't even part of the equation (it would be, if that were the worst part). I opt out on principle because I don't believe that the government has the right to scan my body when I'm traveling, plain and simple. I don't care if they scan the bags I have with me, I have that stuff with me knowing that it's going to be scanned. But for them to assert the right to basically check me out without clothing is too far, I don't agree that they have that right and so I don't allow them to do it. As far as I'm concerned, between protest, security theater, and cancer, cancer ranks third on the list of reasons why I don't want to go through the scanners.
1. Run
2. Be a woman
I opt for the passive aggression also. I wear my t-shirt with the quote in my signature and wait patiently as I opt out (I have never once been allowed to go through the metal detectors while the nut zappers have been in place).
The way I read it, the medical exemption entitles him to use only the medical detector, not that it necessarily also means he can't have someone touch him.
Thanks for the answer. I avoided it by keeping my drink in my bag as I boarded the plane!
Whoa man, Jesus Christ! The TSA works hard to develop these comprehensive foolproof security measures such as looking for someone holding a drink and then scanning it. Can you please avoid giving the terrorists information that they otherwise could have never gotten if you hadn't posted common sense on the internet? Think of the goddamn children!
Obviously I need to write to my congressperson to push them to write a law that bans you from the internet or talking to people. In the name of security, of course.
I'm not sure how they calculate their liabilities are only $60m either
They reported assets and liabilities for both BTC and cash. In cash, they have around $32million, and owe around $55million (last I heard). For BTC, they have around 2,000, and owe around 850,000.
To hear them say it, Bitcoin has already recovered off its lows
It has:
http://www.coindesk.com/price/#2014-02-21,2014-02-28,close,bpi|bitstamp|btce
Thanks to Slashdot, you'll probably have to copy and paste that link text. But look right there, that's the valley caused by the Mt. Gox news on the 25th. Look at how quickly it recovered. By the time I was hearing everything and thinking I should watch for a slide in order to buy low, it was already recovered. The price today is the same rates that we had on the 22nd, before the news about Mt. Gox.
If you look at the larger picture over the month:
http://www.coindesk.com/price/#2014-01-28,2014-02-28,close,bpi|bitstamp|btce|mtgox
You can see that when Mt. Gox shut off withdrawals on Feb. 7th, that the price on Mt. Gox completely tanked from there. The other 3 exchanges have gone down 15 - 20% since then. This is hardly a grand collapse, and it is obvious that there are a lot of people looking for slides so that they can buy.
The world of bitcoin might not be the land of rainbows and unicorns that you apparently think happens on Reddit, but it's far from the doom and gloom that the critics claim.
I think a solution is possible, although it would be extremely difficult to get Congress to pass rules limiting their power and the influence that others can have over them. I wrote up some ideas about it here:
http://newamericandeal.blogspo...
One thing is certain: whatever legislation we need, the current administration is too incompetent and corrupt to deliver anything with teeth.
I don't think that situation is going to change unless we completely clean out Congress and elect all new people, with term limits for all members of Congress. It would also really help if corporate donations to politicians were illegal, and that all personal donations to politicians were public. There's far too much money in the system for anything to work like it should.
A new Congress... talk about wishful thinking.
In other words, it sounds like someone with my understanding of how bitcoins work built Mt. Gox.
My understanding, which is admittedly pretty shallow regarding BTC, is that essentially the attackers created 2 transactions, but that Mt Gox saw one. The 2 transactions used the same transaction ID, which is the only thing that Mt Gox used to uniquely identify a transaction, when they should have been using more information (to, from, timestamp, amount, etc).
Basically, the attacker would send say 1000 BTC, and then show another transaction with the same ID where they receive 1000 BTC. The first transaction wouldn't actually be valid, but Mt Gox would still send them the 1000 BTC.
If you want to see the actual transactions, check here. First, notice these are still going on today. The stats on top show that that address has received a total of over 788,558 BTC, and the current balance is 0 (they moved it). In the list of transactions you can see one transaction where they send BTC to a lot of addresses, followed by a transaction where they receive BTC from one or a small number of other accounts. Basically, those requests where they receive money shouldn't have happened, but Mt. Gox allowed it. The fact that transactions are still happening means that Mt. Gox is not the only victim.
Someone figured out that there are wallets or exchanges that are not verifying transactions correctly, and they are exploiting that to steal the coins.
Looks like slashdot broke my links. You can copy and paste the link text, or click the link and replace the %7C with |
I think that BTC has matured enough that there are enough speculators waiting for the currency to drop so that they can buy low. A lot of people took notice when BTC started selling for $1200. Since there is so much more attention given to it now than there was a year ago, I don't think the recovery is nearly as slow as we might expect.
Here's a 1-week price graph for 3 exchanges:
http://www.coindesk.com/price/#2014-02-19,2014-02-26,close,bpi|bitstamp|btce
There was a pretty sharp drop yesterday, accompanied by an equally sharp rise. People are watching the price drop and getting in when they think it bottoms out.
Of course, the 1-month graph shows a larger trend:
http://www.coindesk.com/price/#2014-01-26,2014-02-26,close,bpi|bitstamp|btce
The trend is definitely downward from the highs in the past, but I think that BTC might have reached a threshold where there are enough people watching it that we might see the price shoot up quickly at any point once big purchases start being made.
When I heard the news about Mt. Gox yesterday, frankly I was expecting a crash, and I was ready with my cash. The dramatic crash that I was expecting didn't happen, though. The small slide that happened had already completely recovered by the time I could have done anything.
Talk about surreal feelings of insecurity. Does Tesla threaten your livelihood, or something? Do you own a dealership? Not a single negative thing you said about the car is objective. In other words, your criticism was slack, vague, inert, and deceptive.
You're talking about a scam in a Tesla article and mention Le Car and the Nobel Peace Prize? Do you know what the definition of a scam is?
Considering that the majority of their liabilities are in BTC and not cash, it sounds to me like they would love to drive the price down and then buy back the lost BTC. They keep blaming transaction malleability when the fault lies with them.
They've been busy. The last large transaction was only 3 days ago.
The camera is more for environmental awareness
What, like an eye?
It's not exactly trivial to loan people money to buy homes or set up businesses or loan money for college.
I'm not sure what you're thinking of, loaning people money is certainly extremely trivial. Creating an interest plan is trivial math. Giving someone money, or anything else of value, with the promise that they pay you back is not exactly a new idea. People have been doing that for each other since before there were banks.
Bankers would love to make you think that what they do is extremely complex, and very important, and you need them. They're just gamblers though, except they don't gamble with their own money. That's the racket.
I'm sorry, but I don't see a reason why I should necessarily need the services of a banker to run my company.
If we're talking reality, then in this reality the bankers have paid the lawyers and the lawmakers to make sure that all of them are needed for everything. But just because that's the way it is, doesn't mean that's the way it has to be. The American financial system is not necessary in and of itself (proof: the world got along fine before there was an American financial system), all of the necessity in the system has been created by the people in the system. We need to bring back Glass-Steagall and take a step back from the cliff.
Bankers should not be in the business of buying and selling companies. A banker's job is to store your money until you need it again. What they actually do is move your money around and take points off the top, and enrich themselves. And yes, without Glass-Steagall they most certainly do buy companies, but that should not be the job of a banker.
Seconded, yes.
Here's the difference: technology CEOs run companies that make things and contribute to society. Bankers earn a profit by moving other peoples' money around and taking some off the top. One of those jobs is necessary for us to progress.
What I need is to finally unlock the goddamn crystal ship.