It's very hard to find people who would not BE the mob, supporting the theft and redistribution model that the government maintains
It's not so hard, you have just found one (me). Except i don't call social and health security, free education and other government benefits theft but rational and effective way of improving our society.
Because it is none of those things you've mentioned above and is instead a pyramid scam targeted at people that are interested in digital currency. When somebody is deliberately targeting YOU with a scam it's hard not to take it personally, hence the negativity.
Your statement wan't become true no matter how often you repeat it. If you want to prove that bitcoin is scam you must use arguments and not state is as fact.
And no, the fact that early adopters profited from bitcoin is no evidence that bitcoin is scam. Otherwise gold or IPO on stock exchang would be also scam.
By "inherent value", I mean that the commodity in question can be used for something other than exchanging it for something else. For example, a bushel of apples has inherent value because I can eat it.
You can talk about inherent value but note that it is subjective quality. Bushel of apples would have zero inherent value for a person with apple allergy.
Your comparison to HSBC fails because (1) HSBC was not specifically set up to facilitate money laundering and other criminal activity, and (2) the vast majority of HSBC's business is not in support of criminal activity.
I would love to know how they found out that majority of LR customers were criminals. There is no evidence of it in the in the indictment, just the claim.
Just because technology makes a thing possible, doesn't mean it should be done.
So how would you prevent it? Would you ban manufacturing of small cameras which can be embedded into glasses or other parts of clothing and used for recording? Or would you ban the posibbility to upload such recordings annonymously on the internet?
Both of those solutions would cause many undesired side effects and would be not worth it in my opinion. The only solution i'd be willing to accept is one which doesn't hamper the legitimate use and development of related technologies in any way.
Sometimes it's just unrealistic to bend new technology to our current legal system. Look at copyright VS digital distribution methods. Copyright causes much more problems that it realy solves.
Don't missunderstand me, as a weed smoker i'm also worried about diminishing privacy in recent years. But in this particular case i don't see any viable way to oppose it. And if we realy can't oppose it, the only remaining course of action is to adapt (e.g. change the law so i wouldn't care if someone records me smoking joint on my balcony:)
Is it really that hard to understand why there is so much hate? Public surveillance is totally different in that the common public doesn't typically access it, and it's typically not available to upload on a whim to the net where it could potentially live forever.
You privacy concerns are certainly valid but it's still hard to understand the hate. The hate will acomplish nothing in the long term as it is basicaly hate toward technological progress. You cannot stop technological progress. Better try to prepare for it now. For example don't "like" the video of someone picking his nose/ass next time you see it on the internet but tell the uploader he is an idiot.
As an evil dictator, your first move should be to legalise as many drugs as you can get away with. This will win you a lot of popular support in the short term, and in the long term, the people who might have become well-educated and clever opposition leaders might instead end up as poorly-educated drug users with severe mental health problems.
I doubt it. More people are actualy dying on drug overdose because drugs are illegal and no consumer protection is in place. Drug users are never sure about the concentration of their stuff bought from some random guy on the street. If you legalised drugs proper identification of various drugs and their concentration would be required and fewer people would die as a consequence.
They received some 3,000 bitcoins in donations back in the day, can't those bitcoins be traced to a certain wallet?
You can trace bitcoins to certain wallet easily by inspecting the blockchain (public log of all bitcoin transactions). The problem is, you usually can't find to whom does the wallet belong. If the bitcoins were send trough some kind of mixing/anonymising service which doen't keep track of real-world identities of its users, you are usually out of luck.
And - related - can they (or the wallet itself) be anyhow confiscated?
The wallet can be confiscated (or bitcoins could be transfered out of it) if you know the private keys stored in the wallet. This is very hard unless you have physical access to the wallet and the wallet is unencrypted.
The value of everything is just matter of supply and demand.
So you should ask: why is there demand for bitcoins?
Because they have many desirable properties. To name just a few: - they are digital - they are scarse - there is no central authority in charge of them - they can be transfered anywhere in the world (where there is internet connection) in about a hour for very low fee - they are easily divisible - they are recognised as currency by growing number of users
I am writing to notify you that from this moment I have decided to stop giving financial support of EFF, via both my membership and donations, including via campaigns like the Humble Indie Bundle.
I hope you are aware that humble indie bundle now also accepts bitcoins as payments for their games. You should probably stop buying them if you hate bitcoin so much:)
The reason for that, is I will not support or have any business with any organization that implicitly gives legitimacy to Bitcoin by accepting them for payment for any services or as donations.
Care to share the reason why would you do that? What do you see on Bitcoin so horrible that it drives you to completely abandon doing business with entities using it?
Accepting them is a "no-brainer" as a donation, there is no loss. But for any other serious financial transaction, well, unless you are a mobster or a dope dealer or otherwise involved in something illegal, the real question is WHY DEAL WITH IT.
I guess one of the several good reasons should be enough for your trollish post: Because you want to be able to accept/send money from/to anyone in the world connected to the internet within reasonable time (one hour) and with small fees (cent per transaction)
I agree. On the other hand the response should be proportional. Uploading a textbook should have involved an officer serving a warrant.
According to later comment from AC from Latvia, the police/publisher warned him several times before raiding his computer. Personaly i think this is horrible but the issue is with the copyright law and not with the police course of action.
The likelihood that Mt Gox was complying with the "Know Your Customer" anti-money-laundering rules that apply to all financial institutions that handle currency was approx. zero.
Mt.Gox is not US company. This is not mt.gox account being closed, this is Dwolla account being closed.
What japanese anti-money laundering regulations does Mt.Gox violate? I don't know about any. I read that they are fully compliant with japanase KYC laws. But you probably have more information if you could write that they have almost zero probability to be compliant. Please share it, otherwise, it's just FUD.
Well, why shouldn't they? It's not like BTC aren't already being exploited by pump and dump con artists.
If some people are acting immorally and doing pump and dump schemes (i'm not saying that it's true in the case of bitcoin), it's OK for another people or you to do the same?
There's no such thing as innate value. Value is context-dependent.
This needs to be emphasized more. Large portion of comments under each bitcoin story endlessly contemplate about the innate value of various currencies, metals and comodities. It seems like very few people realy get it. Almost everything can have great value under right circumstances and under specific circumstances, things that are generally seen as valuable could be useless. Few examples:
Flask of water has very little value under normal circumstances but could be a life saver when you are lost in the desert. Bag of dollars is usually percieved as valuable, but when you find yourself in space, riding rocket on your one-way road to mars, it's realy quite useless.
You can also talk about various kinds of value. Marx proposed "use" value and "exchange" value. But i think those are just specific examples of context-dependent value described above.
this change is going to seriously impact the value of the currency.
Realy? When do you expect this impact will happen? The news was published yesterday and i don't see any unusual drop in exchange rate. What percentage of value will bitcoin lose?
Therefore in effect our civilization is RETURNING the carbon into the air. Therefore, when the fossil fuels were formed it must've been much warmer than today, but not warm enough to harm life on earth. Most living things generally do better in warmth that in freezing cold. Therefore if mankind managed to liberate ALL carbon now stored as fossil fuels, the cycle would repeat itself.
You are completely ignoring the speed this change happened in the past (geological scale, millions of years) and the speed global warming is moving now (tens or hundreds of years). Yes, in the past earth was indeed warmer. Antarctica was a green continent full of life but also areas around equator were dry deserts without life.
Note that there were also periods of time when earth was much colder then today. Even equator was frozen and life survived only in oceans. See Snowballl earth on wiki.
Whenever in the past, there was sudden change of temperature like we are seeing today, it was accompanied by massive extinction of species (90%+ of species died, generally everything larger then mouse). Sure, live will probably prevail but if we don't prepare for this change it will cause big problems. Large areas of the earth will become uninhabitable, nations will move, territorial wars will erupt, seaside cities will be slowly flooded etc.
In my opinion it is very reasonable to study climate changes, the implications they will have on life on earth and try to adapt to them or prevent the biggest problems if possible.
Yep. What the world really needs right now is a new currency whose value fluctuates like a share price.
No, we don't need new, volatile currency, we need proven stable currency with world-wide scope, limited supply and no central authority. Is bitcoin there yet? No, but it's best candidate. Unfortunately, no one has invented new currency with the good properties of bitcoin which would be stable from day one. I doubt it is even possible. The volatile phase and wild growth is IMO inevitable
Slashdot Mirror
It's very hard to find people who would not BE the mob, supporting the theft and redistribution model that the government maintains
It's not so hard, you have just found one (me). Except i don't call social and health security, free education and other government benefits theft but rational and effective way of improving our society.
Because it is none of those things you've mentioned above and is instead a pyramid scam targeted at people that are interested in digital currency. When somebody is deliberately targeting YOU with a scam it's hard not to take it personally, hence the negativity.
Your statement wan't become true no matter how often you repeat it. If you want to prove that bitcoin is scam you must use arguments and not state is as fact.
And no, the fact that early adopters profited from bitcoin is no evidence that bitcoin is scam. Otherwise gold or IPO on stock exchang would be also scam.
By "inherent value", I mean that the commodity in question can be used for something other than exchanging it for something else. For example, a bushel of apples has inherent value because I can eat it.
You can talk about inherent value but note that it is subjective quality. Bushel of apples would have zero inherent value for a person with apple allergy.
If sense #1 is intended, then no, BTC isn't legal (yet).
Bitcoin is and always was perfectly legal at least in EU where i live.
Oh, look, it's the weekly Bitcoin post.
Tired of this
Why do you read them and even comment on them?
Your comparison to HSBC fails because (1) HSBC was not specifically set up to facilitate money laundering and other criminal activity, and (2) the vast majority of HSBC's business is not in support of criminal activity.
I would love to know how they found out that majority of LR customers were criminals. There is no evidence of it in the in the indictment, just the claim.
Just because technology makes a thing possible, doesn't mean it should be done.
So how would you prevent it? Would you ban manufacturing of small cameras which can be embedded into glasses or other parts of clothing and used for recording? Or would you ban the posibbility to upload such recordings annonymously on the internet?
Both of those solutions would cause many undesired side effects and would be not worth it in my opinion. The only solution i'd be willing to accept is one which doesn't hamper the legitimate use and development of related technologies in any way.
Sometimes it's just unrealistic to bend new technology to our current legal system. Look at copyright VS digital distribution methods. Copyright causes much more problems that it realy solves.
Don't missunderstand me, as a weed smoker i'm also worried about diminishing privacy in recent years. But in this particular case i don't see any viable way to oppose it. And if we realy can't oppose it, the only remaining course of action is to adapt (e.g. change the law so i wouldn't care if someone records me smoking joint on my balcony:)
Is it really that hard to understand why there is so much hate? Public surveillance is totally different in that the common public doesn't typically access it, and it's typically not available to upload on a whim to the net where it could potentially live forever.
You privacy concerns are certainly valid but it's still hard to understand the hate. The hate will acomplish nothing in the long term as it is basicaly hate toward technological progress. You cannot stop technological progress. Better try to prepare for it now. For example don't "like" the video of someone picking his nose/ass next time you see it on the internet but tell the uploader he is an idiot.
Yes it's something along the lines - 'everything what looks like underage person in sexual position'.
It covers young looking adults, cartoon porn (hentai) etc.
As an evil dictator, your first move should be to legalise as many drugs as you can get away with. This will win you a lot of popular support in the short term, and in the long term, the people who might have become well-educated and clever opposition leaders might instead end up as poorly-educated drug users with severe mental health problems.
I doubt it. More people are actualy dying on drug overdose because drugs are illegal and no consumer protection is in place. Drug users are never sure about the concentration of their stuff bought from some random guy on the street. If you legalised drugs proper identification of various drugs and their concentration would be required and fewer people would die as a consequence.
That's just not true.
Unfortunatelly it is. You can read the definition of child pornography in U.S. and find some example court cases on the web.
They received some 3,000 bitcoins in donations back in the day, can't those bitcoins be traced to a certain wallet?
You can trace bitcoins to certain wallet easily by inspecting the blockchain (public log of all bitcoin transactions). The problem is, you usually can't find to whom does the wallet belong. If the bitcoins were send trough some kind of mixing/anonymising service which doen't keep track of real-world identities of its users, you are usually out of luck.
And - related - can they (or the wallet itself) be anyhow confiscated?
The wallet can be confiscated (or bitcoins could be transfered out of it) if you know the private keys stored in the wallet. This is very hard unless you have physical access to the wallet and the wallet is unencrypted.
Why are BitCoins valuable
The value of everything is just matter of supply and demand.
So you should ask: why is there demand for bitcoins?
Because they have many desirable properties. To name just a few:
- they are digital
- they are scarse
- there is no central authority in charge of them
- they can be transfered anywhere in the world (where there is internet connection) in about a hour for very low fee
- they are easily divisible
- they are recognised as currency by growing number of users
I am writing to notify you that from this moment I have decided to stop giving
financial support of EFF, via both my membership and donations, including via
campaigns like the Humble Indie Bundle.
I hope you are aware that humble indie bundle now also accepts bitcoins as payments for their games. You should probably stop buying them if you hate bitcoin so much:)
The reason for that, is I will not support or have any business with any
organization that implicitly gives legitimacy to Bitcoin by accepting them for
payment for any services or as donations.
Care to share the reason why would you do that? What do you see on Bitcoin so horrible that it drives you to completely abandon doing business with entities using it?
Accepting them is a "no-brainer" as a donation, there is no loss. But for any other serious financial transaction, well, unless you are a mobster or a dope dealer or otherwise involved in something illegal, the real question is WHY DEAL WITH IT.
I guess one of the several good reasons should be enough for your trollish post: Because you want to be able to accept/send money from/to anyone in the world connected to the internet within reasonable time (one hour) and with small fees (cent per transaction)
I agree. On the other hand the response should be proportional. Uploading a textbook should have involved an officer serving a warrant.
According to later comment from AC from Latvia, the police/publisher warned him several times before raiding his computer.
Personaly i think this is horrible but the issue is with the copyright law and not with the police course of action.
Ownership (all ownership) is the right to deny use. This is as true of intellectual property ownership as it is of tangible item ownership
I agree with you on this, but if you try to deny me the use of copies of your ownership which i made myself, i'm going to ignore you.
But the legal requirements go far beyond merely verifying the legal identities of your customers
I'm afraid unless you specify what legal requirements are violated by Mt.Gox you are just spreading FUD.
The likelihood that Mt Gox was complying with the "Know Your Customer" anti-money-laundering rules that apply to all financial institutions that handle currency was approx. zero.
Mt.Gox is not US company. This is not mt.gox account being closed, this is Dwolla account being closed.
What japanese anti-money laundering regulations does Mt.Gox violate? I don't know about any. I read that they are fully compliant with japanase KYC laws. But you probably have more information if you could write that they have almost zero probability to be compliant. Please share it, otherwise, it's just FUD.
Well, why shouldn't they? It's not like BTC aren't already being exploited by pump and dump con artists.
If some people are acting immorally and doing pump and dump schemes (i'm not saying that it's true in the case of bitcoin), it's OK for another people or you to do the same?
What a twisted way of thinking...
There's no such thing as innate value. Value is context-dependent.
This needs to be emphasized more. Large portion of comments under each bitcoin story endlessly contemplate about the innate value of various currencies, metals and comodities. It seems like very few people realy get it. Almost everything can have great value under right circumstances and under specific circumstances, things that are generally seen as valuable could be useless. Few examples:
Flask of water has very little value under normal circumstances but could be a life saver when you are lost in the desert.
Bag of dollars is usually percieved as valuable, but when you find yourself in space, riding rocket on your one-way road to mars, it's realy quite useless.
You can also talk about various kinds of value. Marx proposed "use" value and "exchange" value. But i think those are just specific examples of context-dependent value described above.
this change is going to seriously impact the value of the currency.
Realy? When do you expect this impact will happen? The news was published yesterday and i don't see any unusual drop in exchange rate. What percentage of value will bitcoin lose?
Therefore in effect our civilization is RETURNING the carbon into the air. Therefore, when the fossil fuels were formed it must've been much warmer than today, but not warm enough to harm life on earth. Most living things generally do better in warmth that in freezing cold. Therefore if mankind managed to liberate ALL carbon now stored as fossil fuels, the cycle would repeat itself.
You are completely ignoring the speed this change happened in the past (geological scale, millions of years) and the speed global warming is moving now (tens or hundreds of years). Yes, in the past earth was indeed warmer. Antarctica was a green continent full of life but also areas around equator were dry deserts without life.
Note that there were also periods of time when earth was much colder then today. Even equator was frozen and life survived only in oceans. See Snowballl earth on wiki.
Whenever in the past, there was sudden change of temperature like we are seeing today, it was accompanied by massive extinction of species (90%+ of species died, generally everything larger then mouse). Sure, live will probably prevail but if we don't prepare for this change it will cause big problems. Large areas of the earth will become uninhabitable, nations will move, territorial wars will erupt, seaside cities will be slowly flooded etc.
In my opinion it is very reasonable to study climate changes, the implications they will have on life on earth and try to adapt to them or prevent the biggest problems if possible.
Yep. What the world really needs right now is a new currency whose value fluctuates like a share price.
No, we don't need new, volatile currency, we need proven stable currency with world-wide scope, limited supply and no central authority. Is bitcoin there yet? No, but it's best candidate. Unfortunately, no one has invented new currency with the good properties of bitcoin which would be stable from day one. I doubt it is even possible. The volatile phase and wild growth is IMO inevitable