Any purchase inflates the value (not price) of Bitcoin
Given bitcoin's value is arbitrary and moving closer to zero all the time you've got that exactly the wrong way around.
Yes, bitcoin is heavily overpriced right now.
What exactly is moving to zero all the time? Bitcoin is still 10x times more valuable than one year ago. I also expect its value to drop and in time even be replaced by a few altcoins unless it manages to become a "gold standard" somehow.
So as long as there is no governmental rules on cryptocurrency, it will stay a wild west where ONLY bad apple & a lot of hacking and fraud occurs, comapred to traditional money processing.
I have absolutely no problem with that - for the time being. Fiat currency started like that too, then more and more rules have been added, the bad currency failed and was excluded, etc. 2018, and perhaps 2019 will be the year(s) of cryptocurrency maturing. It was, is and will be highly inadvisable to participate to such lawless financial gamble until the market matures. It indeed is a wild west, where the ruthless would gain and everyone else would lose. There are methods to protect yourself, though. Nobody can extract money from your virtual currency wallet as long as you have it in the form of an encrypted file on your HDD. But I digress.
The point is, in time, the market will stabilize and become a valid, safe enough alternative to traditional banking. That time hasn't come yet by any stretch. So if you're skittish, wait it out.
"Some observers fear that these purchases are artificially inflating the price of bitcoin."
Any purchase inflates the value (not price) of Bitcoin. It is extremely difficult to mine new bitcoins, and this creates scarcity. But yes, if Tether is indeed lying about their dollar pegging methodology, it would crash its value and send earthquake waves in the cryptoworld, which is a good thing in the long run. Once all bad apples are removed, we'll end up with the good apples. I personally am betting on ASIC-resistant, mineable coins.
"The company claims that the odds of getting malware is 10x lower via Google Play than if you install apps from outside sources." This means nothing. Considering the worst possibility, if outside sources have 100% chance to get malware, then Google Play has 10% chance, which is VERY BAD. Even a chance of 1% of getting malware is horrible, considering we are talking about Google's official app channel.
IMO the chance should be 1 in 100K, meaning there would still be 35 apps in the official store loaded with malware.
Wrong comparison. If I want to buy a TV (or car, or house, etc) using Bitcoin, I can do that right now, from my own personal wallet, without moving it through any exchange and with exactly ZERO risk (except for my PC being infected of course). Exactly the same as fiat currency. There are three major online stores accepting Bitcoin here in my country.
But in order to get involved in financial speculation (trading, etc), just like with fiat currency, you need to move it to an exchange.
I watch Adam Sandler movies expecting exactly what they give me: stupid-ass humor and not much of anything else. It works, if I'm in the right mood. The thing with that kind of movies is they're not tooting themselves as groundbreaking. Now there are movies generating a lot of hype and failing hard, those are bad movies indeed.
Consider an algorithm such as Yescrypt (http://password-hashing.net/wiki/doku.php/yescrypt) which is a valid CPU cryptomining algorithm. My CPU (Broadwell i7 6800K) finds a share every 5 seconds with 11 threads running. I extrapolate a quad core CPU would find a share every 15-20 seconds. Those shares add up if the receiving wallet and mining pool are the same. This means wallet "iourthoesruithjvansoivrzupaweo" could have a swarm 10K workers mining for 30 seconds each on the same pool, and find 10K shares every 30 seconds.
Let's see what this adds up to in terms of cash.
My CPU (taken as reference) makes about 1.5 dollars a day. A Quad-core CPU (average desktop PC CPU) would make about 0.5 dollars a day through cryptomining. Multiply that by 10K miners (dynamic swarm), it adds up to 5K dollars a day. It's a hefty sum, assuming the website really has 10K active visitors at all times.
1K active sessions would yield 500 bucks a day, 100 active sessions would net 50 bucks a day. Even 10 active sessions would be 5 dollars a day, every day. Not bad, I'd say.
It really depends. Visiting from a desktop PC with adequate cooling? OK, I guess. Using a laptop, tablet or mobile device? Bad, really bad.
Then it's a matter of how much mining is being performed and where. I assume most people leave a few tabs open, for example one with e-mail, one with news aggregator, a few community websites, maybe a couple social media tabs. If all of them cryptomine, you're in deep shit. Also if they mine while the tab is in the background, you're also in deep shit.
Humans have _more_ evolutionary need for pairbonds, as our huge headed offspring are helpless for longer than just about any other species.
Pair bonding is clearly an evolutionary adaptation to increase the survival rate of offspring. Species where the mother drops then abandons the kids don't pair bond, species where parents feed and raise the kids do. Sex and pair bonding are inexorably linked.
Again you're comparing to mindless species. Certain tribes have adopted group raising of children and it worked very well. And the big, big mistake you are making is assuming that the sole purpose of sex is procreation. Indeed, for all other species it is. And it used to be true for humans until very recently (say last 50 years or so). What you and most other people are incapable of is realizing that assumption is now wrong. Sex now has an entertainment value, which can be enjoyed without inexorably linking it with procreation.
Sorry but don't compare intelligent species with non-intelligent species. Makes no sense. Also it makes no sense to link sex and pair bonding. One has nothing to do with the other unless you glorify sex, making it be more important than it is.
It's not just about deep feelings. If your wife is banging other people for fun, who pays the bills for the next 18 years when she winds up pregnant?
Condoms are cheap, abortion is legal. If she messes up THAT badly despite the widely available solutions, she, as an adult, can deal with the consequences.
If she catches an STD, brings it home and infects you, your life could be cut short through no fault of your own. Sex is great fun, sure, but there ARE other serious considerations besides the pleasurable aspects.
Same as above: condoms are cheap. Carefully choosing partners is a common sense thing. Going to bang a random smelly stranger in a bar with no protection is retarded - and there's no fix for stupid, but that's valid for everything from "wear a helmet when on a motorcycle" to "don't drink and drive" and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
Any purchase inflates the value (not price) of Bitcoin
Given bitcoin's value is arbitrary and moving closer to zero all the time you've got that exactly the wrong way around.
Yes, bitcoin is heavily overpriced right now.
What exactly is moving to zero all the time? Bitcoin is still 10x times more valuable than one year ago. I also expect its value to drop and in time even be replaced by a few altcoins unless it manages to become a "gold standard" somehow.
So as long as there is no governmental rules on cryptocurrency, it will stay a wild west where ONLY bad apple & a lot of hacking and fraud occurs, comapred to traditional money processing.
I have absolutely no problem with that - for the time being.
Fiat currency started like that too, then more and more rules have been added, the bad currency failed and was excluded, etc.
2018, and perhaps 2019 will be the year(s) of cryptocurrency maturing. It was, is and will be highly inadvisable to participate to such lawless financial gamble until the market matures. It indeed is a wild west, where the ruthless would gain and everyone else would lose.
There are methods to protect yourself, though. Nobody can extract money from your virtual currency wallet as long as you have it in the form of an encrypted file on your HDD. But I digress.
The point is, in time, the market will stabilize and become a valid, safe enough alternative to traditional banking. That time hasn't come yet by any stretch. So if you're skittish, wait it out.
And Don't worry either because, in a few years Quantum Computers will wipe them all out.
Much like the year of the Desktop Linux, huh?
Nope. Banks can trade with money they don't yet have.
"Some observers fear that these purchases are artificially inflating the price of bitcoin."
Any purchase inflates the value (not price) of Bitcoin. It is extremely difficult to mine new bitcoins, and this creates scarcity.
But yes, if Tether is indeed lying about their dollar pegging methodology, it would crash its value and send earthquake waves in the cryptoworld, which is a good thing in the long run. Once all bad apples are removed, we'll end up with the good apples.
I personally am betting on ASIC-resistant, mineable coins.
"The company claims that the odds of getting malware is 10x lower via Google Play than if you install apps from outside sources."
This means nothing.
Considering the worst possibility, if outside sources have 100% chance to get malware, then Google Play has 10% chance, which is VERY BAD.
Even a chance of 1% of getting malware is horrible, considering we are talking about Google's official app channel.
IMO the chance should be 1 in 100K, meaning there would still be 35 apps in the official store loaded with malware.
I don't know about his latest ones, I'm kind of stuck in the past as far as he's concerned, e.g. Mr. Deeds, 50 First Dates, etc.
Wrong comparison.
If I want to buy a TV (or car, or house, etc) using Bitcoin, I can do that right now, from my own personal wallet, without moving it through any exchange and with exactly ZERO risk (except for my PC being infected of course). Exactly the same as fiat currency. There are three major online stores accepting Bitcoin here in my country.
But in order to get involved in financial speculation (trading, etc), just like with fiat currency, you need to move it to an exchange.
Use smaller amounts and multiple exchanges.
Isn't that called "home"? I have been using it since the 70s.
I watch Adam Sandler movies expecting exactly what they give me: stupid-ass humor and not much of anything else. It works, if I'm in the right mood. The thing with that kind of movies is they're not tooting themselves as groundbreaking.
Now there are movies generating a lot of hype and failing hard, those are bad movies indeed.
Consider an algorithm such as Yescrypt (http://password-hashing.net/wiki/doku.php/yescrypt) which is a valid CPU cryptomining algorithm. My CPU (Broadwell i7 6800K) finds a share every 5 seconds with 11 threads running. I extrapolate a quad core CPU would find a share every 15-20 seconds. Those shares add up if the receiving wallet and mining pool are the same. This means wallet "iourthoesruithjvansoivrzupaweo" could have a swarm 10K workers mining for 30 seconds each on the same pool, and find 10K shares every 30 seconds.
Let's see what this adds up to in terms of cash.
My CPU (taken as reference) makes about 1.5 dollars a day. A Quad-core CPU (average desktop PC CPU) would make about 0.5 dollars a day through cryptomining. Multiply that by 10K miners (dynamic swarm), it adds up to 5K dollars a day. It's a hefty sum, assuming the website really has 10K active visitors at all times.
1K active sessions would yield 500 bucks a day, 100 active sessions would net 50 bucks a day. Even 10 active sessions would be 5 dollars a day, every day. Not bad, I'd say.
It really depends.
Visiting from a desktop PC with adequate cooling? OK, I guess.
Using a laptop, tablet or mobile device? Bad, really bad.
Then it's a matter of how much mining is being performed and where. I assume most people leave a few tabs open, for example one with e-mail, one with news aggregator, a few community websites, maybe a couple social media tabs. If all of them cryptomine, you're in deep shit. Also if they mine while the tab is in the background, you're also in deep shit.
So there you have it, society is changing. I guess it's a byproduct of modern civilization, which, to be honest, is a very new thing.
So I guess those who used a smartphone less were living outside of that same society?
So what? Pair bonding and casual sex are different things.
So all those people out there having sex for fun are what, non-human?
Try not eating and see what it does to your health.
What was your point again?
Feel free to be skeptical, I couldn't care less.
Humans have _more_ evolutionary need for pairbonds, as our huge headed offspring are helpless for longer than just about any other species.
Pair bonding is clearly an evolutionary adaptation to increase the survival rate of offspring. Species where the mother drops then abandons the kids don't pair bond, species where parents feed and raise the kids do. Sex and pair bonding are inexorably linked.
Again you're comparing to mindless species.
Certain tribes have adopted group raising of children and it worked very well.
And the big, big mistake you are making is assuming that the sole purpose of sex is procreation. Indeed, for all other species it is. And it used to be true for humans until very recently (say last 50 years or so). What you and most other people are incapable of is realizing that assumption is now wrong. Sex now has an entertainment value, which can be enjoyed without inexorably linking it with procreation.
Married, two kids, never cheated on my wife. Didn't feel the need.
Unlike most others (who are deeply rooted in traditional upbringing) I don't have double standards regarding sex.
Sorry but don't compare intelligent species with non-intelligent species. Makes no sense.
Also it makes no sense to link sex and pair bonding. One has nothing to do with the other unless you glorify sex, making it be more important than it is.
It's not just about deep feelings. If your wife is banging other people for fun, who pays the bills for the next 18 years when she winds up pregnant?
Condoms are cheap, abortion is legal. If she messes up THAT badly despite the widely available solutions, she, as an adult, can deal with the consequences.
If she catches an STD, brings it home and infects you, your life could be cut short through no fault of your own. Sex is great fun, sure, but there ARE other serious considerations besides the pleasurable aspects.
Same as above: condoms are cheap. Carefully choosing partners is a common sense thing. Going to bang a random smelly stranger in a bar with no protection is retarded - and there's no fix for stupid, but that's valid for everything from "wear a helmet when on a motorcycle" to "don't drink and drive" and so on.
It's not only the US. But in time, through many small hits, the perception will erode away.