While bitcoin remains volatile it is smart to hedge against this volatility holding another form of currency. This way the consumer can actually benefit from the volatility of bitcoin by only spending Bitcoins when the are valued higher than the purchased price or when they were received, otherwise spend your Fiat. In order to do this one must have one to two weeks of spending cash saved; but shouldn't everyone encourage this behavior anyways instead of living paycheck to paycheck?
Some companies and individuals offer 3-5% discounts to pass the merchant processing/chargeback savings onto the client. Otherwise you can always indirectly buy everything at 3% cheaper using services like gyft http://www.gyft.com/bitcoin/. Using the techniques above you can raise this 3% savings up to 5-20% discounts by simply accounting what prices you purchased or received your bitcoins in.
Yes, most cipher/cypher-punks fall into some spectrum of anarchism and more specifically are typically Crypto-anarchists. Here is a list of prominent ones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... if you wanted to individually research their politics.
Anyone, any organization, or politics is free to use and benefit from crypto-currencies, in this sense Bitcoin is politically nuetral . Both the designers politics and the intrinsic design structure remains anarchistic in nature, however. There is no majority consensus algorithm within Bitcoin where the majority can impose rules over a minority of the community. Even if one person disagrees they have a choice to hardfork the chain and carry on normally with the ease of simple non-action in resistance to any change they disagree with.
To understand the context of my statement, you need to understand the origins of crypto-currencies and the cipher-punks who created this technology. Investors and other users came into the Bitcoin ecosystem later. I do admit my statement is a bit of an exaggeration because there are, per capita, higher percentages of anarchists involved in bitcoin than the general population but these numbers have dropped from ~90% down to around ~30 %. This a a rough estimate I measure from speaking with thousands of bitcoin users over the years, indeed anecdotal, but with a decent sample size.
Your statements were equally valid for either the internet or credit cards when they first became available. I agree with you bitcoin isn't ready for the mainstream consumer; this will change quicker than most people realize. Already, I prefer paying with Bitcoin and can execute transactions quicker and less expensive than with my credit card.
Once Hardware wallets are refined, prepare for a future where everyone carries one on their keychain.
Yes, some anarchists and libertarians did use Mt-gox and were fooled by Mark. - Roger Ver is a prominent example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Despite this, just do a search for warning posts from many members on sites like bitcointalk to see how many people were warning others about Mt-Gox well into advance. The amount of warnings posts and time stretched on for a couple of years because Mt Gox had a history of horrible customer service and being hacked.
Bitcoin has a very diverse group of users with many different political backgrounds. Many anarchists tend to be the paranoid type, thus were much more likely not to jump through all the KYC steps Mt-Gox required or trusted anyone with their private keys.
I understand its popular to label most Bitcoin users as libertarian/anarchists, but nothing could be further from the truth. At most you have a third of users leaning that direction at the moment and rapidly decreasing.
Bitcoin and OpenBazaar anonymity is not an extreme position, all of what you fear can already be done with cash. It is merely about keeping the status quo that has existed for the last ~4k years with physical currency. The lack of privacy is something relatively new. The extreme position is to go along with totalitarian ideals that centralized entities should control and know exactly how all money is spent.
Correct, but backups are not needed with deterministic wallets, the backup is the initial seed. Users should either just store spending cash or use a hotwallet solution on their cell phone to protect against users who don't copy down their determinist seed on wallet creation or get a virus.
We fully expect that governments will eventually fork our code and create a competing "govcoin" that is both popular and useful. This coin would likely be an inflationary proof or stake or inflationary DPoS variety. Bitcoin will retain certain key differences which will make it useful being that it has a fixed money supply and is a Proof of Work currency that is sovereign outside of governments. Even if every country made Bitcoin illegal(unlikely), Bitcoin has a bright future fulfilling an important role for the black and grey markets which is bigger than the white-market worldwide.
Bitcoin is an open source protocol, with over 60% of the source code already re-written since created; Satoshi's identity is unnecessary. Being pseudo-anonymous simply means the end user ultimately decides which wallets he wants public and completely transparent and which they want private. Stealth addresses and coinjoin used with TOR allow us to be as anonymous as it gets.
P.s... I never suggested I "like" the label libertarian and please look up the definition of a pyramid scheme.
Most anarchists and libertarians understood bitcoin is p2p and both warned and laughed at those who stored their bitcoins in Mt-Gox. Mt-Gox was mainly used by either the less technical savvy, or daytrade investor types who kept their money in an exchange because they wanted to profit from volatility. Many of us still use exchanges but immediately withdraw the coins upon purchase and store them in mult-sig cold storage.
If you understand bitcoin how to secure your private keys you will realize that it is much more secure than cash. If my cell phone was stolen I would still have my bitcoins and it would be practically impossible for thieves to use them unlike your wallet filled with cash. I have almost no risk of hackers or thieves stealing my offline multisig wallet either.
Bitcoin's problem right now is mainly the steep learning curve but more hardware wallets are beginning to roll out so users can be more secure without being a security expert.
No, I do not have the answer, because if I did I would be giving it.
The answer lies in recognizing that even though we oppose it in principle we are supporting it through funding.
If political leaders are misuses your money and the voting system is provably inadequate in changing this behavior than you are left with 2 options:
1) Leave the country and become a citizen in a less corrupt one
2) Follow the principles of Agorism and starve the beast with local barter or using Bitcoin instead and avoid paying taxes as they fund policies you oppose.
Here is the new owners address-
https://blockchain.info/addres...
It is funny reading some of the spam comments sent to the blockchain before and after.
Me and my friends and family spend bitcoin all the time. I find it to be easier and more secure than credit cards. Businesses like them as well because they dramatically lower merchant fees. You will begin to understand it once you start using it.
It would be funny if the buyers used them to buy drugs.
I can pretty much guarantee this... those investors just made between 3 to 4.5 million in a single day off their smart investment. Knowing how these institutional investors work there is plenty of coke, champagne, and women being purchased right now.
Why? This has nothing to do with the technology itself, nor regulation or adoption of that technology, nor has the price been pushed up to anything beyond what it has been before. The government seized some assets, and then auctioned them off.
Many people feared that the market and demand for Bitcoin could not satisfy 30,000 or ~18 million dollars worth of coins being liquidated within a single day. Instead this auction proved both liquidity, fungibility and that their are many institutional investors sitting on the sidelines waiting to invest in Bitcoin but are looking for opportunities like these in order to invest in large sums of bitcoins.
If bitcoin was trading at something like $600 beforehand, why would anyone bidding $450 be surprised that they lost out? If these bitcoin boosters are so firm in their belief that bitcoin is as fungible as any other currency, shouldn't they have bid at something like the going rate?
This was a test in the fungibility of Bitcoin. Some investors underbid in hopes that the hurdle of a minimum of 200,000usd deposit would lower competition and the demand would not be so fierce to be able to purchase 30,000 extra bitcoins in a single day.
What this auctioned has shown is that the market can easily take large amounts of bitcoin being liquidated and demand s so high that over 20 million dollars in investor money was brushed aside where they will have to turn to exchanges to satisfy their investments.
Bitcoin is most often treated like money , but certainly behaves like a commodity. Federally, Bitcoin is viewed as both a currency (FINCEN) and a commodity(IRS).
I am going to stay ontopic rather than discuss all of your statements.
Bitcoin does solve the issue of being able to electronically pay people you may not trust, but so does PayPal.
Isn't the chargeback potential a risk under paypal not found for bitcoin? When someone gets paid the charge can be reversed at any time per Paypal's discretion. Thieves will buy bitcoins all the time on ebay with stolen paypal accounts and than the seller will be out all the money when paypal reverses the transaction. Additionally, isn't paypals security polices also a risk for the user unlike with bitcoin where you can trust the mathematics and network which is immune from many traditional attack vectors?
The thing I like about bitcoin is it allows the user to determine how secure or insecure they wish to be while with credit cards they are dependent upon multiple third parties security measures and the weakest link in the chain can expose you to fraud. I never had an issue with fraud in Bitcoin and have had multiple issues with fraud with debit/cc's where I needed to get replacement cards and was liable for the deductible.
When I pay a retailer with Bitcoin I don't have to worry about identity theft or my account being compromised.
Decentralized Black Markets are being created and working proof of concepts are available.
https://github.com/darkwallet/darkmarket
All of these old darkmarkets mentioned in the OP are obsolete. Theft from the market owners will no longer be possible. Theft from sellers, while rare in past, will become even more rare with escrow mutisig authentications. Theft from governments shutting it down and stealing everyone's bitcoins like in SR1 will now become impossible.
DarkMarket: A decentralized peer-to-peer marketplace, which cannot be shut down. Anyone can start a node and join the network, buying and selling with their peers. With identity, reputation, seller pages, multi-signature escrow, private messages and privacy features.
Like the taxpayer supported hitmen that most pay for? Silk road at least never allowed for assassins to be hired and bid upon; the same cannot be said for other organizations.
So the internet is causing people to reject their silly belief that "there is a god" and replace it with an equally silly belief that "there is no god".
Get behind me, Internet!
Disbelief in god does not equate to active belief in a non-existence of a god. Most atheists are agnostic atheists where they simply withhold judgement as the burden of proof has not been sufficiently met.
What is ludicrous is the school of agnostic thought that claims that god is ultimately unknowable which is ultimately a solipsistic belief. There are some definitions of god that are indeed nu-falsifiable and untestable but there are many other ones which can either be tested or outright refuted because of logical absurdities.
Slashdot Mirror
While bitcoin remains volatile it is smart to hedge against this volatility holding another form of currency. This way the consumer can actually benefit from the volatility of bitcoin by only spending Bitcoins when the are valued higher than the purchased price or when they were received, otherwise spend your Fiat. In order to do this one must have one to two weeks of spending cash saved; but shouldn't everyone encourage this behavior anyways instead of living paycheck to paycheck?
Some companies and individuals offer 3-5% discounts to pass the merchant processing/chargeback savings onto the client. Otherwise you can always indirectly buy everything at 3% cheaper using services like gyft http://www.gyft.com/bitcoin/. Using the techniques above you can raise this 3% savings up to 5-20% discounts by simply accounting what prices you purchased or received your bitcoins in.
Anyone, any organization, or politics is free to use and benefit from crypto-currencies, in this sense Bitcoin is politically nuetral . Both the designers politics and the intrinsic design structure remains anarchistic in nature, however. There is no majority consensus algorithm within Bitcoin where the majority can impose rules over a minority of the community. Even if one person disagrees they have a choice to hardfork the chain and carry on normally with the ease of simple non-action in resistance to any change they disagree with.
To understand the context of my statement, you need to understand the origins of crypto-currencies and the cipher-punks who created this technology. Investors and other users came into the Bitcoin ecosystem later. I do admit my statement is a bit of an exaggeration because there are, per capita, higher percentages of anarchists involved in bitcoin than the general population but these numbers have dropped from ~90% down to around ~30 %. This a a rough estimate I measure from speaking with thousands of bitcoin users over the years, indeed anecdotal, but with a decent sample size.
Once Hardware wallets are refined, prepare for a future where everyone carries one on their keychain.
Despite this, just do a search for warning posts from many members on sites like bitcointalk to see how many people were warning others about Mt-Gox well into advance. The amount of warnings posts and time stretched on for a couple of years because Mt Gox had a history of horrible customer service and being hacked.
Bitcoin has a very diverse group of users with many different political backgrounds. Many anarchists tend to be the paranoid type, thus were much more likely not to jump through all the KYC steps Mt-Gox required or trusted anyone with their private keys.
I understand its popular to label most Bitcoin users as libertarian/anarchists, but nothing could be further from the truth. At most you have a third of users leaning that direction at the moment and rapidly decreasing.
Bitcoin and OpenBazaar anonymity is not an extreme position, all of what you fear can already be done with cash. It is merely about keeping the status quo that has existed for the last ~4k years with physical currency. The lack of privacy is something relatively new. The extreme position is to go along with totalitarian ideals that centralized entities should control and know exactly how all money is spent.
Correct, but backups are not needed with deterministic wallets, the backup is the initial seed. Users should either just store spending cash or use a hotwallet solution on their cell phone to protect against users who don't copy down their determinist seed on wallet creation or get a virus.
We fully expect that governments will eventually fork our code and create a competing "govcoin" that is both popular and useful. This coin would likely be an inflationary proof or stake or inflationary DPoS variety. Bitcoin will retain certain key differences which will make it useful being that it has a fixed money supply and is a Proof of Work currency that is sovereign outside of governments. Even if every country made Bitcoin illegal(unlikely), Bitcoin has a bright future fulfilling an important role for the black and grey markets which is bigger than the white-market worldwide.
P.s... I never suggested I "like" the label libertarian and please look up the definition of a pyramid scheme.
Most anarchists and libertarians understood bitcoin is p2p and both warned and laughed at those who stored their bitcoins in Mt-Gox. Mt-Gox was mainly used by either the less technical savvy, or daytrade investor types who kept their money in an exchange because they wanted to profit from volatility. Many of us still use exchanges but immediately withdraw the coins upon purchase and store them in mult-sig cold storage.
2 tools in bitcoin : stealth addresses and coinjoin allow for this.
These tools when used with Tor and a marketplace like Openbazaar or Darkmarket insure that you are practically as anomynous as you can get.
Bitcoin's problem right now is mainly the steep learning curve but more hardware wallets are beginning to roll out so users can be more secure without being a security expert.
These have already hit the market:
http://www.bitcointrezor.com/ http://www.hardbit.cn/ http://btchip.com/
This is being released this month-
https://mycelium.com/entropy
And this will shortly follow along with other products- https://mycelium.com/bitcoinca...
No, I do not have the answer, because if I did I would be giving it.
The answer lies in recognizing that even though we oppose it in principle we are supporting it through funding.
If political leaders are misuses your money and the voting system is provably inadequate in changing this behavior than you are left with 2 options:
1) Leave the country and become a citizen in a less corrupt one
2) Follow the principles of Agorism and starve the beast with local barter or using Bitcoin instead and avoid paying taxes as they fund policies you oppose.
Here is the new owners address- https://blockchain.info/addres... It is funny reading some of the spam comments sent to the blockchain before and after.
. it's not that good as a currency.
Me and my friends and family spend bitcoin all the time. I find it to be easier and more secure than credit cards. Businesses like them as well because they dramatically lower merchant fees. You will begin to understand it once you start using it.
It would be funny if the buyers used them to buy drugs.
I can pretty much guarantee this ... those investors just made between 3 to 4.5 million in a single day off their smart investment. Knowing how these institutional investors work there is plenty of coke, champagne, and women being purchased right now.
Why? This has nothing to do with the technology itself, nor regulation or adoption of that technology, nor has the price been pushed up to anything beyond what it has been before. The government seized some assets, and then auctioned them off.
Many people feared that the market and demand for Bitcoin could not satisfy 30,000 or ~18 million dollars worth of coins being liquidated within a single day. Instead this auction proved both liquidity, fungibility and that their are many institutional investors sitting on the sidelines waiting to invest in Bitcoin but are looking for opportunities like these in order to invest in large sums of bitcoins.
If bitcoin was trading at something like $600 beforehand, why would anyone bidding $450 be surprised that they lost out? If these bitcoin boosters are so firm in their belief that bitcoin is as fungible as any other currency, shouldn't they have bid at something like the going rate?
This was a test in the fungibility of Bitcoin. Some investors underbid in hopes that the hurdle of a minimum of 200,000usd deposit would lower competition and the demand would not be so fierce to be able to purchase 30,000 extra bitcoins in a single day.
What this auctioned has shown is that the market can easily take large amounts of bitcoin being liquidated and demand s so high that over 20 million dollars in investor money was brushed aside where they will have to turn to exchanges to satisfy their investments.
Bitcoin is most often treated like money , but certainly behaves like a commodity. Federally, Bitcoin is viewed as both a currency (FINCEN) and a commodity(IRS).
I am going to stay ontopic rather than discuss all of your statements.
Bitcoin does solve the issue of being able to electronically pay people you may not trust, but so does PayPal.
Isn't the chargeback potential a risk under paypal not found for bitcoin? When someone gets paid the charge can be reversed at any time per Paypal's discretion. Thieves will buy bitcoins all the time on ebay with stolen paypal accounts and than the seller will be out all the money when paypal reverses the transaction. Additionally, isn't paypals security polices also a risk for the user unlike with bitcoin where you can trust the mathematics and network which is immune from many traditional attack vectors?
The thing I like about bitcoin is it allows the user to determine how secure or insecure they wish to be while with credit cards they are dependent upon multiple third parties security measures and the weakest link in the chain can expose you to fraud. I never had an issue with fraud in Bitcoin and have had multiple issues with fraud with debit/cc's where I needed to get replacement cards and was liable for the deductible.
When I pay a retailer with Bitcoin I don't have to worry about identity theft or my account being compromised.
Some of the Kodak golds I had failed within 1 year due to the data layer flaking off from humidity.
Decentralized Black Markets are being created and working proof of concepts are available.
https://github.com/darkwallet/darkmarket
All of these old darkmarkets mentioned in the OP are obsolete. Theft from the market owners will no longer be possible. Theft from sellers, while rare in past, will become even more rare with escrow mutisig authentications. Theft from governments shutting it down and stealing everyone's bitcoins like in SR1 will now become impossible.
http://www.coindesk.com/airbitz-wins-toronto-bitcoin-expo-hackathon-darkmarket
DarkMarket: A decentralized peer-to-peer marketplace, which cannot be shut down. Anyone can start a node and join the network, buying and selling with their peers. With identity, reputation, seller pages, multi-signature escrow, private messages and privacy features.
Their customer base includes hit men?
Like the taxpayer supported hitmen that most pay for? Silk road at least never allowed for assassins to be hired and bid upon; the same cannot be said for other organizations.
So the internet is causing people to reject their silly belief that "there is a god" and replace it with an equally silly belief that "there is no god".
Get behind me, Internet!
Disbelief in god does not equate to active belief in a non-existence of a god. Most atheists are agnostic atheists where they simply withhold judgement as the burden of proof has not been sufficiently met.
What is ludicrous is the school of agnostic thought that claims that god is ultimately unknowable which is ultimately a solipsistic belief. There are some definitions of god that are indeed nu-falsifiable and untestable but there are many other ones which can either be tested or outright refuted because of logical absurdities.