Bitcoins. Now if your anything like pacmonster, you immediately need to know what they are and how they are relevant to you, or you become defensive and unwilling to learn about unfamiliar topics (especially advance topics like economics and emerging technologies) Now what the **** are they? Where do these Bitcoins (btc) come from? How can it survive without banks and government support? Bitcoins come from miners? What does that even mean? I'm a **** lapper and can't read, any help? Yes, here's a video that explains it in even terms you can understand! What is Bitcoin? - YouTube For more basic information check out We Use Coins Now I honestly think that this topic is interesting enough to warrant good discussion, and there's enough info to get you started and asking questions. FH has been a pretty shitty place lately as far as real discussion (about anything) goes. Just look at how many week old last posts there are on the first page of GC alone. I think it's cool to know there's more out there than re-hashed reddit ****. But that's for another thread, go on and learn something new! *EDIT* If your interested, you can view a live exchange rate at http://mtgoxlive.com/orders giving the current BTC:USD ratio. Right now it's closing around 1btc:$5
Never going to catch on for one obvious reason: It will not gain enough trust for a long while. Another is the propaganda Wall street and banks will create to swing feeble minded citizens into hating this idea. Local businesses will also lose revenue which in turn creates loss of jobs. Lol3reasons.
A very interesting view-point. 1. What do you mean by it will not gain enough trust for a long while? Are you saying that fear of collapse will cause people not to trust it? Or are you saying people can't trust the currency itself? That's all pretty moot, there's tons of people with no trust in fiat-currency anyway. As you can see, the dollar is still fine with this lack of trust. If anything you should feel more secure with a currency based on mathematics rather than humans. Cuz' we all know bankers and top executives are immune to corruption! 2.You do realize this is much bigger than the scope of the US, correct? And because of the way this works it wouldn't matter what anyone says about it (governments, banks, etc) because it's peer to peer. When a group of people hold something at a value, and trade between each other with a p2p currency, they are deciding the coins are worth so much. External views are irrelevant, they will still trade at what they view the value to be. 3. I don't see what you mean here, how are they loosing revenue at all? You mean if the wall street or whatever denounce btc? Like I said above, it would be to little effect. Small businesses have a lot to gain by accepting btc (mostly due to the low amounts of businesses accepting btc, and the enormous amount of people who use btc) and it's not like they're not accepting cash anymore lol. Lolanythingelse?
By trust I mean not a lot of people are willing to have their whole savings on a line of code. Look at the dollar which has a ton of people trusting it, and it still isn't doing any good. Lolsmellsadebate
I'm trying to have a debate going! Discussion! FH needs it! I think my title is misleading you in the sense that I'm portraying it as a new technology that is going to replace the dollar or any other currency for that matter. You don't have to have all your money in it, you can think of it like stocks (simple). I personally buy $200~ in btc and trade with it. When btc goes up, I make money with no work whatsoever because my btc are now worth ~$300. Now this really isn't answering anything about it's trust. For people to gain trust in this system, they have to be fairly willing to learn about how it works and not be ignorant to the technology. If you know how the technology works and you do it all correctly, then there's no way to lose any money short of your computer dying from a freak accident. The statement "The person handling your money has a responsibility to prevent fraud" is still true; but now the power has been shifted into your own hands instead of that of the banks. Now do you trust yourself or other people more with your money? *edit* I would recommend reading this, especially if you don't have a good background in economics. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths
Bitcoins. Now if your anything like pacmonster, you immediately need to know what they are and how they are relevant to you, or you become defensive and unwilling to learn about unfamiliar topics (especially advance topics like economics and emerging technologies) Nice intro, needs more sass.
Although I do agree with the bad title, and how BZC being used as a stock is a good idea, I still see a flaw. Imagine when BZC is now used heavily. The value is up and everyone is happy. Then the enevitable happens, a glitch or a bug surfaces and people get nervous. Some quit the system and the exchange rate lowers a bit. Others see this and think about how they didn't really trust it in the first place. The exchange rate lowers even more. Before you know it, people will be rushing for the doors and try to escape with something. If you don't believe this will happen please see: Great Depression.
Yeah, investing in any form of currency that has no intrinsic value is a bad bet. It's what is killing the U.S. economy and it could definitely happen to bitcoins.
You mean, like... every single person who has a bank account? You really don't think that your local BoA has a giant vault full of all your $20 bills, do you? Security: your bitcoins are not "inside" your computer and as such cannot be stolen. They exist solely within the network and are accessed with secure login, just like a normal bank account.
If you trace back the money in banks it will most often go back to the gold in the vault in Fort Knox. Today's dollar is actually backed up by an object of value. What are Bitcoins backed up by?
Not true. The US Dollar is an unbacked fiat currency. The gold standard was abolished in 1971. The dollars you have in your pocket have no intrinsic value other than that which the government gives them.
While this system offers several good ideas; universal money, good security, no frozen accounts, etc, the reason why it won't become anything more then an interesting experiment is because of the part I quoted. Do you know why the internet works so well? Internet protocols are enforced and monitored by the Internet Engineering Task Force which themselves are monitored by The Internet Society which are two very large organizations with hundreds of developers working round the clock keeping the whole system going. The bitcoin protocol is monitored and enforced by this group of people Bitcoin Developers. Now, I certainly dislike the bureaucracy bs that happens in banks and the lame **** governments pull off with inflation of currency but I still have infinitely more faith in that system (which has had smart economists theorize all the ways to improve the system for hundreds of years) then in bitcoin, for the time being. Maybe bitcoin gains steam and enforcement and monitoring becomes a much larger thing for them but currently all it takes is a dedicated group of criminals to shoot the dozen or so people who monitor the system and low and behold they now have access to everyone's "money" which is not a statement one could even say for most situations.
This kind of reminds me of something that happens in Australia. Stupid tourists visit our mint in Canberra, and buy a brand new one dollar coin for two dollars. Instant gain for our economy. Instant loss for said tourist. But look how shiny! The reason I say it kind of reminds me of this, is because it's buying currency for more than it's worth. Sure, it's a viable trading item, but it seems a little aimless to me. You're basically buying something intangible, that could easily be corrupted, and use it for a trade when you could have easily used your own money, or hoard it until the value goes up. You may as well just buy stocks. Maybe I'm missing the point of them entirely, but they aren't something I'd get myself involved with. My money works fine, and I honestly don't care if I have to pay a few cents out of a dollar to buy something in person or online. In saying this though, knowing my luck, Bitcoins are going to take off rapidly in the next few years and will be worth thousands of dollars individually, and I'll be kicking myself for missing the train. **** you, Murphy's Law.
This has actually happened before. The market has actually crashed 3 or four times due to major events like hackings, or exchange companies going down. But it's always recovered. But these developers don't really influence the protocol any more. Like mock said, gold doesn't back up the dollar anymore. Lol it's not too late to make money now. Just from casually using btc I've made about ~$320 from trading. For example, I buy btc at a low price from an exchange (this process takes a couple days) then I turn around and sell the btc through paypal at a higher price to people who want to skip the long process of the exchanges. There's good money to be made. Check out this trading forum.
None of that quote or what you said before that alleviated what I said...in fact it further deepens the lack of trust people should feel in that system. The "market crashing" is not a good thing, I suppose in perspective it isn't so bad because bitcoin isn't a true respected currency yet but if it was a world currency on the scale you're hoping it would one day become...this kind of thing JUST CAN'T HAPPEN. The world panics when stocks dip a few dozen points in a day, if the stock market completely crashed for a day because someone "hacked" the system the world would stop (going with the assumption that we are talking about a global currency). Saying "it's always recovered" is like saying...well at least it didn't permanently break...so there's that. And the quote you provided, the original team still has "limited" capability to modify the protocol...what the hell does that even mean? There is no "limited" either they can change the protocol or they can't. What is the "community consensus"? Again is there an agency who monitors it or can any body with a computer and basic knowledge of the system weigh in and say "yeah it's probably a good idea". That quote also didn't cover the crux of what I was saying which was "who is in control of the protocol". If the answer is "everyone that has a bitcoin client" then that is a horrible idea. One day the majority of users decide...you know what lets increase the number of bitcoins in circulation because...why not? So I did some research on it but I can't actually find who is in control of the protocol so if you can link me to it I would appreciated it. Again I find the idea of the system has merit but for the time being too many security concerns to find it a viable alternative to paper money.
i read about this around a year ago or so? (maybe a few months, idk, bad perception of time) still nothing has happened with it so.... we'll see.
Tax Evasion? Can you buy(trade for) actual goods and services? If so, then I'm guessing this entire thing was invented as means of tax evasion. Transactions using real money are taxed, even on the internet. Are bitcoin transactions taxed?