I don't think it's a fad. The more I look at it the more value I see in it. It's like being your own bank. Want to create a new account? Press a button and it's done. No hassle, no private information required, nothing. If nothing else, it is a way out of the crony banking system to some extent. Undoubtedly it's in early stages of takeup and all new technologies have growing pains, but I see no reason why people won't think of ways to make it easier and better to use for the average person. Most places obviously don't accept it yet but if, say, an Amazon or similar decided to accept bitcoin it may go mainstream. I think ultimately it will have a similar effect on the banks that bittorrent did on the music and movie industries.
Bernie Madoff ran a pyramid scheme using US dollars. There have been documented scams involving gold and silver. Don't mistake the medium for the scam itself.
Don't get me wrong as I do think it's an innovative scheme and maybe it might just work within a very niche market, but that will always be a very small market and way smaller than the PM market. What I struggle with is that using the scheme, you are creating something of alleged value from nothing. Out of thin air so to speak. What is the difference between say the the federal reserve printing money with no backing to Joe Blo on the street creating money with no backing? So whether you're creating fiat or bitcoins, both have no backing. As with the world of banking which is not regulated in the true sense of the world, neither is bitcoin. I get the concept of an alternative currency outside of the current monetary system, but what is the reality of this succeeding? The CIA already met with the founders of bitcoin to determine the threat and I think the consensus was that there is no threat. All this does anyway is promote electronic currency where every single transaction you make can be tracked and recorded, pretty much the same way it is when you swipe your loyalty card at the grocery store. Soon, with RFID embedded into all consumer products, everything will be tracked anyway so I guess we might as well get used to it. But is this what people want? I don't know the answer to that, but I kind of like a little bit of anonymity when I buy stuff. Not that I've got anything to hide but isn't bitcoin just another tool to pry into people's spending habits? Or am I just paranoid?
The restriction on the creation of bitcoins is artificial, that's true. But it's real nonetheless. The value of Gold as a monetary system has always been it's scarcity, not specifically that it's a physical thing. That's why Fiat works in theory, though clearly not in practice as you can't trust human beings. If the scarcity is imposed by nature or by cryptography, is there really a difference? Regulation is a red herring. It's used to benefit businesses while ostensibly being made out to benefit the consumers. The best regulation is that of the market mechanism, if it is allowed to work. As for cashless currency, well, it makes sense in a digital world. Unfortunately, we have the tradition of the state running the money supply. I think Bitcoin, or maybe a successor, will be able to fill that role of anonymous digital currency. The state run banking system never will. There needs to be alternatives for those of us who value our privacy and I think Bitcoin is something that has come to fill in that gap. What do you value most , the (ostensible)security of the state banking system or the freedom, and attached self-responsibility, of a decentralized currency. I know which I'm leaning towards. The question in my mind at this point in time is, how are govt's going to react to it? If they react at all. I think if they recognised it, it might cause more people to be interested than otherwise might be. At the moment it's a small enough market that they don't really have a need to, but the CIA thing was them keeping an eye on it and trying to figure out if it is significant or not. And if I had to guess, I would say for them the jury is still out on that question.
Did someone say Bitcoin? I was involved in a Bitcoin discussion on here 18 months ago in this thread http://forums.silverstackers.com/topic-10118-bitcoin.html and thought i'd drop in on this one. I have been passing by the site for Silver info lately, but a good friend mentioned that Bitcoin had come up again so thought i'd have a look at the thread Interesting how the comments in the thread are very similar to the thread from 18 months ago, and even more interesting how attitudes changed as the thread went on I only wanted to add, that if you are looking at mining it is at a point now where it is hard to justify on GPU, so if you are CPU mining I wouldn't even bother. The progress with FPGAs/ASICs has been the biggest leap over GPUs because they use so little power and can get some serious hash rates that are hard to compete with. Because of FPGAs/ASICs the complexity has increased to a point that the power GPUs suck down when compared to the return (current price of BTC) is hard to justify (if you are paying for the power). This is an example of some of the FPGA boards (ASICs were covered earlier in this thread) https://www.btcfpga.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=59 Can see them in action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EoDeOCgJKs So mining has turned into a business of its own, but being involved in bitcoins and trading is still the same (ie. don't let the massive changes in mining put you off getting interested). If you are still mining, it is worth joining a pool. A good Australian pool is http://www.ozco.in/ which is currently at about 750 GHash/s (no affiliation have just mined with them in the past). Good to see the interest, discussion and Bitcoin itself still ticking along after another 18 months
Forgetting for the moment the discussion of if it is a flawed system or not, the ECB is reportedly taking an interest: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/11/03/1516231/european-central-bank-casts-wary-eye-toward-bitcoin
I love the mining side.. dont think its very profitable but the concept was/is excellent. At the moment the COP must be close to its dollar-based value I still have issues about another competiting currency diluting demand for bitcoin (this was my concern since i learnt about it a coupel of years back.). I have purchased some bitcoin and mined some more.. i will continue to do so... Not sure about the buying/selling/trading side yet but am more than happy to have a little exposure until i am in a better decision to make Bicoin a larger aspect of my folio. I think it is possible the price could go down but due to the difficulty of mining it has a pegged growth which is one very positive factor about bitcoin. COMPLICATED? NO, not when it is dissected into its parts. 1. Mining for bitcoin (yes complicated) but not that much and as its a license to get bitcoin its gonna have some barriers 2. Bitcoin Wallet.. its holding the bitcoin - you can pay or recieve or see your transactions/balance (EASY) 3. Transacting in bitcoin... easy -different.. simply to send and recieve.. want to be a day-trader? its just as hard as any other. For me the biggest hurdle was understanding the above breakdown.. viewed in its parts its not overwhelming.. but to not understand its different componants is going to be harder to understand. saying chitt"e like its open source p2p software based on shares and an algorhtm that realeases blocks will needlessly confuse people (which may have been the intention). If you are never goning to mine for bitcoin the only thing you really need to know about step 1 is that people spend a bunch of time and money using hi-tech comps to mine for bitcoin.. the jury is out if this is profitiable but going by australia prices for power i am thinking its marginal at best .. not to mention the upfront costs or buying bitcoin rigs. THREATS: govt... and lack of patented idea leading to copycats who may hit it bigtime with a similar idea (forcing out bitcoin: AKA myspace - facebook). I almost wonder if Bitcoin is NOT plentiful enough *(see Bill Still on money masters and return to OZ for the break down on PLENTIFUL debt free money). I think if they made mining bitcoin twice as easy it may become more popular.. it would decrease the price in the short term but if we could get more bitcoin more people could use it.. ie: its the lack of supply that could be stopping it from going real big tine. 1for1
When i write a post the screen goes black when im at work so my post quality is diminished. cheers, 1for1
It seems bitcoin is being legitimised - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20641465 A currency exchange that specialises in virtual cash has won the right to operate as a bank. Bitcoin-Central got the go-ahead thanks to a deal with French financial firms Aqoba and Credit Mutuel. The exchange is one of many that swaps bitcoins, computer generated cash, for real world currencies. The change in status makes it easier to use bitcoins and bestows national protections on balances held at the exchange.
Aww yeah! News like this is great, I hope there's more of it! ... If it wasnt for bitcoins I wouldnt have ever gotten onto PM's, I think their a great idea and have invested some money into 2 ASIC miners, in hindsight I should have invested that into PM but ill take the risk. Bitcoins remind me of the hype that the internet brought in the mid 90's, aka "The internet is just a fad". Its been around since 09 and if you invested then you could be pulling out over 6 times the investment. Whether Bitcoins last or not im not sure, I just hope I make my money back on the miners ive paid for in time!!! This is what I check from time to time. - http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/ -
Im sorry but can you send 10KG of Silver across the globe without a huge fee and taking forever to get there? You can send 1000 bitcoins for virtually no fee at all and anywhere in the globe in a matter of minutes Silver is only a investment not a low overhead global tool of exchange This is a very important economical global Debt-free cryptocurrency with massive potential I love both Silver and Bitcoin but they are very different from one another and can even be used hand in hand. Get with the game or miss the train
The game is right here. Ever think about where all that CPU power is going to generate those Bitcoins? Who is tapping all this power? What about a global hack squad in need of pooled resources to launch a hack attack? Just throwing it out there. Sorry, but I work for tier 1 info tech security firm and I see it all, and many similar to bitcon.
Well I just cancelled my order. Just not worth the headache waiting to see if a product will actually ship or not. Quite the saga :/ https://www.btcfpga.com/forum/index.php?board=3.0
Bitcoin has not been hacked ever ? Miners and the protocol are in control not unknown hackers .. The power is being sent to hash SHA-256 hashes and cannot be captured ... https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification You bring up a good point but i don't think it can be compromised because of its highly sophisticated cryptographic design.
You work for an info tech security firm? You don't sound like you know what you're talking about at all. Bitcoin is a protocol, and it doesn't make your "CPU power" go anywhere. The hashing is carried out by the Bitcoin client software, of which there are many different options, some of them open source. Do you have a reason to believe that a specific closed source Bitcoin client has been developed secretly by hackers, masqerading as a legitimate software operation, and that they are just sitting there waiting to steal everyone's CPU cycles? Then point out that particular Bitcoin client and why you think it is Malware; don't spread FUD and then back it up with useless "teir 1" appeals to authority!
How did I not know this post existed! I just read from front to back, I loved how it started out with as an attack on bitcoins and ended up with some changing their minds. In my opinion Bitcoins are one of the best potential "investments" out there right now, the more bitcoins are accepted, the more the price will rise - I believe it is really that simple! With most people turning to resellers and exhanges to aquire their bitcoins, the price has only one way to go - up. Online gambling sites are popping up who use bitcoins, and the Silk Road is doing huge turnover, anyone who monitors that will see it exploding. Even the domestic Australian sales are increasing dramatically by the day. All these people purchase the bitcoins (rather than mine them) to pay for their goods which causes demand and exchange rate increases. They can't mine enough to pay for $1000 worth of smack every few weeks. I agreed that there is nothing to stop competing currencies popping up, but Bitcoins are worth over $100 million US already, and becoming accepted all over the internet. A competitor would have a lot of catching up to do first.
