Dark Bit Factory & Gravity
GENERAL => General chat => Topic started by: Kirl on September 16, 2011
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I've been reading an article about bitcoins (digital currency) and if it truly succeeds (and it sounds like it stands a good chance) it might just liberate currency (or a good leap in the right direction anyway) as wikipedia liberated knowledge. Jason Calacanis was quoted and he describes my thoughts better then I probably would have: "Bitcoin is going to change everything, or it's going to be shut down"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
A bitcoin for your thoughts! ;)
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I'd be interested in seeing how they plan to guard against market crashes, or if that's their intention at all?
Personally I'd prefer to go back to trasactions backed in gold coins, as it is both awesome, and (in theory) gold never loses it's value for any great length of time.
Gold dubloon anyone?
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It's not backed by anything but it has a finite amount of total bitcoins that can be in roulation at any one time (this means bubbles of virtual money (loans etc) shouldn't be able to form). Transsactions are done P2P.
I'm no economist, far from it as I'm still struggling to understand our whole financial mess, but as far as I am aware it should be a lot less prone to crashes that are the result of human meddling, even though it's stability will be an issue in the early stages.
Going back to valued currency would be a good idea, but it's probably never going to happen until certain banks/governments fall. The cool thing about this is it's p2p, so there no middle man anywhere, no banks/governments/institutions et all!
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i read about bitcoins a while ago and thought it sounded totally bonkers :) There was an article recently (I can't remember where) about someone getting hacked and having a huge amount of their bitcoins stolen. It's certainly interesting and I'll follow its progress, can't say I'm ready to cash in yet though. Having said that, bitcoins seem to have increased massively in worth vs standard currency since they started.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/19/bitcoin_values_collapse_again/ (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/19/bitcoin_values_collapse_again/)
Jim
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Oh I see now - Bitcoins differ from PayPal because PP is centralised while BC is P2P.
But if your bitcoin count is stored on your own computer, wouldn't it be possible to modify the stored files to increase your BC count - like forging money?
Or does it work differently to that?
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/19/bitcoin_values_collapse_again/ (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/19/bitcoin_values_collapse_again/)
Jim
Oh dear, seem I'm behind the times again.
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@CK
Transactions are public and more or less anonymous. You'll probably understand the Wikipedia explanation better then I do, but as far as I understand it, every wallet stores a sequenial transaction number in chronological order. Actually I shouldn't even try to pretend I understand, it's just the bitcoin initiative that has me excited.
@Jim
The article mentioned the Mt Gox crash, it says the value of the bitcoin only plummeted on the MtGox exchange while it's value remained stable on other markets, just repeating the article here. The fact that it was hacked is troubling but the article also mentioned that the more transactions are being done with bitcoins, the cryptography increases in complexity.
I think the initiative of a completely free currency is extremely interesting, because the whole blurry government/bank blend is a little disturbing IMO. Private institutions (central bank) are providing the government with the money that civilisation is built on. In such a construction where do you think the power resides? (QED @ 0:35? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTcL6Xc_eMM)). Personally, I wouldn't put any money on "we the people".
Now imagine a currency that can not be artificially influenced and is only determined by their relative value. The government/bank wouldn't have any direct control over it, and we might one day stand a real chance against these unfair control structures. Peacefully and from the ground up.
A recent example:
Mastercard/visa et all which controll about 90% of all internet transactions stopped tranferring donations to Wikileaks on request of the government (legal action wasn't even needed). Nobody owns bitcoins so nobody can be requested or forced to stop donations to {insert any random organisation here}.
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Yeah, the cool bit was though that they said "hey some prick fucked with our money. Hang on a sec while we back that shit out". That's v.special from an accountant's point if view.
It's cool. It's new. It's fucked. But it's very interesting to watch :)
Jim
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I'm no economist, far from it as I'm still struggling to understand our whole financial mess, but as far as I am aware it should be a lot less prone to crashes that are the result of human meddling, even though it's stability will be an issue in the early stages.
Where there is value to be had there are always people who are clever enough to exploit an idea, no matter how well intentioned. For every loser in a market crash, someone wins.
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Lol, remember this old thing? I was reading up on bitcoin, trying to get my head around this decentralized agreement thing, and I remembered this old thread. I was thinking of buying 100 bitcoins att just because I thought it was cool...
Back then (acording to wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Blockchain)) 1 bitcoin was worth between $0,30 and $5 and by now 1 bitcoin is worth about $13000!
Kinda wish I had, haha! ::)