I'm amazed anyone actually still deals with bitcoins. It seems like there's two people trying to use it 1) People manipulating it because they can 2) Morons.

Am I off base? What's the actual appeal and benefit? Is it preferable for shady business or something?

How the hell do you steal virtual currency? Is there some sort of code that is used? if so, invalidate it and move on

TheHumanCannonball: I'm amazed anyone actually still deals with bitcoins. It seems like there's two people trying to use it 1) People manipulating it because they can 2) Morons.

Am I off base? What's the actual appeal and benefit? Is it preferable for shady business or something?

and you found out about it how? some anonymous drug dealing web site that no one talks about.??

fight club. right

TheHumanCannonball:

Am I off base? What's the actual appeal and benefit? Is it preferable for shady business or something?

You forgot drug dealers. Strangely enough they prefer anonymous and untraceable currencies over very easily traceable credit-cards of paypal.

Every game has a patsy. If you don't know who the patsy it, it's you.

Basically anyone who is into shady money deals. Some people mentioned drug dealers, Ive also seen elements of the russian mob transfering money and back forth via bitcoin. Most likely the same element that hacked bitcoinica lol.

Also, there is no way to "reset" the money codes or whatever, thats the whole point. The only way to generate new money is to "farm" for it, which involves running a complex math program on your computer similar to seti@home or a folding project, and the more people who farm for it and the more money out there in general, the longer it takes. So while it may have taken 3 days to earn 2 bitcoins in the past, 6 months from now it might take 7 days to farm the 2 coins, etc.

Its a rather clever system, actually.

People are retarded for investing real money into this experiment though. I assume most people who are sitting on vast sums just got in on the project early and generated that shiat, I doubt someone converted $100,000 USD to BTC.

TheHumanCannonball: I'm amazed anyone actually still deals with bitcoins. It seems like there's two people trying to use it 1) People manipulating it because they can 2) Morons.

Am I off base? What's the actual appeal and benefit? Is it preferable for shady business or something?

You forgot the people involved in illegal activity, and nuts who think the government is spying on their legal activities.
Personally, I never saw the wisdom of investing in something that loses value as more people invest in it.

SockMonkeyHolocaust: The real joke is that these exchanges get "hacked" at the rate of one per week and this exchange in particular was written by a teenager. He sold it to investors but then stayed on board to help them run it. Allegedly, a mobster antiques collector relative of his stole all his info and took all the money and he heroically got most of it back. The whole thing has been a lesson in economics and especially why the libertarian movement will never work.

Yup, the libertarian movement will never work because people are stupid.

Danack: TheHumanCannonball:

Am I off base? What's the actual appeal and benefit? Is it preferable for shady business or something?

You forgot drug dealers. Strangely enough they prefer anonymous and untraceable currencies over very easily traceable credit-cards of paypal.

So you can buy weed with runescape coins?

Thieves and scumbags get hacked and stolen from by thieves and scumbags. Whoa.

Interesting, thanks for the info.

why not just keep the money at Silk Road. might as well since you should be spending your money on cocaine anyway

ZzeusS: Thieves and scumbags get hacked and stolen from by thieves and scumbags. Whoa.

Blanket contempt for people who seek anonymity and secrecy? You know some governments are thieves and scumbags, or have officials who are, or could someday. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking steps to ensure that no one knows what one is doing.

SockMonkeyHolocaust: ZzeusS: Thieves and scumbags get hacked and stolen from by thieves and scumbags. Whoa.

Hey, not every bitcoin miner is a thief or a scumbag. Some of them are really terrible at math and basic economics.

but it's free money.
it's like transferring money from your power company to your Silk Road account.

TheHumanCannonball: I'm amazed anyone actually still deals with bitcoins. It seems like there's two people trying to use it 1) People manipulating it because they can 2) Morons.

Am I off base? What's the actual appeal and benefit? Is it preferable for shady business or something?

Buying drugs online

quick_thinkfast: TheHumanCannonball: I'm amazed anyone actually still deals with bitcoins. It seems like there's two people trying to use it 1) People manipulating it because they can 2) Morons.

Am I off base? What's the actual appeal and benefit? Is it preferable for shady business or something?

Buying drugs online

That just seems like a really bad idea

Alonjar: Basically anyone who is into shady money deals. Some people mentioned drug dealers, Ive also seen elements of the russian mob transfering money and back forth via bitcoin. Most likely the same element that hacked bitcoinica lol.

Also, there is no way to "reset" the money codes or whatever, thats the whole point. The only way to generate new money is to "farm" for it, which involves running a complex math program on your computer similar to seti@home or a folding project, and the more people who farm for it and the more money out there in general, the longer it takes. So while it may have taken 3 days to earn 2 bitcoins in the past, 6 months from now it might take 7 days to farm the 2 coins, etc.

Its a rather clever system, actually.

People are retarded for investing real money into this experiment though. I assume most people who are sitting on vast sums just got in on the project early and generated that shiat, I doubt someone converted $100,000 USD to BTC.

This is a decent summary of bit coins l, I think, and matches what I know about them. I'll add that the exchange rate has fluctuated wildly as bitcoins get talked about in the press, and throw out a CSB.

For a time, I'd go to silk road every few days, just to see what I could see (I'd never be stupid enough to order drugs over the Internet, btw). At the time, bitcoins were receiving their first widespread attention, and the bitcoin was gaining value from rough parity with the dollar trading @ $4-7 per bitcoin.

Since all of the prices on silk road are in bitcoins, NOT in USD-translated-to-bitcoins, this meant that the oz of weed that was selling for 300 bitcoins the day before went from costing $300 USD to costing $1200-$2100 USD. This fluctuation was from a Forbes article, I believe. That's right - one news article.

More to the point, since bitcoins were fluctuating in value so much, nobody on silk road was inclined to reduce their prices - because when the media attention died away (and it did) the bitcoin faced a sudden precipitous decline in value (which happened a few weeks later, I believe).

I guess the point is this: bitcoins are a neat idea, and they are well done for an electronic currency l, but from what I've seen they are entirely too volatile in value and complicated to use to be an effective online currency. Unless you have concerns about remaining anonymous, they're not worth it; and there's the added risk that you'll loose your shirt to the volatility of the bitcoin itself.

TheHumanCannonball: I'm amazed anyone actually still deals with bitcoins. It seems like there's two people trying to use it 1) People manipulating it because they can 2) Morons.

Am I off base? What's the actual appeal and benefit? Is it preferable for shady business or something?

The only place I've seen bitcoins in use is in markets where neither the buyer nor seller trust each other, such as they grey/black market for MMO items.

TheHumanCannonball: I'm amazed anyone actually still deals with bitcoins. It seems like there's two people trying to use it 1) People manipulating it because they can 2) Morons.

Am I off base? What's the actual appeal and benefit? Is it preferable for shady business or something?

Appeal? How about the fact that the currency isn't tied to any one government. How about the fact that users can transfer it directly to each other securely without having to deal with services like paypal or bank wire transfers that want to take a chunk off the top. As long as you have some kind of a reliable backup system in place there is no reason to use any of the online wallets. And no, it isn't just people using it for stuff like drugs. There are a few ebay style sites that use them, some normal retailers, software sales, etc...

It may not be 100% free money but if you are going to leave your computer running anyways the extra power draw of having your machine do some mining vs doing whatever it is normally doing is probably fairly minimal and you can come out ahead. It is the guys running dedicated racks of mining rigs I wonder about. You aren't going to get rich with most machines but you may as well use the machine to make some sort of income if it is already built and running.

So I don't know why you would be amazed at people "still" using bitcoins when their use and useability is increasing. There is enough flux in the market that sinking a lot into them (either as a direct purchase or building dedicated mining machines) as an investment for long term is highly questionable but casual mining on existing machines and short term purchases of BTC to transfer for an online purchase are no big deal in my opinion

Hacker_X: TheHumanCannonball: I'm amazed anyone actually still deals with bitcoins. It seems like there's two people trying to use it 1) People manipulating it because they can 2) Morons.

Am I off base? What's the actual appeal and benefit? Is it preferable for shady business or something?

Appeal? How about the fact that the currency isn't tied to any one government. How about the fact that users can transfer it directly to each other securely without having to deal with services like paypal or bank wire transfers that want to take a chunk off the top. As long as you have some kind of a reliable backup system in place there is no reason to use any of the online wallets. And no, it isn't just people using it for stuff like drugs. There are a few ebay style sites that use them, some normal retailers, software sales, etc...

It may not be 100% free money but if you are going to leave your computer running anyways the extra power draw of having your machine do some mining vs doing whatever it is normally doing is probably fairly minimal and you can come out ahead. It is the guys running dedicated racks of mining rigs I wonder about. You aren't going to get rich with most machines but you may as well use the machine to make some sort of income if it is already built and running.

So I don't know why you would be amazed at people "still" using bitcoins when their use and useability is increasing. There is enough flux in the market that sinking a lot into them (either as a direct purchase or building dedicated mining machines) as an investment for long term is highly questionable but casual mining on existing machines and short term purchases of BTC to transfer for an online purchase are no big deal in my opinion


There was a study awhile ago showing that now that the easy bitcoins have all been found the power cost is greater than the amount of coins you'll find. Unless you live in a place where your electricity is paid for you end up losing money mining bitcoins.

So much for getting MDMA powder and high grade DMT overnighted to my house.

Nem Wan: ZzeusS: Thieves and scumbags get hacked and stolen from by thieves and scumbags. Whoa.

Blanket contempt for people who seek anonymity and secrecy? You know some governments are thieves and scumbags, or have officials who are, or could someday. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking steps to ensure that no one knows what one is doing.


Sure. And people that take many, many steps to deal only in cash and 'live off the grid' are usually completely trustworthy and not hiding anything at all.

ZzeusS: Nem Wan: ZzeusS: Thieves and scumbags get hacked and stolen from by thieves and scumbags. Whoa.

Blanket contempt for people who seek anonymity and secrecy? You know some governments are thieves and scumbags, or have officials who are, or could someday. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking steps to ensure that no one knows what one is doing.


Sure. And people that take many, many steps to deal only in cash and 'live off the grid' are usually completely trustworthy and not hiding anything at all.

Now adays? Sure. They're mostly crackpot crazies, but they're rarely doing illegal things aside from running their own still or maybe growing their own pot. It's simply easier to fly under the radar by doing Average Americana than to live off the grid.

As you have so aptly demonstrated, being different makes people suspicious and untrusting. Being an average uninteresting person just makes people pretend you're not even there.

Canadian Tire money is a more legitimate currency.

Or CVS ExtraCare bucks.

/bitcoin is a ponzi scheme for nerds.

Surely Google could farm a metric crap ton of bitcoins in next to no time, completely destroy the market.

Jonny Ninja: Surely Google could farm a metric crap ton of bitcoins in next to no time, completely destroy the market.

Then you've wasted more money producing them then they are worth.

"I made $40 dollars in bitcoins with $50 in electricity! I'm in the hole 10 buck, and that doesn't include the cost of the mining rig!"

/sound investment bitcoins are....

fluffy2097: Jonny Ninja: Surely Google could farm a metric crap ton of bitcoins in next to no time, completely destroy the market.

Then you've wasted more money producing them then they are worth.

"I made $40 dollars in bitcoins with $50 in electricity! I'm in the hole 10 buck, and that doesn't include the cost of the mining rig!"

/sound investment bitcoins are....

At the very least, bitcoins aren't gonna see much inflation.

bitcoin: an internet technology for people who live off the grid.


hey, wait a minute...

IronJelly: It's a shame bitcoin is only used for Silk Road and a few other obscure services. The concept is noble, to have a standardized currency on the internet, like it was it's own country.

Sadly, as though it was it's own country, people abused it, and we all suffered for it.
Link

If you can't find something worth spending your bitcoins on you are either an amazingly picky person or you just aren't looking.

Hacker_X: If you can't find something worth spending your bitcoins on you are either an amazingly picky person or you just aren't looking.

Can you convert bitcoins to dollars from an FDIC accredited bank?

That's the only thing I can think of.

/I could probably get more South African rand then dollars though. Maybe I should convert to that.

Trackball: SockMonkeyHolocaust: The real joke is that these exchanges get "hacked" at the rate of one per week and this exchange in particular was written by a teenager. He sold it to investors but then stayed on board to help them run it. Allegedly, a mobster antiques collector relative of his stole all his info and took all the money and he heroically got most of it back. The whole thing has been a lesson in economics and especially why the libertarian movement will never work.

Yup, the libertarian movement will never work because people are stupid.

And controlled societies will never work because politicians are stupid.

As control goes up, so does the complexity of the bureaucracy, and the efficiency of the bureaucracy goes down. We all lose.

Complete anarchy is silly. But the happy medium of freedom and a controlled state needs to lean more toward freedom before we are great again.

All of this fascism and socialism crap is a vestige of the industrial society. Governments needed to make sure people got to the factories.

In the information age, we're past it now. Freedom will be on the increase. Any institution who supports the controlled society will eventually fail and remain on the wrong side of history.

KarmicDisaster: bitcoins==tulip bulbs

Not necessarily. BTC peaked at about $32, then fell down to around $4 for quite some time. Since then it's made steady progress to the $11 range. IIRC, tulips peaked then fell, never to recover.

I have a good friend who has been at the forefront of the computer revolution for a very long time. He was one of the first to recognize Yahoo and invest heavily into it. Same with Google, and then Linux. He's been right every time, and now he's saying BTC is the next online revolution. He has over 250k invested in bitcoins.

I'm not ready to get invested in any legit way, however his arguments are intriguing. He's been correct on every major internet windfall thus far. So much that he's been a vagabond who makes tens of thousands of dollars from his laptop as he travels the world for about 10 years now.

I'm still a skeptic, but should BTC be the next currency, these early users are going to become very, very rich. Some already are (those who invested when it was ~ $0.02/btc)

D-Liver: Some already are (those who invested when it was ~ $0.02/btc)

And those are the only ones who ever will be.

Unfortunately, all you're going to buy with bitcoins is child pornography, drugs, and crap on etsy.

Nobody else needs the anonymity enough or is willing to put up with the volatility of the market.

I meant to ask earlier, but didn't Bitcoin people sue either Fark or Somethingawful for having a simple story about what they were, how they worked, etc.?

No open mockery, no nothing else, just...here's what they are..

And apparently the story being ON a website was enough to scare the jebesus out of all the Bitcoin owners in the world and cause a run where everyone sold off everything, meaning the coins were worth pennies on the dollar..?

kroonermanblack: I meant to ask earlier, but didn't Bitcoin people sue either Fark or Somethingawful for having a simple story about what they were, how they worked, etc.?

No open mockery, no nothing else, just...here's what they are..

And apparently the story being ON a website was enough to scare the jebesus out of all the Bitcoin owners in the world and cause a run where everyone sold off everything, meaning the coins were worth pennies on the dollar..?

It's pretty much an alpha version. It shouldn't be relied on as you shouldn't rely on alpha software. Not everyone should be an early adopter.

And this very well may be a faulty technology, but the idea is solid. It most likely won't make it in it's current form, but later versions or a fork could be very effective.

And, yes, like vulnerable stocks or other currency, news stories will cause flux.

BTW, I would like to read about the story you mentioned. If you do come across it please post.

I really doubt BTC are anonymous. They just aren't very widespread and they frequently go in/out of easily monitored exchanges. Those highly encrypted jumbles of data are still present and identifiable. Your network provider knows when you are using TOR, even if they can't discern what you are doing. I am sure the government has a nice big pile of data to mine based upon movement of BTC. The public won't find out about it until some big event/investigation involving them comes about and then the beans will get spilled.

kroonermanblack: I meant to ask earlier, but didn't Bitcoin people sue either Fark or Somethingawful for having a simple story about what they were, how they worked, etc.?

No open mockery, no nothing else, just...here's what they are..

And apparently the story being ON a website was enough to scare the jebesus out of all the Bitcoin owners in the world and cause a run where everyone sold off everything, meaning the coins were worth pennies on the dollar..?

"Bitcoin" can't sue. It's not an organization. The entire point is that it's a decentralized thing. And the media was full of Bitcoin coverage back when. The media coverage is what drove the prices up.

It's possible that one of the Bitcoin currency exchanges got mad and sued someone, but I don't remember that.

SockMonkeyHolocaust: uber humper: In the information age, we're past it now. Freedom will be on the increase. Any institution who supports the controlled society will eventually fail and remain on the wrong side of history.

See, it's great to write all those words but since the Meze Grill stopped taking bitcoins people in the glorious free society outside of fiat currency have to rely on that one guy that dries strawberries over his mining rig for sustenance.

It takes time to make change. ;)

madgonad: I really doubt BTC are anonymous. They just aren't very widespread and they frequently go in/out of easily monitored exchanges. Those highly encrypted jumbles of data are still present and identifiable. Your network provider knows when you are using TOR, even if they can't discern what you are doing. I am sure the government has a nice big pile of data to mine based upon movement of BTC. The public won't find out about it until some big event/investigation involving them comes about and then the beans will get spilled.

It's a matter of being so public it's private. You can have any number of addresses as you can generate bitcoin wallets completely offline and when you take them online to do a transaction with them, they're in the open. It's not possible to add bitcoins to yourself offline since it has to be generated online and when it is, it is placed into a wallet publicly with it's own encryption key. I'm not sure if two wallets can be exactly alike, but if you've got wallet A and A(copy), both having 1 bitcoin, both having the same bitcoin with the same encryption, you still only have 1 coin as when you publicly transfer it, it's not considered yours anymore and it's placed into the next persons wallet and trying to make another purchase with it is accessing the coin you've publicly shown to have traded away. In the same sense, you can have wallet A and A(copy), one having 1 coin, the other none, but since the non-copy has the correct key, despite having the same wallet name, it's able to access that coin.

UrCa: madgonad: I really doubt BTC are anonymous. They just aren't very widespread and they frequently go in/out of easily monitored exchanges. Those highly encrypted jumbles of data are still present and identifiable. Your network provider knows when you are using TOR, even if they can't discern what you are doing. I am sure the government has a nice big pile of data to mine based upon movement of BTC. The public won't find out about it until some big event/investigation involving them comes about and then the beans will get spilled.

It's a matter of being so public it's private. You can have any number of addresses as you can generate bitcoin wallets completely offline and when you take them online to do a transaction with them, they're in the open. It's not possible to add bitcoins to yourself offline since it has to be generated online and when it is, it is placed into a wallet publicly with it's own encryption key. I'm not sure if two wallets can be exactly alike, but if you've got wallet A and A(copy), both having 1 bitcoin, both having the same bitcoin with the same encryption, you still only have 1 coin as when you publicly transfer it, it's not considered yours anymore and it's placed into the next persons wallet and trying to make another purchase with it is accessing the coin you've publicly shown to have traded away. In the same sense, you can have wallet A and A(copy), one having 1 coin, the other none, but since the non-copy has the correct key, despite having the same wallet name, it's able to access that coin.

None of that has anything to do with anonymity. The anonymity features of Bitcoin are not as robust as Tor's, and when the NSA is slurping up the entire internet into storage so they can continually re-run more advanced traffic analysis on it as hardware gets better, it's almost impossible to make truly anonymous transactions online. Patterns always emerge, encryption keys get cracked, with enough effort.

foxyshadis:

None of that has anything to do with anonymity. The anonymity features of Bitcoin are not as robust as Tor's, and when the NSA is slurping up the entire internet into storage so they can continually re-run more advanced traffic analysis on it as hardware gets better, it's almost impossible to make truly anonymous transactions online. Patterns always emerge, encryption keys get cracked, with enough effort.

Wait, you don't actually believe the NSA is recording a copy of all internet traffic do you? Do you have any concept of just how much raw data that is every single second? There isn't a data center on the planet with enough hard drive and tapes to store even one days worth of internet traffic.

Hacker_X: Wait, you don't actually believe the NSA is recording a copy of all internet traffic do you? Do you have any concept of just how much raw data that is every single second? There isn't a data center on the planet with enough hard drive and tapes to store even one days worth of internet traffic.

The NSA wouldn't want to capture all the things, just filter. they're searching for different keywords and keeping things of interest. Seems like a good way to collect a lot of garbage data tbh, even with filtering.

I'm pretty confident that the NSA has no file on me. Me and my porn is a waste of data center space.

Hacker_X: foxyshadis:

None of that has anything to do with anonymity. The anonymity features of Bitcoin are not as robust as Tor's, and when the NSA is slurping up the entire internet into storage so they can continually re-run more advanced traffic analysis on it as hardware gets better, it's almost impossible to make truly anonymous transactions online. Patterns always emerge, encryption keys get cracked, with enough effort.

Wait, you don't actually believe the NSA is recording a copy of all internet traffic do you? Do you have any concept of just how much raw data that is every single second? There isn't a data center on the planet with enough hard drive and tapes to store even one days worth of internet traffic.

Not everything, certainly not media files, mostly just metadata - every connection, when, where, how much - with samplings that traffic analysis highlight as interesting, worth future study, and a bit of entirely random stuff for testing purposes. They might throw out anything unencrypted immediately after verifying that it's uninteresting and stop recording connections surrounding it, if they're pressed for data.

I have no doubt that they have tens or hundreds of terabytes dedicated to storing connection information at each peering point. The hardware to do all of that a hundred times over would cost much less than a single F-22.