BitCoin Opinions?

thebman

Hi,

So just saw this on the Keiser report which was left on in the room by someone else as I browsed, I swear

Anyway, this guy came on and advertised this on the show so I thought I would post it here to see what people think.

It is basically like Bittorrent as an online currency from what I gather though I don't see how it will logically work or how it is not a scam in some way :P

http://bitcoin.org/

andrew

thebman wrote: »

Hi,

So just saw this on the Keiser report which was left on in the room by someone else as I browsed, I swear

Anyway, this guy came on and advertised this on the show so I thought I would post it here to see what people think.

It is basically like Bittorrent as an online currency from what I gather though I don't see how it will logically work or how it is not a scam in some way :P

http://bitcoin.org/

The only thing it's useful for is buying stuff illegally online. Apart from that, I don't see the point tbh.

blubloblu

I think it has potential as an online cash equivalent, something which doesn't really exist at the moment. If you want to send money to someone online at the moment, you need to use paypal (which has its fees and habits of randomly freezing your funds), credit cards (need to setup as a merchant + fees), bank transfers (slow, risk of fraud).
Bitcoin is pretty quick, takes a few minutes to go through. Right now there aren't any fees and you will probably never pay more than a few cent, regardless of the amount sent. It's direct and anyone can accept it.
What it needs to take off is more people buying and selling in it. At the moment there's a few web designers, hosting and other early-adopter techies.

andrew

How easy is it to convert between Bitcoin and euro and vice versa? Can it be converted into any currency? (at the moment at least)

blubloblu

andrew wrote: »

How easy is it to convert between Bitcoin and euro and vice versa? Can it be converted into any currency? (at the moment at least)

The biggest exchange site is MtGox, they accept European, American and Australian bank transfers, you can withdraw into a European bank. Others deal with Paypal or even cash in the mail.

srsly78

Ponzi scheme. All the guys that got in first mined the bulk of the coins.

Inverse to the power of one!

srsly78 wrote: »

Ponzi scheme. All the guys that got in first mined the bulk of the coins.

Not true.

http://bitcoinwatch.com/
6,411,200 out of 21 million bitcoins have been mined at a set rate and increasing difficulty producing a block of 50 Bitcoins every ten minutes. Also a ponzi scheme is by it's essence a tree structure leading to one final point where as this is distributed such that early adopters are being extremely well rewarded due to the built in difficulty scale.

What's a better question is just what exactly does bitcoin represent as an economic unit, it has qualities that make it similar to a commodity but was designed as a currency. It's also worth asking just how this economic model will work out....probably won't go mainstream....but this is a fully transparent economic experiment unfolding in front of our eyes. With full transparency of the data involved in its day to day use, this will at least hopefully add knowledge to the field of economics.

I don't really want to be seen as a proponent.....but this sure as hell is entertaining me.

To keep a sense of balance, it goes without saying that bitcoin is extremely risky, volatile and prone to bubbles. Just as in any other economic activity there is risk as well as reward and people will both lose and gain.

Take it as you will

cavedave

Marginal revolution has been looking at bitcoin for a while here

I think it has all the problems of Gold backed currency with crypto worshipped as opposed to metal. That said i do like the sheer geekery of the concepts behind it

Mantel

Recent news stories or market manipulation (haven't been arsed looking in to it more so it could be anything) have caused the $ to bitcoin rate to soar, a recent high was $29 per bitcoin from under $10 less than a week ago.

Also there's concern over one of the mining pools having over 50% of the network share (the deepbit pool)

andrew

Mantel wrote: »

Recent news stories or market manipulation (haven't been arsed looking in to it more so it could be anything) have caused the $ to bitcoin rate to soar, a recent high was $29 per bitcoin from under $10 less than a week ago.

Also there's concern over one of the mining pools having over 50% of the network share (the deepbit pool)

Sounds interesting, do you know any more about deepbit? (Or have any sources that'd be good for reading more?)

digme

this is the funniest thing I've heard all year.If you are retarded enough to have
some of these I'd sell them right now as you are getting taken for a ride.You can bet your ass he's the one selling them for 30 dollars a pop to gullible idiots. So 30 times 1.6 million is a lot of money,obviously he's not selling them all but he is offloading them at a nice rate for a new yacht or something along those lines.

andrew

digme wrote: »

this is the funniest thing I've heard all year.If you are retarded enough to have
some of these I'd sell them right now as you are getting taken for a ride.You can bet your ass he's the one selling them for 30 dollars a pop to gullible idiots. So 30 times 1.6 million is a lot of money,obviously he's not selling them all but he is offloading them at a nice rate for a new yacht or something along those lines.

Link?

click_here!!!

Apparently, BitCoin is expected to be used for alot of illegal activity. There is a website called Silk Road where you can use BitCoins to buy all sorts of drugs.

The website is only available when you use the Tor secret internet access service.

Interesting article from Wired Magazine: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/silkroad/
1st paragraph:

Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or light bulbs? Now you can: Welcome to Silk Road.

nesf

Economist article on this: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/06/virtual-currency?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/bitsandbob

Mantel

andrew wrote: »

Sounds interesting, do you know any more about deepbit? (Or have any sources that'd be good for reading more?)

Sorry, wasn't watching the thread.

http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5328668205/deepbit-50-percent-threshold

The worry has lessened a bit for now but Deepbit still has the largest proportion of the bitcoin network - http://bitcoinwatch.com/#footer - Especially if either of the other two largest go offline for any reason...

Other intresting thing is the commission charged on each block found by deepbit, and other pools of course : http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/hueo5/deepbit_pool_owner_pulls_in_112_an_hour_controls/

Looks like the value is going back to it's previous levels, around the $10 mark, slowly going under $15 now.

andrew

Paul Krugman's Opinion.

WooPeeA

I've seen bitcoins ad in the radio and made some research yesterday. I'm surprised to see this thread about it here.

bnt

There's speculation by the New Yorker, NPR and others, that the real identity of "Satoshi Nakamoto", the creator of Bitcoin, has been uncovered. If they're right, he's Irish, a former CS student at Trinity who has worked for AIB. But they could be wrong ...