camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Yeah, I felt I was a bit piss-takey and drunk on myself with that one. This time I wanted a more 'serious' discussion in a kind of "hang on... but really, what might come of this?" sort of way.
Bitcoin discussion and news
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Yeah, I felt I was a bit piss-takey and drunk on myself with that one. This time I wanted a more 'serious' discussion in a kind of "hang on... but really, what might come of this?" sort of way.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Nope, there's no ability for government to do that, same way they can't interpose themselves between two people arranging a cash-in-hand transaction. No centralization you see, it's all crypto/p2p.
And actually I think this technology is more like digital gold then cash at the moment, prices are not stable enough yet to run a business on. Who wants to pay in btc when they're at 50% apr or whatever it is, better to hold on to them and see where they go in 2 or 3 years. It's a speculators paradise for now, but there's no long term future in it until people are exchanging products and services for the stuff.
Anyway government could no more force tax out of bitcoins then they could force people to use good grammar in their email exchanges. Not sure if that's a good thing. Happily most businesses want to obey the law and keep their affairs kosher.
Can you explain to me (either as a developed world salaryman or a developing world market trader or whatever) why this bitcoin shit is better than traditional currency that I can have either in a wad under my mattress or in an account with a bank which one hopes is regulated by someone? Currency exchange markets are pretty efficient as it is.
What's the killer app? "Not being run by any government" isn't it.
What's the killer app? "Not being run by any government" isn't it.
ExtraRefined
Better than you at everything you love
Combine this with tor .onion sites and you could have lots of fun
ETA oddly enough someone's already had this idea
http://silkroadmarket.org/
ETA oddly enough someone's already had this idea
http://silkroadmarket.org/
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Micropayments for one thing. My opinion, there are a host of internet services crying out for a good micropayments solutions that you just can't do with dollars, pounds, Euro's etc. Bitcoin means you can do things like apply a 0.0001 btc fee per click or what have you, and the accumulation of such fees can be easily handled.
Also don't underestimate that bitcoins are deflationary, as there will only ever be 21 million of them the value your bitcoins represent will never be eaten by inflation, instead bitcoins appreciate, as the bitcoin denominated economy grows each bitcoin is worth more. This means they're a great store of value and gives bitcoins the qualities of being both a profitable asset, and yet highly liquid.
Cash in your wallet isn't growing in value, bitcoins in your wallet.dat file are (depending on the rate of uptake, which is quite well according to market data... see the graph).
http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zvztgTza1gWMAzm1g10zm2g25
It also means you can store money really easily as a file of only a few kilobytes on your hard disk, on a usb, in your phone, as an attachment in an email... my advise would be to archive and password protect your wallet.dat and make multiple copies. Alot cheaper and securable than storing gold or wads of cash.
I don't want to come over as some sort of spam-bot/bitcoin-bug but if you have a blog or a website and welcome donations, you could do a lot worse than to accept bitcoin donations as well. If bitcoin does take off there's no knowing how much purchasing power (directly of products and services or of currencies like dollars our pounds) a single bitcoin might represent in say... 5 years. If you can offer products or services where you can accept payment you don't mind sitting on for a while (as opposed to needing to pay fixed/variable costs that week for example) then I strongly suggest you consider accepting payments in bitcoins. Nothing major mind, just stuff you don't mind payment for in an experimental new form of money that (in my humble opinion) probably is the Next Big Thing on the internets (remember where you heard it first
) You can get 0.05 free btc here: http://freebitcoins.appspot.com/
Donations welcome
16yF2LVLi8iViz2NanFL2mzpoW61HGpBup
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Combine this with tor .onion sites and you could have lots of fun
ETA oddly enough someone's already had this idea
http://silkroadmarket.org/
Yup, if I was a drug-dealer or money launderer I'd be laughing. Cash already does that for them really, but cash you can teleport around the world... freedom and power can be dangerous. C'est la vie.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
What happens if they get more then 21 million users. Do we have to share them?
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
Yeah, I don't quite understand this from a technical POV. Each bitcoin is divisible to 8 decimal places, but how do you share that round?
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Ok say a pair of shoes costs 50 btc, (or $50 taking 2011 as a base year).
2 years later the bitcoin economy has grown a lot, hundreds of times bigger. Now the same pair of shoes costs 0.05 btc (or $50 dollars at 2011 prices). Hope that kind of explains it. This is deflation, it means the price of things fall. With 'fiat' money as they call it, growth takes place on the other side of the decimal place (21 million becomes 21 billion etc). With bitcoins the growth takes place before the decimal place, so you get smaller and smaller divisions of btc, your share of all btc remains the same but worth ever more instead of being diminished by newly printed money (ala QE1 and QE2 etc).
Deflation can suck if you make things to sell but the cost of inputs don't also fall too. I suspect btc will be good to have, and sell as you need it, but not what you want to pay your suppliers in unless you renegotiate prices on a weekly or monthly basis or something.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Best let wiki explain this one...
Now there are about 5.5 million bitcoins, new coins produced 6 times an hour. This is where the bitcoins come from. In the current version of the client you'll see only 2 decimal places but this is just cosmetic. The software can show more decimal places.
So for instance I could send you 0000.00045 bitcoins, or I could send you 1000.00000 bitcoins (if only I had that many). Miners can sell bitcoins they manage to mine, speculators buy them and sell them, businesses and individuals can offer products and services for them.... does this answer your question?
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Same way as it does full coins. Check out the block explorer, it shows transactions from one account to the other, you'll see the account name (the public-key) and beside it the amount of coins that were sent:
http://blockexplorer.com/
Click on a hash (public-key) and it links to the next account that amount of bitcoins was sent to. They're just record entries really that the network as a whole records (what amount went where).
So the three killer reasons why microbits would be useful to a developed country salary-earner or developing country market trader are:
I don't really see the existing problem here. It's already possible to make very small payments with existing currency. If something is 1 cent per 100 impressions/clicks/whatever, then it's just the same as (hold on - got to check my decimals here) 0.01 c per click.
Having a deflating currency is a disincentive to borrowing money; having an inflating currency is a disincentive to lending money; in both cases an interest rate will mediate; and in any case as long as the currency is a tool of exchange (rather than an investment), then I don't really care how many zeros are at the beginning or end of a number.
More generally, isn't there a basic fallacy in your model which ignores the role of credit in determining the money supply? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply Even if there is only a fixed number of "physical" currency units, money supply will increase as credit agreements are created; and if you can't have credit, then it's useless as a currency.
And what about the other causes of inflation that aren't only money supply increase?
Storing money securely isn't really a problem for the salaryman where there's constant access to, say, debit cards payment networks and for the market trader, there isn't the universal and cheap access to computing and comms technology that would make microbits practical for buying a loaf of bread. Mobile phone transfers denominated in existing currencies are already handling larger payments.
I just don't see why I should care - sorry.
By the way, what do you think that graph illustrates over the last two months?
I don't really see the existing problem here. It's already possible to make very small payments with existing currency. If something is 1 cent per 100 impressions/clicks/whatever, then it's just the same as (hold on - got to check my decimals here) 0.01 c per click.
Having a deflating currency is a disincentive to borrowing money; having an inflating currency is a disincentive to lending money; in both cases an interest rate will mediate; and in any case as long as the currency is a tool of exchange (rather than an investment), then I don't really care how many zeros are at the beginning or end of a number.
More generally, isn't there a basic fallacy in your model which ignores the role of credit in determining the money supply? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply Even if there is only a fixed number of "physical" currency units, money supply will increase as credit agreements are created; and if you can't have credit, then it's useless as a currency.
And what about the other causes of inflation that aren't only money supply increase?
Storing money securely isn't really a problem for the salaryman where there's constant access to, say, debit cards payment networks and for the market trader, there isn't the universal and cheap access to computing and comms technology that would make microbits practical for buying a loaf of bread. Mobile phone transfers denominated in existing currencies are already handling larger payments.
I just don't see why I should care - sorry.
By the way, what do you think that graph illustrates over the last two months?
Wolveryeti
Detty Pig
As long as people believe that 'bitcoins' is an unhackable currency and people continue to believe that bitcoins will be convertible into real goods. I am skeptical on both counts. Blah blah something about hashtags controlled by loads of nodes run by computers with no identifiable users to go to when things go wrong. Doesn't sound too appealing to me...
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Unlike bitcoin FundaMentalists, I don't think bitcoin will completely replace 'regular money', I see it as just another asset, just another thing that is valued and can be traded. Credit plays an important part in the money supply under the current model, I don't think it's impossible to issue credit in bitcoin (I wouldn't do it). I hardly think that makes it useless as an exchange of value. That's like saying gold or silver is useless as an exchange of value.
Other causes of inflation not to do with an increase in money supply would therefore not be things that bitcoin could solve I would imagine... what with not being related to money supply.
I think you're reliance on how the 'salaryman' sees the world is flawed. The salaryman is generally speaking not a source of innovations. Salaryman does what the innovators, advertisers, producers and profits tell him to do. One could say that obedience to market forces is the essence of his existence. Salaryman probably wouldn't have seen the point of facebook or text messaging or open-source software either.
Sorry? For what? This isn't fucking Dragons Den, I hate that show. I don't care about baseball cards myself, doesn't stop people from trading the things. That's market forces, not particularly bothered about the tastes or understandings of non-participants. So, if I somehow got hold of a classic baseball card from the late 1800's valued at 50,000 dollars US, I'd gain an interest in the things sharpish so as to exchange it for something I really like. And if you got 50,000 bitcoins, you wouldn't delete them because you'd realize they're valuable to people that would buy or exchange for stuff you might like. It's not necessary to be at all interested in what money is or how it works to be into using it. Bitcoins are a form of money, and therefore a lot easier to trade than classic baseball cards, but also impossible to fake compared to 'regular money'. Seems that's enough for some people as there's already over 5 million dollars worth of trade in them with thousands of participants that think they're great.
But if you do come across any bitcoins and don't want them because they are silly then feel free to send them here:
16yF2LVLi8iViz2NanFL2mzpoW61HGpBup
The graph shows volume and dollar price of bitcoin over the past 2 months or so. Volume is quite small, so the markets quite volatile really. Generally speaking the speculators are buying up, there's a great deal of Expectation on offer it seems.
From a more geeky perspective, here's vid from website Security Now discussing the technical elements of bitcoin (42:00 minutes in)
I think they go on too much about generating bitcoins via mining etc, and seems to miss the more non-geek/cipherpunk element, like er... using it to buy and sell stuff what people made. I got a donation of some for some stuff I wrote. Worth anything or not it made me feel quite pleased.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Hm, well that's like not being keen on cash, and actually a lot of people aren't, so they avoid paying for big things in cash. But don't confuse something like 'money' with the services that surround its use, such as escrow services or whatever.
ExtraRefined
Better than you at everything you love
My graphics card is now generating about BTC 2 a day - when it's not playing New Vegas at any rate.
Gold and silver is not much cop as a medium of exchange, actually, which is why people don't buy televisions or teabags in krugerrands. Gold and silver is hard to slice into correctly-sized pieces, a low karat lump looks more or less the same as a high karat lump, and carrying lots of it about is an invitation to be smacked over the head.
If you can't issue credit in a currency, you're missing out one of the huge advantages of modern currency. And if you can issue credit in a currency, then there is scope for inflation.
vs
I wasn't asking if a salaryman would invent it or not. I was asking you to explain why it would be any more useful than "normal" money to an "ordinary" person, giving two examples of such people with different money needs. A salaryman might not have invented Facebook or OpenOffice or texting, but I can explain why he might be interested in using any of those three things.
The point I am trying to get at is whether this is actually addressing a shortfall that exists or whether it's a solution looking for a problem. So far, I think it's the latter. Not that there's anything wrong with that - experimentation is good and all of that shit.
Right...it's a thinly-traded, volatile, new market that's (apparently) being driven by experimenters and speculators. It's far too early to start making statements about how safe, liquid etc the asset is. It's just too soon to tell.
If fractional bitcoins are supported, and it's eight places, then the actual granularity of the currency is 2,100 trillion (give or take a place)
The "21 million" is meaningless. That it is a fixed quantity is meaningful, but the number quoted is marketing flim-flam. They could just as well say we'll only distribute one bitcoin, and make it divisible by loads more places.
The "21 million" is meaningless. That it is a fixed quantity is meaningful, but the number quoted is marketing flim-flam. They could just as well say we'll only distribute one bitcoin, and make it divisible by loads more places.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Not for marketing reasons, obscure coding reasons. But yes it's true that "21 million" is basically arbitrary. Attrition will make some bitcoins unspendable as time goes on (lost wallet.dat files) making the remaining ones that little bit more valuable. And yes the whole world economy could run on just 1 bitcoin.
I'd be interested to know who you think would be 'marketing' them. Do you feel bitcoin is the product of a company somewhere? There have been forms of online private money in the past, usually they get in trouble with the law and fall flat on their faces I believe.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Yes it's true. Which is where gold receipts came from in the first place, bits of paper representing the bearers ownership of a lump of gold in some safe somewhere. Enter banking, and then fractional reserve banking, credit, financial instruments etc. All fair enough in my opinion. Bitcoin is better than gold or silver in terms of having the thing itself in an easy enough form to not only carry around but send instantly across the world at a click, to encrypt, to back-up and duplicate and have an address on your website or by email that people can send to with very very low if any transaction costs, and yet still only be able to spend them once... strikes me as rather clever. You may disagree, fair play to ya.
Don't think I'd be missing out. As I said in the previous post bitcoin is just another thing out there, you can have the advantages of inflationary 'fiat money' (so-called) and you can have the advantages of deflationary bitcoin. I'm not one of these absolutists, I believe in a mixed world of complexity, variety, and choice. Why should I miss out on anything just because I think bitcoin's a good idea?
Salaryman will either get it or not. Frankly even if he doesn't get it all that's needed is trade among some of the internets millions of 'klingon-speakers' that will get it and you have bitcoin success, it doesn't need wide up-take to be successful. Only replace 'klingon-speaker' with 'soon-to-be-bitcoin-freak'. To be honest I don't think a lot of people that currently work in banking, finance and certain other fields will get it. The idea seems to appeal to a certain type of person. Dreamers and weirdos probably.
To be honest this debate bores me, I'm not really here to argue for bitcoin as if it needs people convincing of its merits to get it started on it's little legs, it's pretty much become a Movement already...
Green are active clients, red are non-active, link
Do not mistake my posts for an earnest attempt to pursued you that bitcoin is a good idea or whatever. I'm far more interested in what it means (if anything) for society going forward. Same shit different day I suspect, but all the same a tad cyberpunk... well, actually literally cipherpunk, I find it very interesting. And has anyone ever heard of the concept of 'Agorism'? I have, and frankly I suspect Agorists are a slew of Rand-enjoying twats, and yet I do like the idea of bitcoin... I'm deeply conflicted about the whole thing.
Urm... if you read the thread I've referred to bitcoin several times as 'bubbly', 'experimental', 'volatile' and advised that it's not to be gotten into by trading anything 'you don't mind selling with an experimental new form of money'. Therefore I find this last observation somewhat redundant.
Besides, you can always mine for yourself if you've got a decent GPU, in between blasts of New Vegas of course.
I didn't ask you to justify it to salaryman or demand that salaryman "gets it". I just asked
ExtraRefined
Better than you at everything you love
The killer app is clearly tax avoidence, money laundering and black market transactions, taking the place of the late lamented e-gold. Unlike e-gold, it's decentralised, so can't easily be taken down - it's freenet/tor, to e-gold's napster. At it's peak, ie before the feds stamped on it, e-gold's reserves were worth around half a billion dollars.
How, though, esp if it's all digitally logged? Hawaladars, for instance, evade surveillance by not keeping any records. Tax isn't collected just by monitoring streams of money and translation of assets into cryptcurrency isn't money laundering because you don't end up with "clean" money. At best it's just a way of transporting/transferring money.
ExtraRefined
Better than you at everything you love
All you've got to do is either obscure your exchange to bitcoins, launder the bitcoins themselves (disconnect the exchange and purchase) or obscure the purchase. There's ways of doing all of these.
That's just money transport, not money laundering. The point of money laundering is end up with apparently legitimately-gained property. A pile of bitcoins the origin of which I can't explain is no good to me as an end result and it's not terribly useful as a tool of money laundering considering how thinly-traded it is at the moment.
A currency that is designed for, or becomes dominated by, money laundering (or similar criminal activity) is no use for those purposes because it attracts too much attention. Mangling a metaphor slightly, it's like wearing a mac with your collar up and a broad-brimmed hat pulled down: if the only people who do this are trying to avoid attracting attention then wearing that outfit will actually attract attention to the fact you're trying to avoid attention.
A currency that is designed for, or becomes dominated by, money laundering (or similar criminal activity) is no use for those purposes because it attracts too much attention. Mangling a metaphor slightly, it's like wearing a mac with your collar up and a broad-brimmed hat pulled down: if the only people who do this are trying to avoid attracting attention then wearing that outfit will actually attract attention to the fact you're trying to avoid attention.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Good points in my opinion.
But it's complete cock. Firstly because the whole notion of it being a deflationary currency has been more than adequately challenged above; and secondly because even if it were a deflationary currency, that would discourage saving/credit (because it suggests a negative rate of return) which is itself economically inefficient.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
I disagree.
Anyway, this...
Anyway, this...
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