Bitcoin.

[SeaDaddy1]

Bitcoin is digital currency.

Anyone here ever heard of it? Is it suitable as an economic currency?

 

[cjh]

It's probably great if you're engaged in something illegal.

Otherwise: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/...11/DigitalCurrencies/disadvantages/index.html

 

[Sean Renaud]

Yes I've heard of it, no it isn't currently viable. I'd be shocked if it ever truly became viable and ultimately if it ever really started getting going you'd watch one by one as the governments moved to restrict it's use. If there is nothing else we have learned in Europe over the last four years it's that if you can't inflate your own currency you simply don't have anything you can do in a recession other than cry about it.

 

[neci]

you won't find me fucking around with that shit.

 

[blue_pearl_85]

Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme; more accurately, it's like Dutch tulips.

Buying them is a long-term disaster; only way for it to be worthwhile is if you are really convinced you know that the supply of stupid money in the Bitcoin world has not yet peaked. (SEE: earlier thread about Texas, gold, and rank stupidity)

Whoever's left with it when the music stops will take a bath.



Commodities are intrinsically precious because they can be used to make real property.
Dollars are intrinsically precious because they can be used to pay US taxes; in the absence of such payment, the IRS will take real property, or imprison you.
Bitcoins are not intrinsically precious. They have no path to real property, and are just a shiny crypto-bauble.

 

[a1eyeblind1]

Bitcoin is digital currency.

Anyone here ever heard of it? Is it suitable as an economic currency?

I heard/read something awhile ago about drug dealers using monopoly money. Since I don't mess with drugs I didn't pay much attention to it.

 

[aqwertyuiop]

I believe DHS has just defined Bitcom as "money laundering." I read that somewhere this week.

 

[marshalt]

It's probably great if you're engaged in something illegal.

Otherwise: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/...11/DigitalCurrencies/disadvantages/index.html

I forget what it's called, but there is a website where you can basically order drugs and shit using bitcoins. I think it's "___________ market" or something like that.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Bitcoin is digital currency.

Anyone here ever heard of it? Is it suitable as an economic currency?

Probably not.

The scheme

In order to prop up the initial system, Bitcoin "mining" was designed to bribe early users with exponentially better rewards than latecomers could get for the same effort. This effectively makes Bitcoin a pump-and-dump scheme wherein these early adopters, who have more bitcoins than anyone else ever will, hype it up so they can offload their bitcoins onto fools who think they'll strike it rich as speculators, or whomever else will accept them as payment. Basically, this means the system runs on opportunism, especially among people who like the idea of decentralized techno-money. Although this setup is defended as an acceptable trade-off and/or a fair reward for propping up the system,[28] this presumes that it will actually result in a widespread, reliable currency.

In the meantime, speculators and opportunists remain Bitcoin's main users: only 22% of existing Bitcoins are in circulation at all, there are a total of 75 active users/businesses with any kind of volume, the Mt. Gox exchange is responsible for 90% of all Bitcoin transactions ever, one (unidentified) user owns a quarter of all Bitcoins in existence and one large owner is trying to hide their wealth accumulation by moving it around in thousands of smaller transactions.[29] But go on, dive in and get rich.

The moral

Well, there's several. 1. In a gold rush, the money's in selling shovels. 2. Cash only.

 

[pointless]

I believe DHS has just defined Bitcom as "money laundering." I read that somewhere this week.

no, you read something with the words money laundering and bitcoin in the headline, but you did not read that.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I believe DHS has just defined Bitcom as "money laundering." I read that somewhere this week.

There is no apparent way to pump dirty money into the system and get clean money out. Mining for bitcoins takes time and processing power, and not money, beyond what those things cost.

 

[SeaDaddy1]

I never heard of Bitcoin until I read this link about a Canadian wanting to sell his property via Bitcoin currency. I thought, 'WTF kind of shit is that?' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21863593

Now Walmart is selling bitcoin.


Also, the Cyprus crisis has boosted Bitcoin currency: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/cypr...rrency-bitcoin/story?id=18792763#.UU3h5jcW5kg

 

[great lover]

bitcoins are the currency of the future. stores in Germany have now placed their trust in bitcoins.

 

[KingOrfeo]

From Salon:

If the last two weeks have taught us anything, it’s that there is nothing magically transformative at all about Bitcoin. Mt. Gox’s woes impelled Japan’s financial authorities to announce that they will now start regulating Bitcoin. The founder of the online drug emporium Silk Road, once cited as proof that Bitcoin enabled resistance to the powers that be, is now in jail. The geeks and dreamers who founded the first Bitcoin institutions are being replaced by Silicon Valley start-ups. There is no room for libertarian utopia in this scenario.

The irony here, though, is that a good argument can be made that doomsayers are overstepping when they write Bitcoin off as a complete failure. Good programmers and successful start-ups learn from their mistakes — they iterate, to borrow a popular piece of Silicon Valley jargon. Serious investment is now at play in the Bitcoin world, and there is every reason to believe that the institutions that store and transfer and exchange Bitcoin will become more secure. Bitcoin’s true value may turn out not to rest in its potential to liberate mankind from central bankers and government autocrats, but in its ability to achieve the much more prosaic task of moving money around the world more cheaply than it is currently practical to do so. Think of Bitcoin as the 21st century version of a Western Union money order and you might not be far off. The model train importers of the future may end up revering Satoshi Nakamoto as their savior. No more big fees for international transfers.

But governments and bankers and Wall Street money men will still be around. Neither Satoshi Nakamoto nor Bitcoin ever stood any chance of operating outside the bounds of conventional society. There will be regulation, there will be consumer protection, there will be rules and taxes, and criminal prosecutions for those who break the law. Bitcoin isn’t cyberpunk fantasy and it isn’t a Thomas Pynchon novel. It’s dull. The thrill is gone. And that’s why people are so mad.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

In a truly free market place the market itself should be the sole arbiter of what the means of exchange is going to be, not the government.

Look, the government gets to demand you pay your taxes in U.S. dollars, not Bitcoins or silver ingots or livestock. You got a problem with that?

Anyone else might be free to work out a Bitcoin-or-barter deal with you, but no regular retail business would because they're already set up to do everything in dollars, since they have to pay all their taxes in dollars anyway. You got a problem with that?

I don't know if Bitcoin was the way to go, but I applaud the effort to keep economic activity free of undue government intervention.

We have a Federal Reserve System for very good reasons.

 

[unregistered]

 

[KingOrfeo]

Yes and we've seen how it has bled off 96% of the Dollar's value since 1913.

While the economy has expanded. That's how it works.

 

[unregistered]

 

[JohnnySavage]

So how far do you think the last 4% is going to get us?

Just... mind-blowing...

How could anyone be so economically illiterate.

 

[KingOrfeo]

So how far do you think the last 4% is going to get us?

And that is not how it works.

 

[Sean]

Just... mind-blowing...

How could anyone be so economically illiterate.

Have you never read any of his other posts on econ...any subject at all?

 

[JohnnySavage]

Have you never read any of his other posts on econ...any subject at all?

Sometimes I think he has to be kidding. I mean really?


I can kind of forgive his lack of understanding about the Constitution because it's a complicated area, and open to interpretation.

But basic economics is just math.

 

[Sean]

Sometimes I think he has to be kidding. I mean really?


I can kind of forgive his lack of understanding about the Constitution because it's a complicated area, and open to interpretation.

But basic economics is just math.

He'll get back to you after Drudge has told him what to say.

His basic problem is that he's not very bright. It's blatantly obvious in what CJ calls his "purple prose". Massive overcompensation for being uneducated by using words he thinks sound clever.