yet another bitcoin thread - DANG, the price dropped
- Thread starter sennin436
- Start date
really? seems most of the second tier altcoins out there (litecoin, feathercoin, peercoin, etc, etc, etc) all came out with lot's of fanfare with the same claims of better features, being faster, etc, with hardcore fans believing that it would surpass bitcoin as top dog. We even had a few altcoins with millions of $$ in backing, started by a few tech millionaires, lot's of fanfare, but kinda fizzled out. It's gonna be tough trying to catch up to the mementum already gained by bitcoin.
Just saw this:
Microsoft now accepts Bitcoin for Xbox and Windows digital content
Microsoft Now Accepts Bitcoin Through BitPay
Microsoft to accept payments in bitcoin
Will the trend continue? who knows...
The funniest thing I noticed about alt coins was that the masterminds behind launching the new ones were pre-mining millions of coins before their launch.
A decent alternative to bitcoin is going to need a lot more than better tech to overcome it, it will need to hop the greed hurdle first.
TLDR;
Bitcoin == cash
It has problems but all currencies do. It doesn't make it the revolution some people where hoping for but it also doesn't make it the joke that others want it to be.
The problems with Bitcoin or any crypto currency;
It has no value outside of what the markets dictate.
There are people who claim that Bitcoin's value is derived from the electricity used to generate them, but this is a fallacy. It's the same as claiming that a piece of wood has value because of the energy it took to cut the tree down.
Bitcoin's only value is what people place on it, like any other medium of exchange.
It's the same a fiat.
The claim is made that it's better than fiat, because XYZ. It's not, it's the same as fiat. It's backed by nothing of true value and is subject like other currencies to the whims of the market.
It's not the end to money as we know it and it doesn't make governments, banks or federal reserves lose sleep at night.
51% attack
This is a problem, which a lot of people choose to ignore. It's possible, even easy, to do as a single individual against anyone who will accept the payment as valid after one confirmation. Of course, if they wait three then the likely hood of the attack being successful is reduced to almost zero.
But that means that a shop has to wait 60 minutes for the funds to clear, which makes it impossible to allow instant payments without assuming the risk of being defrauded.
Bitcoin is vulnerable
Do you have enough CPU power to start processing over 50% of the blocks on the chain?
Great you now essentially control what transactions are valid and what aren't.
Now I'm generally not one to engage in bullshit conspiracy theories, but who has massive amounts of CPU resources at their disposal and has absolutely no regard for law, privacy or common decency?
Point being, if governments (or more to the point alphabet agencies) really want it dead, it would be.
The advantages of Bitcoin;
It's anonymous
As long as you don't use a third party that complies with the "know your customer" laws.
It's fast
Even with the 1 hour wait, it's still faster than transferring money via bank to another country.
It's cheap
The fee to move money around the world is literately pennies versus the fees a bank charges.
It's easy
Buying and selling Bitcoin's is easier then setting up a bank account in some countries and when it's not, it's comparatively the same.
Some fallacies that people love to spew about Bitcoin;
It's a fad!
Not any more, it's may had started off as an exercise in intellectual masturbation by cryto academics, but it has long ago stopped being that.
Bitcoin is now mainstream and here to stay for the foreseeable future.
It's not backed by anything of value and therefor cash is better
I would have skipped pointing this out (again), but judging by some of the comments in this thread it bears repeating.
The difference between Bitcoin and cash is... NOTHING.
They are both backed by nothing of true value, unlike for example gold.
The instability seen in the Bitcoin markets can just as easily happen to cash.
It has happened before to cash, and more than likely will happen again.
It's complex to understand but I understand cash therefor cash is better
Anyone who states this with a straight face should be punched in the balls in the hope it will prevent them from breading.
Most people's understanding of what money really is, is limited at best. More often than not it comes down to "I can buy things with this piece of paper with numbers on it."
When asked how cash gets it value they will blankly stair in to space hoping their phone will ring.
The point being that understanding money or cash is complex, more so I would argue, than understanding Bitcoin.
Bitcoin == cash
It has problems but all currencies do. It doesn't make it the revolution some people where hoping for but it also doesn't make it the joke that others want it to be.
The problems with Bitcoin or any crypto currency;
It has no value outside of what the markets dictate.
There are people who claim that Bitcoin's value is derived from the electricity used to generate them, but this is a fallacy. It's the same as claiming that a piece of wood has value because of the energy it took to cut the tree down.
Bitcoin's only value is what people place on it, like any other medium of exchange.
It's the same a fiat.
The claim is made that it's better than fiat, because XYZ. It's not, it's the same as fiat. It's backed by nothing of true value and is subject like other currencies to the whims of the market.
It's not the end to money as we know it and it doesn't make governments, banks or federal reserves lose sleep at night.
51% attack
This is a problem, which a lot of people choose to ignore. It's possible, even easy, to do as a single individual against anyone who will accept the payment as valid after one confirmation. Of course, if they wait three then the likely hood of the attack being successful is reduced to almost zero.
But that means that a shop has to wait 60 minutes for the funds to clear, which makes it impossible to allow instant payments without assuming the risk of being defrauded.
Bitcoin is vulnerable
Do you have enough CPU power to start processing over 50% of the blocks on the chain?
Great you now essentially control what transactions are valid and what aren't.
Now I'm generally not one to engage in bullshit conspiracy theories, but who has massive amounts of CPU resources at their disposal and has absolutely no regard for law, privacy or common decency?
Point being, if governments (or more to the point alphabet agencies) really want it dead, it would be.
The advantages of Bitcoin;
It's anonymous
As long as you don't use a third party that complies with the "know your customer" laws.
It's fast
Even with the 1 hour wait, it's still faster than transferring money via bank to another country.
It's cheap
The fee to move money around the world is literately pennies versus the fees a bank charges.
It's easy
Buying and selling Bitcoin's is easier then setting up a bank account in some countries and when it's not, it's comparatively the same.
Some fallacies that people love to spew about Bitcoin;
It's a fad!
Not any more, it's may had started off as an exercise in intellectual masturbation by cryto academics, but it has long ago stopped being that.
Bitcoin is now mainstream and here to stay for the foreseeable future.
It's not backed by anything of value and therefor cash is better
I would have skipped pointing this out (again), but judging by some of the comments in this thread it bears repeating.
The difference between Bitcoin and cash is... NOTHING.
They are both backed by nothing of true value, unlike for example gold.
The instability seen in the Bitcoin markets can just as easily happen to cash.
It has happened before to cash, and more than likely will happen again.
It's complex to understand but I understand cash therefor cash is better
Anyone who states this with a straight face should be punched in the balls in the hope it will prevent them from breading.
Most people's understanding of what money really is, is limited at best. More often than not it comes down to "I can buy things with this piece of paper with numbers on it."
When asked how cash gets it value they will blankly stair in to space hoping their phone will ring.
The point being that understanding money or cash is complex, more so I would argue, than understanding Bitcoin.
then maybe take the time to read it sometimes lol? I mean, hey, nice post about bitcoin vs cash, but dang...not really relevant in this thread tbh
. There's been no discussion or discourse re: bitcoin vs cash (like we had with some of the other threads). I still like what you said tho. edit: well, make that no serious debate about btc vs cash.
anyone want to sell me about €50 worth of bitcoin while bitstamp is down? i can pay via paypal with a 10 or 15 % markup
oops. thought you were talking about the thread, but I'm beginning to think 'TLDR' was the title/disclaimer/jab you were making at your own long post? my bad.
19,000 BTC stolen? WTF is wrong with these companies? "It's ok, we'll just put $6 million of BTC online with the private keys on the server, because Jack here, he's a top-notch server admin and knows his shit".
Not to mention, why anyone would store funds with a company who has private keys online is beyond me as well.
How would you automate the processing of transactions where people are moving their coins to a wallet outside of the exchange without having a hot wallet that is sitting on a server somewhere?
Doesn't excuse their lax security though.
If you're dealing with that kind of money, hire staff to sit there 24x7 and sign offline transactions. Here, they can use this. I'll have it finalized in about a week.
https://github.com/peterscott78/offline_signer/
Or depends on the operation, but for example, randomly generate a new BIP32 key-pair for each user. If you need to keep it user-friendly, AES256 encrypt the private key with the user's password + large salts. That way, funds can only be withdrawn from their account when they're logged in with the correct password. This way, the only funds that need to be in BitStamp's possession are open orders. Then they just add an extra output to transactions to funnel their fees to BitStamp's wallet.
Actually, that wouldn't work due to lost passwords, would it? Ok, same concept, but instead of AES256, each user gets their own BIP32 key-pair and PGP key-pair. Everything is stored online, and BIP32 private key is encrypted using PGP with multiple recipients -- one recipient being the user using their password + salts, and the other recipient being Bitstamp.
Make sure Bitstamp generates a new PGP key for themselves every week or so, and keep the passwords and private keys offline. Keep track of which user belongs to which key, which should be easy enough. The only time this will be needed it when a user loses their password, to ensure they don't also lose their funds. Worst case scenario, even if someone gets their hands on one of Bitstamp's PGP private keys + password, plus rooted the server, they will have only have access to funds sitting in user's account who joined within say a one week period. They won't be able to access other user's funds. That's better than having access to the entire storage of 19,000 BTC.
There. That would actually work quite well. Even if a hacker rooted their servers, they're not going to have access to much money. They'll just have a bunch of PGP messages, and no passwords to decrypt them.
There's a second problem with making each user have their own encrypted wallet. If there was a major, major bug (i.e. every user password leaked, etc), then instead of just losing the contents of the hot wallet (and keeping the cold wallet coins safe), everyone loses all their funds potentially, and Bitstamp goes bankrupt instantly.
Only retards like Sony store plain text passwords. Most people, and I would hope folks like Bitstamp, use multiple iterations of SHA512 with dynamic salts. In other words, leaking of passwords is technically impossible. SHA is a one-way hash algo. You can encrypt, but can't decrypt. They could dump the entire user database, and not get a single user password.
You do know there is more to building a house than just labor right? or do these "nanites" actually create free materials?
Chairman Mao said that power stems from the barrel of a gun. In fact, it stems from a gun in the hands of someone who dares to shoot. Nobody is bombing anything for Bitcoin and which of the world's powers that be have any vested interest in Bitcoin? Follow bloodshed, it is truer than money.
Yeah, if you knew all the other shit he did, you would not reference this guy for anything but disaster, incompetence and egotism.