Bitcoins and cryptocurrency, The future of currency or… The beast smiles ?

`
Disclaimer; I am like many of my PF peers, I consider it a bad day if I do not learn something new. I first heard the mention of cryptocurrency on the popular Coast to Coast radio which is a beautifully entertaining and very popular radio program that discusses everything from UFO’s to SETI to Ghosts. Everything goes, no bigots allowed! And that is the thing only insulting jerks and their comments are not allowed.

Anyway I couldn’t sleep so I turned on the radio and tuned it to C 2 C around 1am. They were discussing bit coins and crypto currency. Basically it is an electonic currency sold in ’bits’.

There Crypto-C fairly new concept in currency that was founded and invented by two people. Bits are the dollars or units sold and traded. Micro soft is one business that takes these things. I see nothing wrong and may buy a few bitcoins just for fun. However it began and grew fast so its not just a novelty item. Also the bitcoins are losing value but still they are interesting. The danger of bit coins and crypto currency in my estimating is that it is the ultimate fiat currency. Of course the fed has even shown interest in the currency and concept. For someone like myself who is an avid end time theist I would say that a crypto Fed or international banking economic system based on crypto mumbo jumbo would be the ultimate MR Obvious warning that the beast is near. Even ignoring theistic concerns, crypto is too easy to manipulate compared to the many varied currency based systems now in existence. What say my PF peers? Is crypto the cure for the West’s money ills etc? Or is it a horrible idea that may the first 6 of 666. Or maybe its just bad business for the worlds people. Bad because the authorities and others would easily cave into its temptations by making stealing and corruption easy?

reva



A request from a long time member of PF;

Please lets pull PF out of the current view of respected web site members that PF is a good example of a cluster-f of maladjusted angry juveniles and adults that know better. It’s up to we, current members to bring to the staff and mods attention of the mods etc toxic insults and flame baiting even if it gets the haters and the toxic bigoted members banned. God bless all here including the unhappy members that feel they must insult to communicate, and god bless my PF friends.

Reva ThD to be ~ I hope (lol)

 

I happened to be listening to the same program, but I knew of BitCoins long ago.

BitCoins were developed by some dude, and the idea is, you can 'mine' BitCoins with some super advanced computers somehow doing math problems 'unlocked' the coins. It was set like this, so the math would be harder and harder to break, keeping bit coins valuable because there was a finite amount of them.

When the Silk Road went down (which, if you don't know the story of its inception, purpose, or the creator's arrest, its fascinating), the price of a BitCoin crashed. The Silk Road dealt strictly in BitCoin, and it was a huge, worldwide, black market, so when the mastermind was arrested, the value tanked.

Its really an interesting story.

 

Bitcoins value has tanked multiple times. There have also been numerous incidents where exchanges failed or were fraudulent and millions of dollars (on paper) worth of bitcoins disappeared or were stolen. No FDIC insurance lol.

You look at the market and the community and the whole thing starts to look like a giant pump and dump scheme. A handful of people got in early and took the lions share while more people followed as the value skyrocketed. These early adopters are constantly pushing bitcoin as a legitimate currency to increase their own wealth and then something happens and the value tanks. Bitcoin is also just a derivative of commodity currency. Except it has none of the advantages of a real commodity currency. At least if gold's value tanks you can build a coffin for your financial dreams out of the scrap; bitcoins are just a chain of digital numbers, which also plays into the pump and dump aspect of it.

Watching Bitcoin shenanigans is hilarious because you get to see Libertarians slowly realize why we have financial regulation.

 

government would never allow bitcoins to exist imo, those who control the money control the power

 

And yet they exist.. so much for your opinion...

 

It sounds very interesting! I enjoy stuff like that. Also the concept using math to make mining the coins more and more difficult as kind of a virtual gold backing (if I understand it correctly) is intriguing, to say the least.

reva

 

Bitcoins seem to make the knights Templar dream a reality, that dream was creating wealth out of thin air. They did a similar thing inventing banking and the IOU note. It seems to me that there should be a way to make the Bitcoin concept secure. The value would be in trading them for labor like well, paper money. The coast programs host said microsoft took bitcoin as payment, but did not say how much or what the bitcoin bought.

reva

 

http://coinmarketcap.com/

 

That's the key thing....they're a clear indication of why libertarianism would fail in the financial system.

Or go back further in history to the whole "Free Silver" and Silver Panics of the late 1800s.

 

and gov is destroying the people that created them and traded in them.... so much for your opinion..

 

I'll look for the podcast. Love Coast to Coast!

 

Yes, basically that's what it was.

The dude who created the Silk Road made them popular. You could buy and sell anything online, and pay with BitCoins, and the entire transaction was completely untraceable. Only the shipper knew the address of the buyer, no names were used, no IPs could be logged. I actually had a buddy who was a super ner show me the site when I was in high school. There was some super secret way to find it. You could buy and sell guns, sex slaves, drugs, hitmen, anything you could ever want.

Anyway, they finally found the guy who created the Silk Road, and I think it was something as having a package delivered to his house. So they go to bust him, turns out he's like in his late 20's living with two other roommates, who had no idea what he was doing. He would go across the street to use a computer in a cafe to manage and run this elaborate, jumping, tracking proof website.

The guy was worth some absurd amount, around $40m if I remember, and it was all because of the amount of BitCoins he had (he charged a 'finders fee' for facilitating the transactions).

It probably will be made into a movie one day.

 

Bitcoins are just another arbitrary currency. The Bitcoins imaginary supremacy was kicked down a notch with the fall of the silk road.

 

A few companies accept bitcoin as payment, but very, very few of them (MS included) keep many, if any of them after receiving. They flip them for dollars asap to make sure they don't get screwed by fluctuating value.

 

Bitcoin has some advantages over other money that make it unlikely that it will ever go away. First, it iss extremely difficult to counterfeit or create more than the "mining" system allows, which gives it a kind of stability that will, over time tend to stabilize its value. The fluctuations its seen to date have been a result of the fact that its new, and as with any new release of such a commodity (think IPO) there is an excitement that elevates demand beyond its real value temporarily. Over time the value will stabilize and speculators will lose interest and it will become a much more reliable medium of exchange. Second, bitcoin doesn't require any middleman. I can keep a bitcoin account on my computer and transfer my bitcoins directly to sellers who accept bitcoin. No bank or government authority is necessary. Bitcoins are extremely difficult to trace because they're peer to peer money. If you use anonymous proxies to transfer the funds its pretty much impossible to trace the payment from buyer to seller. The Silk Road uses bitcoin and is still in operation because all those transactions are untraceable. Third, bitcoin is extremely convenient. If you live in a third world hovel, 100 miles from the nearest bank, you can still use bitcoin from a smartphone and buy and sell stuff worldwide.

The problems that have occurred with bitcoin have actually been more like poor banking practices allowing misappropriation of funds. People trusted bitcoin "bankers" that were not trustworthy and got their coins stolen. The bitcoins themselves were as unaffected as stolen dollars or euros are. When the alleged mastermind of the Silk Road was arrested, the feds confiscated his bitcoins just as they would have if he'd had stacks of cash or a regular bank account. Again, the bitcoins themselves were unaffected by how they transferred ownership. Also, there are now several services competing with The Silk Road for their black market businesses and using bitcoin as the medium of exchange.

The guy running Silk Road called himself The Dread Pirate Roberts. That is significant because, if you know your Princess Bride, Westley was the Dread Pirate Roberts in the story but he wasn't the original Dread Pirate Roberts. The title had been transferred several times allowing the original Roberts to retire to a life of wealth and ease. If the guy the feds busted was actually the mastermind of the Silk Road (there hasn't been a trial yet), its very likely someone else has taken the title and is running the Silk Road just as before.

 

There are well over 100 types of this coin out there... I even put in a link for you to look at..

 

There also exists the possibility that it will be neither. How many people under thirty have never filled out a check? How many of you carry no financila instruments on you person other than a debit card and credit cards. I expect we will have an essentially cashless society in another 15 years if it takes that long in which case bit coins will be just another electronic currency competing for customers.

 

Bitcoin traitor denied re-entry into USA:



http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-jesus-visa-application-denied-2015-1


Roger Ver, a high-profile member of the Bitcoin community who is commonly known as "Bitcoin Jesus," has been denied a US visa — despite having been born in the country.

Ver is well known in the Bitcoin community as an entrepreneur and angel investor, having funded products including Blockchain, Ripple, and Blockpay. He became known as "Bitcoin Jesus" after giving thousands of coins of the virtual currency away for free. Ver was born in the US, making him a citizen there, but he renounced his citizenship in March — and now he says the government isn't letting him back in.

As Coindesk is reporting, Ver posted on Twitter that the US government had refused his recent request for a non-immigrant visa, leaving him "effectively locked out of his native USA."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-jesus-visa-application-denied-2015-1#ixzz3OoEOrqbT



you know - mebbe it's true that this Bitcoin thing is the Antichrist after all

 

Now I understand the appeal, kind of. It's roughly like gold standard paper money but the gold metal in bit coins are fully dependent on near real time computer analysis's and other cutting edge technologies. Hmmm I think I see a new app for quantum computing! (?)

reva