and is what is NOT appealing about bitcoin ...

I could say that capitalism needs bitcoin like Tampa needs another ahole vortex...

Here is an example of the almost comic book networking that bitcoin represents ...


""

MONTHS ago


just FYI

You sound like those 80 year old luddites who were flabbergasted at the Internet back in 1995. "Those intertubes are just a fad!"

New businesses are announcing its adoption all the time now, and getting faster.

Reeds jewelers recently
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reeds-jewelers-now-accepting-bitcoin-in-all-retail-stores-and-online-at-reedscom-2014-06-10

Already accepting:
Expedia
Dish networks
Overstock.com
Tiger direct

Ebay already opened a cryptocurrency category and are rumored to start accepting sooon.
Paypal is rumored to start soon.

If there's one thing that's funny is listening to people who have no clue on a topic spout about how it can't happen right as it is in front of their face.

If you really thought it was going to fail, you're free to go "short" it and make a lot of money if you're right, but somehow I don't think your willing to put you're money where your mouth is.

after all, only so many and they are gone!

1 might be worth 60Million Dollars someday ROFL

Your chest beating about working on the internet doesn’t impress me... I'm in IT also and I know a intro level cable puller could bark the same thing.

Also, there’s a lot of spouting, but I see your not willing to put your own money to back up your blather.

If you really had confidence that Bitcoin would fail, you would "short" its value and make a bundle... but you didn't say you had any plans to do so, so one can only take your ranting as so much noise.

Unlike you though, a ton of very smart people ARE in fact investing in the high growth Bitcoin market as we see here. You of course will sit on the sidelines and do nothing.

http://cryptocrimson.com/2014/04/largest-vc-firm-u-s-backing-bitcoin/

I guess a CO tech pulling a spool and doing runs between 66 blocks "could" have that title but they do a lot of other more brain challenging tasks as well.

WilTel got smart and instead of pulling anything, they used their existing pipelines and "shot" the fiber. Pretty badass idea, ah, to be back at WorldCom in 1994

But, what are you reading this for? You've got some BitCoins to search for! Remember, after each on is found the next gets harder! Kind of like Angry Birds


Firm Combines Fiber Optics With Pipelines
Jon Denton • Published: September 6, 1990

http://newsok.com/firm-combines-fiber-optics-with-pipelines/article/2330222

Fiber in a pipe sounded good but the notion was so nutty, Wilkens enlisted the help of Vernon Jones, the Williams Co. president. Jones liked what he heard and presented the plan to Williams, who agreed that it was worth exploring.

One problem Williams Cos. faced, however, was upgrading some of its pipeline network. After all, some of the oil pipes had been buried using mules and plows as far back as the 1920s. Shippers had stopped using the pipelines for petroleum and had downgraded the pipe status to a products line for such things as gasoline, kerosene or liquid fertilizer.

"Some of the pipe was old and leaky, but most of it was still good," said C.R. Sensney, general manager of Vyvx National Video Network, a Williams Cos. subsidiary and recognized cheerleader for the forces of fiber optics. "It was already there, and it was accessible."

In 1985, Williams Cos. shot pipeline "pigs" through a sector of tubing in the Midwest, much of it with an eight-inch diameter. The plastic balls acted like bullets in a gun barrel, cleaning the pipes.

Completely avoided the central point of the post I see, which is why you don’t short Bitcoins if your so sure of your stance? Don't you have any faith in your predictions?

equally if not more vulnerable to theft? I have read more than one story of disappearing bitcoins. If there is something deemed to be of value, someone will find a way to appropriate it for themselves.

It from being appropriated by the state. There is only the belief that it won't which maintains this separation.

Speculators.

Or are you thinking it's 2012 still?

You really don't keep up on current events do you?

Bitcoins have done nothing but bounce between hyperinflation and hyperdeflation. They don't benefit anyone except criminals and speculators.

or rumoured about to adopt, like:

Expedia - Currently using
Reed jewelers - Currently using
Ebay - Currently has a cybersecurity trading forum, rumoured to start accepting in mass.
Outsource.com - Currently using
Tiger direct - Currently using
Paypal - rumoured to start accepting soon
Western Union - rumoured to start accepting soon

Using your view of course, we should get rid of cash, because it's also used by criminals and speculators... Much like the internet itself was in large part supported by the porn industry, it grew to legitimacy. What a pathetic argument.

No currency has inherent value, we just believe/imagine they do, and that belief creates a social convenience for some people.

Until then, I think I'll stick with money.

So far other companies either currently taking Bitcoins, or heavily rumored about to start.

Expedia
Reed jewelers
Ebay
Outsource.com
Tiger direct
Paypal
Western Union

It is true that it is a capitalist endeavor. But it is idiotic to believe that it somehow democratizes capitalism when fundamentally capitalism when successful seeks to push the flow of wealth towards a smaller and smaller ruling class. Capitalism is not democratic.

In this sense, Bitcoin is the very embodiment of the conservative revolution; fascism. It represents a revolutionary advance in technology which seeks to maintain the traditional economic order. And the traditional economic order is capital itself.

Why is everything fiat?

There is no fundamental contradiction between the idea of crypto-currency and capitalist tyranny. It simply hasn't had the same length of history to be adopted into the corrupt system.

I think we can all envision a massive government warehouse populated by a super computer or computers designed solely to generate crypto-currency. And then the decentralized concept of such currency will vanish.

It was hardly decentralized in that manner. The creation of the "commodity" (Bitcoins) and the transaction mechanism (the ledger) was decentralized, but beyond that, nothing changes. It's really not substantially different from having workers mine gold to having people mine Bitcoins.

Bitcoins were invented specifically to get around fractional reserve banking, because in the real world there is far more credit than there is currency. As well there should be. Currency makes up around 10% of the actual, physical, money supply. For Bitcoin it makes up 100% of the physical money supply (technically virtual but quantifiable; each coin has its own physical and immutable address).

Commodity currency advocates, however, are really wishy washy on governments controlling the currency. But I don't see how you can't have a fractional reserve decentralized crypt-currency protocol. It's simple, allow the creation of multiple-sub-currencies within the protocol. Just as the world works today.

Is in the ruling class. New ways to divest capital from the ruling class are doomed to failure and they are also doomed to be generated recursively by an economic class which fundamentally misunderstands the philosophy behind capital; of course they're dodgy of government control because they don't yet realize that they have potentially invented the future of normative currency generation. They're the modern model of the petit bourgeoisie.

"But I don't see how you can't have a fractional reserve decentralized crypt-currency protocol."

The market doesn't care what you see, it only knows that investing in a deflationary currency makes sense on an individual level - and this will (in part) drive adoption.

If you really believe Bitcoin will go away or lose value, your free to put your money on it and "short" it's value and make a bundle. My guess is that your not willing to do that. Most people know when their opinions aren't informed enough to drop real money on them - so you just sit there doing nothing, and me and the largest venture capital outfits in the world will keep investing.

http://cryptocrimson.com/2014/04/largest-vc-firm-u-s-backing-bitcoin/

It's a "real" word with an "actual" meaning.

But to answer your sarcastic question (why is everything fiat):
http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/Econ154_Fall_2008/documents/temin_great_depression_jep.pdf

There exist no mechanism within the protocol to do fractional reserve banking. There have been discussions as to how to make it happen, but it is frowned upon in the community, and indeed, Mt.Gox was considered an example of how "fractional reserve banking" goes wrong. Note: my link is to a gold standard / fiat disliking perspective. I disagree with it fundamentally I'm just saying where they stand on Bitcoin and fractional reserve banking.

Fiat =/= Fractional banking system.

Governments have time and time again classified Bitcoin as a commodity, not a currency. Since it is used as a currency it is a commodity currency.

Gold has no intrinsic value any more than a bitcoin. It's all in what people subject value to it. The first few million bitcoins that the author mined, for instance, would destroy the value of it if they were ever in the wild.

What makes Bitcoin not fiat is that "printing money" is not possible within the protocol itself. You can do fractional reserve stuff outside of it, sure, but they believe fractional reserve banking is a farce.

Hence it has intrinsic value.

"Printing money" is irrelevant in determining whether or not a currency is a fiat currency.

Because you can purchase things with it.

Value comes from demand. If someday, people's preference changed and there is no demand for gold jewelry, then gold will not have intrinsic value anymore

Bitcoin's intrinsic value also comes from demand, maybe it is difficult to see the demand for a single bitcoin, but the whole bitcoin network can satisfy 2 major demands:

1. Securely store value in a digital form

2. Securely transfer that value worldwide instantly

There are demands in both area, gold or fiat money can not fulfil these demands

For the first demand, people might pick an online bank account, but due to the inflative nature of fiat money, it is not secure: The value of the saving account is getting less every year and the bank can freeze your account when they wish to do so

For the second demand, bitcoin enabled almost free international value transfer, just like internet enabled almost free international telephone call

How many did you buy when they were trading at $900?

Store value... if you don't mind constantly bouncing between hyperinflation and hyperdeflation.

So you have no clue what intrinsic value means. Makes sense now.

No one wants to buy the bitcoins you bought for $900.

I'm not interested in wasting my time discussing this issue with someone who is just trying to inflate the price of the scam pseudo currency that they bought.

Which means that bitcoin is far less safe than our regular, government regulated banking system. No thanks.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/16/bitcoin-currency-destroyed-51-attack-ghash-io

Bitcoin has stared down an existential threat, after a consortium of miners briefly gained enough processing power to theoretically destroy the currency.

For a few hours on Friday, mining pool Ghash.io controlled 51% of all the processing power being used to perform the calculations that keep bitcoin secure. If it had abused that power, it would have had the ability to indirectly take money from other users, for instance by buying something and then rewriting history so that the purchase never happened.

But shortly after the threshold was breached, some members of the mining pool pulled their computing power from the group, averting – or at least, delaying – catastrophe.

"The high level of combined hash power in the Ghash pool is concerning to many participants in the system," said one such member, BitFury, an industrial bitcoin mining firm. "As a leader and trusted partner in the bitcoin system, BitFury has decided to transfer some of its hashing power away from Ghash to help reduce these concerns."

SNIP

http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/13/time-for-a-hard-bitcoin-fork/

By two Cornell computer scientists:

A Bitcoin mining pool, called GHash and operated by an anonymous entity called CEX.io, just reached 51% of total network mining power today. Bitcoin is no longer decentralized. GHash can control Bitcoin transactions.

Is This Really Armageddon?
Fork in the road
Yes, it is. GHash is in a position to exercise complete control over which transactions appear on the blockchain and which miners reap mining rewards. They could keep 100% of the mining profits to themselves if they so chose. Bitcoin is currently an expensive distributed database under the control of a single entity, albeit one whose maintenance requires constantly burning energy -- worst of all worlds.

Some people might say that this is a sensational claim. It's not. The main pillar of the Bitcoin narrative was decentralized trust. That narrative has now collapsed. If you're going to trust GHash, you might as well store an account balance on a GHash server and do away with the rest of Bitcoin -- we'd all save a lot of energy. This is a big deal, and it would be a mistake to downplay it in the hope to buoy Bitcoin prices. It will be difficult to attract new people to Bitcoin when it's controlled or controlable by a single entity. If those people were willing to trust a single entity, they could have dodged inflation by putting their fiat into World of Warcraft or subway tokens. They came to Bitcoin because it was decentralized, and now it isn't. The first step is to admit that we have a problem. Luckily, there is life after Armageddon, and there are possible fixes to get back to normal from here.

Some pedants might point out that GHash reaching 55% over a 24-hour period doesn't mean they actually have 55% of the hashing power. GHash might just have gotten lucky. That's true, but they got lucky not just once, or twice, but over the span of 133 blocks. Laws of large numbers do apply. And even if they are really at 49.9% and "only" had a lucky long streak, their steady growth over the last year shows that they will soon be over the 50% line if they aren't already.

- See more at: http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/13/time-for-a-hard-bitcoin-fork/#sthash.wmrLCrzJ.dpuf

I'm in the Cyber Security Business and we discuss the security and vulnerability of this errr currency quite often.

And trust me--- it's vulnerable.

Although the OP starter---you know---the guy who thinks he's smarter than anyone on DU-- might disagree with me.

Glad that someone noticed!

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

How is this different from cash also? Are you suggesting getting rid of cash?

That's why it's the currency of choice for drug cartels. Or do you think they choose Bitcoin because of it's 'value' to capitalism?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]

Cash has no records of it moving between people. Bitcoin transactions are completely public. It sounds like you don't understand blockchain technology.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

Each Bitcoin (or fraction thereof) can most certainly be tracked from one address to another. Anyone can see every transaction... like here.

https://blockchain.info/

A Bitcoin can be followed from it's origin years ago, through every single transaction it will ever have. This is exactly how "double spending" is prevented and how anyone can see how many Bitcoins are associated with any particular address at any time.

A specific example of it being done is here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/09/05/follow-the-bitcoins-how-we-got-busted-buying-drugs-on-silk-roads-black-market/

I still don't know what to think of Bitcoin and its siblings... but certainly, at least a lot of that fellow says is true.

BC arise because of a need. The fact is, the UD dollar, and for that matter, most currencies, are on shaky ground, because they are linked to the poltical fortunes and mistakes of the countries that print them. The Yuan, the Dollar, the Euro, all have taken hits because of political squabbles. There is a place for an international currency, that one country cannot abuse. That is why Russia and China are buying Gold, they want to make a new currency to dethrone the Yankee Dollar. Of course, even this new currency would be run by a state, which means it would suffer.

Bitcoin is not the solution to that, as it is very much a tax dodge/libertarian fantasy right out of Ayn Rand's maggot infested brain. However, that does not deny the fact the worls could use a stable, international currency.

It is the only way that government can work towards a more just and equitable distribution of wealth is if government has control over the means of transfer of wealth.

Bitcoin and other non/governmental currencies are the worst thing ever for those who want to see a more just society, as they provide a way for more wealthy to evade taxes and hide thier wealth.

You can't support progressive ideals about wealth, taxation and income inequality and advocate for a currency that is absent any government management, oversight or control. That is a libertarians dream come true, not a progressive one.

Lobbyists petition the leaders to give special protective rules and regulations, forcing out smaller businesses so that only huge monolithic "too large to fail" entities exist...

It sounds like you didn’t even watch the video, but reflexively saw the word "Bitcoin" and started prattling on about some mythical world where angels inhabit Washington instead of the usual vipers. Talk about utopian idealism...

The best way to serve the poor is take away the powerful's ability to steal from them using their one of millions of ways. Bitcoin strikes terror into the entrenched corporatacracy because they know that if their insider buddies couldn’t give them all those favors, they would actually have to innovate and compete, and in lots of cases - fail.

If you favor normal dollars over Bitcoin, your supporting the existing corrupt status quo.

Dollars and taxes paid with dollars do that.

Taxes with Bitcoin could be collected exactly like the taxes on cash now, so roads, schools, and other infrastructure get built.

You completely avoided my point that your dollar gods are wiping out the middle class and making everyone poor.

Fuck Rand Paul and high tech goldbugs.

How stupid is it to equate a currency with a political party?

How stupid?

Maybe we should get rid of cars, bricks, pencils... All those evil things that libertarians use you know.

Again, mindless drivel to associate "things" with political agendas. Talk about myopic reflexive hermetically sealed reality bubbles.

I certainly could care less about Paul, so I don't know who you think your talking to Capt. Jumpto Conclusions.

Just sit back and enjoy the Bitcoin disruption like a good little one. Your opinion, permission, or action isn’t required for it's ultimate adoption.

Again... have a seat in the corner and let the big boys handle it.

Garbage in, garbage out.

I suggest you check your own posts Mr. Kettle before calling any other pots black.

Much like this "Democratic" congressman who is accepting Bitcoin donations to his campaign.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/13/jared-polis-bitcoin_n_5318582.html

To associate a currency to a political party, yes... its on par as associating hammers to libertarians because they use them.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

But you might have to pay a 75-bitcoin luxury tax.

Everyone is going to be filthy freaking rich!!!!111 I swear.

Thank you Rand and Ron!

Yawn... Let me know when you find a point there.

Nobody is getting rich with Bitcoin, except the people at the top... Just like Amway.

Enjoy your faux currency.

If there was "top" people getting rich on a currency, its off the dollar as you let them suck your wealth through inflation.

It's a sad day when your average Joe Moron out there cant tell the difference between inflation and deflation.

Enjoy your depreciating dollars!

Mt. Gox CEO Returns to Twitter, Infuriates Burned Investors (just like Amway)
http://www.wired.com/2014/06/karpeles/

It's got electrolytes!

I mined dozens back when it was easy. Since then, I've basically played dice games with it. Even playing the 98% odds dice games, it works out well.

I've bought gift certificates from Amazon, Victoria's Secret, Home Depot at Gyft.com with it.

It's nice to have a little something stashed away.

He invested 1k some relative gave him into them back in 2012 and was sitting pretty good about this point.

n/t