The value of bitcoins has tripled. It appears they are more valuable than the dollar. Its a sad state of affairs when the value of the dollar drops below a pure virtual currency...
Or it may be because "conventional" currency has lost trust in those last three years, with those bank failures and bankrupt countries.
Of course a virtual currency probably isn't immune to creative accounting... but to be honest, I haven't heard of it before now.
It may be a bubble.
Or it may be because "conventional" currency has lost trust in those last three years, with those bank failures and bankrupt countries.
Of course a virtual currency probably isn't immune to creative accounting... but to be honest, I haven't heard of it before now.
Actually if you stick to the direct trade of the bitcons themselves and don't do loans against them or things of that nature it will preclude 'creative' accounting. Its self checking and the entire system is decentralized. It uses the bittorrent system to disemenate the records to every user. So if someone tries to fake a tansaction, it'll be rejected by the system and their account will be automatically locked out... Its a pretty solid system...
So... out of curiosity... how many bitcoins do you own Lokaire?
None. to get them for 'free' you have to let your computer generate them for 1300 days straight for 50 which would be $150... when I get a job and an income I might go ahead and purchase some or invest in some of the Bitcoin derivative markets or whatever...
I'm just noticing that its hitting the alternative news sites and it seems like a very solid concept. Now if we could just somehow use the bittorrent technology to get alternative news we'd be set for when the feds shut down websites they don't like... Since Alex Jones's infowars and prisonplanet.tv has been blacklisted from google, I'm thinking its going to come sooner or later...
First Bitcoin Depression Hits
So... out of curiosity... how many bitcoins do you own Lokaire?
None. to get them for 'free' you have to let your computer generate them for 1300 days straight for 50 which would be $150... when I get a job and an income I might go ahead and purchase some or invest in some of the Bitcoin derivative markets or whatever...
I'm just noticing that its hitting the alternative news sites and it seems like a very solid concept. Now if we could just somehow use the bittorrent technology to get alternative news we'd be set for when the feds shut down websites they don't like... Since Alex Jones's infowars and prisonplanet.tv has been blacklisted from google, I'm thinking its going to come sooner or later...
Woo conspiracy theories aren't my cup of tea, so I don't frequent either of those sites, but you made me curious enough to check and both of those sites still come up on Google for me if I do any sort of search that SHOULD pull them up (i.e; their names, or googling "alex jones" etc).
A bunch of cranky old seantors go on the news and say "we need to stop these interwebberz who are buying and selling drugs on websites where we can't track them!" and they get two reactions: "I knew those interwebberz were up to no good!" and "wait... I can anonymously buy drugs on the web? Tell me more."
drugs you say?
tl;dr
drugs you say?
Yeah, basically this response right here.
@EE - record of the existance of a transaction goes to everyone, but very little else actually stays, and it's essentially like a cash transaction anyway, just values moving from one person to the other with no other associated data. Like Pluisjen said, you'd have to already know what someone's up to in order to decipher the record.
Of course, in the same vein, it's possible to set things up so that your personal connection to the bitcoin address is unprovable.
What's funny is I saw this article about 10 minutes after I saw a link to this on another forum I frequent.
First Bitcoin Depression Hits
Interesting read
Hrm... I'm skeptical. If the data is there such that if someone tries to abuse the situation they can be banned, that means the information is there such that it can be found out anyhow. Now, there's some ways around that using encryption that I can think of, but none of them work with this kind of decentralized structure.
Its tied to a number. It would look something like this
bitcoin#102384092 generated by 23084290834 transfered to 2384847439 transfered to 102983429038 transfered to 2038420302 transfered to 2038947029.
Now if the cops start snooping around and you have masked your IP properly you can literally delete your id number from your computer and bam they can't prove anything... in fact they'd have to trace the transaction itself to have any chance of finding who it was going to...
And if it gives out account numbers to everyone... you can still see the details of every purchase ever. Tied to an account number instead of a real name? Doesn't matter, this currency is still, if you've accurately represented the design, way more big-brothery then any conspiracy you've come up with.
... wait, so you think there's a shadow government pulling all the strings but you think you can defeat modern digital forensics in your own home?
And if it gives out account numbers to everyone... you can still see the details of every purchase ever. Tied to an account number instead of a real name? Doesn't matter, this currency is still, if you've accurately represented the design, way more big-brothery then any conspiracy you've come up with.
In the sense that the mint knows where every digital bill is stashed, yes, but it has no idea who owns each stash. There's no registration, sign up, or other submission of any meatspace (I love and hate that word) identity. Beyond that the movement of individual bitcoins is about as meaningful as blindly watching the movement of individual quarters.
It's more big brothery in that they know where all the coins are, but less in that you're never standing around holding a wad of cash.
Besides, untraceability isn't the primary motivation behind Bitcoin anyway, just the difficulty in sorting out bitcoin movement is a favoured attribute for the illicit market.
So either you guys are doing a piss-poor job describing the security features of this bitcoin or it's the most traceable thing ever. I mean ****, at least with credit cards you have to get the company to cough up the records, with these things they just give the records away.
... if you see every transaction then the only thing keeping you from knowing where every bill is, is how much time and memory you're willing to spend. It's like if everyone's ledgers were mixed up, line-by-line. Sure, it's a pain to figure out just how much one person has, but that sort of task is what computers were built for.
So either you guys are doing a piss-poor job describing the security features of this bitcoin or it's the most traceable thing ever. I mean ****, at least with credit cards you have to get the company to cough up the records, with these things they just give the records away.
Because there are no qualifiers on who can create and address and no direct information tying a person to an address if you're looking to obfuscate your transactions you could have dozens, if not hundreds, of addresss to splinter, combine, re-splinter, and re-combine coins across, and short of coming into posession of your physical computer there's nothing that ties you as a carbon based thing to any of it. The entire transaction history is "public" but it's all devoid of context. There's no way to tell a business apart from a friend apart from a smurf. In this regard you are only as secure as your own behaviour.
Let's use a hypothetical example, dealing with crime since that's really what people care about:
Our mutual friends Joe and Paul are looking to buy a hooker off an onion market. The hooker has become a person of interest and due to being sloppy on her part LE knows her bitcoin address and is watching her transactions.
Joe is also a bit of a moron and has his address posted in his signature on every forum he visits, and after making the transaction it takes little more than a google search to find out who the address belongs to.
Paul is a paranoid guy. He never gives out his address unless buying something, and creates a new one after every transaction. He has, essentially, dozens of meaningless identities performing dozens of transactions without context. There's no way to sort out if Paul is one person or twenty unless you already know what you're looking at.
That's the key difference between the bitcoin network and the credit card network: the credit cards and the recipients are all tied to someone specific, so the context already exists for the transactions to make sense.
Unless you're actually asking about security against forging in which case I'd have to direct you to the technical articles on the cryptography involved, because I haven't read them.
How do you create a new "address" after each transaction? If there's no record of Alex giving Bob his coin stash, why is it legit for Bob to use the coins? And if there's no need for a record of Alex giving Bob his coin stash, what's to stop Caroline from intercepting the data and using the coins without Alex/Bob's approval?
The bitcoin frontend has a button right on it that queries and generates a new address, so to create a new address after each transaction you'd just generate a new address and then send your coins from your first to your second.
It's basically like making a new bank account or getting a new credit card after every purchase, except it only takes seconds.
Now, yes, in a sense there is a record of Alex giving Bob his stash, but only if you know that #0000000000000000001 is Alex and #0000000000000000002 is Bob.
As far as interception goes, the coins never "travel." There isn't a point where they're unassigned within the block. They aren't sent so much as re-assigned, and there's no such thing as an unassigned bitcoin.
Now, wether or not that is foolproof I don't know. To look at that you'd have to get into the cryptology of their generation and structure and, like I said before, I just haven't read into the hard technical details.
Here's a decent enough article on how the security works: http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/how-bitcoin-security-works-by-analogy
So the whole untraceability bit? I'm gonna rank it as somewhere above credit cards and below pre-paid debit cards. Though that everyone can see the transaction history is really worrisome to me.
... so yeah, the entire security depends on whether you can connect an account to a person, which I imagine is easier then you think.
What kind of circumstances are we talking about?
The system sounds like, by design, it sacrifices anonymity for security. Which isn't bad or good, it just is.
geeks.thedailywh.at/2011/06/15/bitcoin-h...
So... out of curiosity... how many bitcoins do you own Lokaire?
None. to get them for 'free' you have to let your computer generate them for 1300 days straight for 50 which would be $150... when I get a job and an income I might go ahead and purchase some or invest in some of the Bitcoin derivative markets or whatever...
Nice. So you have to work your computer for .005 dollars per hour for 1300 straight days.......and perhaps open your computer up to attacks. What happens if during those 3 and a half years you buy a new computer or you lose power?
None. to get them for 'free' you have to let your computer generate them for 1300 days straight for 50 which would be $150... when I get a job and an income I might go ahead and purchase some or invest in some of the Bitcoin derivative markets or whatever...
Nice. So you have to work your computer for .005 dollars per hour for 1300 straight days.......and perhaps open your computer up to attacks. What happens if during those 3 and a half years you buy a new computer or you lose power?
It's a bit more complex than that, as far as how blocks are generated. Actually, it's a lot more complex.
It doesn't matter if you lose power because block generation isn't a contiguous process, you'd just be losing time.
As far as making your computer vulnerable to attacks: no much more than if you just left your computer on with your browser open. Typically people whop are "serious" about mining will build a cheap second rig (or two or three) that they can ignore in the corner.
Also at present exchange 50 BTC is more like 1,000$.
Now I'm wondering if multiple people can work on the same problem at the same time. Would suck to have your computer running for 4 years only to have someone else find the solution a week before you do.
Bitcoins are hard to trace, and they’re tied to computers rather than user accounts. If someone can get access to your computer, they can also get access to your Bitcoin wallet, and — as was the case here — transfer your coins right out of it. The anonymous nature of Bitcoin makes it tough to trace the thieves.
They're as anonimous as cash is. If someone takes your real wallet you have the same issues.
Except my wallet doesn't fit $500K.
They're as anonimous as cash is. If someone takes your real wallet you have the same issues.
Except my wallet doesn't fit $500K.
Well, what if they steal your grocery bag full of cash that you were taking to buy a suitcase full of premium cocaine?
They're as anonimous as cash is. If someone takes your real wallet you have the same issues.
Except my wallet doesn't fit $500K.
Well, what if they steal your grocery bag full of cash that you were taking to buy a suitcase full of premium cocaine?
Excuse me... I'm Colombian. I would be selling the cocaine. Get it straight!
Excuse me... I'm Colombian. I would be selling the cocaine. Get it straight!
My appologies.
Though I do agree that it's a fair enough criticism of the system.
I wonder how long it'll be before Glenn Beck starts telling his listeners to get into Bitcoins. 
I wonder how long it'll be before Glenn Beck starts telling his listeners to get into Bitcoins.
Depends on when Bitcoins start paying him.
They're as anonimous as cash is. If someone takes your real wallet you have the same issues.
Except my wallet doesn't fit $500K.
You mean you're not dumb enough to store $500K in something that can so easily be taken away. This guy apparently, would walk around with $500K in his wallet.
If you spend a measly 1% of that money on security, you can purchase 20 EEEpcs, and store a section of the bitcoins on each, thereby reducing the impact of such a theft easy.
Then again, if you don't put your money on the bank but store all of it in a large box under your bed, you get about the same level of security as this guy had... and you're asking for it.