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> "So you buy bitcoins with dollars, Bitpay exchanges the bitcoins back into dollars, and then they hand the dollars over to Steam." You don't have to buy bitc
by ZenoArrow 11y ago
> "So you buy bitcoins with dollars, Bitpay exchanges the bitcoins back into dollars, and then they hand the dollars over to Steam."
You don't have to buy bitcoins directly, you can mine them.
- VMG 11y agoOr sell other goods and services.
- joosters 11y agoThen I'm converting dollars to bitcoin via my electricity bill, with even more inefficiency.
- lsadam0 11y agoThen don't?
- ssharp 11y agoExactly. Most people logically arrive at this conclusion when considering Bitcoin's merit as a currency. And that's before they even learn about the deep security issues, how hard it is to protect, how most Bitcoin services cannot be trusted, etc.
- lsadam0 11y agoDeep security issues? Like what?
- pjc50 11y agoYour money is exactly as secure as your private keys, and if they are stolen there is basically no prospect of getting it back. "Be your own bank" implies "be your own security division", which very few people are qualified to do.
- lsadam0 11y agoIf I leave cash on the street should I expect it to be safe? Is that a deep security issue? You implied there were deep fundamental flaws in BTC security, but your response shows nothing of the sort. Your 'deep flaw' is 'you have to protect your private keys'. You are describing a UX flaw, and I would agree with that. Objectively, you have exposed no 'deep security issues'.
- ssharp 11y agoI'm not sure what Bitcoin equivalent of "leaving cash on the street" you're inferring. It might be helpful if you elaborated on that. Bitcoin's non-physical nature (as compared to paper and coin currencies), I think, makes it more of a metaphor to a bank account or debit/credit card than a currency. This likely is a UX flaw, as you state, but it's a pretty big flaw. And credit cards, in most jurisdictions, have lots of protections against theft and fraud, as well as consumer protections like chargebacks and transactions are reversible, of course.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago> "I'm not sure what Bitcoin equivalent of "leaving cash on the street" you're inferring. It might be helpful if you elaborated on that." Bitcoins are a form of digital cash. You store Bitcoins in a wallet. If you lose your Bitcoin wallet you lose your bitcoins. In a similar sense, if you lose your wallet containing notes/coins, you lose your notes/coins. The security risk is the same.
- pauletienney 11y agoBut the digital form of bitcoin change things. A good hacker might check for thousands of computer a day to find private keys but he can't walk along kilometers to find coins on the ground.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoDon't expose them to hackers then, keep your bitcoin wallet away from the Internet until you want to use it.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoIt's a bootstrapping measure. The idea eventually is that Bitcoin will be a useful currency without such heavy reliance on converting back and forth with traditional currencies.
- apozem 11y ago> While ASICs represent the fixed cost of Bitcoin mining, the expense of electricity is the marginal cost; indeed, Bitcoin is, for all intents and purposes, the digital representation of electricity. https://stratechery.com/2015/21-inc-and-the-future-of-bitcoin/ https://stratechery.com/2015/21-inc-and-the-future-of-bitcoi...
- stale2002 11y ago21 inc's ideas are a horrible scam. Why would you pay hundreds of dollars, to buy an inefficient miner that is 10% as efficient, when you could just buy hundreds of dollars of bitcoin.