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* Where can I find Bitcoins? 1. You can hand over stupendous amounts of personal identification to an all-but-unregulated exchange. This is best analogised to

* Where can I find Bitcoins? 1. You can hand over stupendous amounts of personal identification to an all-but-unregulated exchange. This is best analogised to keeping your money in a sock under someone else's mattress. Occasionally exchange owners disappear with everyone's socks, or get "hacked". This is very rare, and only happens once or twice a month. Our FAQ strongly recommends Cryptsy, they're a good one mate. 2. You can exchange cash directly with someone on LocalBitcoins for bitcoins, because business deals in parking lots are famous for working out well. 3. You can mine them yourself! Note that barriers to entry include designing your own ASICs and super-cheap or subsidised electricity (possibly buying your own hydroelectric plant). * How do I buy and sell stuff with Bitcoins? Much simpler than just using your dollars! 1. Change your dollars into Bitcoins. 2. Find a vendor who advertises that they take Bitcoins. 3. See if they can find the staff member who still remembers how they take Bitcoins. 4. Buy your thing. 5. Wait six hours for your transaction to confirm. 6. When it's dropped on the floor, send it again with a larger fee. Make sure you didn't accidentally reverse the amount and fee fields, irreversible remember! * Example of a Bitcoin transaction Your mother calls you that her computer has been locked with ransomware demanding bitcoins within 48 hours. Proceed according to the first step. * What do I need to know to protect my Bitcoins? Fortunately, we have this super-simple guide to Bitcoin security! https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet Your mother will be completely up to speed next time. * What are the disadvantages of Bitcoin? It is most useful for speculation (95% of usage), drugs and ransomware in that order. * Scams to watch out for Fucking everything. The uses that aren't scams are buying drugs. * Testimonials Tyler Winklevoss, co-creator of Facebook, summed it up when he said: "what was I thinking when I bought all these coins, will I get this ETF up before the bitcoin network collapses. DAMN YOU STOLFIIIIIIIII" Rick Falkvinge, Founder of the Swedish Pirate party, predicted that: "The Target Value For Bitcoin Is Not Some $50 Or $100. It Is $100,000 To $1,000,000." Of course, that was a few months before the bubble popped, but never mind that! According to John McAfee, Founder of McAfee, "THEY PUT A RADIO IN MY HEAD YOU KNOW" * Where do I go from here? To a shop for armored knee pads, so the next time someone says "Bitcoin" or "Blockchain" to you you can kick them in the nuts and run.

sayurichick 10y ago
im curious why you're so angry at bitcoin. it's just open source software, that is VOLUNTARY. it clearly challenges your beliefs/ideologies to a point that you spent the time to comment and try to frame bitcoin in a negative light. Is it bitcoin (the software) scamming people? or is it humans? and most importantly, what are your reasons for wanting bitcoin to fail?
- davidgerard 10y ago
  It's those fat Goldman Sachs paydays. No, here you go, actual reasons: * Every cryptocurrency I’ve seen is a fractal scam at every level. When phrases along the lines of "a whole new form of money" and "the old rules don’t apply any more" start going around, people get gullible and the ethically-challenged get creative. * Every cryptocurrency I’ve seen is a disastrous waste of resources and effort at every level – “proof of work” in particular is literally wasted to secure a distributed thing that should not be distributed, and which naturally recentralises anyway. (4 miners do 50% and 7 miners do 75% of Bitcoin, and 75% of hashing power is about to be in a single building.) * Cryptocurrency advocates are frequently both strident and delusional about technology, economics, human nature and computer science itself. * Bitcoin ideology is based on John Birch Society and Eustace Mullins conspiracy theories about central bankers, based on economic ideas which are most generously described as "not even wrong". * Bitcoin advocates want a dot-com payday, where you get rich for free, only without even the step where you build an enterprise that does something that's useful to someone. * Bitcoin advocates are almost universally either scammers, suckers or (best of all) suckers who think they're the scammer. Sorry, "early adopter". Pretty much everyone who got in after about 2012 is playing the role of "sucker" in the pump'n'dump. A "trustless" currency seems to attract people who absolutely cannot be trusted. * Blockchains only approximately solve the problems they claim to (coordinating information amongst actors who distrust each other), and the approximation breaks down as they recentralise. * Blockchains have no use cases outside cryptocurrencies, insofar as those count as a use case. * Everything about cryptocurrencies is, in practice, a bad idea for pretty much anyone to be involved in, and warning people off it is a public service. * I feel like it. I've answered you. Now it's your turn to go back to my comment up there and point out which bits are factually inaccurate.

sayurichick 10y ago

im curious why you're so angry at bitcoin. it's just open source software, that is VOLUNTARY. it clearly challenges your beliefs/ideologies to a point that you spent the time to comment and try to frame bitcoin in a negative light. Is it bitcoin (the software) scamming people? or is it humans? and most importantly, what are your reasons for wanting bitcoin to fail?

davidgerard 10y ago
It's those fat Goldman Sachs paydays. No, here you go, actual reasons: * Every cryptocurrency I’ve seen is a fractal scam at every level. When phrases along the lines of "a whole new form of money" and "the old rules don’t apply any more" start going around, people get gullible and the ethically-challenged get creative. * Every cryptocurrency I’ve seen is a disastrous waste of resources and effort at every level – “proof of work” in particular is literally wasted to secure a distributed thing that should not be distributed, and which naturally recentralises anyway. (4 miners do 50% and 7 miners do 75% of Bitcoin, and 75% of hashing power is about to be in a single building.) * Cryptocurrency advocates are frequently both strident and delusional about technology, economics, human nature and computer science itself. * Bitcoin ideology is based on John Birch Society and Eustace Mullins conspiracy theories about central bankers, based on economic ideas which are most generously described as "not even wrong". * Bitcoin advocates want a dot-com payday, where you get rich for free, only without even the step where you build an enterprise that does something that's useful to someone. * Bitcoin advocates are almost universally either scammers, suckers or (best of all) suckers who think they're the scammer. Sorry, "early adopter". Pretty much everyone who got in after about 2012 is playing the role of "sucker" in the pump'n'dump. A "trustless" currency seems to attract people who absolutely cannot be trusted. * Blockchains only approximately solve the problems they claim to (coordinating information amongst actors who distrust each other), and the approximation breaks down as they recentralise. * Blockchains have no use cases outside cryptocurrencies, insofar as those count as a use case. * Everything about cryptocurrencies is, in practice, a bad idea for pretty much anyone to be involved in, and warning people off it is a public service. * I feel like it. I've answered you. Now it's your turn to go back to my comment up there and point out which bits are factually inaccurate.