7 ms·

Bitcoin has risen more than eightfold in past year

24 points by zoomzoom 9y ago

nicky0 9y ago
"Literally soaring into space"
- Danihan 9y ago
  "Technology provider to use satellites to increase access"
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  blue origin or spacex is going to send a rocket up there and comeback with a pile of literal bitcoins, in a treasure chest. Then we will fly to Mars and live there with the money we make from collecting bitcoins from space. Everything about this is hype. Everytime I hear someone talking about bitcoin, I squint my eyes and think, I don't think you know what you are saying. This is another case of that for sure.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    Hype? You can use it today, for free. It is operating and 100% open source. https://github.com/Blockstream/satellite https://github.com/Blockstream/satellite
- rsync 9y ago
  " ... literally ..." From the article: "Blockstream Inc. plans to make the digital ledger underpinning the cryptocurrency accessible via satellite signal so people without Internet access, or in places where bandwidth is expensive, can trade and mine bitcoin."
TD-Linux 9y ago
Better links are the Blockstream press release: https://blockstream.com/2017/08/15/announcing-blockstream-satellite.html https://blockstream.com/2017/08/15/announcing-blockstream-sa... And the website: https://blockstream.com/satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/
bandrami 9y ago
Can somebody ELI5 how cryptocurrencies don't run afoul of Ponzi scheme laws? The only way the price can be going up is if new money is coming in constantly, right?
- nadaviv 9y ago
  The same thing holds true for gold, diamonds, art paintings and fiat currencies.
  - bandrami 9y ago
    Gold and diamonds have industrial uses and so some inherent value (even if a seller's cartel in both cases overinflates them). Fiat currencies are backed by big militaries, which, again, is an inherent value.
    - bdamm 9y ago
      Bitcoin can be transferred from anywhere to anywhere, with almost no interference. That is its inherent value.
      - foepys 9y ago
        Western Union can do this, too. Even into a lot of regions where nearly nobody has internet access. Depending on the state of the Bitcoin network, sometimes also cheaper than Bitcoin.
        bdamm 9y ago
        As someone who has used Western Union and ended up in money-trail hell, I can tell you with complete confidence that Western Union and their ilk are huge pains in the butt and charge too much for their overly complex "service". Sure, you need to get money into bitcoin and then out in order to take advantage of that property, but the ability to do that is getting easier and cheaper all the time.
    - 9y ago
twinkletwinkle 9y ago
That is figuratively the worst title I've ever read.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  Literally is non-figuratively no longer a word that means anything.
- jandrese 9y ago
  They are launching a satellite, the headline is accurate.
  - jethro_tell 9y ago
    No, if they were launching a rocket full of Hard Drives with bitcoin wallets on them it would be literal. They aren't adding anything that my partents aren't gettin out in rural USA with their current satalite internet. (remindes me, need to pay my dial up bill before I go out there next week)
    - jandrese 9y ago
      As long as a copy of the Blockchain is on the satellite (which seems likely given the mission) then the headline is accurate. It could just be a bent pipe comm satellite, which would make the headline mostly inaccurate, but it seems like having a copy of the blockchain on the bird would be a big win. A lot of the queries could be completed without having to bounce back to the ground if a copy of the blockchain was available on the satellite.
      - kobeya 9y ago
        There is no copy of the blockchain on the satellite. These things are just repeaters for the signal sent up from a teleport station, presumably owned by Blockstream.
    - kobeya 9y ago
      This service has no monthly bill attached.
sktrdie 9y ago
Aren't there better ways to broadcast the data? Say using SMS services which seem already quite used by farmers in remote places [1]. Also it's unclear how people in these remote places will acquire their first bitcoins. What I like about Bitcoin is the way that the tokens are distributed (via PoW currently). If there was a way to distribute a new cryptocurrency, somewhat fairly, within these remote places that have no internet, and let them bootstrap their own economy, now that would be cool. For these places what is needed is a sort of an "offline cryptocurrency". They don't care about sending 5 btc to the person across town instantly... they care about sending 5 btc to the person in front of them at the market. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2012/nov/27/farmers-mobile-phones-sms-agriculture https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...
- zanny 9y ago
  Bitcoin is only so valuable because its a pyramid scheme. All the participation and engagement by miners and anyone looking to get rich off it is predicated on how most bitcoins were already made so any market growth translates into increased prices and scarcity for the bitcoin that exists. This is the fundamental problem with making a cryptocurrency that can actually serve its users well. To get popular, you need to be a get rich quick scheme, but to actually be useful, you need to not deflate out of control forever. But bitcoin is doing what it was meant to do. It wasn't meant to promote a healthy monetary policy or be a pervasive useful currency to replace the fiats we have now - it would have had a much different coin issuance algorithm / monetary growth policy otherwise. It demonstrated the capabilities of proof of work distributed consensus and made its early adopters ludicrously rich.
- kobeya 9y ago
  Bitcoin is a up to 4MB/10min protocol. That's a thing much for SMS...
kharms 9y ago
Has anyone done the math to see the effect of ransomware on the bitcoin price? How much demand is from folks buying their data back?
- ojr 9y ago
  not much considering $300 million usd worth of bitcoin was traded with South Korean Won in the past 24 hours compared to wannacry ransom that raised around $50k, exchanges have more influence than ransoms https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bithumb/ https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bithumb/
vlokshin 9y ago
The news is so behind actual crypto performance. Shocking, as it's all readily available. This is like the 10th time the news catches up to a surge only after there's actually been a quick drop (like today. BTC, ETH, LTC all down 5-6% over 24h). The volatility itself (in crypto) creates amazing short turn-around opportunity for those willing to take some risks and set up basic limit buy/sells (gdax makes this very easy).
joeyspn 9y ago
> the entire cost of all equipment needed to connect your computer to the Blockstream Satellite network is only about $100 USD So you need to buy a SDR transceiver in order to operate... https://blockstream.com/satellite/blockstream-satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/blockstream-satellite/
- kobeya 9y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted for one of the few on topic posts in this thread.

24 points by zoomzoom 9y ago

nicky0 9y ago

"Literally soaring into space"

Danihan 9y ago
"Technology provider to use satellites to increase access"
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jethro_tell 9y ago
blue origin or spacex is going to send a rocket up there and comeback with a pile of literal bitcoins, in a treasure chest. Then we will fly to Mars and live there with the money we make from collecting bitcoins from space. Everything about this is hype. Everytime I hear someone talking about bitcoin, I squint my eyes and think, I don't think you know what you are saying. This is another case of that for sure.
- kobeya 9y ago
  Hype? You can use it today, for free. It is operating and 100% open source. https://github.com/Blockstream/satellite https://github.com/Blockstream/satellite
rsync 9y ago
" ... literally ..." From the article: "Blockstream Inc. plans to make the digital ledger underpinning the cryptocurrency accessible via satellite signal so people without Internet access, or in places where bandwidth is expensive, can trade and mine bitcoin."

TD-Linux 9y ago

Better links are the Blockstream press release: https://blockstream.com/2017/08/15/announcing-blockstream-satellite.html https://blockstream.com/2017/08/15/announcing-blockstream-sa... And the website: https://blockstream.com/satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/

bandrami 9y ago

Can somebody ELI5 how cryptocurrencies don't run afoul of Ponzi scheme laws? The only way the price can be going up is if new money is coming in constantly, right?

nadaviv 9y ago
The same thing holds true for gold, diamonds, art paintings and fiat currencies.
- bandrami 9y ago
  Gold and diamonds have industrial uses and so some inherent value (even if a seller's cartel in both cases overinflates them). Fiat currencies are backed by big militaries, which, again, is an inherent value.
  - bdamm 9y ago
    Bitcoin can be transferred from anywhere to anywhere, with almost no interference. That is its inherent value.
    - foepys 9y ago
      Western Union can do this, too. Even into a lot of regions where nearly nobody has internet access. Depending on the state of the Bitcoin network, sometimes also cheaper than Bitcoin.
      - bdamm 9y ago
        As someone who has used Western Union and ended up in money-trail hell, I can tell you with complete confidence that Western Union and their ilk are huge pains in the butt and charge too much for their overly complex "service". Sure, you need to get money into bitcoin and then out in order to take advantage of that property, but the ability to do that is getting easier and cheaper all the time.
  - 9y ago

twinkletwinkle 9y ago

That is figuratively the worst title I've ever read.

graphitezepp 9y ago
Literally is non-figuratively no longer a word that means anything.
jandrese 9y ago
They are launching a satellite, the headline is accurate.
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  No, if they were launching a rocket full of Hard Drives with bitcoin wallets on them it would be literal. They aren't adding anything that my partents aren't gettin out in rural USA with their current satalite internet. (remindes me, need to pay my dial up bill before I go out there next week)
  - jandrese 9y ago
    As long as a copy of the Blockchain is on the satellite (which seems likely given the mission) then the headline is accurate. It could just be a bent pipe comm satellite, which would make the headline mostly inaccurate, but it seems like having a copy of the blockchain on the bird would be a big win. A lot of the queries could be completed without having to bounce back to the ground if a copy of the blockchain was available on the satellite.
    - kobeya 9y ago
      There is no copy of the blockchain on the satellite. These things are just repeaters for the signal sent up from a teleport station, presumably owned by Blockstream.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    This service has no monthly bill attached.

sktrdie 9y ago

Aren't there better ways to broadcast the data? Say using SMS services which seem already quite used by farmers in remote places [1]. Also it's unclear how people in these remote places will acquire their first bitcoins. What I like about Bitcoin is the way that the tokens are distributed (via PoW currently). If there was a way to distribute a new cryptocurrency, somewhat fairly, within these remote places that have no internet, and let them bootstrap their own economy, now that would be cool. For these places what is needed is a sort of an "offline cryptocurrency". They don't care about sending 5 btc to the person across town instantly... they care about sending 5 btc to the person in front of them at the market. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2012/nov/27/farmers-mobile-phones-sms-agriculture https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...

zanny 9y ago
Bitcoin is only so valuable because its a pyramid scheme. All the participation and engagement by miners and anyone looking to get rich off it is predicated on how most bitcoins were already made so any market growth translates into increased prices and scarcity for the bitcoin that exists. This is the fundamental problem with making a cryptocurrency that can actually serve its users well. To get popular, you need to be a get rich quick scheme, but to actually be useful, you need to not deflate out of control forever. But bitcoin is doing what it was meant to do. It wasn't meant to promote a healthy monetary policy or be a pervasive useful currency to replace the fiats we have now - it would have had a much different coin issuance algorithm / monetary growth policy otherwise. It demonstrated the capabilities of proof of work distributed consensus and made its early adopters ludicrously rich.
kobeya 9y ago
Bitcoin is a up to 4MB/10min protocol. That's a thing much for SMS...

kharms 9y ago

Has anyone done the math to see the effect of ransomware on the bitcoin price? How much demand is from folks buying their data back?

ojr 9y ago
not much considering $300 million usd worth of bitcoin was traded with South Korean Won in the past 24 hours compared to wannacry ransom that raised around $50k, exchanges have more influence than ransoms https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bithumb/ https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bithumb/

vlokshin 9y ago

The news is so behind actual crypto performance. Shocking, as it's all readily available. This is like the 10th time the news catches up to a surge only after there's actually been a quick drop (like today. BTC, ETH, LTC all down 5-6% over 24h). The volatility itself (in crypto) creates amazing short turn-around opportunity for those willing to take some risks and set up basic limit buy/sells (gdax makes this very easy).

joeyspn 9y ago

> the entire cost of all equipment needed to connect your computer to the Blockstream Satellite network is only about $100 USD So you need to buy a SDR transceiver in order to operate... https://blockstream.com/satellite/blockstream-satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/blockstream-satellite/

kobeya 9y ago
Not sure why you are being downvoted for one of the few on topic posts in this thread.