12 ms·

Gavin Andresen on BitCoin and Virtual Currency

63 points by pointillistic 16y ago

pointillistic 16y ago
This is far from a benign endeavor. Look what feds are up to: Fake gold and silver Ron Paul coins seized: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21836699/ns/politics-decision_08/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21836699/ns/politics-decision_08...
sneak 16y ago
Unrelated: If anyone wants to purchase Bitcoins, feel free to contact me. (sneak@datavibe.net - PGP 5539 AD00 DE4C 42F3 AFE1 1575 0524 43F4 DF2A 55C2)
- dexen 16y ago
  Before somebody criticizes you for soliciting on HN, I'd consider your post an indicator of existence of bitcoin market. Out of curiosity, how much do you have for sale?
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    Just Google "bitcoin market". Bitcoins are quite liquid, although the market is pretty volatile.
- wladimir 16y ago
  Might be a stupid question, but what's that hexadecimal code?
  - dexen 16y ago
    EDIT As pointed out in this thread, that's not a bitcoin address. That's just a GPG key fingerprint. Nothing to do with bitcoin itself. Terribly sorry for the foobar. The original post: > It's a bitcoin address, used for both sending and receiving. If you want to trade with a person, you enter that address as receiver's address in a transaction. Nb., each bitcoin user can freely generate several addresses to protect privacy; up to and including using one-off addresses (i.e., address for just one transaction).
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - wladimir 16y ago
      Hm, OK, last time I looked, bitcoin addresses were given in base64.
      - sneak 16y ago
        They're base58.
    - sneak 16y ago
      Bitcoin addresses look like this: 1HkrUYFNW6XHR99HoDivQuHRhMghwVaVMF
    - endian 16y ago
      def bitcoin_address(public_key): x = "\x00" + ripemd160(sha256(public_key)) x += sha256(sha256(x))[0:4] return base58_encode(x)
  - sneak 16y ago
    It's my PGP key fingerprint. Copy the last two blocks and you've got my key ID - with that, my key is fetchable from public keyservers and has my email address on it.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Since there is already a clearing central for that, I am going to have to downvote you for spam.
  - dexen 16y ago
    Please have a look at HN Guidelines [0] -- spam ought to be flagged (the `flag' link next to the post) rather than downvoted. ---- [0] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - cmelbye 16y ago
      I don't have a flag button next to comments, should I?
      - cpach 16y ago
        Try the comment's permalink (eg. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2407227 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2407227).
      - dexen 16y ago
        You seem to have low average karma; perhaps there's some threshold. There certainly is some karma threshold for downvoting.
  - sneak 16y ago
    There is no centralization with Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin transactions are not able to be reversed, buying them is notoriously difficult online, as fraudsters like to buy them with stolen credit cards. (Of course, this means that almost nobody sells Bitcoins for PayPal/credit cards/etc. due to chargeback risk.) It's much better to deal with someone you know, or, failing that, someone with existing reputation. I was hoping to make life easier for fellow HN scenesters. Please pardon the intrusion, commerce-phobe.
    - dexen 16y ago
      Any source supporting the assertions about fraudulent transactions? Not that I contest, just never heard any story before.
- mynameishere 16y ago
  Why would you possibly want centralized currency for something so much superior? I can't fathom your angle.
  - mrb 16y ago
    Some of us who mine Bitcoins need to sell some either to recoup our investments in hardware to generate them (repaying debt), or to purchase more hardware (reinvesting the profits).
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- dexen 16y ago
  > the supply of currency (...) is controlled by a small handful of early adopters who therefore control the price. Careful now, this is a big simplification. The supply is only partly controlled by the current adopters. Each adopter is free to throw more and better silicon & software onto the computations, to get better chances of finding a new hash. However, the overall pace is moderated by the so-called `difficulty factor', shared by all peers. Which is adjusted periodically so the generation of subsequent hashes doesn't progress too fast -- where `fast or too fast' is about building community of users. Current difficulty factor, and other stats, available near real-time courtesy of http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/ http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/ EDIT: from the bitcoin wiki: > The network tries to create 6 blocks per hour. Every 2016 blocks (about two weeks), all Bitcoin clients compare the actual number created with this goal and modify the target by the percentage that it varied. This increases (or decreases) the difficulty of generating blocks. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
    - dexen 16y ago
      I've failed to make a point. There is a kind of self-regulation mechanism in bitcoin. It limits the ability of adopters to heavily imbalance the system. Also, that's quite unlike the currencies issued by countries ;-)
  - bonzoesc 16y ago
    The supply is moderated by big cooperative pools that spread out the block generation workload in return for spreading out the rewards. http://deepbit.net/stats.php http://deepbit.net/stats.php is a fairly large pool that wins pretty often, and a hobbyist crunching on spare GPUs will see a better return through a pool than trying to get lucky on their own.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
erehweb 16y ago
3 Bitcoins and $4 will get you a Starbucks latte - comments on Bitcoin at http://erehweb.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/bitcoin-madison-hours-and-musical-banks-alternative-currencies-virtual-physical-and-fictional/ http://erehweb.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/bitcoin-madison-hour...
- DennisP 16y ago
  If you sell your three bitcoins on an exchange, at the current price of 63 cents each they'll cover a grande coffee. https://mtgox.com/ https://mtgox.com/
sgornick 16y ago
Best comment from the show's host: "I hope some of my colleagues will find this of interest." A decentralized, global currency is truly a foreign concept to economists. In the early 1990s there were many who immediately realized the potential of this thing called the world wide web. But there were only a few who were articulate in delivering the message: "I hope you will pay attention, THIS IS KIND OF A BIG DEAL".
eco 16y ago
This is great. I emailed Roberts (and NPR's Planet Money while I was at it) back in the beginning of March saying an episode on Bitcoin could be fascinating. I didn't receive a reply so I figured it wouldn't happen. Listening now.
chwahoo 16y ago
Technically, I think BitCoin is extremely cool. However, I can't help but be skeptical of many of its apparent consequences: During the financial crisis, many on the left expressed concern about a deflationary spiral. I don't claim any economic expertise, but the concern seemed valid. Bitcoin, by slowly reducing the speed at which currency is produced, effectively ensures long term deflation. Couldn't this have all kinds of bad consequences for the economy? I favor ideas like "campaign finance reform". I also am not a fan of various forms of fraud, bribery, and organized crime. Of course these things all exist now, but bitcoin would seem to make them scale much more smoothly. I don't want government to micromanage the economy, but I also want it to be able to create and enforce laws that help correct problems caused by extreme economic freedom. I also think taxes are needed. I think a bitcoin-driven economy is one that is hard to tax because it's hard to prove that person X has, or has received, some amount of money. Even sales tax seems difficult to collect. Is there some form of tax that would still work? Also, will lenders be wary of bitcoin since they have little recourse to collect money from someone? Will something like credit cards still work? Will investors be scared to invest in startups since it becomes harder to trace where money is going? I'm not trying to debate the free market with the libertarians out there. I'm curious if someone can explain why my concerns are invalid, due to my misunderstanding of the economic consequences of bitcoin.
- sneak 16y ago
  Point one: > I also think taxes are needed. The cypherpunks would tend to disagree with you. Remember, taxes aren't inherent to any system of monetary value, they're just laws that say "pay us x or go to jail". Point two: "During the financial crisis, many on the left expressed concern about a deflationary spiral. I don't claim any economic expertise, but the concern seemed valid." Deflationary spirals are an economic theory, and have never yet been seen in the wild. The only "problems caused by extreme economic freedom" are the groans and reactions of centralized monetary control as liberty is restored to the people.
  - chwahoo 16y ago
    I'm aware that people hold your views. I was more curious whether I am right that bitcoin is mostly incompatible with mine.

63 points by pointillistic 16y ago

This is far from a benign endeavor. Look what feds are up to: Fake gold and silver Ron Paul coins seized: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21836699/ns/politics-decision_08/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21836699/ns/politics-decision_08...

sneak 16y ago

Unrelated: If anyone wants to purchase Bitcoins, feel free to contact me. (sneak@datavibe.net - PGP 5539 AD00 DE4C 42F3 AFE1 1575 0524 43F4 DF2A 55C2)

dexen 16y ago
Before somebody criticizes you for soliciting on HN, I'd consider your post an indicator of existence of bitcoin market. Out of curiosity, how much do you have for sale?
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  Just Google "bitcoin market". Bitcoins are quite liquid, although the market is pretty volatile.
wladimir 16y ago
Might be a stupid question, but what's that hexadecimal code?
- dexen 16y ago
  EDIT As pointed out in this thread, that's not a bitcoin address. That's just a GPG key fingerprint. Nothing to do with bitcoin itself. Terribly sorry for the foobar. The original post: > It's a bitcoin address, used for both sending and receiving. If you want to trade with a person, you enter that address as receiver's address in a transaction. Nb., each bitcoin user can freely generate several addresses to protect privacy; up to and including using one-off addresses (i.e., address for just one transaction).
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - wladimir 16y ago
    Hm, OK, last time I looked, bitcoin addresses were given in base64.
    - sneak 16y ago
      They're base58.
  - sneak 16y ago
    Bitcoin addresses look like this: 1HkrUYFNW6XHR99HoDivQuHRhMghwVaVMF
  - endian 16y ago
    def bitcoin_address(public_key): x = "\x00" + ripemd160(sha256(public_key)) x += sha256(sha256(x))[0:4] return base58_encode(x)
- sneak 16y ago
  It's my PGP key fingerprint. Copy the last two blocks and you've got my key ID - with that, my key is fetchable from public keyservers and has my email address on it.
tomjen3 16y ago
Since there is already a clearing central for that, I am going to have to downvote you for spam.
- dexen 16y ago
  Please have a look at HN Guidelines [0] -- spam ought to be flagged (the `flag' link next to the post) rather than downvoted. ---- [0] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - cmelbye 16y ago
    I don't have a flag button next to comments, should I?
    - cpach 16y ago
      Try the comment's permalink (eg. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2407227 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2407227).
    - dexen 16y ago
      You seem to have low average karma; perhaps there's some threshold. There certainly is some karma threshold for downvoting.
- sneak 16y ago
  There is no centralization with Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin transactions are not able to be reversed, buying them is notoriously difficult online, as fraudsters like to buy them with stolen credit cards. (Of course, this means that almost nobody sells Bitcoins for PayPal/credit cards/etc. due to chargeback risk.) It's much better to deal with someone you know, or, failing that, someone with existing reputation. I was hoping to make life easier for fellow HN scenesters. Please pardon the intrusion, commerce-phobe.
  - dexen 16y ago
    Any source supporting the assertions about fraudulent transactions? Not that I contest, just never heard any story before.
mynameishere 16y ago
Why would you possibly want centralized currency for something so much superior? I can't fathom your angle.
- mrb 16y ago
  Some of us who mine Bitcoins need to sell some either to recoup our investments in hardware to generate them (repaying debt), or to purchase more hardware (reinvesting the profits).

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

dexen 16y ago
> the supply of currency (...) is controlled by a small handful of early adopters who therefore control the price. Careful now, this is a big simplification. The supply is only partly controlled by the current adopters. Each adopter is free to throw more and better silicon & software onto the computations, to get better chances of finding a new hash. However, the overall pace is moderated by the so-called `difficulty factor', shared by all peers. Which is adjusted periodically so the generation of subsequent hashes doesn't progress too fast -- where `fast or too fast' is about building community of users. Current difficulty factor, and other stats, available near real-time courtesy of http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/ http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/ EDIT: from the bitcoin wiki: > The network tries to create 6 blocks per hour. Every 2016 blocks (about two weeks), all Bitcoin clients compare the actual number created with this goal and modify the target by the percentage that it varied. This increases (or decreases) the difficulty of generating blocks. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - dexen 16y ago
    I've failed to make a point. There is a kind of self-regulation mechanism in bitcoin. It limits the ability of adopters to heavily imbalance the system. Also, that's quite unlike the currencies issued by countries ;-)
- bonzoesc 16y ago
  The supply is moderated by big cooperative pools that spread out the block generation workload in return for spreading out the rewards. http://deepbit.net/stats.php http://deepbit.net/stats.php is a fairly large pool that wins pretty often, and a hobbyist crunching on spare GPUs will see a better return through a pool than trying to get lucky on their own.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

erehweb 16y ago

3 Bitcoins and $4 will get you a Starbucks latte - comments on Bitcoin at http://erehweb.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/bitcoin-madison-hours-and-musical-banks-alternative-currencies-virtual-physical-and-fictional/ http://erehweb.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/bitcoin-madison-hour...

DennisP 16y ago
If you sell your three bitcoins on an exchange, at the current price of 63 cents each they'll cover a grande coffee. https://mtgox.com/ https://mtgox.com/

sgornick 16y ago

Best comment from the show's host: "I hope some of my colleagues will find this of interest." A decentralized, global currency is truly a foreign concept to economists. In the early 1990s there were many who immediately realized the potential of this thing called the world wide web. But there were only a few who were articulate in delivering the message: "I hope you will pay attention, THIS IS KIND OF A BIG DEAL".

eco 16y ago

This is great. I emailed Roberts (and NPR's Planet Money while I was at it) back in the beginning of March saying an episode on Bitcoin could be fascinating. I didn't receive a reply so I figured it wouldn't happen. Listening now.

chwahoo 16y ago

Technically, I think BitCoin is extremely cool. However, I can't help but be skeptical of many of its apparent consequences: During the financial crisis, many on the left expressed concern about a deflationary spiral. I don't claim any economic expertise, but the concern seemed valid. Bitcoin, by slowly reducing the speed at which currency is produced, effectively ensures long term deflation. Couldn't this have all kinds of bad consequences for the economy? I favor ideas like "campaign finance reform". I also am not a fan of various forms of fraud, bribery, and organized crime. Of course these things all exist now, but bitcoin would seem to make them scale much more smoothly. I don't want government to micromanage the economy, but I also want it to be able to create and enforce laws that help correct problems caused by extreme economic freedom. I also think taxes are needed. I think a bitcoin-driven economy is one that is hard to tax because it's hard to prove that person X has, or has received, some amount of money. Even sales tax seems difficult to collect. Is there some form of tax that would still work? Also, will lenders be wary of bitcoin since they have little recourse to collect money from someone? Will something like credit cards still work? Will investors be scared to invest in startups since it becomes harder to trace where money is going? I'm not trying to debate the free market with the libertarians out there. I'm curious if someone can explain why my concerns are invalid, due to my misunderstanding of the economic consequences of bitcoin.

sneak 16y ago
Point one: > I also think taxes are needed. The cypherpunks would tend to disagree with you. Remember, taxes aren't inherent to any system of monetary value, they're just laws that say "pay us x or go to jail". Point two: "During the financial crisis, many on the left expressed concern about a deflationary spiral. I don't claim any economic expertise, but the concern seemed valid." Deflationary spirals are an economic theory, and have never yet been seen in the wild. The only "problems caused by extreme economic freedom" are the groans and reactions of centralized monetary control as liberty is restored to the people.
- chwahoo 16y ago
  I'm aware that people hold your views. I was more curious whether I am right that bitcoin is mostly incompatible with mine.