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Online Cash Bitcoin could Challenge Governments, Banks
- patja 16y agoGood recent Bitcoin podcast interview on Econtalk: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/04/andresen_on_bit.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/04/andresen_on_bit.htm...
- gaius 16y agoThis is what happens when you challenge governments and banks: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2451302 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2451302
- weavejester 16y agoThere are lots of examples of governments or large organisations taking down networks with single points of failure, but far fewer examples of taking down highly distributed networks like Bitcoin. I don't think this fight is a foregone conclusion. I think it would be difficult to write a law that would make Bitcoin illegal, without making things like MMO currencies or SSL certificates illegal.
- zacharypinter 16y agoOne guess is they might write a law that requires U.S.-based online businesses to collect certain information about the transactions they accept that would make accepting bitcoins illegal.
- vessenes 16y agoThis is called a 'know your customer' plan, and it's already in place and the law for all banks and money transfer businesses. Accepting BitCoins won't be illegal if you have a know your customer plan. Of course, it won't be pseudonymous at that point, either.
- gaius 16y agoExactly. The choke point is the same as it for poker: you need the retail banking system to convert your bitcoins or your poker chips to and from something ordinary people can actually spend. Underneath every technical system is other ordinary people who need to pay their bills and mortgages and taxes - you can't not have this capability. And the banking system is highly regulated and will do whatever the govt requires it to do via the regulator.
- weavejester 16y agoThat wouldn't necessarily make accepting bitcoins illegal, it would just make accepting bitcoins from anonymous sources illegal. I think they'd also have a hard time justifying why I can buy a product anonymously in cash (or with a pre-paid VISA), but I can't buy a product anonymously using bitcoins. Particularly since bitcoins have less anonymity than cash, because a history of all transactions is maintained.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Duff 16y agoFrom a practical standpoint, Bitcoin has other problems for using it in a real business -- mainly the fact that taxes are only payable in the coin of the realm. If you are a real, legal business, do you want your entire personal and business future contingent on the ability to exchange bitcoin with dollars?
- weavejester 16y agoYou don't have to put all your eggs in one basket. You could accept payment in dollars and bitcoins, and exchange the bitcoins for dollars the day you receive it. If the bitcoin market suddenly crashes, you'd only lose the amount you hadn't managed to exchange for dollars.
- Duff 16y agoIf you do that, what's the advantage of bitcoin?
- noahc 16y agoCurrency Diversification. The point being that at the end of each day/week/month you can cash it out for dollars/euro/yen. That's the idea anyway. I'm not sure how practical it is!
- weavejester 16y agoYou can send bitcoins directly to a person's account without going through an intermediary, such as Paypal or a bank. This means that it would potentially be cheaper, but more importantly it would be easier to automate, and easier to start up interesting financial web apps.
- pyre 16y agoExactly. The vendor wouldn't be paying the tithe to the credit card processor.
- 16y ago
- daniel1980fl 16y agothere is ONLY one money-printing machine in USA, it is a privately owned entity called "Federal Reserve", dont get fooled by "Federal" in the name (Federal Express is private company). everyone else coming up with more or less sophisticated machine to print money, or exchange money, or any form of transaction that Federal Government is unable to track/monitor/accept or deny WILL get hurt very badly. It is just a matter how popular your machine is and how much traction it is getting. But rest assured, once you turn it on, you have your own chart in the FBI system.
- ataggart 16y agoIt is not useful to argue that the Fed is private, nor is it useful to argue that it is public. It is both and neither depending on which stance will serve its interests at the time.
- Groxx 16y ago>far fewer examples of taking down highly distributed networks like Bitcoin. There are plenty of examples of the reverse, however. Bittorrent continues to thrive.
- ck2 16y agoand this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2436193 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2436193 and this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978651 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978651 and this http://google.com/search?q=site:ycombinator.com+tsa+arrested http://google.com/search?q=site:ycombinator.com+tsa+arrested
- gte910h 16y agoTo me this press effort always seems like just people who already have bitcoins trying to get buyers to raise the price of the currency.
- lawnchair_larry 16y agoI really doubt the true goal is to raise the value of bitcoins already held. I don't think "forex" speculators take a serious interest in bitcoin yet, but rather, those using it would like to see wider adoption so that they can actually buy things with it. A current problem is that it is highly volatile and fairly illiquid. Most adopters have a genuine interest in the success of an alternative currency rather than trying to profit from the situation. I downloaded the client and checked out the forums. Although I don't have any BTC myself, I would like to see something like this succeed. However, I have low hopes that it will not get tagged with propaganda about drug dealers, terrists, and child pornography (I can't believe the article implied that already!), and probably made illegal like online poker. Visa/Mastercard will refuse to process payments for exchangers, who will later be indicted as money launderers.
- vessenes 16y agoThere are many, many bitcoin speculators. I know because I was one, sort of. Large bitcoin holders currently have in excess of $250k in BTC value, much of it purchased at $.02/BTC -$.05/BTC originally. There are a few people making their daily living trading, generating and exchanging BitCoins. Just the top of the iceberg, I imagine. The payment problems are exactly as you describe. Interestingly, it would definitely be possible to run an above-board US-based exchange for BTC; it's called a money transfer business, and they're regulated in a specific way. Getting fully registered and compliant is likely around $1mm USD. When the BitCoin economy gets big enough, expect someone to try this. I have no idea if it will succeed, though.
- jsavimbi 16y agoYou don't need a US-based exchange for BTC, per se, as other currencies are traded on the open market and the brokers simply relay quotes to their customers via feeds they receive rom the banks. If the banks saw the potential to make money off of trading BTC, they'd make it happen.
- mshron 16y agoAs far as I can tell, the only way to actually stay anonymous and have a foothold in the bitcoin economy would be to exchange bitcoins for cash in person with someone. Even then, once you tried to combine that account with any other you owned that was traceable to you (record in an exchange, email sent to a client containing your bitcoin address) it would be easy to link them together, since the entire ledger is public. I guess what I'm saying is that your level of sophistication to stay anonymous would have to rise along with the sophistication of an attacker, which is not immediately obvious from these glowing articles on Bitcoin.
- tcoppi 16y agoI agree that many articles are a little too glowing on the anonymous aspect, but the level of anonymity you have with any system is proportional to your sophistication, so I don't see it as a problem inherent in bitcoin. See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity for more info on the anonymity of the current bitcoin implementation and system.
- mshron 16y agoThanks for the link, and well said that anonymity is basically always proportional to sophistication. What worries me is that other, related systems people will have experience with (like anonymous file-sharing, public-key encryption, onion routing) have many fewer hoops to jump through to feel confident that they're working correctly. Apples to oranges, but expectations work like that. If I throw a disk containing my 2048-bit private key into a fire, I can be confident that nobody is ever going to decrypt my files. Getting the same level of confidence for Bitcoin anonymity is a lot tougher.
- bonzoesc 16y agoIt's possible to run a Bitcoin laundromat; you control addresses A and D, laundromat controls B and C. Send money from A to B, receive from C to D. As long as the laundromat doesn't recycle addresses and moves a lot of cheddar, it'll be difficult to establish a linkage.
- iterationx 16y ago>>Intermediaries as Choke Points Interesting to see an article using network theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_point http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_point
- thedaveoflife 16y agoMoney is fiction. The value of money is derived from trust in the central authority that creates it. Therefore I think an entity like Bitcoin (though not necessarily Bitcoin itself) could conceivably come to replace federal currency because its source is not human beings, but an unflappable algorithm.
- bonzoesc 16y agoThe source of the currency is software written by humans and run on computers built and controlled my humans. The algorithm may be temporarily unflappable (as long as the cryptographic algorithms it depends on remain solid), but the implementations of it depend on humans in every step.
- pnathan 16y agoBitcoin is really cool. I just wish I knew what to sell to get some. My dabbling with mining bitcoins has convinced me it requires a on-all-the-time setup to mine with any prayer of success. Last time I looked, there didn't seem to be a real economy, just people trading bitcoins. ~.~
- joelthelion 16y agoPeople sell real stuff all the time over the bitcoin forums. Whatever you have (old computer stuff, time on your hands, ...), you can probably sell it for bitcoins.
- bonzoesc 16y agoDon't bother trying to get lucky on the 50BTC block bounty; join a pool that splits the winnings. Pools provide well over half the calculation capacity of the Bitcoin system, most are free to join and ones worth joining don't have any real requirements. I make about 1 BTC per day just with spare GPU cycles on my desktop; it's not a substantial amount by any means, just a test pool for experiments and playing with software.
- joeyh 16y agoAFAICS, the benefit to being in a mining pool is you can make some bitcoins immediately, rather than waiting for a big, rare payout. There's no increased probability of winning due to pooling resources is there?
- JeremyBanks 16y agoYour expected gain is the same, but it has a smaller margin of error.
- shazow 16y agoThere is a small increase in probability because the pool is aware of the participants and thus reduces redundant work done by each participant. It becomes a slightly-less-than-random brute force operation. If you mine on your own, then your targets are effectively random.
- euroclydon 16y agoI have a hard time getting excited about a currency when the main reasons given for it's existence are for online gambling and Wikileak donations. I would be excited about a dollar alternative that allowed the common person to protect themselves from the inflationary rot that the US Congress is hell-bent on subjecting us to.
- bonzoesc 16y agoThose are the first uses because online gamblers and muckraking NGOs are the ones most desperate for an alternative to a government-issued currency. If the average person was unable to function with inflationary currencies, they'd find an alternative.
- euroclydon 16y agoPeople don't just utilize things in order to function: think iPhone. Wikileaks and gambling will sink bitcoin before it can mean anything.
- phillmv 16y agoInflationary currencies? I'm pretty sure every form of currency is subject to inflation.
- quanticle 16y agoCurrencies linked to physical goods of limited quantities wouldn't inflate. For example, I could make a currency that represented shares of Picasso paintings. Since there are only a limited number of Picasso paintings, my currency wouldn't inflate. Commodity-linked currencies (e.g. those that are gold/silver based) don't inflate much in a practical sense, since the amount of gold/silver being mined each year is usually much less than the amount of gold and silver already being used for exchange. That said, the US did experience a pretty huge bout of inflation after the California gold rush, as all that new currency increased the money supply.
- 16y ago
- AndrewMoffat 16y agoWhy is Bitcoin a good currency again? If I understand how it is distributed correctly, those with higher/more computational power receive more of the finite bitcoins. How does that not favor the already rich?
- cwp 16y agoI'm hardly an expert in bitcoins, but: simply having more computational power isn't enough, you have to use it. That computational power is valuable; if you're mining bitcoins you're not using it for whatever it is that you bought all that capacity for in the first place. I doubt that Google or Amazon or the NSA are going to abandon what they're doing now to mine bitcoins.
- kd0amg 16y agosimply having more computational power isn't enough, you have to use it You can say that about any resource. It's still generally easier for someone who's wealthier to put up more of that resource.
- cwp 16y agoYes, that's the nature of wealth. The point is that Bitcoin really is different from other currencies in terms of how bitcoins are created. Dollars are largely created by banks. They get special permission from the government to create dollars and lend them out. Bitcoins, in contrast, can be created by anyone with some computing power, no permission needed. The fact that one must expend resources to create bitcoins is what makes them valuable - a currency that anyone could create with no effort would be worthless.
- jonknee 16y agoThe point of Bitcoin isn't to not favor the rich (all types of money favor those who have it), but to prevent central control. That control leads to things like hyper inflation, preventing payments to certain parties, seizing of assets, etc.
- kaerast 16y ago
- clistctrl 16y agoBitcoin is pretty sweet, but its extremely confusing. I barely understand it, and i'm an extremely technical user. I think people need to work harder on bringing down the complexity.
- StavrosK 16y agoWhat complexity? The client pretty much only has one button, "send BitCoins".
- clistctrl 16y agoHow do I transfer my coins from one computer to another? I found digging through my application data to find the wallet.dat file is unintuitive.. along those same lines, how many less technical users have lost extremely important data because they never made a backup? Additionally what if I want one wallet so I can go to a physical store, and use my phone to pay? The shuffle seems very inefficient to me. Perhaps people could setup servers to host their own wallet... however that creates another barrier of entry to less technical users. Look at this crazy shit: http://www.stronggames.com/bitcoin http://www.stronggames.com/bitcoin if I want to buy a game I have to somehow obtain 40 bitcoins (the markets are great for speculators, but its not 2 buttons simple for people who just want some coin) after I somehow obtain the bitcoins I need to tell them about it... In the form that it is in today, this is a currency for geeks. Awesome? (hell yeah!) but sometimes you need to do business with non geeks, and its just not ready yet for them.
- sgornick 16y agoBaby steps. Try starting out using an eWallet, such as MyBitcoin: http://www.mybitcoin.com http://www.mybitcoin.com Then buy your Bitcoins with PayPal here: http://coinpal.ndrix.com http://coinpal.ndrix.com use the bitcoin address generated at MyBitcoin. You'll get your bitcoins in less than an hour at MyBitcoin. Then those bitcoins can be spent using your example, at StrongGames.
- 16y ago
- sage_joch 16y agoI think the main takeaway is that governments are making a strong case for an alternative, decentralized currency: * preventing transactions they don't agree with * inflating savings away * freezing bank accounts of adversaries * seizing cash at security checkpoints
- joe_the_user 16y agoThe problem is that since an alternative currency is still pretty purely hypothetical, we don't know with any certainty that it wouldn't be subject to similar abuses. Moreover, aside from inflation, the other abuses you list are essentially abuses of power and if governments maintain power - their official monopoly of force and violence, they will continue to be able to engage in these other actions. EI, I don't think there is any imaginable electronic currency that couldn't be "taken" from you if a group of armed men burst in, seized your computer and demanded your passwords. And if bitcoins became ubiquitous, the state certainly would believe that you owed taxes on your bitcoin transactions and it would send it's armed-men to collect. Edit: grammar
- mike_esspe 16y agoIf I'm not mistaken, at least in US you can't be forced to reveal your password?
- gaius 16y agoThen they do you for "contempt of court" rather than whatever they charged you with originally, surprise surprise the sentence is the same.
- richcollins 16y agoWhy don't you include inflation in that list?
- joe_the_user 16y agoInflation is pretty much directly based on the control of the currency. While I don't necessarily advocate a society using gold-money, it's an example of a situation where the state couldn't directly control the currency. A state in such a society could still tax and arbitrarily confiscate money but it couldn't create inflation (well, under normal circumstances...).
- AndrewMoffat 16y agoThere's some great discussions going on in the Economics section of their forums: http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?board=7.0 http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?board=7.0
- nabilt 16y agoGreat article that explains the basic technology and it's potential impact. Great link to send to some of your non-tech friends.
- known 16y agoSounds like computerized http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
- originalgeek 16y ago> Because Bitcoin is an open-source project, and because the database exists only in the distributed peer-to-peer network created by its users, there is no Bitcoin company to raid, subpoena or shut down. Which will leave only Bitcoin users to raid, subpoena and shut down.
- pyre 16y agoAnd that worked so well for copyright piracy! I'm glad we live in a world without pirated music and movies!
- tnt128 16y agoIf the government can confiscate gold, what would prevent them from passing the law saying bitcoin ownership is illegal?
- mike_esspe 16y agoI hope, that US can't return in time of "executive order 6102"
- dublinclontarf 16y agoYeah goodluck with that, proving someone has a particular private key. Of course this is all possible but would require the banning of cryptography, and that would take a disciplined dictatorship to pull that off. The cryptography cat is out of the bag, you can't just ban it(sure you can try, but like I said, good luck enforcing it).
- originalgeek 16y agoHauling people away in handcuffs is a much more potent deterrent than randomly shaking people down for a few grand.
- pyre 16y agoIt depends on critical mass. If only 2 people are doing it the risk of being the one in handcuffs is a lot larger than when you are 1 of 100 million people doing it.
- known 16y agohttp://www.weusecoins.com/ http://www.weusecoins.com/ for the beginners
- ZitchDog 16y agoBitcoin is a fantastic idea, with one crucial mistake: the finite nature of bitcoins. The fact that coins will one day "run out" will almost certainly lead to increased speculation, which will in turn lead to a deflationary spiral, followed by a "bubble burst" when speculators sell all their bitcoins and average coin holders are left holding the bag. Infinite coins would tie the value to the opportunity cost of computation, which is actually a really cool idea. Inflation based on the log of moore's law would ensure a steady inflationary rate based on computing power. This would deter speculators and incentivize innovation in computing power in order to more efficiently mine currency. My hunch is that an uncapped bitcoin competitor would have a more difficult time getting off the ground, since the finite nature of bitcoins favors the first mover.
- powertower 16y agoSpeculation is exactly what is required for Bitcoin to take hold as a legitimate currency. Without speculation it's a product/service no one wants (because it has no value or potential), by definition. Before today Bitcoin was "just" interesting to me, after reading this I now see the potential it has. I think I'm going to run an experiment and also accept payment for my product in Bitcoins: http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper
- joelthelion 16y agoIf you start accepting bitcoins, be sure to drop a word at the bitcoin forums.
- ZitchDog 16y agoI fundamentally disagree. The purpose of currency is to facilitate efficient trade. It is dangerous when currency is seen as an appreciating asset (deflation) as this will encourage hoarding (speculation) and discourage spending and investing.
- euccastro 16y agoThis is aggravated, in the long run, by the fact that they intend to support/incentivate the people who run nodes by transaction fees. Another friction factor. It would be better to have small, fixed, predictable inflation, and pay the infrastructure with that (that is, with the newly generated money). It worked in ancient Egypt. There was a currency that was more or less a receipt on stored grain. That "money" lost value over time due to storage costs and loss to decay and rodents. That inflation stimulated trade. Currencies with so-called demurrage worked wonders in middle-century central Europe until they were banned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_%28currency%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_%28currency%29 (I'm basically parroting Bernard Lietaer [which google for] here.)
- tarkin2 16y agoI don't think Bitcoin solves the main problem of new currencies: confidence of their acceptance. John Law introduced paper money into France by getting the government to accept it for paying taxes. Every Frenchman and woman was confident the state, no matter who took over, would still collect taxes. And the state, knowing the currency was valuable to everyone--even foreigners, could also use it. Where's my confidence that people will desire a bitcoin in future? Even if, say, every Starbucks in every country started accepting them, it'd only be as valuable as the trend for coffee and the stability of Starbucks. Could I, when planning a mortgage, bet on Starbucks' popularity over 25 years? I can see how game currencies can come about. But the market for these games is limited and ephemeral in the long run. If you want to compete with banks, you need to think about long term confidence. I've yet to hear how Bitcoin, or any other startup currency, solves this problem.
- joelthelion 16y agoConfidence comes gradually. When bitcoins started, confidence was extremely low. Thus the whole bitcoin economy was worth maybe $1000. Now confidence has grown significantly, and the whole bitcoin economy is worth approximately 5 million dollars. I wouldn't bet my life savings on it yet, but I find that already pretty good for something that has less than five years, and isn't backed by anything.
- joe_the_user 16y agoConfidence may come gradually but it can vanish very suddenly. If a number of investors have enough invested in the system that their investment become worth more to them than maintaining the bitcoin system and some event decreases the confidence in the system, then those investors will attempt to "liquidate" their holdings. Whether they succeed or fail, the impact on the system will likely be terminal since there wouldn't be any entity ready to step in and buy unwanted bitcoins.
- rmc 16y agoOr its just a bubble
- cabalamat 16y ago
- kragen 16y agoOh shit. I guess that's the end of the road for Bitcoin, eh? No way governments and banks are going to let it live now that Time says it "could challenge" them.
- ender7 16y agoBitcoin is both a really great idea, and a really stupid idea. sage_joch has already pointed out the reasons why it's a really cool idea. It's also flawed in a number of ways. First, the limited supply means that you've essentially just created an electronic version of gold. It's more easily tradeable, but its behavior as a commodity will be similar. If you like investing in gold, that's great. I guess. Second, bitcoins do not necessarily remove the issue of paying a fee for transactions. Instead of paying a fee per transaction, you will instead pay a fee in order to transform normal currency into bitcoins (this is not as readily apparent now, but if the system ever becomes large enough to actually have stable value, then you will need to pay someone to convert real currency to bitcoins). Will this be cheaper than credit-card fees? Probably? Keep in mind that credit card companies are offering just that: credit, which is a service. Someone has to pay for it (either you, the merchant, or the marketers who they sell your buying profile to). Third, bitcoins ignore the fact that national currencies are an incredibly valuable tool for modern governments. They can of course be misused (see: Argentina, post-WWI Germany), but adjusting the value of your currency is one of few ways of improving your country's competitiveness globally (see: the trouble Ireland, Greece, and other European nations have had recently because they do not have control over the Euro). So, don't expect national currencies to go away, or become obsolete. Perhaps the Bitcoin community has an answer for these concerns...
- lhnn 16y ago1) That's the point. It wants to be similar to gold. We traded based on a third party commodity (gold/silver) until 1974 and did alright. 2) So? I don't see your point. The goal of BTC is not to eliminate fees, but to make digital currency that you can use P2P. 3) I don't think government currencies are going away any time soon, but BTC provide an alternative.
- ender7 16y ago1). Ah, if that's the goal then...great I guess. I personally don't think moving back to a commodity currency is a good idea, but that is perhaps another discussion. 2). I've heard a number of Bitcoin enthusiasts state this as an advantage/goal (even in this discussion), who perhaps have started developing their own ideas about what bc should be used for. 3). But an alternative to what purpose? Say that I believe strongly enough in the ideals of BC that I want to use it (privacy, accountability, etc). Do I convert part of my monthly paycheck into BCs? Do I convert all of it? This isn't terribly practical if my national currency is still popular. Perhaps I want to even-up with friends or acquaintances? Is transferring BCs easier than writing a check? Now imagine that I don't believe strongly in the idealistic angles of BC (which, sadly, will be the vast majority of your potential users). I want immediate pay-offs for my efforts (this may sound petty, but isn't. Most peoples' time is extremely valuable to them - if you have a product, even a free one, you must compete for their time). What benefit to I gain from converting my money to BCs?
- cookiecaper 16y agoEvery time btc gets press mtgox jumps. We were looking at averages between 70 and 80c / btc, now it's up to $1.11. I would encourage people to let the furor die down a bit before investing in bitcoins, until they're back in the 80-90c range at least.
- cookiecaper 16y agoBitcoin is awesome because it stands to make electronic payments extremely easy without any hassle from banks or outsiders. No more e-commerce hassles like a merchant account or payment gateway. The anonymity is less strong than many initially presume since ALL PAYMENTS ARE PUBLICLY REGISTERED, including the payment chain. This is why it's important to generate a new btc receiving address whenever you perform a new transaction. The entire exchange history of that bitcoin is public knowledge, from the day it was generated until the very last transaction. Hence, if you use a bitcoin that was sent to a publicly disclosed address to pay for something, that transaction is linked to you forever. So people need to be careful about how they use which bitcoins, and the client doesn't really make that easy. There really is a lot of potential in btc, I've been excited about it since I first learned of it, though as soon as the government catches on they will outlaw it (if they can't find a current law to justify prosecution and/or destruction of the btc network, which is doubtful) and do everything possible to destroy it. They won't like it at all, and neither will the banks that even btc users rely on to store their country's regularly denominated currency. I am scared and interested to see what happens to btc as demand rises.
- barmstrong 16y agoJust realized, BitCoin could become a force to recon with overnight if just one step happened: Paypal started supporting BitCoin. Peter Thiel is a libertarian and seems like he would be very sympathetic to the idea - who knows, crazier things have happened.
- smanek 16y agoEven if Thiel was in favor, he is no longer with Paypal.
- barmstrong 16y agoWho knows, the roots of the company go back there and he could still have influence.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- euccastro 16y agoNot arguments, but advice: RTFA.
- waynerad 16y agoSomeone tell my why the US government can't just demand ISP's block the protocol that Bitcoin uses?
- tlrobinson 16y agoEncryption, port randomization, etc
- waynerad 16y agoSo, every x days, every user of the currency in the country has to upgrade their software, because the government has blocked the protocol, so they need new software that in essence uses a different protocol??? If using this currency is that inconvenient, people will just go back to using credit cards and Paypal.
- getsat 16y agoI don't have to download a new copy of uTorrent if I decide to use different ports. The client could probably just check periodically for a signed message from a central server (or a broadcast on the network itself) with instructions to currently operate on the network. This isn't really a big deal or usability issue that I can see.
- waynerad 16y agoI see I've been modded down. Why? What do you people know that I don't? It seems to me like I'm asking a simple, obvious question: what is stopping governments from simply shutting down Bitcoin within their physical borders? You think they will not be smart enough to handle a simple port number change? Regarding the comparison with Bittorrent, my ISP (Comcast) did in fact block and throttle Bittorrent, successfully, until someone sued them. It seem to me Bittorrent is an example of how ISP's can block an application, not an example of them being unable to do so. "The client could probably just check periodically for a signed message from a central server (or a broadcast on the network itself) with instructions to currently operate on the network." -- why could the ISP not block this, also? Especially if the software is open source, as Bitcoin is, all the knowledge of the inner workings of the protocol is public knowledge, which makes it impossible to stick in something like "just check periodically for a signed message from a central server (or a broadcast on the network itself) " secretly without governments wanting to block the system knowing about it.
- DiabloD3 16y agoFor those that think Bitcoin has no purpose, what about all the small time FOSS authors out there who are, frankly, scared shitless of Paypal coming in and closing their account? Bitcoin is perfect for stuff like this. And if you think Bitcoin is a waste, feel free to send your coins to 1DbeWKCxnVCt3sRaSAmZLoboqr8pVyFzP1
- rick888 16y agoWhat's to stop someone from taking apart the software/building rogue software and generating their own bitcoins without going through any of the complicated math calculations? If they can't, then there must be some central authority preventing this..which means it's no different than the government It also doesn't really help with privacy. In fact, it does the exact opposite: Taken from: http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=5907.0 http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=5907.0 "Every bitcoin transaction ever made is public, and the life of every bitcoin is fully recorded in public for all to see,"
- prodigal_erik 16y agoForging a solved bitcoin block is like making counterfeit currency in crayon. No central authority is needed because every peer running correct tools will reject blatantly invalid blocks. The history of each bitcoin is public, but the ownership of the sending and receiving addresses is not, and generating fresh anonymous addresses (keypairs) is nearly free. I don't know how resistant they are to traffic analysis attacks, though.
- rick888 16y agoI'm still not convinced. Currency has gone through many corrections because of counterfeiting and I feel pretty confident that most people won't be able to counterfeit money (especially with the new designs). Bitcoins also do not have the backing of the government (and it never will, unless the government is issuing them, which would defeat the purpose). A security flaw in any of the peers could potentially mean lots of stolen money/devaluing.