11 ms·

Coinbase Nabs $5M in Biggest Funding for Bitcoin Startup

152 points by conesus 13y ago

yumcoin 13y ago
Congratulations! Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663327
barmstrong 13y ago
Brian from Coinbase here. We're obviously very excited here to do our best in fostering Bitcoin's growth towards mass adoption. To those who have seen our growing pains - the full intention of raising money is to address those pain points. We look forward to doing our best to eliminate each of them one by one.
- bithive123 13y ago
  Can you comment on some of the things I've heard about Bitcoin which might prevent its mass adoption? - The network imposes a limit of 7 transactions per second (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability); and the information I've seen suggests that it typically averages much less than that (http://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions http://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions). - There is a finite number of Bitcoins, and they can effectively be lost forever if private keys are lost. This has led to people doing things like leaving tips in BTC which expire (https://www.bctip.org/ https://www.bctip.org/). This is disregarding the volatility of the price and the fact that it seems to behave like a speculative commodity rather than a real currency -- what is your vision of "mass adoption" of Bitcoin?
  - bdcs 13y ago
    1) From your link "Today the Bitcoin network is restricted to a sustained rate of 7 tps by some artificial limits. These were put in place to stop people from ballooning the size of the block chain before the network and community was ready for it. Once those limits are lifted, the maximum transaction rate will go up significantly." 2) Bitcoin money supply is currently INFLATING at fast clip of over 10%/year. Refer to nobel economist Milton Friedman and others to read about a constant-supply currency.[1] The volatility is because the sum(bids+asks) on the exchanges is small relative to speculator's pockets. This is getting better with time. [1]http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2006/Friedmantranscript.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2006/Friedmantranscr...
  - shazow 13y ago
    I don't work for Coinbase, but I'll try to answer (someone correct me if I'm wrong): > - The network imposes a limit of 7 transactions per second (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability); and the information I've seen suggests that it typically averages much less than that (http://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions http://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions). The transaction volume is currently limited by two things. (1) The number of transactions that can be included within each block by miners. (2) The bandwidth required to keep up with the blockchain. The block transaction cap is just a hardcoded value in the client. Like many things that change on a monthly basis in the reference client, it can and will be changed when the time is right. There are lots of variables which are being adjusted as Bitcoin grows, such as the recommended minimum fee for small transactions. As for the bandwidth, there are a few options: First part is to only require clients to maintain a tiny summary of each block, rather than the full ledger. This will reduce the sync bandwidth required by at least two orders of magnitude. This solution only applies to clients, not miners. The second less popular plan is to encourage networks of "green addresses" (kind of like trusted banks that don't need to verify transactions between each other) as well as super-nodes which delegate trust by layers. And finally, there is always methods for pruning the Merkle tree to remove unnecessary history, or introduce periodic genesis blocks which put down the current state in stone without requiring the history before it. These are just off the top of my head, there are likely more initiatives in the works, maybe of which have been planned for from the first day that the Bitcoin whitepaper was published. > - There is a finite number of Bitcoins, and they can effectively be lost forever if private keys are lost. This has led to people doing things like leaving tips in BTC which expire (https://www.bctip.org/ https://www.bctip.org/). Both of these things are true. Keep in mind, a bitcoin can be divided into units of 0.00000001 (what we call a satoshi). That is to say, the finite number of satoshis is 2,100,000,000,000,000 which should be more than enough for a long long time. (More on that here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin) As for the question of Bitcoin being lost forever, all this means is that everyone else's Bitcoins rise in value slightly (since you're reducing supply).
    - betterunix 13y ago
      "The block transaction cap is just a hardcoded value in the client" Why is these even a value? Why does the protocol limit how many transactions can be performed in a given period of time? This seems like an extreme deficiency to me...
- taylorbuley 13y ago
  One of the main concerns around exchanges is security. And for obvious reasons. I'm interested to guess at what kind of chunk of this $5mil goes to corporate-level capital concerns like infosec vs. the regular startup sinkholes. Can you colorize for me what kind of chunk of your operating expenses goes toward security in one form or another?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Andrew_Quentin 13y ago
  Hey man, do something about the UK market. Brits are starving for Bitcoins and that means a lot of money for you.
bradhe 13y ago
Is "nabs" really the right word here? It makes it sound like they sneakily grabbed $5M from someone's pocket.
- erikpukinskis 13y ago
  Nab isn't necessarily sneaky, it could just imply haste, as in they got the investor attention ahead of other competitors.
- wmf 13y ago
  We're talking about Bitcoin; it's gotta be a little shady.
  - JoeKM 13y ago
    How is Bitcoin shady?
    - bradhe 13y ago
      I think people aren't comfortable with the anonymity associated with Bitcoin yet. Plus it's only heavily exercised use case is in buying shit you can't purchase with regular currency :)
    - betterunix 13y ago
      It is largely used in black market transactions, it exists without any regulations at all, and there are almost no mainstream businesses that actually deal in it (and even those that do are doing so through an intermediary service that is giving them dollars/etc.). For most people, it sounds more like a scam than something they can trust their money with.
      - kiba 13y ago
        It is largely used in black market transactions, it exists without any regulations at all, and there are almost no mainstream businesses that actually deal in it (and even those that do are doing so through an intermediary service that is giving them dollars/etc.). Please provide citation that silk road and other black markets are the majority of bitcoin's economy.
sethbannon 13y ago
Key quote from Fred Wilson: “If Bitcoin really becomes the global currency that every country and every business accepts, and Coinbase becomes the JP Morgan Chase of Bitcoin, that could be worth a lot of money.”
- blantonl 13y ago
  The JP Morgan Chase of Bitcoin could also become the single largest target of technical and crypto attacks that the technology industry has ever seen. Ever. Advances in cryptography which once were targeted to breaking encrypted messages could be focused on breaking the entire world economy in one fell swoop (provided Bitcoin gets real market traction)
  - patio11 13y ago
    It's highly unlikely that high-profile Bitcoin busts will require meaningful advances in cryptography: they're far, far more likely to be appsec work -- perhaps inspired appsec work -- of the kind routinely conducted by intermediate programmers with weeks of specialized training. Let me put some round numbers on the cost of various attacks: Major result in cryptography: $X0 million to $X00 million+ (nation-state adversary) Subtle bug in the Satoshi client C code: $100,000 (trivially within the reach of organized crime or a single highly motivated attacker) Bust any Bitcoin-using Ruby on Rails (&tc) application: $20k probably, upper bounded by $100k where you'd produce (as an industrial biproduct) a RCE on any arbitrary Rails site Compromise the security of a non-trivial number of Bitcoin users via spearphishing / targeted malware / etc: $1,000 If you're a thief who doesn't have access to any computer skills or the above sums of money, have no fear, it is likely that the Bitcoin economy still has multiple options for you to get in on the ground floor of exciting new ways to steal things. [P.S. I'm routinely pessimistic about Bitcoins for a lot of reasons, but the software security angle keeps coming back to me because it's so easy to explain. If you think I'm overly pessimistic, consider the track record on HN of "people who know what the threat environment banks operate in looks like" versus "Bitcoin advocates" has been in predicting observable future outcomes of e.g. Bitcoin bucket shops in advance.]
    - 13y ago
fossuser 13y ago
Coinbase is by far the easiest service to use (something that I think is vastly undervalued from the complaints on HN). As long as bitcoin continues to do well I think they have a good chance of being very successful. Congratulations on the funding.
blantonl 13y ago
Quote from the article: “We need 10 people yesterday,” said Ehrsam, a 24-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader. "10 People" in this case == security and crypto engineers - like the best the world can get. If you want to lead the largest exchange for a decentralized, anonymous currency, you better have an NSA quality-type security team that can address the intricate mathematics of the problems they will certainly face. I'd suggest they hire a very senior and experienced economist as well. $5m of funding? 500K per hire. Sounds about right.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "If you want to lead the largest exchange for a decentralized, anonymous currency, you better have an NSA quality-type security team that can address the intricate mathematics of the problems they will certainly face" Their first question would be, "What is the formal definition of Bitcoin's security?" Then they would notice that polynomial time attackers can double spend Bitcoin currency and stop bothering with the entire system. This is the sort of work in this field that top-notch crypto people create: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.44.8279 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.44.8... http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F11889663_20 http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F11889663_20 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5443458 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5443458
  - wmf 13y ago
    Is it a startup's job to address existential risks to the system(s) that they participate in?
    - betterunix 13y ago
      These are not existential risks, they are real security issues. If there is not even a meaningful definition of Bitcoin's security -- a definition that can be used in a mathematical proof, without circular logic -- then how can Coinbase make any kind of claim about the security of their own system? To put it another way, suppose Bitcoin is inherently insecure -- suppose that nothing you do can prevent a polynomial time attack (this is not unheard of in crypto; see Merkle Puzzles) -- can you even claim that Coinbase is secure?
Aloisius 13y ago
When I first heard that VCs were putting money into Bitcoin companies, frankly, I balked. Then I realized that I felt the exact same way years ago when I first saw one of those companies selling gold at inflated prices to people. There is clearly a market for Bitcoin. Between the large black markets, the anti-government libertarians/anarchists and the speculative traders, there is little doubt there are fortunes to be made. I just don't know if I'd care to be in such a business.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rdl 13y ago
Wow. Congratulations.
rdl 13y ago
Is this Fred Wilson's first new investment in 18 months?
- fredwilson 13y ago
  yes, but more like 21 months http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/05/off-the-schneid.html http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/05/off-the-schneid.html
tibbon 13y ago
To the naysayers- there are 100 potential problems with Bitcoin. All reasons why it can "never" work. Yet, I can also list 100 problems with all sorts of things that we use on a daily basis: cash currency, vehicles, firearms, libraries, etc.... - Cash can be stolen, destroyed, counterfeited. It isn't easy to divide (I need quarters at the laundry machine, but I have a $5 bill). Cash is dirty. Do you know how many people have touched that dollar bill? - People could drive in the wrong lane, drive drunk, ignore all rules of the law. People might get killed! - People could do incredibly stupid things with guns. They might misfire or jam. You can miss and hit the wrong target easily. - People could steal books from libraries. They could burn. They cost money and make no money. Despite these problems- all of these things more or less work. Yes, Bitcoin has problems. Yet, I don't see any of them as being actually bigger than the potential problems with things we use daily anyway.
- Nursie 13y ago
  Difference is that a bunch of bad economic decisions were built into bitcoin from the word go (IMHO, I know you're going to disagree). It doesn't have potential downsides like the things you list, it has built-in definite downsides.
- betterunix 13y ago
  Shouldn't the goal be for Bitcoin to have reduced problems compared to the systems it is meant to replace? Why should we go from one problematic system to another equally problematic system?
  - tibbon 13y ago
    I think it just has different problems. I don't think there's any way to create a perfect system, which is what many people seem to expect. It does solve several problems that no other currencies have managed to solve, but has cropped up some new potential issues in the meantime. While I think the problems inherent to current currencies are well known, I think some of the problems with Bitcoin still remain theoretical, with at least 50% of them being due to misunderstanding of the system or that its very early and we still lack some infrastructure (enough exchanges, etc)
LifeIvy 13y ago
Buy into weakness | Sell into strength. Hello profit.
Egregore 13y ago
Quote from the article: “Hackers are the animals that can detect a storm coming or an earthquake,” he said. “They just know, even though they don’t know why, and there are two big things hackers are excited about now and can’t articulate why–Bitcoin and 3D printing.” But from reading HN it seems that there is a lot more controversy about bitcoin than about 3D printing.
- kyledrake 13y ago
  Let me fix that for you. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/click-print-gun-the-inside-story-of-the-3d-printed-gun-movement-video http://motherboard.vice.com/read/click-print-gun-the-inside-...
venomsnake 13y ago
Why didn't they get them in Bitcoins?
alloftheabove 13y ago
“They have competitors doing the same thing." So are most of these bitcoin startups just banks/exchanges? Is there anyone doing anything more unique with bitcoin? Since it is hard to judge the true value of a bitcoin since it fluctuates so much, perhaps bitcoins would be best suited to pay for services and goods that are hard to judge in value? Someone should create a bitcoin based fiverr or mechanical turk. It would also be interesting to see something completely close the loop when it comes to bitcoins. For example, raise bitcoins to pay for the production costs of a movie, pay actors and staff in bitcoins, charge bitcoins for movie download, and repay investors in bitcoins.

152 points by conesus 13y ago

Congratulations! Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663327

Brian from Coinbase here. We're obviously very excited here to do our best in fostering Bitcoin's growth towards mass adoption. To those who have seen our growing pains - the full intention of raising money is to address those pain points. We look forward to doing our best to eliminate each of them one by one.

bithive123 13y ago
Can you comment on some of the things I've heard about Bitcoin which might prevent its mass adoption? - The network imposes a limit of 7 transactions per second (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability); and the information I've seen suggests that it typically averages much less than that (http://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions http://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions). - There is a finite number of Bitcoins, and they can effectively be lost forever if private keys are lost. This has led to people doing things like leaving tips in BTC which expire (https://www.bctip.org/ https://www.bctip.org/). This is disregarding the volatility of the price and the fact that it seems to behave like a speculative commodity rather than a real currency -- what is your vision of "mass adoption" of Bitcoin?
- bdcs 13y ago
  1) From your link "Today the Bitcoin network is restricted to a sustained rate of 7 tps by some artificial limits. These were put in place to stop people from ballooning the size of the block chain before the network and community was ready for it. Once those limits are lifted, the maximum transaction rate will go up significantly." 2) Bitcoin money supply is currently INFLATING at fast clip of over 10%/year. Refer to nobel economist Milton Friedman and others to read about a constant-supply currency.[1] The volatility is because the sum(bids+asks) on the exchanges is small relative to speculator's pockets. This is getting better with time. [1]http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2006/Friedmantranscript.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2006/Friedmantranscr...
- shazow 13y ago
  I don't work for Coinbase, but I'll try to answer (someone correct me if I'm wrong): > - The network imposes a limit of 7 transactions per second (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability); and the information I've seen suggests that it typically averages much less than that (http://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions http://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions). The transaction volume is currently limited by two things. (1) The number of transactions that can be included within each block by miners. (2) The bandwidth required to keep up with the blockchain. The block transaction cap is just a hardcoded value in the client. Like many things that change on a monthly basis in the reference client, it can and will be changed when the time is right. There are lots of variables which are being adjusted as Bitcoin grows, such as the recommended minimum fee for small transactions. As for the bandwidth, there are a few options: First part is to only require clients to maintain a tiny summary of each block, rather than the full ledger. This will reduce the sync bandwidth required by at least two orders of magnitude. This solution only applies to clients, not miners. The second less popular plan is to encourage networks of "green addresses" (kind of like trusted banks that don't need to verify transactions between each other) as well as super-nodes which delegate trust by layers. And finally, there is always methods for pruning the Merkle tree to remove unnecessary history, or introduce periodic genesis blocks which put down the current state in stone without requiring the history before it. These are just off the top of my head, there are likely more initiatives in the works, maybe of which have been planned for from the first day that the Bitcoin whitepaper was published. > - There is a finite number of Bitcoins, and they can effectively be lost forever if private keys are lost. This has led to people doing things like leaving tips in BTC which expire (https://www.bctip.org/ https://www.bctip.org/). Both of these things are true. Keep in mind, a bitcoin can be divided into units of 0.00000001 (what we call a satoshi). That is to say, the finite number of satoshis is 2,100,000,000,000,000 which should be more than enough for a long long time. (More on that here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin) As for the question of Bitcoin being lost forever, all this means is that everyone else's Bitcoins rise in value slightly (since you're reducing supply).
  - betterunix 13y ago
    "The block transaction cap is just a hardcoded value in the client" Why is these even a value? Why does the protocol limit how many transactions can be performed in a given period of time? This seems like an extreme deficiency to me...
taylorbuley 13y ago
One of the main concerns around exchanges is security. And for obvious reasons. I'm interested to guess at what kind of chunk of this $5mil goes to corporate-level capital concerns like infosec vs. the regular startup sinkholes. Can you colorize for me what kind of chunk of your operating expenses goes toward security in one form or another?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Andrew_Quentin 13y ago
Hey man, do something about the UK market. Brits are starving for Bitcoins and that means a lot of money for you.

bradhe 13y ago

Is "nabs" really the right word here? It makes it sound like they sneakily grabbed $5M from someone's pocket.

erikpukinskis 13y ago
Nab isn't necessarily sneaky, it could just imply haste, as in they got the investor attention ahead of other competitors.
wmf 13y ago
We're talking about Bitcoin; it's gotta be a little shady.
- JoeKM 13y ago
  How is Bitcoin shady?
  - bradhe 13y ago
    I think people aren't comfortable with the anonymity associated with Bitcoin yet. Plus it's only heavily exercised use case is in buying shit you can't purchase with regular currency :)
  - betterunix 13y ago
    It is largely used in black market transactions, it exists without any regulations at all, and there are almost no mainstream businesses that actually deal in it (and even those that do are doing so through an intermediary service that is giving them dollars/etc.). For most people, it sounds more like a scam than something they can trust their money with.
    - kiba 13y ago
      It is largely used in black market transactions, it exists without any regulations at all, and there are almost no mainstream businesses that actually deal in it (and even those that do are doing so through an intermediary service that is giving them dollars/etc.). Please provide citation that silk road and other black markets are the majority of bitcoin's economy.

sethbannon 13y ago

Key quote from Fred Wilson: “If Bitcoin really becomes the global currency that every country and every business accepts, and Coinbase becomes the JP Morgan Chase of Bitcoin, that could be worth a lot of money.”

blantonl 13y ago
The JP Morgan Chase of Bitcoin could also become the single largest target of technical and crypto attacks that the technology industry has ever seen. Ever. Advances in cryptography which once were targeted to breaking encrypted messages could be focused on breaking the entire world economy in one fell swoop (provided Bitcoin gets real market traction)
- patio11 13y ago
  It's highly unlikely that high-profile Bitcoin busts will require meaningful advances in cryptography: they're far, far more likely to be appsec work -- perhaps inspired appsec work -- of the kind routinely conducted by intermediate programmers with weeks of specialized training. Let me put some round numbers on the cost of various attacks: Major result in cryptography: $X0 million to $X00 million+ (nation-state adversary) Subtle bug in the Satoshi client C code: $100,000 (trivially within the reach of organized crime or a single highly motivated attacker) Bust any Bitcoin-using Ruby on Rails (&tc) application: $20k probably, upper bounded by $100k where you'd produce (as an industrial biproduct) a RCE on any arbitrary Rails site Compromise the security of a non-trivial number of Bitcoin users via spearphishing / targeted malware / etc: $1,000 If you're a thief who doesn't have access to any computer skills or the above sums of money, have no fear, it is likely that the Bitcoin economy still has multiple options for you to get in on the ground floor of exciting new ways to steal things. [P.S. I'm routinely pessimistic about Bitcoins for a lot of reasons, but the software security angle keeps coming back to me because it's so easy to explain. If you think I'm overly pessimistic, consider the track record on HN of "people who know what the threat environment banks operate in looks like" versus "Bitcoin advocates" has been in predicting observable future outcomes of e.g. Bitcoin bucket shops in advance.]
  - 13y ago

fossuser 13y ago

Coinbase is by far the easiest service to use (something that I think is vastly undervalued from the complaints on HN). As long as bitcoin continues to do well I think they have a good chance of being very successful. Congratulations on the funding.

blantonl 13y ago

Quote from the article: “We need 10 people yesterday,” said Ehrsam, a 24-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader. "10 People" in this case == security and crypto engineers - like the best the world can get. If you want to lead the largest exchange for a decentralized, anonymous currency, you better have an NSA quality-type security team that can address the intricate mathematics of the problems they will certainly face. I'd suggest they hire a very senior and experienced economist as well. $5m of funding? 500K per hire. Sounds about right.

betterunix 13y ago
"If you want to lead the largest exchange for a decentralized, anonymous currency, you better have an NSA quality-type security team that can address the intricate mathematics of the problems they will certainly face" Their first question would be, "What is the formal definition of Bitcoin's security?" Then they would notice that polynomial time attackers can double spend Bitcoin currency and stop bothering with the entire system. This is the sort of work in this field that top-notch crypto people create: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.44.8279 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.44.8... http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F11889663_20 http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F11889663_20 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5443458 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5443458
- wmf 13y ago
  Is it a startup's job to address existential risks to the system(s) that they participate in?
  - betterunix 13y ago
    These are not existential risks, they are real security issues. If there is not even a meaningful definition of Bitcoin's security -- a definition that can be used in a mathematical proof, without circular logic -- then how can Coinbase make any kind of claim about the security of their own system? To put it another way, suppose Bitcoin is inherently insecure -- suppose that nothing you do can prevent a polynomial time attack (this is not unheard of in crypto; see Merkle Puzzles) -- can you even claim that Coinbase is secure?

Aloisius 13y ago

When I first heard that VCs were putting money into Bitcoin companies, frankly, I balked. Then I realized that I felt the exact same way years ago when I first saw one of those companies selling gold at inflated prices to people. There is clearly a market for Bitcoin. Between the large black markets, the anti-government libertarians/anarchists and the speculative traders, there is little doubt there are fortunes to be made. I just don't know if I'd care to be in such a business.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rdl 13y ago

Wow. Congratulations.

rdl 13y ago

Is this Fred Wilson's first new investment in 18 months?

fredwilson 13y ago
yes, but more like 21 months http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/05/off-the-schneid.html http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/05/off-the-schneid.html

tibbon 13y ago

To the naysayers- there are 100 potential problems with Bitcoin. All reasons why it can "never" work. Yet, I can also list 100 problems with all sorts of things that we use on a daily basis: cash currency, vehicles, firearms, libraries, etc.... - Cash can be stolen, destroyed, counterfeited. It isn't easy to divide (I need quarters at the laundry machine, but I have a $5 bill). Cash is dirty. Do you know how many people have touched that dollar bill? - People could drive in the wrong lane, drive drunk, ignore all rules of the law. People might get killed! - People could do incredibly stupid things with guns. They might misfire or jam. You can miss and hit the wrong target easily. - People could steal books from libraries. They could burn. They cost money and make no money. Despite these problems- all of these things more or less work. Yes, Bitcoin has problems. Yet, I don't see any of them as being actually bigger than the potential problems with things we use daily anyway.

Nursie 13y ago
Difference is that a bunch of bad economic decisions were built into bitcoin from the word go (IMHO, I know you're going to disagree). It doesn't have potential downsides like the things you list, it has built-in definite downsides.
betterunix 13y ago
Shouldn't the goal be for Bitcoin to have reduced problems compared to the systems it is meant to replace? Why should we go from one problematic system to another equally problematic system?
- tibbon 13y ago
  I think it just has different problems. I don't think there's any way to create a perfect system, which is what many people seem to expect. It does solve several problems that no other currencies have managed to solve, but has cropped up some new potential issues in the meantime. While I think the problems inherent to current currencies are well known, I think some of the problems with Bitcoin still remain theoretical, with at least 50% of them being due to misunderstanding of the system or that its very early and we still lack some infrastructure (enough exchanges, etc)

LifeIvy 13y ago

Buy into weakness | Sell into strength. Hello profit.

Egregore 13y ago

Quote from the article: “Hackers are the animals that can detect a storm coming or an earthquake,” he said. “They just know, even though they don’t know why, and there are two big things hackers are excited about now and can’t articulate why–Bitcoin and 3D printing.” But from reading HN it seems that there is a lot more controversy about bitcoin than about 3D printing.

kyledrake 13y ago
Let me fix that for you. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/click-print-gun-the-inside-story-of-the-3d-printed-gun-movement-video http://motherboard.vice.com/read/click-print-gun-the-inside-...

venomsnake 13y ago

Why didn't they get them in Bitcoins?

alloftheabove 13y ago

“They have competitors doing the same thing." So are most of these bitcoin startups just banks/exchanges? Is there anyone doing anything more unique with bitcoin? Since it is hard to judge the true value of a bitcoin since it fluctuates so much, perhaps bitcoins would be best suited to pay for services and goods that are hard to judge in value? Someone should create a bitcoin based fiverr or mechanical turk. It would also be interesting to see something completely close the loop when it comes to bitcoins. For example, raise bitcoins to pay for the production costs of a movie, pay actors and staff in bitcoins, charge bitcoins for movie download, and repay investors in bitcoins.