Happy Birthday Bitcoin!

guerilla said:
And even with trust, someone can decide to betray you. If you gave me 10 BTC to hold onto, I would probably do it. If you gave me 100,000 BTC, you'd never hear from me again.
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You are describing general human nature, rather than anything specific to bitcoin.

Also, escrow in bitcoin can be done without the escrow agent ever having access to the bitcoins (multi-signature transactions).
 


droplister said:
It seems that bitcoin has likely made a good number of early adopters rich. Whatever the future of bitcoin is, this is the case now. Basement dwelling neck beards with fat stacks. I'm hopeful of what they'll do with their new money.

I'm not sure how big this group is, surely dozens, but maybe hundreds, thousands? And they each have $100k, maybe $300k, others with millions. (What do to think?) And I'm not talking about the speculators, but the hacker types.

They're techies interested in encryption. They are largely unknown. And they're ideologically opposed to centralized control.

And now they have access to capital they would never of had otherwise, that can be spent on disruptive technology that wouldn't have been funded otherwise. And, I would imagine, profit won't be a major driving factor since they didn't sweat for their fortune.

I'm not saying they're not looking to make money, but if they've got it already, I see this group taking up the more idealistic, ambitious stuff rather than starting a chain of laundromats that accept bitcoin.

So, they'll be interested in open sourcing solutions to problems that the marketplace otherwise wouldn't. (That's a lot of assumptions, but if just one of these bitcoin billionaires goes rouge and delivers something awesome, I will cream my pants.)

I've got my fingers crossed that this results in effective ways for the general population to thwart the dragnet data collection stooges. There's stuff like TOR and PGP, but not one person I know IRL has heard of them.

I consider this top priority for the web, essentially smashing all the cameras. If the Internet is going to have a good future, government surveillance has got to be rooted out instead of built in.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this, or could you link me to anywhere that goes into this? Maybe I'm just dreaming this group up, but when 4000 BTC gets stolen, where does it go? Who is it funding? I imagine the result being something like Silicon Valley. All the vision without the venture capitalists, business plans, or Starbucks.

This is just something that intrigues me more than the price of BTC. It strikes me as a potential hotbed for innovation.
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What you are describing is an extremely common and apparent thought over at bitcointalk, reddit/r/btc and on one of the many facebook bitcoin pages. It's kind of a shared group optimism, and it so strong that it is in fact kinda tangible.

I'd dare say that if one of the many hundreds of new bitcoin millionaires dared to speak up and say something like "i'm cashing out and retiring" or "I'm just going to use this to become the NJ laundromat king" then you'd have thousands of screaming haters replying to the thread calling him a bitcoin turncoat or even threatening bodily harm...

I know the BTC haterz would call this a collective of jealous nerds or something derragatory; but it certainly does make for a focused core group of people who will do anything to see btc thrive.

BTW; don't expect one to 'go rouge' and deliver something awesome...

Expect 100 of them to.
 
mattseh said:
You are describing general human nature, rather than anything specific to bitcoin.
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I never said it was specific to Bitcoin.

However, Bitcoin has disadvantages in this aspect vis a vis "real" "money".

Anonymity makes it a great "money" to steal. It's lack of transparency makes theft simple. Indeed, I am not sure how you would prove someone "stole" Bitcoin.

Then there is the lack of institutional support.

Then there is the fact Bitcoin is an abstraction, and lacks any defining or specific physical form.

I could go on and on, but I am rapidly losing interest in this topic again...

mattseh said:
Also, escrow in bitcoin can be done without the escrow agent ever having access to the bitcoins (multi-signature transactions).
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You will have to explain this to me but until someone is doing it, I think I will be able to get people to "give" me millions of dollars in Bitcoins without too much trouble. Actually, knowing how lazy people are, I could probably put it in the fine print that they are just giving them to me through my escrow service. That would be funny.
 
conv3rsion said:
Ok, I now understand why there was confusion. Essentially, I was explaining that Bitcoin does not need a built in chargeback mechanism to be successful, and you are saying that "so what, it can be gamed one way or another".
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Yes, it can be gamed, and it's not that the technology is the weak spot. Humans are always the weak spot. If you send me 50 Bitcoins and I don't live up to my end, what will you do?

I'd love you to take me to court, where you can claim I owe you a non-physical, non-copywritable digital abstraction.

Or better yet, let's increase the transaction costs by signing contracts every time we transact.

conv3rsion said:
And then I'd counter with, "actually in the case of escrow, you use multi key signing and the escrow company cant ever spend the money themselves"
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I should probably just setup a Bitcoin bank. That's the easiest way to get lots of Bitcoins.

conv3rsion said:
Read the section on escrow - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts

Actually read the whole thing, this technology is amazing.
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I read the section on Escrow, that's interesting. I didn't read the rest, Bitcoin gives me AIDs.

I wonder though, how does the mediator get paid?

Anyway, I think you have convinced me escrow is not the way to go. I need to think bigger like a bank. Bank's "acquire" stuff voluntarily, and if the bank "loses" all the Bitcoins, what are people going to do? Call Obama? LOL

I would probably just find 1,000 Lukes to park their BTC with me for a 5% annual return. Once we hit 500k Bitcoins, time to retire to somewhere with white sandy beaches.
 
It will be interesting to see what comes of the upcoming Senate committee hearings.
 
guerilla said:
Eve is brilliant because it shows the holes in an anarchist economy/society. It doesn't prove anarchism doesn't work, it just proves that being dumb and too trusting can have very expensive consequences.

There is no safety net for lazy or dumb people. They fail. Then they either smarten up, or they leave the gene pool.
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The same reason we shouldn't give a shit if you can chargeback bitcoins
 
guerilla said:
I should probably just setup a Bitcoin bank. That's the easiest way to get lots of Bitcoins. I would probably just find 1,000 Lukes to park their BTC with me for a 5% annual return. Once we hit 500k Bitcoins, time to retire to somewhere with white sandy beaches.
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Lol, you still don't get it at all... Not one tiny little bit!

Today you have two kinds of bitcoin owners; The speculators pushing up the market, which are either cashing out their coins after a sale or just keeping them at the exchange, and the believers like me, the 20k+ vendors, & the silicon valley investors that understand the genius of this technology and fully expect to see it become the #1 world currency one day.

Neither group has any need nor desire for a bank. Banks and the Fed are well known as "the enemy" within all bitcoin communities I have visited. 100% of them.

You just won't allow yourself to see any progress, will you?
 
lukep said:
Lol, you still don't get it at all... Not one tiny little bit!

Today you have two kinds of bitcoin owners; The speculators pushing up the market, which are either cashing out their coins after a sale or just keeping them at the exchange, and the believers like me, the 20k+ vendors, & the silicon valley investors that understand the genius of this technology and fully expect to see it become the #1 world currency one day.

Neither group has any need nor desire for a bank. Banks and the Fed are well known as "the enemy" within all bitcoin communities I have visited. 100% of them.

You just won't allow yourself to see any progress, will you?
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Yes, all of the Silicon Valley investors involved fully expect BTC to become the dominant global currency lol. You should spend a little less time on the BTC forums and some more time in the real world. The price of BTC does not reflect what you believe to be happening. BTC is still in it's adolescence. Very few people have time machines like you do to see the future. Slow your roll.
 
cassius said:
Yes, all of the Silicon Valley investors involved fully expect BTC to become the dominant global currency lol. You should spend a little less time on the BTC forums and some more time in the real world. The price of BTC does not reflect what you believe to be happening. BTC is still in it's adolescence. Very few people have time machines like you do to see the future. Slow your roll.
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You're totally out of the loop, just like Guerilla.

I don't have time to argue against both of you, but I'll leave you with a Y Combinator school video where Srinivasan, investor, lecturer, and also the owner of Coindesk.com gives a presentation on basically using silicon valley to remove power from all world governments, with Bitcoin as their biggest tool.

Start watching at around 9:00 for the most relevant stuff, and remember, this is someone who has invested Tens of millions into bitcoin startups lately and is a teacher at the YCombinator school, leading the next generation of silicon valley investors.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A]Balaji Srinivasan at Startup School 2013 - YouTube[/ame]


Never heard of ycombinator? Educate thyself.


Then listen to this panel of SilliV investors talk about bitcoin at a conference called "#Disrupt"

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhF-B1X7QWE"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhF-B1X7QWE[/ame]
 
Lol at the BTC-E chatbox right now:

bitcoin crashing will be at $50 by tonight!
best time to buy bitcoin is right now!
bitcoin crash sell sell sell!
buy bitcoin now while price is low!
(insert random pump and dump for other useless crypto)
i have inside info bitcoin will be at $25 in 2 hours
just heard from trusted source bitcoin will be at $430 in 3 hours
 
Comments like, "if it works. . . extremely high risk investment. . . no one should expect those returns" do not equate to, "fully expect[ing] to see it become the #1 world currency one day." Expecting enough expansion to profit and expecting a totally dominant currency are not one in the same.
 
cassius said:
Comments like, "if it works. . . extremely high risk investment. . . no one should expect those returns" do not equate to, "fully expect[ing] to see it become the #1 world currency one day." Expecting enough expansion to profit and expecting a totally dominant currency are not one in the same.
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These people have to watch their words so they don't get sued. Learn to read behind the lines: Such as where they put their money.
 
lukep said:
These people have to watch their words so they don't get sued. Learn to read behind the lines: Such as where they put their money.
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Yes, they put their money where they expect to make profits. That's investing. They expect the value of BTC to grow, as do I. That doesn't mean they 100% expect BTC to become the dominant currency. You are making assumptions, pretty bold ones.
 
luke, do you seriously see folks like ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, and the Department of Defense transacting solely in Bitcoin?

Don't get me wrong, I like Bitcoin, has a vested interest in it, and it pays my bills just fine. However, I don't believe the Chinese government will be purchasing mineral rights in other countries using Bitcoin anytime soon.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
luke, do you seriously see folks like ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, and the Department of Defense transacting solely in Bitcoin?

Don't get me wrong, I like Bitcoin, has a vested interest in it, and it pays my bills just fine. However, I don't believe the Chinese government will be purchasing mineral rights in other countries using Bitcoin anytime soon.
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I don't think anyone behind Bitcoin sees that. They see it as a tool for the New World to go up against the Old World.

That's like asking if people really thought the Catholic Church would be behind the widespread distribution of books and information through the printing press. Of course not. The Vatican did everything in their power to stop the spread of information. But you can only keep people dumbed down and controlled for so long before they break free. Eventually the new technology prevailed and books greatly hurt the control the Vatican had on the people.

Bitcoin could end up being similar to the printing press or the Internet. Again, it may not be bitcoin in particular, but some type of non-system currency is going to begin to put more and more pressure on traditional banking methods and governments the same way the printing press put pressure on the establishment of that day.
 
droplister said:
They're techies interested in encryption. They are largely unknown. And they're ideologically opposed to centralized control.

And now they have access to capital they would never of had otherwise, that can be spent on disruptive technology that wouldn't have been funded otherwise.
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Yup, if you think about it, its fucking awesome. Almost impossibly awesome.
 
slayerment said:
I don't think anyone behind Bitcoin sees that. They see it as a tool for the New World to go up against the Old World.
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The "Old World" isn't going anywhere due to a f*cken crypto-currency.

Again, I like Bitcoin, and think it has a promising future. However, you guys are just delusional with the whole "will become the dominant world currency" stuff.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
The "Old World" isn't going anywhere due to a f*cken crypto-currency.

Again, I like Bitcoin, and think it has a promising future. However, you guys are just delusional with the whole "will become the dominant world currency" stuff.
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It was absolutely unavoidable that you would have come to this exact conclusion Matt. You've outted yourself as a statist on many occasions.

No offense of course; but it's hard enough to explain this stuff to Guerilla.
 
lukep said:
It was absolutely unavoidable that you would have come to this exact conclusion Matt. You've outted yourself as a statist on many occasions.
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LOL. That actually made me burst out laughing. "You've outted yourself as a statist". It's like the Wickedfire equivalent of some 7 year old kid on the playground yelling out, "you're gay!" to some other kid.

No luke, I just happen to live in the real world.
 
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