Ask Amir Taaki About Bitcoin 768
"Bitcoin," says the project's website, "is a peer-to-peer currency. Peer-to-peer means that no central authority issues new money or tracks transactions." Wikipedia offers a readable explanation of the underlying technology. In (very) short, Bitcoin uses a distributed database and public key encryption to allow users to reassign ownership of units of Bitcoin currency (BTC), and does so in a way that can keep the user's identity private. Bitcoin isn't yet accepted the way credit cards are, but it's more than theoretical. You can buy (some) things with Bitcoin, and trade the currency itself.
Now, you can ask question about Bitcoin of Amir Taaki, a developer of client interfaces and stock trading software for Bitcoin, and owner and operator of trading exchange Britcoin.co.uk. Amir requests that questions focus not "so much on the mining (too many people get focused on that
when it's a minor aspect of Bitcoin) nor simple technical questions (people can
go find that info themselves on Wikipedia/the forums/sourcecode)," but rather on the harder-to-answer questions. Reading some of the related stories listed below may give you ideas on what those are. Standard Slashdot Interview rules apply: ask as many questions as you want, but please keep them to one per comment. Amir will get back with his answers.
oh look ! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:My question. (Score:0, Informative)
Unfortunately all our money is essentially worthless. It is only the belief that gives it value. As such Bitcoin has as much value as any other currency. The current spike in bitcoin is cause by the fact that people have little faith in dollars etc. so want to put their money somewhere else that can't be devalued by someone printing more money.
5-step formula (Score:4, Informative)
1. Create new "currency"
2. Make new "currency" progressively harder to acquire as time goes on
3. Get new people to buy into the "currency"
4. Sell off your easily gained currency holdings to new adopters
5. Profit!
Hey guys, I found Step 4!
Re:is there ever going to be a bitcoin bank? (Score:3, Informative)
Yeeees. But if you kept your life savings in a suitcase of cash, and it got burnt, you'd lose your life savings. A bitcoin wallet is like a suitcase of cash.
A Bitcoin wallet is also like your folder of photos of your your kids -- you can take a backup of it, and should do so.
Or keep your Bitcoins in a Bitcoin bank. There probably is one now -- I've not looked. If there isn't one, there's no technical reason for there not to be one.
Or, use Bitcoins to buy and sell, trading them for "real" money in order to keep it in the bank. This is what I do with my Paypal "dollars" from trading on eBay.
Re:Convince me it's not a Ponzi scheme (Score:5, Informative)
Convince me it's not a Ponzi scheme.
Break out ye olde wikipedia and be enlightened. Basically a Ponzi scheme involves one individual taking in periodic money deposits from many people and spending that income on overhead or paying out as faked interest/income. See Bernie Madoff.
Since there is no one individual, no regular periodic deposits/investments, no statements with made up balances, no interest payouts... I guess it fails to meet all criteria of a Ponzi scheme.
It may in fact be a massive investment "bubble" much like .com stocks / homes / social media / higher education. But its not a Ponzi.
I will give you credit that in modern American English, Ponzi has become null. Kind of like prefixing a question with "but that begs the question", when it means nothing in context, or at least certainly not what actually begging the question means. Similar to illiterate youngsters saying the word "like" every other word as a placeholder or time-filler.
It's probably already too late to get in, and it may be too late to get out.
As an investment scheme, yeah. For mining-for-profit, yeah. However, I "get in" by mining about 200 BTC back when the "difficulty" parameter was about two digits. I think I can "get out", if I please, with no loss.
Basic rule of investing is you bake your return in when you select your "buy" price. Mine was installing and compiling some software and having an enjoyable time reading the code and math behind it. Its pretty interesting. No downside means I have an excellent rate of return regardless of whatever market manipulations are going on.