Online-Only Currency BitCoin Reaches Dollar Parity 517
IamTheRealMike writes "The BitCoin peer to peer currency briefly reached exchange parity with the US dollar today after a spike in demand for the coins pushed prices slightly above 1 USD:1 BTC. BitCoin was launched in early 2009, so in only two years this open source currency has gone from having no value at all to one with not only an open market of competing exchanges, but the ability to buy real goods and services like web hosting, gadgets, organic beauty products and even alpaca socks."
In other words (Score:5, Funny)
The US Dollar will soon be worthless?
*ducks*
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If anything depends on pure faith more than anything else, it would be currency. Lots of people still have faith in the dollar, so no, it is not worthless yet.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Interesting)
It will never be worthless. The US Treasury Dept only accepts US dollars for tax payments, so we need to have dollars to pay our taxes, or we go to jail.
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Actually, there are really only two requirements for a national currency:
- The government accepts is in payment of taxes.
- The military accepts it as wages
Everything else is fluff. The exchance rates matter only to the extent that you have contracted to receive or make future payments in that currency (or have savings in raw currency, which is a very silly thing), and even that is trivial to hedge with a derivitive these days. How often you have to add a 0 on the end of prices and paychecks only matters i
Re:In other words (Score:4, Insightful)
The "Hard liners" in congress have proposed 100Bn in spending cuts, on a 1400Bn deficit.
That is the biggest fix the US politicians could come up with, and half of them are whining about how it's too much.
It's not worthless yet. But the US is going to hit a financial wall very soon, very hard.
Re:In other words (Score:4, Funny)
The differences between the US and Zimbabwe are that the US is the world's #1 economy, the US is a center of innovation, the US preserves inalienable rights. Because of the faith and credit of the US, we can basically print as much money as we like.
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The differences between the US and Zimbabwe are that the US is the world's #1 economy,
Are you sure about that? Whose figures are you using, and what do they measure?
the US is a center of innovation, ... I think we lost that edge over 5 years ago, and more probably over a decade ago. And we're still declining.
In patent and copyright lawsuits, perhaps. Otherwise
the US preserves inalienable rights
Have you looked at recent governmental proposals? Recent laws? Recent court decisions? It's true there's an
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While Zimbabwe is an interesting example of run-away hyper inflation, the economy of that country was and is so small that it is lost in the noise of international foreign exchange.
The country that does show world-wide consequences is the Weimar Republic and its 1000%+ annual inflation that arguably led to World War II. When a major world power sees its currency collapse, particularly when it is intimately tied to international trade, serious stuff can and does happen. The collapse of the Dollar or Euro w
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Isn't the dollar already worthless?
Maybe... Maybe not. I can still go into any store in the US and buy something with good old-fashioned cash. If I went in their with my digital wallet of BitCoins, they'd probably laugh at me.
On a side note, if they were real geeks, they would've called them credits.
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On a side note, if they were real geeks, they would've called them credits.
Bitcoin is not a credit-based money system. That's kind of the point.
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In theory, it is possible to print out a Bitcoin "note" on your home computer printer... or at least come up with a system where a physical piece of paper can be given some value of Bitcoins and used in a fashion similar to "old fashioned cash". The "official forums" of the Bitcoin website have several proposals, some of which have had some considerable thought put into them in terms of how that would be accomplished.
The most promising proposal I've seen along those lines is to print out "Bitcoin notes" wi
Strength of dollar != competition (Score:5, Insightful)
The dollar is weaker compared to other currencies than it has been in the past. It sounds like this is a bad thing, but really, it's not such a clear cut issue.
For instance, I have a bunch of Canadian and European friends who are coming to the US this year to vacation. The weaker US dollar means their Canadian dollars and Euros will go much farther. And Tourism is awesome because it brings money from outside of the economy in.
We are also seeing a slight uptick in exported goods as our prices are effectively lowered by the weak dollar. It creates a lower labor cost (relatively speaking) and allows us to create more jobs for exported goods manufacturing and services.
And it also means that our debts, while still significant, are effectively smaller.
There's a fair bit of not so go that goes a long with a weakening dollar as well, but it's not a wholly good/bad situation. There is some good, some bad, and some ehhh that accompanies any change in value of the US dollar.
-Rick
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Yup, take a look at Japan a couple of decades ago. Having a strong Yen caused them serious problems. They built up a large manufacturing base and, for a while, everything that you bought had 'Made in Japan' stamped on it. Japanese nationalism, however, meant that they were also heavily into the idea of buying local goods, so they weren't importing much. That meant that everyone was exchanging money for Japanese goods, and the Yen became very expensive. This drove up the price of Japanese-produced goods
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
From the site,
The total eventual circulation will be 21 million bitcoins. There will never be more coins than that. The coins are entering circulation gradually, at a steady pace over many years, to nodes supporting the network in proportion to the CPU time they contribute. With the current total CPU power on the network, most CPUs will usually take months between successfully generating 50 BTC.
So basically, this is like "collector items", not currency. A very scare "resource", if you can call it that. You get 50 BTC after few months, meaning that basically you've just spent $50 in electricity to get your "free" money.
Anyway, this virtual "currency" is bad for so many reasons, it's not even funny. Fist, the purpose of currency is not to hoard it - it is to spend it for goods/services. Currency is IOU notes that devalue over time. It is not a hard asset, like coal or copper or shares of MegaAssInc. FIAT currency tends to be *backed* by something, like an economy, like USA or European Union or even China. What is this backed by?
Anyway, another fad "currency". Might as well collect "ISK in eveonline" or "gold nuggets in WoW" - same thing.
Re:In other words (Score:4, Insightful)
You get 50 BTC after few months, meaning that basically you've just spent $50 in electricity to get your "free" money.
No, you get 50 BTC by selling something or some service, just like any other currency.
The money "generations" isn't a way to earn it, it's just to produce them initially.
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The 8 "decimal places" subdivisions of Bitcoins are merely a protocol limitation, of which can be "upgraded" and changed in some fashion without really breaking the system. Even if only 1 Bitcoin existed for all world trade, it could still be subdivided into as many smaller pieces as needed. There is no "quantum" Bitcoin.
In terms of people hoarding the money, eventually there reaches a point people have to eat, pay rent, and do things where they have to "spend" the money in some fashion. Once it gets spe
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There's a world of difference between "saving" and "saving raw currency". A system that encourages saving by investing in the production of new goods and services (ie., wealth) is much better than a system that encourages hoarding raw currency. Japan's "lost decade" is a great example of the problems even a little deflation can cause.
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The problem with the Japanese economy is multifold and I don't think you can simplify the issue down to just deflation. The problem is that the economy of Japan was structured for an inflationary currency, and it takes time to shift to another economic reality. They are still acting as if it is still an inflationary currency, but when deflation hits, you have to use a different playbook so to say as the rules are different. Some people can't adapt when that happens.
Also, like I said, large companies and
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"eventually" yes, but it's still the case that one of the many reasons that a slight inflation is preferable, is that it makes it less tempting to hoard money.
With inflation even if you don't spend the money, you do atleast let someone borrow it (perhaps you put it in the bank) to get interest to cover inflation.
Another advantage is that it makes wage-adjustments easier. It's hell of a big problem to set someones salary DOWN, all hell typically breaks loose. A lot easier if *everyones* salaries fall by 2-3%
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Any finite resource can be a currency. Scarce yet widely spread resources work best (gold, for example).
Computing power, which is derived from energy.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Scarce yet widely spread resources work best (gold, for example).
Supply is too scarce and industrial demand for gold are too variable for it to be a good currency any more. Even in the 1700s and 1800s inflation and deflation often hit 20% or more, which killed a lot of economic growth. Yes, that's inflation and deflation of a currency consisting primarily of gold coins. And the government wasn't capable of stopping it. You won't hear that from anyone claiming all of our economic woes are because we went off the gold standard. Inflation has generally been lower and more stable than it was on the gold standard, and deflation has been rare. That doesn't mean it's not a good store of value (i.e. the price of gold won't drop to zero. It could drop 80%, though) or a hedge against high inflation. It just means that it isn't a good currency.
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categorically false. a silver or gold dollar from 1789 to 1917 essentially had a constant value except in gold rush or silver rush towns. since 1917 the unitary dollar has lost 98% of its value. or in words the poster can understand, inflation of the dollar over the last ninety years was 50 fold.
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categorically false. a silver or gold dollar from 1789 to 1917 essentially had a constant value
You can call it "categorically false," but that just makes you someone who hasn't looked into it or a liar. I'll assume the former for now.
That the value was essentially the same in 1789 and 1917 doesn't mean that there were no cycles of inflation and deflation in between. Have a look at page 6 of this presentation [oregonstate.edu]. In it I see annual inflation of up to 20% and annual deflation of up to 19% in that time period. Then compare it to the relatively lower (absolute value) inflation after 1917.
Sorry if it
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"FIAT currency tends to be.."
I believe you mean 'fiat', not "FIAT". Fiat currency is legal tender that has value backed by decree of a policymaker; The FIAT Currency is the new hatchback from the Italian automaker.
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Currency is IOU notes that devalue over time.
Absolutely. This is the one thing that "goldies" never seem to get right. Money is all about you owing me and vice versa. Moreover, all money in existence is ultimately a debt of the government, which is why the current political obsession with austerity is so ridiculous. Government debt is simply the mirror image of private wealth.
FIAT currency tends to be *backed* by something, like an economy, like USA or European Union or even China.
More concretely, modern fiat money is backed by the power of taxation. A large part of the value of money comes from ultimately circular reasoning, i.e. you can pay your grocerie
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Are you implying that the limited quantity is a bad thing? That's a good thing, because it means its value won't drop over time due to diluation, as happens with fiat currencies with no limit on how much is issued.
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basing currency on a random metal from the ground is completely asinine. rather than monetary policy set by experts, or politicians, or even corrupt businesses, it's set by whoever happens to find deposits of gold or own the land those deposits are on. since gold production and demand do not scale to population sizes the end result of a global gold based currency would be prices in miniscule portion
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"Good money does not lose its value over time."
Wrong. Money gives you liquidity with zero rentability. As long as the world becomes more productive (by means of specialization and technical advancement) a given set of currency *must* dilute, or else you would be gaining wealth by just sitting on a pile of money.
"thus discouraging saving money."
That's a good thing. Saving money does absolutly nothing for anybody. Investing money does. Of course, your savings in a bank is not "real savings" (as in hiddin
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Are you implying that the limited quantity is a bad thing? That's a good thing, because it means its value won't drop over time due to diluation, as happens with fiat currencies with no limit on how much is issued.
A limited quantity is a very bad thing for a currency. The value is _supposed_ to drop over time. That is the entire reason it works as currency. The only point of currency is to encourage and enable trade. So you can trade your extra sheep for ducks without having to hunt down someone who needs sheep and has extra ducks and can make the exchange right now. In order to do that, currency needs to actually be used and traded. Currency that is under someones bed rather than in circulation is not doing its job.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Informative)
> Currency is IOU notes that devalue over time.
No, currency is whatever we decide it is. You are speaking only of one small subset of currency known as fiat currency. There is nothing intrinsic about currency that says it has to devalue over time.
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But there's nothing intrinsic about devalueing. A currency could also increase in value with time - if economic production increases faster than the currency supply for example.
And there is no concept of a BitCoin representing some amount of energy - you can't get the energy back. It's simply a mechanism to restrict the supply without requiring a centralized issuer.
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The biggest problem bitcoin seems to have is that people get way too caught up in those details. I did too.... but that's just about how its minted. Yes, you get 50 btc if you process a block (an amount which cuts in half roughly every 4 years until it goes below the 8 decimal minimum and becomes 0)
However, nobody is going to make a lot of btc doing that,.... the network is already too big (a phenom II 6 core will process a block around every 125 days last I checked). The MAIN way to get btc is to trade for
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Wrong. An economy is not a backing. It does encourage confidence that the notes of debt may be exhanged of goods or services in the future, but a backing is a guarantee (e.g. hard assets) and an economy is not a guarantee.
WRONG! Fiat currencies may or may not be backed by something: fiat means mandated by law. Coincidentally, fiat c
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The Constitution also states that only Congress has the power to coin money, but that doesn't mean that members of Congress were expected to spend time at the mint themselves. That's where the Necessary and Proper Clause comes into play. The Supreme Court ruled in McCulloch v. Maryland that the Congress can create a central bank to help handle fiducia
SWEET! (Score:2)
woohoo? :D
meaningless (Score:2)
To reach "parity with the dollar" means nothing. A Yen may be worth $0.01, but that doesn't mean ANYTHING about the strength of the Yen.
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To reach "parity with the dollar" means nothing. A Yen may be worth $0.01, but that doesn't mean ANYTHING about the strength of the Yen.
True, but if you knew historical values of the Yen or Bitcoin vs. the Dollar (or any other currency) you might know something about it . . .
And then there's this point from TFS: "BitCoin was launched in early 2009, so in only two years this open source currency has gone from having no value at all to one with not only an open market of competing exchanges, but the ability to buy real goods and services . . ." Actually, that's about 1/2 TFS, so it is short enough to read in its entirety. As is TFA . . .
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It's not meaningless. The point is not to say that bitcoin is as strong as a dollar - which it isn't (as the strength of a currency is defined by how many traders accept it), but to say that the adoption rate is growing and quite rapidly.
Re:meaningless (Score:4, Interesting)
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The real threshold (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, with Triskelion Quatloos, you can buy a chick in a tinfoil bikini armed with a giant can opener: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamesters_of_Triskelion [wikipedia.org]. Maybe you should consider using that currency?
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Yes, but do we want to?
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Here you see what two people can do! (Score:2)
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The exchange volume on the mtgox exchange is currently 57239. So a bit more than 2 people.
See ref: http://www.mtgox.com/trade/history [mtgox.com]
Sorry (Score:3, Funny)
...but I only accept payments in Beenz or Flooz
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But THIS time it's DIFFERENT! This time there's crypto-decentralized-cloud-p2p-trust-digitalness in it! It's more privatey! That makes it way better and more underground, so it's required that everyone on Slashdot will switch to it at once.
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Facebook Credits? Facebook Credits are no good out here! I want something real.
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How much is that in Flooz? (Score:2)
Because I've got a shitload I need to get rid of.
does this online money have any bank backing? (Score:2)
does this online money have any bank backing? or is some thing that they can say the eula says we don't have to pay out any thing.
what about tax?
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... or is some thing that they can say the eula says we don't have to pay out any thing ...
There is no EULA. It's completely peer-to-peer. You don't register, you just run the open source client.
I was thinking of calling it a con (Score:4, Insightful)
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So now (Score:3)
So now you know you can call it a con.
Re:I was thinking of calling it a con (Score:5, Insightful)
... this isn't really any different than what banks do with fractional reserve banking.
Aside, of course, from the complete lack of anything resembling deposits, loans, or reserves (fractional or otherwise). In other words, no real similarity at all. It's not a con or scam either, of course—merely a protocol for indirect exchange in which certain hard-to-find patterns of bits take the place of scarce physical commodities. As a virtual currency it has many of the attributes which make precious metals so eminently suitable as physical currencies: scarcity, durability, divisibility, and fungibility, to name a few. The protocol may not be perfect, but it is the best I've seen thus far. The limitations mainly relate to scalability and maintaining a consistent state between many decentralized peers—technical issues, not economic ones.
O-key (Score:2)
So the EFF will accept BitCoin-based donations. I'm sure their staff will be ecstatic to be paid in this "currency" rather than old-fashioned euros (or dollars or yen).
Seriously - this seems no more useful than money earned in Second Life or Monopoly money.
Re:O-key (Score:4, Interesting)
Obvious question (Score:5, Funny)
Do alpacas really wear socks?
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Only if it really completes the outfit. ;-)
Non-story (Score:3)
In other news, my new currency will trade at 100USD to 1. Therefore, it is much better and we can all ooh and ahh over how obsolete national currencies are. That's the whole story here, right?
"Working directly with the owners of this small family farm in Massachusetts, we are offering selected Alpaca products for Bitcoins."
Yeah, so I suppose this is someone's father or something. Real great customer there. The Eco-shop online linked from the article has 5 of 7 categories listing no products. You know I love buying from those sorts of stores! Either the owner never finished the site or it's been abandoned for some time, there's no way to know. The best part is giving my CC info to some shop with tumbleweeds and cockroaches wandering about.
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what CC info? you just send cash to some address, or use bitcoin escrow service [appspot.com] if you want be more secure.
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Except this isn't one person saying that 1 bitcoin == 1 dollar, this is lots of people trading with each other.
All of today's currency is meaningless... (Score:2, Insightful)
...in the post-apocalyptic world. That's why I'm saving bottle caps.
Credits (Score:2)
I won't take any new currency seriously unless it's denominated in credits. Or possibly quatloos.
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Oblig (Score:2)
BitCoin credits? BitCoin credits are no good out here. I need something more real.
I don't have anything else...but BitCoin credits will do fine.
bucket shop (Score:2)
I'd invest in penny stocks before I invested in this.
The True Measure (Score:4, Funny)
and even alpaca socks.
They have finally arrived.
I don't understand the appeal (Score:2)
BitCoin enthusiasts seem to fall into the same category as gold standard promoters. You can't run a modern global economy with financial instruments based on a rare commodity. Only 21 million BitCoins will be generated, which will cause deflation once that limit is reached. The only way a government could use BitCoins is the same way they used to use gold, ie. buy up enough of it to have reserves that can be used to pump money into the economy when it needs it. BitCoins won't be more stable than modern
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Once that limit is reached neither deflation nor inflation will occur. Any price fluctuations in a currency with stable supply will be the result of supply and demand fluctuations.
Which is the point of having a price system in the first place, conveying that information as accurately as possible.
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Deflation is bad because it reduces the amount of BTC in effective circulation (i.e reduces spending of a currency because it will be worth more tomorrow). People will tend to hold BTC rather than spend, which means the people who accept BTC are more likely to stop accepting them. At the same time the merchants are more likely to hold the BTC they do get rather than selling them on an exchange. Since there will be fewer BTC on the exchange, the price will be driven up further.
Back when the US was using
There are several problems here (Score:4, Interesting)
First, a fixed number of bitcoins will not actually work. The smallest unit of value people will want to exchange is not one 21 millionth of all the units of value in the world. It will be significantly smaller than that. As the total size of the economy expands, the total value people will want to exchange as a fraction of the size of the economy will become smaller and smaller.
Secondly, the way the system works affords no transaction anonymity. And for a currency to be 'real' this is a big deal.
I have long felt that in order for any currency to work, it must be able to be 'stolen'. In other words, you must be able to use it to engage in transactions that are not legally sanctioned.
Of course, the identity behind any given public key in the bitcoin network is something of a mystery. But it's not that hard to trace, especially since it's possible to compile a complete and unbroken history of all transactions any bitcoin has been involved in.
This is an interesting experiment, but I don't think it's a replacement for currency.
Re:There are several problems here (Score:5, Informative)
The smallest transferable unit is not a single BitCoin. It is in fact .00000001 BitCoin, making for plenty of transferable units.
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The smallest unit of value people will want to exchange is not one 21 millionth of all the units of value in the world.
That shouldn't be a problem; the protocol allows each BitCoin to be divided by up to six decimal places, so the limit is one 21-trillionth of the world-wide value, not one 21-millionth. The official client only allows two decimal places for now, for practical reasons, but that would be trivial to change.
Secondly, the way the system works affords no transaction anonymity.
This is more of a problem. The system is designed to allow anonymous spenders and recipients, but some simple traffic analysis can show connections between various accounts (some of which may be linked to re
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There are 47,619,047,619,047,619 units in the total pool (when the system has run its course). Seems like quite a few. Enough for 14 B people to have 3,401,360 each.
For a currency to work people need only to accept it as a medium of value exchange.
i think it is not meant as a replacement for national currencies, but as a supplement.
It works this way : (Score:5, Informative)
system assumes two things :
cost of electricity
computational power.
it is based on the computational power of the network. if the computational power increases, the system arranges bitcoins accordingly. so, even if you join with a huge server farm, you just up the computational power of the network, and the amount of coins you can earn from your participation decreases. hence, you cannot beat the network.
also, the cost of electricity is a factor. if you do the above, you will get hit by a huge cost in electricity.
only way to beat the system, is to be able to have zero cost for the electricity you spend, and then join it with mega server farms.
but, the system says that, at a point where zero cost for electricity is a practical reality anywhere on the planet, there will be no need for money, since cost of producing anything will approximate zero. (and that's right).
the system is also anonymous. noone but you and the person you exchange with, know who sent them what. but, this knowledge is only in the form of awareness of a complex encrypted key existing on the other side - nothing else. it may have been done from china over a netbook, or a mobile device flying somewhere on atlantic ocean.
that is both good, and also a drawback - if you lose the encrypted keys you store on your hard drive, you lose the 'wallet' that contains your cash.
but thats no different in the real world either.
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And thus the next generation of botnets found its purpose...
Third Sock! (Score:2)
Two Socks with BitCoin, Get One Free!
Er...
Re:...wow (Score:5, Interesting)
Selling CPU time for money has been almost as old as computing itself, and most of the time you didn't worry about malicious code or anything silly of that nature. You certainly could build a CPU emulator (java/flash/mono) which will run executable code in a "sandbox"... and it is being done in various ways even now with virtual machines of various kinds. The Seti@Home project showed you could even queue jobs in various ways for a mass computation effort.
The only point of selling that for Bitcoins is that the Bitcoin becomes the currency instead of Dollars or Euros. There are some advantages of using Bitcoins (lower overhead for transactions and the ability to calculate micropayments in an easier fashion), but you aren't using CPU bandwidth as the currency. The whole point of the hashing algorithm which "mines" the coins is merely to introduce scarcity and to "spread the wealth" while the currency is being established.
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Because they are members of the camel family. And you don't want their toes to get cold.
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There are only 2 ways to eliminate money.
You can provide every human need and desire for free using magic, if you have magic.
You can collapse the world economy to the point where no one trusts representative value, then you will be bartering a cow and a dozen chickens for your next iPhone.
Re:Bartering (Score:3)
No, we'll be bartering iPhones for Cows and Chickens after the 4th world war.
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Did I miss the 3rd world war? Was that MySpace versus Facebook? Netscape versus IE?
bullshit. (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w [youtube.com]
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Re:not another currency, please! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? Gold has very little inherent worth. If the shit really and truly hit the fan people would probably go back to it out of some belief otherwise, but in reality using gold (or any other near worthless commodity) is practically identical to using a fiat currency. The only reason you accept anything as payment is because you have faith that you'll be able to pay someone else with it tomorrow. The only difference between fiat and backed currency is that the amount of money in circulation is controlled by a governing body, as opposed to being 'controlled' by the global output of whatever your backing is. At least if the Federal Reserve prints a few billion extra dollars there is generally a reason for it, if someone were to find a major, previously unknown gold deposit tomorrow the value of a backed currency would fluctuate for no reason.
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No more fiat (or in this case, fiat-esque because it lacks a govement) money. We need physical-backed money.
I don't care if it's gold or doughnuts, just no more fake currency.
How about bottlecaps?
Re:not another currency, please! (Score:4, Funny)
Not entirely true.
Gold is high density, malleable and corrosion resistant so it makes great bullets.
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Actually it is far too malleable. Copper makes much better bullets for my 300 winmag. Barnes is the company that makes them. Nice high velocity shooting without the bullet totally disintegrating on impact.
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That is usually only the case if you are shooting something with a thick skin. An unkevlared person will probably take a lot more damage from a hollow point gold bullet than a solid copper slug. Plus gold won't contaminate the meat like lead or copper can.
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