Quote :

"Even if it does succeed, banks will eventually have to get involved, because you will want to finance something. Like a house or a car. Which means that you'll need more bitcons or dollars or gold than you currently have. Which means you need a loan. "

That's the beauty of it: banks won't have to get involved. Private individuals or organizations can give out loans if they want to. The potentially great thing about BitCoin is that the government can't control it, which takes the power away from the power players, and gives it back to the people. I think Bitcoin could work, if enough people started using it.

6/3/2011 1:04:55 PM

^ that brings up some interesting points. if someone defaults on their debt, what recourse do the lenders have? would debt holders be first in the pecking order or would their debt be subordinated to other obligations? perhaps the debt can be a security with the same pecking order rights as equity -- the obligations on the security could be structured like dividends.

6/3/2011 1:17:37 PM

It is ridiculous to assume that nobody can manipulate a system created by man.

6/3/2011 1:20:37 PM

[announce] Namecoin - a distributed naming system based on Bitcoin
April 18, 2011, 12:52:59 am
#1
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Namecoin is a naming system based on bitcoin with a few modifications. It is inspired by the bitdns discussion and recent failures of the DNS.

The quick facts:

* This is a new blockchain, separate from the main Bitcoin chain
* Name/value pairs are stored in the blockchain attached to coins
* Names are acquired through new transaction types - new, first-update and update
* Names expire after 12000 blocks unless renewed with an update
* No two unexpired names can be identical
* Block validation is extended to reject transactions that do not follow the above rules
* The code is here: https://github.com/vinced/namecoin

Initially, two name spaces are defined - DNS and personal. The DNS name space is targetted towards a new distributed TLD, possibly .bit.

Here is how you can help:

* Compile and run namecoind.
* Do some mining. The starting difficulty is 512, so CPU mining is still viable.
* We need proxies, browser plugins and DNS servers created to act as a bridge between Namecoin and users.

6/3/2011 1:52:42 PM

bam! already manipulated by creating a whole new parallel system.

6/3/2011 2:04:35 PM

That's like saying a farmer is manipulating the banana market by showing up to the market with oranges.

6/3/2011 2:09:06 PM

Bitcoin keeps going up Damn I wanna buy like $1000 worth just to see how much it goes up

6/3/2011 2:13:44 PM

What do you mean it keeps going up?

Quote :

"Faucet is being Fixed The Bitcoin Faucet is closed for maintenance. Please come back later. "

keeps going down for me.

6/3/2011 2:33:13 PM

The value of the coins. 200,000% return. 0.5 cents a year ago now worth $10.50

6/3/2011 3:00:36 PM

i see.

6/3/2011 3:05:54 PM

The only ones guaranteed to profit are the creators. everyone else it's just like a stock market gamble. Where can you go to buy these?

6/3/2011 3:08:48 PM

My brain is becoming mush from reading all these (shady) terms and conditions.


The question is do I trust these people?

You only can reach them via email. They practically say your email may or may not be read and may or may not be responded to.

The artwork on all these sites seem cheap and unprofessional.

They claim hardly any responsibility for your account information.

No fraud protection.

No physical location.

This is the wilderness, baby.

6/3/2011 3:54:19 PM

You acknowledge that starting in 2011, Dwolla will report to the Internal Revenue Service the total amount of the payments you receive each calendar year into all the Accounts you own if you(i) receive more than $20,000, and (ii) receive more than 200 payments, in that calendar year.

6/3/2011 4:03:10 PM

21st century drug deals ITT.

6/5/2011 10:57:43 PM

It was the opportunity of the lifetime if you had the cash.

I've looked into it and I think you can still make money, Its all about risk/reward here.

I would NOT recomend buying anything illegal off this website, period.

But I think you can hold the coins and make money. Look at the taxi cab medallion holders in NYC who made serious coin holding a medallion while not running a cab.

The supply/demand factors here mixed with the government insolvencies, currency crisis, and artifically low interest rates make this an attractive investment if you like taking big risks (lose everything) for potentially big rewards (make 50-300%).

6/6/2011 1:51:33 AM

I would not buy bitcoin, especially not as an investment. I have not looked into the system, but it seems improbable that counterfeiting will never become a problem. Also, a fixed money supply will fluctuate wildly in value (relative to a variable money supply), leading to bubbles and crashes as people are driven back and forth between bitcoin and its leading competitor, dollars.

For a currency to be good to use it must be a good store of value, which means, the phrase "it is a good investment" must never be uttered. As it has been uttered for bitcoin, I predict a wild run-up in prices followed, eventually, but a massive crash.

6/6/2011 11:51:50 AM

You just said it will have a wild runup in prices during the bubble yet you would not invest in it.


This thing could be a mega bubble. I guess you hate money or don't have the discipline to sell when it gets frothy

6/6/2011 4:18:15 PM

I don't have faith in my ability to recognize when it has become frothy. After-all, if I can see it has reached the peak, so can everyone else, and at that instant the price drops from $texas to $zero. When the drop comes, it isn't going to just fall in price, trading will simply stop.

6/6/2011 4:42:53 PM

what do you mean you can see it hit the peak?


shit could go to $60 or could go to $1 at any minute.

6/6/2011 4:45:08 PM

I was going to buy some the other day when it was at $14, it jumped $5 today



Waiting on dwolla to send verification deposits to my account. Should be here tomorrow at the latest

6/6/2011 5:32:32 PM

I'm only here because of gawker btw.

http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imaginable

6/6/2011 5:39:46 PM

That's their in. War on Drugs. The government will shut down Bitcoin before the end of the year.

6/6/2011 7:12:52 PM

Lonesnark, that's because you are an economist and economists know dick about valuations. (not being a jerk, it's just true)

Bitcoins are not difficult to value at all because they are exchanged for real goods and services.

If a bitcoin cost $20 and for one bitcoin you can get something that would normally cost you $30 in a store then it's one thing. If all you can get is something that normally costs $10 then its another. Not terribly difficult to find a value.

6/6/2011 7:32:08 PM

You are right, economists don't know a lot about valuations aside what we can calculate, however, frequently, investors know just as little but, unlike economists, are willing to overestimate their ability to judge values.

Quote :

"Bitcoins are not difficult to value at all because they are exchanged for real goods and services. If a bitcoin cost $20 and for one bitcoin you can get something that would normally cost you $30 in a store then it's one thing. If all you can get is something that normally costs $10 then its another. Not terribly difficult to find a value."

You could say the same of US Dollars, yet you routinely state that they are overvalued.

6/6/2011 7:47:11 PM

Well we do have a $50 million/month trade deficit.

Also, it's not so much that I think the dollar is overvalued now (though it probably is), I am just warning people that it will collapse when the Fed chooses to devalue the dollar in order to service our ballooning debt.



[Edited on June 6, 2011 at 8:34 PM. Reason : a]

6/6/2011 8:33:53 PM

So those two things directly contradict each other , you can pick which one of them is complete bullshit, I'd recommend the one about being able to easily accurately price the bitcoin.

6/6/2011 8:45:05 PM

Nothing I said contradicts itself there buddy.

I know more about this stuff than you do man, let it go.

6/6/2011 11:09:41 PM

Keep telling yourself that. I considered explaining it to you but I know it's pointless.

[Edited on June 6, 2011 at 11:27 PM. Reason : ]

6/6/2011 11:27:13 PM

More like you know id be able to refute any weak points you made

6/7/2011 9:51:56 AM

Quote :

"Update: Jeff Garzik, a member of the Bitcoin core development team, says in an email that bitcoin is not as anonymous as the denizens of Silk Road would like to believe. He explains that because all Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a public log, though the identities of all the parties are anonymous, law enforcement could use sophisticated network analysis techniques to parse the transaction flow and track down individual Bitcoin users. "Attempting major illicit transactions with bitcoin, given existing statistical analysis techniques deployed in the field by law enforcement, is pretty damned dumb," he says."

I thought one of the few advantages was anonymity.

6/7/2011 10:23:51 AM

^^Ok, fine, I'll bite

You say "Bitcoins are not difficult to value at all because they are exchanged for real goods and services."

Dollars are also exchanged for real goods and services, yet you seem to think it is much more complicated to value.

So which is it? Is it easy to something that is exchanged for real goods and services, or is it difficult?

6/7/2011 11:15:33 AM

Quote :

"Bitcoins are not difficult to value at all because they are exchanged for real goods and services."

Actually, this is not why bitcoins are so easy to value; their value is easily determined because it is known how many are in circulation at any time. Compare that to the dollar - we don't know how many have been created, how much of that is parked in private banks or at the Fed, or when those dollars will make it into circulation. All we know is that more dollars are been created, which means the dollar should be losing value.

6/7/2011 11:23:44 AM

Oh okay I see the confusion now.

What I meant is that bitcoins are easy to value relative to the dollar on a day to day basis. There is a simple day to day way to calculate to see if one is well out of whack. That much I'm sure we can agree on.


As far as valuing the dollar against other currencies its not the easiest thing in the world but its much simpler than valuing a stock like linkedin, where its near impossible to project earnings 10-15 years in the future.


With the dollar you simply look at a few factors, trade deficits and debt burdens for instance. Those are relatively easy to quantify and price accordingly. Now in the long term its a completely different animal. The difficultly comes from the treasury not publishing M3 so we don't know how tightly supply is being constrained therefore future values are next to impossible to predict, particularly since policy continues to change toward even looser monetary policy in order to keep the ponzi scheme alive indefinitely

[Edited on June 7, 2011 at 11:31 AM. Reason : a]

[Edited on June 7, 2011 at 11:34 AM. Reason : a]

6/7/2011 11:26:50 AM

http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=7867.0

6/7/2011 11:57:03 AM

The bank account was successfully verified.

6/7/2011 12:17:46 PM

Quote :

"Actually, this is not why bitcoins are so easy to value; their value is easily determined because it is known how many are in circulation at any time."

The difficulty in valuing a currency is not calculating the supply, but rather the demand.

Quote :

"All we know is that more dollars are been created, which means the dollar should be losing value."

Well that's certainly not neccesarily true.

Quote :

"What I meant is that bitcoins are easy to value relative to the dollar on a day to day basis. There is a simple day to day way to calculate to see if one is well out of whack. That much I'm sure we can agree on. As far as valuing the dollar against other currencies its not the easiest thing in the world"

You're holding the dollar to a different standard. It's just as easy to measure the bitcoin against the dollar as it is to measure the dollar against the bitcoin, or bitcoin/euro, dollar/euro, etc.

Quote :

"With the dollar you simply look at a few factors, trade deficits and debt burdens for instance. Those are relatively easy to quantify and price accordingly."

That's stupid. The demand for a currency has many more components than "a few simple factors". In fact there are countless factors and they are nearly impossible to quantify.

Also you didn't answer my question, although it's pretty much the same one I've asked you three times or so. I'll help you out since you seem to be struggling with it. It is difficult to accurately value a currency. This statement "Bitcoins are not difficult to value at all because they are exchanged for real goods and services." is flat out wrong.

6/7/2011 12:18:10 PM

You have initiated a deposit to Dwolla. Please wait 1-3 days for the transfer to complete











This is why normal people can't make money. It's taking me 7 days to move money.

6/7/2011 12:19:21 PM

Quote :

"bam! already manipulated by creating a whole new parallel system."

if you actually read that carefully, it's not intended as a currency system at all, but an alternative to DNS.

6/7/2011 4:18:56 PM

HAHAHAHA

http://www.weusecarrots.com/

http://youtu.be/DoK8HXMSsNg

6/8/2011 8:08:04 AM

HOLY SHIT I AM SO FUCKING PISSED.



I have been waiting for money to transfer for fucking 6 days. Bitcoins has jumped from $14 to $31

6/8/2011 1:16:03 PM

I was seriously thinking about buying today. But shit the price jumped from $19 to $32 in the last day. wtf?

6/8/2011 1:29:49 PM

i'm soooo fucking mad right now, I cannot lie. The soonest I can buy in is tomorrow morning, latest, friday morning.


by that time the shit is going to be $45

6/8/2011 1:34:07 PM

I think the united state's currency really is going to crash because of the stupid fucking congress.

6/8/2011 1:34:53 PM

The faster the price rises the sooner the crash.

6/8/2011 2:01:34 PM

http://buttcoin.org/

6/8/2011 2:07:42 PM

get out while you still can

6/8/2011 4:10:56 PM

I think we're going to see $60 before the crash

6/8/2011 4:41:30 PM

Money deducted from my bank, not showing up in dwolla yet...


I still have to transfer that shit to mtgox

Then mtgox has to put the order in.




This is why normal people can't make money.

6/9/2011 10:17:57 AM

^ and this is why the government does have the power to stop bitcoin

6/9/2011 10:45:02 AM

Geeks + Drugs + Anonymity = $Profit

Everyone is aware that the press from Gawker on an elite underground drug market is what has most likely been influencing the current value of Bitcoins, right?

6/9/2011 11:02:08 AM