bit¢oin$

technology has sparse revolutions and in between the revolutions has diminishing returns. the next revolution is either this crispy medical shit or we invent robots that enslave us either way i'm down

biggest/simplest argument vs BTC becoming a viable anything - it does not scale. currently the protocol handles about 3 transactions a second and there's no way to increase that without forking the chain and if you look at the recent block size debacle there's no way to get 51% of miners to agree on anything.

― frogbs, Wednesday, December 9, 2015 4:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol holy shit, had no idea about stuff at this level of detail but that makes it 10x more hilarious that anyone thinks this can become a currency.

this article is pretty good
http://brokenlibrarian.org/bitcoin/

8) So could Bitcoin ever be a real currency?

No, for one simple reason. Bitcoin does not scale. The network is very specifically designed to process a very limited number of transactions in each block, and each block by definition takes about ten minutes to process, regardless of how powerful the Bitcoin verification network is. The more popular that Bitcoin becomes, the slower it will be for every single transaction to get processed. The claim that Bitcoin is "instant" is demonstrably false.

(It is also not "free", because while adding a transaction fee to your Bitcoin transaction is technically optional, without a fee it is unlikely that your transaction will be verified any time soon. Fees are a de facto requirement to get your transactions processed.)

More importantly, the blockchain size is increasing rapidly. The blockchain file is currently many gigabytes in size, and the entire chain must be downloaded in order to mine or verify your own transactions. (Or to track somebody else's transactions: see the part about anonymity above.) You can use a third-party service to store and transfer your Bitcoins, but these services have historically tended to get hacked or just suddenly vanish, taking all your internet funny-money with it.

If Bitcoin actually became popular as a currency and not just as a speculative commodity, the blockchain would swell to an absurd and unmanageable size. Visa (for example) maintains multi-terabyte (at least) databases of financial transactions; now imagine if everybody who wanted to safely use a Visa card had to have a copy of all that data (including lists of everybody else's transactions).

9) Wait, does that mean that every advantage that people claim Bitcoin has is not actually true?

Yes. It's not anonymous, it's not free, it's not instant, and it's not convenient. It's extremely difficult to make money on it, mining is useless, and it's literally impossible that it will ever go into widespread use. Unless you have an ideological stake in the concept of Bitcoin (or want to buy drugs and/or child porn), there is literally no reason to get involved in it.

There's actually one thing that Bitcoin supporters claim about Bitcoin which is true: it has no chargebacks. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible. Whether this is actually an advantage or not probably depends on whether you've ever been ripped off before. If you haven't, then getting involved in Bitcoin is probably a good way to fix that.

"the first practical solution to a longstanding problem in computer science called the Byzantine Generals Problem"

so much wrong with this sentence, from a technical standpoint.

― big WHOIS aka the nameserver (s.clover), Wednesday, December 9, 2015 1:46 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

explain?

― flopson, Wednesday, December 9, 2015 1:50 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

basically bg is a big famous class of problems of a certain sort in computer science that have to do with distributed systems, and lots of solutions for different problems have been developed over lots and lots of years, many of which are "practical" and used in important aspects of work, like managing distributed clusters. a "distributed ledger" is only really semi-related to the classic family of bg problems, and bitcoin was one of the first to tackle that -- but it was fundamentally about recognizing a new _class_ of problem rather than a new solution to a longstanding known problem. (and the utility of a distributed ledger is what is sort of growing in popularity more broadly -- i think that those concepts will become more widespread and common even as bitcoin itself ends up sort of fading away).

This all changed as Bitcoin was discovered by three types of people. First, there were the internet libertarian types who liked the idea of a currency that was not controlled by a government. For them, Bitcoin represented an ideology. Second, there were people who wanted to use Bitcoin as a semi-anonymous international currency for illegal transactions, such as drugs, weapons, or illicit pornography, as well as a possible method for laundering money. For them, Bitcoin represented safety from the law. Third, there were people who viewed Bitcoin as a method to get rich by getting in on the ground floor of a new kind of money. These people saw Bitcoin as an investment.

--

almost everyone fucking w bitcoin is doing it for ideological reasons, the rest are in it to buy drugs online which is a bad idea btw, then there are a handful of thinkfluencers/investors w free associative dreams of the blockchain dancing in their heads

:]

buying a few drugs online seems like a bad use case, maybe buying a few hundred kilos of cocaine it is more practical

drugs deals are all about relationships dont go online

can we talk more about the aussiee

yes

oi m8

the mixture of bragging / trying to hide his identity reminds me of walt in mid-series breaking bad

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--ZZP8RDuV--/gmoyhqntwlvt1uzbu6fp.png

lol

http://i.imgur.com/MkB4Jim.gif

the guy gets outed as a bitcoin founder then hours later the police raid his home and say its unrelated

he's kind of a candidate for People who have obviously written their own Wikipedia entry, S/D C/D

imo the best way to think about a bitcoin is that it's equivalent to like having a level 80 character in diablo ii (pre expansion pack) or a complete unique set or real stones of jordan, that you could only get through hours and hours of grinding n you could sell on eBay for money but only to the extent there were other diablo ii players who wanted them

a bitcoin is basically like a whirlwind barbarian and can get nerfed at any moment

I am glad that sterling post about the BG problem so I don't have to. But yeah egghead's line about that produced gas face

GG, MMO analogues

the rest are in it to buy drugs online which is a bad idea btw

do you know anybody who's gotten busted for it? I don't fuck around but I know people who do and they're v evangelical about Silk Road etc, certain they can't be traced

i dont personally but theres plenty of documented cases of that happening, and if it does youre facing more charges than you wld if it happened in person because of shipping it, also my understanding ppl get ripped off w fair regularity online

i mean if youre just buying recreational amounts yr exposure is prob p minimal but still

oh yeah don't get me wrong I think it's madness, like waaaay back in the 80s I sent acid through the mail to a girlfriend in NY and years later I was like "do you even know how bad they can ding you for anything that goes down through the mail," but the feeling I get is yeah the risk isn't much worse than buying on the street

can def understand the appeal of just getting whatever drugs u want sent to u

i prob shdnt think abt that too much

lol

medco express scripts is sweet, not sure what u guys are worried abt

amazon prime... for drugs

wb for more on this fast moving story

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-probably-backdated-and-point-to-a-hoax

http://i.imgur.com/nRB305Y.png

so these guys killed satoshi nakamoto, right

or they have no idea who he is and were trying to set up a case for claiming ownership of his bitcoins by pretending they were him all along

the key proabbly belongs to the other guy who died

actually... it belongs to me

I am glad that sterling post about the BG problem so I don't have to. But yeah egghead's line about that produced gas face

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, December 9, 2015 8:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think i understood sterling's post. he said bitcoin is only semi-related (to BG) and not even a solution to this semi-relatd problem "but ... fundamentally about recognizing a new _class_ of problem rather than a new solution to a longstanding known problem." that doesn't make sense to me. not knowing anything about BG, it was obvious to me from the context that MA was talking about a sub-class of problems, even though literally it reads that way. but i don't get how it's not even a solution to a subproblem. does it not actually do what it is purported to do?

almost everyone fucking w bitcoin is doing it for ideological reasons

― lag∞n, Wednesday, December 9, 2015 5:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is contrarianism an ideology? ;-)

When you turn over the stone you will find an inscription telling you that the Original Key is...love.

otm

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/12/11/2147499/doubts-grow-over-craig-s-wrights-connection-to-satoshi-nakamoto/

might not be him after all, which is too bad cause it made a good narrative

but i don't get how it's not even a solution to a subproblem. does it not actually do what it is purported to do?

― flopson, Thursday, December 10, 2015 10:59 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its a solution to a "distributed ledger" -- which is related to BG, but only in the sense that every system that involves more than one party and some degree of trust is related to BG.

it does provide a relatively trustworthy way to provide an account of transactions that are "witnessed" by the "public" (where here the "public" is "machines running bitcoin mining operations").

So instead of "Bitcoin is the first practical solution to a longstanding problem in computer science called the Byzantine Generals Problem" imagine somebody wrote "Uber is the first practical solution to a longstanding problem called getting from one place to another" -- its not a great analogy, but maybe it gives a sense.

good roundup http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/bizarre-saga-craig-wright-latest-inventor-bitcoin

http://blog.acton.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/bitcoin-dead.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/OjOi8I8.jpg

who makes those jeans

Casual Male XL?

can those arms even hold that sword upright?

it's Inner Strength that matters duh

http://i.imgur.com/3FnkOJW.png

because you're an idiot, best known for playing idiots on TV

surely the right move is to use the butterfly effect power to make his past self buy bitcoin imo

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/hackers-are-holding-a-hospitals-patient-data-ransom/463008/

A hospital in Los Angeles has been operating without access to email or electronic health records for more than a week, after hackers took over its computer systems and demanded millions of dollars in ransom to return it.

The hackers that broke into the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center’s servers are asking for $3.6 million in Bitcoin, a local Fox News affiliate reported. Hospital staff are working with investigators from the Los Angeles Police Department and the FBI to find the intruders’ identities.

bitcoin is fostering so many great innovations