Can someone please explain BitCoin?

GameboyRMH said:

GameboyRMH said:

The difference with bitcoin is the deflationary nature which encourages hoarding...it won't be a big thing in the future. In fact I think it's more likely to be forgotten. Cryptocurrencies will still be around for black market deals, maybe small online payments, and people who hate governments so much that they don't like to use their "inflationary debt notes" or whatever.

Man I had waaay too much faith in humanity...

It's still a net zero, or net negative, "asset". The bottom will fall out sooner or later for a lot of reasons both financial and political. The problem is going to be the damage that will be wrought, hopefully no one here is the bag holder when it happens.

In reply to The0retical :

The bottom has been falling out "any day now" for 10 years....

Just as an aside, I find bitcoin mining to be really offputing. Huge amounts of energy being used to create value in something that intrinsically caries none. 

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

Just as an aside, I find bitcoin mining to be really offputing. Huge amounts of energy being used to create value in something that intrinsically caries none. 

Isn't that the majority of consumerism, driven by the capitalisic system?

Grow grow grow!  Buy more so we can grow!

It's gained value, but I still wouldn't want to invest in it... and don't really regret not having done so.

It seems cryptocurrency does have usefulness, but I believe immoral ones.

I do not regret the money I have not made by not trafficking in human suffering.

Organized crime needs a secure way of doing business. Enter crypto...

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

Just as an aside, I find bitcoin mining to be really offputing. Huge amounts of energy being used to create value in something that intrinsically caries none. 

I remember watching 'Captain Planet' growing up. It is almost literally one of the "absurd" schemes out of that show where a fat millionaire creates a machine that pumps out pollution to print money.

Beer Baron 🍺 said:

It's gained value, but I still wouldn't want to invest in it... and don't really regret not having done so.

It seems cryptocurrency does have usefulness, but I believe immoral ones.

I do not regret the money I have not made by not trafficking in human suffering.

I'm fine with your stance, there are a bunch of problems I don't fully understand....but that times a million for gold...

Hey, lets invade a continent and kill as many people as necessary and then some more for fun.....for gold.

I'm more and more of the opinion that the reason that bitcoin has taken off so exponentially is that its mainstream acceptance has made it far easier for human traffickers to operate. In other words, I believe that it has made it far easier to monetize slavery. 

In reply to jamscal :

That's kinda what humans do. Replace gold with oil, opium, lithium, slaves, water, farmland, and you have the story of human history.

And what about all the "lost" bitcoins ?

a guy I know mined 10 Bitcoins just because it was something to do at the beginning , and he was a computer geek :)

They were worth less that $1 each and no simple way to spend them ,  

He recycled the computer with the info / password and has no way to recover the bitcoins. 

How many others did the same thing ?

In reply to californiamilleghia :

Isn't there a guy with like a potential millions in a computer with a lost password? 

In reply to californiamilleghia :

And what percentage have been lost by hacks and phishing and other forms of theft? If my bank threw up their hands and said "get an offline wallet!" after my bank account was emptied, I would have recourse. Not so with bitcoins etc. 

Appleseed said:

In reply to californiamilleghia :

Isn't there a guy with like a potential millions in a computer with a lost password? 

I am sure there are 100s , maybe 1000s of people with more then 10 lost bitcoins , (equals about $1 million )

But if they still had the hard drive there may be a day where computing power is so quick that it can figure out the lost password.

But what happens when even 1% of the known Bitcoins want to get US$ for them ?

Interesting times ahead !

If you listen to what the tech-billionaire Crypto-evangelists describe as the culmination of what they'd like to see crypto be turned into, they almost exactly describe the trope that exists throughout cyberpunk media of megacorps each creating and controlling their own currencies that they are then able to use to turn their workers into wage slaves.

Steve_Jones said:

In reply to The0retical :

The bottom has been falling out "any day now" for 10 years....

Which is why I don't hold any. Despite what anyone says or preaches, governments hold a total monopoly on the physical and fiscal violence required for a currency to be a medium of exchange. Bitcoin can't say the same and really only serves to redistribute wealth upwards while accruing a massive energy debt. If you got lucky with it great. But it's far too much exposure for me.

dculberson said:

In reply to californiamilleghia :

And what percentage have been lost by hacks and phishing and other forms of theft? If my bank threw up their hands and said "get an offline wallet!" after my bank account was emptied, I would have recourse. Not so with bitcoins etc. 

https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/

In reply to Beer Baron 🍺 :

See also: https://www.vice.com/en/article/online-assassination-markets/

Don't build the Torment Nexus!

So this thread has been around 11 years, and we still haven't seen a usage for them appear except as a speculative asset.

MadScientistMatt said:

So this thread has been around 11 years, and we still haven't seen a usage for them appear except as a speculative asset.

And crime. Don't forget crime.

I wish I'd bought when the OP started this thread, just sayin

Jay_W said:

I wish I'd bought when the OP started this thread, just sayin

I say to myself I wish I'd used my spare computer to mine some back in the beginning when one of my more constantly online coworkers mentioned it to me when it was worth almost nothing, but then I realize I probably would have sold when it hit 10 bucks or so.

Beer Baron 🍺 said:

MadScientistMatt said:

So this thread has been around 11 years, and we still haven't seen a usage for them appear except as a speculative asset.

And crime. Don't forget crime.

A lot of people don't realize that a cost of cryptocurrency existing is the existence of ransomware. Less than 10 pieces of ransomware ever existed before cryptocurrency, most of them used oddball Internet funny-money schemes that the US quickly squashed with extreme prejudice, one was made by a madman who spread the ransomware via floppy disks and requested ransoms by cash in the mail...both of which had his name on them. Now ransomware has gone from an extreme rarity to the bread n' butter of cybercrime.

Aside from the existence of ransomware it's also revolutionized cybercrime finance. Before cryptocurrency the mainstay of the cybercrime finance ecosystem was the Western Union + money mule system, where criminals known as money mules would register with WU using fake ID and become middlemen moving money back and forth for black hat hackers. But oddly while this system was made obsolete by cryptocurrency, large gift cards are almost as bad, and are sometimes still used in place of cryptocurrency even in recent years. Companies like Amazon and Apple have absurdly large gift card options going into the 4-digits that are anonymous enough to be useful for cybercrime finance.

Jay_W said:

I wish I'd bought when the OP started this thread, just sayin

Whenever I find myself wishing I had bought Bitcoin 15 years ago, I reminded myself I probably would have kept them at Mt. Gox.