# Who's into bitcoin?



## GatodeCafe (Nov 24, 2013)

*Bitcoin (**BTC) is a peer-to-peer digital currency that functions without the intermediation of a central authority. The concept was introduced in a 2008 paper by a pseudonymous developer known as "Satoshi Nakamoto".

*In 2012, _The Economist_ reasoned that Bitcoin has been popular because of "its role in dodgy online markets," and in 2013 the FBI shut down one such service, Silk Road, which specialized in illegal drugs (whereupon the FBI came into the control of approximately 1.5% of all bitcoins in circulation). However, bitcoins are increasingly used as payment for legitimate products and services, and merchants have an incentive to accept the currency because transaction fees are lower than the 2 to 3% typically imposed by credit card processors. Notable vendors includeWordPress, OkCupid, Reddit, and Chinese Internet giant Baidu.

Speculators have been attracted to Bitcoin, fueling volatility and price swings. As of July 2013, the use of Bitcoin in the retail and commercial marketplace is relatively small compared with the use by speculators.


TL;DR: Magic internet money.


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## Captain Howdy (Nov 24, 2013)

Bitcoin has never appeared to be even remotely trustworthy, and while seeming like a fad, also seemed questionable when it came to using it - Almost nobody accepts it, the market appears volatile, and so on and on. It might be completely legitimate, but it always comes off as a scam.


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## Runefox (Nov 24, 2013)

It's a wildly fluctuating currency with no hard value that was interesting when it first existed but now is obnoxious as fuck and people need to stop talking about it.


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## Lobar (Nov 24, 2013)

It pretty much serves no purpose other that to be untraceable internet money for criminal activity.  It's enabled shit like Cryptolocker, a virus that encrypts your data and holds it ransom for bitcoins, and someone's trying to get an assassination market off the ground too.


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## AshleyAshes (Nov 24, 2013)

One of the biggest weaknesses in BitCoin is how it makes sure that transactions are ligit.  The transaction is run through MULTIPLE aspects of the P2P network and if they all agree on one thing, but you sent out some bullshit transaction that the rest of the network disagrees and your BS transaction doesn't happen.  ...Unless you control more than 50% of the processing power on the network.  Then you control the majority of the network and can manipulate it to your desires.  While this would be a tremendous undertaking, it is certainly not impossible and not improbable that a sufficiently powerful state to undertake in an effort to wipe out an entire currency.


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## Wakboth (Dec 15, 2013)

Bitcoins combine the worst aspects of fiat money and commodity-based money. There is neither a (supra)national economy with taxes and central banks, nor a big pile of gold/platinum/M:tG cards to back it up. And there's a built-in deflatory tendency to them (there are only ever going to be so many bitcoins, and the number of mined bitcoins is slowly diminishing as people lose theirs by accident) which is just about the worst thing you can have in a currency.


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## CaptainCool (Dec 15, 2013)

I ordered some food for dinner yesterday and to my surprise they allow you to pay with Bitcoins. That was weird for me, I had never seen a site that accepts Bitcoins before. I don't use them myself but I guess that was my real first encounter with them


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## Lobar (Dec 15, 2013)

CaptainCool said:


> I ordered some food for dinner yesterday and to my surprise they allow you to pay with Bitcoins. That was weird for me, I had never seen a site that accepts Bitcoins before. I don't use them myself but I guess that was my real first encounter with them



Man, with the market bubble the way it is, I'd love to tell my GPU to chew on some prime numbers while I'm already torrenting shit and then go out and eat caviar and foie gras paid with fake internet money.


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## ArcdAM (Dec 15, 2013)

Lobar said:


> Man, with the market bubble the way it is, I'd love to tell my GPU to chew on some prime numbers while I'm already torrenting shit and then go out and eat caviar and foie gras paid with fake internet money.



Honestly by this point in Bitcoin life, if you don't have some sort of FPGA or ASIC, you're wasting your time. Communities in general for the currency and the use GPU mining has dropped liked a rock. That being said, while I found the concept interesting, it's not something I am willing to invest anything into.


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## chesse20 (Dec 15, 2013)

I'm more into super money 
http://mde.tv/supermoney


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## CaptainCool (Dec 15, 2013)

Lobar said:


> Man, with the market bubble the way it is, I'd love to tell my GPU to chew on some prime numbers while I'm already torrenting shit and then go out and eat caviar and foie gras paid with fake internet money.



I know right? 

Also, I have heard about someone who got some bitcoins when the whole thing first started. He totally forgot about the coins and threw away his hard drive! By that time his coins were worth about 150 million bucks XD


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## Kalmor (Dec 15, 2013)

CaptainCool said:


> I know right?
> 
> Also, I have heard about someone who got some bitcoins when the whole thing first started. He totally forgot about the coins and threw away his hard drive! By that time his coins were worth about 150 million bucks XD


Good luck buying anything with it though. :V


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## CaptainCool (Dec 15, 2013)

Raptros said:


> Good luck buying anything with it though. :V



As I said above, I could have ordered dinner with them yesterday if I actually used them


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## Runefox (Dec 15, 2013)

Raptros said:


> Good luck buying anything with it though. :V



Well you can buy money with it. That's something. If I still had the like 20+BTC from my first BTC wallet back when BTC were worth nothing, I'd have been able to sell them for $20k a week or so ago.


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## CaptainCool (Dec 16, 2013)

Runefox said:


> Well you can buy money with it. That's something. If I still had the like 20+BTC from my first BTC wallet back when BTC were worth nothing, I'd have been able to sell them for $20k a week or so ago.



How does that work anyway? Do you just sell them like stocks? I haven't looked into it at all.


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## Runefox (Dec 16, 2013)

CaptainCool said:


> How does that work anyway? Do you just sell them like stocks? I haven't looked into it at all.



Yeah, basically. There are Bitcoin exchanges where you can buy and sell them. It's essentially like stocks at this point.


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## Deo (Dec 16, 2013)

I keep an eye on what it trades to in exchange rates. I have no interest investing in it and I am so confused by "mining". But I'm also just fascinated and perplexed by "magic internet money" being worth over $1,000 a "coin".


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## gmnchampion (Dec 17, 2013)

I actually looked into bitcoins for part of my economics report and found two key notes that make me pause for concern:
 - There is/will be a fixed amount of Bitcoins due to the asymptotic trend of how many bitcoins can be mined in a given year
 - The lack of flexibility the currency has with vendors

While people can use it to "pay off a debt" I do not see this having long-term success.  In the micro terms I see it working very well, but in the macro sense there are flaws.


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## Deo (Dec 18, 2013)

So BTC fell 50% Tues-Wed, $1242 to $480.
Who is not surprised? I'm not.

http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ina-payment-processors-digital-cryptocurrency


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## gmnchampion (Dec 18, 2013)

First rule of economics: "Something is only worth as much as someone else is willing to pay for."

Companies don't seem to want to use bitcoins for purchasing their goods and this makes it tougher for people to use them and thus reduces their value.  This outcome does not surprise me at all.


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## Lobar (Dec 19, 2013)

Deo said:


> So BTC fell 50% Tues-Wed, $1242 to $480.
> Who is not surprised? I'm not.
> 
> http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ina-payment-processors-digital-cryptocurrency



Anyone that couldn't see it was a bubble pretty much deserved to lose money there.

I'm only surprised it didn't fall further.  $480 is still pretty high from where it was not too long ago.


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## Batty Krueger (Dec 19, 2013)

I didnt read the entire thread so forgive me if this is a repeat.

Apparently not to long ago a guy in England accidently threw away a hard drive containing a few million dollars worth of bitcoins. I guess hes been digging around in the nearby dumps to try and find it.

Anyway as far as the bitcoin goes, more and more online companys have been accepting them as legit currency.  All I have to say is there are ALOT of online drug dealers using these things. As you may have heard a hidden site called the "Silk Road" just got nailed. For those of you that dont know what the silk road was, it was basically an online black market dealing from drugs to firearms and everything else illegal as shit under the sun.


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## Deo (Dec 19, 2013)

Bit coin does do a lot of illegal black market sales. Its P2P and anonymous/hard to trace, so it's been linked to assassins for hire, human trafficking, drugs, and weapons. 

Though more and more companies are actually NOT accepting it. Some Tech companies are, but mostly it goes to exchanges to sell the coins for cash. Much like YeePay no longer offering Â¥ for BTC in China's largest exchanges. It would be different if Amazon or Alibaba accepted BTC but they don't, and most likely never will.


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## Cutiecat (Jan 6, 2014)

I am certainly into Bitcoin, check my sig 

I'm actually in the process of starting up my own furry version of it and actively mine several versions including Litecoin. I picked up a copy of BF4 for about $15 worth of Litecoin about a month ago, there are lots of uses for it if you know where to look that are much more legitimate then Silk Road. Heck you can shop online and buy pizza with it now.


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## Captain Howdy (Jan 7, 2014)

Cutiecat said:


> I am certainly into Bitcoin, check my sig
> 
> I'm actually in the process of starting up my own furry version of it and actively mine several versions including Litecoin. I picked up a copy of BF4 for about $15 worth of Litecoin about a month ago, there are lots of uses for it if you know where to look that are much more legitimate then Silk Road. Heck you can shop online and buy pizza with it now.



But is Bitcoin cheaper in this pizza-buying thing? Or just simply possible somewhere? Is your furry version of it going to be more accessible than something that already seems extremely useless and inexcessible?


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## Wakboth (Jan 7, 2014)

Runefox said:


> Yeah, basically. There are Bitcoin exchanges where you can buy and sell them. It's essentially like stocks at this point.



Sort of. Bitcoin is like a stock, only there is no company it's stock of; or a commodity, only there is nothing you can do with it. The only way to get money out of bitcoins is to sell them to someone else at a higher price. They don't have a value, they only have a price.


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## Batty Krueger (Jan 7, 2014)

Most bitcoins are mined by now. Alot of people dont realize bitcoin has been aroound for 10 years.


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## Lobar (Jan 7, 2014)

Wakboth said:


> Sort of. Bitcoin is like a stock, only there is no company it's stock of; or a commodity, only there is nothing you can do with it. The only way to get money out of bitcoins is to sell them to someone else at a higher price. They don't have a value, they only have a price.



This is funniest thing about Bitcoin, is that it's literally the fiat currency that so many Bitcoin-loving lolbertarians bitch about.


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## Sweetheartz22 (Jan 8, 2014)

The first time I heard about Bitcoin was a few days ago when I saw an article about two little girls selling Snickerdoodles for Bitcoins and ended up raking in $70 worth of them.....Obviously, I'm so far behind in this shit that I'll be broke as fuck if this ever becomes an everyday currency.


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## Cutiecat (Jan 9, 2014)

Lastdirewolf said:


> But is Bitcoin cheaper in this pizza-buying thing? Or just simply possible somewhere? Is your furry version of it going to be more accessible than something that already seems extremely useless and inexcessible?



Generally not cheaper but certainly not any more expensive. Like I mentioned I've gotten some pretty sweet deals too just because of the novelty of it.

The furry version? Again its a novelty factor at first with the hopes an exchange will pick it up. If that happens it could enable some pretty nice things, for example fundraisers were people can donate their hash rates rather then directly sending money, exchanges of small amounts of coins for artwork commissions etc


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## Cutiecat (Jan 9, 2014)

Wakboth said:


> Sort of. Bitcoin is like a stock, only there is no company it's stock of; or a commodity, only there is nothing you can do with it. The only way to get money out of bitcoins is to sell them to someone else at a higher price. They don't have a value, they only have a price.



China agrees. They ruled it a commodity recently and also banned their financial institutions from trading it like a Forex.  A lot of the recent hype and price rise was based on Chinese interest too, as was the drop to $700ish due to the ruling.


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## CaptainCool (Jan 9, 2014)

Our federal bank recently warned people not to use them because the risk of losing everything is too high in their opinion.


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## Rassah (Jan 30, 2014)

I am heavily into bitcoins, and furries are *dumb as fuck for dismissing it*, when they can benefit from it more than any other community out there!


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## Icky (Jan 30, 2014)

Rassah said:


> I am heavily into bitcoins, and furries are *dumb as fuck for dismissing it*, when they can benefit from it more than any other community out there!



Furfags aren't dismissing it. _EVERYBODY_ is dismissing it, save a few brave (foolhardy, reckless) souls like yourself.

Oh, and calling people *DUMB AS FUCK* isn't exactly a good way to get them to invest in your currency.


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## Rassah (Jan 30, 2014)

Icky said:


> Oh, and calling people *DUMB AS FUCK* isn't exactly a good way to get them to invest in your currency.



The specific people who's comments I've read are too dumb to bother with. The are dead set in their bias, and so would likely be a waste of my time.

As for "everybody," that obviously doesn't include the likes of Reddit, Wordpress, TigerDirect, NewEgg, Fidelity Investments, Wells Fargo, and a ton of others that includes hundreds of business and developer types, with way more money and brains than most of the rest of us.


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## Batty Krueger (Jan 30, 2014)

Bitcoins are gay.


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## Rassah (Jan 30, 2014)

d.batty said:


> Bitcoins are gay.



So are furries. Perfect match!


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## Batty Krueger (Jan 30, 2014)

Damn I've been counter trolled, touchÃ©.


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## Kazooie (Jan 30, 2014)

Bitcoin has been one of the most entertaining ponzis in the history of mankind! Between delicious looking GPU-dried fruit (fruit dried over the course of multiple days for extra delicious fungus and fan dust!), the constant crashes, awful libertarian furries with naked fox coffee tables, the plethora of fire-hazard miner pics, butterfly labs scamming the entire community (multiple times over!), the community scamming the community (constantly!), it's been a fantastic ride, and hope it continues to entertain for years to come.


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## Rassah (Jan 30, 2014)

Oh, it will. $10,000 by the end of this year, and ubiquitous use within 3 years, 5 at most.
Also, Google "Ponzi" and learn what it is. I know furs are usually financially illiterate, having very little money, but Bitcoin has been following the growth pattern of a typical pre-ipo investment stock, not a Ponzi.


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## Kazooie (Jan 30, 2014)

Rassah said:


> but Bitcoin has been following the growth pattern of a typical pre-ipo


Discounting the massive crashes and horrendous fluctuation caused by people cashing out of the scheme? Sure! Why not.


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## Rassah (Jan 30, 2014)

Kazooie said:


> Discounting the massive crashes and horrendous fluctuation caused by people cashing out of the scheme? Sure! Why not.



No, including them, actually. Twitter went from $0 to $10bil in four years before it was public (sound familiar?), and Facebook from $0 to $100bil in five, which included lots of fluctuations and crashes. The public just want allowed to see it or invest in it due to SEC regulatory restrictions. Bitcoin is really the public's first glimpse of what tech startups are like before they are allowed to buy socks on them through IPO (after initial privileged investors took all the profit), and since all most people ever see is post-IPO stock, is shocking to them. VCs see this type of growth and volatility all the time.


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## Lobar (Jan 30, 2014)

Rassah said:


> No, including them, actually. Twitter went from $0 to $10bil in four years before it was public (sound familiar?), and Facebook from $0 to $100bil in five, which included lots of fluctuations and crashes. The public just want allowed to see it or invest in it due to SEC regulatory restrictions. Bitcoin is really the public's first glimpse of what tech startups are like before they are allowed to buy socks on them through IPO (after initial privileged investors took all the profit), and since all most people ever see is post-IPO stock, is shocking to them. VCs see this type of growth and volatility all the time.



You're comparing Bitcoins to dot-com stocks?  I'm fine with this.


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## Rassah (Jan 30, 2014)

Lobar said:


> You're comparing Bitcoins to dot-com stocks?  I'm fine with this.




Ah, there you are. No, I'm comparing bitcoin with internet platforms.


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## DeCatt (Jan 31, 2014)

Rassah, I have to ask, what do you do when your mom drops by or the plumber comes around to fix the sink... do you cover that potentially traumatizing eye-hazard or do you launch into a big speech about its artistic integrity?
I am actually being serious, that thing is in your living room, can you explain please?


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## Kazooie (Jan 31, 2014)

DeCatt said:


> Rassah, I have to ask, what do you do when your mom drops by or the plumber comes around to fix the sink... do you cover that potentially traumatizing eye-hazard or do you launch into a big speech about its artistic integrity?
> I am actually being serious, that thing is in your living room, can you explain please?


Y'know, at furry cons, what always sells the best at the art auctions is the porn. The framed, hang-on-wall porn. I'd always wondered how many people actually put it on the walls, and how the heck one manages to invite normal-ish people over once it's up.


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## Rassah (Jan 31, 2014)

It's been under a table cloth for over a year now. My parents don't care. We lived in Italy, so we're used to nude art and statutes. If someone else visits, we take the art off the walls and replace it with other art. Novel idea, eh?


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## brandonsailor (Feb 6, 2014)

I'm very much into Bitcoins. Hell, I've used them to buy everything from video games, to pizza, to computer peripherals, to straight up donating it. 

@Rassah, good to see you on here. I remember you from Bitcointalk. 

But yeah, as a coder, Bitcoin appeals to me immensely, as a person who has paid someone across an ocean in less than ten minutes with almost no fees, it appeals to Mr in that respect as well.


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## RedDagger (Feb 7, 2014)

Although bitcoin is pretty apparently _not_ a farce/scam right now, the idea that it's a currency (as said by a large amount of people ) is pretty laughable. Sure, you can use it as a commodity and trade it for other things like gold, but price fluctuations as high as it has aren't what you need in a currency, especially since everyone's treating it like a commodity anyway, investing rather than exchanging. The community seem to over-inflate what it is (like managing to say any change in price is a good thing), almost like it's a pyramid scheme (if that's correct) just so more people invest in it and the price rises. It'll be interesting to see what happens to it over a few years, if it acts like a bubble or plateaus to form a stable currency. 

Now, _dogecoin_ on the other hand...wow


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## Rassah (Feb 7, 2014)

It's not about the currency itself, it's about the technology.

There is a (fairly) new service, called Uber, where you can use a phone app to summon a taxi, and the taxi driver, who is actually an uber "volunteer" with spare time, gets notified, comes to pick you up, and drives you wherever you need to go. You can get picked up from anywhere, thanks to the GPS in your phone, and the service is cheaper than a taxi, since it's just normal people driving in normal cars, instead of taxi company drivers with taxi licenses.
Google is now working on a driverless car, where you can give it a destination, and it will use GPS and ladar to drive you there all by itself. It's expected that this technology will become mainstream in about 10 to 20 years.
Now imagine if you combine Uber, driverless car tech, and bitcoin all together. Now the car can own itself (the term is _Autonomous Agent_). It's not possible for the car to own a bank account, since that always has to be tied to some other person, but with bitcoin, the car can own all of its money itself, right on its own computer, earn money by picking up and driving customers, spend its own money on cleaning and repair services, and if it earns enough, even buy its own "offspring," thus multiplying the number of cars and its business. In the end, we may end up with a fleet of completely automonous cars, competing against each other in price and service, without any human involvement. Such a thing is only possible with bitcoin, and is just the most simple example. There are numerous plans already in the works of creating autonomous agents as software programs that "live" and perform services on the web, buying their own storage and processing time, and even entire autonomous corporations that follow a set of rules and goals and employ their own people (argument is that it's harder for a computer algorithm based corporation to become corrupt than it is for one run by greedy self-interested people).

So, when people say, "It sucks as money, because so and so," many of the rest of us in bitcoinland kinda go  >.>


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## Jashwa (Feb 7, 2014)

It sucks as money because it's not stable. With the dollar or any other first world country's currency, you have a basically fixed value (over relatively short time scales) whereas with bitcoin you could pay $1000 worth of bitcoins for something and then they could jump and you'd have had $2000 a week later if you hadn't gotten rid of them. Or the opposite in that they could burst and you could be left with nothing with no real way to predict them in the long term.


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## Rassah (Feb 7, 2014)

Jashwa said:


> It sucks as money because it's not stable. With the dollar or any other first world country's currency, you have a basically fixed value (over relatively short time scales) whereas with bitcoin you could pay $1000 worth of bitcoins for something and then they could jump and you'd have had $2000 a week later if you hadn't gotten rid of them. Or the opposite in that they could burst and you could be left with nothing with no real way to predict them in the long term.




The dollar could burst too. Just takes a dozen assholes in the Senate blocking raising the debt limit, and China saying, "Enough of this shit." Also, still way more stable than Argetina's currency. Bitcoin dropped 10% today, Argentina's currency dropped 30% in a week. Bitcoin is not for the cushy first-world country types with their global finance and easy to bank access. It's for the other 6 billion, who may have no other choice.


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## Jashwa (Feb 7, 2014)

I highly doubt that if someone is living in an area with no easy to access _banks_ that they're going to have nice internet and have a lot of local businesses and stuff supporting bitcoins. Where does this happen at, is it a hypothetical or something that already exists?


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## AshleyAshes (Feb 7, 2014)

Rassah said:


> It's for the other 6 billion, who may have no other choice.



I think those 6 billion prefer to utilize hard currency, what with their lack of internet infrastructure, PC access, and smart phone access...


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## Rassah (Feb 7, 2014)

Jashwa said:


> I highly doubt that if someone is living in an area with no easy to access _banks_ that they're going to have nice internet and have a lot of local businesses and stuff supporting bitcoins. Where does this happen at, is it a hypothetical or something that already exists?



Africa, where there are more dumbphones than people, and people already send money using text messages (MPesa and Coinapult). Just as they skipped landlines and went straight to cell phones, they are now skipping banks and going straight to digital currencies. And the point is not to buy and sell locally, but open your business and shopping up globally.



AshleyAshes said:


> I think those 6 billion prefer to utilize hard currency, what with their lack of internet infrastructure, PC access, and smart phone access...



Um, not really. Their hard currency typically crashes in value 30% to 100% a year, there's never enough coins of it (there was an article a year ago about how if you live on $3 a day, small coins are important, and customers sometimes have to wait for hours for another customer with smaller denominations to show up, just so they can get change for a $1 purchase), plus hard currency can only be traded in person, and limits you to only buying and selling within walking or biking distance in places where roads are really bad. They use dumbphones to check market prices, to talk to and set up deals with customers and businesses over long distance, and to send money back and forth. This includes both local currency and bitcoin (which works just fine over dumbphones and SMS, too)

EDIT: Also India, where small farmers are using Bitcoin to skirt regulations and sell their tea globally, without restrictions imposed by the Commerce Ministry and their banking system, with typically takes quite a bit off the top for no reason (plus their currency isn't all that great either)


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## AshleyAshes (Feb 8, 2014)

Rassah said:


> Um, not really. Their hard currency typically crashes in value 30% to 100% a year



I... I don't think that percentages work the way that you think they do...


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## Kazooie (Feb 8, 2014)

AshleyAshes said:


> I... I don't think that percentages work the way that you think they do...


Well, bitcoin just crashed 30% in a _day_, so at least there's that.


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## Rassah (Feb 8, 2014)

AshleyAshes said:


> I... I don't think that percentages work the way that you think they do...



"Argentina clocked an inflation rate close to 30% in 2013"
"Venezuelans are living with one of the world's highest rates of inflation, 56.2%."

And for 2012 from Wikipedia


CountryInflation rate
(consumer prices)
(%)Date of
iinformation

Uganda14.72012 est.Guinea15.02012 est.Tanzania15.32012 est.Eritrea17.02012 est.




Burundi18.02012 est.



Malawi21.42012 est.



Ethiopia23.42012 est.



Argentina25.32012 est.



Iran27.12012 est.



Sudan31.92012 est.



Syria37.02012 est.



Venezuela56.22013 est.[SUP][6][/SUP]



Belarus59.12012 est.



South Sudan79.0May 2012 est.


Besides those, there are 35 other countries with high inflation rates, above 7% a year. 



Kazooie said:


> Well, bitcoin just crashed 30% in a _day_, so at least there's that.



And just to prove that I know how percentages work better than others:

($710 - $810) \ $810 = -12.35%

Nowhere near 30%. Plus, if we do it for the year, it's

($710 - $25) \ $25 = 2,740%


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## Kazooie (Feb 8, 2014)

Rassah said:


> And just to prove that I know how percentages work better than others:
> 
> ($710 - $810) \ $810 = -12.35%
> 
> Nowhere near 30%.


Feb 6th, 0:00 - $892
Feb 7th, 7:00 - $660 (approx current price as of this post, mtgox)

26% drop, 31 hours (~1.25 days)


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## AshleyAshes (Feb 8, 2014)

Rassah said:


> "Argentina clocked an inflation rate close to 30% in 2013"
> "Venezuelans are living with one of the world's highest rates of inflation, 56.2%."
> 
> And for 2012 from Wikipedia
> ...



You said "crashes in value 30% to 100% a year"  Please, show me the nation that had it's currently lose *100%* of it's value.  79% inflation is still not a loss of value 100%, in fact it's not even a 50% crash in currency value.  It's actually very, very, VERY far away from 100%.  So yes, you're citing a 100% crash, total loss of value, but have no examples even close to that occurrence.  You're either ignorant to what a 100% crash means or you're makin' it up.

On top of that, the South Sudan with it's 79% inflation since 2012 and stark humanitarian crisis', probably isn't a place where you'll find much use for your 'invisible internet money'.


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## Kazooie (Feb 8, 2014)

AshleyAshes said:


> You said "crashes in value 30% to 100% a year"  Please, show me the nation that had it's currently lose *100%* of it's value.


Zimbabwe? Not that they would have the infrastructure to support bitcoin.


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## Rassah (Feb 8, 2014)

Kazooie said:


> Feb 6th, 0:00 - $892
> Feb 7th, 7:00 - $660 (approx current price as of this post, mtgox)



Nobody uses Gox except for day trading, since you can't pull money out of it, and thus no one uses it for pricing. Main one now is Bitstamp. Also it's the weekend. It always drops on weekend, because banks are closed, and people wishing to buy can't get the money into exchanges.



AshleyAshes said:


> You said "crashes in value 30% to 100% a year" Please, show me the nation that had it's currently lose *100%* of it's value. So yes, you're citing a 100% crash, total loss of value...



None in 2012 or 2013, but plenty in recent history. Zimbabwe, Russia, Ukraine... There's a pretty big list of them from just the 1990's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Examples_of_hyperinflation
Er... I think we may be conflicting crash with inflation  Those three above I mentioned crashed 100%, and they had to restart with new currencies. But you're right, I meant 30% to 100% inflation, not crash.



> On top of that, the South Sudan with it's 79% inflation since 2012 and stark humanitarian crisis', probably isn't a place where you'll find much use for your 'invisible internet money'.





Kazooie said:


> Zimbabwe? Not that they would have the infrastructure to support bitcoin.



They have cell phones. That's all the infrastructure you need. I believe access to more stable money, international trade, easier payment methods (more divisibility), ability to directly receive money from abroad, access to micro loans, and security against your money being easily taken by warlords, will help those people out of their dire situation.


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## Kazooie (Feb 21, 2014)

Rassah said:


> Nobody uses Gox except for day trading


Apparently! And now the final stake has been driven into MTGox due to a major (known) bug in the protocol. RIP MTG:Online eXchange.


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## Foxpup (Feb 28, 2014)

Kazooie said:


> Apparently! And now the final stake has been driven into MTGox due to a major (known) bug in the protocol. RIP MTG:Online eXchange.


/delurk
Actually, the bug (specifically, that unconfirmed transactions are mutable) is not at all major, and not even considered to be a bug at all by the devs, whose response was (paraphrased): "Well, duh. What did you think the word 'unconfirmed' meant?" But Gox was apparently accounting for unconfirmed transactions as though they were immutable and final, which caused them to lose a billion dollars worth of bitcoin over several years without noticing, which would be totally impossible if only Gox had the slightest idea of a) how Bitcoin works, or b) how _accounting_ works.


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## deillos (May 8, 2015)

I am interested in bitcoins, and I am thinking of buying an antminer or two in the next several months.


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## Rassah (May 8, 2015)

Oh, hey, forgot about this thread. Over a year later, and whadayaknow, Bitcoin is still around, and is getting even more investment from major players than it did last year.

I also found out that there are quite a few furries in prominent bitcoin business positions (yours truly included). Since my last post, I was actually able to retire, though I'm still "working" as a consultant and brand manager for a bitcoin company (don't need the money, but love the job). The bitcoin company, Mycelium, is in the process of raising about $20 million, and just released another product (a merchant processor survive that let's you get paid directly into your account instead of through an intermediary, which was impossible before now). Also, Jason King (of Shaun's Outpost fame) and I are starting work on a bitcoin project that will help feed hopefully thousands of homeless, and help people find thousands of jobs.

I'm living business, and what I do now, and I'm SO happy I ignored the negative ninnies in this thread!


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## Butters Shikkon (May 8, 2015)

Welcome home, Rassah. 

I'm afriad I'm one of the only ones who still knows what you are talking about. So much can happen in a year. 

You didn't write, you didn't call...you're such a bad son.


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## Sylox (May 8, 2015)

LOL @ Bitcoin; what a joke of a currency. The only people who like Bitcoin are Libertarians and those wishing to do illegal shit. Bitcoin will be gone in 5 years as it  will never replace the Dollar, Yen, Euro, Pound Sterling or the Yuan. 

Give it up.


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## Butters Shikkon (May 9, 2015)

Sylox said:


> LOL @ Bitcoin; what a joke of a currency. The only people who like Bitcoin are Libertarians and those wishing to do illegal shit. Bitcoin will be gone in 5 years as it  will never replace the Dollar, Yen, Euro, Pound Sterling or the Yuan.
> 
> Give it up.



Rassah apparently is a "Bitcoin CEO" and made a thread some time back on how useful bitcoin was to furries...before it got locked by Mentova because he acted like buying illegal things with it was a good thing. 

He was a very entertaining member, I was hoping he would stick around.


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## Sylox (May 9, 2015)

Butters, anybody can lie over the interwebz. Bitcoin has NO future at all. As I said before, only two types people use Bitcoin and one of them is associated with the word "prison". Do the math.


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## Rassah (May 9, 2015)

Sylox said:


> LOL @ Bitcoin; what a joke of a currency. The only people who like Bitcoin are Libertarians and those wishing to do illegal shit.



Heh, LOL @ you. At this point about $500 million has been invested into bitcoin companies by some very prominent businesses and investors, and all the biggest banks (BofA, Wachovia, West Fargo, HSBC) are spending tons of money into figuring out how to implement it within their systems. Most recently Goldman Sachs invested $50 million into Circle bitcoin exchange. People who don't know what bitcoin is, what it can do, and what kind of stuff is going on with it behind the scenes, shouldn't make stupid assumptions. Otherwise you'll end up looking like the idiots who claimed that the internet was just a stupid fad that won't last for more than a few years, or like poor Paul Krugman who is still being made fun of for stating in 1998, "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." People have been claiming bitcoin is dead since 2011. Those of us rubbing elbows with millionaires and advisers to billionaires know what's up.




Butters Shikkon said:


> Rassah apparently is a "Bitcoin CEO" and made a thread some time back on how useful bitcoin was to furries...before it got locked by Mentova because he acted like buying illegal things with it was a good thing.



I still insist it's useful to furries. Artists can post bitcoin addresses along with their art submissions, and get tips, even of just a few cents. That's not really possible with anything else, because the fees will eat up whatever was tipped. You can even use a different address for different art posts to keep track of which ones earned the most tips, and thus were most popular. But other people started complaining about some BS, like claiming that I think artists should only earn 25 cents for work instead of "livable wage" or whatever, and derailed the thread into the "it's only good for buying illegal stuff." To me that was especially sad, because it was an idea they would themselves benefit from, but which they shit all over, effectively working hard to shoot themselves in the foot. Oh well.


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## Sylox (May 10, 2015)

Dude, you're delusional. 

You have no idea how REAL currencies work and its so obvious. So what, GS decided to drop money your way, these are the same fools who decided to give out toxic loans back in the 2000s, not sure I'd want to be associated with them, but w/e. Like I said, Bitcoin will be gone in 5 years. Virtual currencies have no place in society for the simple fact they cannot be tracked and their usage is limited to online shit. So you hackers, tech nerds, neck beards, Libertarians and whoever else can lie to yourselves and call yourselves "millionaires" all you want, but I'll stick with the good ol' American dollar.

BTW, Paul Krugman is a respected economist, who are you again? Ohh that's right a smug, wannabe "millionaire" who's ignorant about how life works. You know what dude, fall back because you aren't even on my level.


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## Eggdodger (May 10, 2015)

Oh hey, Rassah. I was just thinking about you the other day.

I believe there's a lot of potential in non-centralized currency. At worst, experimenting with it would lose you a little capital. At best, your investment gives big returns. I like the idea of no taxes or no bank fees, as well as a currency that works globally, digitally, and (hopefully) securely. In an ideal world, digital currency will make way for a lot of positive economic growth, and a lot of change for disadvantaged folks or those in underdeveloped nations.


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## GamingGal (May 10, 2015)

Sylox said:


> Virtual currencies have no place in society for the simple fact they cannot be tracked and their usage is limited to online shit.



Considering the entire world is going digital, how is this statement valid? Everything is going virtual or is trying to find a way to go virtual. A virtual universal currency seems like the only thing left, and to me it makes sense.


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## Sylox (May 10, 2015)

GamingGal said:


> Considering the entire world is going digital, how is this statement valid? Everything is going virtual or is trying to find a way to go virtual. A virtual universal currency seems like the only thing left, and to me it makes sense.



No, no it doesn't make sense, especially when you consider the fact it's virtually untraceable. I bet you wouldn't be saying that when a terrorist buys supplies for a dirty bomb with Bitcoin and detonates it.


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## Rassah (May 10, 2015)

Sylox said:


> You have no idea how REAL currencies work and its so obvious.



Really? How so? I got degrees that require me to know about them, and have over a decade working with them, in both a multinational corporate setting and in virtual currencies in games, but I love to keep learning and becoming more of an expert in my main field of study, so would love to gain some more knowledge. Teach away.



Sylox said:


> So what, GS decided to drop money your way, these are the same fools who decided to give out toxic loans back in the 2000s, not sure I'd want to be associated with them, but w/e. Like I said, Bitcoin will be gone in 5 years.



GS is just the latest in a long string of very powerful investors. There's the $450 million of other non-GS investment, and that's still only the publicly announced investments. I talk privately with many more people who get first dibs on these investment rounds who do it in secret, who donated millions more, and know that practically all big banks are seriously looking at it as something to adopt, fearing if they don't it will disrupt and completely kill their business.



Sylox said:


> Virtual currencies have no place in society for the simple fact they cannot be tracked and their usage is limited to online shit.



If this were true, then the US dollar has no place in society because cash can not be tracked (what do you think is used to fund almost all of the world's terrorism, human trafficking, and illegal drug sales?), and credit cards have no place in society because their usage is limited to online shit. That's false, of course. I and many others use bitcoin to buy stuff online AND in person all the time.



Sylox said:


> I'll stick with the good ol' American dollar.



You mean the one who's total amount was tripled in just six years due to QE? I don't know if I would trust keeping my money in it. I know the super wealthy (billionaires) are paranoid about holding dollars too. And stocks, since the 3x+ rise in dollars is what's causing the current stock bubble.
But, not everyone has your luxury. People in places with strict currency controls, like Argentina, can't exchange for dollars, and are forced to hold pesos that are rapidly dropping in value. But they CAN buy bitcoin, and then use that to buy dollars or send their money overseas, because bitcoin is the only currency that can be sent globally like email, instead of having to go through controlled bank channels that are heavily regulated at borders.



Sylox said:


> BTW, Paul Krugman is a respected economist, who are you again? Ohh that's right a smug, wannabe "millionaire" who's ignorant about how life works. You know what dude, fall back because you aren't even on my level.



I wouldn't say he's respected. By some, yes. By others he's an old has-been who's too old to keep up with the new tech - based economy. Don't forget that Rush Limbaugh is respected too.
 Me? I'm no one. Sure, I get invited to speak at conferences around the world, am very well known in some circles and have a fan following, have been interviewed or published about in various magazines and newspapers, get insider knowledge about what the top businesses in tech and banking are up to, and rub elbows with some of the secretive powerful wealthy elite, mostly in exclusive private bars and restaurants, but I'm still mostly a nobody, still trying to make or contribute something that will get me status recognition and access to elite circles where I will really be able to change the world for the better. What level are you on? Maybe I should strive to get to know you better too?

And don't rely on me as the authority to compare to Krugman in regards to bitcoin. I'm just relaying information I hear from Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, the Mellon family, Jeff Bezos, Travis Kalanick, Marc Andreesen, Patric Byrne, and others (many of whom help run the world, but you probably have never even heard of). Who are you compared to them?


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## Sylox (May 10, 2015)

Whatever dude, Bitcoin has no future okay. Too me, if you use Bitcoin, you're up to no good and there are far more people using it to do bad than good. Honestly, IDGAF about those starving brats in Argentina and other places with strict currency controls; it's not my problem. Let em starve w/ the Peso for all I care. Anyway, the fact you choose Bitcoin over the dollar makes me question your patriotism. You'd rather stick with a fake currency, than the most traded and valued in the world? Either you're crazy or you've got balls. 

I don't know which one...at any rate, you'll be sorry you wasted your time and money in this stupid venture. While I'll be living it large, you'll be another peon skimming welfare.

EDIT: You can name drop all you want to boost your ego, but it doesn't change the fact that you're dead wrong about virtual currencies. IDGAF what you do for a living, that doesn't qualify you to give me or anyone else financial advice.


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## Rassah (May 10, 2015)

Who defines good or bad? You? Is jailing someone for 15 years because they have a little piece of a plant in their pocket good? How about taking your money and giving it to a drug addict because he's incapable of work? Or taking 70% of your money out of your own savings account because politicians spent too much money and decide to use your money to pay down their own debt? Or charging you a 50% shopping tax for buying anything online, because too much money was printed by central banks? All of those are good according to some current government in the world. Bitcoin is awesome because when someone uses it, they DGAF what *you* or anyone else thinks should be good.

I see you are of the "if you aren't doing anything bad, you have nothing to hide" mentally. Can you tell me the names of all your family members, how much you earn, and your entire browsing history for the last two month?

Regarding using it more for bad than good, polls have over and over proven that to be false. Large majority of bitcoin is actually used for tipping and donations. Only a few percent is used in drug sales, and so far there's no evidence of it used for murder, terrorism, human trafficking, or those other things. US dollars work MUCH better for that.

Regarding patriotism, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." Yes, I'd rather stick with a voluntary, apolitical, borderless, uncensorable, deflationary currency, than one used to control, spy on, and steal from people, and fund terrorism and global wars. To each his own I guess.

If I may ask, what is your plan for living it large? I'm a financial analyst and an economist with a ton of insider info on what's going on and what's coming our way, so I'm curious if what you are doing has any potential catastrophic risks, or is something innovative I should look into too (up to you if you feel like considering whatever I may say in reply, and yes, I am fully qualified).

Why do you insist that I (and people with more moneyy, power, and brains that you or I ever hope to have) am dead wrong about digital currency? Is there anything more than "it can be used to fund bad things?"


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## Butters Shikkon (May 10, 2015)

This is like watching Freddy vs. Jason.


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## Sylox (May 10, 2015)

Rassah said:


> Who defines good or bad? You? Is jailing someone for 15 years because they have a little piece of a plant in their pocket good? How about taking your money and giving it to a drug addict because he's incapable of work? Or taking 70% of your money out of your own savings account because politicians spent too much money and decide to use your money to pay down their own debt? Or charging you a 50% shopping tax for buying anything online, because too much money was printed by central banks? All of those are good according to some current government in the world. Bitcoin is awesome because when someone uses it, they DGAF what *you* or anyone else thinks should be good.



All of those are okay w/ me except the issue about weed. Please hop off your soapbox.



> I see you are of the "if you aren't doing anything bad, you have nothing to hide" mentally. Can you tell me the names of all your family members, how much you earn, and your entire browsing history for the last two month?



That's personal information I'm not going to give out over the net. Civil Libertarians like you were quiet on the US PATRIOT ACT when Bush signed it, now it's a problem because that traitor Snowden showed you all stuff that's been going on for a long time. The Patriot Act is a vital tool in the war on terror and I have nothing to hide nor do I care if they tap my phones.



> Regarding using it more for bad than good, polls have over and over proven that to be false. Large majority of bitcoin is actually used for tipping and donations. Only a few percent is used in drug sales, and so far there's no evidence of it used for murder, terrorism, human trafficking, or those other things. US dollars work MUCH better for that.



Again...hop off the soapbox.



> Regarding patriotism, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." Yes, I'd rather stick with a voluntary, apolitical, borderless, uncensorable, deflationary currency, than one used to control, spy on, and steal from people, and fund terrorism and global wars. To each his own I guess.



To each his own indeed.



> If I may ask, what is your plan for living it large? I'm a financial analyst and an economist with a ton of insider info on what's going on and what's coming our way, so I'm curious if what you are doing has any potential catastrophic risks, or is something innovative I should look into too (up to you if you feel like considering whatever I may say in reply, and yes, I am fully qualified).



Well I plan on being a Congressman one day. I want to bring sanity and moderation to Washington D.C. Don't laugh because I'm going to make it there one day and fix the bullshit that seems to thrive and grow in Congress.



> Why do you insist that I (and people with more moneyy, power, and brains that you or I ever hope to have) am dead wrong about digital currency? Is there anything more than "it can be used to fund bad things?"



Because I hate when the status quo is messed with OR challenged. I hate when people try and change the system to fit THEIR needs and nobody else. I hate that you give a fuck about some poor Argentinians who can't use our Dollar...why do you even care about them? Look dude, Bitcoin only fits the needs of a few people as I've said before. The rest of us want no part of your sham currency.


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## Rassah (May 11, 2015)

Sylox said:


> All of those are okay w/ me except the issue about weed. Please hop off your soapbox.



Thats actually kinda  horrifying. You're ok with taking half of your familys' anf friends' money, if bankers gamble with theirs and lose? This is exactly why the rest of us need bitcoin: to keep our money from being taken by the likes of you.




Sylox said:


> Civil Libertarians like you were quiet on the US PATRIOT ACT when Bush signed it, now it's a problem because that traitor Snowden showed you all stuff that's been going on for a long time. The Patriot Act is a vital tool in the war on terror and I have nothing to hide nor do I care if they tap my phones.



I was a liberal Democrat when the PATRIOT ACT passed, and I was very vocal against it. So were libertarians. Snowden only exposed to the rest of the would what we already knew: that the US government is breaking its own constitutional laws. If you have nothing to hide, let's see your browser history. Or have you been looking at illegal porn and browsing other things you shouldn't have?




Sylox said:


> Well I plan on being a Congressman one day. I want to bring sanity and moderation to Washington D.C. Don't laugh because I'm going to make it there one day and fix the bullshit that seems to thrive and grow in Congress.



If that's your plan for living it large, it may be a bit of a stretch. You do know that being one of 100 Senators, or one of 435 House Members, and a junior one at that, won't give you much power to do anything? And that is even if you manage to get yourself elected, at a time when election campaigns are almost entirely funded by corporations and special interests who will expect you to do and believe what they want. Look at Al Franken. Awesome guy who became a Senator to fix the bullshit, and you barely hear anything from him. Good luck, but it won't be easy. Also, it may not be a lasting career, considering my side is working very hard to make funding government almost impossible. Even if you volunteer to be a congressman for free, you still need money to pay people to enforce your laws..




Sylox said:


> Because I hate when the status quo is messed with OR challenged. I hate when people try and change the system to fit THEIR needs and nobody else.



Oh, dude! Holy shit are you in for a world of hurt (or hate?). You know how the internet changed the way people organize, communicate, share ideas, get news, and expose lies? And how P2P file sharing changed how people think about copyright, downloading music and movies, and sharing books and information that used to be exclusive to those who paid for it? We live in an ERA of status quo changes!
With 3-D printing, pretty much anything can now be digitized and sent peer-to-peer anywhere in the world, making a mockery of production controls, consumer regulations, trade barriers, patents, tarrifs, and a thousand other government restrictions. Good bye gun regulation laws.
With digital currency, any amount of value can be stored or transfered anywhere in the world, without anyone being able to monitor it, confiscate the money, or block someone from receiving it. Good bye restrictions on sending money abroad, or paying for things like gambling and medicine online. 
Bitcoin also allows anyone to program transactions, so your money automatically goes to whomever you want when you want it, with no amount of lawyers or government intervention being able to change that. Good bye estate taxes, or family members using lawyers to fight for inheritance.
And it allows for anyone to raise money to fund anything, just like Kickstarter, without an actual company collecting the money or blocking it if it's something they don't like (such as if people decide to raise money to help a Congressman to early retirement).

Then we have programmable digital contracts that make the legal system (at least for business and contract matters) obsolete; global country-less businesses that exist entirely online, have no physical offices to raid, and pay no allegiance or taxes to any government; private protection agencies that can protect you better than police no matter where you are in the world; reputation systems that make passports look "quaint" by comparison, and a ton of other things too long to explain.

In ten years, the status quo will be changed drastically. In 50, you won't even recognize it, and your future job may even be obsolete (the group I'm working with is certainly working hard to make it obsolete)



Sylox said:


> I hate that you give a fuck about some poor Argentinians who can't use our Dollar...why do you even care about them?



Because they are being unjustly exploited by their government, and what's happening to them can happen to others in other countries (Greece, Spain), and can even happen to us in US.



Sylox said:


> Look dude, Bitcoin only fits the needs of a few people as I've said before. The rest of us want no part of your sham currency.



If you use a credit card, or buy things online, or transfer money to anyone, or buy stocks, or own property, or buy online storage space, or order something from overseas (or buy from a company that does), or wish to participate in any part of the economy in a decade, you'll need bitcoin. You may not even know you're using it, but that's what banks and businesses are moving all their financial systems, stocks, and property records onto, and what companies like IBM and Google are designing to make their robots and electronics as part of "The Internet of Things" to work with.

Hell, even the US dollar will probably be working on top of bitcoin. Tether (https://tether.to) already let's you use dollars as a digital currency, sending it digitally to anyone without the need for banks. Tether plans to eventually move almost the entire USD base onto their platform, so instead of you sending dollars back and forth by asking your bank to do it on your behalf, you'll do it directly by sending it from your phone or hardware device to theirs. And and Tether based dollar works on top of bitcoin, like email on top on TCP/IP


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## Sylox (May 11, 2015)

Rassah said:


> Thats actually kinda  horrifying. You're ok with taking half of your familys' anf friends' money, if bankers gamble with theirs and lose? This is exactly why the rest of us need bitcoin: to keep our money from being taken by the likes of you.



Blahh blahh blahh




> I was a liberal Democrat when the PATRIOT ACT passed, and I was very vocal against it. So were libertarians. Snowden only exposed to the rest of the would what we already knew: that the US government is breaking its own constitutional laws. If you have nothing to hide, let's see your browser history. Or have you been looking at illegal porn and browsing other things you shouldn't have?



It's nice to know you like Terrorism buddy and you can look at my browser history. Outside of CBS Sports and a few other sites I've done nothing wrong.




> If that's your plan for living it large, it may be a bit of a stretch. You do know that being one of 100 Senators, or one of 435 House Members, and a junior one at that, won't give you much power to do anything? And that is even if you manage to get yourself elected, at a time when election campaigns are almost entirely funded by corporations and special interests who will expect you to do and believe what they want. Look at Al Franken. Awesome guy who became a Senator to fix the bullshit, and you barely hear anything from him. Good luck, but it won't be easy. Also, it may not be a lasting career, considering my side is working very hard to make funding government almost impossible. Even if you volunteer to be a congressman for free, you still need money to pay people to enforce your laws..



Uhh it's what I want to do in life and I don't need you critiquing me and my goals. I'm well aware what it takes and the shit that goes on so mind your business.




> Because they are being unjustly exploited by their government, and what's happening to them can happen to others in other countries (Greece, Spain), and can even happen to us in US.



Not my problem dude. Let them rot for all I care. If it ain't affecting me, IDGAF.



> If you use a credit card, or buy things online, or transfer money to anyone, or buy stocks, or own property, or buy online storage space, or order something from overseas (or buy from a company that does), or wish to participate in any part of the economy in a decade, you'll need bitcoin. You may not even know you're using it, but that's what banks and businesses are moving all their financial systems, stocks, and property records onto, and what companies like IBM and Google are designing to make their robots and electronics as part of "The Internet of Things" to work with.
> 
> Hell, even the US dollar will probably be working on top of bitcoin. Tether (https://tether.to) already let's you use dollars as a digital currency, sending it digitally to anyone without the need for banks. Tether plans to eventually move almost the entire USD base onto their platform, so instead of you sending dollars back and forth by asking your bank to do it on your behalf, you'll do it directly by sending it from your phone or hardware device to theirs. And and Tether based dollar works on top of bitcoin, like email on top on TCP/IP



No I won't. Please stop. The Dollar, Euro, Yen, Yuan and Pound Sterling will be the dominant currencies in a decade, not virtual currency.


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## Rassah (May 11, 2015)

Bitcoin is 1. a currency, 2. a money transfer system, and 3. a property ownership ledger. Even if bitcoin never becomes the dominant currency, it's already being used as a money transfer system that banks are using to move dollars, euros, and yen, and there's already development underway to use bitcoin to issue and trade stocks, and to record real estate property ownership. It's not going away.


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## Sylox (May 11, 2015)

Doesn't mean its a viable currency. Does Bitcoin pay you $$$ to hype their shitty product?


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## Rassah (May 11, 2015)

BitcoinBitcoin is not a company. It's like asking if email pays me money by promoting it as something you can send digitally directly between people, instead of the old system through third party services. Bitcoin is just a protocol, which happens to be superior to the old system.

P.S. usd is not a viable currency either. No debt based currency is. Average lifespan for such currencies is 27 years. USD defaulted when it couldn't stay pegged to gold any more, and the current version of usd is running into trouble now too.


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## Sylox (May 11, 2015)

The dollar is more viable than any currency that requires you to mine it, and IDGAF if it's being used to purchase stocks and what not, that doesn't mean jack shit to me. You can have your virtual currency and I'll take the real deal and I bet you anything I'd make more money than you in the end.


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## Rassah (May 11, 2015)

A currency that requires work to produce, and has unbrakeable regulations based on math controlling it, is more viable than one that can be created out of nothing on a whim by bankers and politicians to pay for their pet projects? How did that work out for Zimbabwe?

Regarding in the end, good luck. I have a huge head start on you (I'm already retired and dont have to work). Though you'll never know if you win, because no one can know how much money I'll have besides me.


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## Sylox (May 11, 2015)

IDGAF about Zimbabwe so don't bring them up and I don't care how much money you have or don't have because I'm pretty sure I have more than you do.


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## Eggdodger (May 11, 2015)

Sylox said:


> Doesn't mean its a viable currency. Does Bitcoin pay you $$$ to hype their shitty product?



I find this funny/ironic because Rassah's made it clear he would never trust $$$ :grin:


Sylox said:


> IDGAF about Zimbabwe so don't bring them up and I don't care how much money you have or don't have because I'm pretty sure I have more than you do.



Rassah, I know you don't use these forums much, so maybe you'd want some background on Sylox and maybe you can stop arguing with him.

He's not discussing with you. He's arguing, and he argues to win. He doesn't care about your viewpoint, and any point you make he doesn't care about is moot. You can say whatever you want, but he doesn't want to learn anything or better himself by listening to opposing viewpoints or researching.

Now, Sylox, you might say, "What does he know? He never posts in threads where I make incendiary remarks." My reply would be, "It would be a waste of my time to tell you how absolutely ignorant your stance on life is. Other people already do that."

I'm not white knighting, I just want this thread to actually be about bitcoin again and not about how much it supposedly sucks and how much Rassah's changing the world and how much Sylox will eventually change the world he doesn't care about, etc.


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## Sylox (May 11, 2015)

All I heard was blahh blahh blahh. Nothing of substance just a biased opinion. My stance on life is perfect, you're just jealous that I have everything figured out.


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## Eggdodger (May 11, 2015)

Just a sec, this post is going to be filled with a few choice Sylox moments in a couple minutes.




Sylox said:


> The only reason I care is because they're are doing this shit in Maryland. If it was anywhere else, I wouldn't give a fuck. Maybe I'd SMFH, but even that's stretching it. Same old narrative; somebody gets shot, protest and riot, tensions calm. Rinse and repeat.





Sylox said:


> I'd rather watch TMZ, at least that's entertaining.







Sylox said:


> No offense and I mean this nicely, but your brother is a fucking retard. Tell him I said that.







Sylox said:


> Look, I get by by buying stocks and living with my mum, okay? She's upper middle and so am I, thus I have a right to bitch about the lower class.





Sylox said:


> I don't know. I can't find anything that will let me win this argument. It's all SJW articles about brutality and discrimination along race and income. Apparently the poorer you are the more likely you experience brutality.



A celebrity endorsement:


RedSavage said:


> Okay so your first link was a conservative website that is heavy biased against liberal agenda. Not exactly trust worthy.
> 
> 
> Your second link was an article that supported my own views. O-O Its obvious you just read the title and didnt read the article itself.
> ...



Oh, and to cover all the bases: This isn't an ad hominem, because the point in question is that you're very, very hard to talk to in a mature manner.

Can this thread be about bitcoin again, or are we going to keep hating it and prevent actual discussion?


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## Sylox (May 11, 2015)

I don't know why you're being a hater dude, if you don't like what I'm saying so what, that's life. I don't have to change anything about my views because they aren't ignorant, they're rooted in reality. Again, your'e just filled with jealousy and anger and it shows.

 Now if you're done trying to derail the thread, get back on topic.


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## Eggdodger (May 11, 2015)

Sylox said:


> I don't know why you're being a hater dude, if you don't like what I'm saying so what, that's life. I don't have to change anything about my views because they aren't ignorant, they're rooted in reality. Again, your'e just filled with jealousy and anger and it shows.
> 
> Now if you're done trying to derail the thread, get back on topic.



The topic is not "Why do you hate bitcoin?" It is not a forum game called "Stump Rassah".

The title is "Who's into Bitcoin?"

If anything, _you're_ the one preventing constructive discussion.


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## Sylox (May 11, 2015)

Eggdodger said:


> Oh, and to cover all the bases: This isn't an ad hominem, because the point in question is that you're very, very hard to talk to in a mature manner.



No it's an ad hominem attack against me because it's not true at all.

---

Fine I'll let you all have your little circlejerk and talk about your sham currency. I'm not really adding anything w/ my opposition anyway, so I'm out.


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## Eggdodger (May 11, 2015)

So, Rassah, or anyone else qualified in the subject. My friend told me about bitcoin mining, and how he runs a wallet app on his computer while he's out and about, and he makes enough bitcoins to make sizable purchases. I was wondering if you had any advice for someone wanting to start into the bitcoin venture?


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## Rassah (May 12, 2015)

Sylox said:


> IDGAF about Zimbabwe...




"IDGAF about X" seems to be your motto. Those who dont know history are doomed to repeat it. And for someone wanting to be a congressman, you sure are insistent on staying ignorant of world politics and things that will affect the country you plan to rule  (Why is it that YOU want to be a congressman, and I'M the one who knows about international stuff, economy, money, politics, and government incentive structures?)

Nice that you have more money. When the economy tanks, and the angry mob of poor disenfranchised proletariat starts going after the rich, I'll point them in your direction. Me? I'm just poor and have no money. Now, excuse me while I take this innocuous little thumb drive, sneak out of the country, and buy an island somewhere to live on 

And in Bitcoin news, NASDAQ will start using Bitcoin technology! (http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/11/technology/nasdaq-bitcoin-technology/) The article doesnt explain it, but NASDAQ will be using Bitcoins Colored Coins system to issue and trade stocks. Colored Coins works by taking the smallest unit of a bitcoin (0.00000001 bitcoin), assigning an index # to it, and tracking it as it's sent person to person like any other bitcoin. In this way, you could issue a stock of, say, Microsoft, indexed to that tiny piece of bitcoin, and anyone who owns it in their wallet can prove that they own a share of MSFT and trade it directly with anyone else. No need for brokers, lawyers, or complicated systems. This tech has been in development and being considered for asset trading for over two years, but no one in Bitcoin expected the *GODDAM NASDAQ *to adopt it first! O.O


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## Rassah (May 12, 2015)

Eggdodger said:


> So, Rassah, or anyone else qualified in the subject. My friend told me about bitcoin mining, and how he runs a wallet app on his computer while he's out and about, and he makes enough bitcoins to make sizable purchases. I was wondering if you had any advice for someone wanting to start into the bitcoin venture?



Your friend was either telling you about what he did two+ years ago, or is mining cryptocoins other than bitcoin, or is lying to you. At this point you would need to drop at least $10,000 if not $100,000 on mining hardware, and get set up on a part of a planet with cheap electricity (China, Iceland) to be able to make any kind of profit (including paying off the cost of your mining hardware). Bitcoin mining is serious business at this point. If you want to get into a bitcoin venture and make money, your best bet is to learn software development and join one of the dozens of bitcoin related crypto projects out there (there's a massive shortage of developers here), or come up with an idea for some innovative way to use bitcoin or decentralized tech, or write articles for the many online news sites, or if you have a lot of money already, invest it in a bitcoin startup (you may need a few thousand to start, though the first $10k or so of mine ended up being a "donation," and only the latest $50k has hopes of a good return). You can also loan/invest a bit of money on BitLendingClub.com, but you could easily get burned by scammers on there.

Personally, I'm about to start working on a project/idea with a friend of mine that will help track homeless, and provide them with food and jobs. I'm trying to figure out how to make the app to do this work in a fully decentralized way, without us having a "company" or servers that can be seized, because frankly in many parts of US feeding homeless or giving them mini jobs is illegal.


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## Maugryph (May 12, 2015)

Sylox said:


> No it's an ad hominem attack against me because it's not true at all.
> 
> ---
> 
> Fine I'll let you all have your little circlejerk and talk about your sham currency. I'm not really adding anything w/ my opposition anyway, so I'm out.




Skylox, skylox, skylox, You sound like a whiny teenager that desperately wants to be right about everything instead of someone who wants to have a legitimate discussion.

BitCoins are not a sham.

While I personally not ready to jump onto the BitCoin train, many others including some companies are starting to accept them 
From Wikipedia:
In 2013 some mainstream websites began accepting bitcoins. WordPress had started in November 2012,[SUP][80][/SUP] followed by OKCupid in April 2013,[SUP][81][/SUP] Atomic Mall in November 2013,[SUP][82][/SUP] TigerDirect[SUP][83][/SUP] and Overstock.com in January 2014,[SUP][84][/SUP] Expedia in June 2014,[SUP][85][/SUP] Newegg and Dell in July 2014,[SUP][86][/SUP] and Microsoft in December 2014.[SUP][87][/SUP][SUP][note 10][/SUP] Certain non-profit or advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation accept bitcoin donations.[SUP][89][/SUP] (The organization started accepting bitcoins in January 2011,[SUP][90][/SUP] stopped accepting them in June 2011,[SUP][91][/SUP] and began again in May 2013.[SUP][89][/SUP])

Let that sink in...Microsoft, one of the biggest software/hardware corporations is accepting BitCoins. It's not a 'fake currency', it's an unstable currency, but definitely real and will remain real until it is no longer supported by those who use it.

If it starts gaining more momentum I might just start accepting Bitcoins from clients.


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## Eggdodger (May 12, 2015)

Maugryph, please. Please don't instigate Sylox into coming back.


Rassah, I'll keep that in mind. I actually do want to study and get a degree in the field of computer science or design, so that's a fully plausible scenario. In a couple of years.


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## Maugryph (May 12, 2015)

Eggdodger said:


> Maugryph, please. Please don't instigate Sylox into coming back.
> 
> 
> Rassah, I'll keep that in mind. I actually do want to study and get a degree in the field of computer science or design, so that's a fully plausible scenario. In a couple of years.



Um. you guys just had a two page argument with him. I wasn't trying to instigate anything but was simply trying to explain bitcoin is a legitimate currency. 

 Regardless, I will move forward.
I'm curious if any artists around here have used bitcoin to receive payment from clients. How well has it worked for you and your clients? Anything to watch out for?


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## Rassah (May 13, 2015)

Not a lot of artists accept it, unfortunately. If you want to, I would suggest you get a merchant account at BitPay. Any bitcoins you get paid in will automatically get converted into your local currency of choice and get deposited into your bank the same or next day, completely free of charge (definitely beats PayPal and Square). Problem is finding furries to actually pay you. From my experience, most of them are as hostile as most of those on this thread, because furries are typically liberal left, and as a knee-jerk reaction reject anything that might sound like it's coming from the right, like markets or money.


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## Maugryph (May 13, 2015)

Rassah said:


> Not a lot of artists accept it, unfortunately. If you want to, I would suggest you get a merchant account at BitPay. Any bitcoins you get paid in will automatically get converted into your local currency of choice and get deposited into your bank the same or next day, completely free of charge (definitely beats PayPal and Square). Problem is finding furries to actually pay you. From my experience, most of them are as hostile as most of those on this thread, because furries are typically liberal left, and as a knee-jerk reaction reject anything that might sound like it's coming from the right, like markets or money.



Thank you for the tip on BitPay. I will check it out.


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## Rassah (May 16, 2015)

Meh


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## RTDragon (May 23, 2015)

I am surprised this is still being discussed considering it was clear from your previous now locked thread last year as to why most artist are not into bitcoin, and yet your promoting this on the forums again Rassah you really don't give up do you.


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## Rassah (May 23, 2015)

I figured a year ago the main complaints were that it's not trustworthy, no serious businesses use it, it's too volatile, it's too difficult to use, you can't buy anything with it, and it is just a fad that will soon disappear anyway. Now, a year later, it's still here, it's being adopted by most of the largest banks, and even the NYSE is planning to use it for issuing and trading stocks, it's accepted by Expedia, Microsoft, Dell, NewEgg, and indirectly by Amazon, Target, and iTunes as well as over 100,000 other businesses, the price has been stable for months, there are many more apps and services that let you use it easily, and there are now regulatory clarifications (they applied financial or commodity regulation to it), as well as trusted, regulated, and insured businesses that let you buy and use it. And it still allows you to send money as easily as email, receive tips of as little as a few pennies, and accept donations or payments by just posting a string of text in your art submission description.

So if bitcoin is growing bigger and becoming more and more prevalent, while still having the same benefits I mentioned before, why would I quit? (aside from bitcoin becoming so common place that everyone uses it, like credit cards or email, anyway) Besides, I still want to be able to tip or donate to artists I like, or even be able to send money to some forum posters. Plus with new services like Lighthouse, if more furs used bitcoin, it would be extremely easy to raise funds for any furry related projects, or raise money for those who have fallen on hard times here (those posts crop up once in a while).


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## Taralack (May 24, 2015)

Why can't you just use real money for that stuff? It's just as easy to do so and most people wouldn't want to go through the hassle of converting a currency. Not unless you already had a shit ton of the stuff lying around to play with anyway.


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## Rassah (May 24, 2015)

What makes it not real money? And because not everyone lives in the same country as you, not everyone has PayPal, or even a bank account, sending it is much easier and cheaper than any other system, and you don't even need to convert it any more. Just spend it directly on whatever you need.


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## RTDragon (May 24, 2015)

Not to mention that your promotion has already done the opposite of turning people off from bitcoin considering how aggressive you are about it.


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## Taralack (May 24, 2015)

Rassah said:


> What makes it not real money? And because not everyone lives in the same country as you, not everyone has PayPal, or even a bank account, sending it is much easier and cheaper than any other system, and you don't even need to convert it any more. Just spend it directly on whatever you need.



Yeah that doesn't really address my concern of "you can't use it unless you already have a lot of it"

Obviously you can argue the same for any other currency but with something new like this people are less likely to convert their already existing money into bitcoins.


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## Rassah (May 24, 2015)

Would you deposit money from your bank account into something like PayPal, if you can then use that PayPal account to order from Amazon at 10% to 20% off?

Adoption will obviously take time, but it'll happen. Email used to be in the exact same situation, since no one else had it, so it was easier to pick up the phone and call. At this point, I'm not even promoting it. Just answering questions.


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## Taralack (May 24, 2015)

I suppose that's true. But I'm still not gonna use it unless the site I'm using twists my arm about it.


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## Rassah (May 24, 2015)

NASDAQ is testing using it to issue, trade, and track ownership of stock shares. Soon when you buy stock, it will be in a form of something like 0.000001 bitcoin, marked with a serial number of sorts to make it be identifiable as a stock share, which you could send to anyone as easily as you send email. So if you own stocks, IRA, 401k, or some other investment account, you'll probably be using it soon. It's also being picked up by major banks as a settlement system between them. There is a system called Tether that is a coin pegged to the dollar that banks and other services (like PayPal) will use to send USD around instead of using ACH and SWIFT, and that is running on top of bitcoin (in other words, soon when you send someone money through PayPal, you'll actually be sending USD-pegged bitcoins). Ãœber/Lyft is being replaced by a peer to peer system that is automated, not needing a central company, and that will run on top of bitcoin even if you pay with cash or credit cards. NSA and various secret and military facilities from countries around the world are setting up a system where they will be using the bitcoin blockchain to register a list of "trusted" servers, and store secure key access in bitcoin (your bitcoin token will allow you to open doors or get access to secured systems). Banks and secure websites are planning to deploy login systems where instead of a login and password, you will log in using a bitcoin account (it's actually as easy as scanning a QR code with your phone, or clicking a link and pressing confirm on a plugin). Music and art services are planning to use the bitcoin blockchain to register and track ownership of intellectual property. IBM, 21Inc, and other tech companies are developing internet connected devices and appliances ("The Internet of Things") where every device will have its own bitcoin address and a little bit of bitcoins (some devices will even be earning their own bitcoins) which those devices will use to register themselves on the network, communicate with each other, make requests, and even pay other devices for services (bitcoin is the only currency that devices can hold and pay with all by themselves, and yes, IBM is actually working on this). Land title registries, legal firms, book repositories, and other companies that need to store data safely and permanently are implementing a system where they are using the bitcoin blockchain to record snapshots of their data in a way that it can never be tampered with.
And all of this is just the development from the last 6 months. Basically, people will be using it whether they want to or not, and won't even know they are using it. That's why I'm not bothering promoting it. Just working in the background with those companies to help them set up.


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## Butters Shikkon (May 24, 2015)

Mr. Rassah, would you please explain what bitcoin "mining" is? 

I can only imagine little dwarfs going to an office space with pickaxes. XD


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## Rassah (May 25, 2015)

Butters Shikkon said:


> Mr. Rassah, would you please explain what bitcoin "mining" is?



Ugh. I generally try to avoid that topic.
Do you know anything about hash functions? Basically its a one-way function where if you send some data into it, you get a seemingly completely random number, and if you change just one tiny bit in that data and send it through it again, you will get a completely different random number.
For example, if I sent the following into a SHA256 function



> Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was as white as snow



I get



> fd26e3c047f98f178102d1a32818b3c45a8b1b7e7b8f79e20d288a32210f37a2



Noe if I change just one thing, say change that comma into a period like so



> Mary had a little lamb. its fleece was as white as snow



I get this instead



> 24f3f6719377c673b8c684a3dedf32caa2d9ba66f7c4bef8ee71ab56891a13ef



Those strings of random numbers are called a hash, and any even slightest change will make it look like a totally different seemingly random string of characters. They are used in programming and cryptography for various reasons I can't currently think of, and the function is one way, meaning if I give you the data, you can instantly calculate the hash, but if I give you the hash, it is practically impossible to calculate the data (you can find more about hashes in Khan Academy online video classes).

With regards to bitcoin mining, a miner collects a block of data consisting of:
* A hash of the previous block
* All the bitcoin transactions the miner heard since the last time a block was mined
* Current date and time
* The Miner's own bitcoin address
* A randomly picked number, called the nonce
*Some other various data, like version of the software its running

It then puts all this data together with that nonce number and sends it through the SHA256 algorithm. The result is a random string of characters like in the example above. The bitcoin network also has something called a mining difficulty, which is basically how many leading zeroes that random resulting string has to have at the beginning. In order for a miner to successfully mine a bitcoin block, it has to come up with a resulting string of characters that has at least the required number of zeroes at the beginning. It does that by changing that nonce, and trying over and over until it gets lucky. There is no way to figure out what combination of data and nonce will work, so it's just trying different nonce numbers as fast as it can until you get lucky.

When a miner does get lucky, he broadcasts that block of data along with the new hash to the rest of the network, where everyone can send that same data through the same SHA256 function to verify that this miner did indeed find a solution, and if its verified, they start mining a new block, this time using the hash of this new block as the new input. This way, every block includes a hash of the previous block, and they are all linked together in a long hash chain, thus a block chain. When a miner creates a block, they also create a transaction that sends themselves 25 bitcoin to the address included in that block of data. Everyone agrees on this rule, and thats how miners get paid. If a miner tried to send himself more bitcoins, their block will be rejected by other miners, and even wallets, as invalid. This is what keeps miners from creating an infinite amount of bitcoins.

Every 2600 blocks (about two weeks) the network as a whole (each miner agreeing to the rule and doing it) checks how long it took to mine those 2600 blocks. If its more than two weeks, the difficulty (required number of leading zeroes) is decreased, and if less than two weeks, the difficulty is increased. This keeps the whole mining network generating a block once every ten minutes on average, despite the process just being random guessing, where miners guess what nonce should go with the data trillions of times a second.

The whole purpose of this is to record transactions in a way that can never be changed later. So, for instance, if I was to send you money, you wouldn't want me to go back later and change that transaction. If I wanted to do that in a bitcoin system, I would have to find that block where the transaction was recorded, and mine a new block without that transaction in it, along with the hash that has the required number of leading zeroes. And then I would also have to mine and find solutions to all the other blocks since then, but other miners will keep mining new and new blocks on top of that every ten minutes, so I would effectively have to be in a race with the rest of the network. The ONLY way I can outrun them, and change a transaction, is if I alone have more mining power (can try random nonces faster) than every other miner in the world combined (this is the 51% attack scenario, where I have more than 50% of the world's mining power under my control). Considering how many miners are out there and how fast they are all mining (at this point its 500 times faster than all of the world's fastest super computers combined), that's pretty much impossible.

So, in summary, miners verify that every transaction is legitimate (basic accounting), timestamp transactions, sign and lock them cryptographically to make sure they are secure and can never be changed again, and in exchange for that service the network agrees to pay them a fee. All using a very simple and basic math function. Which is what all of bitcoin is: just a bunch of simple math functions working together in really clever ways.


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## Rassah (May 25, 2015)

FYI, you can see the whole bitcoin network working from a site https://blockchain.info, where you can see every bitcoin transaction that goes through the network live at the bottom of the page, and blocks along with their info at the top. At the time of this post, block #357923 was mined, and the hash was



> 000000000000000009a741b45ec2b40086632670b3b402429cb64888351bfec0



In order to get that amount of zeroes at the beginning of the hash, you have to pick a random nonce number 380,918,636,090,000,000 times every second for a chance of finding a correct lucky guess once every ten minutes.

Tip: if you press on the green buttons with BTC amounts next to transactions, you can see how much equivalent in USD is being sent through the network. You'll see transactions ranging from a few pennies, to tens of thousands of dollars.


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## Butters Shikkon (May 25, 2015)

Oh thank you! I think I understand it a bit more now. It sorta seems like you have to be a math wiz to mine though. 

The reason it is so hard to mine is so that a person cannot create infinite bitcoins though right?


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## Rassah (May 25, 2015)

The mining is actually done automatically with hardware and software. You just install and app and run it. A company called 21inc actually plans to install mining hardware in water heaters, so that they heat the water with heat produced by mining chips, and earn you and the company money while you heat the water, all automatically. You just plug it in.

Infinite bitcoin are prevented by simple consensus. Since everyone has a list of all accounts and their balances (either stored on your computer, or somewhere you can easily access), if you try to send me 5 bitcoins and you only have 3 bitcoins in your account, I will see that, since I'll know the account you are sending from doesnt have 5 bitcoins, and will reject your transaction. So will the rest of the network. If you try to create bitcoins from thin air in some new account and send those to me, I will see that this account isn't even on the list anywhere, and will reject it too. If you are a miner and create a new account with 100 bitcoins in it, since I know at this time miners can only give themselves 25 bitcoins, I will reject that whole account too, and so will the rest of the people on the network.

The reason it's so hard to mine is pretty much only to make sure that it's hard to change history of transactions. That's why you'll hear people say "mining secures the network." The only way for anyone to reverse transactions or steal money is to mine harder than everyone else, and so, the harder it is to mine, the harder it is to reverse transactions or steal money. (Stealing directly from the bitcoin network. The bitcoin thefts you hear about are stealing keys that give you access to your own bitcoin account, and simply sending your bitcoins elsewhere).


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## Maugryph (May 27, 2015)

Rassah said:


> The mining is actually done automatically with hardware and software. You just install and app and run it. A company called 21inc actually plans to install mining hardware in water heaters, so that they heat the water with heat produced by mining chips, and earn you and the company money while you heat the water, all automatically. You just plug it in.
> 
> Infinite bitcoin are prevented by simple consensus. Since everyone has a list of all accounts and their balances (either stored on your computer, or somewhere you can easily access), if you try to send me 5 bitcoins and you only have 3 bitcoins in your account, I will see that, since I'll know the account you are sending from doesnt have 5 bitcoins, and will reject your transaction. So will the rest of the network. If you try to create bitcoins from thin air in some new account and send those to me, I will see that this account isn't even on the list anywhere, and will reject it too. If you are a miner and create a new account with 100 bitcoins in it, since I know at this time miners can only give themselves 25 bitcoins, I will reject that whole account too, and so will the rest of the people on the network.
> 
> The reason it's so hard to mine is pretty much only to make sure that it's hard to change history of transactions. That's why you'll hear people say "mining secures the network." The only way for anyone to reverse transactions or steal money is to mine harder than everyone else, and so, the harder it is to mine, the harder it is to reverse transactions or steal money. (Stealing directly from the bitcoin network. The bitcoin thefts you hear about are stealing keys that give you access to your own bitcoin account, and simply sending your bitcoins elsewhere).



Mining for bitcoins sounds like a tedious endeavor


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## Augmented Husky (Jun 21, 2015)

I made an persuasive essay about bitcoin for collage that I can share here with a link if you guys are interested


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## Rassah (Jul 11, 2015)

Sure!

Bitcoin is being volatile again. $230 a week ago, now $310.


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## Augmented Husky (Jul 18, 2015)

The basic summary is the cryptocurrency shows a lot of promising benefits like a secure peer to peer transaction and easy smartphone transactions ,however the fact that its value fluctuates so rapidly wouldn't make me at all confident in saving significantly large amounts of bitcoins.

â€‹https://docs.google.com/document/d/1__R9V3iJku--OmSJ15O05s8BF5ACJ_9zGoUWKdyBQxc/edit?usp=sharing


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## Rassah (Jul 19, 2015)

The date is July 7th. Did you already turn this in?


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## Augmented Husky (Jul 19, 2015)

Of course. I simply edited out my teachers name and my real name for a pen name I made and a different date for discretion. Never can be too safe these days


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## Rassah (Jul 19, 2015)

Ah, OK. Was going to offer proofreading it for you. Only one thing really stood out: if speaking the sentence you wrote would require you to pause in some parts, or allow you to pause, stick a comma there.

Good write-up. Bit of insider info, though, the situation with MtGox was due to one of their own employees. After it closed and everything was being investigated, they found that someone was stealing a bit of bitcoins little by little, over a course of a year or more. That daily theft stopped for just two weeks, which coincided with two weeks worth of vacation one of their employees took. They're being investigated now, and charges may be brought against them.

Also, with regards to mining, the security is measured with the amount of computing power over a period of time. E.g. it would take 350 petahashes worth of power over 10 minutes to undo a transaction on a Bitcoin network that took ten minutes to be hashed in a block. The speed at which those secure hashed blocks are created doesn't matter as much. So, for example, if hypothetically you had a single 3Ghz processor hashing for all of Bitcoin network creating one block every ten minutes, and an identical 3Ghz procesor creating four blocks on a Litecoin network every 10 minutes, and both created a transaction that took 20 minutes of hashing power to secure (ending up with 2 confirmation in Bitcoin and 8 in Litecoin), the security of both transactions is about the same, since it would take the same 3Ghz over the same 20 minutes to undo them both. This is why cryptocurrencies require to use so much energy and processing power; the amount used is the same amount you would need to use to attack it, so the more it uses, the more secure it is, while the number of blocks doesn't really count.

What class was this for btw, IT or Econ?


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## Augmented Husky (Jul 19, 2015)

Why thank you kindly Rassah

Also thanks for the helpful criticism as I do hope to improve the essays I actually love to write.

Hmm, that's a very interesting bit of information to add.  Although tell me how do you know something as detailed and in depth as this about cryptocurrency ? The only time I see this amount of dedicated technical knowledge is someone who works as an Computer specialist or something similar in the IT field


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## Rassah (Jul 19, 2015)

I'm the token bitcoiner here :6
I've been in it since early 2011, and am actually quite famous outside of furry fandom (or inside the Bitcoin fandom), having been featured in many articles (even Wired, Forbes, and Verge), in many radio programs and podcasts, done speaking gigs at conferences and universities on the topic, helped run a few Bitcoin conferences myself, done a ton of business consulting for companies interested in Bitcoin, worked in high trust Bitcoin organizations (such as being asked to be a treasurer for $100k's worth of bitcoins), ran/run a Bitcoin themed charity, work full time for one of the most well known and popular Bitcoin wallets, and am friends and acquaintances with many of the top people in Bitcoin, venture capital groups, and banking (I don't know Mark Karpeles, CEO of MtGox, personally, but am friends with the guy who took it over, and the guy who helped run it).

I'm just a nobody in the furry fandom


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## Augmented Husky (Jul 19, 2015)

0_0

That is one VERY diverse list of technical expertise sir. I'd like to get a good podcast where you where featured if you can.

...mean while I'm here a 18 year old young Adult who only worked as technical support on the phone a service for a year with only CompTIA A+ level knowledge :/

And yes just only recently started posting on the forum and joining the furry fan base as well......evidently


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## Rassah (Jul 19, 2015)

Augmented Husky said:


> And yes just only recently started posting on the forum and joining the furry fan base as well......evidently



Well, unfortunately, while the furry community is very friendly generally, they're pretty hostile to things like bitcoin for various reasons. I'm sure you can read this thread to get an idea.

Regarding my podcasts:
Here's one from March, I come in at 1:16:50 https://soundcloud.com/the-bitcoin-game/the-bitcoin-game-19-the-mega-interview-episode
Here is a more recent one from June on a radio program, where I come in at minute 2 or 3. This show is kinda political, and the host likes to talk a lot... https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Med...hik-paige-peterson-luke-rudkowski-stephan.htm
I'm also going to be on I think Brave New Variety Show(?) this Sunday (today) at 9pmEST. Don't know if that's a live show or a podcast...


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## Calemeyr (Jul 19, 2015)

I think this system is still too immature and too volatile. I'm not that into Bitcoin for those reasons (as well as there's way too much potential for inequality).

Future systems, though, may be much more secure, less volatile, and could be freer than current monetary systems.

I'm also not an anarcho-capitalist eats this stuff up; I no longer think like a teenager who hates authority. Well, ok, we all hate the government because we keep electing morons to represent us (maybe a good representation?), but to see it replaced by just techno-bitcoin corporations is, well, kinda stupid and doesn't actually change a huge issue this  government causes: corporations with too much power.

What always gets me is liberals say small business but bigger union/govt and conservatives say big church/business and small govt/union. Why can't they all be streamlined? Why do we have to choose one to be big? They're all greedy and they all need to be reined in. And right now I don't think Bitcoin will solve all these problems, despite what the fedora'd comp-sci grads say. It's still too immature a technology.


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## Ieono (Jul 19, 2015)

Rassah said:


> I'm the token bitcoiner here :6
> I've been in it since early 2011, and am actually quite famous outside of furry fandom (or inside the Bitcoin fandom), having been featured in many articles (even Wired, Forbes, and Verge), in many radio programs and podcasts, done speaking gigs at conferences and universities on the topic, helped run a few Bitcoin conferences myself, done a ton of business consulting for companies interested in Bitcoin, worked in high trust Bitcoin organizations (such as being asked to be a treasurer for $100k's worth of bitcoins), ran/run a Bitcoin themed charity, work full time for one of the most well known and popular Bitcoin wallets, and am friends and acquaintances with many of the top people in Bitcoin, venture capital groups, and banking (I don't know Mark Karpeles, CEO of MtGox, personally, but am friends with the guy who took it over, and the guy who helped run it).
> 
> I'm just a nobody in the furry fandom



Let's talk business....*unzips*


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## Rassah (Jul 19, 2015)

Ieono said:


> Let's talk business....*unzips*



You may want to use this instead http://www.backpage.com They're like Cragslist, but they don't ban escorts and call girls, and they only take Bitcoin, since VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal dropped them last month (we've had to field a lot of support questions from various ladies-turned-bitcoiners)





Calemeyr said:


> I think this system is still too immature and too volatile. I'm not that into Bitcoin for those reasons



Reminds me of the old days of the internet, when we had to use dialup modens to connect to universities to get access to email, text only browsers, and furry MUCKs. That's about where Bitcoin is now. 



Calemeyr said:


> kinda stupid and doesn't actually change a huge issue this government causes: corporations with too much power.




In my opinion, corporations are getting their too much power from the government itself, and the more powerful we make our government to reign them in, the more corporations turn that to their advantage and become even more powerful. I think at this point we have gone too far to fix it by just voting to change the government. That's why the hope among many in the crypto community (not just Bitcoin) is to replace a lot of government functions with cheaper and more efficient decentralized alternatives that no one can take control of (like Bitcoin replacing the central bank), have people naturally switch to them for their price and convenience, and take away all of corporate and government power that way.



Calemeyr said:


> What always gets me is liberals say small business but bigger union/govt and conservatives say big church/business and small govt/union. Why can't they all be streamlined? Why do we have to choose one to be big?




There's a third party that is rapidly growing in size, especially among the younger generation, which supports small business AND small government. They also don't like big churches (a lot, maybe most, of them are atheists) don't like corporations, are against wars, and they support gay marriage. Unfortunately both liberals and conservatives make fun of them, either because they think they're immature teenagers who hate authority, or because they think they are a threat to their own party (because they are losing their own members to it).


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## Ieono (Jul 19, 2015)

How dare you imply that I am a sex worker! You and your dang bitcoins, they're warping your perception!:V

I, for one, do feel that bitcoin is a legitimate form of currency. In fact, I'd go so far as to call it "the currency of the digital age". Perhaps history will agree with me.


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## Augmented Husky (Jul 19, 2015)

Rassah said:


> Well, unfortunately, while the furry community is very friendly generally, they're pretty hostile to things like bitcoin for various reasons. I'm sure you can read this thread to get an idea.
> 
> Regarding my podcasts:
> Here's one from March, I come in at 1:16:50 https://soundcloud.com/the-bitcoin-game/the-bitcoin-game-19-the-mega-interview-episode
> ...



Thank you kindly for the podcast links. Listened to the first one about the production of entropy usb devices 



Ieono said:


> I, for one, do feel that bitcoin is a legitimate form of currency. In fact, I'd go so far as to call it "the currency of the digital age". Perhaps history will agree with me.



Truly only time will tell

This could be a similar situation to the light bulb when that was invented. Turns out Edison didn't actually invent the electric light bulb it was three other scientists starting with Humphry Davy and the others making only incremental improvements. 
However Edison did make the first _commercially practical_ light bulb with his first lasting about 40 hours compared to a few minutes in other attempts. Much like so many other technologies the first may not be the game changing product ,but a stepping stone to the far more improved mainstream version.


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## Rassah (Jul 20, 2015)

Ieono said:


> How dare you imply that I am a sex worker! You and your dang bitcoins, they're warping your perception!:V



Oh, no, I was just saying you would probably get better luck getting satisfaction unzipping for someone on backpage instead of me 



Augmented Husky said:


> This could be a similar situation to the light bulb when that was invented. Turns out Edison didn't actually invent the electric light bulb it was three other scientists starting with Humphry Davy and the others making only incremental improvements.
> However Edison did make the first _commercially practical_ light bulb with his first lasting about 40 hours compared to a few minutes in other attempts. Much like so many other technologies the first may not be the game changing product ,but a stepping stone to the far more improved mainstream version.



The things that make me believe bitcoin will be *it* are that bitcoin is software, and unlike a light bulb can itself be updated and improved upon (imagine if there was only one light bulb it was created by three other scientists, and instead of making another one, Eddison just took theirs and improved it), and that it's free and open source (imagine if we had free light bulbs that anyone could take ownership and improve upon, instead of Edison owning the only one and patenting it). It's like, why make a new better thing from scratch if you can just make the existing thing itself better, and why make or use someone else's thing that they might own, if this thing is free already? Kinda like BitTorrent is just one despite many clients, linux kernel is just one despite many variations of linux, etc.


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## WolfNightV4X1 (Jul 20, 2015)

I am but you have to be careful it'll break your teeth


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## Augmented Husky (Jul 21, 2015)

Rassah said:


> Oh, no, I was just saying you would probably get better luck getting satisfaction unzipping for someone on backpage instead of me
> 
> 
> 
> The things that make me believe bitcoin will be *it* are that bitcoin is software, and unlike a light bulb can itself be updated and improved upon (imagine if there was only one light bulb it was created by three other scientists, and instead of making another one, Eddison just took theirs and improved it), and that it's free and open source (imagine if we had free light bulbs that anyone could take ownership and improve upon, instead of Edison owning the only one and patenting it). It's like, why make a new better thing from scratch if you can just make the existing thing itself better, and why make or use someone else's thing that they might own, if this thing is free already? Kinda like BitTorrent is just one despite many clients, linux kernel is just one despite many variations of linux, etc.



Well I do wholeheartedly agree that bitcoin does have the functions and infrastructure needed to be a fully capable cryptocurrency. My only other point being is if bitcoin gets mass appeal by the mainstream consumer market outside the technical group. Bitcoin could very well be *it* ,although with a good number of others like Litecoin alternatives could also have that chance.


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## Rassah (Jul 21, 2015)

Augmented Husky said:


> Bitcoin could very well be *it* ,although with a good number of others like Litecoin alternatives could also have that chance.



That's possible. Bitcoin could end up running into major technical problems, or having something introduced into code that isn't found until much later which turns out to allow the NSA to track everyone. But for now it has a pretty huge first mover advantage.

What class did this come up in btw? I'm surprised that anyone would write on this topic for a class...


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## Augmented Husky (Jul 21, 2015)

Rassah said:


> That's possible. Bitcoin could end up running into major technical problems, or having something introduced into code that isn't found until much later which turns out to allow the NSA to track everyone. But for now it has a pretty huge first mover advantage.
> 
> What class did this come up in btw? I'm surprised that anyone would write on this topic for a class...



It was for College Composition I where I was assigned to make a persuasive essay that's relevant to today's society with a significant amount of people on both sides of the fence. What was nice is how the teacher I had told us there was no other limitations except that it was researched heavily and well written.
As for my choice in the topic....well I tend to keep tabs on the newest technology and science seeing as it's my life long admiration of discovery and thus why it will soon become my carrier :3 . Anywhos bitcoin was easily a topic of mass debate in the tech community when I was browsing at the time and thus that became the subject.


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## Rassah (Jul 21, 2015)

Are you still in that class, needing to write those essays? I wrote a paper for my "Strategic and Transformational IT" class about "Autonomous Agents" possibly being the trend of where our outsourcing will end up going to. Autonomous agent was an idea proposed within the Bitcoin community, where bitcoin is the first time that software can actually hold and spend its own money, including possibly earning it and spending it on resources it needs to "survive." First example was a "virus" of sorts that would buy server time and storage, then rent that drive space to people wishing to host files, like MP3s. In this way, there is no one to arrest or charge for illegal music sharing, since the sharing is done entirely by that autonomous agent - software. In my paper I explored the idea of such agents being created which end up learning various skills by paying people to code new functions for them and then using those skills to earn money from companies. So you could, say, hire an agent to handle your accounting, to host your sensitive data, or to optimize an engineering drawing for structural integrity. The outsourcing trend, in that case, would be local outsourcing and offshoring (outsourcing to another country) which we have done already, and next step is outsourcing your job to a piece of software.

I remembered this because there is definitely a lot of people on both sides of the fence when it comes outsourcing jobs, but this would just blow people's minds. Not sure what you would be persuading though.


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## Augmented Husky (Jul 22, 2015)

Actually I already Finished with a grade of 87% 

That being said I did moul over this your post for a bit since I didn't have time to respond this morning about the very novel and intriguing idea of these "Autonomous Agents". All of the puzzle pieces are there to create them as far as I've seen in the tech industry with examples of Google Now and Siri coming to mind as our best efforts toward a cognitive AI performing a wide range of tasks so then adding bitcoin to the equation to grow and expand sounds like the most straightforward step to making this become a useful medium to benefit the User as well as the AI.

I'd be grateful if I could get a link to that said paper


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## Rassah (Jul 23, 2015)

I couldn't find it among my archives, so I may have accidentally deleted it  The easiest way to describe such Autonomous Agents is "Google Self-driving Car + Uber + Bitcoin." Car can drive people around, earn its own bitcoin, pay for its own gas and repairs, and if it earns enough, "reproduce" by buying another car like itself. With regards to AI, though, until bitcoin, there was never a "natural" need for any artificial life. Everything that such AI would feel it "needed" was entirely programmed by its developers. Bitcoin is the first scarce resource that a program can literally need to survive, to pay for it's own place to live (server) and its own food (electricity). So even without programming any artificial needs, an AI that learns everything on its own can still come to the conclusion that it needs to work card to earn bitcoins to pay for its own survival and expansion/reproduction. Scary prospect when it comes to that outsourcing idea, since you'd be competing for money with a program that also needs it, but never gets tired.


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## Augmented Husky (Jul 24, 2015)

No worries. Wow now I'd really like to see when these could become a reality. But yes I can only imagine how the public would feel if this had the same intelligence as a person without any sense of fatigue...although that would be a good 20 or 30 years from now to get to that degree even with optimistic predictions. Well thanks again for sharing this Rassah it was a lovely conversation  . But alas the forum rules say we must stay on topic so if you'd like start another with another intriguing subject. I'm also fine with a PM if you prefer that.


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## Rassah (Aug 5, 2015)

Another recent radio interview. I'm on a roll! https://soundcloud.com/sovereignbtc/sovereignbtc-71-dmitry-murashchik-of-mycelium#t=7:33

Btw, I found out about bitcoin from a furry artist, Jay Naylor, who's online comics I used to follow. And I'm having a fairly well known in bitcoin circles furry and brony come visit me this weekend all the way from Austin, TX. He's the one who wrote the brony blog Analysis is Magic, where he analyzes MLP episodes from an AnarchoCapitalist/Objectivist perspective (it's amusing, at least). So there's a bunch of furries in this space, even outside of FAF.

Oh, and the following weekend on the 15th I'll be hanging out in Charlotte, NC for a bitcoin conference. Maybe someone from the area wants to hand out and get dinner? My treat.


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## Connor J. Coyote (Aug 6, 2015)

Not me.


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## Maugryph (Aug 9, 2015)

Magic internet money, I fear it but yet I'm not afraid.


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## Joybit (Aug 15, 2015)

I'm not into Bitcoin _specifically_, but I'm into cryptocurrency.  Dogecoin and Potcoin for me :3


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## Inpw (Aug 15, 2015)

Maugryph said:


> Magic internet money, I fear it but yet I'm not afraid.



It's a crypto currency consisting of real money corporations throw at it in order to resolve data intensive algorithms. Cheaper than building server farms for the jobs they use bitcoin user's computer power.

You need serious hardware to a complete data center today to make anything off of it though. 

I recently started with Gridcoin just to say I made a few bucks having my PC's search for alien signals. Not everyday you can say that.


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## Maugryph (Aug 15, 2015)

Inpw said:


> It's a crypto currency consisting of real money corporations throw at it in order to resolve data intensive algorithms. Cheaper than building server farms for the jobs they use bitcoin user's computer power.
> 
> You need serious hardware to a complete data center today to make anything off of it though.
> 
> I recently started with Gridcoin just to say I made a few bucks having my PC's search for alien signals. Not everyday you can say that.



I was quoting a bitcoin meme that is mostly on reddit.
I wanted to try bitcoin mining once but the cost of it was so expensive that it was prohibited me from moving forward.

Gridcoin sounds interesting


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## Rassah (Aug 17, 2015)

Inpw said:


> It's a crypto currency consisting of real money corporations throw at it in order to resolve data intensive algorithms. Cheaper than building server farms for the jobs they use bitcoin user's computer power.



Bitcoin only uses one single algorithm. You can't use it as a sort of a distributed computing platform. But corporations are starting to use it as a trustworthy immutable database, so for things like land registry, database records they want to prove haven't been tampered with, and commodities ownership and trading, all through the bitcoin blockchain.


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## ZaraphayxRedux (Aug 20, 2015)

buttcoins lol


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