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-   -   Bitcoin - Part 2 (https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=280087)

Puppycow 2nd July 2014 11:57 PM

Bitcoin - Part 2
 
Mod InfoContinued from here.
Posted By:LashL



Quote:

Originally Posted by Stacko (Post 10070321)
US to auction off bit coins seized from Silk Road. Should be interesting to see how that affects the value.

Quote:

The marshals said Thursday that they will auction the virtual "coins," consisting of sets of numbers entered in an online public ledger, via the web on June 27.
Well June 27 has passed and it looks like the value is up atm.

Found this story about the auction:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...,4038036.story

Quote:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Venture capitalist Tim Draper, sole winner of an auction last week of 30,000 bitcoins by the U.S. Marshals Service, called the sale a vote of confidence by the government in the nascent crypto-currency.

The well-known Silicon Valley investor partnered with Palo Alto-based Vaurum, which facilitates over-the-counter bitcoin trading, for the sale but would not discuss how much he paid.

Draper, a major backer of Vaurum, will partner with the startup to use the coins as a liquidity source for Vaurum's trading platforms in emerging markets, Draper told reporters in Palo Alto on Wednesday.

"If they thought that they were going to try to put the kibosh on bitcoin, I think they would have just buried these," Draper said, referring to the government's stance on the currency. "Instead, they decided that this was of real value to society."
How much he paid is a secret:
Quote:

The U.S. Marshals Service auctioned off 29,655 bitcoins at an estimated worth of about $18 million in an online, sealed-bid auction that drew more than 40 bidders, including a number of well-known players in the crypto-currency. Terms of the sale have not been disclosed, but the success gives the virtual currency more legitimacy as a means of exchange.
I wonder how the auction worked. Did you have to bid for all of them or could you bid for some of them? I wonder if he paid about what the price on PREEV is or more to ensure he won?

AdMan 3rd July 2014 12:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Puppycow (Post 10098509)
Quote:

Originally Posted by Stacko (Post 10070321)
US to auction off bit coins seized from Silk Road. Should be interesting to see how that affects the value.

Quote:

The marshals said Thursday that they will auction the virtual "coins," consisting of sets of numbers entered in an online public ledger, via the web on June 27.
Well June 27 has passed and it looks like the value is up atm.

Found this story about the auction:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...,4038036.story

Quote:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Venture capitalist Tim Draper, sole winner of an auction last week of 30,000 bitcoins by the U.S. Marshals Service, called the sale a vote of confidence by the government in the nascent crypto-currency.

The well-known Silicon Valley investor partnered with Palo Alto-based Vaurum, which facilitates over-the-counter bitcoin trading, for the sale but would not discuss how much he paid.

Draper, a major backer of Vaurum, will partner with the startup to use the coins as a liquidity source for Vaurum's trading platforms in emerging markets, Draper told reporters in Palo Alto on Wednesday.

"If they thought that they were going to try to put the kibosh on bitcoin, I think they would have just buried these," Draper said, referring to the government's stance on the currency. "Instead, they decided that this was of real value to society."
How much he paid is a secret:
Quote:

The U.S. Marshals Service auctioned off 29,655 bitcoins at an estimated worth of about $18 million in an online, sealed-bid auction that drew more than 40 bidders, including a number of well-known players in the crypto-currency. Terms of the sale have not been disclosed, but the success gives the virtual currency more legitimacy as a means of exchange.
I wonder how the auction worked. Did you have to bid for all of them or could you bid for some of them? I wonder if he paid about what the price on PREEV is or more to ensure he won?


Hmm--interesting. This whole thing is a bit weird to me. Wasn't Bitcoin supposed to be untraceable, uncontrollable, unable to be confiscated, un-taxable, and outside the reach of any government?

Or maybe all that was simply empty hype?

shuttlt 3rd July 2014 01:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdMan (Post 10098527)
Hmm--interesting. This whole thing is a bit weird to me. Wasn't Bitcoin supposed to be untraceable, uncontrollable, unable to be confiscated, un-taxable, and outside the reach of any government?

Or maybe all that was simply empty hype?

http://xkcd.com/538/

Brian-M 3rd July 2014 02:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdMan (Post 10098527)
Hmm--interesting. This whole thing is a bit weird to me. Wasn't Bitcoin supposed to be untraceable, uncontrollable, unable to be confiscated, un-taxable, and outside the reach of any government?

Or maybe all that was simply empty hype?

If you use it carefully and the government doesn't get hold of your computers containing unencrypted bit-wallets, then yes. The claims are correct, to a degree.

But the transfer of Bitcoins between wallets is completely transparent and easily traceable. If they find out which wallet is yours (such as checking whose bank account is being used to buy more or sell off the Bitcoins in that account), they can easily watch how many Bitcoins are passing through your wallet and where they're going.

(There are anonymous services that can disguise where the Bitcoins are coming from and going to, but they charge a fee, and there's no way to be sure they won't keep all your Bitcoins for themselves.)

If the government gets hold of your computer, and your wallet is on it (and not password protected) they can just pretend to be you and transfer the Bitcoins to a government wallet.

If it is password protected, they can always try to crack the password or, more simply, pressure you to hand over the password with threats of pressing extra charges.

The only way to be absolutely sure your Bitcoins are safe is to keep the wallet on a storage device or piece of paper and hide it somewhere they'll never find it. But that's inconvenient for you, because you'd have to retrieve it every time you want to use it, and they could always pressure you to reveal its location.

If you keep your Bitcoins in an exchange, its easy for them to get hold of them, they just have to force the exchange to turn over your account, exactly as they would with a bank account.

TeapotCavalry 3rd July 2014 06:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eirik (Post 10097916)
A sign of a booming economy.

A sign of a booming BTC economy is whether an arbitrary mmorpg has implemented BTC payment, sure.

TeapotCavalry 3rd July 2014 06:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Puppycow (Post 10098509)
I wonder how the auction worked. Did you have to bid for all of them or could you bid for some of them? I wonder if he paid about what the price on PREEV is or more to ensure he won?

You could bid for the individual blocks and not necessarily for all of them, hence it was kinda newsworthy one bidder outbid all the blocks.

http://www.coindesk.com/18-million-w...us-government/

TeapotCavalry 3rd July 2014 06:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdMan (Post 10098527)
Hmm--interesting. This whole thing is a bit weird to me. Wasn't Bitcoin supposed to be untraceable, uncontrollable, unable to be confiscated, un-taxable, and outside the reach of any government?

Or maybe all that was simply empty hype?

That surely seems to be some kind of hype you've heard. I can't think of anything in this world that is or could be all of those things. Not even your deepest most secretest secrets. There is always a way.

psionl0 3rd July 2014 12:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdMan (Post 10098527)
Wasn't Bitcoin supposed to be untraceable, uncontrollable, unable to be confiscated, un-taxable, and outside the reach of any government?

It is none of these things if you are careless. Bitcoin is not idiot proof and what Thomas Tusser had to say about "a fool and his money" applies equally well to bitcoin holders.

Puppycow 3rd July 2014 06:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shuttlt (Post 10098580)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian-M (Post 10098594)
If it is password protected, they can always try to crack the password or, more simply, pressure you to hand over the password with threats of pressing extra charges.

Yeah, at the end of the day, if they can arrest you, they can take your bitcoins (or at least force you to pay a heavy price if you won't). A low-tech hack for a high-tech security scheme.

psionl0 5th July 2014 02:06 PM

Hmmm - so this thread is no longer about "The Most Important Creation In The History Of Man".

jasonpatterson 5th July 2014 05:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by psionl0 (Post 10102700)
Hmmm - so this thread is no longer about "The Most Important Creation In The History Of Man".

Agriculture? Fire? The wheel? Surely not antibiotics...

stevea 5th July 2014 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Puppycow (Post 10099920)
Yeah, at the end of the day, if they can arrest you, they can take your bitcoins

I disagree - they can remove your access to your bitcoins, to your liberty or to your life, but that cannot take your bitcoin.

This issues isn't specific to bitcoin but to personal secret data. It's truly possible to encrypt data st no rational amount of processing power can decrypt it w/o the key. It's always possible that some future mathematician will devise a clever way to crack these crypts more rapidly, but that's tentative and even dubious in the case of certain crypts.

So imagine that you carefully manage the key that controls your bitcoin identity or other secret data. The day you get arrested/kidnapped you destroy the key. Now it's impossible for anyone to access the encrypted data. No one can obtain this data.

Quote:

(or at least force you to pay a heavy price if you won't). A low-tech hack for a high-tech security scheme.
Yes, but they can do that anyway - the primary motivation is to ultimately collect your goods or data - and they can't succeed at that if you are willing to destroy the key.

Truly destroying recorded data is another issue - but not unreachable.

psionl0 5th July 2014 11:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jasonpatterson (Post 10102943)
Agriculture? Fire? The wheel? Surely not antibiotics...

That was debated somewhere in the old thread. We no longer have to deal with that question anymore.

Anders Lindman 8th July 2014 12:46 AM

The EU (EBA, European Banking Authority) agrees with me that an officially regulated virtual currency (VC) is needed:

"A governance authority may, at first, appear incompatible with the conceptual origins of VCs as a decentralised scheme that does not require the involvement of a central bank or government. However, the mandatory creation of a scheme governance body does not imply that VC units have to be centrally issued. This function can remain decentralised and be run through, for example, a protocol and a transaction ledger." -- EBA Opinion on ‘virtual currencies’ pp. 40 -- http://www.eba.europa.eu/documents/1...Currencies.pdf

The Don 9th July 2014 01:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anders Lindman (Post 10106612)
The EU (EBA, European Banking Authority) agrees with me that an officially regulated virtual currency (VC) is needed:

"A governance authority may, at first, appear incompatible with the conceptual origins of VCs as a decentralised scheme that does not require the involvement of a central bank or government. However, the mandatory creation of a scheme governance body does not imply that VC units have to be centrally issued. This function can remain decentralised and be run through, for example, a protocol and a transaction ledger." -- EBA Opinion on ‘virtual currencies’ pp. 40 -- http://www.eba.europa.eu/documents/1...Currencies.pdf

Not quite, they say that virtual currencies should be regulated not that:
  • A regulated virtual currency is required - in the absence of any virtual currencies
  • A new regulated virtual currency needs to be created - the existing currencies should be regulated

You've also made it sound like they've taken you up on your suggestion rather than you happening to share the same view.

psionl0 9th July 2014 01:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Don (Post 10108326)
Not quite, they say that virtual currencies should be regulated ......

..... and even then, they are more interested in ensuring that existing financial services are quarantined from "virtual currencies". From page 44:
Until a comprehensive regulatory regime is developed, (if it is developed at all), only those risks can be mitigated that arise in the interaction between VC schemes and the regulated financial services sector (but not those that arise from activities within or between VC schemes). This would include risks of money laundering and financial crime, the risks to conventional payment systems, and some risks to individual users. To that end, the EBA recommends that national supervisory authorities discourage credit institutions, payment institutions, and e-money institutions from buying, holding or selling VCs, thereby 'shielding' regulated financial services from VCs.

catsmate 10th July 2014 03:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TeapotCavalry (Post 10098812)
A sign of a booming BTC economy is whether an arbitrary mmorpg has implemented BTC payment, sure.

At relevant as the offhand mention on Rizzoli and Isles...

Tyke 10th July 2014 11:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevea (Post 10103295)
So imagine that you carefully manage the key that controls your bitcoin identity or other secret data. The day you get arrested/kidnapped you destroy the key. Now it's impossible for anyone to access the encrypted data. No one can obtain this data.

But how would that work exactly? There's a bang on the door and you look outside - it's the pigs, delete! "Sorry to bother you sir but you've left your headlights on".

If you get arrested (or kidnapped!), there's no guaranteed grace period where you get a chance to delete your stuff.

psionl0 11th July 2014 02:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyke (Post 10112007)
But how would that work exactly? There's a bang on the door and you look outside - it's the pigs, delete! "Sorry to bother you sir but you've left your headlights on".

If you get arrested (or kidnapped!), there's no guaranteed grace period where you get a chance to delete your stuff.

LOL - you suck at being a criminal.

Aepervius 11th July 2014 02:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyke (Post 10112007)
But how would that work exactly? There's a bang on the door and you look outside - it's the pigs, delete! "Sorry to bother you sir but you've left your headlights on".

If you get arrested (or kidnapped!), there's no guaranteed grace period where you get a chance to delete your stuff.

Dead man button.

You simply make it so that if you do not regularly (24 ? 48 h) it automatically delete your stuff, and rewrite with random data.

eirik 12th July 2014 03:48 AM

That sounds safe. You end up in hospital or end up in jail over some petty stuff. Boom, your drug fortune is gone..

Andy_Ross 12th July 2014 06:10 AM

Share the key between a number of people. divide it in to say 4 parts then tell 8 people who don't know each other a part of the key. That way each part is copied twice (in case one of your people loses it or isn't available.

The_Animus 23rd July 2014 07:47 PM

Dell now accepts bitcoin.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/deal...&smid=fb-share

jhunter1163 23rd July 2014 09:40 PM

Yawn. Nothing new here; they're laying off the volatility risk on Coinbase, same as Overstock.com did. If a big company decided to accept Bitcoins directly, then you'd have news.

psionl0 8th August 2014 09:50 PM

Bitcoin prices have been ho-humming along in the $550 to $650 range for over 2 months now (will it never get down to $150? :D).

This is a clear indication that it is not a major news item ATM and that I have not made any predictions on its price for over 2 months.

jhunter1163 29th August 2014 10:46 AM

www.preev.com

Slipped a little bit, down around $510 ATM.

EGarrett 9th September 2014 08:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Animus (Post 10133718)

Looks like eBay will now too.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...-payments.html

Looks like that dumb old Bitcoin just keeps on shrinking and falling apart, now they're "down" to being picked up by billion-dollar mainstream companies.

jhunter1163 9th September 2014 08:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EGarrett (Post 10213001)
Looks like eBay will now too.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...-payments.html

Looks like that dumb old Bitcoin just keeps on shrinking and falling apart, now they're "down" to being picked up by billion-dollar mainstream companies.

Yawn, again. They're laying the risk off on Coinbase, same way the other companies have. I'm waiting for Coinbase to get hacked. That would be the sure and certain end of BTC as we now know it; they're pretty much the only game in town any more.

Oh, and the price has dropped to $470.

EGarrett 9th September 2014 09:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhunter1163 (Post 10213015)
Yawn, again. They're laying the risk off on Coinbase, same way the other companies have. I'm waiting for Coinbase to get hacked. That would be the sure and certain end of BTC as we now know it; they're pretty much the only game in town any more.

Rationalization and backpedaling are unbecoming of JREF members. Now, can I hold you to these claims? That Coinbase is "the only game in town anymore," meaning that no other Bitcoin transaction insurers or services will exist, and that if Coinbase gets hacked (ignoring how likely or unlikely that is) that that's "the sure and certain end of BTC as we now know it?"

Quote:

Oh, and the price has dropped to $470.
When I first showed up in the original thread over 3 years ago, a Bitcoin was worth roughly $20, and in the middle of "crashing" for the first time.

So tell me again what it's "down to?"

G6000 9th September 2014 09:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EGarrett (Post 10213152)
When I first showed up in the original thread over 3 years ago, a Bitcoin was worth roughly $20, and in the middle of "crashing" for the first time.

So tell me again what it's "down to?"

Does the value of a Bitcoin track with the dollar, or with any commodity?

If not, it is not a currency. It is a speculative fantasy.

EGarrett 9th September 2014 10:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by G6000 (Post 10213197)
Does the value of a Bitcoin track with the dollar, or with any commodity?

If not, it is not a currency. It is a speculative fantasy.

We've had a hundred-page discussion dispelling this. It's littered with the failed personal attacks and "predictions" of that hypothesis...such as the poster in my sig.

Are you the next to pick up the wooden sword?

superfreddy 9th September 2014 10:20 AM

Bitcoin is one of the accepted payment methods for purchasing compromised credit card numbers at rescator.cc

jhunter1163 9th September 2014 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EGarrett (Post 10213152)
When I first showed up in the original thread over 3 years ago, a Bitcoin was worth roughly $20, and in the middle of "crashing" for the first time.

So tell me again what it's "down to?"

And at the height of the frenzy, it was up around $1,250. Ask the guy who bought, say, 20 BTC at that point, and whose $25,000 investment is now worth about $9,500, what BTC is "up to".

Almo 9th September 2014 12:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhunter1163 (Post 10213269)
And at the height of the frenzy, it was up around $1,250. Ask the guy who bought, say, 20 BTC at that point, and whose $25,000 investment is now worth about $9,500, what BTC is "up to".

Argh! Glad I just have some dogecoins that people gave me for free.

G6000 9th September 2014 01:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EGarrett (Post 10213222)
We've had a hundred-page discussion dispelling this. It's littered with the failed personal attacks and "predictions" of that hypothesis...such as the poster in my sig.

Are you the next to pick up the wooden sword?

A Bitcoin is not currency any more than a Snickers candy bar is.

G6000 9th September 2014 01:49 PM

The value of a Bitcoin is barely connected to the number of Bitcoins in circulation. It's wildly fluctuating value is based on wildly fluctuating desire. That makes it an almost purely speculative fantasy. An investment commodity. Property, not currency.

Dutch tulips.

psionl0 9th September 2014 06:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by G6000 (Post 10213197)
Does the value of a Bitcoin track with the dollar, or with any commodity?

If not, it is not a currency. It is a speculative fantasy.

Are you really determined to recycle this lengthy debate about the meaning of a word?

Legally, it is classified as a virtual currency in the US so that it falls under FinCEN regulations. Other countries may classify it as not-a-currency because it is not a debt instrument and is not issued by a government.

For practical purposes, it is a currency if you can buy things with it, otherwise not. IOW who cares?

AlaskaBushPilot 9th September 2014 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by G6000 (Post 10213599)
A Bitcoin is not currency any more than a Snickers candy bar is.

sure it is. Snickers comes out extremely low on "store of value" grounds, which is an attribute of mediums of exchange.

Money also needs to be relatively scarce, which is a way of saying it has high value in compact form. As compared with say, sand. Or snickers. Gold does pretty well, as with silver or platinum - but Bitcoins come out just fine there too.

This is strange hyperbole - I mean, you can do all manner of transactions with bitcoins, even get people killed! Apparently. From these criminal charges on Silk Road.

I don't think I can recall of a hit being done with payment in snickers. So why say such a thing?

Puppycow 10th September 2014 12:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlaskaBushPilot (Post 10214086)
I don't think I can recall of a hit being done with payment in snickers. So why say such a thing?

I found someone willing to "kill for a Snickers", does that count? Although the offer may no longer be valid.

EGarrett 10th September 2014 04:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by G6000 (Post 10213599)
A Bitcoin is not currency any more than a Snickers candy bar is.

This has been answered already by others' replies.


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