Bitcoin and Digital Currencies

That will likely be true for ANY new currency invented, since widespread adoption will not be instant.

Bitcoin may be Internet Money 1.0, with something to replace it later to come along.

Bitcoin has no real chance to become a global currency in its current form. It might function as a prototype for something that does, but as it stands it's like a flea on an elephant.

I don't see how bitcoin is viable globally or controversial. There's some crazy "bitcoin will replace all other money!" folks out there, sure, but for me I always viewed it as a way for me to anonymously buy shit off the deep web.

Though I sold all of my bitcoin and made a tidy profit off of it. I had about 200 bitcoins from back when they were 7 dollars a pop, and sold them off at a substantially higher rate.

The FBI owns the single largest Bitcoin wallet on the internet.

Irony, there.

Not when it was worth "more than gold", I presume?

edited 20th Dec '13 4:04:30 PM by joesolo

I sold them when they were worth around 150 bucks. Made a tidy little profit there. Not really kicking myself for selling early, I paid off my car with the money.

X4 if Bitcoin is often used by criminal groups it be that the FBI has as much as it does due to seizing it from crooks? Or simply as a way try and ferret out criminals using Bitcoin (though I've no idea if that's even possible).

The FBI could possibly be using that wallet to more easily interact with the dark web side of the internet.

If you can deal in the currency other then standard cash it likely makes it easier to interact with the sites and people who operate at that level.

if Bitcoin is often used by criminal groups it be that the FBI has as much as it does due to seizing it from crooks?

If you read the article, that's exactly what happened. Most of it is from Silk Road.

And now they'll use it to fund assassinations, right?

Welp, all $16.13 worth of BTC I had is being sent to the Internet Archive, no longer to be just left to sit in my wallet.

@Barkey, I envy what you did with your bitcoins. You made $30,000 off them. I've made thousands, but not even ten thousand.

*7:

So from what i don't understand.

It's currency generated by er, mining? Or buying from someone who has mined? And stored in an online wallet and then you spend it?

But I do remember hearing anything about it starting from a few months ago. When it's too late to jump in.

^^

I just about shat myself when I checked that my wallet still had my BTC in it. Twas a good day.

I got in early sort of by mistake. I used to be very involved in some aspects of the TOR community, and word gets around. When bitcoins first started to take off, I figured "What the hell, why not?" and would set up my machine to mine when I was asleep or away from home. I made somewhere in the neighborhood of 27k off of mine. Paid off my car, threw all the rest in my savings.

I always knew that my perverse interest in the seedy dark side of the internet would pay off, and it most definitely did.

For anyone looking at timelines, this was somewhere between early 2010 and mid 2011 that I did that.

edited 21st Dec '13 7:28:44 AM by Barkey

I should probably start mining litecoins then, to convert to bitcoins and then dollars later.

Good luck.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/krugman-bits-and-barbarism.html

Krugman talks about bitcoin and its relationship to gold; in both cases, you burn up resources "mining" something that you then lock up in a vault and pretend has value. At least gold has a use as something other than currency.

Bitcoin having a rough time in India now as well

Bitcoins big problem will be fighting the currencies that are not freely tradeable. For currencies that are freely tradeable, it is merely another wrinkle in the vast array of options that you can use your money with, but for countries with controls on their currencies, especially big ones like China and India, Bitcoin and its cohort are going to be anathema

My brother is telling me that businesses are starting to accept bitcoin because it can be traded instantly without annoying transfer fees and things slowing it down. It's more convenient for them.

It still has to be convertible to dollars for them to conduct most of their business. There's no free lunch here.

Bitcoin strikes me as being a more convenient version of gold, with all the associated issues, but without the disadvantage of having to carry the fucking stuff from place to place.

Pretty much. There is a reason it is sometimes referred to as digital gold.

Fighteer is right. Someone somewhere down the line is charging for the bitcoin to be not a bitcoion.

All they are doing is changing around the same fees to a new location. They are still paying them just at a different part of the transaction.

I have a doubt. How much Bitcoins will be allowed to be made? Since you can't just print lots of money without generating certain complications (you know them better than I do), I wonder what would be the estimated quantity being produced yearly or in total?

If anyone can answer this, I'd be grateful.

edited 28th Dec '13 4:20:57 PM by Quag15