Bitcoin and Digital Currencies

This Hindustan Times article says little that hasn’t already been said in this thread about why you should stay the fuck away from the Bitcoin bubble, but it’s an excellent one-click link for the uninformed.

The BBC’s quest for the truth behind cryptocurrencies leads them to the darkest of places.

...You know, I don't actually know what goatse is. And I think I'm better off that way.

Short answer: the original Shock Site

I loved the AV Club's description of goatse (and goatse coin).

The coin looks to me like an Indecisive Parody .

Lol!

edited 3rd Jan '18 1:35:27 PM by betaalpha

Either that, or it's being weirdly honest. "Sink your time, passion and money into this hole to be fucked over and need bleach."

edited 3rd Jan '18 2:08:56 AM by Euodiachloris

The underworld is starting to ditch Bitcoin.

Why? Law enforcement has figured out how to track transactions through the blockchain.

I imagine $30 transaction fees are also a big driver.

Yeah, rumblings I’ve heard are that it’s just no longer usable as a currency now that its self-imposed scarcity has entirely turned it into a speculative resource.

Child porn has been discovered embedded in the blockchain.

I... huh?

That's hilarious. Per the article, blockchain was designed to hold small bits of extra data, such as transaction notes, but some enterprising criminals have been using it to hide illegal data, such as links to CP and even whole images. Per various EU laws, having possession of blockchain data containing such things is prima facie illegal, and the technology has no way to excise it.

Umm... lawl.

Wow that alone may help seriously smack the tar out of the block chain.

An upstate New York town has put an 18 month ban on Bit Coin Mining Companies Why? Because they use way too much damn power. The town had cheap power thanks to a local hydroelectric dam. The bit coin miners of course not giving a shit about their negative impact on the region moved in and started eating up their power allotments to the point that this last winter they went over twice and overall drove up the prices of electricity. The town council voted unanimously to protect their residents over the digital gold miners and put an 18 month Moratorium on the mining of bit coin.

edited 20th Mar '18 5:49:20 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I would have been very surprised if noone had tried to hide CP in the blockchain. It's a pretty obvious idea.

And the conspiracies are flowing. As if Bit Coin was solely used by honest well meaning law abiding citizens. -_-

Pretty sure that a form of speculative currency that doesn't have many uses outside of the internet, besides buying things that aren't legal to begin with and worthless web junk and require MW/h worth of energy to be broadcasted and verified which net a energy bill much higher than whatever currency you mined out of it and you probably won't be able to use it to pay the energy bill, is surely being used by very well adjusted individuals.

I find that people who mine cryptocurrency are usually of the "don't care, got mine" type, and disregard the damage they're doing to the environment, the economy, and especially the price of halfway decent GPUs. I haven't been able to upgrade my rig in years because I can't find anything current under $400.

edited 23rd Mar '18 2:48:45 PM by danime91

An interesting video looking at the limitations and inherent lack of sustainability of bitcoin from an engineering perspective.

Edit: The teal deer version is that due to the limited number of coins that can be mined and the increasing computational power needed to verify the blockchain, its going to hit the point where miners aren't going to be able to break even at some point. Also, as it currently is, bitcoin is not acting as a currency, it's acting as a wealth storage commodity and a highly volatile one at that.

edited 23rd Mar '18 4:37:19 PM by KnightofLsama

Yeah, the real test of Bitcoin will be what happens when the difficulty starts going down. I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet.

Still, I expect a long, slow decline, rather than anything dramatic. There's a lot of people who will be propping it up with their paychecks for years to come.

My question is, quite honestly, why they think anything of which there can only be a finite amount made would ever work as a viable currency. Sure, fiat currency is trusted to work because the countries who print such things are stable, but they can also just print more money if it's deemed necessary. There's not a finite amount of paper dollars or coins being produced.

Because there is a certain school of thought that longs for the gold standard of yore. It doesn't really work past a certain point as it actually limits the ability of an economy to grow but some people don't really get that.

They dont want a workable currency, they want to get rich without working. For that purpose getting in early on a finite commodity that then becomes the basis of the world economy is prefect wank material. Bit coin is not good technical engineering, but it is very clever social engineering. Its a terrible currency, but everyone who owns or buys it are incentivized to hell and gone to hype it. So the internet is flooded with hype.

would that make it a mere get-rich-quick scheme or the world's most successful pyramid scheme?

It's a scam either way. An energy hogging, bubble forming, CP and drug deal enabling scam.

don't forget polluting and GPU hogging.

edited 24th Mar '18 2:22:49 AM by MorningStar1337

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a manifestation of humanity's unbridled greed, selfishness, arrogance, shortsightedness, and ignorance.

I guess I'm trying to say I don't really approve of cryptocurrencies.

edited 24th Mar '18 2:33:04 AM by M84