Bitcoin P2P Currency: The Most Dangerous Project We've Ever Seen

Originally posted by VonDoomen
reply to post by imasecretspy

 

if you knew aything about the darknet or deepweb, you would understand how useful this is, and that it is CERTAINLY not going away.

I think BitCoins will never amount to anything of real world value (such as buying groceries or paying your mortgage with them), and that they definitely won't topple any governments as the article suggested.

You think they will

Time will tell.

reply to post by imasecretspy


please dont put words in my mouth. I never said this will topple any governments. Nor did i say you would go to the store and use them. I dont know where you get this idea and why putting blatantly/obvious false conclusions in my mouth helps your stance.

these are a free medium of exchange, though still in its infancy. people will always choose free over not free. just give it time. and what this does is slowly remove power from central banks which charge interest for the use of their money.

reply to post by VonDoomen

...and what this does is slowly remove power from central banks which charge interest for the use of their money.

I doubt that they will be around long enough to have that kind of impact.

You think they will.

Like I said, time will tell.

Originally posted by Maxmars
Perhaps the point is that currency, the medium of exchange between two or more parties, need not be 'controlled' by a superseding third-party.

This would be a radical departure from the current model of exchange which mandates a third-party in ALL transactions... even if only in the form of currency owned and issued (in almost all cases) by a national bank which has a defacto monopoly on monetary policy.

This would be bartering.
This would be old.
This would be unfeasible in a global economy.

reply to post by imasecretspy


lol. I promise you. they will still be around. just because YOU dont know about it or hear about it, doesnt mean its not going on. Quite the contrary. theres a class of people too smart for the governments to contain. and if they outlaw this one, there will be another.

and yes, as i said, this circumvents central bank money which is owed at interest. this is free peoples money in a sense.

reply to post by VonDoomen


Promises from strangers mean nothing.

At best, I think BitCoin will be replaced by another company that will have more success than they ever did.

BitCoin if anything, will just be used to test the waters.

OK this looked interesting until I looked a bit deeper.

There are basically 2 ways to obtain bit coins if I've understood correctly

a) to use CPU/GPU power to 'mine' the coins for yourself (which is free, except the cost of your electricity), solely or in a 'mining pool' with shared profits.

b) to purchase the equivalent processing power from these people:

www.bitcoin.org...

Notice the "- We accept payments only via bank transfers." In which case... what's the point? Even those 'mining' bitcoins want real money for them!

The other thing is that it's Open Source on the GNU license which means anyone can view and replicate the source code for themselves. What's to stop everyone from creating their own version of Bitcoin, equally worthless and confusing the market further?

The truth is I may not fully understand this system as yet, I've only just heard of Bitcoin, and to be fair I will dig a little deeper before I completely dismiss it.

I don't agree with the current system, but I doubt this is the answer - and I doubt Mervyn King or Ben Bernanke are losing sleep over it.

Originally posted by Runaway1977

Originally posted by Maxmars
Perhaps the point is that currency, the medium of exchange between two or more parties, need not be 'controlled' by a superseding third-party.

This would be a radical departure from the current model of exchange which mandates a third-party in ALL transactions... even if only in the form of currency owned and issued (in almost all cases) by a national bank which has a defacto monopoly on monetary policy.

This would be bartering.
This would be old.
This would be unfeasible in a global economy.

Actually, currency exchange is not bartering. Removing the monetary monopoly is what this is - and that would be quite new (assuming you don't count that this is precisely how it started before 'banking' became the legislated or mandated 'norm.'

reply to post by Pr0t0


It is not the act that represents the threat, it's the concept that bankers should not - and in such a case could not - monopolize currency.

In this case they are simply doing what good ol' Bert Gore wants to do with carbon credit.

But in Bert's case he wants it married to the current monetization moguls.

In this case there is a form of exchange being developed that would make the 'middle-man'-'bankster'-'money changer' obsolete.

reply to post by Maxmars


My point was that the companies, such as those linked, are charging GBP for the coins and accepting only Bank Transfers - at which point are they not using banks then? I'm going to download and mine some myself and do a bit more research, which would only be fair, but it seems to me, at this moment in time, that this is at best a game and at worst a scam.

reply to post by Pr0t0


You do need to do some research and see for yourself for sure but it is not a scam. It is as real of a product as any electronic product and even more so because there is an encrypted chain of custody from its inception to its end use. It is digitized and encrypted work product nothing more or less. The fact that some people will accept it for payment is besides the point.

I foresee encrypted meeting places online like games where people transact business in private and then when they deal is worked out they can both put their public key into an escrow along with the bitcoin being promised for goods and then when real world delivery takes place and both parties are happy they each click an icon that locks the transfer and then a trusted agent (mod) who can see nothing more than the fact that the parties agree to what ever they were talking about in private and the moderator in the game hits a moderator only accessible key and delivers the escrowed bitcoin to one person and a digital receipt to the other.

Real world transactions can take place in complete privacy in this way. It will not hurt the FED right away but it will hasten the slide into alternative currency for sure.

When it actually has some uses other than buying Drugs, Pedo Porn or Gambling Chips then please tell me lol.
Nevertheless it's an interesting idea. I don't know how it really works but I'll be looking into it. I think it would need to be properly controlled for it to work though.

Originally posted by Noviz
When it actually has some uses other than buying Drugs, Pedo Porn or Gambling Chips then please tell me lol.
Nevertheless it's an interesting idea. I don't know how it really works but I'll be looking into it. I think it would need to be properly controlled for it to work though.

Actually the whole point is no one controls it. As far as the ad-hominem association of this with criminals and degenerates, thank you for making my point of how this will be fought...

Originally posted by Maxmars

Originally posted by Noviz
When it actually has some uses other than buying Drugs, Pedo Porn or Gambling Chips then please tell me lol.
Nevertheless it's an interesting idea. I don't know how it really works but I'll be looking into it. I think it would need to be properly controlled for it to work though.

Actually the whole point is no one controls it. As far as the ad-hominem association of this with criminals and degenerates, thank you for making my point of how this will be fought...

edit on 17-5-2011 by Maxmars because: (no reason given)

Surely if no one controls it then people would just make as many bitcoins as they want therefore the value of the coins themselves would get lower and lower?
Anyway, I'm going to read up on it all now and hopefully understand the whole thing a little better.

reply to post by Noviz


The software is open source. The system is locked to production of just so many coins. When you are making coins you are also providing some of the system web access and your CPU time so it is not exactly free to make all you want. Those making coins are contributing to the working of the system in the doing of this. This makes this a work product in encrypted digital form. What is money to us but a storage of our work product in a transferable barter form?

reply to post by wayouttheredude


Hmm ok, thanks for the information.
Looks like an interesting way to buy things... Rather confusing for someone that knows basically nothing about economics lol. I'm a scientist not an economist!

Originally posted by Maxmars
Actually, currency exchange is not bartering.

No. Currency exchange is not bartering. What you advocated and I responded to was and is. Think it through. Or explain it through. I am afraid that might be off topic though.

reply to post by Noviz


Be sure to read some of the follow up articles linked to the main article. This one for instance: Is Bitcoin the Wikileaks of Monetary Policy? Is very revealing in the potential of bitcoin.

From the article:

Bitcoin presents an unambiguous challenge to the government monopoly on the power to print money. In concept, Bitcoin raises serious questions about the legitimacy of national monetary policy in a globalized digital economy. In practice, Bitcoin could undermine it completely. Symbolic paper currency requires all participants in the economy to maintain a fiction: that thin sheets of paper represent real value even though they lack the intrinsic value of precious metal. And symbolic paper currency is a dwindling percentage of the total money supply. Increasingly, money exists purely as digital information: no one uses trucks to move hundreds of millions of dollars when they complete a transaction. As long as we all agree that those numbers on a glowing screen represent real value, the system works.

It points to the very tenuous situation the so called central banks now find themselves. This fiction they sell us and call it money is without real value to any but who it serves and that is not you and me buddy.

Originally posted by Runaway1977

Originally posted by Maxmars
Actually, currency exchange is not bartering.

No. Currency exchange is not bartering. What you advocated and I responded to was and is. Think it through. Or explain it through. I am afraid that might be off topic though.

I apologize for being unclear.

I am not advocating that we adopt this as a medium of commerce; I am however, encouraged that options are being explored that would eliminate the need for a banking institution to extract wealth from the fruits of our labor as a matter of principle.

When I think of bartering I consider an exchange of products or goods or services for whatever the recipient feels is equal in value. Currency allows you to make the symbolic gesture of transferring that worth without having to exchange goods, and is necessary because not everyone who needs something from you or I will have an item or service that we want.

All I hope for is a way that we can eliminate the notion of debt as currency, and this theoretically has that potential.

Unfortunately, as has been pointed out, some have already begun the process of 'monetizing' bitcoins back into the debt based currency I would prefer to eliminate.... Sorry if that came off snooty... it was not intentional.

reply to post by Maxmars


When I read your post I thought of the industry that can grow up around this medium. Bitcoin purses be they Android apps or Windows or Linux applications. There will be software and hardware created to make and use bitcoins. These secondary technologies will in fact be the way this enters into the main stream. Make it simple and bring it to the people then get paid. That is why I am going to make it my business to build online communities and social network applications that facilitate this technology.

Making the technology truly Independent of the current monetary system is a matter of secondary markets making use of the technology as a core for their payment system. It has to be a smartphone app I think since then you can transfer coin person to person by Bluetooth like you would exchange electronic business cards or pay online using the same application and even have an escrow system built into the app.