I'm inventing my own currency too. It's called the SuperSuperPennyCoin™. To the naked eye, it looks like a regular penny, but in reality it's worth the value of a gold bar. I am currently selling SuperSuperPennyCoins™ for $19.99 a pop ($2000 value). If you want to get in on the ground floor, just paypal me ($19.99 per SuperSuperPennyCoin™).

[Disclaimer: SuperSuperPennyCoin™s are only of value to other SuperSuperPennyCoin™ users]

This is going to be SO popular with money launderers.

http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imaginable

The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable

"Mark, a software developer, had ordered the 100 micrograms of acid through a listing on the online marketplace Silk Road. He found a seller with lots of good feedback who seemed to know what they were talking about, added the acid to his digital shopping cart and hit "check out." He entered his address and paid the seller 50 Bitcoins—untraceable digital currency—worth around $150. Four days later the drugs, sent from Canada, arrived at his house."

*promote the alternative

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 8:24pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter blankfist.

It's a highly volatile market these bitcoins... But there are people making considerable returns from them.

They've increased in value by 10 times over the last 2 months. I purchased some about 4 days ago, and they've already doubled in value. So I'm happy with that!

But it's very, very risky, despite the continued growth. You never know when it might just crash from all this rapid investment.

I've seen days when the value of a bitcoin has fluctuated up to 88% within a single day.

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

Anyway, I'm not going to take my little investment out just yet... I'm curious to see just how much their value will increase in the coming weeks and months. People talk about a bitcoin bubble, but that requires the public at large to become aware of it, and that's when investors usually cash in - and the bubble bursts... but I don't think we're anywhere near that yet. Ask 100 people on the street what a bitcoin is, my guess only 2-3 would know..... if that.

I'd read that some bitcoin proponents were concerned that the drug trade would hurt bitcoin's reputation as a serious anonymous currency.

Thoughts?>> ^blankfist:

http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where
-you-can-buy-any-drug-imaginable
The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable
"Mark, a software developer, had ordered the 100 micrograms of acid through a listing on the online marketplace Silk Road. He found a seller with lots of good feedback who seemed to know what they were talking about, added the acid to his digital shopping cart and hit "check out." He entered his address and paid the seller 50 Bitcoins—untraceable digital currency—worth around $150. Four days later the drugs, sent from Canada, arrived at his house."

@KnivesOut, I think as long as something makes a profit doesn't devalue their savings, people will care less about what it's being used for. The biggest fear I have is from those who benefit from a centralized currency putting a great amount of resources toward shutting it down - namely the US Government. They went after the Liberty Dollar in '07 and stole their gold reserve because they were afraid of a competing currency they couldn't control: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar

@blankfist said, "A bunch of stuff about bitcoins."

Can you explain what makes bitcoins worth anything? Why can I trust that I will be able to trade a bitcoin for goods and/or services tomorrow, much less in five or ten or forty years? I really don't get it.

Also, what's peer-to-peer money? Money that one person give to another person? Like... any money that's not credit card debt?

>> ^direpickle:

Can you explain what makes bitcoins worth anything? Why can I trust that I will be able to trade a bitcoin for goods and/or services tomorrow, much less in five or ten or forty years? I really don't get it.
Also, what's peer-to-peer money? Money that one person give to another person? Like... any money that's not credit card debt?


It's a competing currency. What makes it worth something are the people willing to use it. You can't be sure it'll be around, so you could lose everything you invest into it. That's how currency works. You can't be sure the US dollar will be around in another ten years either.

You can read up on how it works in greater detail, but p2p means that your coins are stored anonymously across multiple user's machines. It's kind of like bittorrent. Here's their wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Somehow i highly distrust all this libertarian propaganda... why? Because it clearly is propaganda.



And they all seem like giant douchebags.





I know my opinions are not defined or founded by much fact, but reason.tv seems like a giant pile of horsemanure.

How is this currency safe from hackers? Who is the source making the money?

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^direpickle:
Can you explain what makes bitcoins worth anything? Why can I trust that I will be able to trade a bitcoin for goods and/or services tomorrow, much less in five or ten or forty years? I really don't get it.
Also, what's peer-to-peer money? Money that one person give to another person? Like... any money that's not credit card debt?

It's a competing currency. What makes it worth something are the people willing to use it. You can't be sure it'll be around, so you could lose everything you invest into it. That's how currency works. You can't be sure the US dollar will be around in another ten years either.
You can read up on how it works in greater detail, but p2p means that your coins are stored anonymously across multiple user's machines. It's kind of like bittorrent. Here's their wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin


I concede that it is possible for the USD to stop being worth anything, too, but I think it's likely to be a smidge more stable. Even if the world goes nuts, *probably* the store down the street will still give me a loaf of bread for a dollar or two, at least for a little bit. I think that any event that makes the USD so worthless so quickly that it's worth drastically betting against it as a citizen (not a rich person) is also going to make bitcoins (and any currency, really) useless. Better off stockpiling whiskey and ammunition.

I don't know. I just don't buy it. I imagine a large portion of the current bitcoin users are just the equivalent of oil or real estate speculators, trying to make a buck on the run-up. How many have you bought?

Probably you weren't suggesting switching from dollars to bitcoins on a large scale, I guess. I can't remember whether or not you're the one always posting videos about how the dollar's going to vanish overnight.

Gambling on a potential investing opportunity, in case it does get big? I can understand that. Too risky for me, though. Just want to potentially get in on the ground floor of an idealist revolution? I can understand that, too, I guess.

This is super strange, and super neat. You wouldn't expect decentralized money to work...just like you wouldn't expect decentralized file transfers too either, the former are untested, but the later are very resilient. There are, however, some very real attacks you can do on decentralized networks which I will have to look and see how it deals with them. Time to do some reading, this could be huge...like bit torrent huge.

>> ^DerHasisttot:

Somehow i highly distrust all this libertarian propaganda... why? Because it clearly is propaganda.
And they all seem like giant douchebags.

I understand that position, I agree that these folks tend to reek of "fuck you", but this guy is generally accurate in his description of how bitcoin works.

The real compelling application, which he didn't bother to mention, is that the transactional cost is extremely low and the system security is extremely high. If the market growth stabilizes to a slow deflationary curve against the USD, then it will become useful for what it was designed for, allowing people to make digital transactions of funds with a very small non-percentage transaction cost.

I am currently running a few GPGPU servers on the bitcoin network, which while not as profitable as straight speculation at least is a realistic stable business model which is not dependent on beating a bubble burst.

Freedom from a centralized currency. And it's profitable. I can foresee making a lot of money investing in this.

Sheeesh, talk about your Ponzi schemes...

>> ^Stormsinger:

Sheeesh, talk about your Ponzi schemes...


I am confuzzled by this statement. Is China investing hundreds of billions in US bons any different than this? Buying money is a strange concept for me, but this doesn't look like a ponzi setup at all...as it is used as a tender not an investment that needs more investment. Akin to calling paypal a Ponzi scheme...unless I don't understand you completely.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^Stormsinger:
Sheeesh, talk about your Ponzi schemes...

I am confuzzled by this statement. Is China investing hundreds of billions in US bons any different than this? Buying money is a strange concept for me, but this doesn't look like a ponzi setup at all...as it is used as a tender not an investment that needs more investment. Akin to calling paypal a Ponzi scheme...unless I don't understand you completely.


A Ponzi scheme is one in which investors get returns not from any profit but only by being paid with the buy-ins of the later investors...which means that sooner or later, when there are no new investors, the last wave or six -cannot- be paid, because there is no profit. A scheme such as what Hybrid is discussing has no profit...it's nothing but pure speculation, and thus, has no profits to pay to investors. IOW, it's -all- bubble...and the last "investors" are going to be left holding empty balloons.

That sounds like you are saying all arbitrary valuation is a Ponzi scheme, which I don't think is exactly right. If people stop buying stocks, it doesn't cause the companies to crash, if people stop investing into bonds, the money doesn't crash either. Investing real money into money causes the money to increase in valuation without a need for continued investors. Any investing can lead to bubbles when fueled by speculation...Bubble != Ponzi. Bubbles to be had here for sure, just like any IPO for a stock. I think you are wise to be cautious, though, this is a pretty crazy new idea. In that, though, no risk, no reward. It would be akin to investing in gold before a major nation switched to the gold standard...chaching. Same here...if everyone starts using that currency, it will be in high demand making it more desirable.

I plan to read about how it creates additional units without causing inflation or not creating enough which causes deflation. I am interested how it maintains all that. It is all very very intriguing.


*edit grammar and spelling

>> ^Stormsinger:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^Stormsinger:
Sheeesh, talk about your Ponzi schemes...

I am confuzzled by this statement. Is China investing hundreds of billions in US bons any different than this? Buying money is a strange concept for me, but this doesn't look like a ponzi setup at all...as it is used as a tender not an investment that needs more investment. Akin to calling paypal a Ponzi scheme...unless I don't understand you completely.

A Ponzi scheme is one in which investors get returns not from any profit but only by being paid with the buy-ins of the later investors...which means that sooner or later, when there are no new investors, the last wave or six -cannot- be paid, because there is no profit. A scheme such as what Hybrid is discussing has no profit...it's nothing but pure speculation, and thus, has no profits to pay to investors. IOW, it's -all- bubble...and the last "investors" are going to be left holding empty balloons.