>> ^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

@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?

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."

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.

There is also e-Gold and its various similar services which are used in a similar transactions. I don't think you will find a online drug bazaar for those... or at not one that I know of.

Quote:
Jeff Garzik, a member of the Bitcoin core development team, says in an email that bitcoin is not as anonymous as the denizens of Silk Road would like to believe. He explains that because all Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a public log, though the identities of all the parties are anonymous, law enforcement could use sophisticated network analysis techniques to parse the transaction flow and track down individual Bitcoin users.

"Attempting major illicit transactions with bitcoin, given existing statistical analysis techniques deployed in the field by law enforcement, is pretty damned dumb," he says.



And here is a source about how to be more anonymous while using BitCoin:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity

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."

>> ^BansheeX:

I see little difference between this and dollars. Who is behind its issuance? Who will be behind it 100 years from now? What ensures that a company or a government doesn't take it over and issue bitcoins for themselves without labor while everyone else has to labor?<


The system actually does not allow this. The "mint" as well as the "bank" are a massively peer to peer system. The coins are scarce, because the system only generates coins at a fixed rate. Because the system auto adjusts, each coin is cryptographically more difficult to generate then the one before. these coins are awarded to miners based on real cryptographic, unfakable, work that they do to generate the coins. The history of each coin is tracked collectively by the p2p system, and any coin that has broken its rules is considered invalid.

The only significant hacks on the system require having more processing power than the entire existing BitCoin network, and only allows you to either:

1) reverse your own transactions, thereby double spending, and committing easily traceable fraud.
2) deviate from the systems rules, making all your coins invalid, getting barred from interacting with peers using the official client, and end up with a fork of the network, which generates and processes coins that nobody on the official network will accept. (Note: official in this context refers to adhering to the standard, not the approval of any central body)

Just read most of the wikipedia article then did a search on slashdot. This article's comments had a few interesting points/questions...

If this becomes established, it will be taxed in the US. It's income or capital gains. (http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1715548&cid=32869918)

Bitcoins are generated by wasting electricity. Not very green. (http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1715548&cid=32869504)

Bitcoin is designed to lead to massive deflation when the coin limit is hit. This might destroy whatever economy comes to depend on it. (http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1715548&cid=32870538)

People are already starting to invest in bitcoin. Most people probably only purchase a little here and there, but apparently the other day someone dumped a lump investment of $50k into the coin in one fell swoop. Already people's investments went up.

I don't fully understand all of it just yet, but I'm interested. Now would probably be a good time to invest in this alternative currency if it's sound.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I would love this to succeed and kill usurious systems like Paypal - but a pile of dead virtual currencies before bitcoin leave me skeptical. Beenz, flooz and many more. I'm quietly hopeful though because paypal is not good in so many ways.

Also, the tax implications are not a small problem.

I see little difference between this and dollars. Who is behind its issuance? Who will be behind it 100 years from now? What ensures that a company or a government doesn't take it over and issue bitcoins for themselves without labor while everyone else has to labor?

People who add more gold to the money supply are workers just like you and me. There is no central overlord for gold, because it's a physical product with characteristics well suited for money. It has no "issuer" that can print more for themselves at a whim while everyone else has to labor for it. It is the ultimate disabler of the banking elite who have made their jobs 100x more profitable with loans at interest that otherwise wouldn't have existed or been needed. When money retains its value, you can afford things outright and altogether avoid interest.

The banking elite is extremely powerful, but I'm pretty sure alchemy is beyond their abilities, and that's why I continue to support a hard plastic currency embedded with gold and a ban on fractional reserve banking. Any bitcoin fans want to put my fears to rest?

I was talking about tipping in currency. Powerpoints might be interesting too, though. But let's talk about what might happen with money.

@Hybrid's worry may be legitimate, although I don't personally think comment spam would necessarily increase with tipping. I think that's more a function of other social controls - there's a difference between the Sift userbase and the Youtube userbase, and whatever checks manage to keep things mostly civil here would still be in place even with tipping.

In any case, what I was mainly thinking about was tipping for good sifts, maybe also for maintenance functions. That might necessitate some kind of monthly pot to be divided among the most active fixers of dead videos, for example, but I digress.

Tipping for sifts might, if it took off, lead to a kind of curation system on top of the usual functioning of Videosift. I'm thinking of virtual TV channels in a way - long playlists of material, related or not, maybe according to some theme, maybe just on a whim. Current stuff - a collection of news broadcasts and commentary relating to a specific issue over the last week or so, for example. Things that take time and effort and skill to put together in a way that is useful and enjoyable to watch.

Maybe tipping could encourage that. Maybe it could be done anyway, maybe someone's already doing it to some extent. I'm just thinking that in addition to people coming to see what Videosift as a whole has to offer, they might come to see what a specific member has to offer at any given time, kind of like people tune in to watch The Daily Show, not just the Comedy Channel. Bottom line, I think curation is a legitimate service that the Sift could possibly benefit from, and financial incentives might encourage people to spend time on doing more extensive sifting (no pun intended) through material with an eye on creating a coherent narrative on a specific subject. The Sift could take a cut for providing the platform, or maybe ad revenue might increase if enough new viewers came on as a result. (I'm not familiar with the dynamics of ad revenue vs. server costs with increased traffic.)

This could probably be tried out quite easily. Flattr, I think, could readily be implemented here, but it would be hard for the Sift to take a cut (and I do think it deserves one) with that system. For bitcoin, there's http://www.youtipit.org , though that's beta and frankly looks ugly as hell. Also again, taking a cut would require extra work.

I like the way you think. User-to-user tipping. That could be really cool.
>> ^rebuilder:

I'm not Charter, largely because I find the idea of paying for powers a bit disturbing. I wouldn't mind paying just to avoid seeing ads, depending on the sum of course.
As for something completely different... I was thinking the other day, what if the Sift allowed tipping? As in, you like a member's sift, comment, just generally find them a swell person all around - send a few coins their way. This could be done with something like, say, Bitcoin , and maybe the Sift could take a small cut on all tips.
I haven't put that much thought into the concept yet. There may be serious legal issues with bringing compensation schemes into the system. The social effects may or may not be desirable. With Bitcoin specifically, some may well have objections to the very idea of a cryptocurrency. I'm suggesting Bitcoin because it's well suited to micropayments, as the currency can be transferred virtually free of cost. OK, also because I like the idea.
Thoughts?
http://www.bitcoin.org

You aren't really paying for powers though, your paying for access to features.

"Absolutely no ads
Personal Blog
Six (6) concurrent submission slots in the unsifted queue
Two (2) Power Points per recharge period
Personal subdomain for your member profile, e.g., siftbot.videosift.com
Personalized colorizing for your username and comment background
Customizable styling for your member profile
Participation in the Sift Lounge chat room
Random Personal Queue videos listed on your profile
Use a YouTube video for your avatar image in comments"

You still don't get "double vote" power or anything that affects the meritocracy nature of the site. I guess it does buy you a little influence for promoting with the power points, but I don't really consider that a "power" like I do voting.

There could be legal problems for tipping people for others content, though I have no idea.

>> ^rebuilder:

I'm not Charter, largely because I find the idea of paying for powers a bit disturbing. I wouldn't mind paying just to avoid seeing ads, depending on the sum of course.
As for something completely different... I was thinking the other day, what if the Sift allowed tipping? As in, you like a member's sift, comment, just generally find them a swell person all around - send a few coins their way. This could be done with something like, say, Bitcoin , and maybe the Sift could take a small cut on all tips.
I haven't put that much thought into the concept yet. There may be serious legal issues with bringing compensation schemes into the system. The social effects may or may not be desirable. With Bitcoin specifically, some may well have objections to the very idea of a cryptocurrency. I'm suggesting Bitcoin because it's well suited to micropayments, as the currency can be transferred virtually free of cost. OK, also because I like the idea.
Thoughts?
http://www.bitcoin.org

I'm not Charter, largely because I find the idea of paying for powers a bit disturbing. I wouldn't mind paying just to avoid seeing ads, depending on the sum of course.

As for something completely different... I was thinking the other day, what if the Sift allowed tipping? As in, you like a member's sift, comment, just generally find them a swell person all around - send a few coins their way. This could be done with something like, say, Bitcoin*, and maybe the Sift could take a small cut on all tips.

I haven't put that much thought into the concept yet. There may be serious legal issues with bringing compensation schemes into the system. The social effects may or may not be desirable. With Bitcoin specifically, some may well have objections to the very idea of a cryptocurrency. I'm suggesting Bitcoin because it's well suited to micropayments, as the currency can be transferred virtually free of cost. OK, also because I like the idea.

Thoughts?

*http://www.bitcoin.org