Blockchain technology

Tomek

Tomek

Dagobah Resident
FOTCM Member
Hello there,

According to the official website, Bitcoin is "an experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network".

In short, the bitcoin is an electronic currency that allows to send a receive money anonymously. There's many ressources online who will explain how this thing works better than me, but feel free to ask questions !

I have, however, some questions for the C's regarding this currency. Who really created it ? And why ? As some people speculate, it might be a digital currency created by three-letters agencies to fund black ops around the world.

More practical question : is it safe to regard bitcoin as a safe currency in case of economic apocalypse, like gold ?
 
Sorry, can't provide any insight concerning bitcoin, only elongating this thread by including other posts mentioning it:
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=28268.0 (question was first raised there, though without any responses)
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,23423.15.html (mentioned here also)
 
B
Polonel said:
I have, however, some questions for the C's regarding this currency. Who really created it ? And why ? As some people speculate, it might be a digital currency created by three-letters agencies to fund black ops around the world.
Click to expand...

IIRC, Laura has covered this in her material (I forget where exactly, unless it was another source, but I'm pretty sure I read it either in The Wave or one of her articles on cassiopaea.org). Basically (read: long story short), contrary to the common belief that money, or more generally currency aka "a medium of exchange", was used to simplify the "bartering system", it was used first used to quantify debt, which was not necessarily in the usual borrow/lending of goods we see to today but rather as any form of compensation. So "back in the day", if one persons animal trampled another's vegetable patch, "compensation" would likely have been something like a form of labor, first son/daughter, their very life, etc. Since these kinds of things are not very easy to agree upon the value of, a system was needed that would minimize disagreements while those who were owed would be able get exactly what they were owed (and nothing less, of course) out of the first mediums of exchange were agreed to. Over the course of history these were at first simple, tangible, need-for-survival things (food, water) then things valued for their cost in acquiring them as well (salt was a highly valued commodity once), then their for rarity with very little value to pure survival (gold), then a representative abstract system to further (and supposedly more accurately) quantify the value of debt owed and today a completely abstract number system with no real bearing to what it is used to exchange for.

I may be mistaken on one or two points, but that's the gist of it, osit.
 
Hi guys,

Bitcoin was created generally for the use with people operating anonymously using the TOR Browser, _www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
What is the Tor Browser Bundle (TBB)?

The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked.
Click to expand...

The TOR Browser is a way to basically upload/download and view files on the Dark web (aka Deep web) anonymously so the Government/ Authorities/Hackers cant see who's doing it. BitCoin is the currency used via people operating TOR to pay for material they want to get there hands on secretly or to pay people ie hackers for doing work for them. You can avoid taxation on money earned and buy illegal goods with out anyone knowing who you are.

Be warned that buying and using BitCoins with out using TOR could be cause you a drama or two as you wont be anonymous therefore easily tracked and a large possibility of being ripped off.

Main problems that I see with Bitcoins (although it does have some great benefits) is the fact that pedophiles and perverts are mainly the users of this currency and its a way for them to exploit children and women with out getting caught and they can get paid for it. The hacker group anonymous have been using the TOR Browser for years and have on occasion been known to bring down these sicko's by dobbing them in to authorities, this is also how they are able to operate anonymously and feed leaked/hacked information to people like Julian Assange Creator of WikiLeaks.

Polonel said:
More practical question : is it safe to regard bitcoin as a safe currency in case of economic apocalypse, like gold ?
Click to expand...

Please note my answer for this above and I'd like to add that when the SH*& hits the proverbial fan you can be assured that most digital currency will be worthless. I'd be spending my money of material possesions that have a practical value. Gold/Food/Drinkable water (or perhaps a filter so you can bottle drinkable water)

If your going to have a play around on the TOR browser DO YOUR RESEARCH FIRST. It can be a dangerous place to play in if your not careful and make sure you put some tape over your web cam as it can be turned on effortlessly.
 
Hmmm, well, no. The bitcoin wasn't designed to be operated through the TOR network, although it's possible.

I use bitcoins for some time to sell digital goods (video games, gametime cards), without using the TOR network since I had no reason to remain 100% anonymous. I indulged myself in this activity as a little experiment to "see how it works." At the time I was selling these digital assets, the bitcoin worth $4, it is now worth $68.50, and it continues to increase, perhaps because of what happens in Cyprus? I don't know. Speculation is rife. Still, I'm curious whether the Bitcoin initiative is coming from a band of idealistic hackers, or if there's something darker behind the creation of this decentralized currency.

Main problems that I see with Bitcoins (although it does have some great benefits) is the fact that pedophiles and perverts are mainly the users of this currency and its a way for them to exploit children and women with out getting caught and they can get paid for it.
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Fiat currencies are also used for this, and more.
 
Information about Bitcoin is readily available, see the first page of hits on a Google search, for example.

As "a decentralized digital currency based on an open source, peer to peer internet protocol" it doesn't depend on TOR, though it can be used in anonymous transactions conducted over the TOR network, but it does depend on the internet. So the commenter above who observed that Bitcoin won't be worth anything if civilisation falls is probably correct, and in that case precious metals, scarce materials and products, and other physical and productive assets including knowledge and skills will be more valued.

Bitcoin value is volatile, however. One commenter above mentioned its value increasing from about $4 to over $68, though it's had its ups and downs along the way and it's presently worth about $37 today.

If you've got a lot of free time on your hands and have free or low cost access to some significant computational resources, it might be worth playing with Bitcoin to try generating some 'free' currency out of thin air and cheap electricity (or electricity you don't have to pay for yourself). Otherwise, if you want to use Bitcoin for anonymous transactions, you can buy some, even anonymously, with a credit card, debit card or payment service.
 
griffin said:
As "a decentralized digital currency based on an open source, peer to peer internet protocol" it doesn't depend on TOR, though it can be used in anonymous transactions conducted over the TOR network, but it does depend on the internet. So the commenter above who observed that Bitcoin won't be worth anything if civilisation falls is probably correct, and in that case precious metals, scarce materials and products, and other physical and productive assets including knowledge and skills will be more valued.
Click to expand...

Probably. Although the ancester of Internet, ARPANET, was precisely designed to withstand a soviet nuclear attack. Due to the decentralized nature of the network, it seems unlikely Internet succumb rapidly to social chaos. When the time comes to material destruction, it will be another story. That said, it is not impossible that the destruction precede social chaos. Indeed, it seems better to invest in "scarce materials and products, and other physical assets and productive knowledge and skills Including", but I doubt that in case of crisis, gold and silver will have more value the bitcoin.

If you've got a lot of free time on your hands and have free or low cost access to some significant computational resources, it might be worth playing with Bitcoin to try generating some 'free' currency out of thin air and cheap electricity (or electricity you don't have to pay for yourself).
Click to expand...

It's not worth it anymore for small-time miners since December 2012. The reward for "mining" (using your computer power to help calculations for the bitcoin network, and be rewarded in bitcoins for this) has been halved since then. For a good computer with a very good graphic card, you might hope to get 30$ in bitcoins every month, electricity fees included, if your computer is mining 24/24.

Bitcoin value is volatile, however. One commenter above mentioned its value increasing from about $4 to over $68, though it's had its ups and downs along the way and it's presently worth about $37 today.
Click to expand...
At this moment one bitcoin is worth 70$ _http://bitcoinity.org/markets
 
Polonel said:
griffin said:
As "a decentralized digital currency based on an open source, peer to peer internet protocol" it doesn't depend on TOR, though it can be used in anonymous transactions conducted over the TOR network, but it does depend on the internet. So the commenter above who observed that Bitcoin won't be worth anything if civilisation falls is probably correct, and in that case precious metals, scarce materials and products, and other physical and productive assets including knowledge and skills will be more valued.
Click to expand...

Probably. Although the ancester of Internet, ARPANET, was precisely designed to withstand a soviet nuclear attack. Due to the decentralized nature of the network, it seems unlikely Internet succumb rapidly to social chaos. When the time comes to material destruction, it will be another story. That said, it is not impossible that the destruction precede social chaos. Indeed, it seems better to invest in "scarce materials and products, and other physical assets and productive knowledge and skills Including", but I doubt that in case of crisis, gold and silver will have more value the bitcoin.

If you've got a lot of free time on your hands and have free or low cost access to some significant computational resources, it might be worth playing with Bitcoin to try generating some 'free' currency out of thin air and cheap electricity (or electricity you don't have to pay for yourself).
Click to expand...

It's not worth it anymore for small-time miners since December 2012. The reward for "mining" (using your computer power to help calculations for the bitcoin network, and be rewarded in bitcoins for this) has been halved since then. For a good computer with a very good graphic card, you might hope to get 30$ in bitcoins every month, electricity fees included, if your computer is mining 24/24.

Bitcoin value is volatile, however. One commenter above mentioned its value increasing from about $4 to over $68, though it's had its ups and downs along the way and it's presently worth about $37 today.
Click to expand...
At this moment one bitcoin is worth 70$ _http://bitcoinity.org/markets
Click to expand...

Jesus! I remember getting in on the ground floor of bitcoin back when it was practically worthless, had over 100 coins in my wallet at one point. Gutted that it all got wasted if that would be worth 7k now :rolleyes:
 
Polonel said:
griffin said:
Bitcoin value is volatile, however. One commenter above mentioned its value increasing from about $4 to over $68, though it's had its ups and downs along the way and it's presently worth about $37 today.
Click to expand...
At this moment one bitcoin is worth 70$ _http://bitcoinity.org/markets
Click to expand...

You're correct, I failed to notice that the quote amount I'd seen was in British pounds, not dollars.
Click to expand...
 
Carlise said:
Jesus! I remember getting in on the ground floor of bitcoin back when it was practically worthless, had over 100 coins in my wallet at one point. Gutted that it all got wasted if that would be worth 7k now :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Same here, Carlise. Some early bitcoin adopters are millionaires, now. I still have some btc in my wallet, but nothing compared to what I used to have two years ago.
 
It's not worth it anymore for small-time miners since December 2012. The reward for "mining" (using your computer power to help calculations for the bitcoin network, and be rewarded in bitcoins for this) has been halved since then. For a good computer with a very good graphic card, you might hope to get 30$ in bitcoins every month, electricity fees included, if your computer is mining 24/24.
Click to expand...
Does it use CUDA or similar technology because you mentioned the graphic card? It shouldn't be worth since one must also consider hardware wearouts. It increases the chances of hardware failure. Personal computer hardware is not designed for doing non-stop calculations with uptimes of a few months. Then, one would also need a perfect cooling concept which is a problem for most PCs because it is not easy to achieve this, or in some cases even impossible.

Do they assess calculated results, i.e. does one get paid for the amount of calculations done? If one gets some coins simply by time spent on calculations, one could simply use some low-hardware devices.
 
Sirius said:
It's not worth it anymore for small-time miners since December 2012. The reward for "mining" (using your computer power to help calculations for the bitcoin network, and be rewarded in bitcoins for this) has been halved since then. For a good computer with a very good graphic card, you might hope to get 30$ in bitcoins every month, electricity fees included, if your computer is mining 24/24.
Click to expand...
Does it use CUDA or similar technology because you mentioned the graphic card?
Click to expand...
It uses OpenCL, and AMD cards are much more efficient at this than nVidia cards. See _https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

It shouldn't be worth since one must also consider hardware wearouts. It increases the chances of hardware failure. Personal computer hardware is not designed for doing non-stop calculations with uptimes of a few months. Then, one would also need a perfect cooling concept which is a problem for most PCs because it is not easy to achieve this, or in some cases even impossible.
Click to expand...

Some people are really dedicated at mining and, well, they managed to find solutions :

_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLt8Se3vVNg
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEGIZOO-HYY

Do they assess calculated results, i.e. does one get paid for the amount of calculations done? If one gets some coins simply by time spent on calculations, one could simply use some low-hardware devices.
Click to expand...

Well, the more bitcoin network transactions, the more difficult to generate new blocks increases. These blocks are the result of the calculation of the entire bitcoin network to validate transactions and secure the network against attack attempts. Today, the difficulty to generate new blocks is such that it is almost impossible to make a profit with a single graphics card, not to mention less expensive material such as entry-level processors. You can calculate the profitability of mining bitcoin on this site _http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

The graphic cards are outdated, especially since some companies released for sale dedicated hardware of bitcoin mining: ASIC processors. Where a Radeon HD 7970 (a high-end graphics card ~$450 worth) can expect to hit 600 Mhash/s of computing power while consuming nearly 500W, a machine like the Avalon ASIC easily reached 66,000 MHash / s with power consumption of 100W. An Avalon ASIC machine cost $ 1,500for the first two batches, batch #3 is currently in production and will be sold in $ 5,000
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/29/what-is-bitcoin_n_2978872.html

What Is Bitcoin, The Newest $1 Billion Currency?

Bitcoin has been getting a bit :evil: of attention since the Cyprus events. I've never used it, but am thinking about it. The thing about it that has me shying away are a couple of thoughts:

- Gov'ts and big banks, etc would never let such a currency come into existence and thrive without trying to kill it. That's if they aren't ultimately behind it in the first place or have a plan to use it, which gets to my next point.

- The below exchange with the C's I think needs to be considered in relation to bitcoin. Looks like we are heading to a time when fiat currency, etc is going to run into some serious problems and the TPTB you would think would have a plan in place for when things get really bad and to extert even more control via an electronic currency - bitcoin seems to fit that need.

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,25981.0.html
Q: (L) What is the meaning of the number 666 in the book of Revelation?

A: Visa.

Q: (L) You mean as in credit card?

A: Yes.

Q: (L) Are credit cards the work of what 666 represents?

A: Yes?

Q: (L) Should we get rid of all credit cards?

A: Up to you.

Q: (L) Would it be more to our advantage than not to disconnect ourselves from the credit system?

A: Isn't just credit also debit.

Q: (L) Is that an affirmative.

A: How are you going to do this?

Q: (L) Well, do you have any suggestions?

A: World will soon have nothing but credit and debit have you not heard of this new visa debit cards this is the future of money as controlled by the world banking system i.e. the brotherhood i.e. Lizards i.e. antichrist.

Q: (L) If I don't have a credit card then I don't have to belong to this system?

A: No. You will have no choices: belong or starve.

Q: (L) What happened to free will?

A: Brotherhood aka Lizards aka antichrist has interfered with free will for 309000 years. They are getting desperate as we near the change.
[…]


Q: (L) "And he was permitted to impart the breath of life into the Beast's image so that the statue of the beast could actually talk and to cause all to be put to death that would not bow down and worship the image of the beast." What does this mean?

A: Total control once deception is complete.

Q: (L) "Compels all alike, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to be marked with an inscription on their right hand or on their foreheads...." What is this inscription?

A: Visa ID number.

Q: (L) Is this going to be actually physically put on our bodies?

A: Encoded.

Q: (L) How? Is that what the aliens do when they abduct people?

A: No.

Q: (L) How is it going to be done?

A: Stamped.

Q: (L) By what technical means?

A: Electronic encoding. A series of numbers.

Q: (L) Are they going to put these on our skins or imbed them in the skin on our heads or hand...?

A: Yes.

Q: (L) Does that mean that you will have to place your hand on an electronic scanner in order to conduct any type of monetary transaction?

A: Precisely.

Q: (L) Okay, it says: "Here is room for discernment, a call for the wisdom of interpretation, let him who has intelligence, penetration, insight enough calculate the number of the Beast, for it is a human number, the number of a certain man, his number is 666. What does this mean?

A: Visa as explained previously. Everyone will get their own number and it will be a Visa number, the number of the Beast.

Q: (L) "Then I looked and Lo! the lamb stood on Mount Zion and with him 144,000 men who had his name and his father's name inscribed on their foreheads..." What does that mean?

A: ID. The Lamb is the Leadership council of the world bank. Many will think they are taking the "mark" of God when actually being marked by the Beast.
Click to expand...
 
  • Bear said:
    - Gov'ts and big banks, etc would never let such a currency come into existence and thrive without trying to kill it. That's if they aren't ultimately behind it in the first place or have a plan to use it, which gets to my next point.
    Click to expand...

    In the case of Bitcoin, it seems that the PTB are not behind it, for the following reasons:

    It is completely Open Source, therefore no secrets or hidden agendas
    The network is operated by normal people, volunteers
    Everyone can run a bitcoin server
    You can transfer bitcons from person to person directly without the need for a banking authority
    Tranfers don't have any fees
    Transfers can be done internationally, as easy as from neighbour to neighbour
    Bitcoin supply is mathematically limited, like a gold currency, there can't be inflation

    Those are already 7 characteristics that go diametrically against all existing banking system practices.

    Bear said:
    - The below exchange with the C's I think needs to be considered in relation to bitcoin. Looks like we are heading to a time when fiat currency, etc is going to run into some serious problems and the TPTB you would think would have a plan in place for when things get really bad and to extert even more control via an electronic currency - bitcoin seems to fit that need.
    Click to expand...

    I don't agree. Bitcoin can't be controlled for mentioned reasons. Since it is a distributed network operated by normal people, it is also extremely difficult to hack, since an attacker would need more processing power than the entire user network to make a transaction valid. Thanks to Bitcoin's central idea -- cryptographic "proof of work" -- nobody can be an "insider" or have an advantage over others.

    Of course, if there is an "internet kill switch", Bitcoin would not survive if it is pressed.
 
Lets say bitcoin grows and becomes popular, more widely used and right now it has the characteristics you listed. I don't think TPTB are going to just let it replace what they have taken centuries to accomplish in terms of the control of money. From the characteristics you listed bitcoin does look like a great idea. I guess I would be worried that if it grows it will be co-opted somehow and that it is to get people to accept and accustomed to the idea of electronic currency. Maybe I'm just jaded that everywhere I look it is about control, lies, hidden agendas, co-opting of good ideas and movements, etc. I don't plan on using it right now and think it bears watching.
 
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