Blockchain technology

[Bobo08]

Forget about attacking the blockchain, what about controlling its price through owning a large amount of them? If some of the early people still hold large amounts of those 6 mil BTC they could use it as leverage to influence it, speculate, etc. I myself am no economist so i don't know how this could work but it seems vulnerable in that respect.

If someone owns a large number of bitcoins, of course they can influence its price. But at least it will be done honestly because they must use real bitcoins to do that. Bitcoins cannot be printed out of thin air unlike what is being done for many years with gold and stocks.

Also, some hackers are supposedly using the coin as stock for speculation, by DDoS'ing exchange sites, forcing the bitcoin to drop in value, then buying, relaxing the attack, and then selling at a higher price. This instantaneous significant fluctuations could probably hurt Bitcoin popularity, and thus, its acceptance, IMO.

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service attacks) has nothing to do with bitcoin's exchange price.

Another issue is the way to protect your money is different in the case of Bitcoin. People have to be at least moderately tech savvy to correctly protect their own wallets from hackers...

Not really different. If your computer is compromised by hackers, your Internet banking, Paypal, etc. will be compromised as well as Bitcoin.

What is true is that it is still not very user-friendly to use Bitcoin. That's the problem with any new technology. It should be resolved as the technology becomes more mature and popular.

 

[mantype3]

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service attacks) has nothing to do with bitcoin's exchange price.

[/quote]https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130404.html]
...
Why has Mt.Gox become the target of a DDoS attack?
It is not yet clear who is behind this DDoS and we may never know, but these actions seem to have two major purposes:

• Destabilize Bitcoin in general.
 It is not a secret Mt.Gox is the largest Bitcoin exchange with more than 80% of all USD trades and more than 70% of all currencies. Mt.Gox is an easy target for anyone that wants to hurt Bitcoin in general.

• Abuse the system for profit.
 Attackers wait until the price of Bitcoins reaches a certain value, sell, destabilize the exchange, wait for everybody to panic-sell their Bitcoins, wait for the price to drop to a certain amount, then stop the attack and start buying as much as they can. Repeat this two or three times like we saw over the past few days and they profit.
...
What can you do?
Like our favorite author here at Tibanne says… Don’t Panic!

“Panic-selling is a wide-scale selling of an investment which causes a sharp decline in prices. Specifically, an investor wants to get out of an investment with little regard of the price obtained. The selling activity is problematic because the investor is selling in reaction to emotion and fear, rather than evaluating the fundamentals.” (Source: Wikipedia)
...
[/quote]

Sorry, but right now it is. MtGox is by far the largest exchange site for Bitcoins and if it is DDoS'd it can cause panics and make people try to sell feverishly for fear of retaining a commodity that could become worthless because nobody wants it. Maybe this is temporary and its a symptom of it being young, but right now this is a real problem.

Forget about attacking the blockchain, what about controlling its price through owning a large amount of them? If some of the early people still hold large amounts of those 6 mil BTC they could use it as leverage to influence it, speculate, etc. I myself am no economist so i don't know how this could work but it seems vulnerable in that respect.

If someone owns a large number of bitcoins, of course they can influence its price. But at least it will be done honestly because they must use real bitcoins to do that. Bitcoins cannot be printed out of thin air unlike what is being done for many years with gold and stocks.

...

Another issue is the way to protect your money is different in the case of Bitcoin. People have to be at least moderately tech savvy to correctly protect their own wallets from hackers...

Not really different. If your computer is compromised by hackers, your Internet banking, Paypal, etc. will be compromised as well as Bitcoin.

What is true is that it is still not very user-friendly to use Bitcoin. That's the problem with any new technology. It should be resolved as the technology becomes more mature and popular.

But yeah, you have a point here. Maybe we just need to give it time. Wait and see.

Cheers.

 

[Mikey]

Recently the Bitcoin price burst in a bubble, from $220 down to $60. _http://bitcoincharts.com/charts

I've been thinking more about what has been said on this thread, and it almost seems certain that the PTB will do their best to control Bitcoin in one way or another.

Maybe they do have investors that try to generate such bubble bursts artificially? But even if this is the case, it is no different from any other currency they don't like.

I still like Bitcoin a lot, and I think the only chance for Bitcoin to survive is if it is accepted by "the normal people" very soon and very widespread, and that an ecosystem starts to build around it, in which people can buy almost any good in Bitcoins, so that people are not so much concerned about exchanging it or comparing it to other currencies.

In the same way, Gold lost 10% recently, but does that change the inherent value of Gold? No. It just says something about the other currencies, and the general "subjective trust" that is in the currency market.

IMO, Bitcoin is unprecedented and a HUGE chance for freedom, but as always, in our reality, this freedom can only be achieved when A LOT of people really WANT it and back it and DO something for it. So again, it is more or less a war of ideas. If the people don't take that opportunity, then Bitcoin won't survive, in the same way as other ideas.

Just a few thoughts here...

 

[wanderingthomas]

There are some really nice max keiser videos on bitcoin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbSOHwCOnG0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3cQhPBPl6w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP6pBS6uptE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAjL_X_ZesE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t39jCXXIrY

He even has some patents on Virtual Currencies.

 

[wanderingthomas]

Forgot to say, he also predicts that there will be a financial collapse around april, this month, relating to this --> http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,30528.0.html

 

[mantype3]

IMO, Bitcoin is unprecedented and a HUGE chance for freedom, but as always, in our reality, this freedom can only be achieved when A LOT of people really WANT it and back it and DO something for it. So again, it is more or less a war of ideas. If the people don't take that opportunity, then Bitcoin won't survive, in the same way as other ideas.

I agree. I was doubting the implementation of Bitcoin at first, but once i did really study how it works, i realized it really is an excellent idea.

And yeah, this burst is probably only because its mostly used for speculation right now. If it becomes accepted widely it will stabilize, much like gold is stable.

 

[Bobo08]

IMO, Bitcoin is unprecedented and a HUGE chance for freedom, but as always, in our reality, this freedom can only be achieved when A LOT of people really WANT it and back it and DO something for it. So again, it is more or less a war of ideas. If the people don't take that opportunity, then Bitcoin won't survive, in the same way as other ideas.

Recently, I spent some time looking around, reading the bitcoin forum, bitcointalk, and it is a mess. There's a scammer in every corner. Bitcoin exchanges going bust, being hacked are like monthly occurrences. It is a minefield. You can't trust anyone while doing business with bitcoin, all the more so because of the irreversible and anonymous nature of bitcoin transactions. This is, IMO, even more damaging for bitcoin than the recent price burst.

I think for bitcoin to take off, there must be some sort of infrastructure/mechanism in place for normal people to transact easily and securely with bitcoin. Once that happens, bitcoin's inherent advantages will take care of itself.

 

[Yozilla]

Recently the Bitcoin price burst in a bubble, from $220 down to $60. _http://bitcoincharts.com/charts

I've been thinking more about what has been said on this thread, and it almost seems certain that the PTB will do their best to control Bitcoin in one way or another.

Maybe they do have investors that try to generate such bubble bursts artificially? But even if this is the case, it is no different from any other currency they don't like.

Maybe the catch is PTB's trump card: time travel... i mean that every good idea that come to realization can be closely monitored and, if recognized as threat, easily(?) sabotaged by intervening wright at the beginning...

A: Stop thinking linearly!

Yozilla D'monster

 

[DreamGod]

Now with the 512-qubit computer... if they want to mine bitcoins they will possibly ending with all of them right?

The capacity of that computer give them the advantage they mine them all... what are the implication if they can do that?

 

[Mikey]

Now with the 512-qubit computer... if they want to mine bitcoins they will possibly ending with all of them right?

No, since slighly more than 50% of coins are already mined and owned. Of course we don't know if those 50% actually are owed by 'normal people'.

The capacity of that computer give them the advantage they mine them all... what are the implication if they can do that?

One implication would be a deliberate high volatility of the exchange value, by massive, artificial sales and purchases. I guess they would try to make it unattractive. But if that is the case, it would be a small issue if people wouldn't care about exchange rates. Gold also has exhibited high volatility, but that didn't change the subjective value of Gold itself. If Gold suddenly dropped to 100 Dollars per ounce, I still would not panic, because this is just an artificially generated number -- at least in theory.

 

[sitting]

If Gold suddenly dropped to 100 Dollars per ounce, I still would not panic,

Geesus...if gold suddenly dropped to 100 dollars/ounce, people would be dropping out of windows! :P

Seriously, it's hard to predict. Given the use of derivatives. The financial fallout (from a sudden decline) could be quite violent...and in unexpected ways. There's a good deal of hidden internal linkage in these games.

Additionally, I wouldn't rule it out as impossible. If ET's do show up, said all gold belonged to them (as they've done in the ancient past), the price of gold (for humans) can fall to zero.

 

[darksai]

Now with the 512-qubit computer... if they want to mine bitcoins they will possibly ending with all of them right?

The capacity of that computer give them the advantage they mine them all... what are the implication if they can do that?

From what I've read, these quantum computers are worse at cryptography, which is the foundation of Bitcoin, than classical computers. This is because of their high sensitivity to "noise", so to speak, meaning that it takes many more qubits to check errors, and the errors of error checking, than what are actually doing productive work. The reason (on the surface, at least) why D-Wave has been successful is because they've built quantum computers that are made for tasks where the errors aren't much of an issue.

 

[Mike]

Interesting blog post on bitcoin

Bitcoin as a law enforcement/natsec honeypot: what is the evidence?

_http://ianso.blogspot.be/2013/10/bitcoin-as-law-enforcementnatsec.html

 

[angelburst29]

Checking through a few news idems and came across this:
Cash for bitcoins: World's first palm scan-activated bitcoin ATM to open in Canada

http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-atm-canada-first-799/

The world’s first bitcoin ATM will open in Vancouver, Canada, next week – dispensing Canadian dollars in exchange for the anonymous crypto-currency. But only if your palm scan matches the ATM’s records, that is.

The machine will be set up near downtown Vancouver coffee house Waves, is one of five ATMs bought by Canadian firm Bitcoiniacs from Nevada-based producer Robocoin.

The machine will exchange bitcoins for Canadian dollars via Canada’s VirtEx exchange. The transactions themselves will be anonymous, the vendor says, but clients will have to identify themselves via a palm scanner first.

This is done to enforce Canadian anti-money laundering laws, due to which the ATM will only allow transactions of up to 3,000 Canadian dollars (around $2,700) per day per customer.

The four other ATMs will be rolled out in Canadian cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Calgary or Ottawa in December, the company says.

"Basically, it just makes it easier for people to buy and sell bitcoins," Mitchell Demeter, founder of Bitcoiniacs and co-owner of Robocoin, told CBC.

Bitcoin is an internet-based currency designed to exist without any centralized regulatory authority. New Bitcoins are generated by spending computer processing time to conduct complex calculations, and the process is limited by a maximum of about 21 million bitcoins that can exist.

New Bitcoins are generated by spending computer processing time to conduct complex calculations, and the process is limited by a maximum of about 21 million bitcoins that can exist.

The currency has long been a fad among online privacy activists, financial futurists and shady dealers, but is so far little known to the general public. It lately hit the headlines after the FBI bust of the Silk Road website that US authorities say facilitated the trade in illegal goods and services, from drugs to assassinations.

 

[Pierrrr]

[KR516] Keiser Report: Bitcoin – Resistance Starts Here!
We discuss the revolutionary solution that takes money and power from those who hate and gives it to those who will no longer wait for celebrities and pundits to cogitate, agitate and debate whether or not wristbands and hashtags – oh so quaint – can stop the plunder and pillage by the conmen, hucksters, and banksters backed by the state. Yes, bitcoin. The currency is already creating economic value across Africa, China and the developing world while Brits destroy economic value by moving their money into yet another corrupt bank.
http://www.maxkeiser.com/2013/10/kr516-keiser-report-bitcoin-resistance-starts-here/