New online currency - Anonymous, no fees, cant block your account..

[Emil]

Have anyone seen this?
People are already using it so it's a "working currency" right now.

http://www.bitcoin.org

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency. Peer-to-peer (P2P) means that there is no central authority to issue new money or keep track of transactions. Instead, these tasks are managed collectively by the nodes of the network. Advantages:

Bitcoins can be sent easily through the Internet, without having to trust middlemen.

Transactions are designed to be computationally prohibitive to reverse.

Be safe from instability caused by fractional reserve banking and central banks. The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system?s money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) throughout the network, not monopolized by banks.

[$5 submissions]

Makes for a great graduate theoretical economics dissertation but can it survive in the real world? What about hackers?

[alias]

April fools?

Look at all the fun stuff you can buy with it: https://ianxz6zefk72ulzz.tor2web.org/

[Lint]

I use it.

[Emil]

April fools?

Look at all the fun stuff you can buy with it: https://ianxz6zefk72ulzz.tor2web.org/

No, it's real.

[Sly]

I can't see this lasting long. Untraceable money screams terrorism.

[Nicky]

Looks interesting but how do you get the coins? If you can't buy them how can they be worth anything?

[signupdamnit]

Bitcoins can be sent easily through the Internet, without having to trust middlemen.

Be safe from instability caused by fractional reserve banking and central banks. The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system?s money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) throughout the network, not monopolized by banks.

I haven't read much into bitcoin in a long time but I would think this might make it prone to inflation if CPU power rapidly advances. I wouldn't want to hold a significant number of bitcoins if for whatever reason CPU power available to the public versus energy efficiency tripled in the course of a year. In theory if I understand correctly that would mean the value of 1 bitcoin would be 1/3 less all other things being equal.

That said I have seen it become pretty popular in certain circles and wouldn't mind it for one off payments. I don't know if I would want to stake a business on it however.

[signupdamnit]

Looks interesting but how do you get the coins? If you can't buy them how can they be worth anything?

http://www.bitcoin.org/faq#Where_can_I_get_Bitcoins

Where can I get Bitcoins?

Find a Bitcoin owner and sell her something - MMORPG equipment, IT support, lawn mowing, dollars or whatever you can trade with her. You can also generate new Bitcoins for yourself by running a Bitcoin network node.

You can find currency exchangers on the Trade (http://www.bitcoin.org/trade) page.

Currency Exchange section: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Currency_exchange

[Emil]

Looks interesting but how do you get the coins? If you can't buy them how can they be worth anything?

You can exchange and get bitcoins. People are exchanging with Paypal, LibertyReserve and others...

If you want to try it out you'll get 0,05 bitcoin here for free: http://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

[Emil]

I can't see this lasting long. Untraceable money screams terrorism.

The website might be taken down but it will a lot harder if not impossible to take down the bitcoin-network, it will continue to work without any site.

[Lint]

Looks interesting but how do you get the coins? If you can't buy them how can they be worth anything?

https://mtgox.com/

[bbobby86]

is this April joke...

[Emil]

is this April joke...

And for the second time, no. It's real.


http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/ - Creating all those threads because of a easteregg seems like a bit much work dont you think?

[Paul&John]

I still can't understand it lol
What does BitCoin has in common with CPU power? (and by CPU they mean the CPU's in PC's?)

[Lint]

is this April joke...

No. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/0...ship-resistant

[Agent 488]

the favorite currency of terrorists, drug dealers and child molesters.

[Emil]

the favorite currency of terrorists, drug dealers and child molesters.

Just like the USD then.

Some of the big advantages with Bitcoin is that they cant close down your account like Paypal have done to thousands of users. You also dont have to pay a transaction fee everytime you want to pay for something.

[Barry-xlovecam]

Won't work without an account tracking back end to cash out.

For barter it might work.

This is based (taken from) a very old idea. See: Scrip
Problem is unless you are a sovereign nation you can't issues a new currency.

I don't think the legal theory of these BitCoins being property not a form of currency will prevail ...

Too big of a threat to the governmental reserve bank system.

[woj]

anyone use it? how many bitcoins can you generate per day?

[Emil]

anyone use it? how many bitcoins can you generate per day?

It takes a while to generate coins. I let my PC generate coins for 2 days and didn't get any at all.

[czarina]

question is: where did the FIRST bitcoin owner get his first coins?

[Lint]

question is: where did the FIRST bitcoin owner get his first coins?

From mining.

[Deputy Chief Command]

question is: where did the FIRST bitcoin owner get his first coins?

you ask too many questions

[signupdamnit]

It takes a while to generate coins. I let my PC generate coins for 2 days and didn't get any at all.

I've read of some people using NVIDIA cards with CUDA to generate them. I guess this would help things. But what I have seen suggests it is intended to be barely profitable due to the required energy use. I suppose if one had their computer on all day and it was non-scaling with wasted cycles they might pull out 10-30 bitcoins in a month with a quad core and a CUDA capable card. Here's an interesting thought as well: http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comme..._instances_of/

[moeloubani]

the favorite currency of terrorists, drug dealers and child molesters.

Just like the USD then.

Oh snnnnnnnnnnnap

[grumpy]

nothing beats the green. Has been tried several times, why will it work now?

[CaptainHowdy]

[fatfoo]

The bitcoin.org site is interesting. The downloads don't take up too much space.

[Emil]

question is: where did the FIRST bitcoin owner get his first coins?

From generating the coins, you can still do it but it takes a lot of time.

[TheDoc]

I know someone using it... I'll shoot this thread over to him, if I can find him on my list. Maybe he'll jump in and answer some of your questions.

[MyBitcoin]

What about hackers?

You might want to check out the Bitcoin whitepaper. It's a PDF that goes over all of the attacks.

Bitcoin is peer-to-peer (P2P) so you'd have to DoS every single computer that is running it to stop it.

In terms of hacking the currency: anyone with that much processing power will most likely mine coins. They'd make far more money mining coins than attacking the network.

[MyBitcoin]

I still can't understand it lol
What does BitCoin has in common with CPU power? (and by CPU they mean the CPU's in PC's?)

Okay. Bitcoin mining is always confusing at first. Let me try my best to explain it.

There are a finite amount of Bitcoins (21 million to be exact). There will never be any more of them minted. Ever. So Bitcoin is literally an online analog to gold in the physical world. Each Bitcoin is cryptographically unique and can not be double-spent.

The value of Bitcoins is derived from supply and demand. This is the same way that other currencies get their value. Example: 1 USD = 0.98 CAD. Mtgox.com and BitcoinMarket.com are the two largest Bitcoin forex markets. They literally set the exchange rate between USD and Bitcoins. These rates are based on what users are willing to pay for them.

Bitcoin is literally a floating currency without any government/state control. It is the first currency designed to be specifically for online use and also global.

Okay, back to mining... The problem with a new currency is how to handle the distribution. We can't just give one person all of the coins right off the bat or the currency is worthless. We'd have one super rich guy and everyone else would have to work for him to get any coins. The magic of mining was invented as a clever way to evenly distribute the coins.

Each computer running the Bitcoin software that is participating in mining (you can opt out) is competing to solve the same mathematical problem. The first computer to solve it wins 50 Bitcoins. The mathematical problem slowly gets harder to solve as the network grows. This allows for a nice and steady inflation until all 21 million coins have been distributed.

For those who don't like to read, here is a very short film that describes how Bitcoin works: weusecoins.com

[MyBitcoin]

Won't work without an account tracking back end to cash out.

Please elaborate. There are already piles of exchangers that are more than willing to give you USD/CAD/GBP/EUR for the Bitcoins you collect with your websites (or mine).

For barter it might work.

All trade is essentially barter. We just use USDs as an intermediary.

This is based (taken from) a very old idea. See: Scrip
Problem is unless you are a sovereign nation you can't issues a new currency.

It's not really like scrip, because Bitcoin has a forex market (floating conversion rate) and it isn't isolated to one geographical area like traditional scrip was/is.

I don't think the legal theory of these BitCoins being property not a form of currency will prevail ...

Too big of a threat to the governmental reserve bank system.

In terms of legalities the biggest problem I've identified is that all Bitcoin debts will be without the force of law. This means if someone owes you Bitcoins and they refuse to pay them, you can't sue. (The ability to sue would imply that your government recognizes Bitcoin as legal tender. This will never happen.)

This isn't really a problem in my eyes for the sale of online goods, because Bitcoins can't be charged back anyway.

[MyBitcoin]

Thanks, TheDoc. I'll try my best to answer all of these questions.

I know someone using it... I'll shoot this thread over to him, if I can find him on my list. Maybe he'll jump in and answer some of your questions.

[MyBitcoin]

It takes a while to generate coins. I let my PC generate coins for 2 days and didn't get any at all.

Mining on a regular CPU won't really work anymore. There are many Bitcoin users that are using clusters of GPU (graphics cards) to mine. An average computer's CPU can't compete. You'd likely generate 50 coins per year (Around $48 USD at the current exchange rate).

The easiest/best way to get some Bitcoins is to sell real products/services for them. Bitcoin is ideal for the adult arena due to the fact that your account can't be frozen, there are no fees, and no chargebacks (impossible).

Here is a partial list of adult sites accepting Bitcoin, just to give you guys an idea of how it works.

bitcoinxxx.com
bitcoingayxxx.com
talksugar.com
chainedgirls.com

A couple of these sites have been operational for over a year. Some of them only accept Bitcoin.

Here is my shameless plug: I am the owner/operator of mybitcoin.com. What is it? It's a PayPal-like interface to Bitcoin that includes web-based transaction processing solutions. You can easily price your good in USDs and the mybitcoin engine converts the sales into Bitcoins on the fly through an easy to use shopping cart system.

[cam_girls]

Sounds good as long as no competitor sites get the monopoly and bitcoins become worthless.

I was actually trying to come up with a difficult maths problem for a similar purpose, to encrypt some data so that it was SAFE for a few years until you could decode it, i.e. a time lock encryption, noboby in sci.math would tell me a suitable number crunching hard maths problem, is yours proprietary or public domain?


EDIT: wait you're just an agent you wouldn't know the tech details..

[MyBitcoin]

Sounds good as long as no competitor sites get the monopoly and bitcoins become worthless.

Bitcoin is P2P. There is no way to monopolize it.

I was actually trying to come up with a difficult maths problem for a similar purpose, to encrypt some data so that it was SAFE for a few years until you could decode it, i.e. a time lock encryption, noboby in sci.math would tell me a suitable number crunching hard maths problem, is yours proprietary or public domain?

Bitcoin uses SHA-256 and ECC.

EDIT: wait you're just an agent you wouldn't know the tech details..

Why wouldn't I? Bitcoin is open source and the whitepapers are free to download.

[facialfreak]

OK .... I am trying to wrap my brain around this concept, and for the most part I am getting it ...

My question to you MyBitcoin, is what would be stopping you from going bump in the night - with all of our balances kept with your service??

BTW, I did already sign up for an account, however I have not started using it yet, as I am still in the research stage of doing my due diligence.

Cheers!

[cam_girls]

Bitcoin is P2P. There is no way to monopolize it.

You misinterpreted my statement.

What if IMONEY.COM runs a similar peer to peer system
and millions flock from bitcoin to IMONEY.COM and the
value of bitcoins drops from 98c to 0.000000001c ?

Not only that, the p2p software is centralised.

Bitcoin uses SHA-256 and ECC.


Why wouldn't I? Bitcoin is open source and the whitepapers are free to download.

For 1 you just skimmed my post for keywords and didn't answer that either.

[MoreMagic]

read

OK .... I am trying to wrap my brain around this concept, and for the most part I am getting it ...

My question to you MyBitcoin, is what would be stopping you from going bump in the night - with all of our balances kept with your service??

BTW, I did already sign up for an account, however I have not started using it yet, as I am still in the research stage of doing my due diligence.

Cheers!

[MyBitcoin]

OK .... I am trying to wrap my brain around this concept, and for the most part I am getting it ...

Great.

My question to you MyBitcoin, is what would be stopping you from going bump in the night - with all of our balances kept with your service??

We don't want you to trust us. That's why we have a Bitcoin forward feature.

As each sale is processed by MyBitcoin, we bounce the coins to your wallet instantly. The wallet is stored locally on your computer. You literally hold the crypto keys to your own money. (Be sure to back that file up. It's called "wallet.dat".)

BTW, I did already sign up for an account, however I have not started using it yet, as I am still in the research stage of doing my due diligence.

Cheers!

Great. Our service is 100% free. I know this seems 'odd'. We make our money in other areas of the Bitcoin economy currently.

We do plan on adding some fancy (optional) services that we will charge for in the future. Such as integration support, subscription management software, etc.

[cam_girls]

why is it peer to peer?

If you put a mirror at bitcoin.info and bitcoin.net
and run them on seperate servers in different countries
you could manage transactions using a website
with the same functionality and same security.

You don't need peer to peer to store the account
information in each users accounts.

It's like using a courier to go from person A to person B
to tell them a phone number.

[MyBitcoin]

You misinterpreted my statement.

What if IMONEY.COM runs a similar peer to peer system
and millions flock from bitcoin to IMONEY.COM and the
value of bitcoins drops from 98c to 0.000000001c ?

Sure, that could happen in theory. If everyone were to sell their coins at the same time they could crash the price down. Fortunately, there are enough people transacting with Bitcoins now that we've reached price stability.

The US dollar is not immune to this problem either. If China were to sell all of their treasury bonds they would crash the US's economy overnight.

People would only flee Bitcoin for something better, or if there was a fundamental problem with the design of the currency. So far (2 years) it has been rock solid.

I don't see a flee happening. In fact, we are seeing people flee other payment systems to Bitcoin. Mainly because Bitcoins can't be frozen and have no chargebacks.

Not only that, the p2p software is centralised.

How so? Do you mean that the development of the software is centralized? It isn't. It's an open source project on GIT and Source Forge.

It is true that bitcoin.org could be shut down, but not unlike common file-sharing apps, the currency will continue to function.

It's truly revolutionary.

For 1 you just skimmed my post for keywords and didn't answer that either.

I didn't answer your questions regarding a time-sensitive cryptography system because it is outside of the scope of this thread.

[facialfreak]

where exactly do I find this wallet.dat file?

Also, I read on one of the BitCoin sites, that in all likelihood, the US government (or Canadian government, or [you fill in the blanks]) will simply make running the BitCoin software, or accepting BitCoin on your website(s) etc. illegal, when and if BitCoin starts to gain enough popularity for the government(s) to lose taxation revenue in quantities for them to be concerned over - ie: when BitCoin is used by more than a few hundred 'hobbyist' users ...

Could you give me your take on this?

[MyBitcoin]

why is it peer to peer?

Why are file-sharing applications peer to peer? So they can't be shut down. It also makes the network more robust.

You can't just take down one or two websites and take Bitcoin offline. Bitcoin is a software application that runs on hundreds of thousands of PCs (like yours) - all at once.

You'd have to fly all over the world and knock out all of them to stop Bitcoin from running. That, of course, is impossible.

If you put a mirror at bitcoin.info and bitcoin.net
and run them on seperate servers in different countries
you could manage transactions using a website
with the same functionality and same security.

That's the old way of thinking.

Bitcoin runs on a few hundred thousands of PCs around the globe. Each PC is a "mirror". The ledger of transactions is mirrored across all of the nodes like a bit torrent movie is.

You don't need peer to peer to store the account
information in each users accounts.

The system you are comparing this to is obsolete. Centralizing currency and power in one spot leads to corruption.

Let's say I ran the system you are proposing. What is stopping me from just creating money and putting it in my account? Nothing. Bitcoin's P2P model and cryptographic checking stops this.

It's like using a courier to go from person A to person B
to tell them a phone number.

Nope. Each Bitcoin node (a computer running the Bitcoin software) has it's own wallet file. You literally hold the coins on your own computer. There isn't a website that holds the coins for you. (With the small exception of MyBitcoin. It can hold your coins temporarily until you forward them off to some other place. Usually this is to the client running on your PC.)

[facialfreak]

Lets say I have no intention of 'mining' coins .... and I am not running the CPU-intensive SETI software, where do I keep my coins then??

Also ... what would stop a cyber criminal from "stealing" your wallet.dat file?? I mean they can steal banking info off your computer (which is supposed to be "secure" ...), Why can they not steal your wallet.dat file??

[cam_girls]

How so? Do you mean that the development of the software is centralized? It isn't. It's an open source project on GIT and Source Forge.

So? Whoever owns BITCOIN.ORG can substitute any software he wants at any time

If you allowed people to TOP UP THEIR ACCOUNT with cash it's just another payment provider.

Oldest software trick in the book, DISABLE the key features and people will buy an upgrade, done to death by Microsoft.

Top marks for trying to get a reliable eCommerce solution, but it's just crippleware disguised as something new.

[TangibleAsset]

What's to stop people from using botnets to generate bitcoins?

[cam_girls]

Why are file-sharing applications peer to peer? So they can't be shut down. It also makes the network more robust.

You can't just take down one or two websites and take Bitcoin offline. Bitcoin is a software application that runs on hundreds of thousands of PCs (like yours) - all at once.

You'd have to fly all over the world and knock out all of them to stop Bitcoin from running. That, of course, is impossible.

Yes it's SUPER SECURE!

But taking down 3 independant nodes is almost as hard as taking down 100,000

If some agency were to specifically target BITCOIN nodes they could just take down the BITCOIN to cash processors instead.

So you solved 1/3 of the security problem, and still have no way to add funds!