Discuss!
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about damn time?
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/me sells bitcoins in wallet
This is interesting:
“…What was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked “systemically important institutions” and “too big to fail” has become something even worse: a system completely controlled by just a handful of people…”
What would a more democratic medium of exchange look like? Time dollars?
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That was an interesting read.
The fork is dead! Long live the fork!
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I bet Cory writes a blog post about it three or four days from now.
I remember ten years ago when I read things on Boing Boing before everywhere else. Now Twitter usually beats this site by a few days.
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Oh Noes! The $USD is dying too! (All within the previous year)
http://yourarmoredassets.com/diversified-wealth/the-dollar-is-dying-whats-your-escape-plan.stml
Honestly, how many times has BTC’s demise been predicted now? Are the investors who own the hardware to generate them and the coins they’ve generated going to walk away, saying, “Oh well, it was fun while it lasted”?
The sky falls every day.
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Did you actually read the article or ponder the credentials of the author?
As a former Bitcoin miner (I mined on hardware for about 1 1/2 years) and enthusiast, he actually looks like he’s speaking the truth to me and he would know far better than I do. He’s rather famous in Bitcoin development circles.
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Busted! I admit that I did not. I was riffing on the silly headline.
I’ll read that in a bit here.
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Just like any penny stock? How far has the dollar fallen in our hyperinflation? Wait, what? Sigh.
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That was an infuriating read.
(Looks in my wallet, sees cash, says fuckit)
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That was fascinating, thank you.
One hopes that control can be wrested away and things can be set straight.
I think the author of that piece is sending out an important alarm, and I’d not like to see that experiment end yet. So here’s hoping.
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I can’t say I’m a btc enthusiast. I’ve mined, I’ve played around, I track transactions, and I used to know a few decent mixers. But it just feels so much like Tor–yeah, great idea, but it only takes a few dozen douche canoes to ruin it for everyone.
BTW, Satoshi is actually Matt Damon.
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I thought he was Ben Afleck.
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Hey, I’m surprised too. I thought he was Gabe Newell!
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I thought bitcoin sounded amazing when I heard about it a few years ago. Nearly-instant global transactions to anyone. No worry of identity theft. No ridiculous fees, delays, inconvenience, and bureaucracy. No central Paypal-like organization that could lock up, take, or lose your money. And you could get paid just for allocating the idle cycles on your computer!
That was already too late. 
There was a supply/demand issue with the mining hashrates where more powerful processors could scoop all the money while slower processors were still trying to catch up. It was already becoming useless without dedicated high powered graphics cards, and then custom hardware came out and took over.
So I thought maybe I’d just buy some, but there was no straightforward way to do so that didn’t take several days of transactions involving somewhat shady exchanges and middlemen, and possibly linking your bank account to them.
Now I’m glad I didn’t get into it. High fees, transaction lag, and nearly-centralized control by people who don’t even understand it? No thanks.
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I’d hope a new currency would liberate shared value for otherwise economically trapped and isolated people (e.g. by predatory debt service). If bitcoin had that sort of potential, the case wasn’t persuasively made.
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A parallel economy that frees people from effective serfdom? Perhaps a political system could be developed that would work in tandem with it - maybe a decentralised system of workers’ councils?
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