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How To Use Bitcoin – The Most Important Creation In The History Of Man

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psionl0 said:
I think you might have the government-bank relationship backwards. The Cyprus solution was all about bailing out the banks - not the government.
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No. It was about the government needing to get certain ratios of assets and debts in the banks as dictated by the European Union. My point is the abuse of the banking system that occurs when the government may at it's discretion deem one or another bank to be 'failing'.
Tyke said:
The rising value is a killer....
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Ah, quite the reverse.
Tyke said:
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It's funny you should say that because I just did a search and apparently the Thai government have banned it...
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The Thai central bank 'banned it'. They have no authority to make law and thus cannot make the use of bitcoin illegal.
Tyke said:
....it's probably harder to determine whether you paid the right taxes or not if you're using something like Bitcoin.
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No. There are established methods in the tax code for reporting profits where foreign currencies are involved.
 
mhaze said:
Ah, no. I answered that. If a person has the ACH set up, same day or next day (depending on banking hours and time zones) translation bitcoin to currency. If he doesn't, like a first time user, delays should be expected.
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But that depends on them having access to ACH and an exchange that uses it. Isn't that a US system?
A little harder to confiscate? Bullcrap.
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Bitcoin does not need to be on a computer. You can print the keys out and hide them. So no, "THEY" don't "already know where your money is."
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If Bitcoin were banned and government took control of the exchanges, what would your hidden stash be worth do you think?

Hypothetically speaking, let's say there was an organisation that kept a record of internet traffic and IP sources/destinations, had access to ISPs, inserted backdoors in most major operating systems, and had broken the encryption that secures the blockchain (or weakened the standard to the same effect). Would you be as sure?
Mt Gox always rides higher for a number of reasons. They have an established respected presence and can handle sums which others cannot. Offhand say, >20k USD. But given that the total volume in btc is something like 50,000 per day, large sums dropped at a single moment will affect the price (50k/day is about 140 per 10 minute trading interval). 140 at say 1000 usd each is 140,000 USD, so dropping a sizeable fraction of that will affect the price during that trading interval.
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Doesn't that make them a target for people buying at other exchanges and selling there?
 
mhaze said:
Ah, quite the reverse.
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That's a... really convincing argument you've put forward...
The Thai central bank 'banned it'. They have no authority to make law and thus cannot make the use of bitcoin illegal.
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From a quick search it seems that the Thai central bank have been given responsibility over foreign exchange by the government . They're not totally impotent it seems.
No. There are established methods in the tax code for reporting profits where foreign currencies are involved.
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But we're talking about folks hiding their wealth, no?
 
Tyke said:
But that depends on them having access to ACH and an exchange that uses it. Isn't that a US system?

If Bitcoin were banned and government took control of the exchanges, what would your hidden stash be worth do you think?

Hypothetically speaking, let's say there was an organisation that kept a record of internet traffic and IP sources/destinations, had access to ISPs, inserted backdoors in most major operating systems, and had broken the encryption that secures the blockchain (or weakened the standard to the same effect). Would you be as sure?
Doesn't that make them a target for people buying at other exchanges and selling there?
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What are you trying to do, make answers up? It's more important to actually look at how things work. Are practical, real world arguments based on your speculation?

The course of events does not. Actual facts matter.

The block chain doesn't hold the private keys. The block chain is PUBLIC.
 
Tyke said:
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But we're talking about folks hiding their wealth, no?
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The use or discussion of cash instruments does not imply 'hiding wealth' except in the mind of some paranoid whack job.

It is true, though that an ecurrency might facilitate currency flight and there are cases where that would be a very, very good thing. Take the Nigerian hyperinflation of just a few years ago. We may be entering an era where the massive human suffering, malnutrition and death that accompanied that could simply not occur, because the popular wealth and the substitute currency would move in so rapidly that the hyperinflation trap could not occur.

Don't be American-centric (or Euro-centric) with respect to the arguments pro or con bitcoin.
 
AdMan said:
This thing is a joke.
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It started out as a joke, but has turned into something more sinister.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Seizure of Additional $28 Million Worth of Bitcoins Belonging to Ross William Ulbricht
in March and April 2013, ULBRICHT solicited a murder-for-hire of a Silk Road vendor, known as “FriendlyChemist,” who was threatening to reveal the real names and addresses of a long list of Silk Road users unless ULBRICHT paid him $500,000. Upon receiving the threat from “FriendlyChemist” to expose the names of Silk Road users, ULBRICHT wrote to another Silk Road user, telling that user that “FriendlyChemist” is “causing me problems,” and adding: "I would like to put a bounty on his head if it’s not too much trouble for you".
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Anybody who advocates for Bitcoins has to realize that they are supporting a system which attracts criminals. Whilst legitimate currencies can also be used for illicit purposes, the 'advantages' that Bitcoin fanboys praise it for are same ones that criminals are using it for. Lack of regulation and oversight, anonymity, ability to transfer large amounts 'under the radar' etc. all features that proper currencies lack - for good reason. On the down side it is much more volatile and less secure, but criminals don't mind or are even exploiting its weaknesses!

psionl0 said:
Governments are doing more to make bitcoin look attractive than any bitcoin proponent could.
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Only in the minds of criminals and conspiracy nutters, who would hate the government no matter what they did anyway. For the rest of us, Bitcoin is looking more tarnished than ever...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Theft_and_exchange_shut_downs
On 19 June 2011, a security breach of the Mt.Gox bitcoin exchange caused the nominal price of a bitcoin to fraudulently drop to one cent...

In July 2011, the operator of Bitomat, the third largest bitcoin exchange, announced that he lost access to his wallet.dat file with about 17,000 bitcoins (roughly equivalent to 220,000 USD at that time)....

In August 2011, MyBitcoin... declared that it was hacked... leaving more than 78,000 bitcoins (roughly equivalent to 800,000 USD at that time) unaccounted for...

In early August 2012... Bitcoinica was hacked twice in 2012, which led to allegations of neglecting the safety of customers' money and cheating them out of withdrawal requests.

In late August 2012, an operation titled Bitcoin Savings and Trust was shut down by the owner, allegedly leaving around 5.6 million USD in bitcoin-based debts...

In September 2012, Bitfloor... reported being hacked, with 24,000 bitcoins (roughly equivalent to 250,000 USD) stolen.

On 3 April 2013, Instawallet, a web-based wallet provider, was hacked, resulting in the theft of over 35,000 bitcoins. With a price of 129.90 USD per bitcoin at the time, or nearly 4.6 million USD in total...

On 11 August 2013, the Bitcoin Foundation announced that a bug in a pseudorandom number generator within the Android operating system had been exploited to steal from users' wallets...

A Bitcoin bank, operated from Australia but stored on servers in the USA, was hacked on 23 and 26 October 2013, with a loss of 4100 Bitcoins, or over 1 million AUD.

In Hong Kong a Bitcoin trading platform owned by Global Bond Limited (GBL) vanished with 30 million yuan(US$5 million) from 500 investors on 26th October 2013.
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Roger Ramjets said:
It started out as a joke, but has turned into something more sinister.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Seizure of Additional $28 Million Worth of Bitcoins Belonging to Ross William Ulbricht

Anybody who advocates for Bitcoins has to realize that they are supporting a system which attracts criminals....
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what utter nonsense. You realize, do you not, that because of bitcoin's characteristics THESE CRIMINALS WERE LOCATED AND CAUGHT?

The FBI never had a better opportunity for honeypots.
 
mhaze said:
what utter nonsense. You realize, do you not, that because of bitcoin's characteristics THESE CRIMINALS WERE LOCATED AND CAUGHT?

The FBI never had a better opportunity for honeypots.
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NSA...FBI to the rescue!

(Actually the last I heard on radio the FBI may be one of NSA's 'customers'.)
 
The use or discussion of cash instruments does not imply 'hiding wealth' except in the mind of some paranoid whack job.

It is true, though that an ecurrency might facilitate currency flight and there are cases where that would be a very, very good thing.
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You explicitly mentioned the Cypriots who hid their money using Bitcoin. You brought that up, not me.
mhaze said:
You realize, do you not, that because of bitcoin's characteristics THESE CRIMINALS WERE LOCATED AND CAUGHT?
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I'm not even sure what your point is any more. One minute you're saying that Bitcoin is great for people keeping their money safe from confiscation, the next that it's design is perfectly suited to tracking it down.
 
Tyke said:
You explicitly mentioned the Cypriots who hid their money using Bitcoin. You brought that up, not me.
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People all over Europe had money in Cyprus banks, it was a banking haven. Removing money from Cyrpus banks is not the same as 'hiding money'. Even if a citizen of Cyprus, removing money from banks over the 100k cap before said money was taken was not 'hiding money'.

(Although I would sympathize with anyone who desired to hide money from seizures of the sort that occurred in Cyprus.)

Tyke said:
.. One minute you're saying that Bitcoin is great for people keeping their money safe from confiscation, the next that it's design is perfectly suited to tracking it down.
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No, I didn't. The characteristics of the phenomena known as "Silk Road" are not one and the same as the characteristics of the phenomena known as bitcoin. The prior poster confused the two, illogically.

To understand this matter, consider the situation posed by the following assertion.

(A) "All transactions should be done by methods and with instruments that allow full government oversight and record keeping".

Credit cards, checks and other bank instruments do (or can be easily twisted) to comply with this assertion.

Cash, bitcoin being simply an internet cash, can not be so twisted. Cash may in certain cases be mandated to have government oversight, for example, when cash was used to purchase a gun. There the FFL would record the transaction along with the records on the purchaser. This is a characteristic of the category of items sold, not of the instrument used.

Requiring (A) is a different matter entirely.

The method by which the FBI could trackback transactions on Silk Road or other criminal activity would be simply to require the private keys be handed over. Then in each step of a chain, they could trace back, using warrants and search orders.

This is in opposition to the NSA/FBI/CIA current drift toward just recording everything and having everything available for whatever purpose they or their masters desire. This does not work with bitcoin or cash.
 
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Democracy Simulator said:
Many people have already pointed out that this already happens with cash.

Also worth mentioning the vast sums of money that banks like HSBC have taken and moved around from drug gangs and terrorists.
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But cash is a commodity that is illegal to import and export with out making declarations like gold and so on.
 
ponderingturtle said:
But cash is a commodity that is illegal to import and export with out making declarations like gold and so on.
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Above 10,000 USD last I heard, yes, the green slip you fill out on an international flight requires that reporting.

So what? Criminals don't obey the law by definition, so the "rule" affects non criminals, in other words, you and I.

Along the southern border of the US with Mexico, NONE of those rules are followed.

The point here would be I think that the international transaction with bitcoin gives you and I back, for that small sphere of activity, the privacy that we lost with the rules that supposedly targeted terrorists and criminals, but which in implementation targeted us.
 
mhaze said:
Even if a citizen of Cyprus, removing money from banks over the 100k cap before said money was taken was not 'hiding money'.
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I don't think the government would necessarily share that view.
The method by which the FBI could trackback transactions on Silk Road or other criminal activity would be simply to require the private keys be handed over. Then in each step of a chain, they could trace back, using warrants and search orders.
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Why do they even need the keys when the entire sequence of transactions is public?
 
Tyke said:
I don't think the government would necessarily share that view.
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Well, that's part of my point. You don't agree with the actions of some governments, neither do I. Some are despotic, some are fascist, some kill innocent people in huge numbers.

Other governments, we consider more or less legitimate.

You can't think of bitcoin only within the framework of a 'good government'. It's utility for the individual exists where ever the user is. Cyprus is a recent and a good example.

I don't live there, and I didn't have money there, so I am free to say what I wish about the Cyprus government.

Except the nambly pambly politically correct overlords of Randi would censor it. But you get my drift.

Tyke said:
Why do they even need the keys when the entire sequence of transactions is public?
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Because of asymmetric crypto key pairs, consisting of a private and a public key. Only the public keys are in the block chain and it is published for all to see.

http://blockchain.info/

I could for example point you to a transaction where I purchased a starbucks gift card. You would see my public key, and that of the seller. This is called a semi-anonymous database. When a private key is released or printed, anyone who sees it or gets a copy may take (steal) it's contents. Therefore, the private keys cannot be in the public database and remain the property of the individual.

Thus you can see that an individual, with his private key, might travel between Cyprus and other countries freely. He would not have any reason to tell anyone, actually, because he didn't "take money in or out of the country". The record of the money was in the block chain, and remained so regardless of his physical movements. Arguably, the interests of the Cyprus government would be when he exchanged that money for a foreign currency in some amount(s).

As some level of consumer use of bitcoin increases, that might not be necessary for our hypothetical traveler. That would seem to imply the power of money previously the domain of a nation state, had been usurped by the small guy - the individual. Sheer speculation of course, but interesting.
 
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Belz... said:
http://preev.com/

Wow... 700$ at this very moment !!!

Make that 724$, ten minutes later.

Let's see how the most important creation in the history of man handles this.
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A satoshi is still affordable. At just a hundred millionth of one bitcoin, you will be able to own satoshis for some time.

ROFL....
 
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