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

[Anders Lindman]

So any one that ACTUALLY WANTS TO UNDERSTAND BITCOIN (and I don't really care if you want to understand it to talk it up, or down) go get a wallet.

I actually have a Bitcoin wallet. Somewhere. I just tested it and got a fraction of a bitcoin transferred to my wallet for free. Maybe that fraction is worth a lot today! I don't remember how large the fraction was.

 

[psionl0]

Just to be clear, are you denying that BTC is used for speculatory purposes ? Or did I misunderstand your objection ?

It's comparing apples with lemons. The tulip mania was all about bidding for something that had yet to come into existence. That created the double jeopardy that the item might not come into existence or that when it did, the demand for it had fallen. This is very different to buying something that you can take delivery of almost immediately.

The property bubble is also an invalid comparison. It was caused by NINJA loans. The bankers' belief that property prices would always rise fast enough to cover these worthless loans was a global recession in the making.

The dot-com bubble might be a more realistic comparison to bitcoin but I would need to do further research into it.

It might not be that simplistic, but the very fast rise of its value is not indicative of stability.

If that is what was being argued I would have no problem with it. However, the argument runs more along the lines of, "bitcoin has been subjected so many 'catastrophic' price falls that the price is now down to $1200". Baby-babble would make more sense.

 

[mhaze]

I actually have a Bitcoin wallet. Somewhere. I just tested it and got a fraction of a bitcoin transferred to my wallet for free. Maybe that fraction is worth a lot today! I don't remember how large the fraction was.

No Prob!

Just transfer whatever it was to

19LmQApGB5j3XRBXUTGSvGYz9Xv1rBmPZ4

and I'll be happen to tell you how much it is worth today!

 

[mhaze]

A flaw I pointed out earlier. The same thing could have happened if the hard drive failed or got corrupted or accidentally formatted.

the flaw was of the user not the bitcoin system. The user should have printed out paper copies, made backups, or simply had a list of his private keys.

 

[Puppycow]

the flaw was of the user not the bitcoin system. The user should have printed out paper copies, made backups, or simply had a list of his private keys.

Any bitcoins that truly get lost and lost forever means fewer total bitcoins in the world, right? I guess that doesn't really matter, but it does reduce the total supply of bitcoins that can be traded on the market.

 

[psionl0]

Any bitcoins that truly get lost and lost forever means fewer total bitcoins in the world, right? I guess that doesn't really matter, but it does reduce the total supply of bitcoins that can be traded on the market.

That is sheer genius!!!

(Not having a go at you - just some of the other posters here).

 

[Anders Lindman]

the flaw was of the user not the bitcoin system. The user should have printed out paper copies, made backups, or simply had a list of his private keys.

Another example of user unfriendliness. It's like in the past when only scientists in white lab coats could operate computers. This is the 21th century! Technical details like that the system should take care of automatically for the users. Having the option to backup coins oneself is a different matter. That's useful. But to demand users to have to deal with that themselves is bad usability design.

Then some may say that users have to be responsible for backup of their computer files, and having to back up bitcoins is not different than that. To that I say: to demand that users should have to manage backups themselves, that 90s technology! Let's move past that, please!

 

[Vermonter]

No kidding???? It's a CONVENIENT METHOD????

Guess you've answered your own question about why people are headed to bitcoin for payments.

Let me add one thing. I really, sincerely do not like giving my credit card number out over and over to people on the internet. Sooner or later, that will have bad consequences. That is the main reason Paypal is a preferred mechanism. That is a similar characteristic of Bitcoin. FYI.

I notice that you haven't addressed my other arguments.

Paying with Bitcoin is the opposite of convenient. You have to agree upon the exchange rate (which, as established, fluctuates wildly), then you have to wait 10-15 minutes for the transaction to be authorized and completed. Sure, there's some semblance of anonymity, but the vast majority of people couldn't care less. They want something that's easy to use and that has fast transactions.

As for your hesitation regarding credit cards, that's fine. You shouldn't just give out your card to any company. Quite frankly I'd never use Bitcoin to pay for anything. I'll use Paypal or the build-in payment method instead of having to gamble on buying this crypto-currency and praying that the exchange rate doesn't crash in period of time before I make a purchase with it.

However, Paypal is not similar to Bitcoin. You aren't buying Paypal Bucks in order to use their service. You don't have to worry about the exchange rate fluctuating wildly within the span of minutes. I can pay for an eBay purchase through Paypal and know that my money will still be enough to buy the product.

As for other places that use a third-party service to process transactions, even that isn't the same as PizzaForBitcoins. There's a wings place that I order from frequently. I place the order through them, and they have a third-party vendor process the transaction. The important distinction is that I'm interacting directly with the wings shop, and they handle the payment. I don't (directly) pay for their fee to the payment processor.

With PizzaForBitcoins you place your order through the third-party vendor, and then they place the order for you. There's actually a company in my town that provides a similar service - you order your food through them, and then they order the food from the actual restaurant. You pay out the nose for this, though.

Remember: Paypal is not a currency. It will never be a currency, and comparing it to a currency is absurd.

 

[Anders Lindman]

Information technology should make things easier for people. To demand that say a grandma who hardly even uses a computer should have to back up her bank accounts would be a step in the wrong direction.

 

[fagin]

Okay, let's do this differently. See, here is what I figure. There are a lot of pretty smart people here but they all come from different points of view and so forth. So any one that ACTUALLY WANTS TO UNDERSTAND BITCOIN (and I don't really care if you want to understand it to talk it up, or down) go get a wallet. Coinbase, Blockchain.info, Amory, etc.

Then post a public key to JREF, and I will put $1.00 in that wallet.

Until and if you do that, and get some actual experience, you most likely are going to simply be in the category of people that don't know what you are talking about. Not your fault, it's just sort of like riding a bicycle.

So here is the way you do it, you simply post a receive address:

19LmQApGB5j3XRBXUTGSvGYz9Xv1rBmPZ4

Or you can post the QR

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=29057http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_142245297f7fade297.png

It should be clear how to post the QR from within the wallet.

Then we'll do four things.

• Receive funds
• Send funds
• Use a QR code
• Print a paper bitcoin

After which, if you want you can delete the wallet.


Let's see if anyone takes my challenge.

OK, I tried - I got this
1hrA12CWGQPFTtk1jL2s7ujQPe5bofT4v

Look forward to receiving a bit of a bit.

 

[Wildy]

The fact that the USD denominated bitcoin price is skyrocketing indicates that people are dumping USD for them.

Or there's rampant speculation with them or that there are people hoarding them. And it's quite clear that people are hoarding the things which would have an effect on the value of bitcoins.

The new ecurrency which does not exist that lets governments track every bubble gum and hamburger purchase you make and which the money printers tell us to trust will enable a new round of stealing by corrupt government officials as they make it out of thin air.

Weren't you saying that bitcoins were perfectly traceable a few pages ago?

Also, are you really saying that government backed fiat currency is bad while privately created fiat currency is good?

There is no justification for giving any time frame in which bitcoin might enter a decline. It is entirely possible that given current trends, the satoshi (10^-8 BTC) might end up costing more than a dollar in a few years time. By that time, a lot of cyber-geeks and anarcho-libertarians will be richer than Bill Gates. Ignore that possibility at your peril.

They would be theoretically richer. As long as bitcoins are throttled by the fact that pretty much nobody accepts them the real value of those coins is dependent on the exchanges. If the exchanges don't have enough money to cover the costs of people cashing out then it doesn't matter how much you have in bitcoins, they're not going to be worth anything. As long as the exchanges can cash out the bitcoins will be worth something. Just look at how people are showing concerns about MtGox because their withdrawals are taking a fair amount of time to get processed.

 

[Belz...]

It's comparing apples with lemons. The tulip mania was all about bidding for something that had yet to come into existence. That created the double jeopardy that the item might not come into existence or that when it did, the demand for it had fallen. This is very different to buying something that you can take delivery of almost immediately.

The property bubble is also an invalid comparison. It was caused by NINJA loans. The bankers' belief that property prices would always rise fast enough to cover these worthless loans was a global recession in the making.

The dot-com bubble might be a more realistic comparison to bitcoin but I would need to do further research into it.

Thank you. Wasn't that better than just saying "no it ain't" ?

NINJA loans

And we all know how frightening loan sharks Ninjas make.

 

[psionl0]

Thank you. Wasn't that better than just saying "no it ain't" ?

Not really. It's all been discussed before and within a few posts time, you can be sure that another "bright spark" will put up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania as if nobody has ever considered that comparison before.

 

[psionl0]

They would be theoretically richer. As long as bitcoins are throttled by the fact that pretty much nobody accepts them the real value of those coins is dependent on the exchanges. If the exchanges don't have enough money to cover the costs of people cashing out then it doesn't matter how much you have in bitcoins, they're not going to be worth anything.

It is not logical to suppose that the price (demand) for bitcoins would continue to increase at a rapid exponential rate but the opportunities to sell or spend the bitcoins would remain static.

 

[mhaze]

Another example of user unfriendliness. It's like in the past when only scientists in white lab coats could operate computers. This is the 21th century! Technical details like that the system should take care of automatically for the users. Having the option to backup coins oneself is a different matter. That's useful. But to demand users to have to deal with that themselves is bad usability design.

Then some may say that users have to be responsible for backup of their computer files, and having to back up bitcoins is not different than that. To that I say: to demand that users should have to manage backups themselves, that 90s technology! Let's move past that, please!

of course, you'd just have the Un manage everybody's backups (ie, keep everyone's data). Yeah, that sounds great (not).

I notice that you haven't addressed my other arguments.

Paying with Bitcoin is the opposite of convenient. You have to agree upon the exchange rate (which, as established, fluctuates wildly), then you have to wait 10-15 minutes for the transaction to be authorized and completed. Sure, there's some semblance of anonymity, but the vast majority of people couldn't care less. They want something that's easy to use and that has fast transactions.

As for your hesitation regarding credit cards, that's fine. You shouldn't just give out your card to any company. Quite frankly I'd never use Bitcoin to pay for anything. I'll use Paypal or the build-in payment method instead of having to gamble on buying this crypto-currency.....

No, I didn't address your other arguments. I was hoping you'd see they made no sense and move on, but apparently not. You see, what is wrong with these is not that you don't think they are correct and logical - but that these decisions are made in real time by millions of people who vote with their pocketbook.

Look at it this way - I've just spent like, 30 seconds to order Hulu+ with bitcoin, maybe less than that, it was more like Amazon one click, and I run into two laborious long paragraphs by you lecturing me why bitcoin is so hard and slow and difficult to use. If you were me would you take those paragraphs seriously?

....
Weren't you saying that bitcoins were perfectly traceable a few pages ago?

Also, are you really saying that government backed fiat currency is bad while privately created fiat currency is good?.....

The bitcoin is tracable back through the blockchain by computer forensics experts armed with supeonas as at every step they must make a connection that requires asking that individual who he sold to and bought from.

It is also traceable by deduction. If you knew that X sent 1 btc to 20 indivduals on a certain date, you could look at the blockchain for activity of that sort.

RE government fiat currency versus private currency. Generally speaking if it were possible to take control of money out of the hands of trusted intermediaries, of which government is one as the originator, this would be a good thing because it would mean moving a great deal of power - and wealth - from the state to the individual. One way to look at the recent surge in bitcoin valuations is to consider that surge as part of that wealth transfer, but at a very early stage.

sort of like 'yeah, they used to print trillions more dollars which was stealing from us....no more, not with bitcoin...."

That assumes the private currency actually works fairly well. This is not an 'either/or' question but more along the lines of giving consumers a choice in currency instead of forcing them to only use one.

 

[Anders Lindman]

of course, you'd just have the Un manage everybody's backups (ie, keep everyone's data). Yeah, that sounds great (not).

The UN would only act as a certification agency for the local unicoin transaction hubs which are managed by the countries themselves. And instead of requiring that the coins are stored locally for each user, the coins can be stored in the transaction chain itself. It's just digital information! The important thing is to guarantee the ownership of each coin, not that grandma should have to run backup programs for them, lol.

 

[remirol]

Question for Bitcoin skeptics: How high would the price of Bitcoin have to get before you admit that you are wrong and Bitcoin really is The Most Important Creation In The History Of Man?

The exact height of the price is largely irrelevant, since BTC is trying to become a currency and thus a reliable store of value -- should it become that, it will have an established exchange rate in USD/GBP/RMB.

For BTC to be anything other than a speculator's toy (which it currently is), the value would have to remain stable and nonzero for a good, long period of time. (The value was, of course, stable and effectively-zero for plenty of time at its inception, but that does nobody any good). Then, for it to actually gain widespread acceptance, real vendors will have to start accepting it in BTC form.

Right now almost no vendors accept BTC, and that is the second largest reason it's nothing more than a toy right now -- mhaze is spending a lot of effort and spin trying to pretend that you can buy things with BTC, but when you have to use an intermediary to convert it to USD first, that's nothing more than buying things with USD and paying an extra charge to the middleman.

When I can pay my utility bills or mortgage with BTC, _then_ i'll consider it to have arrived. I'll consider it to be on its way when I can do something as simple as order from a major online retailer and pay in BTC to that retailer. That means "Amazon, Papa John's, etc. accepting BTC directly". Of course, no retailers worth their salt are doing this because the price spike over the last month would ruin them -- the minute one of those top 100 BTC holders decides to cash out any significant part of their holdings, all hell will break loose, and anyone who sold a good or service for .1 BTC (equivalent of what, $100 right now?) is going to be really pissed when those BTC are suddenly only worth, say, $25. $75 dollar loss soaked by the merchant? I don't think so -- and that's why you can't buy anything other than drugs or CP with Bitcoin.

Oh, and finally: Tippit posted an interesting article I alluded to, and I wanted to point out something above -- Not a single one of those top 100 BTC holders has made a transaction after May 7, 2013. Bitcoin prices around that time (between 5/1 and 5/14) ranged from between 80 to 140 USD. None of the Bitwhales are involved in this bubble, and that's not at all surprising in the least bit. But it does mean that everyone who's not a Bitwhale and is purchasing coins right now is at great risk from one of those same whales deciding to dectuple (it's a word now, dammit) his investment and cashing out while it's on the current ludicrous spike.

I don't buy into the $20/40 table with only $1000 for a reason -- a lot of amateur speculators are about to learn the same lesson.

 

[mhaze]

OK, I tried - I got this
1hrA12CWGQPFTtk1jL2s7ujQPe5bofT4v

Look forward to receiving a bit of a bit.

Done. Here is screen clip.



Now a couple comments. You can see clearly that this was a one click send. You can see that I have instant choice of sending in btc or a currency (in my case, USD is defaulted to). From the screen, you can't see my sending public address, but it will appear shortly in the block chain.

RE privacy, etc. Clearly if someone searched the block chain for the comment "JREF challege" this should come up, right? Maybe we'll do that a bit later. Then, by going back and maybe googling "JREF challenge" (big maybe) or "JREF challenge bitcoin" someone could locate this transaction as being between JREF forum members mhaze and fagin, then if with supeona powers, force JREF to hand over email and contact data. Of course, if we had subscribed to JREF with one use email, that would be a dead end. But wait! Vbulletin logs the IP addresses, says the LEO forensics guy. JReF hands those over and the guy goes hunting. But we were using VPNs and logging on through a ".ru".

That's the way it would work or not work. We'll pull the block chain data of the transaction up later today. Meanwhile, anyone want to actually get in the game, just get in like Fagin did. Differing views, past arguments, don't matter.

People that are into bitcoin wildly vary - libertarians, socialists, actual communists, anarchists, etc. They are all over the world.

 

[mhaze]

The UN would only act as a certification agency for the local unicoin transaction hubs which are managed by the countries themselves. And instead of requiring that the coins are stored locally for each user, the coins can be stored in the transaction chain itself. It's just digital information! The important thing is to guarantee the ownership of each coin, not that grandma should have to run backup programs for them, lol.

So you think 'trusted intermediaries' are a solution, not a problem? The Russian mobsters sitting on millions of US credit card numbers and personal data would just LOVE your 'solution'...

LOL...

 

[mhaze]

The exact height of the price is largely irrelevant, since BTC is trying to become a currency and thus a reliable store of value -- ....
Right now almost no vendors accept BTC, and that is the second largest reason it's nothing more than a toy right now --

When I can pay my utility bills or mortgage with BTC, _then_ i'll consider it to have arrived. I'll consider it to be on its way when I can do something as ...

The sole question to ask, it would then seem to me, would be what is the projected market price of btc AT THAT TIME.

You said...

mhaze is spending a lot of effort and spin trying to pretend that you can buy things with BTC, but when you have to use an intermediary to convert it to USD first, that's nothing more than buying things with USD and paying an extra charge to the middleman.

Edited breach of Rule 0 and Rule 12. Cut it out, please.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: LashL

Is the light going on now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv5m4hTMuWU