This might make you SERIOUSLY RECONSIDER 'BITCOINS'

[jerry278]

This story just came out today. I for one never liked the idea of 'Bitcoins' from the start but this may make anyone whos interested in 'Bitcoins' to seriously reconsider.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110608/wr_nm/us_financial_bitcoins_2

[Rodebaugh]

Good man, Joe.

[brian0918]

Haven't you seen the headlines? The Senators are just trying to drive the price lower so they have a better entry point.

I'm not too concerned about their threats. Senators are always proposing bills left and right that go nowhere, and an alternative to the US dollar seems particularly palpable with the public these days, so I don't see the GOP supporting this bill - though the GOP, like the Dems, are suckers for anti-drug legislation.

I really doubt they could shut bitcoin down. At best they could add another offense to the list against drug traffickers who are caught.

[PennyPauper]

Doesn't stop me for one second. Two Senators joining the drugwar for more PR.Spend more tax money,to get the same results.
There are to many holes in the dam at this point,the system is going down. It is what their own party wants.It's a PR stunt,just like Ronnies drug war.I'm sure it saved some people,but for its costs it did nothing.Legalize them all and let Darwin sort it out.
How many bills have these two put forth to save the real economy?

[jerry278]

Doesn't stop me for one second. Two Senators joining the drugwar for more PR.Spend more tax money,to get the same results.
There are to many holes in the dam at this point,the system is going down. It is what their own party wants.It's a PR stunt,just like Ronnies drug war.I'm sure it saved some people,but for its costs it did nothing.Legalize them all and let Darwin sort it out.
How many bills have these two put forth to save the real economy?

PennyPauper although I respect your opinion tremendously, I must point out, I think this is larger than 'two senators'.
This is a quote from the orginial article:

"The DEA is "absolutely" concerned about Bitcoins and other anonymous digital currencies, agency spokeswoman Dawn Dearden said when asked for a response to the senators' concerns."


To be perfectly honest, I dont even think the underlying point of the article was about 'the drug war' persay, or gaining PR as you say. But rather the fact that there exists an online digital currency (bitcoins) that are 'untrackable' (to some degree) thus allowing the currency to be used for illicit purposes, including drug transactions but not limited to.

[Kurr]

Close to it, Jerry.

IF IT IS UNTRACKABLE IT IS UN TAXABLE!!

I think THAT is why their against it. They want to be able to reachin your pockets and grab what they want, anything that prevents that is a threat, to be demonized.

[mortarman]

Well I'll be saved. There's been speculation that this would be the first avenue taken to attempt to confront the currency head on, but I didn't think they'd be this quick to move on it. I'm with yall, figuring the untaxability is the key issue.

[theo]

Well I'll be saved. There's been speculation that this would be the first avenue taken to attempt to confront the currency head on, but I didn't think they'd be this quick to move on it. I'm with yall, figuring the untaxability is the key issue.

I agree. The federal income tax essentially gives the federal government access to virtually all of our financial transactions. I've also heard it argued that one reason for declaring drugs illegal was to justify the passage of strict anti-money laundering laws, expanding the Government's power to monitor commercial transactions.

[IdahoCopper]

Beefjerky.com now accepts Bitcoins as payment................just email HQ@beefjerky.com and ask for a Bitcoin transaction.

[Mossy]

I agree. The federal income tax essentially gives the federal government access to virtually all of our financial transactions. I've also heard it argued that one reason for declaring drugs illegal was to justify the passage of strict anti-money laundering laws, expanding the Government's power to monitor commercial transactions.

Yup. The feds want to be able to grab 100% of the taxes due, even if the method they use destroys the economy.

Effeciency is much more important than quantity.

[Johnny99]

Wow, from one brief article i learned how to buy dope online, how to make my ip anonymous, and how to pay for things without a paper trail.

[Kurr]

I do not know how "anonymous" it is. I have heard the US Navy wrote and designed TOR.

************************************************************************
https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html
Inception
Tor was originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion routing project of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. It was originally developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting government communications. Today, it is used every day for a wide variety of purposes by normal people, the military, journalists, law enforcement officers, activists, and many others.
*************************************************************************

Now they would NEVER put backdoors or secret tracking things in it would they?!?

I would assume this "silk road" thing is also some government front.

[IdahoCopper]

Just sold a pound of beef jerky for B$C:1.23.

[psi]

A search on my local craiglist turned up a few people offering to buy bitcoins for cash, and one guy offering silver maples and eagles for them. I guess to do an in person deal you both bring computers and go somewhere with wifi. The risk is that potentially you could get robbed of your computer and your 'hoard' at the same time though!

[barrytrot]

A search on my local craiglist turned up a few people offering to buy bitcoins for cash, and one guy offering silver maples and eagles for them. I guess to do an in person deal you both bring computers and go somewhere with wifi. The risk is that potentially you could get robbed of your computer and your 'hoard' at the same time though!

The problem is you would have to hang out with the guy for an hour while they validate the transaction Bitcoin transactions take a while to "go through".

[psi]

A face to face deal is appealing in some ways but a long wait with someone you're not sure you can trust sounds like more stress than it's worth. I've received one transfer so far and it took at least 2 hours to validate. Some of the craigslist posts in other cities sounded more like club meetings or something, might be a bit more relaxed.

[IdahoCopper]

I think bitcoins will ultimately be worth zero, due to government intervention; or they will eventually have value like Berkshire-Hathaway shares.

It seems like a good idea to accumulate a few now in the near term, perhaps getting 20 to 100 bitcoins, maybe more.

I wonder what the exchange rate for them will be after the dollar finally collapses. 21 million bitcoins finite against what? 100T to 200T USD?

[brian0918]

A search on my local craiglist turned up a few people offering to buy bitcoins for cash, and one guy offering silver maples and eagles for them. I guess to do an in person deal you both bring computers and go somewhere with wifi. The risk is that potentially you could get robbed of your computer and your 'hoard' at the same time though!

You wouldn't have to bring the computer that has your wallet on it. You can just bring any computer, and monitor the bitcoin transactions live. It will show that a transaction has been sent to your address, and it will show when the payment has cleared.

I don't think it would take an hour to clear. I received payment and it cleared in a few minutes.

[brian0918]

I think bitcoins will ultimately be worth zero, due to government intervention

The worst they could do to intervene is shut down the pool servers, which would force people to do solo mining (or join an overseas pool).

The only way I see it going to zero are if people stop using it, e.g. if a better alternative arises, or if the government successfully scares people into avoiding it.

[psi]

I've only had one transfer so far but it showed up within a few minutes, what took a couple hours was getting enough confirmations of the transaction. I read somewhere that larger transactions go faster though.

Sounds like they would want to target exchanges before anything else. That silk road operation does indeed sound like some kind of front, you would have to be very stupid to go around advertising that kind of thing on an open forum (30+ page thread on bitcoin forum.)

[dytha]

outright theft seems to be a possible problem as well http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/06/15/close-to-us500k-stolen-in-first-major-bitcoin-theft/

[Kurr]

I am starting to agree with Mike Rivero on this one.

And again, my concern is less the BitCoins than the BitCoin mining operation. The BitCoin mining software uses a LOT of computer power for what we are told is a simple peer-to-peer cash system. Peer-to-peer file sharing does not require that kind of raw compute power. Neither does the level of digital signing the peer-to-peer cash system claims to use. There is a huge amount of computer power being expended on other unknown tasks. Some articles on just how BitCoins are awarded speak of "solving blocks", and therein lies my concern. As a part of the mining for BitCoins, a huge amount of computer power is being spent on cryptographic processing of these blocks, and nobody really knows for certain what is inside those blocks.

I am concerned that the BitCoin miner, along with passing BitCoins hither and yon, is actually a vast distributed code key-breaker. With enough raw computer power chained together in a few million BitCoin users, brute-force breaking of the keys of asymmetric encryption becomes achievable, even convenient. Great if the perps are reading Iran's government communications or congressional "Sexting" messages, but not so great if the target is banks, SSH transactions, https, utilities, your corporate server, and secured emails.

And just as BitCoin mining becomes widespread, all of a sudden, we are seeing hacking attacks against Sony, IMF, and other previously untouchable secure systems.

I do not think this is just coincidence

This whole operation STINKS according to my nose. Call me a conspiracy theorist, I care not.

I rank Bitcoins right up there with wikileaks and MEMRI and other government con jobs.

[brian0918]

Rivero just doesn't understand how bitcoin works, fundamentally, at all. The reason that so much computing power is necessary *lately* is because so many people are getting involved in bitcoin. The more people jump into bitcoin mining, the higher the difficulty setting goes, making it proportionally more and more difficult to mine bitcoins, in order to maintain the rate at which bitcoins are discovered. As people become bored with bitcoin mining and quit, it will become easier and easier to mine bitcoins, and take much less processing power.

Back when people only used CPUs to mine bitcoins, it was relatively easy to mine. Then people figured out that video cards are much more powerful for mining bitcoins, and everyone jumped onto that bandwagon. The people who got in first made a killing, but once people piled into video card mining, the difficulty automatically ramped up.

If he wants to know if there's a sinister motive behind bitcoin, he can find out by simply examining the source code. There just is NO BASIS for these conspiracy theories.

[Kurr]

I did not know the source code was available.

Thanks!

[Treetop]

http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/06/ ... oin-theft/

500k worth of bitcoin stolen, NOTHING they can apparently do about it....