Screw the Banksters - Use Bitcoins / Are Bitcoins Just Another Bubble

[AntiPublicSectorGreed]

Bitcoin is an internet currency and payment system that was created as an opensource (ie voluntary, non-proprietary) project by progammers with anarchist leanings and based on a peer to peer model (ie BitTorrent) not dependent on any company, bank or government.

In that respect bitoin challenges the power of bankers and in my opinion is revolutionary.

From a users point of view its very simple to use. Heres an introduction video.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo"]What is Bitcoin? - YouTube[/ame]

From an anarchist/libertarian point of view, Bitcoin is very interesting because:
1) Its outside the control of any government, company or bank. There is no Bitcoin company. The project is managed by volunteers. No one can change or corrupt the currency without the agreement of the whole community.
2) It is borderless, operating all over the world. If one government tries to ban it, it will continue to be used in the rest of the world. In any case, a ban would be impossible to implement.
3) There is no inflation in the supply of the currency. The total supply of Bitcoins is 21 million. Once all the coins have been put into circulation no more can be created.
4) It is fairly anonymous. There is no account with your name and address on it. You just install the Bitcoin software and you can start sending and receiving money.
5) Your accounts can never be frozen or locked, unlike credit & debit cards, Paypal, bank accounts etc.
6) Bitcoin is similar to cash because its portable and concealable. You can keep a million euros of Bitcoins on a USB stick under your mattress or you can divide it between multiple electronic wallets, PCs, smart phones, online accounts etc.

So far, Bitcoin has mainly been a toy for geeks and is not yet widely accepted by merchants but this is changing rapidly. Bitcoins value floats on the free market and is determined by supply and demand. Its value cannot be manipulated by insiders, banks or governments. This incorruptibility has allowd the value of Bitcoins to increase from less than $0.01 to $5 today.

You can get Bitcoins by buying them on a currency exchange like MtGox.com or selling goods and services and asking for payment in Bitcoin. There are also people in Ireland, selling bitcoins for cash if you meet up with them. You pay them euro notes and they transfer bitcoins to your computer or smartphone.

You can donate to the occupywallst movement by sending bitcoins to this address - 1Q7DQVTubbUqr5by2YoZJRKCEzj9D3LQ9w

And you can donate to the feedtheprotest.com by sending bitcoins to this address -
1EUqkFmL9HNpBRvbWRAqCiUjepaR7Vbryp

[unspecific]

I'm very interested in the bitcoin concept. Did I hear or read that it was hacked and someone created a few hundred thousand euro for themselves thereby devaluing everyone elses or what happened there?

[C. Flower]

Bitcoin is an internet currency and payment system that was created as an opensource (ie voluntary, non-proprietary) project by progammers with anarchist leanings and based on a peer to peer model (ie BitTorrent) not dependent on any company, bank or government.

In that respect bitoin challenges the power of bankers and in my opinion is revolutionary.

From a users point of view its very simple to use. Heres an introduction video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo

From an anarchist/libertarian point of view, Bitcoin is very interesting because:
1) Its outside the control of any government, company or bank. There is no Bitcoin company. The project is managed by volunteers. No one can change or corrupt the currency without the agreement of the whole community.
2) It is borderless, operating all over the world. If one government tries to ban it, it will continue to be used in the rest of the world. In any case, a ban would be impossible to implement.
3) There is no inflation in the supply of the currency. The total supply of Bitcoins is 21 million. Once all the coins have been put into circulation no more can be created.
4) It is fairly anonymous. There is no account with your name and address on it. You just install the Bitcoin software and you can start sending and receiving money.
5) Your accounts can never be frozen or locked, unlike credit & debit cards, Paypal, bank accounts etc.
6) Bitcoin is similar to cash because its portable and concealable. You can keep a million euros of Bitcoins on a USB stick under your mattress or you can divide it between multiple electronic wallets, PCs, smart phones, online accounts etc.

So far, Bitcoin has mainly been a toy for geeks and is not yet widely accepted by merchants but this is changing rapidly. Bitcoins value floats on the free market and is determined by supply and demand. Its value cannot be manipulated by insiders, banks or governments. This incorruptibility has allowd the value of Bitcoins to increase from less than $0.01 to $5 today.

You can get Bitcoins by buying them on a currency exchange like MtGox.com or selling goods and services and asking for payment in Bitcoin. There are also people in Ireland, selling bitcoins for cash if you meet up with them. You pay them euro notes and they transfer bitcoins to your computer or smartphone.

You can donate to the occupywallst movement by sending bitcoins to this address - 1Q7DQVTubbUqr5by2YoZJRKCEzj9D3LQ9w

And you can donate to the feedtheprotest.com by sending bitcoins to this address -
1EUqkFmL9HNpBRvbWRAqCiUjepaR7Vbryp

I can see the potential for something like this, but is this coinage essentially without value except in so far as people spend "normal" currency to back it ?

[Count Bobulescu]

I can see the potential for something like this, but is this coinage essentially without value except in so far as people spend "normal" currency to back it ?

Bitcoins are novel, interesting, and dangerous. But everyone is entitled to a fantasy. Read Wiki. Suggests there is a Ponzi element. Congressional calls for investigation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Krugman is unimpressed.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...-cyberfetters/

So is the Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...covery/243253/

[AntiPublicSectorGreed]

I can see the potential for something like this, but is this coinage essentially without value except in so far as people spend "normal" currency to back it ?

Bitcoin has no value use other than its use as a means of exchange. So in that respect its similar to government fiat currencies like euro, dollar, yen. Its backed by nothing other than its use as a money.

So why is this "unbacked" money taking off. Well, there are a lot of reasons.

1) It works as a means of exchange better than any other money previously devised.
2) It has all the advantages of electronic payment systems, like paypal, visa, etc, while also having all of the same properties of physical cash (ie person to person payments)
3) Bitcoins are completely non inflationary. The supply of bitcoins is limited to 21 million which is hard coded into the protocol.
4) The bitcoin system is completely transparant. Anyone can review the code before installing it. And anyone can create a new bitcoin software client or wallet and use it or distribute it.
5) Bitcoin is not controlled by any central authority. Because of its decentralised nature no one can shut it down. It was modelled after BitTorrent, which the copyright industry has been unable to shut down after years of trying.
6) You can pay anyone anywhere in the world, anonymously and almost instantly, with next to no fees or charges.

Another reason why the "unbacked" argument is moot is that you can use bitoin as a means of exchange without depending on it as a store of value, if you dont want to. Most merchants that are accepting bitcoins at the point of sale, are immediately converting it to euros or USD, in order to pay their suppliers. Users like myself, are only holding small amounts of it so changes in its value dont really bother us.

[TotalMayhem]

Because of its distributed nature no one can shut it down.

You don't know the ESB.

[barrym]

Sounds good, but does it scale?? 21 million is chickenfeed if it took off.... and those who are in the community now would need to be expanded if the 'capital' was expanded, would they not?

Can it not be integrated in some way with the paypal/community bank models? Then it really would move, use your community bank facility to join, use the paypal system to transact.

Anything that potentially gets rid of banks, bankers, the imf, etc., and their government toadies, has my vote.

[AntiPublicSectorGreed]

Sounds good, but does it scale?? 21 million is chickenfeed if it took off.... and those who are in the community now would need to be expanded if the 'capital' was expanded, would they not?

Yes it is scalable. Each bitcoin is divisible to 8 decimal places. So you can send someone 0.00000001 of a bitcoin. Most people will be dealing in fractions of bitcoins, the same way people deal in grams of gold.

Can it not be integrated in some way with the paypal/community bank models? Then it really would move, use your community bank facility to join, use the paypal system to transact.

Paypal started off with good intentions but it was co-opted by the banking industry. Person to person payments used to be free of charge with paypal, now you need to setup a "merchant account" and they skim off a slice of any payments you receive. In short, paypal became evil a few years ago. Anyone who uses Ebay will tell you that.

Bitcoin took the original concept of paypal and improved it massively, by decentralising it. There is no bitcoin company that can be threatened by the banking industry, or regulated out of existence, like e-gold was.

[Spectabilis]

This is intriguing. The bit that worries me is

No one can change or corrupt the currency without the agreement of the whole community.

How is the community defined? After all we had a banking community here who managed to corrupt our banking system, with little or no regulation. Power will out somehow.

[AntiPublicSectorGreed]

This is intriguing. The bit that worries me is

How is the community defined? After all we had a banking community here who managed to corrupt our banking system, with little or no regulation. Power will out somehow.

Thats a great question which is quite hard to answer. The technology behind Bitcoin is really complex and as a user you dont need to understand it. You just use it. Like you dont understand how your flat screen tv works, you just use it. But I'll try and explain some of the technology as best I can.

Basically, if you are running the bitcoin software on your pc, you are a member of the community. Youre PC becomes a "node" on the bitcoin network. The software sits silently in the background just doing what it does, ie processing payments. With thousands of nodes processing transactions, there is no need for any bank or central authority to do it. All transactions are visible to all nodes as they are broadcast across the bitcoin network for verification. For example you can see all the transactions that have gone through the donation account of occupywallst.org.

http://blockexplorer.com/address/1Q7...JRKCEzj9D3LQ9w

Looks like they have received a total of 161 bitcoins which is around $800 at todays exchange rate.

For anyone to corrupt bitcoin in order to create new money or spend money they dont have, they would need to get all the existing thousands of users to switch to a corrupted version of the software. That cant happen because the existing users have a stake in the integrity of the currency.

Hope that helps.

[C. Flower]

Barter is making a comeback. Barter on-line, with a points system, but no money changing hands, surely has potential ?>

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

I like this idea. Think I may invest and I like that it is as anonymous as cash as well. Think I might have a crack at this shortly...

[Griska]

From an anarchist/libertarian point of view, Bitcoin is very interesting because:

You shouldn't lump anarchists and libertarians together.
It's a common mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

Libertarians are just tossers with money who believe they should be able to do what they like.

[AntiPublicSectorGreed]

Libertarians are just tossers with money who believe they should be able to do what they like.

Mods had no problem with this comment.

I get it now. "Bastards" is banned. "Tossers" is ok. I'll remember that for next time.

Leftwingers are sick tossers.

[AntiPublicSectorGreed]

Heres an example of how to make a bitcoin payment from your smart phone. Its a bit cheesy but does show how you can pay someone by scanning their 3D barcode instead of having to type in their account address.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ-pq...eature=related