Originally Posted by Pawnmower:
well YOU are the one that said it was not noticeable
now you move the goalposts
/shrug
Poor wording in my earlier post.
Aside from that, given the scale of transactions on any given day in any major currency, an increase from 45k to 75k is not really noticeable increase. [Reply]
Originally Posted by KC native:
Poor wording in my earlier post.
Aside from that, given the scale of transactions on any given day in any major currency, an increase from 45k to 75k is not really noticeable increase.
You are absolutely correct. The mere fact that we are talking about this 5+ years after inception is the real story. The Bitcoin protocol "the network" has not been hacked (some say will never be hacked) as more and more people are using it everyday.
I wait on the day where I can pay to read a single Wall Street journal article by scanning a QR code with my phone and paying $.25 worth of bitcoin. [Reply]
Originally Posted by KC native:
Yea, except the same thing happened to Silk Road 2.
Bitcoin is a bubble. It is a good idea but has huge flaws that will prevent it from ever becoming more than a niche product for savvy internet users.
The hoarding is also one of the problems. If bitcoins were becoming more widely used then we would see transactions in bitcoins pick up. That's not happening. People are hoarding them with the expectation that they will go up. Since the market is thinly traded, they've been going up.
This is what I'm not understanding. I'm about as ignorant to bitcoin as a person can be, so be patient, but if there's a finite amount of it how will it ever become something everyone will buy/use? [Reply]
Originally Posted by Rausch:
This is what I'm not understanding. I'm about as ignorant to bitcoin as a person can be, so be patient, but if there's a finite amount of it how will it ever become something everyone will buy/use?
In its totallity there will only ever be 21 million whole bitcoins ever "mined". They will be 99.99999% fully mined in the year 2140 or somewhere close. Each bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places. .00000001 and that number is called a "satoshi" after its inventor. There is a strong push to make the number .000001 called a "bit" for easier public perception.
Its very nerdy at this point but time will take care of that as developers and such make using bitcoin easier and more mainstream.
Originally Posted by ChiefRocka:
In its totallity there will only ever be 21 million whole bitcoins ever "mined". They will be 99.99999% fully mined in the year 2140 or somewhere close. Each bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places. .00000001 and that number is called a "satoshi" after its inventor. There is a strong push to make the number .000001 called a "bit" for easier public perception.
Its very nerdy at this point but time will take care of that as developers and such make using bitcoin easier and more mainstream.
Originally Posted by Rausch:
Ok, so instead of "making" more bitcoins they'll just be sold in smaller parts.
So instead of going FIAT they sell in "Mills" or less. Pretty much dividing down?
As price necessitates, yes.
The blockchain ledger records and validates every transaction no matter how small. Essentially the entire supply is accounted for and logged for all of history from 2009 on. Keys you own unlock the value stored in various addresses on the blockchain. [Reply]
Originally Posted by :
If Bitcoin were a currency, it'd be the worst-performing one in the world, worse even than the Russian ruble.
But Bitcoin isn't a currency. It's a Ponzi scheme for redistributing wealth from one libertarian to another. At least that's all it is right now. One day it could be more. Venture capitalists, for their part, are quick to point out that it's really a protocol, like the early internet, and its underlying technology could still be revolutionary. What are they supposed to say, though, when they've bet hundreds of millions of dollars on it?
But that's not much of a consolation to anyone who bought anywhere near Bitcoin's $1,100 top. Or near $1,000, or $900, or $800, or, well even yesterday's prices. That's because Bitcoin hasn't just fallen 76 percent the past year. It's fallen 36 percent the past two days, as you can see below, with a 24 percent decline the past 24 hours. It's too bad Bitcoin doesn't have a central bank to help stabilize its value.
What in the name of Satoshi Nakamoto is going on? Well, two things. First, Bitcoin's big bubble has been slowly deflating for over a year now. It has no inherent value, after all, because, despite companies trying to get free PR by saying they'll accept it, almost nobody uses it to buy anything other than drugs. Second, though, is a problem that's all too familiar to anyone who tried flipping condos in Miami ten years ago. Bitcoin miners, you see, borrowed money—and real money, as in dollars—that they could only pay back if Bitcoin prices kept rising, or at least didn't fall this much.
Bitcoin, remember, is a digital "currency" that lets you send money online without needing a bank to confirm it. That's because it substitutes a decentralized network of middlemen for a single middleman. And instead of paying them fees, it pays them with new Bitcoins. Think about it this way. The problem with sending money online is that you don't know if I'm trying to scam you by sending the same money to someone else, too. So the solution has been to have a bank sit in between us: I send the money to the bank, it verifies that I haven't sent it to anyone else, and then sends it to you, all for a 2 percent cut, of course.
Bitcoin, though, has a network of miners sit between us instead. These miners try to win new Bitcoins by solving difficult math problems that get even more difficult the more miners there are, and, in the process, they create a public ledger of every single Bitcoin transaction. This means we don't need a bank to know that I've sent money to you and only you, but it comes at the cost of making it irreversible. (And that makes Bitcoin an even more appealing target for hackers who know that you have no recourse if they steal your money).
The key here is that the math problems the miners have to solve get harder the more of them there are. If there's a big influx of miners, say, because of a big bubble that pushes prices into quadruple digits, then there's even more pressure on everybody to upgrade to the latest supercomputers to stay competitive. The thing about the latest supercomputers, though, is that they're expensive to buy and expensive to run. (That's why some miners have set up shop in Iceland, where they can use geothermal energy to power their computers, and Arctic air to cool them). So miners had to borrow lots of money to try to keep up in the Bitcoin arms race.
But all that borrowing hasn't paid off now that Bitcoin prices are free falling. In fact, it's part of the reason that they're doing so. Bitcoin prices are so low, you see, that miners are spending more money running their supercomputers than they're making from new coins. So why are they still going? Well, they have dollar debts that they need to pay back, and where else are they going to get the money? They're stuck, in other words, in a catch-22: they can't afford to keep mining, but they can't afford to stop mining, either. (This, coincidentally, is the same dilemma that oil drillers who borrowed a lot during the boom face now during the bust). This has already forced one big mining group into default. And it's forced the rest to sell the only assets they have—Bitcoins—to pay back their dollar debts. That, of course, only pushes the price of Bitcoin down even further, which makes even more miners sell their Bitcoins to pay back they owe as mining becomes more unprofitable. And so on, and so on.
Bitcoin, in other words, is suffering a deleveraging shock like the one that our economy in 2008, but without a Federal Reserve to cushion the blow. That means this doom loop of debt and Bitcoin deflation could take prices down a lot further still. The only solace is that, in the long run, the system should self-correct, as miners drop out and mining gets easier.
But in the long run, we're all dead, and Bitcoin might be too.
Matt O'Brien is a reporter for Wonkblog covering economic affairs. He was previously a senior associate editor at The Atlantic.
The Nasdaq stock exchange is tapping Bitcoin's powerful new transaction technology to create a more secure, efficient system to trade stocks.
Most people have heard of Bitcoin (XBT) as a system of electronic money -- one that hasn't really caught on yet.
But what gets less attention is blockchain, the technology that powers the Bitcoin system. It's a computer program that automatically processes transactions and creates a perfect, reliable digital record.
High-tech bankers are starting to realize this could revolutionize trading. Nasdaq (NDAQ), a favorite exchange among many technology companies, is making the first move.
On Monday, the stock market announced it will start using a blockchain system to keep records for its Nasdaq Private Market, which handles trading of shares in the pre-IPO phase before a company goes public.
Nasdaq sees the blockchain's perfect recordkeeping as a major step in the right direction for more transparency. The pre-IPO market doesn't typically see as much trading and what does occur is often by a tight circle of employees and early investors.
"Blockchain technology will provide extensive integrity, audit ability, governance and transfer of ownership capabilities," Nasdaq said in its public announcement.
This doesn't mean Nasdaq is using actual Bitcoins as currency. But Nasdaq will be interacting with the Bitcoin system to slip data into the blockchain.
By using Bitcoin's core technology, this is a major acknowledgment of Bitcoin's contribution to finance and trade. This is the first time the world has seen a trading system that doesn't require a trusted middleman. It sounds boring, but in the banking world, it's revolutionary.
CNN explains: What is Bitcoin?
It seems odd to equate Bitcoin with better security. The world's first true big digital currency is generally known for two things. One, its popularity in online black markets. Two, the epic fall of Mt. Gox, a major Bitcoin exchange market that wiped out $400 million in people's savings.
But these have nothing to do with the digital currency itself. Bitcoin's perfect recordkeeping actually helped convict a black market kingpin. And computer security experts say Bitcoin's technology actually makes it more secure than any other money transfer system.
Nasdaq's experiment is a limited one. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal referred to Nasdaq's pre-IPO market, which launched in January 2014, as "a fledgling marketplace." But if it works out, expect to see it use the blockchain concept elsewhere.
"Utilizing the blockchain is a natural digital evolution for managing physical securities," Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld said in a statement. [Reply]
Former head of collapsed bitcoin exchange is arrested over disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars of virtual currency
The former head of a collapsed Bitcoin exchange has been arrested in connection with the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars of the virtual currency.
Mark Karpeles, the former head of defunct Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, was arrested on Saturday in Tokyo, Japanese media reports have said.
The French-born Karpeles, 30, is suspected of falsifying data on the outstanding balance of the exchange, at one point the world's largest hub for trading the digital currency.
Police were unable to immediately confirm the reports, but footage on local television showed the former chief executive being led away from his home and into a police car, with a baseball cap pulled low across his face.
If found guilty, the France-born Karpeles could face up to five years in prison, or a fine of up to 500,000 yen ($4,000).
Karpeles' lawyer said his client denies wrongdoing, the Kyodo News agency reported.
Mt Gox said 750,000 customer Bitcoins and another 100,000 belonging to the exchange were stolen due to a software security flaw when it filed for bankruptcy in February 2014.
The lost funds represented the equivalent of £307million ($480million) at the time of the bankruptcy filing.
Mt. Gox also said more than £17million ($27million) was missing from its Japanese bank accounts.
Karpeles, who had blamed hackers for the disappearance, later said he had recovered 200,000 of the lost Bitcoins.
The relationship between the lost Bitcoins and the inflated account was not immediately clear.
Known as a self-proclaimed geek who said he was uncomfortable in his native France and hadn't been back in years, Karpeles became interested in Bitcoin when a customer of his web-hosting services wanted to pay in the virtual currency.
Mt. Gox subsequently shot from obscurity to dominate global trade in Bitcoin, but as early as 2012 employees at the Tokyo-based exchange challenged Karpeles on issues such as whether client money was being used to cover costs.
Japanese authorities have previously acknowledged they were baffled by the Mt. Gox case because they had never dealt with possible crime dealing with Bitcoin. Experts also said it might be difficult to take action because of the absence of laws over virtual currencies.
BITCOIN: THE HIGHS - AND THE LOWS
January 2009: Officially launches - but the value of a Bitcoin is virtually nothing
July 2010: Mt Gox (Bitcoin currency exchange) is launched in Tokyo
January 2011: One Bitcoin is the equivalent to $1
March 2011: Karpeles buys Mt Gox from founder Jed McCaleb
December 2011: One Bitcoin is the equivalent to $2
December 2012: One Bitcoin is worth $13
December 2013: Bitcoin is briefly worth $1,000 - and rebounds to $1,000 again in January
February 2014: Mt Gox ceases trading and files for bankruptcy
March 2014: Mt Gox announces it has found 200,000 Bitcoins ($115million)
April 2014: Karpeles refuses to attend a bankruptcy hearing in Texas, USA
April 2014: Worth drops to just $340 a Bitcoin
August 2015: One Bitcoin worth $277.82
August 2015: Mark Karpeles is arrested by police in Tokyo [Reply]
