Do you own any bitcoins?

[les]

I just watched a documentary about bitcoins. I haven't heard much discussion about them lately IRL. One of my exes had close friends who were involved in mining bitcoins years ago, so it was a huge focus for them and their community (mostly techies). 

I don't own any, but I did previously think about investing in them. It looks like today's price for one bitcoin is $237.21.

[les]

May 18, 2015 9:50:11 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

I gotta say, I don't really get them and the market for them seems so volatile. Not my cup of tea.

The volatility kept me away from them, too.  

[StJess80]

I don't even know what they are.

[les]

May 19, 2015 9:16:05 GMT -5 StJess80 said:

I don't even know what they are.

I think they are a fascinating invention. An unknown individual who goes by the alias Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper with the idea in 2008. The software was developed by programmers using an open-source platform. Bitcoins are created through a "mining" process, which involves computational problem solving. Bitcoins are peer-to-peer so there is no central source or controlling agency. They are completely digital and can be converted into any currency. There is much legal and political controversy surrounding the creation and use of bitcoins, which has played a role in its extreme price volatility. 

[agnes]

May 19, 2015 10:23:56 GMT -5 les said:

May 19, 2015 9:16:05 GMT -5 StJess80 said:

I don't even know what they are.

I think they are a fascinating invention. An unknown individual who goes by the alias Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper with the idea in 2008. The software was developed by programmers using an open-source platform. Bitcoins are created through a "mining" process, which involves computational problem solving. Bitcoins are peer-to-peer so there is no central source or controlling agency. They are completely digital and can be converted into any currency. There is much legal and political controversy surrounding the creation and use of bitcoins, which has played a role in its extreme price volatility. 

What idea?  To create a software that creates money?

I still don't understand your explanation.  lol  This is way over my head. 

[jinkies]

No. Even when people speak slowly and use small words, I still don't understand them.

[les]

May 19, 2015 11:48:13 GMT -5 agnes said:

May 19, 2015 10:23:56 GMT -5 les said:

I think they are a fascinating invention. An unknown individual who goes by the alias Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper with the idea in 2008. The software was developed by programmers using an open-source platform. Bitcoins are created through a "mining" process, which involves computational problem solving. Bitcoins are peer-to-peer so there is no central source or controlling agency. They are completely digital and can be converted into any currency. There is much legal and political controversy surrounding the creation and use of bitcoins, which has played a role in its extreme price volatility. 

What idea?  To create a software that creates money?

I still don't understand your explanation.  lol  This is way over my head. 

Yes, exactly. His paper proved the concept and developers worked collaboratively to implement the idea.

This website explains it better than I can: bitcoin.org/en/faq#what-is-bitcoin

It's complicated and I still have trouble understanding the details even though I've read quite a bit about it.
 

[LoveTrains]

I haven't invested in them, but I have a friend that does. I have even heard about some of those things where you get a virus and someone takes over your computer. If you pay the ransom, they unlock it for you. I have heard of these guys wanting to be paid in bitcoin.

[StJess80]

Here is the wikipedia page, and that doesn't even help. I have the oldz. I'll just go ahead and gather my things so the young people can take over.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

[les]

May 19, 2015 12:17:35 GMT -5 StJess80 said:

Here is the wikipedia page, and that doesn't even help. I have the oldz. I'll just go ahead and gather my things so the young people can take over.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

LOL. I didn't link the wiki page for that reason. It's way too complex. I think the site I linked to in one of my replies above offers relatively comprehensible explanations.

[agnes]

May 19, 2015 12:13:52 GMT -5 les said:

May 19, 2015 11:48:13 GMT -5 agnes said:

What idea?  To create a software that creates money?

I still don't understand your explanation.  lol  This is way over my head. 

Yes, exactly. His paper proved the concept and developers worked collaboratively to implement the idea.

This website explains it better than I can: bitcoin.org/en/faq#what-is-bitcoin

It's complicated and I still have trouble understanding the details even though I've read quite a bit about it.
 

"Bitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, Bitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet. "

WAIT.  People created fake money and people are investing in it?  Investing in fake money.  

Sounds legit. 

[jinkies]

May 19, 2015 12:42:04 GMT -5 agnes said:

May 19, 2015 12:13:52 GMT -5 les said:

Yes, exactly. His paper proved the concept and developers worked collaboratively to implement the idea.

This website explains it better than I can: bitcoin.org/en/faq#what-is-bitcoin

It's complicated and I still have trouble understanding the details even though I've read quite a bit about it.
 

"Bitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, Bitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet. "

WAIT.  People created fake money and people are investing in it?  Investing in fake money.  

Sounds legit. 

Send me your American dollars and, in exchange, I will send you TWICE their value in Monopoly money. What could go wrong?

[les]

May 19, 2015 12:42:04 GMT -5 agnes said:

May 19, 2015 12:13:52 GMT -5 les said:

Yes, exactly. His paper proved the concept and developers worked collaboratively to implement the idea.

This website explains it better than I can: bitcoin.org/en/faq#what-is-bitcoin

It's complicated and I still have trouble understanding the details even though I've read quite a bit about it.
 

"Bitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, Bitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet. "

WAIT.  People created fake money and people are investing in it?  Investing in fake money.  

Sounds legit. 

Correct. Not only are people investing in it, but they are now able to purchase real goods and services with bitcoins or exchange them into other forms of currency.

Imagine when the first physical forms of currency were created. They had no (or very little) inherent value. They became valuable once groups of people started using them in transactions, rather than bartering.

[niq]

DON'T DO IT!

MONEY BE GREEN, MOTHERFUCKER!

[niq]

I'm on my phone, and today is a wacky day, but really, bitcoin is a scam to separate well off technoutopian white dudes from their money. Which, okay, I'm down with that particular form of redistribution, but don't fall for it.

The short answer is that most of the technical problems bitcoin is meant to solve are going to be solved by banks anyway, except that banks use a currency backed by the full faith and credit of stable governments; the bittards keep reverse engineering solutions to problems that banking solved a century ago and calling it "innovation"; that the upper bound of the maximum value of the market is so small that dumb money can distort the market way too easily. That leaves two things banks can't solve - a by definition deflationary currency, and anonymous transactions. The first isn't actually a problem unless you're Ron Paul. The second, okay that's fair, but it turns out that financial intermediaries (banks etc.) work because of trust, and it's hard to have trust if you have lots of anonymous transactions. Seriously, if you want to tear down the system, Fight Club did a better job thinking this through.

If you think about it, " MONEY BE GREEN, MOTHERFUCKER " covers all of this.

[ESF]

May 19, 2015 12:52:42 GMT -5 les said:

May 19, 2015 12:42:04 GMT -5 agnes said:

"Bitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, Bitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet. "

WAIT.  People created fake money and people are investing in it?  Investing in fake money.  

Sounds legit. 

Correct. Not only are people investing in it, but they are now able to purchase real goods and services with bitcoins or exchange them into other forms of currency.

Imagine when the first physical forms of currency were created. They had no (or very little) inherent value. They became valuable once groups of people started using them in transactions, rather than bartering.

Exactly.  All money is fake.  It exists because we put faith in its value, not because it inherently has value.   We trust that a US dollar is worth a US dollar.  We trust that because we trust the US government, but at plenty of points in history, people have held money based on trust in a government, only for chaos to strike and the money becomes worthless.   We trust that a share of stock is worth something because we trust the company and we trust the market, but plenty of people have discovered after investing that their stock is worthless. 

  Everything we have is valued based on trust and its relationship to what we trust to be the true value of something else.  Bitcoin is no different.

I don't own any, but I admit I'm fascinated by it.

[ESF]

May 19, 2015 15:52:24 GMT -5 niq said:

I'm on my phone, and today is a wacky day, but really, bitcoin is a scam to separate well off technoutopian white dudes from their money. Which, okay, I'm down with that particular form of redistribution, but don't fall for it.

The short answer is that most of the technical problems bitcoin is meant to solve are going to be solved by banks anyway, except that banks use a currency backed by the full faith and credit of stable governments; the bittards keep reverse engineering solutions to problems that banking solved a century ago and calling it "innovation"; that the upper bound of the maximum value of the market is so small that dumb money can distort the market way too easily. That leaves two things banks can't solve - a by definition deflationary currency, and anonymous transactions. The first isn't actually a problem unless you're Ron Paul. The second, okay that's fair, but it turns out that financial intermediaries (banks etc.) work because of trust, and it's hard to have trust if you have lots of anonymous transactions. Seriously, if you want to tear down the system, Fight Club did a better job thinking this through.

If you think about it, " MONEY BE GREEN, MOTHERFUCKER " covers all of this.

I agree with you that the world of bitcoin proponents is a totally weird, insane, and reckless world.  

But I don't see it as that different than anything else.   Corporations are no more real than the anonymous people behind bitcoin.   They exist on paper only, and can disappear at a moment's notice.  Millions of people have lost millions in savings based on simply trust.   So I don't really see bitcoin as doing anything that Lehman Brothers was not.

[niq]

May 19, 2015 16:09:55 GMT -5 ESF said:

May 19, 2015 15:52:24 GMT -5 niq said:

If you think about it, " MONEY BE GREEN, MOTHERFUCKER " covers all of this.

I agree with you that the world of bitcoin proponents is a totally weird, insane, and reckless world.  

But I don't see it as that different than anything else.   Corporations are no more real than the anonymous people behind bitcoin.   They exist on paper only, and can disappear at a moment's notice.  Millions of people have lost millions in savings based on simply trust.   So I don't really see bitcoin as doing anything that Lehman Brothers was not.

I admit that part of what's going on is I know a way too many people who are way too into bitcoin, and for some of them it's wrapped up in a larger technolibertarian utopian worldview that I find ... distasteful? Naive? Oblivious to race, class, financial literacy, behavioral economics? So, I might sneer at it a little more than most people.

But I mean, really, since the implosion of Silk Road, Mt Gox, and a couple of other exchanges, the big realization in the bitworld has been "hey, maybe we need trusted intermediaries". We could call that, I dunno, a bitbank? Good work, you've got a currency with the goal of cutting out the middlemen and you just reinvented middlemen. Oh, it turns out that for intermediaries to be trusted, you need some sort of regulatory agency that insures deposits so that you can rescue retail savers. We could call that the Bitcoin Depository Insurance Corporation -- the BDIC. And then the BDIC needs the power to ensure the soundness of your bitbank so that bank failures don't happen that often. And it turns out the intermedaries will want to do something like lending and borrowing and fractional reserve banking and blah blah blah. Suddenly the bittards just reinvented all of finance. Strong work. Some of this the world figured out in the early 1900s. Some of it the world figured out in the late 1700s. Maybe the bittards should read a history book and stop thinking they're "disrupting" the world because technology.

[ESF]

May 19, 2015 17:43:02 GMT -5 niq said:

May 19, 2015 16:09:55 GMT -5 ESF said:

I agree with you that the world of bitcoin proponents is a totally weird, insane, and reckless world.  

But I don't see it as that different than anything else.   Corporations are no more real than the anonymous people behind bitcoin.   They exist on paper only, and can disappear at a moment's notice.  Millions of people have lost millions in savings based on simply trust.   So I don't really see bitcoin as doing anything that Lehman Brothers was not.

I admit that part of what's going on is I know a way too many people who are way too into bitcoin, and for some of them it's wrapped up in a larger technolibertarian utopian worldview that I find ... distasteful? Naive? Oblivious to race, class, financial literacy, behavioral economics? So, I might sneer at it a little more than most people.

But I mean, really, since the implosion of Silk Road, Mt Gox, and a couple of other exchanges, the big realization in the bitworld has been "hey, maybe we need trusted intermediaries". We could call that, I dunno, a bitbank? Good work, you've got a currency with the goal of cutting out the middlemen and you just reinvented middlemen. Oh, it turns out that for intermediaries to be trusted, you need some sort of regulatory agency that insures deposits so that you can rescue retail savers. We could call that the Bitcoin Depository Insurance Corporation -- the BDIC. And then the BDIC needs the power to ensure the soundness of your bitbank so that bank failures don't happen that often. And it turns out the intermedaries will want to do something like lending and borrowing and fractional reserve banking and blah blah blah. Suddenly the bittards just reinvented all of finance. Strong work. Some of this the world figured out in the early 1900s. Some of it the world figured out in the late 1700s. Maybe the bittards should read a history book and stop thinking they're "disrupting" the world because technology.

I completely agree with all this. It's why I hate Silicon Valley libertarians.  And Uber.   

[Deleted]

I'll stick with regular old fiat money TYVM.

[mcc]

I just came in to give niq a hug for using the term "bittard". I can't wait to use it at my tech startup tomorrow.