The way you are talking makes it apparent to me that the we, the crypto-community, still need to do a better job in educating people and articulating the benefits/advantages of crypto-currencies.
Hold tight buddy, we will teach you soon.
My Conversation with Mark Karpeles of MtGox
- Thread starter Jon
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The way you are talking makes it apparent to me that the we, the crypto-community, still need to do a better job in educating people and articulating the benefits/advantages of crypto-currencies.
Hold tight buddy, we will teach you soon.
See, now this is what pisses me off about the Bitcoin community. It seems as though there's a few sides:
Corporations (eg. Overstock) -- See it as popular, so fucken eh, accept it as a payment method and enjoy the extra revenue.
Businessmen -- Generally love to talk about philanthropy and ideas regarding crypto.
Neckbeards / Anarchists -- "Fuck yeah, we gonna take over da world with hashes!"
Tech Geeks -- They sit around and debate about encryption algorithms, block sizes, and god knows what.
All the while, nothing gets done. Like it or not, my simple little idea above would have stopped MtGox from losing 170,000 BTC. It would have also stopped the FBI from stealing all of Silk Road's money. It's one of those things that's so simple, it's stupid, but very effective.
But nope, everyone will just continue to do one of the four above. Welcome to the crypto-currency community.
If you jump into the crypto world a bit, tons have been happening over the last 3-4 months.
If you think internet businesses are moving fast, the cryptocurrency field is moving at light speed.
In the last 60 days:
-ATMs were introduced in major cities
-At least 5 payment processing businesses have been set up
-New York had a hearing on the regulation of Bitcoin
-Google announced they are considering adding Bitcoin to Google Wallets
-CNBC has brought up Bitcoin as a talking point nearly every day.
-The concept of "tipping" someone over the internet has gained significant traction.
-About 4 new coins are launched every day (most are meh, but some have field tested some revolutionary concepts worth considering)
A lot of these businesses are obviously gonna be shaken out, with only a few winners standing out in each space.
Remember how wary people were of using a credit card online 10-15 years ago? It took forever to gain that trust. That isn't an obstacle this time around. It just takes a bit more education.
Bitcoin is one of those technologies that needs to hit a "tipping point."
I remember how dumb I thought Twitter was when it first came out. "No one needs or cares about this shit." Then in 2007 at SXSW, it exploded.
My point is big things are happening. I'm still remaining skeptical.. regulation can stall the movement a bit, but the cryptocurrency movement as a whole is the same thing that has happened to the music industry, the newspaper industry, the publishing industry, brick and mortar stores, etc.
The force is too strong to cut off. The regulators/gatekeepers have a clear precedence of how disastrous attempts to stop something like this is (see music industry).
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the wallet.dat file you mention is a good idea. Most people did know there is significant risk with leaving coins in an exchange though.
I've said it a few times, but the only place I securely trust my BTC online right now is CoinBase. They have too much on the line. It would be a PR disaster for the VCs to not pay everyone back if something did happen.
LukeP, I'm surprised you didn't address my point, because I wasn't actually joking there. The MtGox theft amounts to somewhere between 6-7% of the total number of bitcoins in circulation. Add in the rest of the various heists, the 144,000 the FBI has of Silk Road coins, and all the others, 10k here, 30k there, 150k here, etc. etc., those numbers add up fast.
This isn't even an up to date list but the tally is staggering... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0
Ultimately these thieves are going to try to launder and start to spend these coins on goods and services. Lots of people, enthusiasts and self appointed sleuths, are trying to follow the MtGox trail, which is all fine and dandy, but ultimately the coins are going to be spent at businesses that have decided to start accepting bitcoins but aren't going to be savvy enough to know where they are coming from. It's just currency after all.
Do you know all the hands that have touched ever dollar that's currently in your possession? I doubt it. So why should they? But now you have a trail of evidence to show that they've accepted stolen bitcoins for their goods and services, so are they then responsible for returning them to the people that are the rightful owners? So then the shop owners are out of pocket, potentially putting their business at jeopardy, which will make them think twice about accepting such a dodgy payment method.
Are those store owners responsible for auditing the blockchain to see where those coins came from and to know whether or not they are transacting in stolen currency?
The whole situation is fucked beyond belief.
Do you realize how many people have some value in a bitcoin wallet? In the US alone there are over 1 Million... Separate IP addresses, no less.
...I don't think they all read wickedfire bro.
You're simply wrong about me. I'm simply a believer in bitcoin, doing what so damn many other people are doing that we're already making funny videos of ourselves to show each other what we must sound like to people like you:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reo7WbibxaQ"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reo7WbibxaQ[/ame]
(Note the views on that, by the way.)
There's your problem; You think we're ignoring it. The exact opposite is the truth. Nothing on earth is having more money thrown at it and coders working on it than bitcoin is right now. Nothing at all.
Don't worry, only newsweek still thinks their story is credible.... It's all just an inconvenience to an old, innocent man now... And for that, bitcoiners are doing what we do best:
"Sorry Dorian" fund (Currently up to about $21,000, all raised today) @aantop is going to deliver it in person.
Details: andreas fundraising for dorian - Pastebin.com
I didn't confuse shit. Drave made a pathetically uneducated statement which I countered in your quote from me.
Sure local politics can slow down bitcoin adoption in one region, but they can't "stop" it anymore than they can stop people from downloading porn.
What would stop it's growth is for it to not be useful anymore. They don't have the power to make that happen, and they look evil when they try.
Also remember; every single time a country has banned something, they create wealth in other countries by making the adoption of it stronger over there. War on drugs? Central american economies couldn't be happier. No more online gambling here? The rest of the world collectively high-fives each other then starts up their own casinos...
Innovation is always anti-empire. I don't expect bitcoin to really take of in the USSA first... But it will never be 'stopped.'
Spoken like a 'murikan who has not yet realized that there are other countries in this world. Travel and then learn some economics before you make this mistake again.
No, these are negatives; but they were expected from the very beginning by Satoshi himself, and they've been planned for. I simply cannot see how these actions by governments will be strong enough to do any real damage.
The "not a currency" status is a mixed blessing, and you really need more info before saying it's good or bad in that country. In Europe some countries have said it's not a currency but is a commodity, which means they can tax it like they do precious metals... Less of a legitimization, but they still get their tax monies. I think this will be the most popular route countries take.
...Not in the US though. I think here they'll be more antagonistic and create bitlicensing requirements so the IRS can trace every murikan's coins. That's how they treat taxpayers over their dollars, so why not with bitcoins too?
Sounds bad, but again, not unexpected. It just puts us in a race to develop infrastructure that americans appreciate against lawmakers passing such laws. I think we'll win that race.
Hardly. How long did it take the internet to produce it's first killer app that the public widely grew attached to?
You've seen the number of coders working on this at Github... Name something else that has so many people actively working together towards something!
The reason every coder at bitcointalk.org doesn't want to work on your project is because THEY ARE WORKING HARD on another project already!
You seem to be mad at the laws of supply and demand. If there were more coders than projects to work on, you'd be criticsizing bitcoin for having no room for improvement!
The issue here is fungibility. Is each bitcoin worth what each other bitcoin is worth? If not, there could be problems, because shopkeepers might not want to take somebody's coins if they were involved in a crime before.
But you just said it yourself; we're close to seeing half of all bitcoins in existence being stolen money!
That makes bitcoin MORE fungible, not less. And we'll bridge the gap with mixing services or other solutions soon too, simply because some idiot proposed to make a service called "coin validate" that traces the history of coins for merchants, whitelisting 'clean' coins.
This is a horrible threat to bitcoin. Currencies that have little fungibility are useless. Every buck should be worth a buck everywhere. If not then the currency becomes inconvenient for use as a currency. Bitcoiners & the foundation know this and we will do whatever is necessary to protect bitcoin's fungibility.
Once the internet gained the momentum Bitcoin has / had? About 1 year.
I.... ummm.... what??? I could list probably about 300,000 things.
No, just frustrated that bitcoin is over 5 years in now, and thefts for over 6% of the entire currency are still taking place. When someone on the Bitcoin Foundation or wherever is questioned about it, it's the same old line they've been using for years -- "you see, it's a brand new technology, so there are still some issues with it, but I think you'll begin to see some really innovative solutions in the near future". They've been saying that for years now.
If governments are deciding not to interfere and heavily regulate bitcoins, that is good news to me.
Bitcoin doesn't and shouldn't get it's legitimacy from governments. It comes from the amount of people that decide to use and accept it.
Classifying bitcoins as a currency or not has certain legal and regulatory implications. I think it's more of a technical and legal statement rather than "bitcoin sucks, don't use it".
Don't Ask the Government to Regulate Bitcoin | Ron Paul Channel
Lolno. That's not even close to a fair comparison!
WWW was 'born' in March 1989 when Tim Berners-Lee published his proposal for a CERN office document management system. (lol) This date is comparable to Satoshi's publishing of his whitepaper on the Mail-archives list in October 2008.
The first website was finished in Dec '89, 9 months later. The Genesis block was mined in Jan 2009, only 3 months later. Websites and Wallet clients have been steadily added ever since.
Here's a chart of early internet growth, starting with the year 1991, because I can't find a chart starting from Dec '89:
Compare this adoption to bitcoin wallet holders starting in 2009. We're certainly ahead of that pace. (Just the QT and Blockchain wallets so far equal around 7 Million downloads.) After the same amount of time of the internet's existence, there were still not 1 Million websites yet.
At first only computer science nerds understood the internet, and only these nerds could learn HTML to make websites. Then browsers got better, WYSIWYG came along, then Geocities and eventually myspace... All of these added users to the web in a way that made the web grow, not just get looked at.
Exactly the same with bitcoin. 100% Nerds at first, and really we're still pretty much in the nerd phase, although I'd say very near the end of it... We're just in a holding pattern, waiting for our Netscape browser.
Basically bro, you're being very impatient. I want it to happen too, but what we're hoping for here is simply too much to ask of so many people to get done so quickly.
No, specifically on bitcoin. I see 3,075 Bitcoin projects going there right now. (Use the search) That's more than you'll find for any other single subject there... And we're not even including sourceforge.net or any other sites... Nor programmers that don't use such a service... And then there's got to be tons of secretive stuff too; those usually turn out to be the biggest.
Check out this huge part of the bitcointalk forum: Project Development at Bitcointalk
Or this one:
Service Announcements at Bitcointalk
These boards are not exactly sitting still. Do yourself a favor and read through them to see what people are working on and completing.
^^ You deflected both questions -- again.
#1. Are we talking about the "first killer app", or # of users now? At first it was the former, now it seems to be the latter.
#2. Are we talking about how many projects are going on in the world with as many or more than bitcoin boys, or are we talking solely about the bitcoin projects going on?
And yes, look at the bitcoin projects. Point out a couple that you believe are especially ground breaking. Etherum is about the best to come out for quite a while, and we have yet to see if that even makes launch,
#1. Are we talking about the "first killer app", or # of users now? At first it was the former, now it seems to be the latter.
#2. Are we talking about how many projects are going on in the world with as many or more than bitcoin boys, or are we talking solely about the bitcoin projects going on?
And yes, look at the bitcoin projects. Point out a couple that you believe are especially ground breaking. Etherum is about the best to come out for quite a while, and we have yet to see if that even makes launch,
So what do you think this whistleblower dude is going to release on Monday, if he follows through on his threat?
Whistleblower Threatens to Expose Corruption at Bitcoin Foundation
Whistleblower Threatens to Expose Corruption at Bitcoin Foundation
Whistleblower Threatens to Expose Corruption at Bitcoin Foundation
Whistleblower Threatens to Expose Corruption at Bitcoin Foundation
Anybody got a good feel for what's going to happen with those 340k bitcoins tied to mtgox wallets that are suddenly in circulation after a long long period of dormancy? Most of the chatter is speculating either available for withdrawals on Monday (l o fucking l) or cash grab for Karpeles as he attempts to split them into anonymity.
/r/bitcoin is amazing entertainment right now, mostly because of the rampant Stockholm Syndrome.
/r/bitcoin is amazing entertainment right now, mostly because of the rampant Stockholm Syndrome.
^
ditto that. the trend in the recent speculations/chatter about what's going on with those missing mtgox coins doesn't sound too good. odd things going on like the 180k mtgox coins , speculations of the theft being an inside job by mtgox employees or karpeles himself since no internal audits/public accountability of the coins seems to have been conducted, etc.
questionable all around: The Nakamoto chase is a sideshow: Here's the real story on bitcoins - latimes.com
ditto that. the trend in the recent speculations/chatter about what's going on with those missing mtgox coins doesn't sound too good. odd things going on like the 180k mtgox coins , speculations of the theft being an inside job by mtgox employees or karpeles himself since no internal audits/public accountability of the coins seems to have been conducted, etc.
questionable all around: The Nakamoto chase is a sideshow: Here's the real story on bitcoins - latimes.com
I disagree, the questions above as written were answered properly. I'm sorry you don't like the answers. I'll try to answer these two below though for you.
The first killer app is an event that will greatly boost the # of users.
If I had to guess, I'd say the first killer app will be for developing nations and the US won't be using it at all. That's cool though, there are far more ppl in developing nations than there are in the US. By more than a factor of 10.
"Bitcoin boys?" I'm not sure what you meant here. I was pointing out that there is more development on bitcoin-related projects than any other area of coder interest. That means the most people are working on developing bitcoin.
Lol; etherium is a joke. I can't believe everyone makes such a big fuss about it... It's got another useless altcoin inside of it and has socialist values throughout... Will never catch on among libertarians and true bitcoiners.
I don't have time to look through the projects on Github; I see too many projects already from contacts in Skype and facebook that are never put onto github... But needless to say they have lots of people there trying to make the next wallet and the next super-simple phone app for ppl with no bank account... Those are both great areas of development we need to push forward on right now.
Bitcoin isn't a corporation, and not many bitcoiners appreciate the foundation pretending to speak for them already.
This will be met with a collective: "Is that all?" by bitcoiners while stoking the fires even higher in the media.
Lol'd at this classic butthurt hitpeice. Needs one tiny little amendment to be anywhere near truthful... Bitcoin has made more of this demographic into millionaires (And some billionairs) than anything else in history.
Some people just will never understand that the free market is a good thing. They'll always need their security and think of the wild west as the worst possible scenario, despite little inconvenient facts like how the wild west was the most fortune-building time in this continent's entire history.
what about this one? goes way more into the (techie) details of why the lame excuses made by mtgox doesn't fly:
Lol'd at this classic butthurt hitpeice. Needs one tiny little amendment to be anywhere near truthful... Bitcoin has made more of this demographic into millionaires (And some billionairs) than anything else in history.
What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox
btw, why are you so obsessed about defending mtgox? geesh..you know, it IS possible to think that mtgox =/= (doesn't equal) bitcoins
no need to feel you need to defend every player (vendor/bizness) that's involved with bitcoins. besides, weren't you taking a break from all this "defending"? 
erm...my point exactly about mtgox. it was easy takings and "fortune-building time" that brought in lot's of shady ppl into the wild west who killed & backstabbed lot's of ppl for money, land, etc. so if you really believe in your analogy of bitcoin being the "wild west", then there's really no reason to defend every fricking player that comes into the field. some will be shady...so buyer beware.
Funny, but it misses the point.
Governments slayed and deported indians back then. Entrepreneurs were busy building railroads and those entrepreneurs who did so made so much money that their families control most commerce and banking across the entire planet today still.
There is no incentive in the free market to kill the natives, even if they're in your way of laying down railroad tracks. Trade is always cheaper than war, and entrepreneurs know this while governments actively discourage that line of thinking.
Defend MtGox? LOL!btw, why are you so obsessed about defending mtgox? geesh..you know, it IS possible to think that mtgox =/= (doesn't equal) bitcoins
I revel in their painful death. I'm pretty sure I've made that abundantly clear.
In a free market, when an entrepreneur who is not efficient drops the ball for some reason, their speedy death is the best outcome for all parties. Especially consumers.
I only defended a free market.
That's not the market, that's an inefficient business. Look bigger, bro.
So in other words, you have no god damn idea, just like the rest of the bitcoin community? You're just sure that when it does happen, it's going to be f*cken awesome!
Have to admit, I've never seen such an amazing concept squandered this badly.