Bitcoins

JohnRo

At this point -any- negative publicity on bitcoin is extremely valuable for those who need it to go away. That said there is no doubt the systems and security being used to move bitcoin around need to be massively improved before it'll gain truly widespread trust and use.

The fact that, for the first time in history, it can clearly be seen exactly where any stolen money is going seems lost on many. I'm not sure how it would affect the general perception of bitcoin but there seems to be no good reason to me, in terms of integrity, why some form of personal identity cannot be attached to transactions. It would make theft practically impossible to get away with.

Obviously crooks won't like that, but that's their problem.

csm888

JohnRo wrote: »

At this point -any- negative publicity on bitcoin is extremely valuable for those who need it to go away. That said there is no doubt the systems and security being used to move bitcoin around need to be massively improved before it'll gain truly widespread trust and use.

The fact that, for the first time in history, it can clearly be seen exactly where any stolen money is going seems lost on many. I'm not sure how it would affect the general perception of bitcoin but there seems to be no good reason to me, in terms of integrity, why some form of personal identity cannot be attached to transactions. It would make theft practically impossible to get away with.

Obviously crooks won't like that, but that's their problem.

I think at first glance it sounds like a good idea, bad money & good money. Money that can be proven to come from an illegal transaction is bad.
The problems are that eventually everything becomes tainted. For example a huge percentage bitcoin addresses contain a small part of that 10K Pizza transaction. If that was proven to be illegal then almost everybody holding bitcoins would have bad money.
Almost every US dollar has cocaine on it and was probably used in drug dealings/use in some way. If we remove the fungibility of bitcoin, the whole things starts to crumble as it would with any other currency.

I think we should keep the law as it, if you can prove that the money held is directly illegally obtained then it can be confiscated. But once spent on a new Ferrari, that Ferrari dealership has a legitimate claim to the money.

JohnRo

I was thinking more about tracing transaction nodes to a name and being able to track any thief physically rather than identifing the coin used as tainted.

At the end of the day free trade is just that, the false drug war isn't about drug use it's about power just like the false war on some terror.

I think what's needed in the digital age is a global RDR on national governments where they're made to explicitly demand their taxes rather than taking at source and empowering a corrupt money printing cartel with privileged access.

The thing with bitcoin is that within the system there simply isnt anywhere to hide (transactions) and that can only be a good thing as long as it remains independently operated and overseen by everyone.

happenstance

JohnRo wrote: »

At this point -any- negative publicity on bitcoin is extremely valuable for those who need it to go away. That said there is no doubt the systems and security being used to move bitcoin around need to be massively improved before it'll gain truly widespread trust and use.

The fact that, for the first time in history, it can clearly be seen exactly where any stolen money is going seems lost on many. I'm not sure how it would affect the general perception of bitcoin but there seems to be no good reason to me, in terms of integrity, why some form of personal identity cannot be attached to transactions. It would make theft practically impossible to get away with.

Obviously crooks won't like that, but that's their problem.

I quite like the anonymity of it and very limited possibility of having my translations traced back to me personally.

It's as anonymous as cash, I quite like having some cash in my safe and no one being able to know that the cash belongs to me personally.

I'm not in a situation where I could, but if I was facing capital gains tax with coins I would have no problem ethically in getting my partner to register as an exchange and transferring some of my coins to reduce my tax bill.

[Deleted User]

Bitcoinity switched to using mBTC today instead of BTC, which is a big step forward and hopefully a lot of other websites and businesses follow its lead: http://bitcoinity.org/markets

JohnRo

I notice we're now moving into the territory where it's the btc lows being tested, the highs are just gravy.

Looks like £600 is or was the new floor barring something catastrophic, which is always possible of course, though quite how I can't imagine at this stage in its development.

I'm still puzzled why the money powers that be haven't moved to try getting it shut down yet, then again with news that RBS / Natwest can't even manage their own electronic infrastructure and customer access to money backed by nothing they probably have bigger fish to fry nearer home.

The bitcoin protocol and nature of the network it thrives on is just making it more appealing than ever.

happenstance

JohnRo wrote: »

I notice we're now moving into the territory where it's the btc lows being tested, the highs are just gravy.

Looks like £600 is or was the new floor barring something catastrophic, which is always possible of course, though quite how I can't imagine at this stage in its development.

I'm still puzzled why the money powers that be haven't moved to try getting it shut down yet, then again with news that RBS / Natwest can't even manage their own electronic infrastructure and customer access to money backed by nothing they probably have bigger fish to fry nearer home.

The bitcoin protocol and nature of the network it thrives on is just making it more appealing than ever.

its p2p so it can't be shut down.

the banks would have as much luck shutting it down as the record companies had with file sharing!

thanks who ever it was that suggested wordcoin, gone up 40% in the last couple of days

happenstance

the thing im confused with is why mtgox prices are 10% more than bitstamp.

whats to stop me spending thousands in the next low with bitstamp and then hours later selling them back into sterling at mtgox?

JohnRo

happenstance wrote: »

its p2p so it can't be shut down.

the banks would have as much luck shutting it down as the record companies had with file sharing!

thanks who ever it was that suggested wordcoin, gone up 40% in the last couple of days

Your faith in the evolving NSA and social media spy network is admirable. They could certainly drive p2p money deep underground though, if the powers that be were prepared to expose themselves as money gangsters protecting their turf.

That would severely limit the potential of any truly democratic cryptocurrency and perhaps buy time for the money barons to get their heads together and work out how they're going to recapture and control the "free" market.

[Deleted User]

happenstance wrote: »

the thing im confused with is why mtgox prices are 10% more than bitstamp.

whats to stop me spending thousands in the next low with bitstamp and then hours later selling them back into sterling at mtgox?

That's called arbitrage and there's a reason you can't do it and a reason the Gox price is higher: you can't withdraw fiat from Gox. You can transfer in fiat, you can transfer out btc, but they have huge cash problems and overseas transfers (Gox is based in Japan) are all but stopped. There are people that tried to withdraw money in July and it's still stuck "pending".

That's why most people are moving away from Gox and why it lost such a huge market share, it's not suitable for trading.