Bitcoins

jimjames

JohnRo wrote: »

The difference being there is no central control and price manipulation being attempted or even possible. All everyone is seeing is exactly what's happening in a free market price discovery mechanism, the market looking for a value.
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That's not what I've read. I'm not up on it well enough to know if true but the source looks authentic

http://mashable.com/2013/11/04/bitcoin-cornell-researchers/

The Bitcoin ecosystem is open to manipulation, and potential takeover, by miners seeking to maximize their rewards

JohnRo

51% attack could make a blockchain fork and alter the code used by all those on it.

That's badly worded, what I mean is a 51% attack would require coordinated use of the altered code by all those included in the 51% to make a blockchain fork that became the new de facto blockchain.

It would require an astronomic level of cooperation between a vast number of people and also kill the concept and any gain it ever stood to make though, which is about as good an insurance policy as there could be.

Everything else is speculation at this stage but I'm sure there are and will continue to be ongoing practical implementation and limitation stumbling blocks. The process so far has been to cross bridges only as and when they need to be crossed.

[Deleted User]

jimjames wrote: »

That's not what I've read. I'm not up on it well enough to know if true but the source looks authentic

http://mashable.com/2013/11/04/bitcoin-cornell-researchers/

The Bitcoin ecosystem is open to manipulation, and potential takeover, by miners seeking to maximize their rewards

The people that published that paper did so without peer review and a member of the Bitcoin foundation has said that on cursory review it appears to be based on flawed assumptions.

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=310

dryhat

citricsquid wrote: »

The people that published that paper did so without peer review and a member of the Bitcoin foundation has said that on cursory review it appears to be based on flawed assumptions.

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=310

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

JohnRo

dryhat wrote: »

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

MSM scaremongering on this (not referring to anything in this thread particularly) reminds me of the false war on some drugs in so many ways, where sensationalist headlines and hysterical editorials appealing to base emotion are all that seem to really matter. Little wonder the two have been portrayed as inextricably linked.

The demolition of such stories never seems to register though.

When you think what could be gained by a bit more positivity the similarities are even more striking.

dealer_wins

JohnRo, are you a bitcoin fan or not? Its hard to tell from your repeated posts :rotfl:

JohnRo

The technology is fascinating. What's not to like?

N1AK

JohnRo wrote: »

All everyone is seeing is exactly what's happening in a free market price discovery mechanism, the market looking for a value.

And the value is being inflated by people buying them to hoard them and wait for the value to go up. At some point demand to buy them as an investment will vastly decrease (it must happen eventually as prices can't increase forever). When that happens and it becomes clear that they aren't a good commodity to sit on any more the demand to buy them will decrease and the desire to sell them will increase and prices will fall substantially.

The only question is when that will happen. Once it has happened then BTC will at least behave more like a typical currency than it currently does; currently it's pretty much like gold but without the inherent value.

grey_gym_sock

there is a logical reason for the value of bitcoins to go up: if a digital currency ends up being used on as wide a scale as seems possible, and that currency is bitcoin, then 1 would expect that currency to be worth a lot more.

this is a story that could run for a long time, but not forever. digital currency use could expand rapidly for quite a long time, but will eventually reach saturation point.

it's also far from certain that it will happen at all. there are powerful interests who are likely to try to stop it.

it's also even less certain that, if digital currency achieves its potential, that currency will be bitcoin. it may be the front runner now, but then myspace was once the most popular social network

of course, there is speculation in bitcoins, as well as that (very uncertain) logic. that is typical of genuine investments or commodities which are experiencing rapid growth. we had the dotcom bubble, but that didn't prove that the internet wasn't going to be massively important.

however, bitcoin is surely a commodity, not an investment. some ppl suggest putting a very small percentage of an investment portfolio into commodities (though i don't do that myself), but then it should probably be a broad variety of commodities.

sabretoothtigger

http relates to bitcoins as a protocol its comparable. Unique in its description of activity. Myspace was just a branch of http a particular arrangement alongside many others

I guess facebook is an evolvement of the idea. There others besides btc and they could take over, alot are very similar though.

As a protocol its more like saying email will fail. Well it does all the time, I guess plain text is not so absolute as how people regard money and security. Ive been waiting for email to develop and it hasnt really, so similarly btc likely is more durable as a parallel to other means

bitcoin is surely a commodity, not an investment.

I took up a very small section of royalty shares from an exchange. They are attempting to add dollar flavour to their current virtual spaghetti soup, with many legal twists. Seems a valid venture to me, the return varies but hopefully about 100% apr