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BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market?

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Re: BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market?

#31
post #23
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, ATI/AMD has that market sewn up.

Has anyone run through the power/hardware costs versus the mined amount in bitcoin and real currency yet?

Yes. I can't find the link, but I read an analysis a few weeks ago. IIRC: Six months ago you could easily build a machine to mine enough to pay for itself relatively quickly. Today it is probably still possibly but more difficult (you need to use GPUs or you can't compete) and the margins are quickly narrowing.

Re: BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market?

#32
post #14

Note that it is illegal in the US to use an alternate currency. The second this becomes popular, the feds will raid it and shut it down. See Liberty Dollar, e-gold, etc. Casino chips are specifically exempted from this rule, but only inside a casino.

  Note that it is illegal in the US to use an alternate currency.
Your position appears to be unsupported by legislation.

31 U.S.C. 5103: (from http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/... )

  United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and 
  circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal 
  tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.
As I wrote three months ago, ( http://bbot.org/blog/archives/2010/12/11/encrypting_a_better... ) the Americans may make it hard on Bitcoin to operate for a variety of other reasons, (for one, it's inherently hard to track the movement of money in the Bitcoin network, making it great for laundering money) but Bitcoin does not appear to be prima facie illegal, on the basis of being an alternative currency.

You have to pay taxes in USD, but simply doing business in another currency is not illegal.

As for "raiding and shutting it down"; difficult, but not entirely impossible. There's only one primary developer, and the network is coordinated through a single irc channel. (#bitcoin @ irc.lfnet.org) You could order him to shut down bitcoin.org, and close the irc channel; but Bitcoin is open source, and a more censorship-resistant client could be hacked together.

Re: BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market?

#33
post #3

Where do I start selling pickaxes?

If you were generating bitcoins, and wanted to make them worth more so as to increase the value of your own CPU-time investment, you could always back them with real money—i.e. establish yourself as a micro-exchange where a certain number of bitcoins will be accepted and a certain number of real USD/EUR/whatever else given back. This would increase the stability and trustworthiness of the bitcoin network as a whole, meaning bitcoin demand would increase—meaning their exchange rate would increase.

Thus, a good second-order solution would be to realize people will inevitably want to build such micro-exchanges—and sell them software that builds them! (Or give it to them for free, but make it charge them transaction fees, etc.) Remember to make it SaaS, though—otherwise, you're just asking for a 100% piracy rate on this sort of thing.

And if you think the government could shut your SaaS down for breaking some trade regulation—well, stop running the SaaS, and instead run a third-order company that allows other, likely non-US-based companies run SaaS exchange-providers. Then build an aggregator with trust-metrics.

Re: BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market?

#34
post #14

Note that it is illegal in the US to use an alternate currency. The second this becomes popular, the feds will raid it and shut it down. See Liberty Dollar, e-gold, etc. Casino chips are specifically exempted from this rule, but only inside a casino.

Really? There are plenty of southern towns that have their own currency in addition to the USD. I suspect the situation is more complex than you imply.

Re: BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market?

#35
post #14

Note that it is illegal in the US to use an alternate currency. The second this becomes popular, the feds will raid it and shut it down. See Liberty Dollar, e-gold, etc. Casino chips are specifically exempted from this rule, but only inside a casino.

Note that it is illegal in the US to use an alternate currency. Your position appears to be unsupported by legislation. 31 U.S.C. 5103: (from http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/... ) United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. As I wrote thr…

If the client were to require tor, or even integrate tor, shutting it down becomes exponentially more difficult.

Re: BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market?

#36
post #14

Note that it is illegal in the US to use an alternate currency. The second this becomes popular, the feds will raid it and shut it down. See Liberty Dollar, e-gold, etc. Casino chips are specifically exempted from this rule, but only inside a casino.

What if all software and hardware are offshore (i.e. in Switzerland or something)?

Re: BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market?

#37

So...what can I buy with BitCoins? Also, from the link, "Donations are accepted at 1Nqr3MqVyUp6k3o3QPePAdn4Yg4tzgB9kw." Somehow I think that's going to present an obstacle for most people. Is this something that is really targeted at the general public, or at programmers who are bored of dollars?

A list of merchants that accept bitcoin:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

Re: BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market?

#38

If you have no idea what in the hell BitCoin is, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQPSwA2Itbs (skip to around 42 minutes). Really explains it well.

Using the #t hash anchor works well for this kind of thing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQPSwA2Itbs#t=2516s

Re: BitCoins - a real, alternative currency with a market?

#40
I had the idea of suggesting to Reddit a while ago that they should start their own currency (i would name it the Karmarian)

Reddit is a very large closely nit community, that is world wide. If the internet has a chance of forming its own open form digital currency, its going to need the backing of a large community such as Reddit or 4chan.

Personally I'd really wish something would take off. It pisses me off that the only way to do business online is via another private business. It would be awesome if our government created digital cash for online transactions, and it would be even better if a non government entity created a world currency to handle digital transactions.

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