I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins • Hacker News Board

I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#1

Post by sas » Sun, Jun 26, 2011, 8:06 AM UTC

Some people claim that Bitcoin isn’t a “real currency,” that it is “imaginary,” or a Ponzi scheme — for a number of reasons, but perhaps mostly because there’s no obvious way to use them in most people’s daily lives. I have a different perspective because last week I paid for lunch with Bitcoins. Here’s how it happened.

I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins
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Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#2

Post by c4urself » Sun, Jun 26, 2011, 8:44 AM UTC

There's a lot to like about BitCoin. They "just" need to solve the following:

1. Technical issues (make it more secure) 2. Economic issues (deflation) 3. "Competitor" issues (governments, banks, the powerful status quo)

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#3

Post by pieter » Sun, Jun 26, 2011, 8:45 AM UTC

Sounds like there really is a need for a standardized way to integrate bitcoin addresses into DNS. For example, just adding the address as a TXT field and using DNSSEC to sign it would make the whole experience a bit nicer already.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#4

Post by ghshephard » Sun, Jun 26, 2011, 8:58 AM UTC

pieter wrote: post #3

Sounds like there really is a need for a standardized way to integrate bitcoin addresses into DNS. For example, just adding the address as a TXT field and using DNSSEC to sign it would make the whole experience a bit nicer already.

The added advantage of that solution is that (with a bit of backend work on your nameserver) you could rotate your Bitcoin address for every lookup, resulting in a unique address per transaction to preserve anonymity.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#5

Post by retube » Sun, Jun 26, 2011, 9:09 AM UTC

It seems that bank accounts are public: https://blockexplorer.com/address/1MTbKpYWnzqmsLvCjdTtwrvuX8...

Why is this?

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#6

Post by ignifero » Sun, Jun 26, 2011, 9:12 AM UTC

c4urself wrote: post #2

There's a lot to like about BitCoin. They "just" need to solve the following: 1. Technical issues (make it more secure) 2. Economic issues (deflation) 3. "Competitor" issues (governments, banks, the powerful status quo)

... Which will lead to 4. Trust. People can only agree to use a currency if they trust it.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#7

Post by stuhood » Sun, Jun 26, 2011, 9:13 AM UTC

retube wrote: post #5

It seems that bank accounts are public: https://blockexplorer.com/address/1MTbKpYWnzqmsLvCjdTtwrvuX8... Why is this?

This is why people say Bitcoin is pseudonymous: the entire transaction history of every Bitcoin is public knowledge.

To achieve actual anonymity, receivers need to use a one-time-address for each sender, and senders need to not leak information about which addresses they own.

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

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#8

Post by patrickg » Sun, Jun 26, 2011, 9:14 AM UTC

c4urself wrote: post #2

There's a lot to like about BitCoin. They "just" need to solve the following: 1. Technical issues (make it more secure) 2. Economic issues (deflation) 3. "Competitor" issues (governments, banks, the powerful status quo)

4) Legislative issues. For example Germany (I'd bet) would not accept bitcoins in one's tax form ("I have to pay 345.67 bit coins of taxes to the state"). And if you have income in a non approved currency, you get into some trouble.

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#9

Post by JeremyBanks » Sun, Jun 26, 2011, 9:14 AM UTC

retube wrote: post #5

It seems that bank accounts are public: https://blockexplorer.com/address/1MTbKpYWnzqmsLvCjdTtwrvuX8... Why is this?

That's the way it works: everyone can see every transaction, and use that to figure how much money is at any address.

For anonymity, you can generate as many addresses as you want in your wallet, and there are services that you can use to conduct transactions anonymously (by proxies and spread out over a period of time).

Re: I Spent A Coin (And I Liked It) — How I Bought Lunch in Manhattan with Bitcoins

#10

Post by ars » Sun, Jun 26, 2011, 9:16 AM UTC

The most important by far rule for currency is stability. With stability comes acceptance of the currency.

You don't have that - the owner first looked up the exchange rate to US dollars.

What you have is a medium of exchange, but you don't have a currency.

A medium of exchange is useful, and can eventually become a currency. But bitcoins are not yet a currency.

Perhaps someone can make a bank, where you store US dollars. Using that bank you can send and receive bitcoins. Only the bank can create bitcoins, but once created anyone can trade them without input from the bank.

If you are familiar with history this is how paper currency actually got started - goldsmiths would store gold and give chits of paper. Those chits started getting exchanged, and a currency was born.