191–200 of 205 posts
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Sadly there isn't enough data for a consumer price index, because Bitcoin isn't a currency (in the extent that its main use is exchange for commercial goods), it's a financial sandbox.
Which means that it's susceptible to the wild fluctuations of any other financial security and is not the almighty digital currency that it's backers try to make it out to be.
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No. If someone does manage to control 51% of the computing power of Bitcoin, he's much better off using that to mine bitcoins rather than "cheating". If he'll use it to cheat, he'll cause panic, make bitcoin drop their value and undermine the source of his own potential wealth. It'll be much better for him to play fair and just gain (a lot, with that much computing power) wealth by mining.
That's true only if you assume the motivation is purely financial.
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I think eCommerce was a different situation than what you describe. People were already used to calling up and ordering things over the phone from a catalog using their credit card. Doing the same thing over the internet wasn't that much of a stretch.
Uhhh... if you were around in the 90s everyone said "nobody will buy stuff online". Everyone. News articles, talking heads, books, etc. People scoffed at sites like eBay even years after it's launch. It was very comparable to bitcoin. Everybody has been complaining about bitcoin while the entire time it's been growing and growing and growing. It's still growing and people are still acting as if it's nothing.
I want to be able to get behind Bitcoin I really do. I just don't understand the purpose it serves. As an asset class it's far too volatile even for someone who plays naked options. Imagine putting $10,000 into an asset class that swings 20-30% daily on a regular basis. Trading curbs eat your heart out. As a currency it's too impractical and there are serious hurdles involved with turning central bank currency into B…
I see BTC as a proof-of-concept experiment right now more than anything else. And I think it's still too early to tell what it's actually proving.
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It totally stands within reason that until it has wide spread adoption and regular people stop caring about what the exact exchange rate is that we will see large runs like that. As I stated, we have several people (myself included) invested to make money and take care of an investment, not to use a daily currency.
...this is exactly why it will fail.
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yep, people are already doing micropayments on reddit. See http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip and http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin . Basically, you can do "tip $0.50" on reddit and a bot will parse your comment and process the transaction.
On that's cool. Could we implement one like that for hacker news?
I'm genuinely not sure how it would be received in this community. It would certainly be something to put past the moderators first.
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I'm guessing there is no solution to this problem. BitCoin will clearly fail.
Green addresses allow instant confirmation. There is also verified escrow. This problem was solved long ago. Anyone can keep spending money in a "Green Address" which is guaranteed by the eWallet provider. There are no problems without solutions. We have an over abundance of solutions just begging for problems. This is the age of abundance.
"In startup we have great of capability for churn out solution. Please send problem, we are pay good money." - https://twitter.com/DEVOPS_BORAT/status/315549020326088704
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On that's cool. Could we implement one like that for hacker news?
I wrote a bot for HN a few months ago, but canned the idea fairly early on. If people were willing to put up with a slightly spammy bot, it wouldn't take much to modify my backend to do something similar. I'm genuinely not sure how it would be received in this community. It would certainly be something to put past the moderators first.
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Leaving aside bitcoin for a moment, payment shouldn't be synchronous anyway, if you can avoid it - you're relying on external systems.
Huh? Cash is synchronous.
But, 1) Bitcoin isn't cash, and 2) you're not paying in-app with cash.
Any time you need to rely on external systems (which is always the case, with electronic payment), as much of that reliance as feasible should be made asynchronous.