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Richest Bitcoin Addresses

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Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#131

Post by qnr »

ajuc wrote: post #90
anopows wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the fact that early adopters are psychotically rich for doing nothing is... one of the many signs of a flawed system. No they risked their money with a speculation that had almost 0% chance of getting any return in the future. They took a huge risk, without this, bitcoin would not exist. And that's why they are rewarded: Taking a risk that almost no one would have taken to create something big. > Basically if e…

Isn't bitcoin easily manipulated? Let's say I have 1% of all bitcoins. I sell half of them, wait for the price to fall, and buy back to have 1.1% of all bitcoins. Repeat each few weeks, and let's say there's 20 people that realized this and have enough bitcoins for this to be feasible. End result = currency that's mostly owned by a few people. And when everybody realize this - bubble collapses. At least that was my t…

To see how absurd this logic is, start with buying bitcoins first:

1. Buy 1% of bitcoins

2. Price increases

3. Sell your bitcoins for more than you bought them

4. Goto 1

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#132

Post by dllthomas »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #112
mcherm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like what happens when your wallet gets burned in a fire. That cash is gone forever.

Correct. Except most of us don't keep all our money in our wallet or under our mattress. We keep it in a bank. Which is insured by the federal government. Bitcoin is akin to keeping all your money in a big bag in a single location if you don't back it your digital wallet offsite.

That is the local effect, which is the same for cash vs bitcoin and different for deposit vs bitcoin (though of course there is nothing preventing bitcoin-denominated deposits). The global effect for bitcoin is more like nuking a bit of gold - you have reduced the total supply permanently - whereas for cash we can just print more.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#134

Post by MSM »

Moral_ wrote: post #111
MSM wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way smaller scale but back in 2011 I heard about bitcoins and crunched some numbers. I realized that at the current price (~$16), I was able to make profit mining them on my desktop since it would only cost about ~$12 in electricty per coin. I got myself 3 or 4 coins (I wasn't even in a pool at that point) but then the price crashed in late 2011 and I eventually forgot about it. Since then I've reformatted and I reme…

How do you get 3 or 4 coins if you aren't in a pool, that's impossible. If you aren't in a pool the only way to get coins is to solve the block and in that case you would have had 50.

Hmm, I must be misremembering then, I know I didn't have 50.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#135

Post by kens »

mcherm wrote: post #100
skriticos2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. If you delete the wallet, the contained Bitcoins make poof . You basically delete the private key and won't be able to sign a transaction with it ever.

It's like what happens when your wallet gets burned in a fire. That cash is gone forever.

Actually the Bureau of Engraving and Printing will replace damaged or destroyed US currency if they can determine to their satisfaction how much has been destroyed. They replace over $30 million of currency yearly. The most common causes of mutilation are are fire, water, chemicals, explosives; animal, insect or rodent damage; and petrification or deterioration by burying.

See http://moneyfactory.gov/uscurrency/damagedcurrency.html There's also an article with some interesting stories: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/06/2001-06-0...

[I'm not intending this as an argument about Bitcoin, but as something people might find interesting.]

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#136

Post by fat0wl »

tedunangst wrote: post #130
grinnbearit wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand, they made a very risky bet and it paid off. Would you have considered compensating them if the value went to 0?

Was leaving your computer (or your work computer) on over night a few years ago really such a huge risk?

eXACTLY! ughhhhhhh 100x yes. i'm always given this "risk" argument and I think "what's the risk in investing pocketchange & leaving on your pc.... it's not like you founded a start-up out-of-pocket".

It's just a more ingenious version of Amway, because rather than pushing products around & trying to have to prod people into trying their hand at sales, they are being sold THE IDEA OF MONEY! And if people decide to buy that money, the value of the originator's money increases. And to make them feel as if they are equals he says "Oh well if you want you can work on these hash equations and free money will appear" but as long as it's propelling the greed for this "money" it will never hurt the value of his stash.

Sad stuff. and the greatest beneficiaries are probably the criminal organizations who use it. Half the reason i wanna see it crash is because it will wipe a lot of bank accounts used by gambling organizations etc. who prey on misery to begin with.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#137

Post by fat0wl »

anopows wrote: post #121
ajuc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't bitcoin easily manipulated? Let's say I have 1% of all bitcoins. I sell half of them, wait for the price to fall, and buy back to have 1.1% of all bitcoins. Repeat each few weeks, and let's say there's 20 people that realized this and have enough bitcoins for this to be feasible. End result = currency that's mostly owned by a few people. And when everybody realize this - bubble collapses. At least that was my t…

I'm no expert in these fields. But I guess it wouldn't work because if you sell a lot of bitcoins you couldn't sell all at the same price. Eg. you want to sell 10k Bitcoins. The price is 750$ and the first 50 Bitcoins you can sell for 750$. Now after that there are not enough limit orders anymore available for that price category. So you would sell a lot of bitcoins for much less than the price was originally when yo…

There are actually common market manipulation trading tricks (will get you busted immediately in the stock market) that people use regularly in Bitcoin.

Read the section in this article titled Enter the tape-painting “Shark Squad”. I've seen a few similar articles that document how simple it is to do market manipulations in Bitcoin that would get you immediately cuffed on Wall St. And it doesn't even take that many parties to pull them off! Because Bitcoin is actually transacted sooooo little.

I can't say for sure though. There are a lot of debates about transactional volume but impossible to tell because some of the big money Bitcoin holders just buy/sell to heighten the perception of its popularity.

http://falkvinge.net/2013/09/13/bitcoins-vast-overvaluation-...

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#138

Post by wdvh »

mike_esspe wrote: post #88
wdvh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I did not know that. But there's little reason to believe that whatever encryption that bitcoin uses (presumably EC?) won't be vulnerable at some point in the future.

Bitcoin address is a hash of public key. So, without address reuse you should break both EC, RIPEMD-160 and SHA-256

DES was broken about 23 years after it was designed.

I'd be surprised if 30 years into the future (probably earlier given the incentives we have to break crypto today are so much than those we had in '98) if these algorithms weren't broken.

There is actually no precedent of a cryptographic system relying on computational hardness surviving for more than a generation. And given that our fundamental theoretical understanding hasn't really evolved beyond, "we think a bunch of these problems are hard", things are likely to stay that way for a while.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#139

Post by droopybuns »

reconbot wrote: post #91
MSM wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way smaller scale but back in 2011 I heard about bitcoins and crunched some numbers. I realized that at the current price (~$16), I was able to make profit mining them on my desktop since it would only cost about ~$12 in electricty per coin. I got myself 3 or 4 coins (I wasn't even in a pool at that point) but then the price crashed in late 2011 and I eventually forgot about it. Since then I've reformatted and I reme…

I got 2 coins off a guy in a coffeshop about 1 year ago for $20. I sold them today for about $1600. About 2 years ago I almost dropped $1000 on bitcoins but was talked out of it by family and friends. It feels weird. I can't connect bitcoins to social or economic value. The "china explosion" of btc price won't last imho. And while I like bitcoin, it's just a currency and not an investment, as in it doesn't generate v…

I struggle with the word "currency."

Any economy built on a currency that fluctuates this wildly is going to be unpleasant.

I don't know how someone can genuinely believe that bitcoin is a currency with this kind of pricing turbulence. It is behaving like the focal point of rampant speculation.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#140

Post by im3w1l »

fat0wl wrote: post #30
res0nat0r wrote: post #6

Question: How hard/impossible would it be for me as a US citizen to cash in on a large lot like that? Say I want 10 million dollars for some partying I want to do for New Years. It seems some people have mega riches, but is it actually feasible for me to realize that money (in US Dollars, deposited to my Chase bank account)?

The whole price of Bitcoin is an illusion that they use to get people to keep buying. It's the result of a bidding war. There is an article here about that basically explains (this is my interpretation not his words) how the price of BTC is kindof like the sticker price on an item in the store. It doesn't represent the real value, it's simply the value as perceived by consumers and is, in a way, fixed -- http://falkv…

Falkvinge thinks they will be worth 100k-1000k in the future. If we accept that (which I don't btw) is it so weird that people want to spend 700 today for something that might be worth 100k in a few years?
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