371–380 of 555 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your common or garden libertarian will construct all manner of complex arguments as to how that isn't so, but there's really nothing in the philosophy which forbids it.
You're right. Proponents of polycentric law don't claim that something fundamentally forbids this from happening. But the same goes for proponents of centralized (government) law. What needs to be analyzed is which system makes this more likely to happen.
The hatred for Mt Gox in the bitcoin community blinded them to the reality that the malleability bug is very serious. The way the bitcoin community responded was irresponsible. Regardless of whether there are workarounds, it's a tragic security flaw in the protocol and should have been treated as such.
This is seriously the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time. Here we have a group of objectivist libertarians who believe that there should be effectively no laws other than the law of economics and self-interest who run an illegal website devoted to the pure greed of cashing in on contraband, and this is what they write: "I’ve included transaction logs at the bottom of this message. Review the vendor’s dis…
Between you and Miguel Icaaza there's enough 'Bitcoin schadenfraude' to power a small town.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They wanted to exit the business from the start. Saw a convenient time with everyone discussing a vulnerability, claim right away that vulnerability was used to steal all the money to avoid backlash from users.
If one were sufficiently cynical one could argue that this was the plan from the start. Build another version of the site, wait for some BitCoin disaster, take all the funds and claim it was the disaster that done did it. Of course to pull that off you'd really need to employ the disaster yourself so that you have the ledger entries to "prove" it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but the processes that make banking secure mostly rely on human interaction, insurance and centralisation, which are obviously difficult or impossible to apply to Bitcoin. The current batch of Bitcoin businesses are getting hard lessons in information security, whereas the mainline banking system can compensate for any deficiencies in their software with more traditional security processes. To me, one of the mo…
And fiat currency starts looking better all the time. The fact that the most powerful security mechanisms aren't even applicable to digital currency should be a huge red flag. Short the exchange rate + significant DDOS attack on the exchanges = millions in free money. That's just a for example. It doesn't even require explicit crime on the bitcoins themselves, and can be done at a safe remove through multiple cutouts…
You could make similar arguments about security on the internet compared to physical security in the real world. The recent Target credit card theft, for instance - it's unlikely that the thieves could have appropriated 40 million credit card numbers by physically taking them!
> Short the exchange rate + significant DDOS attack on the exchanges = millions in free money. That's just a for example. It doesn't even require explicit crime on the bitcoins themselves, and can be done at a safe remove through multiple cutouts.
Sure, but you could achieve a similar effect by attacking an internet retailer and shorting their stock. It's also a lot easier to short stock, which is a shame, as shorting typically reduces price volatility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
at the top of the article: Update: The amount of BTC that was stolen was calculated by Nicholas Weaver @NCWeaver – Computer Security Researcher, to be around: 4474.266369160003BTC that are with the value of about $2.7 Million.
That should be 4474.26636916 . . . who is doing BTC calculations with floats?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The financial industry is just as insecure if you hold actual cash. The solution the industry has is not to hold cash. Since no one has money, and all the banks have insurance, they just reverse the transactions in 90% of cases, and in the other 10, like ATM fraud, use insurance. But seriously, go to a bank and try to withdraw $90K in cash. Also, if you make off with 90K in cash the finance industry has people with g…
You could easily go to a bank and withdraw 90k in cash. There'd be paperwork involved, but even small bank vaults hold far more money than that. This chart is old (1992) but gives an indication of the amount of money in a bank vault: http://i.imgur.com/hVZWFR5.png
See exactly how much paperwork you end up doing for the next 10 years of your life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I only have to worry about being declared a criminal by one rather than [arbitrary number] of groups that I have literally no control over.
You would have much more control over a competitive market of groups. Your claim is like saying that you'd rather there only be a single restaurant available rather than a group of restaurants, because then you only have to worry about one restaurant poisoning you or otherwise providing bad service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is perfectly possible [to secure a bitcoin one owns]. You're forgetting about social engineering.
Social engineering applies to pretty much everything. It has nothing to do with Bitcoin (or whatever else a social engineer wants from you) and everything with your own lack of due diligence and gullibility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious question: Would it be safe to say that not all self-professed libertarians agree on the definition of libertarianism? I've suspected this is the case.
Liberals and conservatives won't agree on their defintions either. Communism has been routinely redefined throughout history. A philosophy of society is always a malleable nebulous concept.
Libertarianism = Freedom. Communism = Freedom. Liberals = Freedom. Conservatives = Freedom. North Korea = Freedom. USA = Freedom.
Seriously what country isn't free? Who is against freedom?