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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?

#21

Post by gavinandresen »

il wrote: 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.

Liberty Dollar was busted for counterfeiting, because their coins looked too much like legal tender.

e-gold was busted for violating Know Your Customer money laundering regulations.

Alternative currencies can be legal-- see, for example, Disney Bucks (paper currency issued by Disney) or Ithaca Hours (oldest local currency in the US, going since 1991).

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

#22

Post by exit »

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Generating_bitcoins

"All generating nodes of the network are competing to be the first to find a solution to a cryptographic problem about their candidate-block, a problem that requires repetitious trial and error."

i wonder whether this "cryptographic problem" is vulnerable to quantum computing, in the same way asymmetric schemes like rsa are.

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

#24

Post by getsat »

il wrote: post #19
mrsteveman1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raid what? There is no central authority with bitcoins that can be shut down. They could go after exchanges I suppose, but exchanges aren't really necessary for there to be a functional economy built around bitcoins.

There's always something to raid. Someone is hosting bitcoin.org, developing the client, etc. The government hates competition.

This has come up many times on the bitcoin forums/IRC. There's a few hardcoded nodes that the client will initially connect to, but you can also grab a third party list. The client is open source. The USA fortunately does not have jurisdiction everywhere, though they would like to think they do.

By the time it pops up on their radar, it will be too late anyways.

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

#26

Post by rfugger »

exit wrote: post #22

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Generating_bitcoins "All generating nodes of the network are competing to be the first to find a solution to a cryptographic problem about their candidate-block, a problem that requires repetitious trial and error." i wonder whether this "cryptographic problem" is vulnerable to quantum computing, in the same way asymmetric schemes like rsa are.

The cryptographic problem is finding a nonce that, when concatenated with current transactions, gives a SHA256 hash below a certain value. Not sure about quantum vulnerabilities.

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

#27

Post by derefr »

thinkcomp wrote: post #8

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?

They could make that one step less confusing by just attaching a protocol scheme (coin://1Nqr...), so that users could click on a labelled link instead. They could make it two steps simpler by making it work like OpenID, where a URL can defer its bit coin "alternate" using a tag—so you could just enter someone's web address in your bit coin client, and be able to push coins to them that way.

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

#28

Post by CoffeeDregs »

socksy wrote: post #20
thinkcomp wrote: post #8

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?

Anonymity allows for online markets that were previously a lot harder to achieve: https://ianxz6zefk72ulzz.tor2web.org/

ohmiword... That is very interesting...

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

#29

Post by soult »

jackolas wrote: post #16
thinkcomp wrote: post #8

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?

I'd assume one could use a DNS like resolver for named addresses considering bitcoin allows IP addresses...

You could use DNS to map from a domain to a bitcoin address. In the Bitcoin forums people are actually working on a way to map email addresses to a bitcoin address.

However, using IP addresses for Bitcoin transfers is insecure because you are vulnerable to MITM attacks (you wouldn't do online banking over a non-SSL connection, would you?) and because the IP addresses of the sender and the receiver will be known by each other.

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

#30

Post by mrsteveman1 »

gavinandresen wrote: post #21
il wrote: 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.

Liberty Dollar was busted for counterfeiting, because their coins looked too much like legal tender. e-gold was busted for violating Know Your Customer money laundering regulations. Alternative currencies can be legal-- see, for example, Disney Bucks (paper currency issued by Disney) or Ithaca Hours (oldest local currency in the US, going since 1991).

Interesting point, I wonder who in the bitcoin ecosystem would be subject to KYC regs, maybe exchanges?
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