411–420 of 447 posts
Does Valve cash out the bitcoins immediately because of it's volatile nature, or is Valve large enough (or bitcoin purchases small enough) that they can safely bear the changes?
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Credit Card authorization guarantees the funds to the merchant. Signing a bitcoin transaction and broadcasting it to the blockchain does not. Successful confirmation of the tx on the blockchain does, and to be on the safe side the rule of thumb is to wait for 6 confs on the bitcoin blockchain before considering the funds to be guaranteed. Tx confirmation times are a known problem with BTC in terms of the payment acce…
Credit card chargeback fraud isn't that rare, and the merchants usually take the hit.
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Bitpay (steam's payment processor) accepts 0-confirmation transactions
Doesn't that open Bitpay up to double-spending attacks?
If it gets doublespent, they tell Steam that, and Steam simply revokes the sale, because it is digital and linked to the account.
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If I leave cash on the street should I expect it to be safe? Is that a deep security issue? You implied there were deep fundamental flaws in BTC security, but your response shows nothing of the sort. Your 'deep flaw' is 'you have to protect your private keys'. You are describing a UX flaw, and I would agree with that. Objectively, you have exposed no 'deep security issues'.
The deep security issues are that transactions are, by design , untraceable and irreversible. That means that any security breach is catastrophic. Whereas the routine security breaches of credit and debit cards, and online banking systems, are not catastrophic. Physical cash is of course not subject to instant theft from anywhere in the world - the theif has to be in the same place as the cash. Whereas it's basically…
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I'll offer a controversial explanation: bitcoin enthusiasts have exhausted most of the oxygen in the room with regard to rational bitcoin discussion. The never-ending adulation of bitcoin as the greatest invention since the internet, the hyperbolic claims that bitcoin will do things like revolutionize payments, end global war, eliminate the need for banks, liberate the people from bondage, the litany of bitcoin and b…
Well, while the hyperbole might be grandiose during the stages of bitcoin's infancy - everything claimed is plausible if it can scale. At least to the point of being a global currency and transfer of value alongside govt and central bank fiat. Sometimes the economic winds favor different assets both liquid and long term stores of value. Bitcoin adds a legitimate, scarce, immutable form of ownership of something that…
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I'll offer a controversial explanation: bitcoin enthusiasts have exhausted most of the oxygen in the room with regard to rational bitcoin discussion. The never-ending adulation of bitcoin as the greatest invention since the internet, the hyperbolic claims that bitcoin will do things like revolutionize payments, end global war, eliminate the need for banks, liberate the people from bondage, the litany of bitcoin and b…
You get this because the properties of bitcoin attracts two kinds of people. Goldbugs, because of how bitcoin is "mined" and is inherently deflationary. And gold is the one true currency, m'kay. Cypherpunks, because it is built around cryptographics. And cryptographics makes anything double plus good. Never mind that both kinds have a strong anti-establishment streak. That said, if they could get away form their anti…
Both issues have been resolved in Ethereum, an alternative cryptocurrency with a market cap second only to Bitcoin itself.
So, it can be said that cryptocurrencies indeed solve many problems. What can't be said is which cryptocurrency will be the one that ends being used as cash in the long term.
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Bitcoin's utility is being a global currency. Like I said, Bitcoin will scale like the internet scaled which is in direct proportion to demand. Blocks aren't often full and if you are in a hurry then you need to pay 10 or 20 cents to prioritize your transaction.
>Bitcoin's utility is being a global currency. But it's hard to get and hard to use. It's useful for a pseudo-anonymous transfer for value. Unless I'm doing something illegal, Visa is a better option.
There's always one situation where one currency is more convenient than the others.
Is this attitude a remnant of the religious wars in Europe?
There can be only one?
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And, of course, the idea that bitcoin changes the world so radically that no one has an army anymore is absurd. But I think you've just touched on another reason why people react so strongly to bitcoin-related articles. It's like, bitcoin started out with a pretty good-sounding idea: decentralized currency, like the old Gnutella network except for money! hey I like it! Then people start talking about it and the first…
> Better start coding, except no one will accept your patches to bump up the 21 million bitcoin supply...not so democratic. That's a horrible change. But it's a perfect example of the ultimate democracy. Everyone has the freedom to listen to you, they're choosing not to.
You've just demonstrated the breach with reality in Bitcoin-land that is most personally irritating to me--the conflation of democracy with consensus/mob rule.
Democracy isn't (and never was) just "majority preference that is inferred from behavior". It's the regular, structured process of checking in and putting the rules that affect people up to a group decision, i.e. voting on stuff on a regular basis, and exposing the rules of the system to that process.
Having a regular vote on the # of bitcoins? That'd give it an element of democracy. But bring that up, and you get the kind of nonsense you just gave us.
And it's funny, in bitcoin-land, the very idea of democracy seems really offensive, and I think I know why; I think that the hardcore bitcoin advocates look at bitcoin as a way to get into a system and come out on top. The actual levers of power in the world are closed off to most of us, and getting into them is a long, hard process that involves skills very few in the computer industry have (or want to develop). Bitcoin gives its adherents a way to feel like they're going to be kings in the new world order, and suggesting the democratizing of this system would of course threaten that.
No one in bitcoin-land ever comes back to me and says "Yeah, you're right, we should involve more people in the decisions behind how this thing is run." That power's seductive (well, that fictional, imagined power of being a king in bitcoin-land), I guess.
In other news: https://i.imgur.com/3ncet7I.jpg
Does that mean Germans can buy uncensored games now?