71–80 of 152 posts
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Because it's easy to spend since others accept it. Money itself has absolutely no value at all. It's more a promise that somebody will accept it when you want to buy something with it.
That's the whole point of fiat money, isn't it?
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The US Dollar area (i.e. the US) has come closer to default than the Eurozone.
yep. But can the largest military power really default?
"Hi Everyone, POTUS here. About those treasury bonds a lot of you are holding... we're not going to pay interest on them. Or pay back the princiapl. Ever. On a totally unrelated note, here are some pictures of our 11 carrier strike groups. Impressive, aren't they?"
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> People do not trust "Federal Reserve notes" Really? There I was thinking foreign governments liked holding their reserves in US dollars... > that at least some people realize that there is no such a thing like US dollar, only those "notes" printed by Ben Bernanke and his pals Wake up, SHEEPLE!
You really do not have a clue how our monetary system works, do you?
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The US Dollar area (i.e. the US) has come closer to default than the Eurozone.
yep. But can the largest military power really default?
They were the largest military power at the time, Germany in land, British Empire(India,Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia...) on the sea.
They started getting in debt and a little country called United States became the biggest creditor of the world.
They they killed each other in a stupid war trying to reign supreme, and someone else did.
Now this someone else had started thinking their power will be forever. We will see...
Given that Bitcoin records all transactions for posterity, and given the ongoing rise of "big data" analytics, I'd say Bitcoin is likely to be harder , in the long run, to use for shenanigans. A government currency has forms in which transactions create no paper trail. Bitcoin does not. Really the big disruption Bitcoin could cause if it becomes well established, is to act as a stable reference frame against which th…
Totally agreed, but I think it's worth pointing out that you could technically "own" the Bitcoin "printing press" if the $BTC distribution is skewed drastically to a particular majority (who could then corrupt the protocol/subsequent block chains). This is why initially, many people were told to use different mining pools or exchanges, as I recall there were a few majority cases a year or so ago (even Mt. Gox still h…
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With so few people - in Germany at least - having their assets in Gold etc. but in bank accounts in $,EUR,... I assume most people trust the currency.
Doesn't Germany hold a huge amount of gold? Additionally, the only euro country not collapsing on itself?
[edit] "But not even the owners are allowed to view their own gold. According to the Federal Audit Office report, the Fed explained that "in the interest of security and of the control process" no "viewings" are possible." http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-politicia...
Given that Bitcoin records all transactions for posterity, and given the ongoing rise of "big data" analytics, I'd say Bitcoin is likely to be harder , in the long run, to use for shenanigans. A government currency has forms in which transactions create no paper trail. Bitcoin does not. Really the big disruption Bitcoin could cause if it becomes well established, is to act as a stable reference frame against which th…
>Given that Bitcoin records all transactions for posterity, and given the ongoing rise of "big data" analytics, I'd say Bitcoin is likely to be harder, in the long run, to use for shenanigans. A government currency has forms in which transactions create no paper trail. Bitcoin does not. I did some research on anonymity (mentioned in that document); I find it hard to project how private Bitcoin will be in future. Our…
They obscure transactions quickly and cheaply.
> FBI assesses with high confidence that [...] malicious actors can [...] use botnets to generate bitcoins. As far as I understand bitcoin (which isn't too far, admittedly), the generation of bitcoins is actually encouraged, and only possible within some well-defined boundaries which basically just ensures that bitcoins are put into circulation up until it hits the fixed limit. Maybe someone could clear that up for m…
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Difficulty obtaining meaningful transaction records. Transaction are public, but often obfuscated.
By "difficult" the FBI certainly means "we'd have to perform some amount of manual reconciliation because the meaningful data won't just fall into our laps." Pretty standard for the last 15 years. As for "obfuscation," I was under the impression that the system doesn't attempt to obfuscate what payment addresses are involved in a transaction. It's not pertinent to the network which physical person controls which addr…
What does the "(U/FOUO)" that keeps showing up mean?