Posted on 02/25/2014 8:06:41 AM PST by SeekAndFind
“Gee, software code doesn’t work as money....who would have guessed it?”
Yeah, I just really hate it whenever my money crashes because of software bug.
“What I don’t get is how did it happen? Bitcoin was designed to be stored personally, and record keeping was peer to peer proliferating throughout the world as a record in everybodies wallet. Why were people keeping them stored at Mt. Gox?”
My understanding is that there is a chain of transactions of all whole and fractional bitcoins in order to keep a given bitcoin from being owned or spent more than once, and IF you had the computer resources to keep up with this ever expanding chain, you COULD store your own bitcoins on your own computer. But as the chain expands infinitely, so does the computing power to keep your own personal copy of the chain up to date, and so it becomes impractical for more than just a few systems to do that. So, almost everyone elects to “keep” their bitcoins at a site that can keep up with the transaction chain. (This is just my understanding of the situation; I’m not a bitcoin expert. Any money that requires a PhD in computer science to understand is not the kind of money I’d want to own: I only have a Masters Degree in computer science, so am not qualified to own any bitcoins anyway.)
< tinfoil > To be so naive would be nice. < /tinfoil >
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