Posted on 12/02/2013 9:41:44 AM PST by Star Traveler
Virtual currency: It is mathematically elegant, increasingly popular and highly controversial. Bitcoin’s success is putting it under growing strain.
ALL currencies involve some measure of consensual hallucination, but Bitcoin, a virtual monetary system, involves more than most. It is a peer-to-peer currency with no central bank, based on digital tokens with no intrinsic value. Rather than relying on confidence in a central authority, it depends instead on a distributed system of trust, based on a transaction ledger which is cryptographically verified and jointly maintained by the currency’s users.
Transactions can occur directly between the system’s participants at almost zero cost, without the need for a trusted third party or any other intermediary, and are irreversible once committed to a permanent and fully public record. Bitcoin’s mathematically elegant design ensures that the money supply can increase only at a fixed rate that slows over time and then stops altogether. Anonymity, while not assured, is possible with the right precautions and tools. No wonder Bitcoin is so appealing to geeks, libertarians, drug dealers, speculators and gold bugs.
Bitcoin began in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, with a paper published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. The technical design outlined in the paper was implemented in open-source software the following year. It came to widespread prominence in 2012 and has been in the headlines ever since.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
Silicon Valley catches Bitcoin fever
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3097361/posts
A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3097365/posts
Bits and Bob [analysis of Bitcoin]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3097370/posts
based on digital tokens with no intrinsic value.
Similar to the US Dollar!
Your name star traveler says it all, there never has been and there isn’t any such thing as a star traveler!
The dollar is also backed by a military with nuclear weapons
I hope you don’t use this style of “reasoning” in your political endeavors ... LOL ...
>>It is funny how many articles are whining that Bitcoins have no “intrinsic value.” Well, nothing has intrinsic value. The value comes solely from its scarcity, and demand. This is as true for Bitcoins as for gold.<<
Well at least with gold you can use it for real world applications or jewelery. So it has value outside of currency.
Here’s something from Wired Magazine that gives you some background and history on how it started. However, it’s not a current article as it’s two years old.
The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/
For the moment. Obama has other plans.
Aren’t we travelling the stars right now?
Well at least with gold you can use it for real world applications or jewelery. So it has value outside of currency.But you can’t quantify that (what’s the “intrinsic value” of jewelry, anyway?), except through supply and demand. People have gold, and for whatever reason are willing to pay serious money to get even more of it. That’s where the price comes from, nothing else. And it’s the same with Bitcoin.
How do you nuke a Bitcoin?
Sell ‘em for cash, quick!
Its value is based on what someone will pay for it in real money, or food, or useful articles.
This is volatile. The ‘value’ will go up to insane heights, before the inevitable crash.
“ALL currencies involve some measure of consensual hallucination”
funny/true
The guy who threw out his hard drive that held the key to his bitcoins illustrates the prob with bitcoin. But I guess one could accidentally toss out their gold too.
Maybe I should buy land. Can’t throw that out.
Similar to the US dollar when it was based on gold.
You can lose your land, through tax seizure, squatters, or erosion.
I could have said that his proper handle should have been “Buggy Whip” ... :-) ...
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