Posted on 11/19/2013 3:10:23 AM PST by pluvmantelo
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, chaired by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), is holding the first congressional hearing on the future of Bitcoin. The first panel features senior figures from the Obama administration. And their comments about Bitcoin have been remarkably positive.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I’m personally very nervous about a form of currency that is backed by nothing and just digitally created out of thin air by mysterious, unseen forces. But enough about the US dollar, I’ll have to look into this Bitcoin thing...
Good one!
Bitcoin sounds like the wet dream of every Free Trader Communist Globalist. A one currency based on nothing
The Seinfeld currency.. A currency from nothing.
LOL!
Score.
In fact, SWIPED!
The Bitcoin is a classic bubble, worth whatever people think it’s worth at the moment. At some point more people are going to want to spend their Bitcoins than hold them, at which time the “value” could quickly plummet to zero.
Much the same can be said about the stock market which is being pumped up far beyond reality by the massive amount of BitDollars being constantly minted by the Fed.
My thoughts as well.
Exactly classic bubble. I remember stories about people buying Beanie Babies for their retirement or for their kids college education. Didn’t work out so well.
Worse than a currency from nothing: a currency that specifically takes WASTE to generate. Wasted energy and CPU cycles on a worthless algorithm. They could have at least had it doing folding or something. Instead it is just waste - and not even backed by the force of law.
The main reason it has gained any value is because drug dealers and hackers (like cryptolocker) like to use them. Yay.
Please don’t blurt out self-contradictory nonsense like ‘free-trade communists’ on this forum.
Communism is the antithesis of free trade. Communism relies on financial repression.
Free Trade (on the other hand) is economic freedom of association - you buy from and sell to whomever you wish.
They need to “embrace” it now in case it get huge. There are 2 major aspects to it that our government hates
1) anonymity (the same “problem” as cash but extended to long-distance purchases)
2) they don’t (currently) tax it
It’s been very hard to start taxing internet sales because people have become accustomed to tax-free purchases. They need to get taxes into digital currencies before a large percent of the population get used to them.
It will be the “perfect currency” if they can modify it so a % of each transaction is sent to the IRS and the details reported to the NSA. That may not be what they are saying now, but you know that’s what many people in government are thinking and why they are pushing digital currency supporters to begin these hearings on a positive note.
3) The government cannot create new bitcoins at will. Bitcoin is the antithesis of the Federal Reserve and its incestuous relationship with the U.S. Treasury.
If the government can’t create Bitcpins out of thin air, then who does? Accounts are synced to a central server somewhere.
Meanwhile, someone is claiming to have created a Bitcoin Assassination Market. Right now. How convenient.
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-bitcoin-assassination-market-2013-11
While the idea of an assassination market has been around for a decade or more, I suspect this announcement is a “false flag”, both as an excuse to slander Bitcoin, and as an opportunity to arrest those who would use an assassination market.
If such a market was set up, its #1 rule would be to keep it a secret as much as possible. It would be designed to be very slow growing, and would have to almost entirely be in the black Internet. It would need to frequently reorganize and disappear entirely only to reemerge elsewhere.
The basic idea of an assassination market is to put out a listing of public figures who *might* be killed. Anyone who wants to, contributes an amount of money to get a time window in which the target *might* be killed. Then when the price is high enough, a potential assassin buys a window of time in which they intend to kill the target. Being the “winner”, the assassin gets the pool of funds, less a use fee by the pool manager.
The idea is that if some public figure is hated, say the fictional character Emmanuel Goldstein from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, people can “crowd source” money by adding to the pool and selecting improbable dates and times for them to be assassinated. This increases the pool of funds for a potential assassin.
Eventually, the idea is to create a pool so large that potential assassins cannot resist.
The tricky part is the payout. Both payer and payee must absolutely be anonymous, and the funds must be fungible.
Technically speaking, such a market is very feasible, and not just individuals, but organizations, corporations, and governments could easily become involved.
I'm pretty good at comprehension when it comes to Math and Economics. I wish someone could explain just what a bit coin is in a way I can truly grasp. Not a doctoral thesis or anything...just a few simple sentences.
“I wish someone could explain just what a bit coin is in a way I can truly grasp.”
From my point of view Bitcoin is just another fiat currency. Just like the dollar since Nixon it is backed by nothing other than the willingness of people to accept it as a medium of exchange.
Technically BitCoin is a triumph of cryptography and peer-to-peer computer networking. Instead of a Federal Reserve conjuring dollars from nothingness BitCoins are created on a decentralized network of computers.
What I find fascinating about BitCoins is that as mysterious as the process behind them sounds, there is a public “ledger” and a general consensus that they aren’t created frivolously. Can the same thing be said about the present-day US dollar?
So how are they created? Is there anything of lasting, stable value assuring they have a value? I realize that our money supply is bogus and nobody's seen the gold, but the government manipulates commerce in a way that gives us confidence that I can exchange money for goods.
Heck, why don't they just use tulip bulbs to back it?
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