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March 28, 2024, 05:14:34 pm

Author Topic: BitCoins - Currency of the future?  (Read 44558 times)

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Skirmant

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BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« on: July 31, 2012, 02:21:00 pm »

Just a week ago I was surfing trough the net and encountered BitCoins or BTCs. At first it seemed like a scam that's too good to be true. But the more I looked into it, the more in-genius the project seemed.

To put into context BitCoins are a cryptographic currency that's maintained by special open source P2P software. It has it's own value and it is not tied to any other currency or resource. There's none in-charge, no main server and BTCs are produced by a predefined rate. To use it you don't need to register, it requires no usernames, emails or passwords. All transactions are done trough special addresses which are anonymous and untraceable. Your addresses and BTCs are literally saved on your computer. It's designed so it would make it impossible for anyone to forge BTCs or abuse the system in any other way. Although assuming that your BTCs are stored on your computer it does make theft fairly easy :P

Currently it's mostly used for purchasing of illegal guns and drugs on websites such as silkroad lots of stuff.

Some useful links and videos bellow.

Community:

Original concept
Official website
Official forum
Official wiki
IRC channels

Exchanges for buying, selling and trading:

BitStamp
BTC-e
BTCChina

Exchanges for buying, selling from/to individuals:

LocalBitcoins
bitcoin.de

Easy to use clients and online wallets:

Electrum
Blockchain Wallet

For monitoring value and overall ecosystem:

https://blockchain.info/
http://bitcoinwatch.com/
http://bitcoinwisdom.com/

Videos:





Technical videos:





What do you guys think? Could this be the internet's currency of the future?

I'll keep expanding and updating the topic as time goes on.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2013, 10:03:30 pm by Skirmant »
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XGamer

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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #1 on: July 31, 2012, 08:33:31 pm »
Wow, nice.

MONEY is good.  ;D
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GangstaRas

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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2012, 01:06:18 am »
i swear these 1st world countries......the way i see it, they'll stop at nothing to make the movie surrogates a reality some day if they keep this shit up
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Skirmant

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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #3 on: August 01, 2012, 09:24:34 am »
i swear these 1st world countries......the way i see it, they'll stop at nothing to make the movie surrogates a reality some day if they keep this shit up

heh.. I liked that movie. But I don't see how digital currency = cyborgs :P
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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #4 on: August 01, 2012, 11:18:42 am »
Nuka-Cola Bottlecaps for the win!
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ferrari32

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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #5 on: August 01, 2012, 02:07:40 pm »
**buys a black market machine gun**
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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #6 on: August 01, 2012, 02:27:22 pm »
How to know what's my address? i want to get some coins.  ;D
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Skirmant

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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #7 on: August 01, 2012, 03:31:13 pm »
How to know what's my address? i want to get some coins.  ;D

Just pick a client http://bitcoin.org/clients.html start it up and you should be able to generate addresses manually.
MultiBit is by far the best choice IMO
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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #8 on: August 01, 2012, 03:47:35 pm »
i swear these 1st world countries......the way i see it, they'll stop at nothing to make the movie surrogates a reality some day if they keep this shit up

heh.. I liked that movie. But I don't see how digital currency = cyborgs :P

it doesnt directly but im saying as technology improve and ideas like this come about to let ppl sit more on their asses at home, cyborgs will be that luxury in years to come
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Charley

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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #9 on: August 26, 2012, 08:25:38 am »
One of the things mentioned about Silk Road and its implementation of BitCoins is that it is tied, in some way, to the US dollar. This is essential really. If the 'currency' is to grow to a size whereby it is commonly used, then it would have to have all the checks, balances and controls that any other currency in the world has. The relationship between value of goods/services and the amount of real money spent would be incredibly volatile if there weren't.

My opinion is that no, this isn't the currency of the future, there are 1000 reasons why it wouldn't work.
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Skirmant

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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #10 on: August 27, 2012, 03:57:21 pm »
One of the things mentioned about Silk Road and its implementation of BitCoins is that it is tied, in some way, to the US dollar. This is essential really. If the 'currency' is to grow to a size whereby it is commonly used, then it would have to have all the checks, balances and controls that any other currency in the world has. The relationship between value of goods/services and the amount of real money spent would be incredibly volatile if there weren't.

My opinion is that no, this isn't the currency of the future, there are 1000 reasons why it wouldn't work.

Good point! But this does not mean that BitCoin itself is tied to the dollar directly.
As insane as it sounds it is believed that if the dollar were to inflate, BTC unlike any other currency would not be affected.



The real reason why silkroad ties BitCoins to dollars is the fact it's currently too unstable. If you're selling a an apple for it's widely accepted price of X BTC and a day after the buying power of BTC fell 30% you would get screwed over with only 70% of the buying power you originally intended to get in exchange.

What's so attractive about bitcoins is the fact it solves many problems of 'real' currencies.
  • Cannot be forged.
  • Cannot be printed by demand (all handled be a predetermined algorithm).
  • Is extremely highly dividable.
  • Is not controlled by any government, bank or company.
  • Is untraceable.

And yes, it has too many flaws for a physical currency. But for something that would be used for teh internets it's obviously better than paypal.

I would love if it you shared some of the 1000 reasons why it wouldn't work :P
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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #11 on: August 27, 2012, 07:41:51 pm »
Skirmant, everything can be forged, trust me.
The fact they're untraceable just helps people to hack them.
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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #12 on: August 28, 2012, 05:50:20 pm »
Skirmant, everything can be forged, trust me.

That may be true, but I think you're confused what a BitCoin is. The truth is it doesn't virtually exist :P

Every dedicated client has a log that documents every transaction ever made (currently 2GB).  When you want to send someone a BTC every client reviews their logs to make sure you actually have funds to do so. And if you do, the transaction is approved and BTC are "sent" (everyone's logs get updated).  It's a lot like a torrent.

The fact they're untraceable just helps people to hack them.

That's not true. If IP's were public then hackers would know which computers had the most wealth and attempt to target them.


The system itself was reviewed by 100s of thousands of IT experts by now and has been debated for the last 4 years.
No efficient vulnerabilities were ever found. But there are some unsolvable issues :-\
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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #13 on: August 29, 2012, 07:38:16 am »
Skirmant, everything can be forged, trust me.
That may be true, but I think you're confused what a BitCoin is. The truth is it doesn't virtually exist :P
Think of it like a geme's exe file, the company issues out a real deal, yet hackers create their own version to tinker with the game. Yet, a game exe doesn't virtually exist :P
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Re: BitCoins - Currency of the future?
« Reply #14 on: August 29, 2012, 10:31:55 am »
Think of it like a geme's exe file, the company issues out a real deal, yet hackers create their own version to tinker with the game. Yet, a game exe doesn't virtually exist :P

A BitCoin is not a file located on your computer that you can edit. It's an agreement between every dedi client on the planet that YOU HAVE it. That's based on the history of all transactions. It's a remote concept that has no direct way to be influenced. Can you see why forging is impossible now? ;)

And game developers don't give a shit about exe files. They know that players like to play their games without inserting a DVD each time :S
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