Bitcoin

[mizerydearia]

I want to suggest considering accepting bitcoin for donations.

<Stephen66> you dont even have to post your role...mearly saying "I am/am not involved" would suffice

I am/am not involved

update: apparently I did it wrong.

<mouser> you have to choose "i am involved in the bitcoin project" or
<mouser> "i am not involved in the bitcoin project i just think it's interesting"

_{x i am involved in the bitcoin project}
^{o i am not involved in the bitcoin project i just think it's interesting}


white paper, forum, wiki
irc: freenode #bitcoin-dev, #bitcoin-discussion, #bitcoin-market, #bitcoin-otc

[mouser]

From a cryptography/security standpoint, bitcoin seems quite interesting, and there is an academic paper in pdf format available on the faq page that looks like great reading.

[f0dder]

Just in so nobody mistakes this for spam: mizerydearia popped up on the IRC channel earlier tonight, nicknamed "necrodear", and suggested we accept bitcoin. After other stuff had been discussed for a while, myself and others started looking at what the bitcoin thing was about, and it ended up with an hour-long discussion of the ideas behind it. Basically, it's an alternate currency.

The system is based on a whole lot of cryptography, as well as being a distributed peer-to-peer system. That in itself was enough to pique my interest. Furthermore, the system involves doing a whole lot of distributed number crunching; the official site was a bit vague on what exactly is being done, which initially made me suspect the "alternate currency" was just a facade to hide a distributed password cracking system, attempting to con regular users into joining the network - that's not the case, though.

Instead, it's a pretty interesting idea, even if I personally don't think it will ever have a breakthrough: to serve as an alternative economic system, with a finite amount of funds ever entering the system (gradually, until the upper limit is hit). to avoid both people being able to "print their own money" (which is what our banks and governments are doing in the current system), as well as cryptographically verifying transactions between users without having to rely on a blood-sucking middle-man institution; transactions are done (securely) directly between the two involved parties - achieving this goal does mean that transaction information has to be broadcasted to the p2p swarm, so it's "hash chain of trust" can be verified.

In addition to the official website, it's worth checking out the PDF Paper on the ideas and algorithms - it's a bit more concrete than the somewhat fluffy website.

I'm not going to add much more now, as we spent a lot of time discussing the project on IRC, but I'd definitely suggest people to read about the project, even if they have no intention to participate. There's definitely some interesting ideas and technology behind the system!

[Deozaan]

I don't get it. You're giving people virtual currency for sharing their CPU cycles in a distributed computing network that does nothing useful but generate more coins (and is that really useful?)? Why would anyone use this currency for anything? It doesn't have any intrinsic value.

Why should people use their CPU to generate a fake currency that has no value when they could at least do something like Folding@Home to look for cures for cancer or something similar?

[f0dder]

Deozaan: that was my initial reaction when I realized it wasn't a distributed cracking ploy - at first it seems like a completely and utterly useless project.

I do wonder if the people behind or any of the participants truly belive that the idea will ever take off; it's the philosophy and technology behind that fascinates me.

The economic system the world currently goes by is, in my not so humble opinion, deeply flawed. Not necessarily from a tired old capitalist-vs-whatever-ideology view, but simply looking at just the economy. Our currency has no no intrinsic worth; it used to be backed by national gold reserves(*), but not so these days. We've got inflation, and the banks&governments just print more bills. We have people making (lots) of money without doing real and substantial work (stock traders), and �ber-inflated company worth ratings. There's a whole lot of stuff wrong.

Not that I have any illusions that we'll ever see anything more reasonable, there's simply too much interest (hoho) in the current system. And I don't have suggestions for any good and realistic alternative.

But let us try to entertain the ideas behind BitCoin for a bit. First of all, out current currency isn't really much more worth than the virtual BitCoin - the value of our current currency lies in people trusting it, because it's the established standard etc.

Because of the cryptographic aspects of BitCoin, if we go by the PDF paper description, it's actually a lot more trustworthy in and by itself - it's a lot harder to forge than physical cash, and transactions are verifiable without relying on a third party (credit card company) acting as a mediator (and money-grabbing bastard).

There's some pretty interesting ideas behind, but it's not a perfect system - app103 had a lot of good points on IRC. One part that could be a real problem is that the security of the system depends on the pool of good people having more processing power than the pool of malicious users trying to abuse the system (and network topology probably has a lot to say as well, because of the distributed aspect). How much more CPU power would the bad guys need? (Infeasibly much according to the paper, but still...)

Ontop of that, there's a whole bunch of problems relating to the currency being virtual and other issues, but I think this will have to do for now

(*) you can argue that gold has no worth either, and I'd be inclined to agree - the point, however, is that once upon a time, you could actually trade in your cash notes for their worth in gold.

[JavaJones]

I heard about this project a few months back and it both fascinated and disturbed me. The system aspects are, as you say f0dder, fascinating. But what it says about our current monetary system (which I already knew, but which this system exemplifies by providing a somehow functional alternate system) is kind of uncomfortable. I was also really surprised to see how many people were participating and willing to, as others have said, use their computer cycles to "do no useful work". It did/does seem like a bit of a waste in some sense. But it's definitely an interesting "experiment" at least. I don't see it ever becoming practical and widespread, but I'm glad they're doing it!

- Oshyan

[Deozaan]

I was also really surprised to see how many people were participating and willing to, as others have said, use their computer cycles to "do no useful work". It did/does seem like a bit of a waste in some sense.

-JavaJones (December 11, 2010, 12:48 PM)

Well, sure, if you could turn a profit by loaning out my CPU cycles when my computer is idle, who wouldn't want to sign up for that? So if you think BitCoin is going to take off in the future, might as well get in early and "generate" all the "cash" you can.

Deozaan: that was my initial reaction when I realized it wasn't a distributed cracking ploy - at first it seems like a completely and utterly useless project.

-f0dder (December 11, 2010, 06:35 AM)

Thanks for your response, f0dder. You make some really good points, but I still don't see any value in the BitCoin system.

As I understand, the US Dollar has value because even though it's not based on the gold standard anymore, you can still trade it for gold.

If the USA used BitCoin all these years and someone came into these forums and said "Hey! I've got a great idea for a new currency! Paper money called the Dollar!" and submitted a PDF about the merits of a paper money system based on the current Dollar system then I'd probably be just as incredulous and say it has no value and it won't catch on and make some reference to Monopoly money. But because nations and companies and states and millions of people all agree to use the dollar as a form of trade, that also makes it valuable because it is useful.

[f0dder]

But because nations and companies and states and millions of people all agree to use the dollar as a form of trade, that also makes it valuable because it is useful.

-Deozaan (December 11, 2010, 04:32 PM)

Yes - this is the only value the current system has, but it's also the reason it's never going to be changed.

If the USA used BitCoin all these years and someone came into these forums and said "Hey! I've got a great idea for a new currency! Paper money called the Dollar!" and submitted a PDF about the merits of a paper money system based on the current Dollar system then I'd probably be just as incredulous and say it has no value and it won't catch on and make some reference to Monopoly money.

-Deozaan (December 11, 2010, 04:32 PM)

Except that would be a proposition to change a sound & secure system for something totally bollocks