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Does anyone here use Bitcoins?
Arizona Hot:
In Bitcoin's Orbit Rival Virtual Currencies Vie for Acceptance
tomos:
In Bitcoin's Orbit Rival Virtual Currencies Vie for Acceptance
-Arizona Hot (December 01, 2013, 03:57 AM)
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an informative but weird article.
The author keeps referring to a "Lawrence Blankenship ... a software engineer from Springfield, Mo.", and his buddies, who are all fans of a particular currency. Almost seems like the author had no clue (a good starting point actually), but instead of researching in depth, decided to just mine "Mr. Blankenship" for info. Not saying the article is misleading. But wouldnt trust it much either. Really poor journalism...
40hz:
Wonder how much longer until...
Hopefully it won't burst before Renegade cashes out and retires as a millionaire! :Thmbsup:
wraith808:
Bitcoin mining malware could be hidden in app, security researchers warn
Computer users are being warned about "scam" apps which stealthily use their PC's resources to "mine" Bitcoins - by getting permission in a lengthy user agreement.
The security company Malwarebytes says that it has come across a program which silently used more than half of a user's computer power to perform the complex calculations required to generate the virtual currency, whose value has skyrocketed this year to around $1,000.
Adam Kujawa at Malwarebytes says that the move is one step on from the typical "Potentially Unwanted Programs" which offer browser toolbars and search agents that capture user data and pass it back to the companies, which then use that to serve adverts.
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More at link.
Renegade:
(see attachment in previous post)
In Bitcoin's Orbit Rival Virtual Currencies Vie for Acceptance
-Arizona Hot (December 01, 2013, 03:57 AM)
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For the skeptical out there, keep your eye on the alt coins. If you have spare CPU or much better GPU power to spare, you can mine alt coins yourself. This is the big alt coin market:
https://www.cryptsy.com
Some others have much more limited offerings. BTC-e is the big Litecoin market. OKcoin.com is influential in the LTC market as well though.
Wonder how much longer until...
(see attachment in previous post)
-40hz (December 01, 2013, 06:58 AM)
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That ain't gonna happen.
What everyone is missing is that Bitcoin is a PROTOCOL. Very much like HTTP. You can build entirely new services and ecosystems on top of it.
http://www.coindesk.com/colored-coins-paint-sophisticated-future-for-bitcoin/
Bitcoin is a useful way to exchange money, but what if you could do other things with it? If bitcoiners could use it to issue shares, bonds and IOUs, or even to create alternative currencies atop bitcoins, they could add even more value to this innovative cryptocurrency. Bitcoinx, a community wanting to “democratize finance,” is hoping to facilitate just that, with a concept called “colored coins”.
Colored coins is a concept designed to be layered on top of Bitcoin, creating a new set of information about coins being exchanged. Using colored coins, bitcoins could be “colored” with specific attributes. This effectively turns them into tokens, which can be used to represent anything.
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More at the link.
What is important to understand is that Bitcoin, and crypto currencies in general, offer a frictionless transaction where you can transfer $150,000,000 (as was done a week or so ago) for about $0.06 where it would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to transfer that through a traditional, antiquated system like Western Union or PayPal, etc.
But not only are these systems frictionless, they are faster and far more secure. You do not run the risk of your bank freezing your accounts or stealing your money because of some idiotic regulations or whatever.
And on top of that, you can have distributed stock exchanges and the like.
This is the democratisation of the value of currency. It flips the entire fiat paradigm on its head.
Technologically, this is a revolution in human history that can only be compared to Gutenberg's printing press and the advent of the Internet. And it dwarfs both of those. This revolutionizes commerce and finance. Fiat is dead. It's just a walking zombie now, waiting for someone to shoot it in the head.
If anyone has been paying attention, we are in the midst of a full-on currency war. China has lobbed another salvo against the USD announcing that it will no longer be buying USD or US bonds. That little story, oddly enough, didn't really make much of a wave in the MSM, despite it being some of the biggest and most important news I've heard all year. There are many other stories in the currency war that the MSM is conveniently ignoring. Even the alternative media hasn't really picked up on it yet.
So when the currency battlefield is soaked in the blood of fiat, what will be left standing?
Centralized currency?
Decentralized currency?
Napster died because it was centralized.
Bittorrent is impossible to kill because it is decentralized.
Crypto currency is here to stay. It's just going to take a bit longer for some people to realise that. :D ;)
Hopefully it won't burst before Renegade cashes out and retires as a millionaire! :Thmbsup:
-40hz (December 01, 2013, 06:58 AM)
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The retirement part *IS* gonna happen~! ;D
Bitcoin mining malware could be hidden in app, security researchers warn
-wraith808 (December 02, 2013, 10:24 AM)
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This stuff is really annoying as the AV companies label minerd.exe as malware, which it isn't. So, I have to whitelist it and turn off my AV when I download cpuminer. It is NOT malware.
But this is no different than other programs that people run the exact same way. Some programs out there do distributed computing and companies sell that power to different customers. The SETI stuff is one example. A lot of it is done under the banner of "for charity" or "for science". Thankfully I've not seen them try to sell that "for the children", though I'm sure that's coming.
The EXACT same type of software has been around for years and years and not labeled malware. The consistency is, well... whatever. Pfft.
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