Beware of Butterfly Labs! They have built quite a "reputation" in the last months.
Quite a bit of not brilliant feedback around, starting from reddit r/bitcoin.

Economist Paul Krugman on why he's not a fan of bitcoin:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/krugman-bits-and-barbarism.html

Krugman is just a complete idiot. His basic premise is that if we all just "believe" hard enough, things will magically become wonderful and rainbow farting unicorns will be given to every child.

For an excellent experiment illustrating just what a total moron he is, have a look into Bernankoin:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375010.0

For a literal illustration of what kind of nitwit Krugman is, see here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375010.msg4393471#msg4393471

ATM I'm not trading COYE, but I'll trade you 10 of my BEK for 20 of yours. Just send me multiples of 10 BEK and keep multiples of 10 BEK for yourself and we'll call the deal done. Send to this address: BndanZXsyDjnrP8dkwgbo87jExvk96tj8z

And the reply:

Ill take you up on that trade!  Traded you 2000 BEK for 1000 BEK, great deal!

And yes. He did send me 1,000 BEK.

To really get the joke though, you need to understand a bit monetary policy, a splash of economics, what Quantitative Easing is (printing money), what a "rewards system" is in crypto currency, and how Bernankoin illustrates QE through its rewards system (named "Quantitative Easing").

Krugman is a troll.

Here's another bit of trolling by Krugman:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/bitcoin-is-evil/?_r=0

Bitcoin Is Evil

There's nothing else in the article worth quoting.

In the comments:

However, Mr Krugman is right about bitcon being evil, at least for socialists. Bitcoin threatens socialist economies, central banks and all government monopolies on money. It is a libertarian tool, so all socialists should hate it.

Bitcoin threatens centralisation and collectivism. It is anathema to authoritarians and rent-seekers. Bitcoin is "neutral". To understand what "neutral" means in terms of a currency, I'd strongly recommend viewing a few of the videos posted with Andreas Antonopolous. Here's a link to many videos with him speaking:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+andreas+antonopoulos&sm=3

Here's a video entitled "Bitcoin Neutrality - Andreas Antonopolous"


The concept of neutrality is really, really important to understanding what Bitcoin is, and in light of what Bitcoin is, further understanding on just how corrupt our current system of fiat currency is.

But, the comment there on Krugtroll's article is quite correct. Socialists should both hate and fear Bitcoin (and by extension, all crypto currencies) because they strip the state of much of its power to dominate and control people.

Remember, Bitcoin has its roots in crypto-anarchism or cypherpunk. It is an anti-political technology. Krugman is a collectivist and hates Bitcoin because of this.

The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's law"--which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants--becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's. - Paul Krugman, 1998

Exactly. This fool is one of the crowd that helped bring you the sub-prime mortgage crisis. His credibility is negative.

The mining window is closing as it is getting increasingly difficult to do (unless you have really serious dedicated hardware). When I first started I was getting over 10,000 coins a day ... Now I'm lucky to break 100.

While it sucks to mine less, this is actually a good thing. It shows that there are more miners (diggers) out there digging for Ðogecoins. The more miners a currency has, the more secure the network.

I touch on this topic a bit in this blog post:

http://cynic.me/2014/01/07/why-shitcoins-are-good-and-why-bitcoin-purists-hate-shitcoins/

Quote from: Stoic Joker on December 25, 2013, 01:38 AM

The mining window is closing as it is getting increasingly difficult to do (unless you have really serious dedicated hardware). When I first started I was getting over 10,000 coins a day ... Now I'm lucky to break 100.

Bingo StoicJoker.

That's the big flaw that keeps bothering me. "Look, here's a new crypto-currency and only a hundred people know about it! Nice advantage to us! Then later when it gets popular the algo will slow down and no one can get much more!"

Reminds me of the day when I cared about Magic the Gathering and bought a pizza with two Sengir Vampires!    (The clerk made a note of the sale and said he would pay back his register.)

There are a lot of considerations in looking at rewards systems. Your comment applies to some, but not all currencies.

I wrote up a joke currency here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=390735.0



It's a joke from top to bottom.

But the rewards system completely eliminates the objection that you just raised. It's based on the Fibonacci series.

Now, while this is an extreme example, there are other currencies that have done similar things to eliminate the scenarios where early adopters jump in and snatch up massive amounts of coins. Some do the exact opposite and reward early adopters.

This should be enough, given the objection/concern, to illustrate just how important rewards systems are for a currency. (The other consideration there is "pre-mining".)

Good grief...

Andreas Antonopoulos - blows me away all the time.


Long, but the section up to about 15:00 is just mind blowing. And it gets better!  

EDIT: Non-stop mind-blowing awesomeness. Luckily I have super powers of not pooping my pants. They were much needed.

Andreas Antonopoulos - blows me away all the time.

a big plus one there Ren
I've only watched the first 30 mins yet, and want to watch it again -- there's a lot in there.

I've listened to, I think, four videos by him -- each about different aspects of Bitcoin, and he really is *very* good. He's got great vision -- but with his feet firmly on the ground. It's refreshing to hear someone who supports bitcoin say that the US dollar is in reasonable shape (for a fiat currency).
He's also the only one I've heard or read so far who addresses the questions I had about possible problems with bitcoin. (I'll have to try find a suitable video by him on the practical aspects of Bitcoin to post here.)

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=31813471

A Stealth Address is a new type of Bitcoin address and related
scriptPubKey/transaction generation scheme that allowers payees to
publish a single, fixed, address that payors can send funds efficiently,
privately, reliably and non-interactively. Payors do not learn what
other payments have been made to the stealth address, and third-parties
learn nothing at all. (both subject to an adjustable anonymity set)

Graphic here:

http://imgur.com/rHhNKL6

tl;dr - Game over. Anonymity wins. Establishment loses.

Implications? Beyond your wildest dreams. This is MASSIVE!

Easier explanation... (bastardized)

I send you an address. You combine that address with a key to create a new address. You send Bitcoins to that address. I get my Bitcoins at my address. Untraceable. No record of it is stored in the blockchain thanks to the wonderful magic of cryptography.

[attach=#]

Bitcoin quiz

You're having way too much fun with that.

It's bobsleigh time: Jamaican team raises $25,000 in Dogecoin

You beat me to it! (And actually $34,944, not $25k.)

This is the donation site:

http://dogesled.net/

The site I made with a few other guys is at the bottom (we didn't ask - they just posted it):

How do I get started with Dogecoin?
howtodoge.com provides some great tutorials on how to get started using Dogecoin!

In other charitable news:

http://www.thedrinkingrecord.com/2014/01/19/romanian-billionaire-saves-openbsd/

Romanian Billionaire Saves OpenBSD

In #bitcoin-assets.

Meanwhile, in the MSM...

OMG! Bitcoin can be used by terrorists and kiddie pornographers! OMG! Money laundering! Crime! Tax evasion! NOOOO~!

Pfft!

And it can save OpenBSD and send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Olympics. Reality trumps paranoid delusions.

Quote from: Renegade on January 20, 2014, 08:23 PM

Reality trumps paranoid delusions.

Ya might wanna rethink that statement  .  Money laundering, crime, tax evasion, et al., have been around - i.e., reality - a lot longer than even the concept of bitcoin and other cyber currencies.  Evil or good is not the realm of any currency medium, just the uses to which it is applied.  To paraphrase an old saying, "What Man can create, Man can pervert." 

I think that's Ren's point. The MSM is trying to spin crypto as causal when it neither is nor can be.

[attach=#]

Bitcoin is not just digital currency. It's Napster for finance.

Terrorism! Drugs! Online Assassinations! Money laundering! Tax evasion!

No... This is what bitcoins are really used for:

From what I've been given to understand, uncut diamonds (and to a lesser extent cocaine/heroin) are the actual preferred currencies for financing terrorism, revolutions, independent mercenary forces, assassinations, major drug deals - and about half of all national government-sponsored black ops programs throughout the world.

A diamond is forever. And things go better with coke.

I'm presuming you havent seen the Bitcoin thread ?
(I suspect this might get merged to it).

This aspect of it hasn't bothered me, but I suspect many would agree with you about the power waste.

uhh.. yes, obviously missed those. Thanks for pointing them out. I'll be reading now