Bitcoin - a currency that exists without government, bank, or any other central backing/authority

This is something that I started looking into recently, and it's very interesting. It's a digital currency that is based on modern cryptography, and it is completely independent of any central authority. Bitcoins are secure, unfreezable, and can even be anonymous if used properly. They were invented by some elusive super-genius named Satoshi Nakamoto (who might be a fake persona) to be free of any government control, as a response to the unstable economic situation in Europe.

I figured Urban Commandos might be interested in something like this. It's very interesting from a political, economic, or computational perspective.


http://bitcoin.org/

They're not all that great. They're certainly less than anonymous. And if you do a bit of googling you will see there's been a fair bit of theft of them.

-Foxxz

What's not great about them?
They're not designed to be anonymous, but it's not that hard to make them. Careful wallet management, TOR/I2P usage, etc. will keep your identity separate from your bitcoins.
All theft was due to human error. Bitcoins are based on super-strong crypto that, as of yet, is impossible to break. It will probably be unbreakable for some time hence.

Even if BitCoin crashes and burns, it will always exist as a v1.0 beta version example that the idea worked at all, if you've got even a shred of anarcho-libertarian in you... it's awesome.

The Faustian Socialist Nanny-State is cancer. A good way to to kill a tumor is to cut off it's blood supply.

.govs of the world would look a lot different if what they did, the services they provide, were only the ones people felt like paying for.

Disrupting the internet effectively breaks bitcoins. Some countries like Iran, Greece, and China have shown they can effectively block specific protocols or disconnect themselves from the internet. At this point this either isolates the country from being able to do business outside the country using bitcoins. If there are not enough bitcoin nodes within the country than transactions can stop completely. Not to mention right now there are not many local exchanges if you want to trade bitcoins for other currency.

I think bitcoins are an awesome idea. But I don't think the dependency of a huge network of servers backing them makes them viable when you want to pay for something on the street using bitcoins. In all likelihood bitcoins will simply be outlawed. Look at similar currency exchanges that have been started.

Bitcoins are also open to cryptographic attack. The network depends on having more good guys with computing power than bad guys. If bitcoin does start to take off China can fire up a supercomputer and become rich.

Anonymity is still questionable. Even if done "right." Bitcoin blocks are signed every time an exchange is done. This signature chain is fairly long. You would essentially have to launder bitcoins through a gamut of wallets just to make the end of the chain fall off that you do not want tracked. Even so, this just effects the bitcoin itself. There are groups that are keeping even longer transaction records as a matter of research in tracking bitcoins.

The problem is once these weaknesses were known theres very little way to fix them because the bitcoin spec itself has weaknesses. It can't be fixed without invalidating all the existing bitcoins and moving to a new spec not compatible with the existing.

-Foxxz

1.Using various data exfiltration techniques, anti-bitcoin filters can be bypassed. It is also very difficult to stop connection to the bitcoin P2P network, as the client has many resilient bootstrapping methods (including manual IP connection). A bitcoin wallet can also be placed on a USB stick, where it can be used anywhere.

2.There are no big servers backing bitcoin. That's the point. And bitcoins can be used as physical currency, just as easily as a dollar.

3.No, they're not. Not until quantum computers become viable, at which point Bitcoin can simply move away from elliptic-curve DSA. And the attack of which you speak (the "51% attack") can only do very limited damage. Basically, they can prevent individuals from successfully spending money. They can't take your money or reverse your transactions or anything like that. Work is being done to prevent 51% attacks from doing any damage at all.

4.Every single client (using the default client) has the entire transaction history on their computer. It's at about 1.1GB right now. Every transaction is tracked. In that sense, it's not anonymous. However, by simply using separate addresses for separate activities, you can keep those addresses unlinked. If you need to transfer money from one account to another anonymously, you can simply use a broker service. Because there are no individual "coins" to keep track of, only lump sums of money, this broker (if they are secure) effectively eliminates any connection between accounts.

5.Actually, that's not the case. Like I said, Satoshi is either a super-genius or a panel of super-geniuses. Bitcoin hashes every block with SHA256, which will likely remain unbreakable (in this context) for a very long time. This effectively freezes every block in time for all eternity. All past transactions can not be undone; they are set in stone. Because of this, all past blocks and transactions would remain perfectly valid even if the Bitcoin protocol was changed. So, if Bitcoin were to switch to a somehow more secure protocol (like switching from ECDSA to Lattice-based DSA or something), it would simply involve changing the signature protocol and having everyone manually send their Bitcoins over to accounts secured with the new signature system.


There is a lot of alarmist criticism of Bitcoin going around, but the system itself is rock-solid. The biggest attack on the system allows for double-spending for a few minutes and selective freezing of funds. This attack would cost tens/hundreds of millions of dollars and would be easily defeated.

Don't have a problem with the idea, only the concept that it is backed/insured by a promissory of nothing tangible.

Great idea, wasn't this brought up in Cryptonomicon? but backed by gold from the old japaneese stash from WWII?
I want to buy 10.

Kinda like the US dollar?

OP should cross-post this in GD

US dollar is Safe, so long as the U.S. dollar stays as the The world's main reserve currency (for what little time is left of that).

Kind of a double edge sword when you think about it. The US had to come off of gold standards since the amount of dollars that where issued long ago surpassed what they had in gold reserves, and when it's all said and done, it will be a country that is on gold (or some other form of tangible item) standards that will be the new worlds main reserve currency when it all said and done instead.

Like the other guy said, same with the USD. It's true that it is not backed by anything tangible, but it has similar advantages. For example, the money supply can never exceed 20,999,999.9769 bitcoins, which eliminates any risk of inflation. Deflation is also not a huge issue (in terms of running out of BTC), as 20,999,999.9769BTC is divisible into 2.1 Quadrillion units. There are less than 1 quadrillion cents in existence.






I'm not sure if GD would care, but sure, why not.

I just think peoples input (and retardation) would be fun to see

ETA: and let the retardation start

You are correct. I probably should have seen this coming.

I did, that's why I wanted you to!

Glad I could be a guinea pig for the wrath of GD.

anytime brother, besides, you're not a team member, what have you got to lose in GD

Here comes the night crew... I'm off to bed.

What blows my mind is the sheer hate dumped on BitCoin.

I get that BitCoin might just implode any day, just based on the odds that any new endeavor... the vast majority of them fail. That's life. It's the odds of the thing. Just the way the world works.

However, to get anything new, you have to try. Honestly, I think it's just laziness. Having to "think" in a different currency, or a system that works differently is scary or at best makes you worried it'll be frustrating. Like being given a Mac or vice-versa a PC for the first time when you're used to the other, or confronting the thought of renting a car in a left-drive country like the UK..

Yes, BitCoin is NOT perfect. However, none of the criticisms leveled in GD even really addressed any of it's actual flaws.

I've made approximately .038BTC this morning on CoinWorker. Clicking on SEO and what was probably a bunch of stuff for reputation.com. Woopiee!

Are any of you aware of other crowdsourcing projects where I could earn BTC or even just plain USD? I don't expect to earn more than a few bucks doing this, but I'm just curious to play with it. And as a minor hedge that maybe 1.00BTC might be worth $50,000 2012 inflation-adjusted USD fifty years from now.

Oh... so NOW they're all respectful of BitCoin all of a sudden..

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_6_2/365334_The_AR_15_bitcoin_project.html

They hate it when something they don't like works, so they don't reply.

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