Bitcoins

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8096/8372512244_9e314b0605_z.jpg

http://qz.com/61893/this-is-how-we-mint-money-now-software-upgrade-glitch-causes-bitcoin-flash-crash/

http://www.kurzweilai.net/bitcoin-hits-1-billion

http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_8qRwhHaLc7b5Sp7

Austan Goolsbee Chicago Strongly Agree 10 Hahahaha. ROTFL.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/seven-men-charged-in-liberty-reserve-global-money-laundering-operation/2013/05/28/0999536c-c7ce-11e2-8da7-d274bc611a47_story.html

http://gawker.com/feds-seize-assets-of-worlds-largest-bitcoin-exchange-506790294

I'll bet that even possessing the Bitcoin software will be "probable cause" from here on out.

http://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/H0-6OpjswRj1Ke3U.jpg

Bitcoin offers privacy -- as long as you don't cash out or spend it

On the surface, Bitcoin seems to be a great way to hide cash. Actually, it's a terrible way to launder money.

That's the conclusion of a new academic study that analyzed Bitcoin's blockchain, or the public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. The ledger shows how bitcoins move from one person to another, represented by 34-character alphanumeric addresses.

It's a sea of numbers without names. But researchers from the University of California at San Diego and George Mason University found it is a lot harder to convert bitcoins to cash -- or spend the bitcoins with a service -- and stay anonymous due to the ledger.

Most bitcoin users interact with a service to buy or sell the virtual currency. These days, most of those services want to know exactly who they're dealing with, especially as regulators around the world take an increasing interest in bitcoin.

Using special algorithms, the researchers were able to associate large numbers of seemingly anonymous bitcoins addresses with certain major services such as exchanges and payment processors, said Sarah Meiklejohn, a doctoral candidate in computer science at UC San Diego, who assisted in the research.

By analyzing those transactions, they found it is possible to somewhat deanonymize bitcoin users, opening up avenues through which investigators could reveal the people behind them.

For example, they linked more than 500,000 Bitcoin addresses with Mt. Gox, a popular exchange in Japan where users buy and sell bitcoins. Mt. Gox requires identification from its users, often including a scan of their passport. It wouldn't make sense for a hacker to cash out a large number of bitcoins there.

"We haven't uncovered the identity of the thief, but we've paved the way for law enforcement or an agency with subpoena power to do exactly that," Meiklejohn said.

Woah, Silk Road supposedly busted: http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/2/4794780/fbi-seizes-underground-drug-market-silk-road-owner-indicted-in-new

(this seemed about the best place I could find to post this... do we have a general cybercrimey type thread?)

rip

http://nation.time.com/2013/10/02/alleged-silk-road-proprietor-ross-william-ulbricht-arrested-3-6m-in-bitcoin-seized/#ixzz2gaCv1yiE

According to the filing, Ulbricht is being charged on four counts: narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. The criminal complaint also alleges that in March 2013, Ulbricht engaged in a “murder-for-hire” scheme where he enlisted one Silk Road user to murder another Silk Road user who was threatening to release the identities of all of the website’s users.

p21 and onwards of the complaint is pretty nuts re this: http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf

(re murder that is)

Silk Road did $1.2 billion worth of business between February of 2011 and July of 2013 ... Silk Road had 957,079 registered users who did 1.2 million transactions between February of 2011 and July of 2013

so the average transaction was $1000? huh. i suppose the high price of assassinations will put the average up a bit.

Fucking lol

xp i think the calculations thrown off because they're valuing it by what a bitcoin is worth today, rather than what it was worth at the time of the transaction

RIP

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/11/27/bitcoin-1000-cryptocurrency/3768821/

Man searches landfill site for hard drive with £4m-worth of bitcoins

I just found out that a college friend who I consider brilliant and who did very well in silicon valley has jumped aboard the bitcoin train. He's convinced it will be "huge" and "disrupt banking." I remain skeptical, but it at least prompted me to think about bitcoin more than I have in months.

http://www.businessinsider.com/someone-holding-bitcoin-sign-on-college-gameday-receives-over-22-bitcoins-2013-12

new thing is Litecoins

That dude with the sign on Game Day story is crazy. Wonder if I could go back in time and hold up a sign with a Pay Pal address.

miss u bitcoins
http://www.coindesk.com/price-crashes-china-outlaws-bitcoin-financial-institutions/

It seems like the other thread is more active than this one but is also annoyingly not searchable. Any way to merge the two under a searchable title? Mods?

yeah I'd be in favor of just locking the other one

Sure.

The new thread can be found at 13UAdioF8zEwb4uyAhq2VuhnRKizgJjoCoCe

lolz

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/12/how-and-why-bitcoin-will-plummet-in-price.html

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BcrKP88CAAA_YKg.png

otm

*slurps champagne*

cool sig

hrm

the main point is that I don't claim any special expertise in technology -- I almost never make technological forecasts, and the only reason there was stuff like that in the 98 piece was because the assignment required that I do that sort of thing. The issues about Bitcoin, however, are not technological! Everyone agrees that it's technically very sweet. But does it work as money? That's a very different kind of question.

And the fact that people are throwing around my 98 quote actually shows that they don't get this point -- that they're confusing technology with monetary economics.

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/BACKWRD2.html

krugman's predictions from 1996 were amazingly prescient and help put his other technology prediction in context

yeah thats a great piece

http://bitcoinblogger.com/more-benefits-of-bitcoin/

the more u kno

lulz

btw I wish we could make this one the regular bitcoin thread, since the other one is unsearchable and I don't even know how the fuck to make the cent sign on my keyboard

"...most people have nothing to say to each other!"

Never seems to stop them saying it, though.

Not sure why people are bringing up Paul Krugman quotes in reference to a (very good) analysis by Tyler Cowen. I think a lot of people are hoping Bitcoin will fail since they missed the chance to buy in when it was cheap. Cowen isn't saying it will fail, rather that it's success will inspire competition, and once that happens the value of each unit will fall.

lulz (xp)

btw I wish we could make this one the regular bitcoin thread, since the other one is unsearchable and I don't even know how the fuck to make the cent sign on my keyboard

http://i.imgur.com/GeqM32m.png

whoops double post somehow

I think a lot of people are hoping Bitcoin will fail since they missed the chance to buy in when it was cheap.

If you really believe bitcoin will succeed, then it is by its nature still cheap, since it would have to rise a lot in value/market cap to be useful. I'm mostly hoping it will fail because it's favored by anti-government, anti-central-banking libertarian nutjob morons. I think it has a chance of taking off, but its road is fraught with pitfalls.

im hoping it will fail cause itd be funny and i hate nerds

If you really believe bitcoin will succeed, then it is by its nature still cheap, since it would have to rise a lot in value/market cap to be useful.

That's assuming that there won't be a lot of successful competitors. The total market cap of crypto-currency may have to rise, but that might be spread among lots of Bitcoin competitors, so the value of individual Bitcoins could potentially fall.

imho it has 0% chance of working whatever the fuck that would look like

Feel like a situation where a bunch of crypto currencies all exist at once resembles the stock market more than an actual system of currency

feel like it resembles something the government would seek to regulate thereby rendering its supposed advantages irrelevant