Bitcoins

feds are better at controlling currency than algorithms and they don't waste as much energy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46150107

lol

not @ the link, just a general lol

I watch a lot of Shark Tank now and it occurred to me that bitcoin is just like every single product that gets brought on where the entrepreneur is like "this is going to take over the world because x y z" and the sharks are like "Sounds great but you have no sales"

HODL not the best investment strategy for moving through a bubble

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/9ylaxp/the_rocket_has_taken_off/

simple but effective imo

looool

https://exchangewar.info/

someone's having a good day

That made me look into wtf Tether is and HOO boy.

yea Tether is amusing in that it's both an attempt to reverse-engineer real money AND a blatantly illegal financial scheme in which the creators just "invent" billions of dollars

Enron?

https://breakermag.com/trapped-at-sea-with-cryptos-nouveau-riche/

^^^ excellent writing. confirms my bias that crypto is a cult of thirsty dudebros above all

yeah it's a great article

yup, handy encapsulation of everything that's horribly wrong in the space

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rGuH0vBLLs

roffle

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/02/crypto-exchange-says-it-cant-repay-145-million-to-clients-after-founder-dies-with-only-password/

whoops

My 'lol' and 'sad' levels were fluctuating wildly as I read that story.

Not convinced yet that the guy is actually dead

“This is a tough lesson learned,” Calgary customer Elvis Cavalic told CBC

at least i got a new screen name out of it i guess

srsly tho it's great that crypto companies are run so competently that a guy dropping dead can just wipe out 190mil, v cool new money system we have here

If there was ever a time to amass a crypto-fortune and then pull a D.B. Cooper in the hopes that a septuagenarian judge will throw up his hands in confusion at the blockchain jargon used to explain the inaccessibility of the funds in question...that time is now.

“Sorry bros”

look far be it from me to suggest that crypto's uniquely insane weaknesses to scamming means that it is uniquely attractive to scammers but

might try to get in touch with this dude via Ouija board later today

https://pics.me.me/john-cena-laughing-19985692.png

is p much how I feel about that

good lord

ive a fella works beside me keeps telling me his e-purse is worth 3 million spends the rest of his time complaining he cant get a loan to cover his kitchen extension

i was giving him the benefit of the doubt for a long time due to a language barrier issue but ive decided hes quite the most stupid human ive seen earn a midrange salary

Just realized I've met Gerald Cotten lol

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/researcher-counts-the-reasons-he-wants-cryptocurrency-burned-with-fire/

nicholas weaver not mincing words here

so, nothing about the environmental consequences?

there was a clip on Click, the bbc's weekly technology thing, on a bitcoin farm in iceland (20,000 desktops) that was burning 1M euros in energy costs a month (despite being in iceland and using lots of passive cooling). this was deemed ok by the owner because it was mining "millions" in bitcoin a day.

15:50 here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b0bk8t/click-mining-for-money

(actually he does mention the waste. but that wasn't reflected in the headings.)

At least Iceland is 100% renewable thanks to all the geothermal power plants. This is very much the exception.

For anyone interested in the Quadriga disaster / why things so frequently go wrong in the crypto space generally, some very smart people and I dive into the story and some of the more conspiratorial angles making the rounds here.

For anyone interested in the Quadriga disaster / why things so frequently go wrong in the crypto space generally, some very smart people and I dive into the story and some of the more conspiratorial angles making the rounds here🕸.

hmm I'll have to look into that

I heard more about this story today but not at liberty to discuss it :/

"We are now spending more electricity mining bitcoin than is produced by all the worlds solar panels combined. So we have eliminated all the progress that we made on green energy, just through bitcoin use."https://t.co/IrhMTMtWrR

— Mike Perham (@mperham) February 22, 2019

the electricity drain from cryptocurrency IS a big problem, but the quote doesn't appear in the NYT op-ed that the tweet links to. deep in the comments to the tweet, someone mentions that actually the quote came from this article (https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/2/22/18188562/climate-change-david-wallace-wells-the-uninhabitable-earth), but it's not in there either. someone else thinks it was in the vox piece, but was deleted:

Very interesting - it seems like they deleted the quote without mention. Thanks @internetarchive: https://t.co/Jz5sGOol86 pic.twitter.com/qSyg0czZmm

— Michel Rauchs (@mrauchs) February 23, 2019

and someone ELSE thinks that the error originated from a conflation between gigawatts and gigawatt-hours, two very different units of electricity usage.

to sum up, arrrrrgh

*chef finger kisses*

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47454528

"died in India" ie ran off with all these hipster crypto-fucks money. He's probably sleeping on Lord Lucan's couch.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/5971/production/_105479822_hi044540818.jpg

this picture of a real bitcoin tickles me

what a shocking plot twist, who could have foreseen that someone involved in crypto would be a scammer

If anyone's reading this who didn't foresee that, I have some real estate that you might be interested in...

sorry all my money's tied up in a really exciting iraqi dinar/blockchain opportunity right now

Unlike some other people, I am fairly convinced Cotten is dead. Likeliest story is that one of his even shadier business partners managed to take advantage of a window of opportunity when he fell ill.

you have to hand it to The Men of Bitcoin, you get none of these shenanigans with boring old government-backed currencies