Be Excellent To Each Other

Isn't that how all currencies work? Widespread trading leads to legitimisation?

No, actual items, not necessarily actual money.

If I wanted to turn 26 pallets of mid term test papers into cash without leaving much of a paper trail I'd look for something that is highly volatile, almost certainly short lived, outside of fisca lcontrols and had a line of people wanting to buy these digital trinkets from me for cash monies, or turn those digital trinkets into something like a car that can then be sold for cash monies. Nobody will turn an eye if you say "This cash? I just sold my car, here's the receipt and transaction documents", that'll do for most gatekeepers. The, when the Virtual Coin dies off, taking all records with it, I've turned my contraband into cash with a legit paper trail of having sold a car. The rests of the background noise in the transactions is just for the novelty of using something that isn't cash to buy stuff. If it is all above board, why the need for anonymous transactions? It's easy, convenient and pretty simple to launder things.

Yes, but the only way you'll be able to get someone to give you an actual item, is if the currency is backed by actual money.

Currency these days isn't back by real money, it's all paper, however to get the current currency model off the ground, the paper money had to be back by something that had physical value in the first place. This is trying to skip that vital step.

It doesn't need to be backed by something physical, it needs to be backed by faith in its longevity/stability. It's possible to get to that point (based on the enthusiasm of evangelists) without any collateral backing, but stuff like the Mt Gox hack really doesn't help.

This is like listening to that Philomena Cunk bit on Screenwipe. She discussed "what is money?"

I disagree. To get the faith it has to be backed by something physical.

And I disagree back. Otherwise people wouldn't be using it right now

Sure - to get the faith outside of the community actively involved in it there needs to be some greater backing, but get it solid enough in the enthusiast community and it can naturally spread from there.

And I disagree back *2, turn around, touch the ground, no returns.

People aren't using it right now though. People are talking about it, people are mining for it, people are doing publicity stunts around letting someone "buy" a car with it, but people aren't actually using it for a currency.

No, for people to have faith in it you just need to be able to exchange it for something they already have faith in (i.e. an existing currency) which is already possible. If that's the case and if you can actually buy stuff directly with BitCoin then people would not only feel comfortable adopting it but not then need to exchange it back to an existing currency. Obviously that situation is a ways off even without the current faith-destroying stuff going on but I can see how it could happens without anyone having to be able to say that, for instance, for every BitCoin mined we've got a gold nugget in a vault somewhere.

Apart from to buy illegal services and substances.

http://www.takeaway.com accept it. If you can swap bitcoin for pizza, it's a currency.

That's my original point. Show me someone who has converted their virtual fortune into actual money.

Only if it's laundered using ecstasy pipes!

Why? Who cares? The test for a currency isn't whether someone has exchanged it for something else. I don't need to swap my bank balance into Euros for sterling to be legit right now. Seeing as you ask though:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... -oslo-home

The guy exchanged a small amount of his BTC stash for enough 'real money' to buy a flat.

You can buy BEER with BITCOIN in a PUB.

http://www.individualpubs.co.uk/pembury/info.html

Done.

You can buy wine with vouchers in a John Lewis.

Doesn't mean that JL vouchers are a legit currency.

Ummm... yes it is, that is pretty much the only test for a currency

Thanks for the link. I'm skeptical of the throwaway line at the end that he bought a flat with them, but at least it is something.

But you can buy Bitcoin with real money, just as you can buy vouchers with £ as well.

I had a point there, but I'm damned if I can see what it is now I've submitted my post.

I'm struggling to see what people might want from a currency outside of the ability to swap it for beer and pizza.

The ability to tuck it into a stripper's suspender belt?

Got you covered.

Just seen a tweet saying the stolen bitcoins have been found.

In the recycle bin, am I right?

Hello? I think Beex has gone down.

That's in Portland, fool.

ROAD TRIP!

Alex Salmond agrees.

And so, my £68 of bitcoin revenue, which I requested to transfer out of MtGox approximately one month ago, remains nowhere to be seen.

Strong odds it's lost. Given it was all virtualised jiggery-pokery I don't feel too bad about it, except a vague feeling of gladness that I didn't invest too much time into the nonsense.

Like a lot of things, there was a window to make a dickton of money before the bubble burst. I don't see how it can really recover from this. Even if the technical obstacles with coin security can be overcome, the trust is gone.

The potential for shouty people or large organisations with lawyers to make money remains intact.

There is still money to be made here. Trust is nothing in the face of avarice.

Everything that I've read points to the fact this was a very badly run exchange, and that others have all come out and said they haven't experienced the problems of MtGox and their bitcoins are all secure.

http://www.businessinsider.com/senator- ... ban-2014-2
US senator agrees with MaliA. Expect plans to colonize Mars to be announced, soon.

Middle-aged American in 'knows as much as Mali about technology' shocker.

Not sure where you think I'm wrong, here, but if you're not going to explain where then I'm kinda stuck. We agree on the following:

Virtual coins enable anonymous transactions
Mining of these coins is verifying and allowing these transactions
Using virtual coins to anonymize transactions opens up black market opportunities
Virtual coin currency markets are unregulated
Virtual coin currency markets are volatile
Virtual coins offer good money laundering opportunities
When mining a user does not know what transactions they are verifying

You've gone wrong already. Any website which you provide your bitcoin address to can associate that with your IP address.

Like anything, you can go to lengths to make sure you are anonymous, but they're not by default.

When there was another, smaller bitcoin theft, people were tracking the coins live as they moved between accounts until they got them back.

I think they did that by donating 0.00001 of bitcoins to the transaction that was moving, so they could trace stuff.

Are they likely to keep those records, though?

What about the rest of it?

Sell stuff for bitcoin
Transaction verified by other users
Dump bitcoins into exchange
Swap for dollars
Money comes out clean as "It was in the exchange and was earned thorugh mining"
Exchange unlikely to keep records as it isn't regulated and record keeping costs.

In reality, bitcoin is probably less anonymous than cash, or gold.

<puts on dark glasses>
<leaves suitcase under bench in central park>

Yes, they're called logs.


What you've described can already be easily done using USD or GBP (and is done on a regular basis). There will always be an element of crime in whatever system you use - it doesn't mean the system is inherently wrong or broken.

Seriously guys? Bit coin is used to buy drugs online precisely because of the anonymity. You can put it through splitters that render it exceptionally hard to locate, else the multimillion Mr Gox thing would be simple to solve and prosecute.

Erm. Derp? Bitcoins can change hands between wallets without every having to interact with a website.

And, so what if they log an IP address? If people are inclined to criminal activity, do you really think they'll be logging on from their home ISP? Since when was the logging of an IP address the ultimate form of internet exposure?

So, you're agreeing with everything I said yesterday. It's good we're on the same page.

You can do that, it's not easy though, and it's not the reason for the currency existing. From the talk in this thread the impression is that bitcoin was set up by criminals on behalf of criminals.

In some ways it would be easier to launder money the traditional way. Bitcoin is not anonymous by default (in fact, it's easier to track cryptocurrency transactions than it is to trace 'normal' money transactions.

Bitcoins burning a whole in your pocket? Spend them in Oxford!
http://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news ... in_market/

A hole hat?

And I now have a horrible feeling that I have been taken in by April Fools' Day tedium. Although, knowing Oxford...

China banned bitcoin altogether recently, did it not?

How do you ban numbers?

It's so notorious that China's economy minister has been nicknamed 'Number Wang'.

Same way you ban twitter I expect.