BitCoin: "The Most Dangerous Project We've Ever Seen"

That's only partially correct and doesn't address the fundamental issue of Bitcoin itself. In fact, Bitcoin is a great demonstration of just how goofy libertarianism can be in practice.

There is no central monetary authority for Bitcoin. So pretty much anyone can do what the fuck they want. I realize this is the point of Bitcoin, but in actuality that very virtue itself creates monsters like Mt. Gox.

There's already a second-hand market birthing for Bitcoin mining machines. The fact that Bitcoin mining it based on solving math, it pretty much makes the dedicated machines ideal for cracking security measures.

It's a young form of currency, events like this may kill it, but maybe not. And even with regular banking you're not guaranteed security, see Cyprus...

Every system comes with a set of pros and cons, and every shadow technology attracts both good and bad - look at Tor, home of freedom fighters and kiddie fiddlers - long term, who knows, cryptocurrencies may just prove to be vapour, but maybe not.

The thing about bitcoin is that it has no intrinsic value. People like to argue the same about dollars, but that isn't the case. Dollars are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, which is to say the the US economy guarantees the dollar. Nothing guarantees bitcoins.

^Lack of intrinsic value is the good thing about it.

Money isn't meant to have intrinsic value, it's metadata - providing a metric of worth - and a vector, making value between differing items transmissible. It ought not to be of value in and of itself.

Of course what ought to be, and what is, usually deviates by some distance...

And even Bitcoin doesn't solve the issue, as it has an inbuilt scarcity, as mining becomes progressively more difficult, meaning they do have exchange value against other currencies. Ideally, money should be a temporary token - create a new coin, it is 'blank' until it is used to describe a value of an item or service, and once that has been discharged it reverts to being blank.

I have zero idea how to go about such an ideal system, let alone a guarantee backing it, short of inventing magic however!

The problem with that is without some sort of stabilizing factor, it is ripe for speculation. And surprise surprise, that's just what happened.

You might think that, but here's what actually happened:

Bitcoin is like gold--slowly growing supply with a finite endpoint to growth--without the industrial and decorative usefulness.

And, of course, like gold it's tailor designed for runaway deflation were it to be used as an actual currency. As the economy grows and the money supply doesn't, prices drop. More stuff and the same amount of money means less money per stuff. That's a big part of why the gold standard sucked such enormous and gangrenous balls; it baked deflation into the economy.

I look at Bitcoin as a valuable experiment.

But I've got to disagree with your statement as evidenced by all the financial shenanigans conducted by banks, other financial institutions, and even governments world-wide over the last few years.

I never thought the Bitcoin bubble would inflate as large as it has, but I am truly shocked that the Magic The Gathering Online Exchange turned out to be run by utterly incompetent people.

For anyone interested, MTGOX has had restrictions on withdrawing money for a long long time now and it was obvious something was up, but people still dumped cash into their accounts on the promise of easy profit.

From another forum:

The lack of a stable value for Bitcoins really hurts them. Its kind of hard to plan your operations when your currency fluctuates dramatically in value over short periods of time.

Yeah, it's the reserve currency of the world for nothing.

Of the many smugly ignorant posts from CaptainX, that might have been the funniest.

I know people who have lost a lot of money in Bitcoin. A lot. I also know people who bought early who have made tons.

Interestingly, all of these people are involved, somehow, in real estate and have done well.

In other words, you know a lot of shysters and douchebags.

I'm not surprised.

Says a cheerleader for big government.

Doubling down, way to go!

Whatever you say, lapdog.

Pony botnet wiping out Bitcoin wallets.

We need to look at this as a "dry run" for what happens if the Russian mob are able to get hold of a 3rd or 4th gen. D-Wave quantum computer (which will probably exist by 2020 at the latest). One of those will be able to crack the kind of encryption that the average PC would use quite easily. Which raises the questions: Will the mob raid as many accounts as they can all at once? Or will they snag a bit here and there, so as to go largely unnoticed?

Idiots at Mt. Gox think that they'll be able to "rebrand" themselves as simply "Gox" despite having lost everybody's money.

The mob will be slow and methodical so as to remain unnoticed. They will also without a doubt manipulate such currencies. But you know, fuck the full faith and credit of the US, let's trust something controlled by criminals!

Why no-one should be surprised.

Not to get off the subject, but at this point it's really a choice between criminals and criminals

Apparently some people had most of their net worth at Mt. Gox. It is now gone.

Linky

Bitcoin body count. Let the bodies hit the floor.

Bitcoin: Its really an "opensource payment method."

Lots more at the link, but while it has elements which make sense to me, I'm still not betting that Bitcoins will ever replace cold, hard cash.

I for one am shocked, SHOCKED, that another unregulated financial institution crashed and burned taking all their depositors savings with them.

But...but... Ultr4P3n1S-666 was a paragon of sound financial advice!

The best part is that Bitcoin IS centralised to an extent.

A year or two ago there was an update pushed out, and some people had issues with it. So the biggest mining pool operators worked together to effectively wind back the clock a few hours.