[Closed] Is Bitcoin dead?

I wondered how long it would be until Silk Road was shut down.

The Dark Web is certainly an interesting place to browse...

How do you know who is the biggest user of an underground currency?

They might have tracked him down via a browser exploit, like Eric Maruqes

There was an article kicking round about the legwork that went I to it. Basic flaw was he advertised for a developer using his own email address and it was linked to code I silk road, he also posted a question on stack overflow under his own name before changing it. What goes up once stays somewhere. Both of these were for bits of code that were integral to the site. He was then tracked but was using a vpn but they managed to get the hosts to spill the beans. Sounds like a lot of good detective work and fairly dull....

When I heard about this I initially wondered if there had been a flaw in TOR that had been exploited, or some other technological/crypto issue. As Mike mentioned, turns out the biggest flaw, as is so often the case, was the human at the end of the chain. Simple mistakes like using his own email address when astroturfing or looking for advice.

As for bitcoin being dead? I wouldn't think so just yet. There are plenty of other places (though none as large) that will still use them and I suspect that the price will recover some what.

Can't be long before a clone site appears, way too much money involved to not tempt someone into creating one.

I guess it's still a fiat currency to some extent - only works if those using it have faith in it. And if it's too strongly linked to organised crime it'll never become a mass, legitimate currency.

I think the thing that has always doomed it as a currency is the bitcoin algorithm will only produce a finite amount of coins which appears to be add odds with how any other currency works.

I think the thing that has always doomed it as a currency is the bitcoin algorithm will only produce a finite amount of coins which appears to be add odds with how any other currency works.

but other currencies have inflation, so do you need more currency or just stable prices?

If you have for example a house that costs £10 in 1900 and is now £200000 is this actually a good thing? why shouldn't a house cost 100k bitcoin now and in 200 years still cost 100k bitcoin?????

The problem is one of growth.
If you have a population of 2 million, then 2 million coins will mean each person has a coin. If the population doubles now half the population have no coins. You can't have a finite currency and any form of growth.

There are 2 sides to bitcoins.

1 its like an anonymous paypal.
2 They are an investment.

They will probably survive in the first scenario, anyone who thought they could be an investment beyond some sort of electronic ponsi scheme is frankly mad as a bag of weasels.

I don't understand the inflation thing.

Surely a finite currency is bound to deflate? As more people start to use it, as above each person can have less. So products and services have to be sold for smaller and smaller fractions of a coin. And those who simply hold onto their coins will become rich through not spending them.

Which, given that there are alternative currencies in which to transact, removes anyone's incentive to spend them - they'll just trade them. So it really is a ponzi scheme of sorts.. or a self defining bubble.

BitCoin isn't finite. It is infinite. But "mining" the coins gets harder until advances in technology make it easier.
So not dissimilar to gold or diamonds.

I thought the point was that there was a fixed number. If not, then it might make more sense.. maybe. Although most currencies moved away from being backed by gold didn't they?

Can't you have parts of a bitcoin? Like we have pennies but because they're not real you can have something that costs 0.03333 bitcoins?

There are already alternative sites to Silk Road that have been operating for as long, maybe longer, than Silk Road. SR was just the most publicized/best marketed of the bunch.

BitCoin isn't finite. It is infinite. But "mining" the coins gets harder until advances in technology make it easier.

That is the complete opposite of the truth. There is a total limited number of BitCoins that will ever be mined. That number is 21 million. You are right about the difficulty increasing, but there will never, ever be more than 21 million BitCoins mined.

[url= https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply ]Read more here.[/url]

The dollar value of a BTC dropped slightly where a few panic sold, but really BTC buys so much these days that the argument "It's only for drugs" isn't true - the value will stabilize and rise again soon. In fact now is a good time to buy if you were looking to make a quick buck on a short sale.

Can't you have parts of a bitcoin? Like we have pennies but because they're not real you can have something that costs 0.03333 bitcoins?

The code in the blockchain can be modified by the community to allow a 1BTC to be divided up as many times as they like. Currently I think it's around 8 times, or 0.00000001. Something like that.

Bit Coin wont be going anywhere. Like I said, the whole "It's only to buy drugs" thing was a media spin to effect public opinion. (/tinfoil hat)

BitCoin isn't like fiat currency as the supply is finite and predictable. Fiat can be printed off at any time, without warning.

because they're not real

They're only "not real" in the sense you can't hold them physically. Other than that there is no different to pounds pence dollars etc. I buy plenty of stuff at work that costs 0.004p - I just have to buy a few thousand at a time to make a figure that exists in pounds and pence. With BTC you can pay exactly 0.004 if you needed.

I stand corrected plyphon.

The summary I read before likened BitCoin mining to looking for the next prime number - clearly I took that analogy too literally 😳

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How do you know who is the biggest user of an underground currency?

I reckon it would be Orinoco

You don't need more of the actual bitcoins if you can secure debt - there may never be more than 21 million bitcoins, but there's no reason why I might not be owed or owe 22 million.

How do you know who is the biggest user of an underground currency?

You send in a mole.

but there's no reason why I might not be owed or owe 22 million

Hmm. So given that total debts would be more than the total amount of coins, you could trade these virtual coins. I could just write out notes saying 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of 1 bitcoin' and then these notes could be traded, on the assumption that no-one actually cashes them in....

What's been created, therefore, isn't a new currency, it's a new virtual raw material, like gold. I could start my own currency called molcoins that are exchangeable for bitcoins and trade those instead on the back of their exchange rate. They could be unlimited. Then after a while we wouldn't need bitcoins at all.

So how many of you own Bitcoins?

Hmm. So given that total debts would be more than the total amount of coins

Exactly. But money is just debt anyway, since it stopped being backed by gold.

As it was whilst and before it was backed by gold. Fortunately the entire universe is a hologram projected on the event horizon of something unimaginable - so none of this actually matters.

Hmm. So given that total debts would be more than the total amount of coins,

Welcome to fractional reserve banking.

Molcoins wouldn't be worth much though as only you would have confidence in them.

I'm intrigued by the known and finite supply.... pretty sure there's not another investment like it.

For that reason l'm in... where do you buy them?

@molgrips - money isn't debt its just a token that's widely accepted can be exchanged for goods and services.

bitcoin was stupid for anonymous payment of goods and services, clearly dodgy by definition.

Anonymous payment?

Just like cash you mean

Sounds like one of it's great benefits

Money is debt by proxy. It's meaningless without any real backing apart from the value assigned to it by those who share the system.

I work for my company, it owes me my salary per month. So instead of giving me anything real it tells a bank that it owes me that much. So I can then take portions of that debt and give it to other people in lieu of anything real in return for services.

It's not called debt, but it is no different, just debt with the polarity reversed.

Could Molcoins overtake Bitcoins?

Unlikely....

How many of these molcoins would a soul frame be worth, and how many matagolian gumbo beads would that convert to, google converter is drawing a blank.

There's at least three viable alternatives to SR. The people I feel sorry for are the SR customers who had their bitcoins deposited in a virtual wallet' on SR. All these have been seized by The Man. And I wouldn't hold much hope of getting them back.

Can money in a SR wallet be confiscated? Nothing illegal has been done with it.