Silk Road seized by FBI. What does this do to the future of Tor & Bitcoins?

[Louie_Cypher]

The news here:http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/10/feds-take-down-online-fraud-bazaar-silk-road-arrest-alleged-mastermind/
What is a Tor?
Tor is a completely anonymous browser to surf the "deep web" https://www.torproject.org/
What is a Bitcoin? http://bitcoin.org/en/
Silk Road was a site in the "Deep Web" that delt mainly in drugs, that used a combination of Tor & Bitcoins, to insure complete anonymous transactions, people are reeling from this bust, Bitcoins dropped 20 bucks today.
The "Deep Web" has been associated with a lot of nefourious activities such as child porn, weapons, drugs, hacking, a place where anything goes. HackBB & Black Market Reloaded are still up even after this.
What does ETS think of Bitcoins, Tor & the "Deep Web"?
Oh BTW NSA, feel free to read my emails even I fall asleep to that shit.

[Fixer808]

Drugs? Fuck it. If people want to do 'em it's their own lookout, doesn't matter if it's weed or meth. Child porn? Crack the fuck down.

[Louie_Cypher]

I 100% agree with you fixer, maybe the question should be can we handle totally being anonymous on the net? There is a point where freedom becomes a liability, hell on Black Market Reloaded, you can buy CC's, guns, even hit men. Funny thing is Tor was & is sponsored by the State Department.
thanks for your feedback

[Charmingly Miserable]

I find the whole Tor/deep web stuff fascinating. Not because there are a bunch of pervs jerking off to children playing with puppies, but because those people exist and they need to get their fix somewhere. I'm down for anonymity but not for creepy shit. Also, the hit men stuff on there is, I think, kinda hilarious.

[DigitalChaos]

Not sure how I missed this thread. I've been a fan of bitcoins for about 3 years. They really aren't anonymous the way people always claim. The entire transaction history for every bitcoin ever exchanged is available. You have to be very conscious of this if you want to actually stay anonymous. Most people have a transaction that links back to their name via an online exchange or even a vendor that shipped something to you.

Anyway, I think the 600% rise in bitcoin value since this thread was made speaks quite a bit about the importance of Silk Road to the importance of bitcoin: very very little. Online drug trade has existed quite lucratively before bitcoin. Drug trade is a very different topic than bitcoin, but I will say that online drug trade is the closest thing to "winning the drug war" that anyone can get. Online drug trade doesn't bring all the associated crime of in person exchanges of physical money and drugs. Guns on the street, theft, violence, etc.

As for bitcoin, I've seen quite a few online startups become attracted to bitcoin just for the exchange aspect. No need for the lengthy signup process with a credit processor, very little transaction fee, and no ability for scammy charge-backs. I love it because it decentralizes money. Decentralization of most things is tantamount to freedom. The treasury, federal reserve, and the banks make tons of money off of you using the US Dollar. Fuck that. It is essentially reducing your income and handing a cut to the people who partake in the banking industry. Fortunately, they can't stop people from using using something like bitcoin. They can absolutely make it more difficult, but they can't stop it. Look at all the money the RIAA pours into "stopping music piracy." Enough said?

[icecream]

Wish I bought some bitcoin when the site was raided. They are so expensive now, would have been a good investment. It's crazy to read about people who bought them a while back and didn't realize how much they are worth now. This guy bought a condo from a 24$ bitcoin purchase in 09: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-buzz/norwegian-man-finds-forgotten-24-bitcoin-investment-worth-184123863.html

[Louie_Cypher]

Yeah got I a few coins around 24$ and thought I was a financial genius for selling them @ 100$ <sad tombone>. I do think they are vulnerable to Social Engineering ie. a confidence scam, especially with all the new bit mining computer shops starting up.
-Louie

[icecream]

Yeah got I a few coins around 24$ and thought I was a financial genius for selling them @ 100$ <sad tombone>. I do think they are vulnerable to Social Engineering ie. a confidence scam, especially with all the new bit mining computer shops starting up.
-Louie
owowowowowowoww, That's gotta hurt. I don't know what to think of them yet. Maybe I should buy some? My econ prof says it's probably a bad investment at this point. But it's so tempting to potentially make thousands of dollars from them. There is even a store in Vancouver for them and a kiosk at a coffee shop to trade them.

[Charmingly Miserable]

Yeah. I don't know if jumping aboard the bit coin boat would be a good investment now. Can it climb any higher? Or will it crash? However, those who bought into it early were wise. I wish I knew about it during its infancy. It would have been a better investment than the Facebook IPO (not that I did that, just saying).

[icecream]

Yeah. I don't know if jumping aboard the bit coin boat would be a good investment now. Can it climb any higher? Or will it crash? However, those who bought into it early were wise. I wish I knew about it during its infancy. It would have been a better investment than the Facebook IPO (not that I did that, just saying).
Too bad it's hard to predict these things though. I bet if someone told me 4 years ago Bitcoin was going to be huge, I would have laughed at them... They seem to be massively popular in China though, so who knows. They might fall out of popularity here but still be big there. Might be worth it to track them for a few months before I buy some.

[DigitalChaos]

Wish I bought some bitcoin when the site was raided. They are so expensive now, would have been a good investment.
Revisit this quote in a few months. If BTC is at $10,000, you'll be kicking yourself :)


Making money by speculating really misses the point of Bitcoin though. Luckily, there is a finite amount of people willing to jump into it because of this. Once that levels out, we can start to see the real power.


My favorite Canadian philosopher explains it well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs6F91dFYCs

Yes, there are some inaccuracies and hyperbolating, but it's a great intro to what the majority of Bitcoin participants AND skeptics are missing.

[icecream]

Revisit this quote in a few months. If BTC is at $10,000, you'll be kicking yourself :)


Making money by speculating really misses the point of Bitcoin though. Luckily, there is a finite amount of people willing to jump into it because of this. Once that levels out, we can start to see the real power.


My favorite Canadian philosopher explains it well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs6F91dFYCs

Yes, there are some inaccuracies and hyperbolating, but it's a great intro to what the majority of Bitcoin participants AND skeptics are missing.
Very cool, I just watched the first 5 min or so but it sounds fascinating. I will definitely come back to this tonight.

[Sebek]

You know, I don't really know much about all this, but I watched the first 5 minutes of this video too, and the guy is going on and on about how safe bitcoins are... how they're unhackable, etc... on the same day that this story comes out: Bitcoin Heist: Millions Vanish from Online Black Market http://news.yahoo.com/bitcoin-heist-millions-vanish-online-175333383.html

[DigitalChaos]

Very cool, I just watched the first 5 min or so but it sounds fascinating. I will definitely come back to this tonight.
He doesnt even start the presentation until 11min in

[DigitalChaos]

You know, I don't really know much about all this, but I watched the first 5 minutes of this video too, and the guy is going on and on about how safe bitcoins are... how they're unhackable, etc... on the same day that this story comes out: Bitcoin Heist: Millions Vanish from Online Black Market http://news.yahoo.com/bitcoin-heist-millions-vanish-online-175333383.html

Your bitcoins are all stored in the distributed network. All you possess is basically a pointer. Without that pointer, nobody can "hack" into the network and take your coins. THIS is the real root of the argument. There are many ways for you to secure that pointer so that others cannot take it from you. You do NOT have to give it to a central authority to ensure it is safe/insured, much like you do with a bank filled with USD.



people GIVING their bitcoins to a website... and then the website running away with the coins... how does that translate to bitcoins being hacked or unsafe? Bitcoins don't stop people from doing stupid things with them. His point is that you can't forge or fake them. That's a common concern who hear "digital currency" and think you can just copy/paste coins like it were a picture. What is also great is that you can make backups of your money. If your house burns down with a bunch of cash in it, you are screwed. With bitcoins you just pull from another backup. If someone mugs you and takes your USD, you are screwed and the thief can spend your money. With bitcoins, they are useless to the thief (if you put a password on it) and you just pull from another backup. There is a growing group of homeless people who love bitcoin for this very reason.

[icecream]

He doesnt even start the presentation until 11min in
Doing away with financial systems, as he explained in the beginning sounded interesting to me. I don't know if bitcoins are the way of the future though. What he is saying makes sense. But what if I start my own online currency, it becomes as popular as bitcoin and then there are two dominant online currencies on the web? I didn't think his explanation really did a good job of arguing against it. Also, he puts too much faith in bitcoin users holding the currency as a way to purchase goods instead of holding them as an investment of sorts. Once they peak, everyone sell them off and it becomes useless without the demand for them, no? Regardless, it might be interesting to buy some now and hold it for a few months/to a year and make some short term money off of it. How can one even buy bitcoin?

[Louie_Cypher]

China bans businesses from using Bitcoins for transactions http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-05/china-s-pboc-bans-financial-companies-from-bitcoin-transactions.html Bitcoin drops 13%
I don't know how China will pull this off, also one of the largest Bitcoin mining operations is in Hong Kong

[Sutekh]

I was just reading a vice interview with the authors of narcomania, and they express skepticism about the security of tor/silk road, saying in all likelihood the police are letting it continue so they can get an idea of who uses it

some snot in the comments is like "fnar fnar, i dont THINK so"

Comment dated 2012... I lold

[icecream]

Aaaaaaaand it looks like bitcoin might be done for with that ban in China. Baidu stopped accepting them and now the prices are plummeting.
http://preev.com/ Track the prices in real time

[Louie_Cypher]

I was reading a few articles 1) a guy bought a new Tesla using Bitcoins 2) Because of fluctuation merchants have to turn them almost immediately, which means they will a problem being a legit currency

[icecream]

I was reading about a Ferrari dealership that has started accepting them. Even people accepting payments in bitcoin for homes. A university in Cyprus has allowed tuition to be paid in bitcoin. It does make it risky though, selling a car for 59 bitcoins at 1,100 dollars a coin and then having those same coins drop 30-35% in value over a few days. Maybe the price will stabalize in the future but if a country passing a single law can almost kill them... I may not get some. Maybe if they get dirt cheap again.

[Sutekh]

I was reading about a Ferrari dealership that has started accepting them. Even people accepting payments in bitcoin for homes. A university in Cyprus has allowed tuition to be paid in bitcoin. It does make it risky though, selling a car for 59 bitcoins at 1,100 dollars a coin and then having those same coins drop 30-35% in value over a few days. Maybe the price will stabalize in the future but if a country passing a single law can almost kill them... I may not get some. Maybe if they get dirt cheap again.

Is the university the UEL campus at nikosia by any chance

[Charmingly Miserable]

So with China pulling bitcoins out of the market and therefore resulting in plummeting prices, it is a no-brainer that bitcoins have become highly volatile. So maybe this is not the good time to get into the market. However, I think, like most risky investments, the demand will cool off thus driving the prices even lower then will skyrocket once again. I think one should wait a little bit to jump into the market- give it another 3-6 months and I think that will be the good time to buy bitcoins.

[icecream]

Is the university the UEL campus at nikosia by any chance
Yes, I think so.

[icecream]

So with China pulling bitcoins out of the market and therefore resulting in plummeting prices, it is a no-brainer that bitcoins have become highly volatile. So maybe this is not the good time to get into the market. However, I think, like most risky investments, the demand will cool off thus driving the prices even lower then will skyrocket once again. I think one should wait a little bit to jump into the market- give it another 3-6 months and I think that will be the good time to buy bitcoins.
I have been watching the prices over a few days. They went from 900 CND to a low of about 650 CDN. Now they are hovering around 800

[Sutekh]

Yes, I think so.

Doesn't surprise me, they sunk 15 million into it and about a dozen have enrolled. In fact it may already be shut down

[DigitalChaos]

Aaaaaaaand it looks like bitcoin might be done for with that ban in China. Baidu stopped accepting them and now the prices are plummeting.
http://preev.com/ Track the prices in real time
People have been calling "the death" of bitcoin or "a crash" of bitcoin so many times over the last several years. Not ONCE has the year over year price been downward trending. You'll have rapid rises, usually centered around some media attention, then a big drop... but prices have constantly been going up. 1 year ago BTC was $13USD. Then there was the March/April rally followed by the "bubble popping" and things stuck north of $100USD for months.

Speculation is good because it creates liquidity. It'll take time until volatility is reduced. People who are running a business on BTC tend to use another currency to handle the volatility while using BTC as the exchange mechanism.

[DigitalChaos]

Oh, and as for the how to buy bitcoin: As of right now: Coinbase is easier than the other exchanges I've looked at. It's kind of a proxy to other exchanges. Localbitcoins is also pretty easy if you don't want to provide much personal info but... in person trading...

[DigitalChaos]

China bans businesses from using Bitcoins for transactions http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-05/china-s-pboc-bans-financial-companies-from-bitcoin-transactions.html Bitcoin drops 13%
I don't know how China will pull this off, also one of the largest Bitcoin mining operations is in Hong Kong
This is based off of people only reading a summary. China didn't ban bitcoin. They said no financial institutions, payment agencies or insurers should price products and services in bitcoin, nor are they allowed to trade or provide bitcoin exchange or settlement services. People are free to exchange bitcoin for whatever they want. They just want the people to take on the risk themselves, not put the risk onto China's banking system. That's an incredibly smart move from a free market perspective. You get insanely irresponsible decisions when someone else takes on your risk (see US banking bailout).

[icecream]

People have been calling "the death" of bitcoin or "a crash" of bitcoin so many times over the last several years. Not ONCE has the year over year price been downward trending. You'll have rapid rises, usually centered around some media attention, then a big drop... but prices have constantly been going up. 1 year ago BTC was $13USD. Then there was the March/April rally followed by the "bubble popping" and things stuck north of $100USD for months.

Speculation is good because it creates liquidity. It'll take time until volatility is reduced. People who are running a business on BTC tend to use another currency to handle the volatility while using BTC as the exchange mechanism.
Very true. Still on the fence about them though. This summer I'll have more income to play around with, can't really afford to do it now. I'll track the price for now. Thanks for the info on coinbase BTW!

[DigitalChaos]

Very true. Still on the fence about them though. This summer I'll have more income to play around with, can't really afford to do it now. I'll track the price for now. Thanks for the info on coinbase BTW!
Don't get hung up on the "1 BTC" requirement, if that's what you are worried about. If you are only interested in speculating by buying and holding, you can put any amount of USD in that you want. .001BTC is going to jump/drop just as much as 100.0 BTC will, in terms of percentage. Lots of places are switching their units to mBTC (.001BTC) now because so many people have this weird mental block. You can currently buy 1mBTC for 90cents! :)

[icecream]

Don't get hung up on the "1 BTC" requirement, if that's what you are worried about. If you are only interested in speculating by buying and holding, you can put any amount of USD in that you want. .001BTC is going to jump/drop just as much as 100.0 BTC will, in terms of percentage. Lots of places are switching their units to mBTC (.001BTC) now because so many people have this weird mental block. You can currently buy 1mBTC for 90cents! :)
Yeah, I wasn't aware until I opened an account on coinbase only to find out I can't link my Canadian bank account to my wallet :/ I was going to throw in 50$ and see what it would do

[DigitalChaos]

Oh... Canadian! I'm not sure what the best option is for you in that case.
https://bitcoinaverage.com/#CAD says there are 3 active exchanges. I have no idea what the reputation is for each of them within Canada. Localbitcoin should pretty much be the same no matter where you are, I'd assume.

[Charmingly Miserable]

Don't get hung up on the "1 BTC" requirement, if that's what you are worried about. If you are only interested in speculating by buying and holding, you can put any amount of USD in that you want. .001BTC is going to jump/drop just as much as 100.0 BTC will, in terms of percentage. Lots of places are switching their units to mBTC (.001BTC) now because so many people have this weird mental block. You can currently buy 1mBTC for 90cents! :)
So, what's the best spot to get into it? If I was to do it, I would be a complete newly to it.

[DigitalChaos]

So, what's the best spot to get into it? If I was to do it, I would be a complete newly to it.

If you are asking about the right time to buy in from a speculation angle and trying to make USD... it's impossible to say. Your best bet at timing a market is to pay really close attention to the news. Otherwise, buy some and plan on sitting on it for at least a year. Also, should should be able to afford a 100% loss. I saw people dumping their entire life savings into it back in April when it was hitting the $250USD+ range... a few days later it collapsed down to well under $100USD. They cashed out and lost their houses, etc. Too bad they didn't just wait because 7 months later it climbed to $1200.

For bitcoin to have any real value, someone needs to have at least one killer use. Right now, everyone is working on doing just that. This is like the early days of the internet. It's entirely possible that killer use will never happen and bitcoin will vanish. It's entirely possible that the Internet would have never taken off because the right conditions didn't unfold. There were a lot of nonbelievers back in those days too. I personally think bitcoin has huge potential and feel like the chances of someone delivering something great is likely. See the 45min video I posted earlier, many great examples there. I don't see centralize currency systems magically fixing all the problems that bitcoin fixes. Bitcoin also has plenty of development capacity just on it's own. It can evolve and will evolve, just as the markets built on bitcoin are growing and evolving. Something simple like the colored coins that is actively in development goes way beyond currency... that one little addition opens bitcoin up to disrupt the industries that center around certificates, record keeping, loans, etc. That one little tweak has a huge number of possible uses, many of which have not been thought of. With every tweak, the potential goes way beyond currency.

In terms of the speculators, I still think it has plenty of room to grow due to popularity growth. Lots of countries are still learning about it. China got interested just a month ago. It looks like India is starting to take notice.

[DigitalChaos]

to give a slightly different answer on the speculation topic and timing... I tried doing daytrading just for fun. I payed very close attention to the bitcoin news. After a few weeks, I made some money. The money I ended up making would have been 10x as much if I had simply bought and held. So, it really is hard to know when the time is good or bad. Historically, it has only gone up in a year over year perspective. It's possible that it could go down to... so #1 rule is to never put in what you cannot afford to lose.

[icecream]

Oh... Canadian! I'm not sure what the best option is for you in that case.
https://bitcoinaverage.com/#CAD says there are 3 active exchanges. I have no idea what the reputation is for each of them within Canada. Localbitcoin should pretty much be the same no matter where you are, I'd assume.
Ok, thanks for the help!! I'm kinda kicking myself for not getting them when they were 700 or so (CAD) just a few days ago. I have a few sites but I'm still not sure how to buy/sell. Do I need to find someone selling and then buy them from them?? And then if I want to sell them I need to find a buyer?

[DigitalChaos]

Ok, thanks for the help!! I'm kinda kicking myself for not getting them when they were 700 or so (CAD) just a few days ago. I have a few sites but I'm still not sure how to buy/sell. Do I need to find someone selling and then buy them from them?? And then if I want to sell them I need to find a buyer?

That's my understanding of the localbitcoins system, yea. Never used it though. The exchanges like mtgox don't do that. I'd recommend just putting $10 in and testing a buy and withdrawal with whoever you use. Read up on it. It's easy to get screwed right now because it's still the Wild West.

[icecream]

That's my understanding of the localbitcoins system, yea. Never used it though. The exchanges like mtgox don't do that. I'd recommend just putting $10 in and testing a buy and withdrawal with whoever you use. Read up on it. It's easy to get screwed right now because it's still the Wild West.
A lot of money in the wild west :p thanks for the help again. I'll throw 10 or so in and see what happens.

[Louie_Cypher]

This is based off of people only reading a summary. China didn't ban bitcoin. They said no financial institutions, payment agencies or insurers should price products and services in bitcoin, nor are they allowed to trade or provide bitcoin exchange or settlement services. People are free to exchange bitcoin for whatever they want. They just want the people to take on the risk themselves, not put the risk onto China's banking system. That's an incredibly smart move from a free market perspective. You get insanely irresponsible decisions when someone else takes on your risk (see US banking bailout).
I agree I did not explain the whole article

[DigitalChaos]

Awesome intro to bitcoin the technology (that few people know) and why it is different than bitcoin the currency (that everyone knows).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2CsJ2HMA2I

[Baphomette]

And another Tor site gets hit by the FBI.

FBI seized entire TorMail database in Freedom Hosting investigation. (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/tormail/)

[Deepvoid]

Bitcoin Figure, Charles Shrem, is accused of conspiring to launder money (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/two-executives-of-bitcoin-businesses-are-arrested/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0)

[Louie_Cypher]

MtGox say's they were hacked files for bankruptcy in Japan, Silk Road 2.0 says they were hacked. A good article in Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/02/25/bitcoins-mt-gox-shuts-down-loses-409200000-dollars-recovery-steps-and-taking-your-tax-losses/.
The "hack" was using txid manipulations to make transactions faster which involved a "hot wallet" which sits on a live server as apposed to a "cold wallet" which is not on the net. With super high flexing value levels, transactions must be quick. I don't yet buy either site could be that compromised by this attack, but why would either company take the money and run if you knew the value would drop with news of an such an attack. More questions than answers.
-Louie

[DigitalChaos]

There are a lot of possibilities with mtgox. From govt gag orders to plain old incompetence.

The great thing is there is nobody getting bailed out here. The currency is doing just fine. Hell, there were huge lines on physical ATMs that only let you buy BTC on the day mtgox announced bankruptcy. This is a great demonstration of how free markets will handle bad times. Even The Daily Show covered mtgox this week in a positive light compared to the US banking sector.

[Louie_Cypher]

I saw that and it didn't hit bottom, again maybe the attack was from the industry (banking) Canada is adding bitcoins to their ATM's. We will see how this plays out (oops sorry I just repeated what you said about ATM's)
-Louie

[DigitalChaos]

The lines I saw forming to buy BTC were from ATMs in Japan... i think.
http://i.imgur.com/86QSVfY.jpg

[Deepvoid]

Couldn't we create an ETS mining pool?

[DigitalChaos]

We could, but it doesn't really do anything for us. I don't think many/any of us have enough computing power for it to make a difference over individual mining. Even if everyone on this forum had their own ASIC miners it would be a sysiphean task with how the difficulty is growing exponentially.

[Deepvoid]

Didn't realize it was that big of task.
I thought it was something like SETI, which simply runs in the background until it finds a "key".

[DigitalChaos]

Didn't realize it was that big of task.
I thought it was something like SETI, which simply runs in the background until it finds a "key".
It's very similar. Basically, every 10min a new block is released. If you are producing 50% of the current processing power, you have a 50% chance of getting that block. Over the course of 24hrs, you'll get roughly 50% of the 144 blocks that get mined. The number of bitcoins you receive for every block you get started at 50BTC and it gets cut in half every ~4 years. I think blocks are currently 25BTC in size. At $700USD per BTC, that's worth over $17,000US!

So, if you are only providing like .01%, it's going to take you a decent amount of time to score a block unless you happen to get lucky. Providing .01% translates to a 1 in 10,000 chance every 10min. A pool lets everyone throw their computing power together as if they were a single person. The pool will then cut each found block up into fractional pieces corresponding to the total computing power that each member is providing. So, instead of having to wait for your 1 in 10,000 chance, you simply score 1/10,000 of every block.

In the very beginning, you could provide a significant portion of the total computing with CPU's. Then someone figured out how to use GPUs (graphics cards) to dramatically increase the computing power and it made using CPU's cost more in electricity than you could ever make in bitcoin. About a year ago people started building ASIC's. Application Specific Integrated Circuit. Basically, you are etching silicon to create a processor for a very specific process. It's how places like Intel make their chips and it easily costs $1mil in R&D to develop. ASIC's are much more efficient and way more powerful than the GPUs. In less than a year the available ASICs went from 65nm architecture to 28nm architecture.

The computing power for bitcoin is measured in hashes per second. I'll compare everything in megahashes per second (MH/s) to put it all in perspective. These are all rough averages, but it gives you an idea:

CPU = 10 MH/s
GPU = 500 MH/s
ASIC 65nm = 50,000 MH/s
ASIC 28nm = 1,000,000 MH/s

Currently, the total processing power that you would have to compete with is 30,000,000,000MH/s. So, running 1 CPU miner will give you a 1 in 3 billion chance of ever getting a block. The total computing power is also climbing exponentially due to all the rapidly evolving tech and with the potential to basically print money. http://bitcoindifficulty.com/

[Deepvoid]

Thanks so much for this explanation. Really interesting.
Looking at that graph on bitcoindifficulty.com pretty much tells me we're about 1 year late to the party?

[DigitalChaos]

Yea, 2011 and 2012 were the prime years for mining with your GPU. Before the ASIC days it got nuts. People were buying actual truckloads of super expensive graphics cards and dedicating entire rooms of their house and even warehouses to a mining operation. The power draw and heat output was so bad that some of the "smaller" operations running out of people's houses were getting raided by the police for suspected marijuana grow ops.

In 2011, I was pulling in like half a bitcoin per day with a few laptops I had laying around at work. That was when 1BTC was worth ~$10USD. I got distracted by other stuff and didn't keep up. I ended up buying a $1500 ASIC miner early last year. It finally delivered in October and was pulling in maybe .05BTC per day. It was WAY more profitable to sell it after a few weeks than try to keep it running.

hindsight is a bitch...

[DigitalChaos]

Speaking of bitcoin history... Looks like they finally found the bitcoin founder!
http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html

There is so much awesome in that article.


some of my favorites:

"He is the only person I have ever known to show up for a job interview and tell the interviewer he's an idiot - and then prove it."


"Descended from Samurai and the son of a Buddhist priest, Nakamoto was born in July 1949 in the city of Beppu, Japan, where he was brought up poor in the Buddhist tradition by his mother, Akiko."


"We were doing defensive electronics and communications for the military, government aircraft and warships, but it was classified and I can't really talk about it,"


Nakamoto encouraged his daughter to be independent, start her own business and "not be under the government's thumb," she says. "He was very wary of the government, taxes and people in charge."


"He was always expounding on politics and current events. He loved new and old technology. He built his own computers and was very proud of them."


Nakamoto, who was laid off twice in the 1990s, according to Mitchell, fell behind on mortgage payments and taxes and their home was foreclosed. That experience, says Nakamoto's oldest daughter, Ilene Mitchell, 26, may have informed her father's attitude toward banks and the government.


He doesn't like the system we have today and wanted a different one that would be more equal. He did not like the notion of banks and bankers getting wealthy just because they hold the keys," says Andresen.


Mitchell suspects Nakamoto's initial interest in creating a digital currency that could be used anywhere in the world may have stemmed from his frustration with bank fees and high exchange rates when he was sending international wires to England to buy model trains.

[DigitalChaos]

Apparently, one of my LA friends is having lunch with him tomorrow. I'm a little bit jealous.

[Charmingly Miserable]

Speaking of bitcoin history... Looks like they finally found the bitcoin founder!
http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html


I don't know if I'm exactly sold on this although it is is an interesting read. The people who are commenting seem to be up in arms over this article.

[DigitalChaos]

Inside DarkMarket: a Silk Road the FBI can't touch
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/25/darkmarket-prototype

[DigitalChaos]

The provocative nature of this teaser video is just perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VFopiRaXwQ

[Charmingly Miserable]

Wired put out this nice write up on Dark Wallet. (http://www.wired.com/2014/04/dark-wallet/)

[DigitalChaos]

Wired put out this nice write up on Dark Wallet. (http://www.wired.com/2014/04/dark-wallet/)
"“This is a way of using bitcoin that mocks every attempt to sprinkle it with regulation”
“It’s a way to say to the government ‘You’ve set yourself up to regulate bitcoin. Regulate this.’”"
“Liberty is a dangerous thing.”


I love that guy so much.

[Deepvoid]

Again, I am not the most informed person on bitcoin but looking at its price chart, from a high of $1,000 in November to its current price of $445, can someone tell me how this should not be considered a joke?
As with stocks, someone got real rich and someone lost their pants.

[DigitalChaos]

because it's not a stock

[DigitalChaos]

The price is only important to the speculators. that's not the real value in bitcoing

as per kevin rose: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rutkt/bitcoin_is_falling_again_here_is_why_it_really/


As per others:
http://techliberation.com/2013/04/05/why-bitcoins-valuation-doesnt-really-matter/
http://techpinions.com/dolla-dolla-bill-yall/28664
https://medium.com/bitcoin-think/86ded11a8cb5

[BrownEyedStatistic]

I tried to hop in on that kind of stuff once.
Screw that.
It all got too weird for me.