Backed by paper currencies, backed by nothing more than the belief in the paper, operating within a rule-less realm.
Nah, no one saw this coming.
Carbon exchange, anyone?
Backed by paper currencies, backed by nothing more than the belief in the paper, operating within a rule-less realm.
Nah, no one saw this coming.
Carbon exchange, anyone?
Hipsters gotta hip, losers gotta lose.
snicker….
Any bets on who’s behind the hacking? My guess is The Fed…
As there were bank robberies in the wild west, there are bank robberies in new banks of virtual currency. And as in the wild west where a single guard may have stood between robbers and their loot, banks dealing in virtual currency need to step up their security. If you read the linked article, Flexcoin’s cold storage (extra protection for a slight fee) was unaffected. This is not a flaw in virtual currency, but rather in specific virtual banks.
As with dollars or gold, you can store your BitCoin under your mattress safe from virtual theft.
We should be cheering virtual currency, not jeering it. They keep the prying eyes and fingers of the government out of our financial transactions, even those we perform online.
Ian, you missed addressing my first two points.
1) The currency has no physical backing to guarantee it’s stability.
2) It has no political or military force backing the psychological belief in the currency.
3) Your analogy is void, the “wild west” (if it ever really existed) morphed into police, towns and States and that’s when ‘joe public’ moved and set up Joe’s Barber Shop. You’re advocating for ‘joe public’ to move before the sheriff has set up shop, and that ain’t gonna happen.
Tulip bulbs are so much safer.
Can’t be scammed.
The comparison with carbon exchanges has some merit, given the near impossibility of attaching true and redeemable value with BitCoins or carbon exchanges, though in the case of the latter there is no underlying value whatsoever, except as a vehicle for taxation.
The more important parallel IMO is the attraction of organized crime to both activities to this incredible opportunity for crime/theft.
You can lead a horse to water …
Looks like some people at this blog need to learn more about economics, money and Bitcoin.
Here’s a primer:
http://detlevschlichter.com/2014/02/bitcoin-has-theory-and-history-on-its-side/
Interesting article and I have read many others with varying opinions. One certainty is it will only survive as long as it is not a threat to the big banks or the government. No government can survive if it relinquishes control of the currency it uses to tax, spend and do business in. It will be shut down and the more success it gains the faster it will be shut down. In the long run Bitcoin is a fools game.
FINALLY, something I have no opinion on and no clue about and don’t want one. It’s positively refreshing!
Anyone who involves themselves in bitcoin, but still uses a bank to hold their bitcoins, is thoroughly misunderstanding the fundamental advance that cryptocurrency offers.
News media portray bitcoin users who store coins “at home” as if they it was “the equivalent of hiding dollars in your mattresses.”
This is total bull-shit. With cryptocurrency, storing ALL of your bitcoin value at home in COLD STORAGE (an encrypted flash drive, for instance) is both painless, and impossible for the average thief to find and decrypt.
A thief who breaks into your house will know where to look for physical valuables that might be found.
A thief who breaks into your house will have an extremely difficult time even locating the proper USB thumb drive, or hell, even a tiny pinky-nail sized SD card will do the trick. Not to mention the fact that once that thief has it, oh yeah, he doesn’t have the key to decrypt the wallet. Good luck with that thief!
Cryptocurrency entirely changes the game. If you are using banks when using cryptocurrency, then you’re just not paying attention.