OT Bitcoin and quick wealth

[sipmeister]

Originally Posted by Clean39T

The funny part was capitol vs. capital.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by jimmy-moots

They would need your private key to be able to take ownership of your bitcoin.

A private key is a long string that objectively you could store anywhere and it has no tie to an owner.

It looks like this:

0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4140

So sure, if the police find your private key they can take your bitcoin, but if you can hide that key then nobody can take it ever.

You could even memorise the key.

You're probably wondering how is that long string of characters on a piece of paper connected to digital money.

That private key connects with a 'public key' on the blockchain which is where your funds are stored. It effectively unlocks your ownership of the bitcoin on the blockchain to do with as you wish.

To the original scenario. If someone in Russia has bitcoin that you sent them, they have the private key to that bitcoin. There is no way to reverse the transaction. The funds are gone. And law enforcement stateside has no relationship with law enforcement in Russia so they're effectively in the wind an are able to convert that bitcoin to other currency in ways that are more difficult to do if you were stateside.

The amount of specialized knowledge on this site can be very humbling. But I know this: language is power. You are speaking in a language that is incoherent to me. In a very real way, that language gives you a real advantage.

I’m a product of an era where jocks still held sway. Muscle equated to might. That paradigm has been completely flipped. Some gangly introverted kid, hunkered down in his parents basement, has the ability to speak the new Lingua Franca . That’s power. (Edit: I know Jimmy M is a racer, so this bit of hyperbole doesn’t apply to him. But still more than a kernel of truth to the scenario)

I’m reminded of the time I was sued by a high-powered commercial law firm. They thought I was the “push-up” dude. But I actually had a background in both journalism, property management law. So, although, the legal profession is very cloistered and the jargon obtuse, I could actually speak that language, and I ended up winning the case.

I initially thought my daughters should learn Spanish or Cantonese, which I thought would be the most useful languages. Since “remote” schooling, one of my daughters has become very adept at coding. In a few years, she will be (even at eight) more computer savvy than myself. I think I would like her to focus on this language, because this language is, for better or worse, the language of the future.

Just to reiterate: I don’t have an effing clue what you were talking about in your post. But I totally respect your knowledge, and grasp of a completely different language.

[MattTuck]

If anyone is confused or curious about the idea of the keys, the best thing you can do to get a better understanding is just to make a bitcoin wallet. It doesn't cost anything, there aren't any bitcoins or dollars attached to it by doing this process. It is basically just creating a bitcoin address.

https://walletgenerator.net/

You'll eventually get an output like the one below. WHich includes a public key and private key. The key piece you need to understand is that the public key (the address you would give to someone and say "pay me here") can only be arrived at by doing a special calculation starting with the private key. So, when you are ready to "spend" your bitcoin, the way you prove you are the owner of the public address is to present the so called "private key", which can easily be verified using that special calculation, to see if it matches.

That special calculation is called a hash, and is a secure, one way computer algorithm.

To grasp bitcoin (or other similar crypto currency) you need to understand the the ideas around the public/private address system, the general idea of a distributed ledger and how transactions are recorded, and finally the block chain piece of it, which secures and verifies the ledger.

[yngpunk]

Originally Posted by XXtwindad

I initially thought my daughters should learn Spanish or Cantonese, which I thought would be the most useful languages.

Might be easier to learn Mandarin (from teaching/material availability perspective) than Cantonese, esp. since many schools are now offering this as a second language option.

[XXtwindad]

Originally Posted by yngpunk

Might be easier to learn Mandarin (from teaching/material availability perspective) than Cantonese, esp. since many schools are now offering this as a second language option.

Yes. Mandarin. I can’t see the practical* application of taking another language besides these three. And “coding” would still be the best choice, by a long shot.

* I speak Italian, and my girls speak Hebrew. I think it’s great to learn another language - at any age. I’m merely talking about practical application.

[buddybikes]

Please tell me what global economic value cryptocurrency provides. This type of stuff is like a war and can do more damage than some real bombs


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/colon...141548661.html

[fiamme red]

Originally Posted by jimmy-moots

Is this a straw man?

Bitcoin and crypto more broadly isn't a product or service in the sense of a typical product or service, to think about it as such is a disservice to your understanding of what it actually is.

Much easier to think about it as a currency - even then it may test you as it's a twist, but at the heart it is a means of storing and transferring wealth.

Fiat money (i.e Money that is backed by nothing other than a government guarantee) is just as absurd a proposition as Bitcoin when you look at the fundamentals of either.

I'm not saying either are absurd, but if you point and laugh at Bitcoin, have a serious think about what the dollars in your bank account actually represent.

But the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is much more arbitrary than that of fiat money. If I go shopping today for groceries and spend $50, I can expect that I may pay a little more or less a year from today for the same items, but it's extremely unlikely that I'm going to pay $10 or $200.

On the other hand, one Bitcoin was worth $63,041 a month ago, and it's worth $48,630 now. On 12/1/17 it was worth $14,156, and a year later it was worth $3,743. It goes up and down based on silly things like Elon Musk's tweets or his appearance on SNL. Until Bitcoin is more stable, I'd just as soon accept payment in GameStop stock.

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by steveandbarb1

Please tell me what global economic value cryptocurrency provides. This type of stuff is like a war and can do more damage than some real bombs


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/colon...141548661.html

If your argument is that cryptocurrencies are bad because criminals use it in the commission of your crimes, I have some unfortunate news for you. Criminals committing credit card fraud cost us around $6 Billion per year. By hearing that fact, do you now believe credit cards provide less utility/convenience/value than they did before?

It seems strange to hold cryptocurrencies to a standard that no other payment system in history has been able to achieve. And, I am not sure that the take away from a terrorist cyber-attack on our nation's critical infrastructure should be that bitcoin is bad.


Also... this just in! Criminals are using cash in their illegal activities. Who knew?

[buddybikes]

I don't know if it is bad. Currency is used in societies to buy and sell commodity or services. Seems like crypto currency is just used to buy and sell more crypto currency.

If crypto currency were to take hold globally to buy and sell commodities, and this were hacked on international scale, won't economies crash?

I am naive here, not argumentative.

Originally Posted by MattTuck

If your argument is that cryptocurrencies are bad because criminals use it in the commission of your crimes, I have some unfortunate news for you. Criminals committing credit card fraud cost us around $6 Billion per year. By hearing that fact, do you now believe credit cards provide less utility/convenience/value than they did before?

It seems strange to hold cryptocurrencies to a standard that no other payment system in history has been able to achieve. And, I am not sure that the take away from a terrorist cyber-attack on our nation's critical infrastructure should be that bitcoin is bad.


Also... this just in! Criminals are using cash in their illegal activities. Who knew?

[verticaldoug]

Generally speaking, the Treasury has really dropped the ball here. They always do this with shadow banking (Crypto is just shadow banking) until there is a problem large enough to let them hammer.

I suspect the pipeline fiasco is the excuse.

What can they do? Well for starters, USD is the currency of choice globally and it is the property of the United States Government. I expect they will use the threat of removing foreign banks that work with some of the crypto brokers and exchanges from the list of US corresponding banks counterparties. The threat of this is enough to starve banks of liquidity so given the choice of losing access to dollars or cutting off their crypto counter parties, they will cut off the crypto counter parties.

It doesn't work for Russia as well, but it does work for the large Russian Banks who have access to global dollars.

If the US is smart, I am sure they can orchestrate a cordinated effort from most countries even China.

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by steveandbarb1

I don't know if it is bad. Currency is used in societies to buy and sell commodity or services. Seems like crypto currency is just used to buy and sell more crypto currency.

If crypto currency were to take hold globally to buy and sell commodities, and this were hacked on international scale, won't economies crash?

I am naive here, not argumentative.

There is a lot wrapped up in your comment, so I'll try to unpack it a little bit.

Up until yesterday, you could buy a Tesla with bitcoin, and there are plenty of companies that will accept it for payment of goods/services.

At this point, sure, there is much more attention and interest in holding bitcoin to get rich, but that is likely not going to be the case for long. Say you have a few more doublings and you're at 200-400K with a market cap of 4 trillion. That seems like a pretty optimistic picture, but still means if you're a speculator getting in today, you're hoping for a 4x return.... not turning a few thousand into millions. So, over time I'd expect lower returns and lower volatility, which means it may start acting more like any other currency. For instance, Swiss Francs.

As far as the system getting hacked. There are around 50 known instances of bitcoin collisions in which people could or did take money from another account. That is "hacking" in a very rudimentary sense, but not an attack on the whole system. It is more akin to setting up a bank transfer into your account and randomly guessing a routing number and account number for the source of funds, and just getting lucky once. It is quite different than someone seeing your account has a lot of money in it, and specifically trying to steal your money.

Not saying the system is infallible, but it has had a good track record to date. New technology or attack vectors could emerge that undermines the system. The hope is that the developers can update the algorithms and make improvements to the system so that it continues to be secure.

As others have said, experience has shown that the weak spot from a security standpoint is the exchanges and specifically getting your money in/out, or storing it in a digital wallet controlled by an exchange. Check out the videos I linked in the previous pages of this thread to learn more.

[MattTuck]

For those keeping score at home, Elon Musk (Tesla CEO) announced a couple days ago that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin due to it being energy intensive and causing carbon emissions. This argument has been discussed on this site as well.

Anyway, it has breathed new life into the debate of proof of work (how bitcoin secures the blockchain) and an emerging approach called "Proof of Stake", which can be much more efficient and less energy intensive.

There is already a path to transition Ethereum to a proof of stake system, and there are several articles that suggest bitcoin will switch also. I'll readily admit this could blow up in spectacular fashion, but if it doesn't, and crypto-currency emerges as a real asset class for the long term... well, it is pretty cool to be around to see it get adopted, and see how quickly it is able to address and respond to the needs of the market (such as less energy use).

Here is a nice review on the concept from this investopedia article, for anyone that is really curious about this stuff:

With Proof of Stake (POS), cryptocurrency miners can mine or validate block transactions based on the amount of coins a miner holds.
Proof of Stake (POS) was created as an alternative to Proof of Work (POW), which is the original consensus algorithm in Blockchain technology, used to confirm transactions and add new blocks to the chain.
Proof of Work (POW) requires huge amounts of energy, with miners needing to sell their coins to ultimately foot the bill; Proof of Stake (PoS) gives mining power based on the percentage of coins held by a miner.
Proof of Stake (POS) is seen as less risky in terms of the potential for miners to attack the network, as it structures compensation in a way that makes an attack less advantageous for the miner.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, runs on proof of work rather than proof of stake.

infographic for those who find such things useful.
[IMG]https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*UTvlKIjMW7DK-ztV5VL2fQ.png[/IMG]

[Dude]

Yeah, I'm getting bugged by Coinbase to "stake" the next version ethereum. I'm new to all of this and can't quite figure out what staking means and why I should/shouldn't do it.