Bitcoin Gets Its First TV Ads 127
MRothenberg writes Bitcoin's not just for libertarians and drug dealers any more! Electronic payment service BitPay this week launched a campaign aimed at making Bitcoin transactions more appealing to mainstream business owners — the first time Bitcoin has been featured in a TV spot. Conceived by Felton Interactive Group, the two new ads promote Bitcoin and BitPay as a secure alternative to traditional credit-card transactions.
Because no one ever ... (Score:3)
... lost any bitcoins and stuff.
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And how is this any different from a real bank? Do you really think your bank has the cash on hand to close every deposit account? (answer: hell. no.) The cash plus debts owed to them (aka the loans they've made with your money) should (and for any healthy bank, does) exceed deposits. If everyone closed their account(s), the bank would default, and [in the US] the Fed (FDIC) would have to step in to cover the mess (up to the FDIC limit of $250k [fdic.gov])
No matter how much lipstick you put on it... (Score:2, Informative)
Bitcoin's still terrible for an economy because in the end it punishes people for spending it. Each person's share of the pool goes down as population grows, since the pool is practically a fixed size. So get ready for yearly or monthly pay cuts if BitCoin takes over.
Just because you have a technical solution doesn't mean you have an economic solution.
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criminals own more dollars than any one else. they have bought the government with them, and decriminalized themselves by fiat.
Re:No matter how much lipstick you put on it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you think the last depression/recession was bad just try a deflationary depression.
People literally stop spending money. As you can wait 1 month and your money increases in value. Why loan money out? It would literally be throwing money away.
Take your typical home loan. Lets say you borrow 100k. Not a huge loan by any means. Lets say the min wage is 10 dollars and there are 0 taxes. It would take you 10000 hours to pay it off assuming you do not need food or anything else. But by your magic in de
declining prices as evil (Score:1)
If people quit using something as money because its value increases too much, they quit using it. ("The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.")
They quit buying stuff with it. They quit making loans in it. Instead they use something else. (Remember Zimbabwe?) It decreases in usefulness to Holland tulip bulb level.
Unless its use is mandated by a government, that is. But only terrible governments do that sort of thing. East Germany did. It's been common in Latin America fo
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you need to read more than a "idiots guide to economics", what you describe is disastrous from a economics perspective, it stops people spending and encourages money hording, this leads to a downward spiral as no one wants to buy anything as they know soon it will be cheaper, as a consequence businesses go broke and the spiral continues downward to one god aweful depression.
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"...no one wants to buy anything."
Yeah right, like consumers will stop buying fuel for their vehicles because they know it will soon be cheaper? Actually with lower gas prices, they buy more fuel because it IS cheaper, hence they drive more. It's the opposite when fuel prices are higher.
And people won't stop spending money on other necessary items like food and energy. They'll still be paying for housing&utilities With the money saved they pay down their debts, or buy sell their car and buy a newer one at the discount.
It wouldn't be the as disastrous as you make it out to be.
ALL they will be buying is the necessary items. The economy is dependent on a lot more than necessary spending, it is the discretionary spending that maintains the economic position, without that spending you will get mass unemployment increases which will make even purchasing the necessary stuff for many impossible. people like you seem to live in a fairy land.
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You are a true believer that perpetually growing spending (wasting) is the only way your idea of economy survives. What a load of BS!
Unfortunately for resource conservation, that's about the gist of it. Modern capitalist economies require growth to survive. Once they go into deflation, investment stops and they fall into a downward spiral that's very difficult to escape (although massive public investment in global war has worked in the past). If you don't believe that deflation knocks out investment, I know some petroleum exploration companies that will eagerly take your money at the value they commanded when crude was still selling at
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it is clear that you did read an "idiot's guide to economics". proof by example that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
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Actually, economic growth slowed greatly when gold go
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That's why we moved to fiat currencies - economic growth was being limited by the available supply of gold - if we couldn't mine more, we couldn't pay people more, so existing stock got more valuable and people stopped spending, stalling out the economy.
One correction: the move to pure fiat currencies globally was forced by Nixon's dissolution of the Bretton Woods system [state.gov], which had a lot to do with the US overspending on the Vietnam War, among other things.
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To be fair, semi-fiat systems have been de facto (if not de jure) in place since days of colonialism. The important thing that served as the need for moving to de facto fiat currencies has been the need to expand beyond what current monetary system could offer. It goes hand in hand with rise of lending to finance such endeavours, i.e. assigning value to "future work not yet done" and giving money with expectation of better return.
Back then there was not enough gold in the coffers of states and local lords t
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For most people, most things they buy are necessities, and most of the rest can only be postponed in emergencies. As a general rule, if the money is not going to an investment, neither deflation nor inflation affects its movement in any way.
Think of deflation as a sale. For example, 1% yea
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That's a terrible analogy. If deflation is happening, it occurs whether one waits for it or not. It s not an "either or" choice. Under a system of 1 % deflation, everyone's money would be worth 1 % more in a year's time. Now, for a singular consumer your money being worth more is of course a positive thing, but think about what it does for the system overall: repeat
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That's a pretty wild view of economics you have there, not something that's supported by conventional views of capitalism. I mean, you could just be speaking about the 1800s and the gold rushes and imperialism therein, but then you use the present tense: "It's a complete myth that currency has to expand with the economy." And then that talk about "before modern fiat currencies" while still talking about wages as a normal way of earning income (I assume?) leads me to believe that you're not talking about wor
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It's not meant for an economy. Bitcoin is intended as a way to move your dollars around, not as a replacement for dollars.
It shouldn't be too surprising that Bitcoin is bad at something it wasn't designed to do, but that's not a good reason to avoid using it for what it was designed to do.
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Well, after an initial period of deflation, there will be enough Bitcoin so that 10 billion people will be able to have an average of 210,000 Satoshis each.
Assume a Satoshi at that point is worth what a dollar is now. That still provides for quite a bit of economic growth from the average wealth now.
On a finite planet with finite resources, and a fixed or slightly declining human population as is predicted after 9 or 10 billion is reached, the only kind of economic growth that is sustainable is growth in va
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Wow. So much wrong.
Rather than itemize them and then debunk each one, I'll instead recommend you read a good book or two on economics intended for the general audience.
And also ask you consider the possibility that if something isn't any damn good -- which you have concluded is the case for bitcoin -- people won't use it. (Just like the Zimbabwe dollar, though for a very different reason.) The "problem" you see isn't a problem.
It's a shame people in the US don't have that option when it comes to US do
Money Laundering (Score:1)
By far the most important part of the art of money laundering, mass tax evasion and the whole financing of organised crime is the ability to hide criminal financial transaction amongst legitimate transactions.
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What's in it for consumers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, BTC is exactly that for a business, but exactly what incentive does a consumer have to use it?
Right now, if I want to buy something with U.S. dollars, I pull out my credit card or my cell phone, and I buy it. The transaction is completed in a matter of seconds (no waiting for verification via a blockchain), and if I use Apple Pay or Google Wallet, it is extremely secure.
On top of that, if I am cheated by the merchant, I can contact the credit card company and dispute the charges. Furthermore, even if my credit card is somehow compromised, I am only liable for $50 maximum by law, without having to go to court or sue anyone.
What does BTC do for me? First, I have to buy BTC, and then spend it quickly before the value changes. Second, if the merchant cheats me, too bad. BTC gives him all the power - transactions are irreversible. Third, if my BTC wallet is compromised, I can kiss my BTC goodbye. All of the consumer protections that I enjoy with credit cards are gone. So exactly what do I get out of the deal?
For the average consumer, Bitcoin is a solution in search of a problem. BTC may be a great way to buy contraband, or to send money to someone in a 3rd world country, but that is hardly something the average person bothers with on a regular basis.
Bitcoin is a niche product, and will remain so, despite every effort by BTC evangelists to persuade consumers to give them real money in exchange for their cryptocoins. Someone give me a reason to use BTC on a regular basis that doesn't involve some idealistic "screw the establishment, fiat currency is evil" rationalization. As a consumer, I don't see the point.
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>>For the average consumer, Bitcoin is a solution in search of a problem.
The problems are [fiat currencies] that are based on nothing but the misplaced confidence that said currencies will be properly managed. Unfortunately, currencies like the US dollar have very shaky foundations. You'll see the point when the next banking crisis hits and the bail ins have been instituted.
Bitcoin is also based on nothing. In fact it is based on even less nothing than fiat currency. Bitcoin has weekly instability and crises. What, exactly, is the motivation here to use it over fiat?
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>>For the average consumer, Bitcoin is a solution in search of a problem.
The problems are [fiat currencies] that are based on nothing but the misplaced confidence that said currencies will be properly managed. Unfortunately, currencies like the US dollar have very shaky foundations. You'll see the point when the next banking crisis hits and the bail ins have been instituted.
Bitcoin is also based on nothing. In fact it is based on even less nothing than fiat currency. Bitcoin has weekly instability and crises. What, exactly, is the motivation here to use it over fiat?
It is based on math. I trust math more then war criminal Bush or Obama, or the private company FED to manage money.
It can not be confiscated or frozen (like happened with Wikileaks); You can receive them anonymously. You can easily script sending them without no bullshit. You are in full control of your money.
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About any kind of volatility, it is not a problem for people who want to use it to buy something, works as well when 1 BTC=0.01 USD as it was used few years back, works at 1 BTC=1 USD and at 1 BTC=10,000 USD.
Unless you want to buy and hold it for a year but then it's your decission should you invest or not (I would invest a bit of saving that I can afford to lose). Some people invested and bought cards, houses after waiting 3 years.
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Same is true for bitcoin. This is why bitcoins value is so volatile - there's very little trust in it and every time news come out that shake the investor confidence, price dives.
As a result, while your argument is correct, it's far more damning for bitcoin than any major state-backed currency in use today.
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Bitcoin is deflatory, your savings are growing over time (in buying power).
But this is just about investing in BTC - single user.
More important use here is to use it as form of payments, that are very universal (world-wide, scriptable, can not be frozen by rogue state e.g. the USA, are more private).
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This is quite irrelevant to the point he was making. We were talking about what makes a fiat currency volatile.
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Too bad history isn't on your side. Look at inflation numbers since the catastrophically HUGE bailout that occurred over the last banking crisis. The value of the dollar should have collapsed based on your assumptions but that didn't happen. At the end of the day, the dollar is the only game in town in spite of it's storied past. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is as stable as a three legged table.
Wallet management/backup is a problem ... (Score:2)
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Transactions aren't stored in the wallet. A wallet is basically a set of secret keys that allow you to transfer bitcoins. The actual transactions are stored in the blockchain on the network.
The wallet also contains a pool of addresses to be used for upcoming transactions, lets say a pool of 100. If you restore your wallet to a backup made 150 transactions ago you lost the most recent 50 transactions. If any of those represented incoming coins then these coins are lost.
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Well, you both have made a rather compelling case against bitcoin: it's too complicated. Not even you guys seem to dig it.
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As comfortable as it can get.
There can be a war that will burn your home, all your backups, your servers and half of the world, and still if you remembered the words you have your bitcoins.
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Modern wallets allow a super-backup whre you memorize some password e.g. in form of 20 words, and all future addresses you will ever generate in that wallet are always recoverable from theses words. As comfortable as it can get. There can be a war that will burn your home, all your backups, your servers and half of the world, and still if you remembered the words you have your bitcoins.
I know, but I thought I'd keep the problem list short. Now go tell the average user they can only have access to their coins if they remember 20 words and their order exactly. And to not use passages from books and such because the bad guys could generate their wallet/keys. I think the history of passwords may suggest how well that will work with the general public.
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Or put it into a deposite bock in Bank, then it is as safe as in Banking system (though insure it/declare value).
Or give keys to family to store in few backups. You have all this options. The choice is your's also about how to spend it, how much to pay for around-world transfer, etc - and I find that very cool
Tax problems because its an asset (Score:2)
A recent U.S. IRS advisory said virtual currency is to be treated as an assent not a currency. So lets say you receive some bitcoins. At some future date you spend these bitcoins. Since these bitcoins are an asset you have to account for their gain or loss in value for the days that you held them and declare a loss or gain on your taxes. In short spending bitcoins has the paperwork overhead of selling stocks, its not lik
What's in it for consumers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you are the wrong type of consumer at this point the development curve of Bitcoin?
If you wanted to send money back home to the Philippines, or engage in any type of remittances you may find value in being able to do it at a substantially lower rate than existing commercial offerings. I'm obviously biased, but to discount everything about Bitcoin because you don't see a use case for YOU right now is incredibly short sighted. Remember the early internet? The exact same kinds of arguments, why would you ever want to watch video online, whats the point of taking a class remotely, etc, etc etc. The reality is that Bitcoin redefined how we do trusted transfer of information on the Internet, and the first use case for this technology is in almost friction-less payments. From experience I can say paying engineers abroad in 5 seconds for 4 cents beats the hell out of an international wire transfer.
Before people start screaming volatility, there are ways to combat that, like not holding bitcoin when you don't want it to fluctuate. I know its novel, but since its digital currency you can acquire it, transfer it, and sell it very quickly, and that entire process is being automated such that Bitcoin becomes the conduit rather than the value store. Programmable money.
Slashdot surprises me because in general the people here have a very uninformed opinion when it comes to digital currency, despite the fact that it is the most exciting technical innovation in the last ten years by far. The value is in the network.
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Bitcoin as a retail payment system? Not yet. Not until bitcoin is a bit less volatile. But as a money transfer mechanism between private citizens? Maybe not a bad idea.
As a payment system, you do not care about the price fluctuations - just use bitpay or one of other payment processors. Price is 10 $ for a product, you are told to pay say 0.03164 BTC for example based on current prices, you pay 0.03164 BTC the marchant has 10$ sent to his bank account in a daily sweep from all customers.
Violation does not concern you.
If you would need to first buy BTC locally e.g. from local btc-atm or localbitcoins or friend, then you will probably pay a 1-2% more (difference between
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Then you aren't doing it fast enough. Remember its programmable money, if you can pay a tight spread in both directions and almost no network fee you can do it cheaper and faster. I'm not speculating, I've done international wire multiple times it sucks. Businesses such as Xoom and Transferwise that have float on both ends, and / or get group rates for transfer do it well enough for most people, but their reach is limited to the markets they operate in. Bitcoin is a decentralized alternative to money excha
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Wait, what? You basically repeat back what he wrote, add a few snarky comments, and he's the one with an uninformed opinion?
VERY obviously biased.
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I don't think its terribly biased to imagine a future where consumers aren't paying a 3% spread to some mega corp for the right to spend their own money online, especially when the security and other guarantees by those corporations are fairly weak. Who hasn't had their credit card stolen? Risk and fraud analysis only get you so far, they are after-the-crime measures. Bitcoin has built security from the ground up.
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I don't think its terribly biased to imagine a future where consumers aren't paying a 3% spread to some mega corp for the right to spend their own money online, especially when the security and other guarantees by those corporations are fairly weak. Who hasn't had their credit card stolen? Risk and fraud analysis only get you so far, they are after-the-crime measures. Bitcoin has built security from the ground up.
As opposed to the security provided by bitcoin which is NON existant. .
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Why do you say that? You make a statement of fact, and then don't even try to back it up.
Riddle me this. If the Bitcoin market cap is 4 billion dollars, i.e there is a 4 billion dollar market incentive to hack the network, why hasn't it happened in the last five years? That seems like enough money to be a legitimate target for a lot of very smart people, certainly major corporations have been hacked for less. For a network with such poor security it seems to be doing a pretty good job...
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The transaction is completed in a matter of seconds (no waiting for verification via a blockchain)
Your transaction is no more complete on a credit card as it is with an unverified blockchain. The money doesn't suddenly come out of your account. It spends time in processing limboland first. Bitcoin is much faster in this regard. You can instantly have the blockchain looked up and see if the transaction has taken place. The blockchain verification then take only a few minutes as opposed to a couple of days as with credit cards.
On top of that, if I am cheated by the merchant, I can contact the credit card company and dispute the charges.
Treat bitcoin like a wallet not a credit card. It's no worse then using a debi
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Bitcoin is a currency. Like all currencies, its usefulness is determined by the number of people that you can do business with using that currency. Pounds Sterling also do me little good in the US; limited acceptance depending on venue affects all currencies, not just Bitcoin. Further acceptance like is promoted in the BitPay ads will allow more people to easily receive bitcoins, and then spend them again without any currency conversion.
Bitcoin's value fluctuates against other currencies - that also is a tr
Keep On Pumping (Score:2, Insightful)
This bubble still has life in it if we can keep finding fresh meat to keep it going.
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Given the gradual decay in prices and there being absolutely no reason for the average person to ever want to use bitcoin as it has all of the disadvantages of real money with none of the legal protections of credit cards or bank accounts. It is a insane risk for the average consumer with zero upsides.
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This bubble still has life in it if we can keep finding fresh meat to keep it going.
It's interesting that many people are coming to this same conclusion, just a few years ago such talk would be sacrilege.
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Yup, looks like it's entering the third phase of the classic model. Number four is where the fun is.
Secure? (Score:2)
Bitcoin is secure?
Bill Clinton said it best: "That depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is..."
Secure only given certain assumptions ... (Score:2)
Bitcoin itself is secure ...
Only when given certain assumptions, such as a diverse community verifying and updating the blockchain. A problem exists in that "ordinary" users are becoming increasingly priced out of engaging in "mining", which is where blockchain verification and updates occur. Increasingly mining is being dominated by commercial entities that can develop, or get early access too, the latest generation of ASIC hardware. This trend makes 51% attacks more plausible than many assume.
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As for BTC price, there are various ideas to invest or not long term, but looking at it's short last 4 years, it grown over thousand times.
And neither of this is needed for successful short term payments.
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If 51% attack would happen even, that does not affect your BTC account at all, you have the same amoutnt of BTC.
Except for the loss of faith and trust that would cause the price to crash. Its not the number of coins in the account that matters, it the faith and trust in the system that supports the price that matter.
As for BTC price, there are various ideas to invest or not long term, but looking at it's short last 4 years, it grown over thousand times.
Only because it was starting virtually from nothing. Look at the last year, its value is less than 1/3 of where it started. 1,000'ish to 300'ish.
And neither of this is needed for successful short term payments.
True, but that limits its role to a transaction system. Which is fine, its just not what advocates claim it is. Merchants are generally doing the safe thing. Usi
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True, but that limits its role to a transaction system. Which is fine, its just not what advocates claim it is.
Not limited to that, as we said, it went up 10000% or
2000% or in last 2 years, or indeed 30% (drop) in last year.
So it can give profit - it is useful as (risky) investmen.
Due to inflation and the basics and at historu I would say that it can drop x10 but also can grow x100, so I would add it is one of more interesting investition devices - on top of being ok for payments as we agreed.
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And the guy who was running silk road didn't have his bitcoins seized and auctioned?
And bitcoin is immune to manipulation of its value against other currencies?
Never underestimate the power of denial!
If something has value, someone has/will figure out a way to steal it or manipulate it, and governments will figure out how to seize it.
There, by reverse logic, I just proved that bitcoin has value.
Happy?
Bitcoin Bowl? (Score:3, Informative)
Did you miss the Bitcoin Bowl game, NCST vs UCF, on the 26th of December from St. Petersburg, FL? They had a few commercials on tv that day.
Scam on TV is still a scam. (Score:2)
Are they going to get Kevin Trudeau to hawk it?
fair use (Score:2)
The users simply have to state that their uses of the work meets the definition of fair use according to the copyright office.
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. 106 and 17 U.S.C. 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement
What a waste of resources (Score:1)
What is most disconcerting is the enormous amount of waste that Bitcoin produces. Just the amount of computing power wasted in 'mining' is such that the electricity used to run the machine no longer pays itself. When a currency costs more to produce than its worth, there is already an economic crisis and the currency is no viable. For instance, when a dime costs more than $.10 to produce, it will be more worthwhile to actually melt the coin down than actually use it. Bitcoin crossed this barrier quite awhil
Re:What a waste of resources (Score:4, Insightful)
When a currency costs more to produce than its worth, there is already an economic crisis and the currency is no viable.
Sure, but that doesn't apply to bitcoin. When the mining profits no longer cover the electricity cost, people will stop mining. At the current price, total mining profits are 3600 * $315 per day, or slightly over $1 million. That means that worldwide electricity cost to operate the bitcoin mining must be less than that. Compared to the cost related to maintaining regular currencies, or investments done for high frequency trading on stock market, that's not very much.
Proof of work is actually required to avoid the double spend problem associated with all distributed currencies, not to prevent spam.
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Double spending is only prevented by recording the transaction in the ledger (in the block chain, which doesn't require proof of work, it uses the block that has already been created).
No, recording the transaction in the block chain requires making a new block. And making a new block requires a proof of work. Without that proof of work, anybody could just add new transactions to the block chain.
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What does communism have to do with monetary system? Even if you don't have property, you still need something to denominate value of objects, tasks and so on.
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All you need is a philosopher - king.
Re: All you need is a philosopher - king. (Score:2)
Well I'm not busy on weekends.
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The executive officer will decide.
The post will be held by individuals, in rotation, for a term of one week.
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-_-
or just idiot
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Re: The only way out ... is workers revolution for communism!
Um. Unless you're planning to outlaw the continued improvement of automation technology and artificial intelligence, I think you'll find that a workers revolution is an obsolete concept. The value of human labour in general is declining fairly rapidly, relative to economic production/activity/throughput/value.
Socialism may be required in the near future, to deal with the predicament that probably a majority of us will be permanently out of work wh