I just love these kind of posts. It's the same rhetoric in 1991 when the Internet gave birth. I remember ignorant comments like "The internet is just another BBS", "Why would anyone want to read the news on a computer... people want to hold something real and read it".
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Apple Removes Bitcoin App 'Blockchain' From App Store
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I just love these kind of posts. It's the same rhetoric in 1991 when the Internet gave birth. I remember ignorant comments like "The internet is just another BBS", "Why would anyone want to read the news on a computer... people want to hold something real and read it".
MOD NOTE: Please take any further comments in about this particular subtopic to our P.R.S.I. sub-forum.
B
Why do we need Bitcoin? What real and legitimate use does it have? I don't see how the use of Bitcoins will make significant improvements to world peace, defeat 3rd world issues or stop us killing each other. In fact it may accelerate the latter when considering the current uses for it.
Whilst I agree that hard currency is more of a promise to pay rather than something particularly tangible - in that sense so is Bitcoin but at least it is backed by governments, use is understood better and is generally used on a wider scale than Bitcoins. Do we actually need it?
My life would not change one jot if Bitcoin just relinquished itself back into nothing. Apple has my permission to remove all apps that deal with Bitcoins.
Whilst I agree that hard currency is more of a promise to pay rather than something particularly tangible - in that sense so is Bitcoin but at least it is backed by governments, use is understood better and is generally used on a wider scale than Bitcoins. Do we actually need it?
My life would not change one jot if Bitcoin just relinquished itself back into nothing. Apple has my permission to remove all apps that deal with Bitcoins.
This up here just shows how ignorant you are. There are a large number of corporations that utilize Bit-Torrent for distributing their content, like for example Blizzard. I pay my electricity bill in Texas with BTC because Coserv accepts them as a form of payment.
You are right, we don't need bit coins, or Gold, Diamonds, Emeralds, etc. All that Jewlery crap not worth a damn right? right? I mean I don't wear jewelry myself, but it doesn't stop Gold form being mined or Diamonds, being seated on rings... right?
This is what Bitcoin is, not just a digital currency, that on occasion its worth more than your average stock option, it's a digital mineral. Intelligent and people with the right mind to invest and ride a wave of risk, mine bit coin, and others who think its better to buy it, they buy it like stock options.
You certainly don't needed, but a guy like me, I like good things and good things in life cost money. So what alternatives do I have, when I already have a good job and almost no time other than for my family... how would I make more money? We all know robbing a bank is not exactly a career path and other than that is plain wrong... What else? Set up a business? No time for that either... What is better than hooking a Miner to your Mac or PC and let it churn away...
I mean I don't know how much you make yearly, but would you mind $700 every month extra? non-taxable, a gratuity in your pocket each month? What about $1000 bucks each month extra... or $2000?
At current prices, if you were mining 2TH/s, you would be making 1 btw every day and a half... that is roughly around $800 every 1.5 days, that is like $5600 every week more or less.
Certainly we don't need bit coin, I could just gotten another loan and got her ring. But thanks to intelligent investment of several miners and staying ahead of the curve, mining Bitcoin is like having a tree in my backyard that has $100 bills like leaves.
Yeah that pretty much sums it up.
Personally, I can't wait till US Government taxes Bitcoin, because then it will be recognized as a true world currency and it will be worth a lot, lot more than its worth at its highest right now.
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A guy just gave out five free Nexus 5 for people to smash their iPhone 5/5S in response to this move by Apple.
See: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x62we/for_every_100_upvotes_this_post_receives_i_will/
See: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x62we/for_every_100_upvotes_this_post_receives_i_will/
We in 1st world countries are fortunate in that we don't *need* bitcoin. But suppose you are living in a poor country without a developed banking system and wish to be able sell your goods or services to a global market. Bitcoin could certainly improve your life.
Or suppose you live in a country like Argentina where the government's inflation of the money supply is rapidly eroding people's wealth - an alternative money that cannot be manipulated by politicians could be of great value.
What if you were a migrant from a poor country who wanted to send money back home to your family without paying 15% in fees to Western Union? Bitcoin could make a big difference to these people.
Unfortunately I'm a dreadful gardener, an even worse butcher but I like meat and veg for dinner. Luckily I do stuff that gardeners and butchers want but have no real means to trade what I do for what they do. Tangible payment methods have (or at least should have) a basis in trade and therefore a value.
You say that you consider BTC to be a tree growing money. You just go take the money - take a step back. Does that sound right? More to the point, does that sound sustainable? The kit to produce 2TH/s is expensive and I suspect that by the time you have invested sufficient money to support an ever increasingly difficult product means that those producing the tech are the real winners.
I do find this interesting and will enjoy the debate, but either way, it's not for me but I wish you every success farming your cash.
Good points here. Merchants in developing countries that can't afford setting up a credit-card infrastructure and definitely can't afford all the transaction fees now have a globally available, relatively secure alternative payment system with negligible transaction fees.
And as far as government financial crises that could be mitigated by Bitcoin, one only needs to look at Cyprus as an example. Bitcoin use there increased significantly after Cyprus's government took money straight out of its citizens' bank accounts to fund a massive bailout. A Bitcoin branch, perhaps the first of its kind, opened in Cyprus recently. There are Bitcoin ATMs in Canada and Slovakia, among other locations.
Whether Bitcoin goes the way of Flooz and Beenz, only time will tell. It's not that good an investment right now, anyway; much of the ROI has already happened, IMO (the Cyprus bank bailout was a major influence in the run-up of BTC exchange rates a few months ago), and even "miners" are finding it difficult to see a profit from keeping the system running. If Bitcoin and/or other cryptocurrencies are to flourish, Bitcoin holders need to start using them for purchases rather than hoarding them for speculation purposes. Luckily, some well-known online sites now accept it, including WordPress and Overstock.com.
Yes, yes, it's all a big fantasy, but it's a fantasy that billions of people the world over have chosen to buy into and build their lives around, and there's a helluva lot of powerful skin in the game holding "real" money.
Making this fantasy even more real, if you're an American for instance, every weird green rectangular piece of paper in your wallet is backed by the US government, with guns if necessary!
The Bitcoin version of this fantasy is a nice dream, though. The problem seems to be that it's backed by little more than dogma and internet hype. Unless it ends up serving a useful purpose for the powers that be, it doesn't stand a chance of succeeding in the utopian vision many here seem to share.
Which reminds me of the old "mark of the beast" bar code thing, you know, the fear of the government being able to track all trade in a cashless society? Look at how the enlightened nerderati on The Verge and elsewhere just love this idea!
It's not too much different from traditional currencies though, is it? Money's only as valuable as everyone treats it. We have seen currencies become worthless in the past. Hell, you could even say the same of gold. It's only really valuable because we treat it as such - but it's not as useful as food, water, medicine etc..
So has plain old cash. And guess what? the currency that most criminals use is.. the US dollar !! OMG !!!
Well, by that sound logic, they might as well remove the phone app because I'm sure someone's used it to set up a hit, drug deal, bank robbery or terrorist attack.
Well, by that sound logic, they might as well remove the phone app because I'm sure someone's used it to set up a hit, drug deal, bank robbery or terrorist attack.
Better ban BBM too since its the most popular app for my local drug dealers.
Right, because dollars are only used legally and by people who abide the law.
Your analogy makes no sense whatsoever.
Some of you haven't been paying attention to economics in the last decade, and have filled your heads with pop news tripe instead.
Bitcoin is a great but early prototype of what a virtual currency can be. ...but its viability is severely limited going forward due to its mining threshold having been irreversibly surpassed. It has doomed itself.
However, it is indeed an awesome achievement. The future of commerce is no doubt a free and open virtual currency, unhinged from the whims and passions of unstable and corrupt institutions.
Apple banning this app is still putting them on the Wrong Side of history.
Bitcoin is a great but early prototype of what a virtual currency can be. ...but its viability is severely limited going forward due to its mining threshold having been irreversibly surpassed. It has doomed itself.
However, it is indeed an awesome achievement. The future of commerce is no doubt a free and open virtual currency, unhinged from the whims and passions of unstable and corrupt institutions.
Apple banning this app is still putting them on the Wrong Side of history.
Actually it's backed by the entire bitcoin network which means basically everyone who's mining bitcoin at the moment and those who use a Bitcoin Qt wallet, with every transaction being confirmed atleast 6 times, before it's considered spend properly.
Umm, no ....
If an app is legal in the majority of countries where it will be used (like a bitcoin wallet, or app that simply lets someone watch the block-chain as it grows) -- Apple is doing nothing wrong by allowing people to download it from the App Store. The responsibility is on the end-users not to use it in an illegal manner!
(Heck, right here in the USA - there are places where radar detectors are outlawed, such as in Washington DC and Virginia. Yet I can walk into my local Apple store right now and buy a Cobra iRadar device, and download the associated iOS app that works with it. Why? Because *normally* it is legal. It's MY problem if i try to use it where it's outlawed.)
If an app is legal in the majority of countries where it will be used (like a bitcoin wallet, or app that simply lets someone watch the block-chain as it grows) -- Apple is doing nothing wrong by allowing people to download it from the App Store. The responsibility is on the end-users not to use it in an illegal manner!
(Heck, right here in the USA - there are places where radar detectors are outlawed, such as in Washington DC and Virginia. Yet I can walk into my local Apple store right now and buy a Cobra iRadar device, and download the associated iOS app that works with it. Why? Because *normally* it is legal. It's MY problem if i try to use it where it's outlawed.)
It really depends .... like most investments ....
IMO, a lot of these people trying to get into bitcoin mining this late in the game are going to waste a lot of money on hardware that quickly becomes worthless. (The only miners that are capable of mining BTC at a profitable rate, given current difficulty levels, are purpose-built boxes that can't do anything else. As soon as difficulty levels rise enough to make them obsolete and unprofitable to keep running, they're worth no more than their scrap value.)
On the other hand, you have a whole lot of people who've been doing the bitcoin mining thing for quite a while now. Some of these people paid off the full up-front cost of massive farms of servers quite a while ago, when BTC's value surged almost 10x overnight. For them, the only real cost to keep mining is the electricity usage -- so it's understandable they have no reason to get back out of it until it costs more in power than it earns for them. (If they also invested in things like solar power as part of the setup, maybe that cost is even zero?)
I think there's also still a window of opportunity to profitably mine the "alt-coins" that use scrypt math calculations, as opposed to the SHA256 that bitcoin uses. The scrypt based altcoins can still be mined at a profitable rate using off-the-shelf 3D gaming video cards attached to standard PC motherboards and power supplies. The window to make big profits from this is rapidly closing ... but it's not shut just yet. The nice thing about going this route is, you're left with equipment at the end that still has some resale value. (PC gamers will still pay hundreds of dollars for these video cards on the used market -- even after you're done trying to use them to mine for alt-coins.)
So yes, done wisely -- your mining rigs really can act like "money trees", but no -- this isn't something "sustainable" forever. It's all about people getting in on it while the opportunity window is there. You know, kind of like people who are able to buy into new stocks when they first go public, before they dramatically rise in value and eventually become rather stagnant at high prices?
IMO, a lot of these people trying to get into bitcoin mining this late in the game are going to waste a lot of money on hardware that quickly becomes worthless. (The only miners that are capable of mining BTC at a profitable rate, given current difficulty levels, are purpose-built boxes that can't do anything else. As soon as difficulty levels rise enough to make them obsolete and unprofitable to keep running, they're worth no more than their scrap value.)
On the other hand, you have a whole lot of people who've been doing the bitcoin mining thing for quite a while now. Some of these people paid off the full up-front cost of massive farms of servers quite a while ago, when BTC's value surged almost 10x overnight. For them, the only real cost to keep mining is the electricity usage -- so it's understandable they have no reason to get back out of it until it costs more in power than it earns for them. (If they also invested in things like solar power as part of the setup, maybe that cost is even zero?)
I think there's also still a window of opportunity to profitably mine the "alt-coins" that use scrypt math calculations, as opposed to the SHA256 that bitcoin uses. The scrypt based altcoins can still be mined at a profitable rate using off-the-shelf 3D gaming video cards attached to standard PC motherboards and power supplies. The window to make big profits from this is rapidly closing ... but it's not shut just yet. The nice thing about going this route is, you're left with equipment at the end that still has some resale value. (PC gamers will still pay hundreds of dollars for these video cards on the used market -- even after you're done trying to use them to mine for alt-coins.)
So yes, done wisely -- your mining rigs really can act like "money trees", but no -- this isn't something "sustainable" forever. It's all about people getting in on it while the opportunity window is there. You know, kind of like people who are able to buy into new stocks when they first go public, before they dramatically rise in value and eventually become rather stagnant at high prices?
I don't know the reason "why", but regarding the timing, maybe it has something to do with Bitcoin ATM being installed in Canada...
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/money/Bitcoin+opens+business+Montreal/9469099/story.html