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Apple's Tumultuous Relationship With Bitcoin Apps
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I'm up to 0.1 BTC by bitcoin mining with a Butterfly Labs minerHonestly regardless of what Apple does with bitcoin apps, the BTC will thrive with or without their approval. I can still access my coinbase wallet via Safari to see how much my miner has mined so it's all good!
How long this take you?
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Use Blockchain.info. It is like a web wallet, but they don't host the bitcoins.
You can store the wallet yourself. It has the security of a desktop wallet with convenience of web wallet. If a hacker were to ever infiltrate them, they could only get the encrypted JSON of your wallet, which at that point, you just change your password before they crack into it and their copy becomes unusable.
If ya need more info, just ask.
So I bought some on coinbase. Then basically I should transfer to my blockchain wallet address? Is that right? I'm scared I accidentally transfer to someone else's.
When you assign value to something that has no actual intrinsic value, you open a Pandora's box of ways that that something's value can be changed. The value of the US dollar and other currencies are changed daily by overprinting and hoarding by banks. While not impossible, this process is much harder with real goods. With bitcoin, the system doesn't even require paper - it's all digital and is therefore even easier to manipulate.
Trading bitcoins is essentially the same as trading on the stock market. You buy a few to start, then try to trade them to other people for a slightly higher amount than you paid for them. You cannot use bitcoins to buy goods or services directly (except in the case of very high-value transactions, just like how you can't buy things with stocks, but companies trade them for goods all the time), but have to first trade them in for actual currency. You attempt to do this at a time when your cash-out value is a little bit more than you paid in. When you do that, you are manipulating the system - trying to make bitcoins worth more than you paid for them.
I wouldn't really know about that stuff, I usually articulate my irrelevent-to-the-topic arguments based on more than just what I heard on talk radio.
Okay, calm down. Ron Paul isn't running for president anymore.
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Real money > ones and zeroes.
I don't know how but you managed to convey my thoughts and feelings so precisely that I'm almost lost for words myself. Thank you! It's great to see some switched on people around here.
As part of the corporate elite, Apple and the government are essentially one and the same. Apple gets extremely favourable treatment from government (far better than the average citizen) in exchange for playing along with the government's wishes.
Apple has used this legal excuse, nay lie, before. They used it to remove the Wikileaks app and censor Wikileaks, even though it's found completely legal and Julian Assange completely innocent in my country (Australia). The US doesn't like this so they're trying to manufacture a rape case instead.
Stories like this are making me hate Apple more and more every day. They lost their cool a while back but now they're becoming a corporation to despise. Not as bad as Microsoft or Google I'll grant you but getting up there. Like governments and politicians they continuously try to address their weaknesses with marketing and media propaganda such as their recent "We're pretending we don't like the NSA mass surveillance and government access to our customers' data even though we know you can take it anyway whether we like it or not" media releases.
In the light of the Snowden revelations somehow I'm not loving technology as much as I once did and this means I'm far more cautious about giving Apple or anyone my money and their controlling Christian-conservatism like just makes it worse.
So basically, the only sound argument Apple can leverage against approving Bitcoin wallet-like apps is that Bitcoin MIGHT be illegal in some countries where the app would be sold?
Well Apple, then don't sell the app in THAT store, but keep offering it in others just like you do with countless other apps where the availability is controlled on a per-market basis? Problem solved?
On one hand, this company goes out of their way to show how "hip" it is by promoting fluffy liberal crap (e.g. the recent Mandela thing on their front page), while on the other hand it is completely cowardly, confused and disingenious when it comes to truly liberating stuff such as Bitcoin.
Go figure.
Well Apple, then don't sell the app in THAT store, but keep offering it in others just like you do with countless other apps where the availability is controlled on a per-market basis? Problem solved?
On one hand, this company goes out of their way to show how "hip" it is by promoting fluffy liberal crap (e.g. the recent Mandela thing on their front page), while on the other hand it is completely cowardly, confused and disingenious when it comes to truly liberating stuff such as Bitcoin.
Go figure.
Generally Apple doesn't do that when there's a legal issue.
Their blanket ban on lottery Apps (one that sells tickets) is a good example of that. Apparently some part of doing that is illegal in California, so they don't allow them anywhere in the world.
A few days... I got the $2500 miner from butterfly labs that's 60 GH/S running at about 50 gh/s currently. Supposedly will mine almost ~1 BTC per month.
This comment proves you no nothing about it whatsoever so why bother commenting....
Bitcoin is used for:
1. Buying drugs or weapons
2. Online-Gambling
3. Profiting from stupid people who hope to get rich by mining or hoarding Bitcoins, by buying BC low and selling high or by selling mining equipment
Most of the people who got rich in the gold rush were people who sold pickaxes...
But that is no reason to boycott it, just because people use it for drugs, gambling or profiting. People use "real" currency for them reasons too. Bitcoins made me richer than I would be today without them.
Arn, it might help Macrumors to actually understand it before posting stories about it...or stop taking news cues from mainstream media outlets to base a story on...
China has NOT banned bitcoins at all. Quite the opposite actually. Its only setting itself up to protect itself, both legally and financially. It has actually given the green light for it to be used in the proper conditions, which every other country should be doing..
But you would have known that if you actually read about it first before posting garbage on the front page.
Don't believe me?
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/12/08/bitcoin-china-meaning/?angle=silicon
China has NOT banned bitcoins at all. Quite the opposite actually. Its only setting itself up to protect itself, both legally and financially. It has actually given the green light for it to be used in the proper conditions, which every other country should be doing..
But you would have known that if you actually read about it first before posting garbage on the front page.
Don't believe me?
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/12/08/bitcoin-china-meaning/?angle=silicon
You mean, as in "So what the **** do I care!"? How come this ignorant post gest upvoted so much? Why don't you educate yourself, e.g. by starting here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
Well the difference here is that in California, Bitcoin is not illegal.
In fact the only place where it's been "outlawed" AFAIK is Thailand.
Yes, I think it's like you say: the "cost" of mining a bitcoin is not necessarily related with the costs of your electricity bill (at least not directly). "By design" it should take the entire system (= all CPUs/GPUs/whatever involved in verifying transactions) 10 minutes average to verify a given number of transactions.
There follows that if more powerful computing units become available - such as the specially designed ASICs - the "harder the task becomes" to verify a "bitcoin block" (a number of transactions).
To verify a transaction is mathematically easy and cheap: you verify the input (e.g. 1 bitcoin) and make sure the sum of all outputs (there can be several outputs for any given transaction) is not larger than the input. Verifying the signatures of the sender and receiver is also cheap (basically calculating some hash value of the transaction with the given public keys of the participants and compare with the given hash values).
Now here comes the clever trick: in order to make it "hard" to verify a block of bitcoin transactions the verifier itself has to sign the transaction, together with a "grain" (a counter of some sort). Signing means "hashing" the transaction again with the verifier's private key (so it can be yet verified by others, given the public key of the original verifier). And "hashing" any given value basically results in some "random" number (at least the has value behaves like a random value - it is off course not random).
And the riddle to solve is now the following: in order to earn ("to mine") a bitcoin the hash value of the verifier needs to be below some "system-wide threshold value". If it is larger, the verifier increments its "grain" (counter) and repeats the hashing algorithm (note: changing just a single bit in the input dramatically changes the resulting hash value, given that a "good hash algorithm" has been chosen!). Until the final hash value of the verification is smaller than the given threshold.
And since the "first come, first served" rule applies (as always in life): the faster you can verify the transaction and get below that threshold, the better, because the first one succeeding in verifying that "block of transactions" earns a bitcoin!
So there follows: the faster your computing unit, the more likely are you going to earn bitcoins. And the faster your computing unit, the more power are you going to burn (so yes, there is probably a co-relation between the bitcoin value and your electricity bill).
If people start turning off their computers the average time it takes to verify a block of transactions increases again, and the threshold will be dynamically increased (making it "easier" again to verify a transaction).
Oh and by the way: that "threshold thing" is not just for fun: it is part of making the whole system work. It must be hard to verify a block of transaction, otherwise people could start cheating and verify false transactions (e.g. spend the money twice or several times!). As long as at least 51% of all bitcoin users (in terms of CPU power) are honest people (and don't fake transaction verifications), the system works, because it will always have more CPU power to "overrule" the wrong transaction verifications (roughly speaking).
At least that's what I understood so far... roughly
I have a degree in economics. The fact is that all forms of currencies and assets can and are being manipulated on a regular basis. There is also a lot of misinformation out there. The news media suggested that gold is a hedge against inflation. While this is technically true, there was never a serious concern that we'd see inflation. Now everyone is talking about a possible deflation, which is worse. Recently, several big banks were accused of manipulating the gold and silver prices. This whole thing is so complex and intertwined that there is no longer a safe bet. Yes, gold cannot loose all it's value, so in some sense it is safer than a stock. But the truth is no one really knows what will happen tomorrow. On a side note, there are also some really interesting statistics on hedge funds. Statistically, hedge funds provide customers with a roughly 0% gain on average, and if you add fees, you actually loose money in an average year. The media always shows the successful hedge funds and investors when in fact more than 50% make no money at all. At the end of the day: there is no longer a guaranteed risk free way to increase your wealth through investments. Real estate would probably be my bet in the long run, but you can't get rid of the risk. If you want more return than the 0.5% a CD can give you, you are going to face risk, no matter what others say. Higher returns compensate for the higher risk. Something to keep in mind, always!
I don't know how you spell it, but I imagine the whole reaction thing looks something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
It's really very simple. You buy a bit coin online for $400. The next day it's worth $800. The next day it's worth $200. It's a lot of fun. The trick is to try and buy something that is worth more than you paid for the bit coin. If you succeed and buy something worth more than your initial investment...You win the game.
Bitcoins are actually worth nothing, it's all based on the "greater fool" theory. You'd have to be a fool to buy one, but you hope there's a greater fool who will pay you more for it. As long as there is a greater fool, you are fine.
Unless you scrap your hard drive containing all your "bit coins" and they all disappear, or you store your bit coins with a company in China that promptly sells all the bit coins and then disappears.
But there is a limited number of bitcoins, what happens then? Bit like gold, since gold is a fairly finite unit of value. Similarly to gold, I don't see the fiat world allowing BC to replace anything soon, there would have to be a major world revolution before that happens....and then who knows what would happen? Probably we will be dealing in bottle tops.