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Comment by technotony | Hacker News Reader

Maybe we should gather together a group of hackers and fly to Cyprus to launch a Bitcoin currency to help people restart their livelihoods. Opportunities like this don't come around too often.

What do you think HN community?

Edit: By launch bitcoin currency I mean raise awareness and tailor existing bitcoin tools to local needs

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ROFL, seriously? Feel free to try to get the Cyprian government to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender but be aware that putting the national reserves into a commodity that can be "stolen" in its entirety in about 30 seconds of computer footwork and it doesn't pass the sniff test. The original gold standard, flawed as it was, depended in part on the fact that it was infeasible to actually steal all the gold out of the reserves. (Hence Goldfinger's devious plan of simply making it unusable)

As a research project though this idea is fantastic, go through and figure out all the things that would have to be true to base the Cyprian economy on Bitcoin. Start with a solid Micro and Macro economic model of the economy, factor in reserves and currency transfers. There is a lot of data you can gather by going over Argentina's economic policies and their actions with regard to currency. A great way to learn from that is to say "This is what Argentina did, this is how you would/wouldn't do that with Bitcoin."

Economics is challenging because it seems very very squishy as a "science" (the gears in the machine are people after all) but there is a lot of really solid stuff which can inform on the question of what role currency plays in an economy, politics, and global trade.

How can it be stolen in it's entirety within 30 seconds? I'm sure there are plenty of people who would genuinely love to know.

There have been a number of highly publicized Bitcoin thefts from various exchanges. Repudiation is something that is made harder by its design (not saying it isn't possible, just harder). So if you get inside access to the computers in that bank and you can effect legitimate transactions out, I've heard (but not witnessed) that it takes about 30 seconds to get enough confirmations back to make a transaction durable. (if this is not the case then I'd love to add that to my understanding of the protocol). A centrally managed currency like the dollar (as an example) doesn't have that issue because transferring assets from federal reserve might make you a trillionaire briefly but they would turn around and transfer them right back. Stealing gold (as a reference standard for currency) does have that issue, except that physics made such a theft much harder to pull off.

Offline storage of an encrypted wallet is fine, although in a functioning economy there will be pretty constant transactions flowing in and out of the depository bank but that is one of the cool things about doing the exercise, you can walk through the scenarios and say "Ok, if this were the case you would need maybe a 'fractional' offline wallet where you could bring a portion online and leave the bulk offline.

I'd love to read about a design for that. When you consider the steps that folks went to in order to penetrate Iran's nuclear facilities, there are similarly challenging places like banks, and depository banks are especially juicy targets.

A bitcoin wallet can be stored offline, so if you want long terms storage you stick the bits in your vault right next to your gold. With a card punch and some gold plate you could store the bitcoin wallet in gold and the protect the gold the usual way! If that was your main concern -- which I don't think it is.

EDIT: I don't think that parent^ post is suggesting trying to make it legal tender either.

I was just reading about etching a key into a real ring http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/03/bitcoin-ring/

> Feel free to try to get the Cyprian government to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender but be aware that putting the national reserves into a commodity that can be "stolen" in its entirety in about 30 seconds of computer footwork and it doesn't pass the sniff test.

I'm not a Bitcoin expert, but my understanding is that you can encrypt a wallet and store it offline somewhere protected, like a safe-deposit box at a bank. I'd expect any large scale and bureaucratic organization with Bitcoin reserves to have those kinds of safe guards.

But then you can't use it. And you forget the password.

The thing is that for a national currency, multiple sources have to agree that "yes, this money is not in this account anymore" for money to actually move from point A to point B. If I write a check, I can send it to person B. I can then go and put a stop payment on it, which prevents them from cashing it. Or, if they got my checkbook somehow and wrote themselves a check, I can go to my bank and say "This was a fraudulent check" and go down the legal road. These are things that happen many, many times on any given day, and the same goes for things like debit and credit cards.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, by it's own proselytes, is an "anonymous crypto-currency" with "no chargebacks" and "no way to recover a lost wallet", as if any of those things is a benefit to any nation, any consumer, or any person who's ever had to access a "recover password" form.

Bitcoin has it's uses, and is fantastic under certain circumstances. But this is not one of them.

You might want some redundancy in case the bank accidentally destroys your safety deposit box [1] or the bank is raided and valuables are confiscated from every single deposit box [2].

[1] http://www.dbs.com.hk/en/aboutus/newsroom/2004/041005/

[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362561/Bank-gangste...

Your response comes across as rude, and you're criticizing an idea that wasn't actually proposed.

I would be willing to tip 1 bitcoin for anyone who can write a bitcoin guide for the country of Cyprus.

Here are a few from around the world:

* USA: http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/in/united-states/

* Mexico: http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/in/mexico/

* Malaysia: http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/in/malaysia/

* Russia: http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/in/russia/

* Germany: http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/in/germany

* Germany (translated): http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/de-de/deutschland/

More on http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/ - all the guides are free and updated regularly.

FYI http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/in/germany leads to a 404

Why the downvote? If you think this is a bad idea please give feedback!

Edit: Moved the discussion to it's own thread if people don't think it's suitable here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5418404

"What do you think HN community?"

Terrible plan that serves mostly to enrich current bitcoin holders.

What does "launch a Bitcoin currency" mean? If they want to buy Bitcoins, all they need is an internet connection, a bank account and an account on Coinbase/MtGox/etc.

I guess you could start an exchange targeting those two countries, but that isn't a small undertaking.

What I meant was launch publicity and education about bitcoin infrastructure to make it easier for local people to use. Would also need to do things like translate into local language, and probably build specific tools to make the currency work locally. It would be a unique opportunity to really engage with people, and understand their currency needs as users. I think there would be quite a lot of infrastructure to build to get a working ecosystem going.

You can actually "launch a Bitcoin currency" too, if you're not convinced check out LiteCoin, PPcoin, SolidCoin, Bitcoin Testnet coins, Rucoin, or any of the clones that are based on original Bitcoin source.

http://github.com/yebyen/testnet-debian

At one point I was able to find a blog or github from GavinAndresen that detailed a few more ways to make your bitcoin blockchain incompatible with the standard chain, but I think this kind of activity is frowned upon due to the risk of 51% attacks. Unless your coin is approaching the popularity of Bitcoin (or somehow you got there much earlier... time machine?), it is vulnerable to being taken over by a small fraction of large Bitcoin miners' community coming over and playing with their clocks and hashing your chain into oblivion.

This is not necessarily all bad, or worse than creating Bitcoin in the first place. You can lose money in banks when your government fails, too.

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