dcc1

The problem is getting paid by Mt Gox in dollars, euro etc as many horror stories exist of people not being paid for months or ever

Other exchanges would also have similar issues, and would hit you with all sorts of antimoneylaundering questions if you try to withdraw too much

Great > more electrics > less demand for petrol > lower petrol prices for us non-hipsters

Erm all bitcoin transactions are public

ALL

If you know someones address then you can go back and check all the transactions.

As for refunds, merchants selling using bitcoin still have to follow law of the land, in most civilised countries there is a "Supply of Goods and Services Act" or equivalent legislation where a customer is entitled to a repair, replacement or refund if the good/service is bad. Buying with bitcoin is no different to buying in cash

You obviously do not understand bitcoin or are confused about some aspects of it.

I went university, learned and used C for years, then Java in final years, then .NET on first job

Over a decade later I almost exclusively use PHP, and it has put plenty of bread and wine on the table :) over the years.

It just gets the job done!

Who is to say NSA are not "Satoshi Nakamoto" after all the code is of very high quality that was likely done by a team not a single person.

I didnt say it be good, I say it probably be implemented since a state (or central bank) controlled crypto-currency could be used to obtain more power over citizenry.

Image the state knowing exactly where you get all your money from and where you spend it (since they would have the blockchain), likes of Revenue/IRS would love it!

It would make it easier to implement welfare and stop tax fraud, this alone could be the argument used to push it thru' (tho I am not sure how politicians would get brown envelopes then) and most people would support it. Just like most people supported current UK censorship creep.

Hell call it "dysto-coin"!

The confidence is not in the currency or the central bank.

The confidence (of the markets) is that the central bank (on behest of the government) will use currency as a tool in order to ensure that economies dont sink due due to negative outlook on the future.

There is nothing stopping central banks from creating their own cryptocurrency and controlling it by controlling all the mining (and hence being able to change the rules of deflation/inflation set into protocol). In fact a "bit-dolla" could probably be used much more effectively as such a tool since everyone would know what everyone else has as blockchain is public. Would these banks have gotten "too big too fail" if their "wallet addresses" were public?

I like how he ignores recent past of almost the whole global economy imploding due to debt based fiat system, and only being "resolved" by issuing even more debt and printing more dollars

Ah jebus another blogger who misunderstands bitcoin ecosystem, technology and its users. Who is looking for attention for his blog since its good linkbait. Well he/she got it.

Economists (including the armchair variety like this blogger) should be delighted bitcoin exists, it gives them something to compare and measure and write about for their dismal "science"

In meantime some of us continue to build for bitcoin and have profited nicely out of it (not the rise in price but saving on fees and no chargebacks)

If I hoarded all those coins over last few years instead of using bitcoin as a means of exchange, i be a bitcoin millionaire now (personally i am happy bitcoin is where it is now and where its headed), if everyone did that bitcoin be useless, the fact that its not useless now shows that whole "deflationary" argument is flawed here in the real world.

p.s: There is no lack of alternate cryptocurrencies, if you want inflation, go make your own "inflate-a-coin"TM

p.s #2: I bet in next decade we would have some central bank(s) creating their own cryptocurrencies, for example the Fed could create a "Bit-dolla" and set an inflation rate of 2% and they could control all the mining, if they get IRS to agree to accept it for taxation purpose we overnight have a state sanctioned crypt-ocurrency. Actually whats scary about this scenario is the state knowing everything you buy/sell (if your wallet is tied to SSN for example). I could definitely see governments embracing bitcoinlike techonlogies in order to get more power and control.

US only, ffs there are countries outside the US

This is bad news (despite being a BMW owner)

In future driving will no longer be fun, if you want to drive "non-automated" car or disable "auto-pilot" your insurance company will automatically jack up your premium, since they would consider self driving cars "safer"

Our whole economy relies on energy, which ultimately comes from the sun, theres a correlation, doesnt mean its important as you are trying to imply

UK has turned into an Orwellian surveillance state (I live in Ireland)

Hell I am watching news now and they are about to setup a centralised database of every woman who got breast implants, you couldn't make this shit up!

Newer mining equipment doesnt use as much electricity. Power is a variable but not an important one.

.... Then the federal government increases taxes on its subjects to spend on decryption of its subjects communications...

Or just download from pirates and get high quality drm free ebooks that dont fuck around.

Same experience (Stripe) also had an increase in orders the days after target thing came out.

All very obviously fraudulent for example user in indonesia but cards from us

Have you ever tried getting a VAT invoice (invoice with price and vat amount and rates and numbers written down on the invoice) from any eBay seller?

I doubt many of them are even VAT registered

Amazon on the other hand clearly state the Tax amounts and/or import duties on the invoices and receipts.

Anyways Ebay/Paypal are one scummy company who are being rightly out-competed by Amazon, they deserve it for their treatment of buyers and sellers and users of Paypal.

I hope Amazon crushes Ebay/Paypal

Ebay/Paypal has a long history of screwing sellers and buyers and users of Paypal, just search the internet for horror stories. Their support is staffed by drones (ha) unlike Amazon support who are swift and efficient and seem to go out of their way to make me feel good as a customer.

What is more surprising is that Ebay hasnt been brought to court here in Europe, its quite obvious majority of sellers are not charging or paying sales taxes (VAT) which are as high as 20 to 30% here depending on state.

It rebounded back to almost same level

http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD

% change 24hrs, -10% at time of this post

There is a lot of pumping by those who want "bitcoin to go to the moon" for their own financial gain.

That still does not make bitcoin technology inherently evil.

The distributed ledger and proof of work pioneered by Bitcoin does have incredible potential to change the way people transfer "value" between themselves.

The problem is a subset of bitcoin users who want to get rich quick, that does not make this technology evil or worthy of death. Cash can also be used by all sorts of criminals for all sorts of shit, if anything its much easier to use for nefarious purposes than bitcoin. It was anonymity provided by TOR that gave rise to silk road, pseudo-anonymity provided by bitcoin was just a bonus.

I don't remember Bitcoin nearly collapsing the world economy and leading to misery for millions worldwide as the Banking sector has done in the past few years.

His main point is along the lines of "OMG <insert_bad_actors> can/may use <technologyXYZ>"

Bitcooin like any tool from the invention of fire to tools like a hammer to "the web" can be used for good or bad, you think someone who writes sci-fi and programs would understand this.

Urm Charlie could always issue "Charlie Dollars" backed by bitcoin, nothing stopping him creating his own inflationary currency.

Just like nothing stopped governments issuing currencies backed by gold (and later removing the link moving to complete fiat)

All in all the author exhibits all the signs of someone who doesn't understand bitcoin in his troll attention seeking article.

Bitcoin is not perfect but its a damn interesting new technology/platform that the world has not seen before.

He was probably busy in the 90s slamming this new emerging technology/platform called the web

Pretty much most of elsevier works are available on pirate sites, all they are doing is harassing their customers by this stage and further alienating them.

share what? do i need to signup to find out??

Uhm f&k paypal, they regularly screw over sellers and businesses no matter how long you sell with them using paypal (or on ebay) or how low your chargeback rate is or how high your rating is.

f*k em, paypal are driving themselves to irrelevancy

On bright side 2 years ago when paypal screwed me and my company it pushed me to look at alternatives and i bought a pile of bitcoins when testing how it works, this turned out to be the best decision ever, thanks paypal for making me $$$

Er you are pulling words our of some hole and putting them in my mouth...

You missed my point,

"Because, Colonization"

argument is silly, both Ireland and India were colonized for prolonged periods, both experienced extreme hardships in that time (and some benefits too of British rule)

both became independent roughly around same time, yet now both have very different standard of living for average person

blaming colonization is stupid when there are multiple other variables present

Bitcoin has an intrinsic value

A distributed ledger with proof of ownership that makes it impossible to forge transactions

That my friends is a first in history, Greenspan and others have not realised yet the implications of this.