Still can't wrap my head around bitcoin, but what a nice surprise for this guy:

[scottie]

His $27 chance turned into $886K in 4 years:

http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...rway-oslo-home

The meteoric rise in bitcoin has meant that within the space of four years, one Norwegian man’s $27 investment turned into a forgotten $886,000 windfall.

Kristoffer Koch invested 150 kroner ($26.60) in 5,000 bitcoins in 2009, after discovering them during the course of writing a thesis on encryption. He promptly forgot about them until widespread media coverage of the anonymous, decentralised, peer-to-peer digital currency in April 2013 jogged his memory.

Bitcoins are stored in encrypted wallets secured with a private key, something Koch had forgotten. After eventually working out what the password could be, Koch got a pleasant surprise...

[Uncle Ted]

The (alleged) owner of Silk Road (mentioned in the above video) was just busted recently...

U.S. Seizes $28 Million In Bitcoins From Alleged Silk Road Owner

U.S. authorities have seized an estimated $28 million in the digital currency bitcoins from the alleged owner of "Silk Road," the online marketplace for drugs and criminal activity that law enforcement shut down three weeks ago.


Federal prosecutors in New York said Friday that the 144,336 bitcoins, a digital currency widely used on the defunct site, were discovered on computer hardware belonging to Ross William Ulbricht, known online as "Dread Pirate Roberts," who was arrested October 1 in San Francisco and charged with various conspiracy counts. They said it represented the largest ever bitcoin seizure.


Ulbricht's lawyer could not immediately be reached on Friday evening, though he previously told reporters that Ulbricht denied the charges.


Since it began operations in 2011, Silk Road provided an anonymous site where drug dealers, counterfeiters and other criminals could shop for everything from heroin to hit men, according to the Justice Department.

More than 900,000 registered users of the site bought and sold drugs using bitcoins, according to authorities. The currency, which has been around since 2008, first came under scrutiny by law enforcement officials in mid-2011 after media reports surfaced linking bitcoins to Silk Road.


With nearly 30,000 bitcoins previously seized, federal agents have now collected more than $33 million in bitcoins, based on current value, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan said.

The seizures were carried out as part of a corresponding civil action against Silk Road and Ulbricht. Ulbricht, who is detained in California, is expected to appear within weeks in Manhattan federal court to face criminal charges of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.


Court documents allege that Silk Road saw some $1.2 billion in bitcoins change hands during more than two years of operation and charged between 8 and 15 percent in commissions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4165439.html

One has to assume that Ulbricht's bitcoins are safely locked in a wallet with a password so the most the FBI could do is destroy the currency by erasing it, unless the beat the password out of Ulbricht with a rubber hose or crack the password they can't use it.

[Indy Coug]

[Uncle Ted]

On the regulation of Bitcoin...

[...]
Jerry Britto, a senior research fellow at George Mason University, spelled out how the Bitcoin is gaining legitimacy while leaving regulators increasingly behind the curve and trying to play catch-up:

At its core, Bitcoin is a completely decentralized ledger system. It can be thought of as a massive online version of an accountant’s book….


Because Bitcoin is decentralized, these applications … exist largely outside regulators’ reach.

While the development of the Bitcoin through computer algorithms that limit the number of Bitcoins ultimately in circulation makes it an attractive alternative to manipulated currencies constantly being inflated by central banks, the real revolution is its decentralized design. As Britto noted:

This design has two important ramifications: First, because the ledger is decentralized, the Bitcoin protocol leaves governments with no intermediary to shut down. Second, the technology is potentially useful for many other types of transactions….


There is no Bitcoin company to subpoena, no headquarters to raid, not even a server to shut down. Add to that its pseudonymous nature and Bitcoin becomes a real challenge to the state’s ability to restrain or keep track of financial transactions….


While the state may be able to uncover the identity and punish the parties to a Bitcoin transaction … it will no longer be able to prevent those transactions from happening in the first place…


Regulators and law enforcement will have to come to terms with the fact that the Bitcoin protocol is beyond their reach, and while they may be able to spy on the vast majority of consumer transactions by regulating third-party Bitcoin businesses, they will not be able to stop individuals from transacting [business] with each other directly on the network…

That genie is out of the bottle.

http://conservativemilitant.com/fede...ulate-bitcoin/

Our government will figure how to regulate this bitcoin stuff. The IRS and CFTC are all over it:

[...]
Two government agencies missing at the hearing were the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The IRS apparently can’t figure out how to tax private transactions between people who may reside in different countries doing business in the ether, while the CFTC is still trying to determine if the Bitcoin is a commodity to regulate.
[...]

[TripletDaddy]

I think I want to buy one bitcoin. Even if it crashes completely, it is an interesting piece of pop culture arcana that most folks don't seem to fully comprehend. Actually, what i want more is the physical bitcoin to keep on my desk. Would be a cool conversation piece.

[thesaint258]

I think I want to buy one bitcoin. Even if it crashes completely, it is an interesting piece of pop culture arcana that most folks don't seem to fully comprehend. Actually, what i want more is the physical bitcoin to keep on my desk. Would be a cool conversation piece.

The only conversation that really happens is, "Man, you should have sold that a couple of days ago."

[Uncle Ted]

I think I want to buy one bitcoin. Even if it crashes completely, it is an interesting piece of pop culture arcana that most folks don't seem to fully comprehend. Actually, what i want more is the physical bitcoin to keep on my desk. Would be a cool conversation piece.

What you need is a bitcoin miner ASIC... to generate your own bitcoin:


5426.jpg


http://www.ebay.com/itm/KNCMiner-Mer...item4d1626f76c

Now that would be a cool conversation piece.

[Moliere]

I think I want to buy one bitcoin. Even if it crashes completely, it is an interesting piece of pop culture arcana that most folks don't seem to fully comprehend. Actually, what i want more is the physical bitcoin to keep on my desk. Would be a cool conversation piece.

I bought FB stock the day it started to trade. I paid around $42 for each share. It subsequently tanked and then rebounded. I think I'm even in the black on those shares as of today only thanks to the annoying ads they now have on the mobile FB app. In any case, I figured if the stock ever actually does something I'll at least have some minor winnings but either way I can still tell the kids at church that I own part of FB.

[TripletDaddy]

What you need is a bitcoin miner ASIC... to generate your own bitcoin:


[ATTACH=CONFIG]3528[/ATTACH]


http://www.ebay.com/itm/KNCMiner-Mer...item4d1626f76c

Now that would be a cool conversation piece.

Dont want that on my desk, sorry.

[Omaha 680]

I bought FB stock the day it started to trade. I paid around $42 for each share. It subsequently tanked and then rebounded. I think I'm even in the black on those shares as of today only thanks to the annoying ads they now have on the mobile FB app. In any case, I figured if the stock ever actually does something I'll at least have some minor winnings but either way I can still tell the kids at church that I own part of FB.

I have a similar story...only when I reveal to anyone I own part of Facebook I hang my head in shame. I dislike Facebook.

[Uncle Ted]

Ron Paul on Bitcoin... He is not buying any but it could be the destroyer of the dollar:

Paul Krugman on Bitcoin... "in principle, you can have assets, which are considered valuable, even though there is nothing backing them":

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-...#ixzz2n2cPSV9t


Paul Krugman on Enron...

In 1999 Paul Krugman was paid $50,000 by Enron as a consultant on its “advisory board,” and that same year he wrote a glowing article about Enron for Fortune magazine. But he would change his tune. After Enron collapsed in 2001, Krugman wrote several columns excoriating the company. (One featured what may be the most absurd howler in the history of op-ed journalism: “I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.”) In most of these columns Krugman worked hard to link Enron to the Bush administration, and in one he actually blamed Enron’s consultants for the company’s collapse — while neglecting to mention that he, too, had been an Enron consultant.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...-donald-luskin

[Uncle Ted]

Big US online retailer to accept Bitcoin

Overstock plans to become the first big U.S. online retailer to accept Bitcoin, as Patrick Byrne, the company's libertarian chief executive, warms to the virtual currency as a refuge from government control.

Mr Byrne told the Financial Times that Overstock planned to start accepting Bitcoin next year – possibly by the end of the second quarter – a decision that he said was driven mainly by his own political philosophy.

"I think a healthy monetary system at the end of the day isn't an upside down pyramid based on the whim of a government official, but is based on something that they can't control," Mr Byrne said.
[...]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101287918

Given the volatility of bitcoin this should be interesting. Bitcoin has been known to change 10% in value in minutes.

[clackamascoug]

I've been reading up on bitcoin, and I could see where it could really gain some traction as it emerges from a curiosity to the currency of the internet. I'm predicting here in Jan of 2014 that in 5 years we'll be looking at the explosion of bitcoin as one of the bigger paradigm shifts brought upon by the internet.

No house of cards vote for me Indy.

Edit: Thanks to BFM below I'm back in the right year!

[BigFatMeanie]

I've been reading up on bitcoin, and I could see where it could really gain some traction as it emerges from a curiosity to the currency of the internet. I'm predicting here in Jan of 2016 that in 5 years we'll be looking at the explosion of bitcoin as one of the bigger paradigm shifts brought upon by the internet.

No house of cards vote for me Indy.

Did you get in Dr. Brown's time machine?

[SCcoug]

Seems like the hype of bitcoin mining has shifted to litecoin mining in the last year.