Bitcoin....who's gotten into it?

[JimmyCarter]

Your naked emperor analogy is honestly about as bad as you could pick considering anyone can literally search every single transaction on the blockchain. It's much more appropriate for the "infinite" dollars the federal reserve prints so a bunch of rich people can keep inflating their own assets.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

CBDC: it’s a bad idea, because they shouldn’t know what you’re doing!
BTC: it’s great because it’s transparent and everyone can see what you’re doing!

And mocking money printing and asset inflation while hyping the gains from your crypto and video game NFTs is pretty hysterical.

[MultiVerse]

LOL. What? While stablecoins have their merits, CBDCs especially have some major flaws. Firstly, they don't do anything to mitigate the disaster of currency debasement and enrichment of the Cantillionaires via endless BRRRRR, even though JPOW is just starting to threaten tapering. We'll see what happens though when the taper-tantrum starts and the market dips. Secondly, CBDCs are a potential privacy and freedom nightmare. The government should not have that kind of insight into everyone's spending, nor should they be able to seize assets at will. Do any of you even remember why American's battled the Red Coats? Now you're all acting like a bunch of corporate statist cucks. SMH.

Who said anything about CBDCs? The post you responded to is about disruption and electronic cash, the original cypherpunk ideas surrounding decentralized money. Bitcoin lost the original plotline and is now popular in some circles, the Prince Harry and Meghan Markle of crypto, but has little do with what really matters, what's really happening in the space.

[TNKen]

Bitcoin farm causing problems in our area. They are after cheap TVA power. This farm eats enough electricity to power 10,000 homes.

https://www.wjhl.com/news/local/nois...ower-provider/

[Dexter Rutecki]

Your naked emperor analogy is honestly about as bad as you could pick considering anyone can literally search every single transaction on the blockchain. It's much more appropriate for the "infinite" dollars the federal reserve prints so a bunch of rich people can keep inflating their own assets.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Yeah, yeah, have heard that line about 'searching on blockchain' so many times before, but it's still meaningless. Who gives a fuck? What does that actually accomplish? That has nothing to do with the essential lack of utility of BTC. Nothing to do with why the BTC emperor is naked. And it's borderline hilarious that a BTC proponent would talk about the wealthy doing things to inflate their own assets--that's basically the defining characteristic of the BTC bubble.

[stalefish3169]

CBDC: it’s a bad idea, because they shouldn’t know what you’re doing!
BTC: it’s great because it’s transparent and everyone can see what you’re doing!

And mocking money printing and asset inflation while hyping the gains from your crypto and video game NFTs is pretty hysterical.

You should take Dylan's advice and don't criticize what you can't understand. Bitcoin has great privacy features for those who choose to use them. Secondly a huge part of BTC's value proposition is that it is unseizable by the government, which is not the case with a CBDC.

Additionally, I am not oblivious to the fact that I am a benefactor of asset inflation. I am lucky in that I was raised upper middle class in the USA, and now have a good paying job that has allowed me an advantage. However, that does not exclude the fact that things can go up in value due to other factors beyond the BRRRRRRR.

[Dexter Rutecki]

You should take Dylan's advice and don't criticize what you can't understand.

Haha, yes, the infinite mysteries of BTC that are so far beyond the understanding of mere financial mortals. Funny shit.

You guys really need to take a deep breath, stop talking your own books for a minute, and consider reality. But as I said earlier, I know such a thing is a fool's errand when it comes to the true believers. (Not to even mention the obvious irony of criticizing what you don't/won't understand.)

[stalefish3169]

Are Afghan refugees paying in BTC to GTFO?

I don't know. But they could store their life savings in their heads by memorizing 12 words while fleeing, so their money doesn't end up in the hands of the Taliban, Isis, or corrupt motherfuckers like this:

https://thehill.com/policy/internati...lls-for-arrest

'Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan has accused Afghan President Ashraf Ghani of stealing nearly $170 million from the country, and is now calling for international authorities to arrest him."

[Dexter Rutecki]

If only he'd used BTC no one would have had any idea how much money he'd stolen!

[stalefish3169]

Man, y'all are salty af today. Just admit it. You're sad that BTC didn't crash to zero yet, and failed to give you the opportunity to feel superior while gloating around on your high horses.

[stalefish3169]

If only he'd used BTC no one would have had any idea how much money he'd stolen!

Nice self-own, Dex.

[dunfree]

I don't know. But they could store their life savings in their heads by memorizing 12 words while fleeing, so their money doesn't end up in the hands of the Taliban, Isis, or corrupt motherfuckers like this:

https://thehill.com/policy/internati...lls-for-arrest

'Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan has accused Afghan President Ashraf Ghani of stealing nearly $170 million from the country, and is now calling for international authorities to arrest him."

Bitcoin prevents theft and corruption?

[Timberridge]

What happens when the bitcoin holder gets dementia and can't recall the 12 words or where they put the list of words?

[Dexter Rutecki]

What happens when the bitcoin holder gets dementia and can't recall the 12 words or where they put the list of words?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/t...-fortunes.html

[stalefish3169]

Bitcoin prevents theft and corruption?

Yes. It absolutely does in some ways. Every time JPOW or any other central bank hits CTRL +P they are stealing time from their citizens. When they add money to the denominator with respect to how many dollars you have versus how many dollars there are, your portion of the pie gets smaller. That is absolutely theft...and legalized corruption.

[Timberridge]

I can't read that story b/c I'm not a NYT subscriber, so where does the lost BTC go if nobody claims it?
If you buy an Apple gift card and you lose it, APPL gets the $ technically. Who gets the lost BTC?

[stalefish3169]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/t...-fortunes.html

They should have backups. That's private key management 101. However, obviously fleeing for your life is an extreme situation. However I'd rather try to remember 12 words over sticking gold bars up my ass. https://www.timesnownews.com/mirror-...airport/284018

Do you want to live in a nanny state?

[stalefish3169]

I can't read that story b/c I'm not a NYT subscriber, so where does the lost BTC go if nobody claims it?
If you buy an Apple gift card and you lose it, APPL gets the $ technically. Who gets the lost BTC?

Nobody gets it. They're gone.

“Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.” - Satoshi

[Dexter Rutecki]

I can't read that story b/c I'm not a NYT subscriber, so where does the lost BTC go if nobody claims it?
If you buy an Apple gift card and you lose it, APPL gets the $ technically. Who gets the lost BTC?

Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes

Bitcoin owners are getting rich because the cryptocurrency has soared. But what happens when you can’t tap that wealth because you forgot the password to your digital wallet?

Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.

The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago, when it passed its previous all-time high of around $20,000.

The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.

“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”

Bitcoin, which has been on an extraordinary and volatile eight-month run, has made a lot of its holders very rich in a short time, even as the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the world economy.

But the cryptocurrency’s unusual nature has also meant that many people are locked out of their Bitcoin fortunes as a result of lost or forgotten keys. They have been forced to watch, helpless, as the price has risen and fallen sharply, unable to cash in on their digital wealth.

Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis. Wallet Recovery Services, a business that helps find lost digital keys, said it had gotten 70 requests a day from people who wanted help recovering their riches, three times the number of a month ago.

Bitcoin owners who are locked out of their wallets speak of endless days and nights of frustration as they have tried to get access to their fortunes. Many have owned the coins since Bitcoin’s early days a decade ago, when no one had confidence that the tokens would be worth anything.
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“Through the years I would say I have spent hundreds of hours trying to get back into these wallets,” said Brad Yasar, an entrepreneur in Los Angeles who has a few desktop computers that contain thousands of Bitcoin he created, or mined, during the early days of the technology. While those Bitcoin are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he lost his passwords many years ago and has put the hard drives containing them in vacuum-sealed bags, out of sight.

“I don’t want to be reminded every day that what I have now is a fraction of what I could have that I lost,” he said.

The dilemma is a stark reminder of Bitcoin’s unusual technological underpinnings, which set it apart from normal money and give it some of its most vaunted — and riskiest — qualities. With traditional bank accounts and online wallets, banks like Wells Fargo and other financial companies like PayPal can provide people the passwords to their accounts or reset lost passwords.
Image“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said.Credit...Nicholas Albrecht for The New York Times

But Bitcoin has no company to provide or store passwords. The virtual currency’s creator, a shadowy figure known as Satoshi Nakamoto, has said Bitcoin’s central idea was to allow anyone in the world to open a digital bank account and hold the money in a way that no government could prevent or regulate.
READ MORE ON HOW BITCOIN WORKS
What Is Bitcoin, and How Does It Work?

This is made possible by the structure of Bitcoin, which is governed by a network of computers that agreed to follow software containing all the rules for the cryptocurrency. The software includes a complex algorithm that makes it possible to create an address, and associated private key, which is known only by the person who created the wallet.

The software also allows the Bitcoin network to confirm the accuracy of the password to allow transactions, without seeing or knowing the password itself. In short, the system makes it possible for anyone to create a Bitcoin wallet without having to register with a financial institution or go through any sort of identity check.
Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life

With Apple’s latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here’s what to know.
A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties’ unwanted attempts to access your data. Here’s a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online.
Ever considered a password manager? You should.
There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet.

That has made Bitcoin popular with criminals, who can use the money without revealing their identity. It has also attracted people in countries like China and Venezuela, where authoritarian governments are known for raiding or shutting down traditional bank accounts.

But the structure of this system did not account for just how bad people can be at remembering and securing their passwords.

“Even sophisticated investors have been completely incapable of doing any kind of management of private keys,” said Diogo Monica, a co-founder of a start-up called Anchorage, which helps companies handle cryptocurrency security. Mr. Monica started the company in 2017 after helping a hedge fund regain access to one of its Bitcoin wallets.

Mr. Thomas, the programmer, said he was drawn to Bitcoin partly because it was outside the control of a country or company. In 2011, when he was living in Switzerland, he was given the 7,002 Bitcoin by an early Bitcoin fanatic as a reward for making an animated video, “What is Bitcoin?,” which introduced many people to the technology.

That year, he lost the digital keys to the wallet holding the Bitcoin. Since then, as Bitcoin’s value has soared and fallen and he could not get his hands on the money, Mr. Thomas has soured on the idea that people should be their own bank and hold their own money.

“This whole idea of being your own bank — let me put it this way: Do you make your own shoes?” he said. “The reason we have banks is that we don’t want to deal with all those things that banks do.”

Other Bitcoin believers have also realized the difficulties of being their own bank. Some have outsourced the work of holding Bitcoin to start-ups and exchanges that secure the private keys to people’s stashes of the virtual currency.

Yet some of these services have had just as much trouble securing their keys. Many of the largest Bitcoin exchanges over the years — including the onetime well-known exchange Mt. Gox — have lost private keys or had them stolen.

Gabriel Abed, 34, an entrepreneur from Barbados, lost around 800 Bitcoin — now worth around $25 million — when a colleague reformatted a laptop that contained the private keys to a Bitcoin wallet in 2011.

Mr. Abed said this did not dim his enthusiasm. Before Bitcoin, he said, he and his fellow islanders had not had access to affordable digital financial products like the credit cards and bank accounts that are easily available to Americans. In Barbados, even getting a PayPal account was almost impossible, he said. The open nature of Bitcoin, he said, gave him full access to the digital financial world for the first time.

“The risk of being my own bank comes with the reward of being able to freely access my money and be a citizen of the world — that is worth it,” Mr. Abed said.

For Mr. Abed and Mr. Thomas, any losses from mishandling the private keys have partly been assuaged by the enormous gains they have made on the Bitcoin they managed to hold on to. The 800 Bitcoin Mr. Abed lost in 2011 were a small fraction of the tokens he has since bought and sold, allowing him to recently buy a 100-acre plot of oceanfront land in Barbados for over $25 million.

Mr. Thomas said he also managed to hold on to enough Bitcoin — and remember the passwords — to give him more riches than he knows what to do with. In 2012, he joined a cryptocurrency start-up, Ripple, that aimed to improve on Bitcoin. He was rewarded with Ripple’s own native currency, known as XRP, which rose in value.

(Ripple has recently run into legal troubles, in part because the founders had too much control over the creation and distribution of the XRP coins.)

As for his lost password and inaccessible Bitcoin, Mr. Thomas has put the IronKey in a secure facility — he won’t say where — in case cryptographers come up with new ways of cracking complex passwords. Keeping it far away helps him try not to think about it, he said.

“I got to a point where I said to myself, ‘Let it be in the past, just for your own mental health,’” he said.
A Bitcoin High

[stalefish3169]

Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes

Bitcoin owners are getting rich because the cryptocurrency has soared. But what happens when you can’t tap that wealth because you forgot the password to your digital wallet?

Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.

The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago, when it passed its previous all-time high of around $20,000.

The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.

“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”

Bitcoin, which has been on an extraordinary and volatile eight-month run, has made a lot of its holders very rich in a short time, even as the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the world economy.

But the cryptocurrency’s unusual nature has also meant that many people are locked out of their Bitcoin fortunes as a result of lost or forgotten keys. They have been forced to watch, helpless, as the price has risen and fallen sharply, unable to cash in on their digital wealth.

Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis. Wallet Recovery Services, a business that helps find lost digital keys, said it had gotten 70 requests a day from people who wanted help recovering their riches, three times the number of a month ago.

Bitcoin owners who are locked out of their wallets speak of endless days and nights of frustration as they have tried to get access to their fortunes. Many have owned the coins since Bitcoin’s early days a decade ago, when no one had confidence that the tokens would be worth anything.
Editors’ Picks
How to Survive a Bear Attack
Why Are Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short Working Together? It’s a Mystery.
Fossils Seized in Police Raid Demystify a Prehistoric Flying Reptile
Continue reading the main story

“Through the years I would say I have spent hundreds of hours trying to get back into these wallets,” said Brad Yasar, an entrepreneur in Los Angeles who has a few desktop computers that contain thousands of Bitcoin he created, or mined, during the early days of the technology. While those Bitcoin are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he lost his passwords many years ago and has put the hard drives containing them in vacuum-sealed bags, out of sight.

“I don’t want to be reminded every day that what I have now is a fraction of what I could have that I lost,” he said.

The dilemma is a stark reminder of Bitcoin’s unusual technological underpinnings, which set it apart from normal money and give it some of its most vaunted — and riskiest — qualities. With traditional bank accounts and online wallets, banks like Wells Fargo and other financial companies like PayPal can provide people the passwords to their accounts or reset lost passwords.
Image“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said.Credit...Nicholas Albrecht for The New York Times

But Bitcoin has no company to provide or store passwords. The virtual currency’s creator, a shadowy figure known as Satoshi Nakamoto, has said Bitcoin’s central idea was to allow anyone in the world to open a digital bank account and hold the money in a way that no government could prevent or regulate.
READ MORE ON HOW BITCOIN WORKS
What Is Bitcoin, and How Does It Work?

This is made possible by the structure of Bitcoin, which is governed by a network of computers that agreed to follow software containing all the rules for the cryptocurrency. The software includes a complex algorithm that makes it possible to create an address, and associated private key, which is known only by the person who created the wallet.

The software also allows the Bitcoin network to confirm the accuracy of the password to allow transactions, without seeing or knowing the password itself. In short, the system makes it possible for anyone to create a Bitcoin wallet without having to register with a financial institution or go through any sort of identity check.
Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life

With Apple’s latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here’s what to know.
A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties’ unwanted attempts to access your data. Here’s a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online.
Ever considered a password manager? You should.
There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet.

That has made Bitcoin popular with criminals, who can use the money without revealing their identity. It has also attracted people in countries like China and Venezuela, where authoritarian governments are known for raiding or shutting down traditional bank accounts.

But the structure of this system did not account for just how bad people can be at remembering and securing their passwords.

“Even sophisticated investors have been completely incapable of doing any kind of management of private keys,” said Diogo Monica, a co-founder of a start-up called Anchorage, which helps companies handle cryptocurrency security. Mr. Monica started the company in 2017 after helping a hedge fund regain access to one of its Bitcoin wallets.

Mr. Thomas, the programmer, said he was drawn to Bitcoin partly because it was outside the control of a country or company. In 2011, when he was living in Switzerland, he was given the 7,002 Bitcoin by an early Bitcoin fanatic as a reward for making an animated video, “What is Bitcoin?,” which introduced many people to the technology.

That year, he lost the digital keys to the wallet holding the Bitcoin. Since then, as Bitcoin’s value has soared and fallen and he could not get his hands on the money, Mr. Thomas has soured on the idea that people should be their own bank and hold their own money.

“This whole idea of being your own bank — let me put it this way: Do you make your own shoes?” he said. “The reason we have banks is that we don’t want to deal with all those things that banks do.”

Other Bitcoin believers have also realized the difficulties of being their own bank. Some have outsourced the work of holding Bitcoin to start-ups and exchanges that secure the private keys to people’s stashes of the virtual currency.

Yet some of these services have had just as much trouble securing their keys. Many of the largest Bitcoin exchanges over the years — including the onetime well-known exchange Mt. Gox — have lost private keys or had them stolen.

Gabriel Abed, 34, an entrepreneur from Barbados, lost around 800 Bitcoin — now worth around $25 million — when a colleague reformatted a laptop that contained the private keys to a Bitcoin wallet in 2011.

Mr. Abed said this did not dim his enthusiasm. Before Bitcoin, he said, he and his fellow islanders had not had access to affordable digital financial products like the credit cards and bank accounts that are easily available to Americans. In Barbados, even getting a PayPal account was almost impossible, he said. The open nature of Bitcoin, he said, gave him full access to the digital financial world for the first time.

“The risk of being my own bank comes with the reward of being able to freely access my money and be a citizen of the world — that is worth it,” Mr. Abed said.

For Mr. Abed and Mr. Thomas, any losses from mishandling the private keys have partly been assuaged by the enormous gains they have made on the Bitcoin they managed to hold on to. The 800 Bitcoin Mr. Abed lost in 2011 were a small fraction of the tokens he has since bought and sold, allowing him to recently buy a 100-acre plot of oceanfront land in Barbados for over $25 million.

Mr. Thomas said he also managed to hold on to enough Bitcoin — and remember the passwords — to give him more riches than he knows what to do with. In 2012, he joined a cryptocurrency start-up, Ripple, that aimed to improve on Bitcoin. He was rewarded with Ripple’s own native currency, known as XRP, which rose in value.

(Ripple has recently run into legal troubles, in part because the founders had too much control over the creation and distribution of the XRP coins.)

As for his lost password and inaccessible Bitcoin, Mr. Thomas has put the IronKey in a secure facility — he won’t say where — in case cryptographers come up with new ways of cracking complex passwords. Keeping it far away helps him try not to think about it, he said.

“I got to a point where I said to myself, ‘Let it be in the past, just for your own mental health,’” he said.
A Bitcoin High

If you want to talk about real scams, Ripple is one. They are largely responsible for pushing the BTC is boiling the oceans narrative that you all fell for, so they could pump their own pre-mined shit coin.

[Dexter Rutecki]

They should have backups. That's private key management 101. However, obviously fleeing for your life is an extreme situation. However I'd rather try to remember 12 words over sticking gold bars up my ass. https://www.timesnownews.com/mirror-...airport/284018

Do you want to live in a nanny state?

No idea wtf this has to do with a nanny state, but I'm never concerned about losing a crypto wallet or password, or having a hard drive fail, and forfeiting all my assets. (But it would be a donation to everyone! So all good, amirite??)

[MultiVerse]

I can't read that story b/c I'm not a NYT subscriber, so where does the lost BTC go if nobody claims it?
If you buy an Apple gift card and you lose it, APPL gets the $ technically. Who gets the lost BTC?

When a bitcoin whale dies and their keys are lost it becomes a celebration among bitcoiners because their own coins are now worth more. It's a bit like Highlander, the movie not the SUV.

[bennymac]

If you want to talk about real scams, Ripple is one. They are largely responsible for pushing the BTC is boiling the oceans narrative that you all fell for, so they could pump their own pre-mined shit coin.

You do understand that Ripple could be a scam - AND bitcoin could be bad for the environment.....at the same time!

Do you ever notice that other BTC holders don't follow the cult as devoutly as you do?

[Dexter Rutecki]

But then they can afford the SUV.

[stalefish3169]

No idea wtf this has to do with a nanny state, but I'm never concerned about losing a crypto wallet or password, or having a hard drive fail, and forfeiting all my assets. (But it would be a donation to everyone! So all good, amirite??)

It's called personal having some personal responsibility, genius. We're lucky in that we live in the USA and have never had to deal with things like this in our lifetimes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business...saster/274096/

"Imagine you woke up one day to discover your bank account has been raided by another country's government. Just like that, $1 in every $16 of your supposedly safe money is gone. If you're wealthy enough to have more savings, it could be $1 in $10. Is it a nightmare? The opening chapter of a Kafka story? A Bond villain plot to start a bank run and bring down the government?

Nah, it's just the new reality facing bank depositors in Cyprus. And it might just set off a fresh wave of financial panic in the euro zone. Because we haven't had enough of that lately."

or this

https://www.thenation.com/article/wo...cial-collapse/

"But their dollars were gone: The now-barricaded banks had lent them to the central bank, and the central bank had spent them over the years, buying liras to prop up an artificially inflated exchange rate. The institution that was supposed to have been the nation’s lender of last resort had turned into something more akin to a shell company running a collapsing Ponzi scheme out of an abandoned warehouse in an insalubrious part of town. A hundred and 30 billion dollars’ worth of deposits had vanished into thin air."

But hey, things are going great here. It's not like we had an attempted coup only a few months ago. Very stable society we have here.

[Timberridge]

So this Satoshi guy could be the ultimate perverse genius having invented a game whereby bitcoiners exterminate other bitcoiners for financial gain?

I'm on neither side of this right now, but I admit it's fascinating.