Bitcoin, crypto currency and block chain...

[iomegaman]

What are your thoughts?

$100 of bitcoin purchased in 2011 would be worth about $455,000.00 now...and it keeps climbing although apparently it is set to split in August...

Only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist so it has a built in "non-inflation of currency" mechanism...but the thing I feel s probably MORE important is the underlying technology of blockchain, the idea of a decentralized "ledger" has huge ramifications for security as we move forward into the Internet of Things...

Currently there are about 100 crypto currencies out there, some are scams some like Dash hope to compete as viable solutions to bitcoin and cash...

Most people I ask about this immediately say "Oh the banking cartel will never let this happen", but it is going to happen on some level and already is...

Or they say "Its the currency of criminals since it's anonymous"...as if other currencies are not used by criminals...

20 years ago if I told you you could walk into Starbucks with only your phone and pay for it from your bank you'd probably have scoffed and said "Banks will never let you keep your information on your phone" yet here we are...

The idea of a distributed ledger though has huge implications for software/security etc. especially in the IoT because for instance if the airplane you are riding in needs a software update before it takes off how can it be sure if the software is safe and virus free, a distributed ledger that is "unhackable" across the connected industry would insure that the software you got matched the software on the other 1000 planes out there and it would reject any software that did not match all the others "ledger" version...decentralized security is the next thing for sure...and that is also the issue people bark about in banking, currently your bank keeps one ledger, in crypto-currency EVERYONE has a ledger and every ledger has a copy of every transaction since the onset its not like someone can hack it historically and hack it in real time as it updates its a continual moving target and the resources alone to do so are so cost prohibitive as to make it virtually impossible...

What are your thoughts?

I think implementation is the current bottleneck...its kludgy, non-user friendly and not as immediate as we impatient humans like...currently because of the size of the ledger and the amount of bitcoins out there bitcoin itself can take up to several hours for a transaction to process and be registered in the ledger and there are also issues with other crytpo-cuurency "wallets" because that seems to be the wink link (again this is the human element here, not taking your wallet offline after a transaction or not making sure your wallet is going to the proper web address is human error)...

Just asking for a friend 8)

 

[cyrano]

Crypro money isn't anonymous...

I had 2.something bitcoin when this was new. Like 20 years ago. Got lost in a disk crash. No backup. And that is the main problem with crypto currencies.

The banks are already in on it. Several big banks have projects about blockchain tech.

Blockchain has a lot of other uses, besides currency.

And nothing is safe. This week, some 40 miljon dollars in Ethereum got stolen in 3 different cyber heists.

 

[iomegaman]

Yes but my understanding of the ethereum heist was because users were not checking the wallet "https" and ended up having the link hijacked instead of verifying the link address...no one cracked the blockchain security what they hacked was the weakest link, the human element...

As far as anonymous, nothing online really is...there's always a link somewhere...

 

[cyrano]

There were three heists, I know of:

2 recent ones, one pulling >30 million $ and one for >7 million.
https://medium.freecodecamp.org/a-hacker-stole-31m-of-ether-how-it-happened-and-what-it-means-for-ethereum-9e5dc29e33ce
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/zmvg58/hacker-allegedly-steals-dollar74-million-in-ethereum-with-incredibly-simple-trick
The third one was an attack on the DAO that had 2 million Eth (around 40 million $ at the time) missing. I don't know if that was the final score. It's from last year:
http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/17/thoughts-on-the-dao-hack/
http://trilema.com/2016/to-the-dao-and-the-ethereum-community-fuck-you/

I've probably missed some as I'm most interested in Safecoin.

Zcash, Monero, Dash and Komodo are anonymous. Most of the rest are not. Bitcoin and Ethereum are not anonymous, every transaction amount, source address, and destination address can be seen by anyone.

It's anonymous when destination address & the amount sent are not seen by anyone.

Zcash, MaidSafe and Monero are anonymous by default. Zcash implements zero-knowledge proofs which are known to protect recipient's anonymity however, there still is debate about that.

Dash offers private or public transactions.

Zcash looks like it has the best system to keep everything anonymous. Safecoin looks even better. Safecoin is the crypto coin for Maidsafe P2P hosting and storage platform. It solves the trust problem the cloud has.

 

[Mbira]

Bitcoin is like the opposite of anonymous.  There was an interesting podcast the other day on this (i think radiolab?).  The thing about the public ledger is that it is public for everyone forever.  So it is anonymous UNTIL someone cracks your specific private chain.  And then every single transaction you have ever made in the history of the public ledger is revealed. 

With all that said I have some investments in bitcoin, ETH, and litecoin.  But they are purely speculative investments.  What percentage of the value of these is based on speculative investment?  I'd guess it is north of 95%. 

 

[Andy Peters]

What are your thoughts?

$100 of bitcoin purchased in 2011 would be worth about $455,000.00 now...and it keeps climbing although apparently it is set to split in August...

Only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist so it has a built in "non-inflation of currency" mechanism..

Bitcoin is like any other commodity -- it is worth exactly what someone else will give you for it.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Bitcoin is like any other commodity -- it is worth exactly what someone else will give you for it.

I'm not sure I would call it a commodity but the price certainly is a market transaction negotiated between a willing buyer and seller, influenced by supply and demand.  Even real commodities experience bubbles when buyers or sellers are irrational. Bitcoin  seems to have engineered in a scarcity factor that could affect supply.

Can you carry bitcoin around on a thumb drive (to bribe the border guards with)?  Will it still work after the anarchists take down the electrical grid?  Gold coins still will. ( A friend of mine collects .22 ammo thinking that will make a practical currency after the revolution. )

JR

 

[Kingston]

Ransomware can only exist because of bitcoin. Currently it's probably the only lucrative "market" for bitcoin as well and the biggest factor still driving the "value" up.

 

[cyrano]

Ransomware can only exist because of bitcoin. Currently it's probably the only lucrative "market" for bitcoin as well and the biggest factor still driving the "value" up.

Most of the recent ransomware probably had destruction as a first goal. On most outbreaks, next to nobody paid, there was at least one with a wrong payment code and several with no decryption method.

The second goal probably was data theft, as the attacks were fairly targeted. Mostly companies were hit. For a couple we still don't know how they spread.

There's some complexity in the pattern, but that's just there to confuse everyone.

The first ransomwares were about money and raked in millions.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Most of the recent ransomware probably had destruction as a first goal. On most outbreaks, next to nobody paid, there was at least one with a wrong payment code and several with no decryption method.

The second goal probably was data theft, as the attacks were fairly targeted. Mostly companies were hit. For a couple we still don't know how they spread.

There's some complexity in the pattern, but that's just there to confuse everyone.

The first ransomwares were about money and raked in millions.

The catch 22 (flaw) with hacking people and asking them to pay you off with bit coin is that the people stupid enough to get hacked, don't know how to pay with bit coin. 

JR

 

[john12ax7]

The problem is the block chain will eventually become unmanageable due to size. And then what if no one wants them anymore? There is no inherent value.

The idea of a finite supply and decentralization is good though.

 

[JohnRoberts]

The problem is the block chain will eventually become unmanageable due to size. And then what if no one wants them anymore? There is no inherent value.

The idea of a finite supply and decentralization is good though.

There was a recent argument within the bitcoin community about how many transactions per unit time could be supported by the infrastructure.  My understanding of how it now stands this will become a limitation for wider use in low value transactions, it may still remain attractive for larger value transactions.

This suggests perhaps more than one digital money surrogate to support small transactions.

JR

 

[Andy Peters]

Ransomware can only exist because of bitcoin. Currently it's probably the only lucrative "market" for bitcoin as well and the biggest factor still driving the "value" up.

but if the ledger is public, how does that work?

 

[JohnRoberts]

but if the ledger is public, how does that work?

I am not the bitcoin expert here but I expect the people paying the ransom know the transaction ID and who they sent it to, so the receiver could be found. That does not mean there is legal recourse in other countries to do anything about it. Many of these ransomware attacks are not even reported to police.

JR

 

[Kingston]

but if the ledger is public, how does that work?

Only the transaction itself is public. The address is very much visible in most malware when you know what to look for. Ransomware payouts are thus easy to track, in fact we know almost exactly how much has been paid to date.

 

[Kingston]

The catch 22 (flaw) with hacking people and asking them to pay you off with bit coin is that the people stupid enough to get hacked, don't know how to pay with bit coin. 

JR

Don't worry, they'll help you!

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3173698/security/ransomware-customer-support-chat-reveals-criminals-ruthlessness.html

And they are way better at "customer" service than many legitimate businesses.

 

[dmp]

The problem is the block chain will eventually become unmanageable due to size.

I don't think that is a real concern. The original vision of bitcoin was to let the blocksize grow with number of transactions and the computational requirement needed to deal with the blockchain would benefit from Moore's Law and market forces. Currently the block size is capped absurdly low by infighting. The blockchain is nowhere near the point of being unmanageable.

but if the ledger is public, how does that work?

The ledger is public but other data is needed to connect a person to a wallet. For instance a bitcoin wallet used in a ransomware attack was: 12t9YDPgwueZ9NyMgw519p7AA8isjr6SMw
You can search the block chain for it in the search box in the upper right.
https://blockchain.info/
You see every wallet that has exchanged coins with it and the current balance.
Getting the person who owns the private key to that wallet, though, is not directly possible- it is sometimes possible with the meta data.  But the 'public ledger' only goes so far as to link payments between addresses.

Monero was a coin that added a technology of "ring signatures"  to encrypt the wallet to wallet data on the blockchain, making it more private and fungible.

Ransomware can only exist because of bitcoin.

There was ransom and extortion far before bitcoin.  Individuals shouldn't have privacy and independence with there money because it can be used for illegal purposes ? The amount of illegal transactions and tax evasion in $$$ dwarfs that of bitcoin.  Should all $ transactions be tracked by a serial number between persons? Eliminate non-digital dollars?

 

[JohnRoberts]

I saw a recent news item about SEC clamping down on people using Bitcoin/ethereum for private offerings (to raise money). I don't think they care about  digital money, but do care about skipping the securities laws about proper disclosure when offering securities.

JR

 

[Kingston]

There was ransom and extortion far before bitcoin.

But not ransomware. The "industry" was born of it like a cancerous growth.

 

[JohnRoberts]

There was ransom and extortion far before bitcoin. 

yup

Individuals shouldn't have privacy and independence with there money because it can be used for illegal purposes ?

Government wants more visibility into transactions and money flow for obvious reasons (collecting taxes). 

The amount of illegal transactions and tax evasion in $$$ dwarfs that of bitcoin. 

yup

Should all $ transactions be tracked by a serial number between persons? Eliminate non-digital dollars?

I expect that is only a matter of time, but it could affect reserve status of currency if they can't bury their piles of 100 dollar bills or 100 euro notes.

India is in the process of doing away with cash and the country is quickly shifting to smart phone based payment systems.

Perhaps we are not like India or southern europe (yet), but I see cash (paper money) going the way of the dodo bird.

Of course I don't see us adopting bit coin for routine transactions either....  I might have to buy a phone.  :

JR