Posted on 01/20/2016 7:04:50 AM PST by C19fan
One consistent idle daydream on the American right is somehow living outside of government. From Ayn Rand's "Galt's Gulch," where a bunch of plutocrats secede from America to gleefully watch society collapse without its job creators, to nutty Silicon Valley plans for "seasteading," somebody is always working on a government-free society.
Over the last few years, many technology-minded thinkers and programmers have made such ideas a reality. Perhaps most notable is Bitcoin, the first fully decentralized currency and payment system. With big government interference all but impossible, surely this virtual money would be the dawn of a new age of freedom.
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
Does the end of bitcoin also mean the end of ransomware?
To the contrary, Bitcoin proved that government-controlled money is far from inevitable.
Blockchain is the real innovation, and it is a revolutionary development.
http://recode.net/2015/07/05/forget-bitcoin-what-is-the-blockchain-and-why-should-you-care/
“Decline” how? Because one disgruntled developer (Mike Hearn) says so? More people than ever are using it and the price is nearly $400. I bought 5, each at around $200 and used it just the other day to buy a winter jacket.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-died-nearly-100-times/
There is so much misinformation below it’s nearly unbearable to read. He is simply parroting Hearn’s screed and doesn’t understand a bit about what he talking about.
“Payment fees are rising fast, and payments themselves are fast becoming unreliable. New Bitcoins are created through complex mathematical calculations (called “mining” in the trade), which now require so much computing horsepower that the new coins can barely pay for the electricity required to create them. The result is miner centralization, mostly in China. Now, a handful of Chinese miners effectively control the block chain, which is running out of space for new transactions. They refuse to increase the file size to ease a payments backlog, because it would threaten their control of the system. Making everything worse, the bandwidth limitations of the China’s Great Firewall have further clogged the system. “
$400 of electricity to mine a new bitcoin?
wow...
That is certainly loaded with attitude. The movie didn't show glee. It showed the opposite from its heroine.
By the way, secession is very real. Human Events published an article just today with the title "Taxes Chased GE Out of Connecticut."
I’m not so sure Bitcoin has “declined”, whatever that means when speaking about a currency. If the price of Bitcoin collapses it won’t be because of Bitcoin’s independence from government. Humans had gold and silver long before they had coins minted by kings. The real problem with Bitcoin is that there is no pricing system denominated in Bitcoin. Most anything that can be bought with bitcoins has to be priced first in some other currency and then converted to its Bitcoin equivalent. Until this changes Bitcoin will remain the preserve of its partisans and speculators.
Bitcoin still has value in its current state. It is a distributed ledger system for storing wealth that cannot be attached or seized by any government without the owner’s permission. That’s not nothing.
Laurel & Hardy: “Utopia”
Far less than that or people wouldn’t bother mining. It’s worth $400 on the market, however, which is pretty damn impressive.
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