The Implications of Bitcoin: Money Without Government

Coin Desk ^ | 23 January 2014 | Jon Matonis

[Errant]

One of my favorite things about bitcoin is how it’s such an all-inclusive tent.

Bitcoin attracts political idealists from the right, political idealists from the left, Silicon Valley technologists, social science academics, philosophers, capitalists, socialists, and even apolitical speculators.

Alex Payne kicked off this latest round of analysis with his blog piece: “Bitcoin, Magical Thinking, and Political Ideology”. A self-described programmer and secular humanist, Payne worked as an early engineer at Twitter building the service’s developer platform and backend infrastructure.

[esoxmagnum]

Diners Club was my first card. Not even sure they exist anymore.

Back to BitCoin, I use it to pay for my TorGuard, which makes it even harder to trace my account to anybody, as using BitCoins is anonymous. Sure, they can track who bought bitcoins, but they can’t trace what the bitcoins were used to purchase.

Would I invest in them. Probably not. But for now, it’s a work-around to having your credit card tied to a TorGuard service.

[Graybeard58]

The last time I bought a new car I bought it with a check, I tried to put it on the card but the dealer wouldn’t go for it.

[mmichaels1970]

Another advantage is that I’m using the heat from mining to warm a little grow room I have, so it saves on heating cost too. :)

lol...that's pretty creative. Heat is a problem I'm dealing with. I wanted to add a third gpu to my rig (using standard cooling), but the gpu on top was reaching over 100C. So I had to dump gpu #3 on a spare motherboard I had sitting around.

I have two R9 270X's (450 kHash each) and one HD7950 (610 khash) which are making me between .4 to .5 LTC per day.

I've been thinking about looking at using these "riser card cables" to better space out my gpus and get back to one rig, but I'm not sure how I'd securely mount the gpus in a normal case.

One thing I've learned and a piece of advice I'd share is to not get sucked into trading on the exchanges if you don't know what you're doing. I'm done trying that (who am I kidding?). I have a tendency to buy at the top, panic, and sell at the bottom. No matter how much discipline I try to maintain. Yesterday was a friggin bloodbath (I lost $8.00).

So I've moved recently from the r&d phase to the mining phase. But I still don't really know what the heck I'm doing.

[mmichaels1970]

Of course you must be diligent about making your backups and all that, since all digital media will fail from time to time. That aspect makes it a pain in the neck.

A good point. But I'm thinking that possibility that we CAN backup our "cash" is intriguing. Imagine if you left the house with a $20 bill and it blew out of your pocket. However, the guy who found your $20 bill would have a very difficult time spending it if he couldn't crack your password. Meanwhile, you could return home an grab your backup $20 bill from your underwear drawer.

You can probably poke a bunch of holes in the idea, but I find that even the remote possibility of it is very interesting.

[Errant]

lol...that's pretty creative.

I've got 3.2 Kwh solar panel setup too. The state and fed paid for 85% of the cost from energy credits. :) Right now it's under 3" of snow though. The grow room stayed at 55 F last night with 25 F outside temps with just one miner going. I heard on the local news this morning that many of the nurseries south of here were up all night trying to save their plants and green houses from snow accumulation and freezing temps.

Maybe TsonicTsunami08 will send you a link to an image of his miner using riser cables for the GPUs. It's pretty cool!

You're doing very good getting that many hashes out. Mine are nowhere near that but I've got the temps set at 75C.

I've traded commodities and stocks in the past. Lots of time, research, headache, stress and luck needed to make any real "take home" money. Might try trading coins one of these days. The exchanges make it pretty easy to do anyway. You have to keep emotion out and go with a system.

Sounds like you're doing well, learning and having some fun in the process. Thanks for sharing! :)

[MrB]

Cash on a chip, a chip in the hand (or forehead), no one buys or sells otherwise...

I’m suspicious of this.

[Errant]

Yeah, people don’t think much about the 3+% CC service charges until big ticket items. CCs are a limitless gold mine for the big banks.

[MrB]

What about a government takeover of bitcoin?

[Pearls Before Swine]

Go Gramps!

[Cementjungle]

A good point. But I'm thinking that possibility that we CAN backup our "cash" is intriguing. Imagine if you left the house with a $20 bill and it blew out of your pocket. However, the guy who found your $20 bill would have a very difficult time spending it if he couldn't crack your password. Meanwhile, you could return home an grab your backup $20 bill from your underwear drawer.

You can probably poke a bunch of holes in the idea, but I find that even the remote possibility of it is very interesting.

I was thinking more of larger sums of money... like retirement accounts. These at least have some sort of coverage (FDIC, SIPC, etc.) in the event of some sort of problem. If we keep large sums of money in Bitcoin electronic "wallets" and our computer dies, and we don't have a proper backup, we would be totally out of luck.

A lot of people don't want to be computer technicians just to manage their cash assets.

[kevkrom]

I just finished re-reading The Diamond Age, and part of the "backstory" that the story is set against is a post nation-state world, where the demise of the nation-state was essentially brought about by an alternate currency system that allowed for untraceable transactions. The result of that was the reorganization of people into "phyles" based on racial, cultural, and/or religious principles instead of states defined by geography.

[George from New England]

Have 13 kw solar panels ... not related to mining at all.

Running about 1.5 TH/sec miners

Haven’t turned on the heat this winter — at all.

Close to 4 kw of heat at all times. One big unit is in the fireplace. On a hot day I open the flue, close chimney off on the chillier nights and days. Maintaining 70 F inside when down to 40 outside.

[Errant]

VERY impressive! What are you mining?

[GeronL]

In the future the only job will be playing Minecraft

[Errant]

Please don’t mention that word... :)

[GeronL]

lol

[Errant]

Btw, is it mind "Mindcraft" not Minecraft? Whatever it is, they're destroying the minds of our youth.

[Errant]

Sounds interesting. I'm making a note of it, to check it out.

Thanks,

[ClearCase_guy]

A lot of thought-provoking ideas in The Diamond Age. Not just the alternate currency, and the replacement of the nation state, he's not 3D-printers basically producing whatever you want in a kind of post-scarcity economy. As well as a return to more "restrained" behavior systems for some tribal units -- Victorian and Confucian to name just two.

[George from New England]

btc