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To: Foundahardheadedwoman

Well, there is a reason for bitcoin, or at least the idea of it, and that is the desire of people to get away from the GOVERNMENT having control over money. There was Egold and bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. There may be a few more. The idea is having something that is “backed” by more than “the full faith and confidence of the US Government” which is also secure. They have the first part down, whether you are data mining prime numbers, using electronic warehouse receipts for gold or whatever. Egold (and now Bitcoin) have shown that the security part is also going to be troublesome.

Governments HATE this because people can move money quickly, and outside the control of the state, to an area they cannot confiscate. This is why bitcoin rocketed up to over $1,000 just after the seizure of funds by the Eurozone in Cyprus. Same thing with the currency controls now in place in Greece and Italy.

Look for howling screeches about “drug money” and “terrorism” from the usual state mouthpieces (and the idiots here who think themselves “patriots” in repeating the propaganda), but this is really about governments keeping wealth where they can tax and confiscate it, vs the desire of people to get it out of an environment where the government is committed to do that.


21 posted on 03/07/2014 2:57:52 AM PST by AK_47_7.62x39 (N)
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To: AK_47_7.62x39

In other news, the IMF is already in Crimea, there to help re-build.


24 posted on 03/07/2014 5:36:02 AM PST by SisterK (behold a pale horse)
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To: AK_47_7.62x39
Governments HATE this because people can move money quickly, and outside the control of the state, to an area they cannot confiscate. This is why bitcoin rocketed up to over $1,000 just after the seizure of funds by the Eurozone in Cyprus. Same thing with the currency controls now in place in Greece and Italy.

You definitely have the right idea. But here are a few more details. You don't have to move money anywhere ever since it is already distributed safely worldwide in a hashed chain. If you want to convert to cash and transfer coin to an exchange, then you can have problems. But simply keeping your coins is a snap: keep a secure backup of your private key (e.g. in a USB stick stuck someplace secure). Your coins will be safe in the chain forever.

The backing of bitcoin is proof of work, it takes 10 minutes to get the next coins and that is automatically controlled by the mining algorithms. There can be no glut of new coins since nobody can print them willy nilly. So scarcity is guaranteed.

The second criteria for a currency is spendability. That is guaranteed by the same mining algorithms that produce new coins. Each new coin issue is in a block and the block also contains all the transactions. A coin can not be fraudulently spent (need the private key) nor double spent (the chain is checked for double spending). Since that is all part of the mining, the same computing power devoted to mining is also devoted to transaction security.

29 posted on 03/07/2014 5:56:38 AM PST by palmer (There's someone in my lead but it's not me)
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