- Joined
- Mar 25, 2013
I'm thinking the funnier aspects of Bitcoin would be worth making a thread for.
A short technical intro: Bitcoin is a research project for peer-to-peer, pseudonymous cryptocurrencies. In plain English: currencies that don't depend on central banks and tying identities to the transactions - similar to handling cash in person-to-person sales, really. Everything is based on cryptographical proofs of transactions which are difficult to produce, and which, when completed, yield some free money for the volunteers who provide computing power to that cause.
Technically, there's not a whole lot of problems with this, except that anyone with rudimentary knowledge of computers would see that this is definitely a research project, not something that people can actually use on daily basis. The biggest problems are that all transactions take up to 10 minutes to verify (which probably isn't a problem in online shopping but would get really annoying in real life). The second is that everyone properly connected to the network itself needs a copy of the blockchain, which is the record of every transaction ever made in the network - right now several gigabytes and it just keeps piling up every day. Most people skip this and just use online wallets, which brings its own set of problems.
Bitcoin enthusiasts keep saying that all of these problems will eventually be solved. Everything will be just fine. Right.
Oh. Bitcoin enthusiasts? That's where the funny parts are. The software side of Bitcoin is genuinely interesting, but the user community is interesting in a whole different sense.
The two sanest groups of people using and promoting Bitcoin are currency traders and scammers. Currency traders treat it as a commodity to be traded. Scammers do calculated attempts at getting your money.
Of course, people generally think stock-market sharks are part of the despicable side of capitalism in general (as in not the part that ultimately produces goods and services people actually need, just profiting off of people who do), and scammers are something that the laws are there for. (Oops, law enforcement is a bit slow on handling Bitcoin though.)
Conspicuously missing from the list of sane people: consumers and stores. There's few actual stores that accept bitcoin (now that the law enforcement is finally cracking down on drug stores), and people still don't give a damn because the prices aren't anywhere near stable.
Actually getting money in and out of the Bitcoin network is an exercise in pain, mostly because the people who run the exchanges are either incompetent (there's been a great number of security breaches) or absolutely hostile toward the regulations or societal expectations they have to follow ("We can only deal with small sums. To exchange bigger sums, you need proof of identity. Don't worry, we only have a backlog of 3 months to process those. Blame the government bureaucracy, not us! Always screwing the little man! It's not like we'd be in any way obligated to hire more staff to handle these matters in a professional manner that people generally expect from financial institutions!")
And then there's the miners - the people who run the systems that produce proofs of transactions. The system was originally designed so that a small group of people could actually handle that. Now? The network has hundreds of times the capacity it needs. Pretty clear that miners aren't out there for the altruistic, volunteering goal of keeping the network running - they're out there to get FREE MONEY!!!!1!!!!. And oh how they do! They were promised a freedom from all those pesky government rules governing financial transactions, and apparently every single safety regulation in the book. There's dedicated hardware to mine Bitcoin, but because mining is so competitive, the hardware is basically obsolete before it is even released. (How do you get rich in gold rush? Sell hardware to the suckers who think that they're getting gold.)
And this is just scratching the surface. Any other favourite stories of Bitcoin weirdnesses, people?
A short technical intro: Bitcoin is a research project for peer-to-peer, pseudonymous cryptocurrencies. In plain English: currencies that don't depend on central banks and tying identities to the transactions - similar to handling cash in person-to-person sales, really. Everything is based on cryptographical proofs of transactions which are difficult to produce, and which, when completed, yield some free money for the volunteers who provide computing power to that cause.
Technically, there's not a whole lot of problems with this, except that anyone with rudimentary knowledge of computers would see that this is definitely a research project, not something that people can actually use on daily basis. The biggest problems are that all transactions take up to 10 minutes to verify (which probably isn't a problem in online shopping but would get really annoying in real life). The second is that everyone properly connected to the network itself needs a copy of the blockchain, which is the record of every transaction ever made in the network - right now several gigabytes and it just keeps piling up every day. Most people skip this and just use online wallets, which brings its own set of problems.
Bitcoin enthusiasts keep saying that all of these problems will eventually be solved. Everything will be just fine. Right.
Oh. Bitcoin enthusiasts? That's where the funny parts are. The software side of Bitcoin is genuinely interesting, but the user community is interesting in a whole different sense.
The two sanest groups of people using and promoting Bitcoin are currency traders and scammers. Currency traders treat it as a commodity to be traded. Scammers do calculated attempts at getting your money.
Of course, people generally think stock-market sharks are part of the despicable side of capitalism in general (as in not the part that ultimately produces goods and services people actually need, just profiting off of people who do), and scammers are something that the laws are there for. (Oops, law enforcement is a bit slow on handling Bitcoin though.)
Conspicuously missing from the list of sane people: consumers and stores. There's few actual stores that accept bitcoin (now that the law enforcement is finally cracking down on drug stores), and people still don't give a damn because the prices aren't anywhere near stable.
Actually getting money in and out of the Bitcoin network is an exercise in pain, mostly because the people who run the exchanges are either incompetent (there's been a great number of security breaches) or absolutely hostile toward the regulations or societal expectations they have to follow ("We can only deal with small sums. To exchange bigger sums, you need proof of identity. Don't worry, we only have a backlog of 3 months to process those. Blame the government bureaucracy, not us! Always screwing the little man! It's not like we'd be in any way obligated to hire more staff to handle these matters in a professional manner that people generally expect from financial institutions!")
And then there's the miners - the people who run the systems that produce proofs of transactions. The system was originally designed so that a small group of people could actually handle that. Now? The network has hundreds of times the capacity it needs. Pretty clear that miners aren't out there for the altruistic, volunteering goal of keeping the network running - they're out there to get FREE MONEY!!!!1!!!!. And oh how they do! They were promised a freedom from all those pesky government rules governing financial transactions, and apparently every single safety regulation in the book. There's dedicated hardware to mine Bitcoin, but because mining is so competitive, the hardware is basically obsolete before it is even released. (How do you get rich in gold rush? Sell hardware to the suckers who think that they're getting gold.)
And this is just scratching the surface. Any other favourite stories of Bitcoin weirdnesses, people?
). After reading a few recent news articles involving Bitcoin, I started to do some research with one question in mind: Just what the fuck is Bitcoin?
If it has, the currency is living on borrowed time.)
