Good article that details exactly why the bitcoin is a pyramid scheme

[navkat]

Nope. But it's not entirely dishonorable either for the experiment to reward its subjects (the early adopters) for taking the gamble by participating if it turns out the new drug works.

That's fine for them, not for you and me and if it gets corrupted, some people are going to be pretty fucked.

Early adopters at the top of a pyramid scheme didn't gamble on the success of the bitcoin. The way it works is it gets progressively more difficult to get bitcoins based on these cryptographic hashes, they could do this without ever investing any of their own money (read up on bitcoin mining).
They took little to NO risk, the currency rises based on the larger investment pool of people below them in the pyramid. They sell off and cash out their earnings that they never had to invest in.

It was worse then negligent or dishonerable, it is a calculated effort to separate people from their money.

Yeah, actually it's worse than that.

It's everything we detest about the current American economy since in order to own a slice of the pie, you either had to get there first or be able to afford a supercomputer to mine all day for you.

So, it's a system where the rich get richer and the poor get nothing. Poor, blacks with no access to adequate computers on the bottom. Again.

Consider me officially disillusioned.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

HFT is hilariously full of con men.  Everything from "Quantum Touch Healing" ( ) to Free Energy Devices (Cold Fusion, LOL).  The bit coin pimps were just starting to run all over the joint when Broze banned us all in a fit of free thinking (ie, we called out the con men...And Broze is the king-hell con man/Jim Jones daddy).

In fact, I'm reasonably sure that it was calling out THAT con (based on Faust's earlier article) that got us banned.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

It was worse then negligent or dishonerable, it is a calculated effort to separate people from their money.

Or, as we call it here in 'Murrka, "Honest business."

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

heh...
cooler than houston. that makes me chuckle.

It's sort of like "wetter than Sonora".

Or "smells better than the restroom at the Arlan's supermarket in Seguin."

[Junkenstein]

No one wants stability in a currency either, right? RIGHT?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/10/bitcoin-new-high-losing-160

digital currency, lost more than $160 (£104) in value on Wednesday, just hours after hitting a record high.

The currency hit a new high of $266 before falling to $105 and then bouncing back to $130. The fall is unlikely to put off speculators. Two months ago, a Bitcoin was worth $20.

With Europe racked by economic uncertainty following the banking crisis in Cyprus, there have been fears that a "bubble" is being created with speculators piling into the four-year-old digital currency. But Bitcoin has crashed before only to bounce back. It hit a low of $7 in August 2011 after hitting a high of $32 two months earlier.

Jon Matonis of the Bitcoin Foundation, the currency's promoter, denied a euro-bubble was being created in an interview with Der Spiegel this week.

"Most transactions are still coming from affluent regions, like the United States and northern Europe. What we are seeing is not a Cyprus bubble," he said.

Until recently Bitcoin had been a largely obscure currency used by the tech-savvy, libertarians wishing to thumb their noses at central bankers and people involved in more nefarious activities such as online gambling (often illegal in the US) or drug deals.

There are around 11m Bitcoins in circulation, 25 new bitcoins are produced every 10 minutes, and they are traded through online exchanges like Mt.Gox.

Wednesday's wild ride came as someone gave away thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoins on Reddit, the social news site. News blog Business Insider calculated a Reddit user under the name "Bitcoinbillionaire" had given away $13,627.69896 worth of Bitcoins to Reddit users over the day. The mystery donor signed off with a quote from Ron Paul, libertarian politician and one-time would-be presidential candidate: "It's no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking."

[Faust]

The best comment I've seen on it now is that it is the only currency that dramatically drops in value in the time between you click buy, and the are you sure prompt.

[Junkenstein]

Zimbabwe must have been pissed to lose that claim to infamy.

[Faust]

Zimbabwe must have been pissed to lose that claim to infamy.

Yeah, they are now only the second most unstable joke currency in the world.

[Cain]

"It's no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking."

What, the 18th century? 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's totally not a "Cyprus bubble"! It's a good thing he said that, to set my mind at ease.

[Shtik]

Zimbabwe must have been pissed to lose that claim to infamy.

Yeah, they are now only the second most unstable joke currency in the world.

What do you mean? I don't see the problem there. I for one would love to buy a stack of these for five bucks!



Come to think of it, we should just add a few zeroes to the end of every dollar. Lets all be trillionaires!

[Junkenstein]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22110345

BBC Tech correspondant appears woefully uninformed about the actuals Cons.

As do the comments section. I really hope this catches onto to more people now. It probably will. The current generations still remember the "dot com" boom (Or as it actually was- Having a geocities site filled with ads and malware) but were just too young to get in on it. This is going to grab all those lazy entrepreneurs and fuck them rigid.


As an aside, I actually managed to get hold of a couple of Zimbabwe banknotes a few years back. The motivation was just to have a couple to pass around the group as a nominal favour token done for "ONE BILLION DOLLARS".


Things done for ONE BILLION DOLLARS:

The dishes
Walking the dog
Lift to the shop
A pint
Shut up for 5 minutes
Etc, you get the idea

It amused us for quite a while. People get interested when you actually pass a note about for things too. Ended up in some interesting conversations. Give it a go.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

The Winklevoss twins are heavily invested in bitcoin.

As if you needed another reason to avoid it like the plague.

[Faust]

So it also seems that not only is this a scam but it is an incredibly eco unfriendly one.

Bitcoin mining which is the process of solving cryptographic hashes and regulating how much new currency comes on the market is taking up more and more cpu time as people across the world attempt to get free money out of this, leaving a nasty carbon footprint without actually creating anything of real value at all.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/13/the-cost-of-a-bitcoin/

[Cain]

Well, in that sense, Bitcoin is mirroring the international financial system perfectly.

Also:

"It's no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of the miniskirt."

"It's no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of the theory of relativity"

"It's no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of synthetic plastics."

Are all equally valid as Ron Paul's above assertion.