What are your thoughts on BitCoin?

[Narz]

I don't really care about bitcoins one way or another but it's always fun to see haters wrong.

 

[Crezth]

Its a piece of property, I already answered. I won't argue otherwise. People will value it and trade for it, whether printed or not, i know that. But it's not a currency.

Ah, but what if it's property? Got you there. Checkmate. Hole in one. King me.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's a hell of a time figuring out what the difference between a barter good, a currency, and money is sometimes. I mean, you need to get pretty deep into regulations to come up with a practical difference, but below that it's mostly a question of liquidity.

 

[Algeroth]

What technology has the potential to disrupt the financial services sector the most?

It’s not the tech giants like Apple, Facebook or Google, who have all made recent moves into payments services.

According to Oliver Bussmann, CIO of Swiss bank UBS, the biggest disrupting force is the blockchain – the underlying technology behind Bitcoin, the electronic-only currency which is created on computers and isn’t controlled by any government or centralized authority.

The blockchain is the open, decentralized online ledger which verifies transactions in the digital currency.

Almost any document can be digitized, codified and inserted into the blockchain, a record that is indelible, cannot be tampered with, and whose authenticity is verified by the consensus of a community of computer users rather than by the discretionary order of a centralized authority

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/10/27/ubs-cio-blockchain-technology-can-massively-simplify-banking/

 

[dutchfire]

http://arstechnica.com/business/201...-into-his-hands-to-store-cold-bitcoin-wallet/

For the last 10 days, Martijn Wismeijer, a Dutch entrepreneur and Bitcoin enthusiast, has lived with an NFC chip embedded in each hand. One has data that he’s constantly overwriting; he can put his contact details in simply by having another person scan his hand with an NFC-enabled phone. But the other contains the encrypted private key to his wallet.

"I use it for cold storage, but it's not cold because it's 37 degrees Celsius inside my body!" he told Ars over Skype on Friday.

Only in Amsterdam!

 

[Mise]

So now everyone knows where it is?

 

[dutchfire]

Well, the article is sadly not very clear about that (and the Ars comments have also made that remark), but as I understand it:

Using Shamir’s Shared Secret—a cryptographic technique to split a secret amongst different people—Wismeijer and his colleagues have to provide a certain number of their private keys to unlock the company’s master cold storage wallet. They can either scan the NFC tags with a USB dongle, or from an NFC-enabled phone.

"To transfer funds to our network, we have to scan our tags, including my hand, which provides part of an encrypted private key, and then only then the phone will transfer to the hot wallet," he said.

So this is only one of many/several keys needed to get the Bitcoins.

 

[Antilogic]

Yeah, I'm not having surgery to secure a bitcoin wallet.

 

[gay_Aleks]

But it's cash! That you can use anywhere!

 

[Antilogic]

Except you can't! And the exchanges where you can get real money for them keep getting hacked!

 

[gay_Aleks]

Well, stock brokers are just like these hackers, except everything is completely legal and even it's advisable to do so.

 

[bhsup]

But it's cash! That you can use anywhere!

*Pulls a fiver out of his wallet* Pretty sure there's something about this being legal tender everywhere (that is relevant to me) as well.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

*Pulls a fiver out of his wallet* Pretty sure there's something about this being legal tender everywhere (that is relevant to me) as well.

*Points to the drug dog*

Fang there has alerted on your currency sir. Please hand your wallet and any other cash in your pockets to Officer Grabnsnatch.

*Tases Bhsup when he reaches for his pocket, then takes the remaining cash and car keys*

Sorry, thought you might be reaching for a gun there. All your assets will now be prosecuted for having been involved in drug deals at some time in the past. Should you wish to hire an attorney for your assets, you won't be able to since we now have all your assets. No attorney will be provided for your assets, since of course assets don't have a right to representation.

Nice car. Would you like a ride home...er...somewhere?

 

[Mise]

I would totally put a chip into my hand, but I'd use it for my Oyster card (prepaid card for use on London public transport), ID card at work, or an actual contactless payment method from a major credit card company.

Failing that, I can certainly see how an NFC chip that can store a password or code would be very useful. I can see myself unlocking my phone, computer, or even something as prosaic as my front door or bedroom window with just a wave of my hand. That being said, I'm not sure these things can't just as easily be achieved with an NFC chip stuck to the back of my watch...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I would totally put a chip into my hand, but I'd use it for my Oyster card (prepaid card for use on London public transport), ID card at work, or an actual contactless payment method from a major credit card company.

Failing that, I can certainly see how an NFC chip that can store a password or code would be very useful. I can see myself unlocking my phone, computer, or even something as prosaic as my front door or bedroom window with just a wave of my hand. That being said, I'm not sure these things can't just as easily be achieved with an NFC chip stuck to the back of my watch...

But if it is stuck to the back of your watch it can be stolen without cutting your hand off.

Hmmmm.

That may be a good thing.

 

[Samson]

Bitcoin transactions are not very anonymous.

The cyber-libertarian poster-child Bitcoin, meant to usher in a new age of anonymous transactions, is rubbish at protecting users' IP addresses according to research from the University of Luxembourg.

In this Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) conference paper by Alex Biryukov, Dmitry Khovratovich and Ivan Pustogarov of the Laboratory of Algorithmics, Cryptology and Security, “few computers” and a budget of €1,500 per for servers and traffic charges should be enough to start unmasking users' addresses with as much as 60 per cent accuracy.

If an attacker needed to be stealthy, their success rate would drop to 11 per cent.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Curses, now how will I buy illegal drugs over the Internet? I will have to do what, use Canadian dollars?

 

[Zelig]

Bitcoin was never meant to hide IP addresses, that's what Tor is for.

 

[Algeroth]

Global computing giant Microsoft has added bitcoin as a payment option for a variety of digital content across its online platforms.

According to the company’s payments information page, US-based customers can now use bitcoin to add money to their accounts, which can then be used to purchase content like apps, games and videos from its Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox platforms.

http://www.coindesk.com/microsoft-adds-bitcoin-payments-xbox-games-mobile-content/

 

[Hygro]

"We will accept anything with market value to lock you into a gift card, especially a commodity that will earn us customer loyalty."