MtGox have FOUND 200,000 bitcoins
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They found $116m worth of bitcoins in a digital wallet from 2011 [behind the sofa][^] I once found £200 in my dinner jacket pocket that I'd hidden there for safekeeping and subsequently forgot about. That was a happy day. But $116m - wow. Just WOW!
OK - I'm clearly a simpleton but I'd have thought the whole block-chain thing would mean that you could uniquely identify the stolen bitcoin, and who spent them and who received them?
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OK - I'm clearly a simpleton but I'd have thought the whole block-chain thing would mean that you could uniquely identify the stolen bitcoin, and who spent them and who received them?
Duncan Edwards Jones wrote:
I'd have thought the whole block-chain thing would mean that you could uniquely identify the stolen bitcoin, and who spent them and who received them
That is what I thought too, but that would make the stolen ones useless. Apparently there is a way around the block-chain.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
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I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
They found $116m worth of bitcoins in a digital wallet from 2011 [behind the sofa][^] I once found £200 in my dinner jacket pocket that I'd hidden there for safekeeping and subsequently forgot about. That was a happy day. But $116m - wow. Just WOW!
How can you "lose" digital data? :rolleyes: And my god, if you can't account for 650,000 bitcoins, just create them! It's all vapor-money anyways (though I speak with no knowledge of how these things are supposed to actually be tracked.) I figure though, take a lesson from the fed - "print" more! Marc
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote:
I'd have thought the whole block-chain thing would mean that you could uniquely identify the stolen bitcoin, and who spent them and who received them
That is what I thought too, but that would make the stolen ones useless. Apparently there is a way around the block-chain.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopesBlock-chain or not, with the anonymity of Bitcoin, some poor slob accepts one for payment on a widget. Do you then punish him for accepting the stolen coin? To much time passed. I thank that they should have just nuked the entire lot of them right away. That would have taken coins out of circulation, value bumped up for everyone else, etc. But because of how MtGox handled the situation and delayed telling people about it for months, that would have given whoever took them a lot of time to shuffle them around and launder them. OT: Who trusts a group of guys who name their 'bank' MtGox? That name was originally used for "Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange"? That is like buying a car from "Bob's Caveat Emptor Used Car Emporium" :wtf:
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How can you "lose" digital data? :rolleyes: And my god, if you can't account for 650,000 bitcoins, just create them! It's all vapor-money anyways (though I speak with no knowledge of how these things are supposed to actually be tracked.) I figure though, take a lesson from the fed - "print" more! Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
take a lesson from the fed - "print" more!
Supposedly that is what is different about BitCoin, no central bank to manipulate the currency. Guess there are a few things to work out? :doh:
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
Block-chain or not, with the anonymity of Bitcoin, some poor slob accepts one for payment on a widget. Do you then punish him for accepting the stolen coin? To much time passed. I thank that they should have just nuked the entire lot of them right away. That would have taken coins out of circulation, value bumped up for everyone else, etc. But because of how MtGox handled the situation and delayed telling people about it for months, that would have given whoever took them a lot of time to shuffle them around and launder them. OT: Who trusts a group of guys who name their 'bank' MtGox? That name was originally used for "Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange"? That is like buying a car from "Bob's Caveat Emptor Used Car Emporium" :wtf:
RJOberg wrote:
That is like buying a car from "Bob's Caveat Emptor Used Car Emporium"
I thought that was the alternate name for all used car businesses. :suss:
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
RJOberg wrote:
That is like buying a car from "Bob's Caveat Emptor Used Car Emporium"
I thought that was the alternate name for all used car businesses. :suss:
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
Marc Clifton wrote:
take a lesson from the fed - "print" more!
Supposedly that is what is different about BitCoin, no central bank to manipulate the currency. Guess there are a few things to work out? :doh:
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopesIt's not a currency, it's a commodity. (Like gold, oil etc.)
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It's not a currency, it's a commodity. (Like gold, oil etc.)
Duncan Edwards Jones wrote:
it's a commodity
How does it get it's value?
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
Duncan Edwards Jones wrote:
it's a commodity
How does it get it's value?
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopesIt has no intrinsic value. It gets its valuation by trade agreement between individual parties, and it is priced by the most recent trade. (Like gold which is also basically useless.) A currency is different because it is mandated by a government for the payment of taxes and gets its value because other individuals wish to acquire it in order to pay their taxes.
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It has no intrinsic value. It gets its valuation by trade agreement between individual parties, and it is priced by the most recent trade. (Like gold which is also basically useless.) A currency is different because it is mandated by a government for the payment of taxes and gets its value because other individuals wish to acquire it in order to pay their taxes.
I don't necessarily agree that gold is basically useless because it has uses, especially, in electronics. It may become more and more useless as material science advances and it is replaced with other exotic substances. But that is besides the point. I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around BitCoins. My interest is from a FX trade perspective. I know from watching the charts that it is a volatile currency, with the potential to win or lose big by trading it. I just don't have a good idea about what makes it move in either direction and there isn't enough historical data to try to make sense of trends yet. Thanks for the information.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
I don't necessarily agree that gold is basically useless because it has uses, especially, in electronics. It may become more and more useless as material science advances and it is replaced with other exotic substances. But that is besides the point. I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around BitCoins. My interest is from a FX trade perspective. I know from watching the charts that it is a volatile currency, with the potential to win or lose big by trading it. I just don't have a good idea about what makes it move in either direction and there isn't enough historical data to try to make sense of trends yet. Thanks for the information.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopesI think the best explanation of the way that a currency unit is in fact a tradable obligation rather than an asset with intrinsic worth is in Debt - The first 5000 years[^].
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I think the best explanation of the way that a currency unit is in fact a tradable obligation rather than an asset with intrinsic worth is in Debt - The first 5000 years[^].
Thanks for the link.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
OK - I'm clearly a simpleton but I'd have thought the whole block-chain thing would mean that you could uniquely identify the stolen bitcoin, and who spent them and who received them?
Duncan, you are pretty near. I will rephrase so you understand the problem. "the whole block-chain thing would mean that you could uniquely identify the stolen bitcoin, and which bitcoin address spent them and which bitcoin address received them." The thing is that a bitcoin address can be created offline, because it is just the public key of a public/private key pair. We don't know who own the private key, and we can't know because there is no central registration of address, and never will be. That coupled with the fact that you can create one public/private key pair for each transaction of bitcoin you do if you want. The list of all the addresses that you have the private key is known as a "wallet", you can store it where you want, even in your USB stick hidden under the mattress. Normal people have one address. But an ecommerce can decide to generate one address for each transaction. If you loose the private key of an address, you loose your bitcoins. It is as simple as that.