Cryptocurrencies

GreyGhost said:
That is what I find the strangest about all of these cryptocurrencies. They are so heavily reliant on physical possession of something (either personally or stored by someone else).

You would think if you were starting from scratch you would make something that required authentication each time so theft couldn't happen. Assuming good authentication, the coins could exist in many places (cloud style) as they are useless without authentication. I thought virtual currencies were headed this way, but with all of the thefts and people storing coins on physical wallets than can be lost it obviously went very wrong.
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The whole point of cryptocoin is that it is decentralized. Authentication in the way you are thinking is not possible with such a system.
 
TwistedKestrel said:
The whole point of cryptocoin is that it is decentralized. Authentication in the way you are thinking is not possible with such a system.
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I think it should be possible to have decentralized authentication. You have a coin in your wallet that is encoded with your private key, in order for the transaction to be processed it must first be decoded. No centralized authority is required as the decryption algorithm could be publicly accessible. Obviously the riskiest part of the exchange is when your private key is being entered. This doesn't fix all problems, but stealing bitcoins in storage shouldn't be possible as the encrypted coins couldn't be transferred between accounts. There is no need for the physical offline wallet to contain the coins as they would just be a data string that was useless without decryption.

Obviously the whole thing would **** the bed if someone managed to beat the encryption algorithm.
 
Except for the last sentence, that is pretty much exactly how it's supposed to work already. Something somewhere has to contain the coins, in a decentralized system it pretty much has to be the coin owner's responsibility
 
TwistedKestrel said:
Except for the last sentence, that is pretty much exactly how it's supposed to work already. Something somewhere has to contain the coins, in a decentralized system it pretty much has to be the coin owner's responsibility
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But why does the coin have to be in a single location? As it is a relatively small amount of useless data, why can't it be stored in 1000 locations at once? Once that data is processed once, if you attempt to transfer that coin a second time, it would essentially bounce.
 
That's sort of what the blockchain is for.

Put it a different way - the currency doesn't actually reside in your wallet. What is in your wallet is the private key to your bitcoin address, enabling you to send bitcoins that you currently control. You currently control bitcoins because you mined them, or they were sent to you by someone else. Where the bitcoin actually "lives" is in the blockchain, a permanent self-referential record of bitcoin transactions. There is only one blockchain, which contains many blocks, which contain many transactions.

When bitcoin is stolen, what has happened is that someone has gained a copy of your private key, then immediately used that key to send the bitcoin to somewhere that they control. If they didn't use it right away, and you learned that someone else stole the key, you could simply send the bitcoin to a new address that you had the private key for.
 
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jc100 said:
Help me understand this topic. I have absolutely no clue why these things are currently worth this much. To me this seems like an elaborate scam attractive to the “money for nothing” crowd.
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I may have it wrong but this might work.

Let's say you have something for sale worth $1,000 and I buy it from you paying with a cheque drawn on Fictional Finance Savings and Loan. I print the cheque on my computer.

Instead of going to the bank you buy something from Brian P and pay him by endorsing the back of the cheque, thereby signing it over to him.

Brian P does the same in a transaction with JavaFan.

Then JavaFan buys something from Baggsy but it's only worth $500 so Baggsy takes the $1000 cheque and gives JavaFan $500 his change in real money.

Baggsy then buys something worth $1000 from Mimico Polak and Baggsy is in the clear.

and so on and so on

I promised to only print 1000 cheques and people that are afraid of the USD want them so we all get rich.

They work especially well for freemen on the land except freemen on the land never have to pay for anything except unicorn saddles.

Basically a mix of kiting, conning and paranoia but it's on the internet so it has to be good.
 
I’ve seen a few posts from millenials (some tongue in cheek to be fair) trying to pay for goods with their various cryptocurrencies and getting upset when they can’t.
 
jc100 said:
I’ve seen a few posts from millenials (some tongue in cheek to be fair) trying to pay for goods with their various cryptocurrencies and getting upset when they can’t.
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Ripple may change all that.
 
I've heard that there's millions lost, that was sent to invalid addresses. Be extra careful with your typing.
 
DJM said:
Ripple may change all that.
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I just read about that. Interesting stuff, however there’s still a large amount of trust involved in these transactions and I don’t see any advantage for me as a consumer right now (I see my current transaction fees as the cost of doing business and those fees represent something paid for a service that I “trust”. Perhaps that might change if things go more mainstream but this still looks to be more a scheme to make the creators rich (they saved 1/5 of their pre mined currency for themselves).
 
It's absolutely all about trust. But keep in mind, you're up against savants in the financial industry. Mainstreaming this allows Wall Street to short it now so I can see even more volatility.

I still recommend playing with it, it's fun. I saw a 40% swing in value with mine in 4 days lol. More fun than a Casino.
 
Cryptocurrencies have been taking a beating the last few hours/days. Bitcoin has lost about 1/2 its value in the last month.
 
I heard KFC is accepting bitcoin
 
Based on this morning's valuation drop KFC lost their shirt...
 
daught said:
Must be a marketing gimmick. It takes at least 10 minutes to do a transaction. It does not seem feasible for fast food.
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I agree, especially since the value is changing so fast. It was apparently just a limited time offer and is now sold out.

from cbc.ca
On Friday, the average bitcoin transaction fee was as high as $35. The bitcoin bucket cost $20. The transaction time is also a problem, with transactions taking anywhere from minutes to hours. And both the fee and the time change depending on the amount of traffic on the bitcoin network.
Purchasing a bucket of chicken with bitcoin also triggers a taxable event that Canada Revenue Agency expects you to keep track of.

KFC Canada
@kfc_canada
KFC Canada presents The #Bitcoin Bucket. Sure, we don’t know exactly what Bitcoins are, or how they work, but that shouldn’t come between you and some finger lickin’ good chicken. https://www.facebook.com/KFCCanada/videos/1758453490840478/?business_id=10153271315728619 …
 
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