What exactly is a bitcoin?
Jalapanose
Banned
I struggle with the entire Silk Road (auto capped by my phone, nice) concept.
Jalapanose
Banned
Comments
After the issues the other day I had debate after debate with supporters.
I personally think is was/is a scam but plenty of others strongly disagree. I can go into more detail if anyone would like.
"Bitcoin is an experimental, decentralized digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network."
Now, the Silk Road is a location on the TOR network, which is highly encrypted. Bitcoins are fairly anonymous as it is, but purchases on the Silkroad get processed multiple times (as in fake transactions tumbling the currency multiple times), and become even more impossible to track back to the seller/buyer.
A similar thing happens with the buyer's information when they send their address over the network, it gets encrypted, and then sent to the buyer through the transaction.
I haven't used it personally, but have visited it out of curiosity.
More detail please, yes.
The answer can get about as complex as you want, I don't understand half of it and I've read dozens of articles on it. I would suggest googling and reading on your own though.
I'm actually waiting on kass to elaborate.
Basically it was created "anonymously" to be the perfect currency as it is both anoymous and not based on the functions or stability of a country. It is supposed to be fixed like a currency based on something tangible like the gold standard since there are a finite number of bitcoins that can be mined.
However though bitcoin was constructed to be the opposite of the fiat currencies of today it really embodies all the problems with them without actually having any advantages. The value of the bitcoin relies 100% on the confidence of the public in order to keep its value as well as to increase in value. Without this confidence the bitcoin is worthless as unlike a currency fixed on a commodity, even though there are finite amount of bitcoins the value is completely reliant on confidence. All a finite number of bitcoins does is limit inflation which is actually bad for the expansion of the bitcoin as a currency.
The only reason these stupid things have value is because they are 100% anonymous if used properly and thus that has a ton of value for certain people in this world. If the bitcoin was not anonymous and I really dont believe it is, it would have zero value to anyone.
Yeah, there's the rub. You can't tell me we can put a man on the moon but can't tell who is buying drugs off the deep net doesn't make sense to me.
I found this via an economics blog I read, hope it helps. Builds on what kass touched on.
A few of the comments after that article are decent but god does it hurt my head reading these kids living in a fantasy land who think they know how world economy works because they took 1 economics class.
agree, i was very surprised when I read them.