For those who saw my post, I told you so.

Originally posted by gandhi
For those who saw my post, I told you so.

What did you say?

reminds me of Bartercard.

remember that?

Still can buy stuff with Bartercard, real stuff. but......

Ever tried to convert Bartercard to cash?

Remeber Multi level marketing? I am not drawing a comparison to that , only in , excited MLMers used to talk in the same way about their products, utterly convinced that what they were doing is the right thing. Almost like they were brainwashed in their product and could not see anything else except that

Some did well, others , mostly failed.

From looking around at Bitcoin, it reminds me of that..

I will pass, thanks

This is webfail, not bitcoin fail.

Attacker is a bored geek with no girlfriend. He decides to hack some website using SQL inject. Woo hoo! Big man!

In this case, the website, happened to be one of many exchanges, that allow users to trade bitcoins. There are many such websites, many such exchanges. These, are not bitcoin generators as such. They are market makers. Similarly, a brokerage house, may also hold stock, but making companies, is not what a brokerage house or exchange, does. Okay? Having an exchange domain on the Internet, has nothing to do with the bitcoin manufacture process.

These websites, and all websites now, due to Anon and Lulz skillz at finding lameness, are victimized by the users, and the general stupidity of users, in general. Everyone who works with computers knows, the users, are retarded, don't know shaznatt, and would rather be using a Mac. Therefore, only moronic persons, would make a big deal out of hacking passwords --BECAUSE THEY ALL SUCK. Said another way: Passwords as a concept, are doomed.

I worked at a company (truly stupid, and have been historically hacked, this company) who reacted to their security mandate, by requiring users to obey the following password rules: "You cannot repeat a character, you cannot use any recognizable word, your pw must be at least 8 chars long and you must change it every 30 days." ...This is standard stuff. Well, standard STUPID stuff I should say. Because it's a case of technosnob meets user community.

Because even if some base-level user, meets these password requirements (typically they will not, their eyes glaze over and they will write it down, aka War Games hacking where he finds the written password --DERP), even if he does obey the convention, and memorizes a new secure pw every 30 days, the secure password they chose means nothing if the site itself, keeps that password in a cardboard box. Get it? I choose a secure pw, and then the website fumbles it, and my bitcoins get robbed on the exchange. That's the sequence of events here.

Therefore, bitcoin has succeeded mightily, in bringing forth, its own critics, in the form of the hack. And therefore understanding what I have explained above, then the next step is to come up with better exchanges, that do not use passwords. That is to say, bitcoin is evil-proof in its very conception, and so we now need an exchange or series of exchanges, that are equally tamper-proof.

To explain bitcoin, it's essentially done by CPU power, and that means hashing, meaning high-level math. This means taking say a 16 digit floating point # like 9,500,204,769,809,093, and trying to solve it for prime root. So this takes a lot of time, and though I am simplifying it painfully, essentially, mining bitcoins, means, creating unique new numbers from old numbers, and that can only be done by good old hard number crunching. The design schema of bitcoin, is quite sublime. It is designed logically such that any evil node, trying to produce bad hashes, is simply outnumbered by the "good" nodes. Meaning, the PCs who mine honestly, will always as a rule, outnumber the few bad ones. And so far, that's true. The bitcoin whitepaper explains logically how amazing and powerful this idea is.

There's a lot of threads/chatter on bitcoin, but I know it is the start of something huge. Others know this as well, which is why they are putting all the fake news out, about how its unreliable, etc.

But meanwhile all our money is debt. FACT: Federal Reserve Note = not money, it is legal tender, it is portable debt which we discharge each time we use the paper. Not money.

So I'd rather have legitimate math, in the form of a reliable and trackable process of math, than some hypothecated piece of worthless paper some other dude says is worth something. To me, a bitcoin is more real than a dollar, simply because I can explain a bitcoin easier than to explain the difference between a Federal Reserve Note and actual money (aka specie or coins). It's way easier to explain bitcoins, than to explain people like Geithner and Buhnanke and the machine the brings us people like them.

Anyway, this failure is due to bitcoin support systems, not bitcoin itself. And flawed ideas about passwords, which keep hackers thinking they're good, when really they're entertaining themselves knocking down fruit that's rotten on the vine. I mean really, to hack some pw database and then feel cool about it? I'd say meh to that, because really, what is cool is not to destroy some website, but to come up with something totally new and brilliant and which is so dangerous in concept to the wealthy powers of this world that it will give them cold sweats and nightmares each and every night. Like bitcoin.

Originally posted by smallpeeps
Said another way: Passwords as a concept, are doomed.

It is inevitable that passwords will become childsplay for nextgen hackbots and whizkids. So it will have to private and public key encryption, for there to be full citizen to citizen identity handshake and encapsulated bitcoin hash or math-snapshot within said key, thereby allowing verification of identity, and of good money.

Contract law precedes constitutional law. Basis of good contract = good faith. P2P coins is like a rope with x-number of knots in it. Or to put it another way, one bitcoin is like one tally stick, of olde days time style money, aka, a stick with x number of notches in it. But with rope-money or tally stick, one might see each knot or notch, as raising the value of the thing. That is to say, when one takes the tally stick to the central "stick issuers" and you and your friend have your tally stick notched and certified, well, that action increases the value of the stick. Following this analogue helps us to understand bitcoin because the first bitcoin minted, each time it gets spent or handed off (like any coin) well, it gains a 'notch' or a 'knot', according to the analogy above. But, the big difference is that these knots or notches, do not raise the value of the bitcoin. What they do, is contribute to its legacy of trueness.

Each bitcoin, has a legacy of trueness. And as each one gets minted (and other versions will no doubt be forthcoming, as many coins as in a fountain no doubt haha) it begins its life, handing off to each party, and each time, the math behind the transaction, adds another suitable hash to the coin, and thereby adds what we might view as a further-layer-of-legitimacy-and-transparency into this concept we call "specie" or "coin". Tell me, what coin in history, has its own clock and badge built in? And also provides anonymity to the users?

So to carry the analogy above a bit further, the bitcoin if compared to the tally stick, is like millions of people generating tally sticks, which have value which value might be stated as "Verifiable computing work done which can then be agreed as having been done in no other way than as to be straightforward and concretely worthwhile to the interested parties, who seek an un-debauch-able sort of coin." and each time the bitcoin or tally stick gets handed/accepted, it gains a 'notch' (a super complex numbertype) which doesn't raise the value, but which futher establishes that coin as, a real bitcoin. Sorry if I am laboring this point. But the reason the first bitcoin is equal to the bitcoin minted today, is that the system is binary in its identification of nodes. That is to say that it is not hard to identify a rude or hateful node in the bitcoin network, because the math involved taxes the bad-PC so immensely that it will be swiftly outnumbered by good nodes, meaning, an un-debauch, happening pico-second by pico-second. It's like having ten good-aligned mathematicians versus the odd two or three evil mathematicians. No debauchers allowed.

So therefore, attacking the exchange, or just lobbing grenades into the marketplace, may be a sort of currency warfare, but mathematically, it is only a matter of time until this bitcoin egg hatches. Iron-strong is what I would this sort of thing. Each bitcoin is uniquely verifiable as being genuinely "good" and systems that mine these will always outnumber those who seek to remove the coins or stop that market. Like the tally stick or seashell or rope money, each bitcoin is at the same time, nothing and everything. It's 'nothing' in that it is faith based. But it is everything in that it is all about verifiable truth or good bond, and good bond is the essence of contract.

So you have to have faith in math, but there are math priests and minters of math coins, and they have a lot to offer us. Jesus said pay back Caesar's things to him, but this ain't gold mined by Caesar, this is work done toward a goal, which work can only be done in this modern age. Unless math itself can be debauched that is.

We spend a lot of time transacting, why not do it person to person and ignore the powers that try to destroy the markets because they fear the coin used therein?

Well, its no surprise that this subject gets so little play. But believe me, you should be paying attention to this.

Now realize that "exchanges" are not the same as the coins that get exchanged.

Also, you may wish to research to computer security software that your bank uses, and you may find that it's crap.

Also.. eh nevermind.

Posted: August 4th, 2011, 11:38 pm
I went to MyBitCoin.com today and found this message:

From the desk of Tom Williams, operator of MyBitcoin.com

For immediate release.

As you have probably noticed, MyBitcoin.com had been down for almost a week due to an unfortunate event.

On Friday of last week we noticed that one of our pooled holding servers was missing a large amount of Bitcoins. After a prompt investigation we realized that the security of our SCI (Shopping Cart Interface) system had been breached by an unknown attacker.

Our response was rash, but necessary. We simply switched the system off until we could have system-wide forensics performed. The forensics took some time, as the system is quite complex by nature.

After weighing all of our options, we have realized that we have no option but to go into receivership. We will settle all accounts with a online claim process that we are currently in the process of working out.

We will release more detailed information about the security breach, the claim process, and our balance sheet in the next few days.

Tom Williams