Introduction to Bitcoin

Thanks for this explanation. I keep hearing a strange sound after your
speech, but it was clear nonetheless.

Bits and Barbarism
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 22, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/krugman-bits-and-barbarism.html?_r=1&

This is a tale of three money pits. It’s also a tale of monetary regress —
of the strange determination of many people to turn the clock back on
centuries of progress.

The first money pit is an actual pit — the Porgera open-pit gold mine in
Papua New Guinea, one of the world’s top producers. The mine has a terrible
reputation for both human rights abuses (rapes, beatings and killings by
security personnel) and environmental damage (vast quantities of
potentially toxic tailings dumped into a nearby river). But gold prices,
while down from their recent peak, are still three times what they were a
decade ago, so dig they must.

The second money pit is a lot stranger: the Bitcoin mine in Reykjanesbaer,
Iceland. Bitcoin is a digital currency that has value because … well,
it’s hard to say exactly why, but for the time being at least people are
willing to buy it because they believe other people will be willing to buy
it. It is, by design, a kind of virtual gold. And like gold, it can be
mined: you can create new bitcoins, but only by solving very complex
mathematical problems that require both a lot of computing power and a lot
of electricity to run the computers.

Hence the location in Iceland, which has cheap electricity from hydropower
and an abundance of cold air to cool those furiously churning machines.
Even so, a lot of real resources are being used to create virtual objects
with no clear use.

The third money pit is hypothetical. Back in 1936 the economist John
Maynard Keynes argued that increased government spending was needed to
restore full employment. But then, as now, there was strong political
resistance to any such proposal. So Keynes whimsically suggested an
alternative: have the government bury bottles full of cash in disused coal
mines, and let the private sector spend its own money to dig the cash back
up. It would be better, he agreed, to have the government build roads,
ports and other useful things — but even perfectly useless spending would
give the economy a much-needed boost.

Clever stuff — but Keynes wasn’t finished. He went on to point out that the
real-life activity of gold mining was a lot like his thought experiment.
Gold miners were, after all, going to great lengths to dig cash out of the
ground, even though unlimited amounts of cash could be created at
essentially no cost with the printing press. And no sooner was gold dug up
than much of it was buried again, in places like the gold vault of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where hundreds of thousands of gold bars
sit, doing nothing in particular.

Keynes would, I think, have been sardonically amused to learn how little
has changed in the past three generations. Public spending to fight
unemployment is still anathema; miners are still spoiling the landscape to
add to idle hoards of gold. (Keynes dubbed the gold standard a “barbarous
relic.”) Bitcoin just adds to the joke. Gold, after all, has at least some
real uses, e.g., to fill cavities; but now we’re burning up resources to
create “virtual gold” that consists of nothing but strings of digits.

I suspect, however, that Adam Smith would have been dismayed.

Smith is often treated as a conservative patron saint, and he did indeed
make the original case for free markets. It’s less often mentioned,
however, that he also argued strongly for bank regulation — and that he
offered a classic paean to the virtues of paper currency. Money, he
understood, was a way to facilitate commerce, not a source of national
prosperity — and paper money, he argued, allowed commerce to proceed
without tying up much of a nation’s wealth in a “dead stock” of silver and
gold.

So why are we tearing up the highlands of Papua New Guinea to add to our
dead stock of gold and, even more bizarrely, running powerful computers
24/7 to add to a dead stock of digits?

Talk to gold bugs and they’ll tell you that paper money comes from
governments, which can’t be trusted not to debase their currencies. The odd
thing, however, is that for all the talk of currency debasement, such
debasement is getting very hard to find. It’s not just that after years of
dire warnings about runaway inflation, inflation in advanced countries is
clearly too low, not too high. Even if you take a global perspective,
episodes of really high inflation have become rare. Still, hyperinflation
hype springs eternal.

Bitcoin seems to derive its appeal from more or less the same sources, plus
the added sense that it’s high-tech and algorithmic, so it must be the wave
of the future.

But don’t let the fancy trappings fool you: What’s really happening is a
determined march to the days when money meant stuff you could jingle in
your purse. In tropics and tundra alike, we are for some reason digging our
way back to the 17th century.

The game Dragon Tale is very lagyy! Tip or do i something wrong with start
the game

I’m confused. Is MtGox tor-friendly? What’s the best for-friendly bit coin
exchange?

I just caculated,if you use bit coin generator every time you generate for
free you get 0.00000002 bitcoins,if you want to procces your pc for 2
bitcoins you will need 100 000 000 times to click generate button ,that is
every time about 1 hour!

Could you go ahead and not go ahead with beginning every sentence with “Go
ahead and…” 

Please donate small bitcoin for my: 1HvA46qTp1sLBasBzS5NLjNueJbvo2Ekna

THANKS!

How much is 1 bitcoin worth? And how long to mine it with a gamers high end
pc???

mt.gox doesn’t take dwolla anymore

free good way for free bitcoins http://freebitco.in/?r=52375

http://www.neonymous.com/id/chiara

get started with bit coin using http://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet
and to not spend money to see if u like it use
https://btcclicks.com/?r=4305eeba
its a pay per click site all you do is view a site wait for the 15 sec
timer then free bitcoins

False. There is a central monitoring system, a network of computers, who
keep track and maintain the distributed system. It keeps records and
properties of all computers and users that are a part of the network,
otherwise you wouldn’t be able to be aware of the others and their
accounts. It’s made to record how many computers and users there are
worldwide.

@GeorgeeRobson yeah that video doesn’t say shit other than, we gonna use
machines to make everything, and have everyone fill out a survey to see
what they like best, and by magic engineers are going to determine the best
way to make the machines and magically know the best way to make the
machines do w/e they are supposed to do. Oh and ofc we can’t use money,
that is like some god awe full sin. seriously the video is nonsense empty
rhetoric. The only thing they got right is its all voluntary.

Money isn’t real. Yes it is (Used to be “Backed”) but in sense its a piece
of paper exchange for goods and services. Capital will be needed in one way
or another for goods and services. To say Money is real is laughable. All
you need is a hard day of work, a beer, and a nice relaxing night of sleep.

People who say that this currency is imaginary forget that ALL currency is
‘imaginary’. The problem with the current currency is that it is CORRUPT.
It can be printed/digitally created at will. When you come to pick it up
your money, they say “Whops, we don’t actually have that money”. Then they
file for bankruptcy and get even more money from you through bailout.
Bitcoin already has footing and will make central banks obsolete. Which is
why banks will do EVERYTHING to convince you otherwise

@RustyKalashnikov That’s not how bitcoin works. At all.

meat and cannabis!! meat and cannabis!!

@salsa20 So you’re either too stupid to know what a ponzi sheme is, or
you’re more likely a detractor working for the Federal Reserve, because
ponzi sheme only refers to investments, and bitcoins aren’t investments but
currencies

@RustyKalashnikov There is no digital bank and no way to track transactions
to tax. Your supply of bitcoins is simply a computer file. Like any other
good, it’s up to you to protect it – whether you store it encrypted locally
or in a cloud. The exchanges are done p2p – no middleman, no central
authority, no coercion. It’s entirely decentralized and voluntary.

i here that obama will pay you too bitcoins if you vote for him, im voting
twice!!!11!!!! i here that michelle obama will pay you too bitchcoins if
you vote for her husband, im voating thrice!!!!!!two@@

muy de acuerdo con Terry, si te convence adelante, si no, olvídalo y sigue
tu camino. para los interesados en Bitcoin, hay una aplicación muy buena
que encontré en internet, utilizaba BTCbalance pero tenia algunos problemas
con la cartera, estas pequeñas imperfecciones las tienes cubiertas con
bitbalance esta aplicación para android te permitirá seguir y gestionanr
tus balances en tiempo real, es muy bueno.

Game over man…Game OVER!

@salsa20 The transactions are anonymous if you keep your personal info
separate from the public key associated with the transaction. If you have
to expose your personal info – e.g. mail an item in exchange for Bitcoins –
use a different public key for the transaction. If you want to keep your IP
and thus, your ISP and personal info separate from the transaction, execute
the transaction through a VPN or proxy service such as TOR.

@chronikful you totally just proved batmanthe’s point. kudos hater.