Bitcoins, the virtual currency. What the hell?
Do any DJTT members use bitcoins or have experience in owning, trading, paying, or receiving payment with this virtual currency. It sounds pretty amazing and pretty bs all at the same time.
The bitcoin market just crashed.
Not on my watch, they’re still climbing steady as far as I know ^^
(and as far as bitcoin-central.net tells me)
There was quite a lot of coverage of it. Bitcoin panic selling halves its value - BBC News
extremely volatile currency, good concepts behind it. Im currently investigating on mining bitcoins.
ahahahhaha,
the concept behind it is that you “donate” your computer time to process transactions of other people and in rewards for your services you are payed with bitcoins
Bitcoins are an interesting concept and currency. But the scheme is flawed in many ways, and this is where bitcoins get their BS from. There’s only one official branch exchange (Mt. Gox), so hackers will DDoS attack the site, cause delays in transactions, and increase the value / make people speculate and thus make the currency fluctuate in value as people gobble them up or sell them off in a panic.
A hacker can also use a virus to hijack the resources of a bunch of computers and create a botnet, then use those computers to harvest bitcoins illegally.
They provide much greater anonymity than using a credit card or PayPal, so they get used for illicit purposes a lot. Plus they aren’t taxed yet, so governments are now attempting to tax them (ie. the Canadian govt), and law enforcement is attempting to tighten their grip on it. Bitcoins are one more thing that add to the “cybersecurity” concerns in politics lately for these reasons.
Slashdot has a lot of good discussions and posts about bitcoin. I’d look there if you want more info on it.