[cryptome] Re: 1st British Bitcoin Exchange due to open
- From: Aftermath <aftermath.thegreat@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "cryptome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <cryptome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2015 05:54:45 -0700
Hi Doug,
you make some excellent points on this fascinating subject.
For those reasons, I submit that governments aren't in the slightest
bothered about the influence of Bitcoin...it is just too small in the
market
place. In fact, though a wonderful piece of mathematical invention, it is
quite useless, like all good art...to paraphrase Oscar Wilde... :-).
ATB
Dougie.
While I agree it is not an immediate threat to governments I believe there
is huge potential that blockchain technologies (not bitcoin per se) can
disrupt the current financial systems controlled by banks and governments.
bitcoin has problems and is not perfect. Its volatile and it is still
cumbersome to use and even more difficult to understand for the layman so
adoption has been slow.
I think at some point an altcoin will be mass adopted. Bitcoin might
survive and become the gateway to the new altcoin, or it might fizzle out
and become obsolete legacy code.
If cryptocurrency gets a market cap that rivals developed countries
GDPs then the game will change. Like you say, if you cant cash out then
it becomes worthless but what if currency becomes so wide spread that there
is no need to cash out.
I do think there is concern from governments that this may happen and
efforts are being made to devalue btc but the efforts are subtle.
When the banking cartels start to realize that open source cryptocoins
might make their fiat look like usery and the confidence in fiat starts to
decrease then their efforts might suddenly become not so subtle. Its not
hard to imagine several banks pooling their resorces together to create
super computer that will give them enough computing power to double spend
coins. I would imagine they might do this unnoticed for some time to
maximize their impact once its discovered.
quantum computing may be another threat, but my thoughts are hypothetical
scenarios
the point im trying to make is that there is a lot of power to be lost (and
gained) when we talk about a new technology like bitcoin. We are literally
talking about potentially all the fiat money in the world
potentially devaluating because a currency that no one single
entity controls and has a public ledger.
This is pretty much the opposite of how current banks make profit. They
enjoy having the ability to print off more money when it's convenient to do
so and as a side effect they can manipulate an economy and profit from that
knowledge as well. Yes, they cannot predict everything all the time in
the economy but knowing essential variables that only private banks know
will give those banks quite an edge when it comes to
predicting price fluctuations.
Im not saying that cryptocurrency cant be manipulated but its not in the
same model that traditional fiat follows so its a new game for the banks
and governments where they will have so much less control over the currency
and will have to figure out new ways to keep the power they currently have.
Decentralized systems can be manipulated but if the wealth distribution is
spread out well then there might be a legitimate cause for concern for
banks. right now the bitcoin network has a few ways it could be exploited
into price manipulation. satoshi premined a shit tonne of coins. if he
decided to liquidate all his bitcoin at once then you could predict with
confidence that the price of btc would drop, as would public confidence in
the currency likely would too. The 51% attack is a feasible reality that
may severely damage confidence in bitcoin. innovative altcoins are
starting to solve these problems. there are coins that have no premining
and coins that have no mining at all so 51% attacks wont be an issue as
long as distribution of the coin is widespread.
Im sure banks and intelligence agencies have done threat analysis with
bitcoin against their interests. If they havent already acted in subtle or
non subtle ways to keep cryptocurrency out of the mainstream, then you
should be sure that they have atleast considered doing something for if
(when?) it does become a threat to them, but Ill spare you my theories of
conspiracy where events were orchestrated to sway public opinion may have
already happened.
P.S. I notice that some peer to peer organisations are putting bit mining
into their sharing systems...without asking permission...Lots of folks
aren't very pleased about it...including me...I don't have enough bandwidth
as it is, without sharing it surreptitiously. Now, that is something to be
shit-scared of... :-).
This is indeed a dirty practice being done mostly by dishonest rouge
developers.
Youd likely notice a hit on your system performance before noticing any
drop in bandwidth. mining is generally very low in bandwidth and high in
cpu usage. Try sticking to open source programs as it is easyer to spot
malicious code in open sourced programs.
Id be more worried about becoming infected with a bot program tnat not only
targets my cpu cycles but also monitors for my bank account and credit card
info passwords etc , as it more likely your computer get infected and
assimilated into a botnet than download a quickly discontinued version of
utorrent or something.
anyways, I apologize for my babbling as i am very sleep deprived and
slightly intoxicated. Im sure when i read this tomorow ill be pretty
embarrassed for such sloppy writing.
take care, list :)
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