Topic: 2012-11-25 Slashdot - Bitcoin Mining Reward About To Halve (Read 1801 times)

Thanks for these words, they'll keep me posting .

Incidentally, it was slashdot that introduced me to bitcoin. Friggin' even had to happen TWICE for me to look into it deeply enough to get it. So who am I bashing these guys for brushing bitcoin off on first sight because they just didn't research hard enough?

Technomage is correct. I've read every story on Slashdot about Bitcoin and posted to most of them. The level of understanding is getting a lot better.

Slashdot is a snapshot of the understanding and thoughts of the wider tech community. It isn't special in any way, beyond the posters there being more technical and better educated than the average man on the street. The fact that a lot of people misunderstand Bitcoin there is because, hey, guess what, a lot of people misunderstand Bitcoin in general.

The good news is that as Technomage says, you can actually see people learning and teaching themselves and the general quality of the discussion going up and up. The first times I saw Bitcoin discussed on Slashdot (and various mailing lists I'm on), there were a lot of posts saying things like "It's gonna get hacked" or "this is a stupid idea, botnets will double spend and it'll all be over". Then there were people saying it's illegal to make new currencies. Etc. Etc. Over time these criticisms have fallen by the wayside and nobody claims botnets will destroy Bitcoin anymore because there's an existence proof they're wrong.

Don't worry. Lots of people read these online debates and make up their own mind, then come to join our little community. Remember that one of the first big influxes of new users and spikes in the price was after coverage on Slashdot.

That could be because you just aren't paying attention. Other possible explanations are left as an exercise for the reader...

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17852/army_of_fake_social_media_friends_to_promote_propaganda

I don't believe the government is all that smart or evil.

In my opinion the quality of the comments has been getting much better at Slashdot. I don't know overall, but I have time to read only the highlighted comments (which have a high score) and in this particular article I'd say that the majority of highlighted comments were actually good. I think it's a big difference to earlier Bitcoin mentions.

+1 ...even on sites where it's all about money. Astroturf might really be one of the most effective ways for *.gov to resist Bitcoin.   

I wouldn't rule out the possibility that some of the posters involved are hired to shape opinions on certain topics. There's an entire industry devoted to social media astroturfing.

I don't know what it is, but the slashdot crowd seems to get dumber and lazier every day.

I don't get why they're so hostile towards bitcoin and don't even understand it. All the talk: "it's not anonymous". Well that's not the point, guys, it's about censorship resistance, "it's not fair", well neither has gold mining been fair, has it, "there's not enough bitcoins around", well jesus fucking christ, turn on brain and read, it's even explained something like 5 times in this very slashdot thread!

I've replied on most of the slashdot articles, but I just get downvoted or ignored although I'm voicing valid corrections and explanations in a friendly manner.

Yep, I am amazed how many are stuck on the "only 21 million" bitcoins will ever be in circulation thing.  When writing the article I was trying to focus on the less tech savy crowd but I assumed that they would still know about simple division.

I doubt it. When reading the slashdot comments I'm struck by how this must be the last bastion of misunderstanding tech users. Obviously slashdotters are far less tech savvy than I believed.

Maybe that will raise bitcoin price even more than the reward drop 

Cool, one of the links in that article points to my little mining blog (http://mineforeman.com/2012/11/23/halving-day-is-almost-upon-us/) that I use to keep the people that I run mining hardware for informed.

700 hits in the first half an hour, that more hits than it has got in the few months that I have been running it.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/12/11/25/2124236/bitcoin-mining-reward-about-to-halve