Topic: Casascius and other physical bitcoins (Read 1368 times)

That seems to be the real problem with the media and old school bankster/wall street guys. Their tiny minds can't comprehend a currency you can't physically touch so it immediatly becomes not-real in their minds off the bat and are instantly dismissive of this weird Internet funny money without understanding anything about it at all, which in a way is understandable given we've had 100 years of fiat currency as our daily staple. Bitcoin is a radical change from that model.

Glad you're here to help Bitcoin's image by making real coins people can see, touch, and ask about. It makes them curious and wanting more. Plus, gold coins! I definitely want one someday so I can show it to my future kids and go "back in my day..."

Can we look forward to a 1 Satoshi coin someday

If Casascius had a bitcoin for every Bitcoin news article featuring an image of one of his coins...he'd have a lot more bitcoins! I think that has been one of the largest impacts of his project, even if it might be misleading to the first time reader.

what's the eta for the 2013 10btc silver coins?

Novelty gift? Or priceless relic from the start of the financial future. People won't be trading Casascius coins in the future, they will be keeping them in bank vaults.

10 X 1 BTC coins from Casascius was my fourth Bitcoin ecosystem transaction in late 2011. 

I gave 7 of them away that Christmas and every one of those people had no idea what I was giving them at the time, but they are all Bitcoin fans now. :-).

Love your work.

Yes, I'd say so. Even in my own limited experience, they've had a great effect. I gave a bunch away over the holidays, and every recipient was far more curious about bitcoin once they had the coin in their hand. A number of them now own non-physical bitcoin and have done the research to understand it. Good stuff.

The whole reason I created these in the first place was to produce a functional proof of concept, something for people to wrap their minds around, something pretty to inspire non-technical people to want to talk and learn about bitcoin.  I was tired of hearing that bitcoin was a coin you can't hold because it's virtual, and felt that a large portion of the human population would be turned off by bitcoin if that premise were really true.

Yeah, their destiny is to be a novelty gift, or a collectible.  Casascius Coins are not money.

The whole point of having the hologram security was to illustrate a point: so long as the private key is kept private, the bitcoin is good.  Whether somebody with a sophisticated imaging system could tamper the coin under laboratory conditions was not a concern relative to the primary functional purpose behind producing the coins.

But yeah, sure.  Assuming I come up with a way to mass produce these, and assuming there's a better way to secure them that makes them more secure, then I wouldn't be opposed to doing it.  I just don't consider my product "broken" to know that somebody, somewhere, with a lot of money, or perhaps not, can defeat the hologram sticker's tamper resistance.

If and when it becomes widely known that Casascius Coins are either tamperable, being counterfeited, or otherwise being attacked, people will just put up their guards and stop assuming that just because one looks good, that it is.  Oh well.  It is a risk I accepted going into it.  But so far, the mission for which Casascius Coins were created is accomplished I think.  Bitcoin has finally reached criticality, and Casascius Coins were one of many forces that helped that happen.

So if you recognize that tampers are possible, does this mean you don't actually expect adoption? So, their destiny is just to be a novelty gift?

Can I ask you this: Have your anti-tamper methods ramped up since the explosion in price?

I am working on smaller coins. The 25btc coin once gone will be gone.

I assume tampers will be possible. It's a cat and mouse game and has always been outside the scope of the intended purpose of the project. If they get tampered, it will probably damp the secondary market or at least buyers will be doing more due diligence as to who has possessed the coin (something cryptography might be able to help with as part of a future solution).

I've searched and nothing really. A 25 bit coin coin won't be able to circulate once the price increases only a little bit. If the price doubles, that's almost 12500 dollars. Unless each coin has at least that amount of money put in just making it secure and tamper-proof, there's no way it can circulate due to a lack of trust.

So they either needs to make denominations way way way smaller, and/or figure out some way have cost effective security in every single coin they mint that can account for future increases in bitcoin price. The latter just seems to unfeasible. Even 1 btc coins are starting to look risky.

5 and 10 BTC? I have a 25 BTC Casascius coin, and he's made some 1000 BTC coins in the past.

I think Mike has gotten this question before; I recall another thread about it...

Casascius in particular; are they ramping up their security and anti-tamper methods? Particularly since they have coins that are in five and ten denominations. What happens when bitcoin reaches 5000 dollars a coin? for even a 1 BTC physical coin, it would be economical to use industrial-grade tampering/bypass methods to get the code out of the coin without evidence of tampering.

So my question is this: how well can their security scale? And are they shifting to much lower denominations? The website was unclear