Topic: How many people pushing bitcoin on this forum have a vested interest? (Read 2637 times)

I have typed an address incorrectly and hit send... and the client informed me that the address was invalid and nothing was lost.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address

That's not a currency, that's a payment system.

Please explain how you "reverse fraudulent transactions within 24-48 hours" when you hand someone a $100 bill, or a €20 note?


I suspect that insurance will come along eventually.  There are always people/companies willing to take on the risk of others in exchange for a reasonable (or sometimes unreasonable) compensation.


Bitcoin is a technology protocol.  It is still in it's infancy.  The internet was just as difficult to use and just as limited to a small subset of the population in the 1980s.  Given time to mature, additional layers will be built on top of that protocol to bring interfaces to the masses.


No they wouldn't.  Giving away something to people who don't understand what they are receiving is wasteful and destructive.  Those who believe in and care about the long term success of bitcoin would do exactly what they are already doing.  Educating others and investing their time and resources in advancements that improve upon what is currently available.


Has not been demonstrated to be a problem yet.  Just how big are the databases of other worldwide accounting systems?


Clearly you don't understand what problems bitcoin solves or how it solves them.  Perhaps you should try reading the "Satoshi Whitepaper" before you try to pass judgement on something that you clearly don't even understand.


Among other things it allows any node to verify the source of any payment without needing to trust any centralized entity.


Instead of "assuming" and then passing judgement on your own assumptions, try learning, and then passing judgement on actual facts.


This is clearly not true in all cases.


It is possible to acquire bitcoin without using exchanges (note that mainstream exchanges that allow you to exchange one currency for another ALSO charge transaction fees, but you conveniently ignore this when complaining about the bitcoin exchange fees). There are vendors that offer lower prices for bitcoin payment.


Someone is paying for that.  Usually it is you with lots of "hidden" charges (such as ATM fees, dormant account fees, purchase of checks, statement fees, teller fees, excessive use fees, insufficient use fees).  In addition if you pay with a debit card, the bank charges the merchant a fee, and the merchant needs to make sure they are profitable, so they simply increase the cost of everything they sell.  In this way you are indirectly paying your bank through the purchases you make.


Definitely it is!

bitcoin will never gain widespread acceptance if people are required to store secured wallets in separate computers or operating systems and risk having their coins stolen by scammers simply out of ignorance. Bitcoin has a high barrier to entry... basically you need to be a power user to understand it, and there's too many people who still want to 'cash in' by having bitcoin go to $10,000....

A bitcoin alternative will ultimately take over, assuming crypto currencies survive... being able to reverse fraudulent transactions within 24-48 hours would be a good first start, as would insurance of funds and ease of use. How many people actually use bitcoins? I bet the number is under a half million... a small pool of people still hold a large number of the coins... these people, if they really cared about bitcoin and it's spread, would selflessly donate their coins anonymously in giveaway threads if they have over say 1000 total coins.

Also the whole problem of the ever increasing blockchain size... ultimately a currency that terminates blockchain records after 6 months would be more secure and more ideal to keep the size in check. What's the point of holding every transaction record that ever existed forever?  I suppose you need this info in order to maintain information in bitcoin addresses I'm assuming?


Right now, with fees, it simply costs more to use bitcoins... vendors that do take it tend to inflate prices, and exchanges that do business charge transaction fees. Right now I can store cash in a bank for no fee. I hope it works out, but right now it's still very much the 'wild west'

If people who own a lot of Bitcoin don't support protocol development, Wall Street will. Trezor is just about ready to hit market I believe? They've frozen orders. Times will be good when a trusted hardware wallet is no more expensive than a thumb drive.

I'm not talking about the technical issues - just the user friendly/layman issues.

Apparently we aren't allowed to demonstrate agreement with an opinion or add emphasis to a fact with a simple "+1".  I've recently had my "+1" posts removed.  Therefore, I'm typing out this message to indicate that I believe the quoted information needs extra emphasis to avoid being unnoticed in the rest of the chatter in this discussion. I may (or may not) also have added bold or underline tags to the text in the quote above to further emphasize the parts that I think are important to understand or be aware of.

Hey OP!



Got overwhelmed by the answers?

I would think most people have various levels of a vested interest since most people in here own bitcoin. I personally care more about bitcoin getting more adoption and improving the way consumers and merchants make various types of transactions but certainly if the exchange rate of bitcoin goes up then I benefit from that as well since I have holdings.

I try to be "honest" with my vested interest though when talking to people about bitcoin. I have no problems talking about some of the road blocks bitcoin currently faces, risks, and things that need to be improved upon.  I try not to over exaggerate things when talking to people about bitcoin.  For example the other day someone asked me why they should buy bitcoin just to make a purchase they can already make with their debit card (they were talking about overstock). I was honest and told them that as of right now it might not be practical since they could just use their debit card with no fee on the purchase. I also made sure to let them know bitcoin is in it's infancy though and just because its not practical in every situation right now (probably wont ever be for EVERY situation) the potential is still huge.

Care to teach the rest of us why you believe this to be the case?

edit - brevity of quote

None, yet. But I'm fairly circumspect.

which scam did you get caught up in ?

I actually had zero invested, but laid out about $700+ in buying a bitcoin plus over $2500 in mining rig equipment in the past month. $979 for a block erupter cube and about $1500 to upgrade one GPU rig and add 2 new GPU rigs for non-BTC altcoins. So far my equity is about $1250 in returns.  So I still need about $1950 to ROI, and it's currently earning me about $20 a day, so I still have 100 days, but as the diff goes up on both BTC and altcoins it may take a bit longer. But I'm hoping this craze catches on to the mainstream and the actual coin values jump soon. That's when it will pay off. I'm earning a low income and had to take a lot out on my credit cards, and I'm old enough to be only a bit more than 2 years from retirement, but I'm a computer geek, and "work from home" YES, I like when the miner profits roll in, checking the graphs each day, etc... It's worth just being in the game for the excitement. And you can bet I coin hop for the ones that do better from day to day, and hold the ones I think are good investments. I'm sure it will pay off eventually, but in extra income per month after the ROI period, I don't know as the situation is changing so quickly.

Right now I would say, most people vested in bitcoins, if not all, are doing so for the purely speculative matters. Argue all you want, but that's just the way it is. It's new and exciting, so of course that's going to attract those aspects of it.




I'm still fairly new here, but so far this seems to be the case with me as well, and it leaves a bad impression in my mind, but there are intelligent people here who have very valid and some good thought provoking discussions and arguments that aren't filled with extremest non-sense. Let's not generalize too much  

But personally I feel the more intervention from the government, the better. If you're trying to make a case for why bitcoins should be a new currency, you have to have some regulation or it just will not function for anything more then a novelty.

Yes. You should leave now, especially if you're not good at recognizing other people's motives.

Zero that's the reality of what happened to the post office, it was a fundamental swing

you cannot push against a trend like that and win,

I can't argue for or against the "problems" of bitcoin but hopefully I can answer this question

Is this forum skewed and a dangerous place to lurk for advice and an objective view?

-It depends on who you listen to. On some occasions, group-think occurs and people who have minimal understanding follow the herd.
On the other hand, there are experts who have done their homework and have a greater understanding. It is easy to tell that these people have learned about crypto-currencies over time and have good advice.

It's funny because you make the claim that Bitcoin is flawed yet fail to mention any of the flaws, here it goes:
1) Bitcoin is not anonymous, it's pseudoanonymous
2) Mining becomes too centralized, the blockchain is too big, potential 51% attack
3) SHA256 could be broken in the coming years

I have bitcoin, I want them to go up in value, so I want new users, so I want you to invest. It is selfish, but I also believe it is good for you. If you have some bitcoins, you will profit on the appreciation of value in the coming years. Two years. Maybe holding only one year will net you a good profit, probably better than any other investment. Risk is - you never know with risk, but - I consider risk to be low. So jump in, it is not too late.

Typo? Not gonna make you lose bitcoins. PITA to type in, but safe from typos n

You bet. But I would've thought the definition of easy money would require a large dollop of zero risk/ sure thing. Bitcoin's a long way from that though it has paid off amazingly for anyone who was around from the early days and has pulled out some of their investment into other currencies.

There was a massive risk of failure when it was just a few enthusiasts talking to each other. It's a whole new dimension of risk as it attempts to go global. I guess that's what excites people so.