If cryptocurrencies do turn out to be universal currencies, companies and vendors around the world would choose the most popular one which is Bitcoin. For them to support multiple cryptocurrencies would take a lot of toll of resources and management.
Bitcoin is the most popular at this time. That doesn't mean that it can't/won't change. 
Topic: it is certainly true that bitcoin is unsafe, but the alternatives are unsafer (Read 725 times)
November 11, 2013, 11:29:16 AM
November 11, 2013, 10:58:58 AM
If cryptocurrencies do turn out to be universal currencies, companies and vendors around the world would choose the most popular one which is Bitcoin. For them to support multiple cryptocurrencies would take a lot of toll of resources and management.
November 11, 2013, 09:16:47 AM
If paypal gets hacked/a bank gets robbed, does that make fiat unsafe?
November 10, 2013, 07:10:49 PM
"more unsafe" not "unsafer"
November 10, 2013, 07:09:33 PM
I see some serious campain against bitcoin safety lately. Of course exchanges are not safe for your BTC. Dont keep any BTC there, or accept the risk of losing em if your trader. Simple as this
November 10, 2013, 07:08:59 PM
Clearly having an offline wallet is the way to go. However using established services such as http://blockchain.info/wallet to send small amount of money online when buying products seems like an acceptable risk; especially if they are small amounts each time.
I don't see why alternative currencies would be unsafer from a technical stand point. Possibly a totally different story from an investment view point
.
I don't see why alternative currencies would be unsafer from a technical stand point. Possibly a totally different story from an investment view point
. November 10, 2013, 06:57:06 PM
I believe everyone should have an offline wallet it's much safer.
November 10, 2013, 02:07:46 PM
Bitcoin is not unsafe, the exchange is unsafe, don't confuse the two!
Be your own bank, install Bitcoin-QT, and be responsible for your own coin security, and help decentralize the network.
This.Be your own bank, install Bitcoin-QT, and be responsible for your own coin security, and help decentralize the network.
If a website accepts USD, and it gets hacked, is USD unsafe?
November 10, 2013, 01:53:24 PM
http://bitcoinviews.com/live-is-bitcoin-proving-to-be-plain-and-simply-unsafe
Of course, 45 percent of bitcoin exchanges fail. If you know the admin's root password, you can obviously visit the exchange server and steal all its money, if they did not use a receive-only deterministic wallet. How do the admin get their password? From the hosting company, of course.
Of course, 45 percent of bitcoin exchanges fail. If you know the admin's root password, you can obviously visit the exchange server and steal all its money, if they did not use a receive-only deterministic wallet. How do the admin get their password? From the hosting company, of course.
The matter of your server security. You may store hot wallet, database and other sensitive data in the encrypted folder, which automatically unmount on every root/user login. You may use the first server like a transparent proxy to your main server, which send you sms on every unauthorized login, etc. There are many similar simple solutions, but very often exchangers are managed by enthusiasts, not bank-level security specialists.
November 10, 2013, 08:32:35 AM
Bitcoin is not unsafe, the exchange is unsafe, don't confuse the two!
Be your own bank, install Bitcoin-QT, and be responsible for your own coin security, and help decentralize the network.
Be your own bank, install Bitcoin-QT, and be responsible for your own coin security, and help decentralize the network.
November 10, 2013, 08:31:08 AM
http://bitcoinviews.com/live-is-bitcoin-proving-to-be-plain-and-simply-unsafe
Of course, 45 percent of bitcoin exchanges fail. If you know the admin's root password, you can obviously visit the exchange server and steal all its money, if they did not use a receive-only deterministic wallet. How do the admin get their password? From the hosting company, of course. A large hosting company does not send just one email with the root password, as you can imagine that they may receive visitors who will tell them that their servers will be used for "terrorism" and that all such passwords must be handed over, along with a gag order, of course. For foreign exchanges, it is just a question of doing pattern matching on the meta data and on the automatically generated email that contains the root password.
If something is possible in theory, all we need is a PoC (Proof of Concept) to figure out what they are doing already and what they will be doing next. There is no need to look into Edward Snowden's stash of documents at all. Just look at the what the existing information infrastructure looks like and what is already possible just in theory.
In approximately every large country in the West, there is a large central government database containing all bank account holders with their names and account numbers. This database is obviously under surveillance by the country's secret services in order to detect who is a "terrorist".
As you can imagine, anybody holding a substantial amount of money in his own name, instead of the name of some anonymous company, must look carefully at the last transactions in his bank account. The freelancers in the secret services and in the bank may accidentally have swapped the order of things to do. Suddenly lots of transactions show up on your account, anti-dated to a date that third parties may not even be able to get a copy of! Your balance is mostly gone! What is there about to happen? This is indeed a mistake, and the mistake is that you are still alive. That was obviously not the idea. Some people just do not understand that in this kind of landscape the sum of their bank account holdings simply forms a bounty on their heads.
Of course, the best targets are people that they have been instructed to watch already. They are famous, have a lot of money, or they are in a situation that lends itself to doing that. Look at what my friend Luis is complaining about:
I got fucked big time. The portuguese government froze/boycotted/stole/impeached the meagre savings that i had in the portuguese bank!!! Alledgedly due to unpaid back taxes (that i remember nothing about since i haven't worked in the wretched country for the last 10 years...) they just grabbed the 5000 euros that were my last.resource.
For them, it was fantastically safe to fake this kind of things, because he won't be coming back to complain, anyway. No need to kill him. This man is still alive.
Riba means Interest. Riba is forbidden in Islamic economic jurisprudence (fiqh) and considered as a major sin. Simply, unjust gains in trade or business, generally through exploitation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba).
Why is it sinful for a muslim name to store a lot of money in these riba banks? Because they were instructed to watch you already, and because the database that you will find with queries they made against this kind of names is exactly what their bosses instructed them to do. Someone committing the sin of receiving or paying riba, that is, usury, may simply no longer fall under the protection of the laws of his Almightiness. Since I am no better than you, this is not really a reproach. If the accounting of sins, the karma, turns out in a wrong way, we may just be going to the same place after this world ;-)
Of course, 45 percent of bitcoin exchanges fail. If you know the admin's root password, you can obviously visit the exchange server and steal all its money, if they did not use a receive-only deterministic wallet. How do the admin get their password? From the hosting company, of course. A large hosting company does not send just one email with the root password, as you can imagine that they may receive visitors who will tell them that their servers will be used for "terrorism" and that all such passwords must be handed over, along with a gag order, of course. For foreign exchanges, it is just a question of doing pattern matching on the meta data and on the automatically generated email that contains the root password.
If something is possible in theory, all we need is a PoC (Proof of Concept) to figure out what they are doing already and what they will be doing next. There is no need to look into Edward Snowden's stash of documents at all. Just look at the what the existing information infrastructure looks like and what is already possible just in theory.
In approximately every large country in the West, there is a large central government database containing all bank account holders with their names and account numbers. This database is obviously under surveillance by the country's secret services in order to detect who is a "terrorist".
As you can imagine, anybody holding a substantial amount of money in his own name, instead of the name of some anonymous company, must look carefully at the last transactions in his bank account. The freelancers in the secret services and in the bank may accidentally have swapped the order of things to do. Suddenly lots of transactions show up on your account, anti-dated to a date that third parties may not even be able to get a copy of! Your balance is mostly gone! What is there about to happen? This is indeed a mistake, and the mistake is that you are still alive. That was obviously not the idea. Some people just do not understand that in this kind of landscape the sum of their bank account holdings simply forms a bounty on their heads.
Of course, the best targets are people that they have been instructed to watch already. They are famous, have a lot of money, or they are in a situation that lends itself to doing that. Look at what my friend Luis is complaining about:
I got fucked big time. The portuguese government froze/boycotted/stole/impeached the meagre savings that i had in the portuguese bank!!! Alledgedly due to unpaid back taxes (that i remember nothing about since i haven't worked in the wretched country for the last 10 years...) they just grabbed the 5000 euros that were my last.resource.
For them, it was fantastically safe to fake this kind of things, because he won't be coming back to complain, anyway. No need to kill him. This man is still alive.
Riba means Interest. Riba is forbidden in Islamic economic jurisprudence (fiqh) and considered as a major sin. Simply, unjust gains in trade or business, generally through exploitation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba).
Why is it sinful for a muslim name to store a lot of money in these riba banks? Because they were instructed to watch you already, and because the database that you will find with queries they made against this kind of names is exactly what their bosses instructed them to do. Someone committing the sin of receiving or paying riba, that is, usury, may simply no longer fall under the protection of the laws of his Almightiness. Since I am no better than you, this is not really a reproach. If the accounting of sins, the karma, turns out in a wrong way, we may just be going to the same place after this world ;-)
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