You just hit on a great idea. Greencoin, the ecologically responsible cryptocurrency. Actually, I'd be surprised if something like that didn't already exist.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

I am not a fan of fiat currency and would prefer it be backed by gold. However, it is the system we have that is fully sanctioned by our government. And the reason that the dollar has value is because of the scarcity of it that requires labor or capital investment to earn more of it. All of us understand the relative value of a $20 bill vs a $100 bill. I suspect none of us, except maybe for tech savvy guys like BRick, have any comprehension of the "work" required to mine one bitcoin.

I may be on the wrong side of history with bitcoin, but I am completely comfortable sitting back and watching another bubble come and go. The best part will be all the people jumping on the train that will wonder where the U.S. Government was during said bubble and why it didn't protect innocent consumers from greedy crypto peddlers.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I'm gonna guess you earned more last year than, let's say, Richard Nixon ever earned in his life. That isn't a reflection of the value of your skills or Nixon's, but rather the precipitous drop in the value of the Dollar over the last 50 years.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

Also, I agree with you that there are scoundrels now flocking to cryptos. But that isn't a reflection on the concept.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

If we tied the Fiat currency to gold, as we should, then inflation would disappear. Unfortunately, modern economists and the Fed feel that inflation is a necessary evil that causes people to consume in the short term rather than waiting for things to get cheaper or cost the same in two years. Modern economics is wholly flawed, and we see it with Central Bank activities. That folly does not justify things like crypto currencies.

You have absolutely no way to know what a crypto currency should be worth. It has no underlying value and it has no practical usage. It is a bubble, a house of cards, and sure it is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. And someday no person will be willing to pay anything.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

The SEC is a bit late to the game, but they are starting to assert authority and shut down coin offerings. Other countries have already banned them.

The Feds, in the name of stopping terrorism and drug deals, will eventually crack down on bitcoins et al. But I suspect the bubble will burst before that actually happens.

The underlying technology has a lot of value for vetting transactions, so I see block chain surviving the coming bust. The currencies will not.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

If we break it down enough, gold has little "real value". After all, you can't eat gold. The "value" of gold exists primarily in man's brain.

And no offense, Dennis, but I have yet to hear anyone who I really thought understood the underlying technology call Bitcoin a "bubble". You can go online and find podcasts and videos from when the exchange rate for Bitcoin was around $2000 USD and hear Real Smart Guys telling you how it was a bubble that would burst soon.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

No offense taken. There is a distinct possibility that I am 100% wrong. I was almost convinced that the housing bubble was for real as my arguments against it seemed to whither over time. We laughed about the dotcom bubble including the guy who sat next to me who bought the QQQ's at the absolute peak or the fool who owned mothernature.com.

I think the rise of bitcoin's price is a sign of the current global asset bubble. But this time it's different right?

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Just exactly how wealthy is deni$? Nixon made $200,000/year during his 5-year presidency alone. Is deni$ a multimillionaire?

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Technically you CAN eat gold.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

There are certainly cryptocurrencies that will end up being worth nothing at all. Hell, Bitcoin might be one of them. (I doubt that.) Many of these ICOs are not much different than your typical pump-and-dump on the Vancouver exchange. But there will be one or a few prevailing cryptocurrencies.

If you look at the number of transactions, Ethereum appears to be used more than Bitcoin. I say "appears" because we don't really know what a transaction consists of. If all it is is an exchange to USD or another currency, I wouldn't call that a real transaction. In this case I mean an exchange for goods or services.

But Peter Schiff likes to compare Bitcoin to pets.com. Bitcoin is not pets.com. It can't go bankrupt.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

True. I was fortunate enough to dine at Katsu a couple times before he closed up shop.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

Shut down the reactor.

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Many of the currencies do not support mining, specifically citing the energy resources that are required.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

How are transactions proofed?

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

I'm a bit over my skis on this, but I think they just create 8 million coins (or whatever number) and then the transfer of coins works the same way as the Bitcoin does, it is just that no new coins can enter the market. I'm not entirely sure how they decide who gets the initial 8 million though.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

But you still have to prove the transactions and provide some incentive for doing so.

I tried to GOOGLE IT! and I see the guy who invented BitTorrent is working on an alternative that somehow utilizes available storage.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

Yeah, maybe they take a cut of each transaction? My cousin is all over all of this stuff -- I'll see if he knows the difference between mineable vs non-mineable coins.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

I laughed at Paul Krugman in this video and thought of this post.

https://www.facebook.com/businessinside ... 392929071/

"Its some fancy technological thing that nobody understands" = "Its some fancy technological thing that I don't understand."

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

The guy who created Litecoin sold all his coins today. This can only be good for Litecoin, right?

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Alright, just finished up with my cousin and I have the scoop. There are two main ways of cryptocurrency paying out -- the first is proof-of-work, which is what Bitcoin uses (and a bunch of the others) where you mine for coins. The second one is called proof-of-stake, where you keep your wallet open so everyone can see how much you have, and then based partially on the size of your stake, you are awarded additional coins. The incentive to keep your wallet open is to have more copies of the blockchain out there, making it harder to hack the coin. Others do it based on the age of the coin, where if you hold onto a coin for more than 30 days, you have a greater chance of getting the next coin.

Wiki says that PoW uses about 16 gallons of gasoline in energy per Bitcoin in 2014, and PoS is more than a thousand-fold more energy efficient. My cousin also said that some coins have PoW implementations that only will work up to a fixed number of coins, and then switch over to PoS. He's way into this stuff; he talked for an hour about it and thinks he is sitting on a $3k investment that will be worth anywhere from $300k to $750k by the end of 2018 (if the bubble doesn't burst, which he realizes is a very real possibility, and says will at some point.) Now we're going to go bowling.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

Ouch. I am sure a few suckers got smacked.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you talking about guys who were looking for a short term gain? I would advise buying the cryptocurrencies and forgetting about them. Check back for your pleasant surprise in about ten years.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

Come on, don’t play dumb. BitCoin fell 40% in a matter of days. They reeled in the suckers and now they’re getting sheared. Normally long term is the way to go but not with something that has no inherent value.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I love the concept of currencies that are outside of the control of central banks, but remember, a currency should be a means of exchange, not an investment in itself. It's hard to be a meaningful currency for any sort of exchange when you have wild fluctuations in value.

Sure central bank backed currencies float, but the relative change in value is usually small day to day

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Who is it you think "reeled in" suckers? If China can't figure out how to wreck confidence in Bitcoin, one will be worth $100,000 in five years. I'm sorry if some goof panicked.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

Well, guess you nailed this one so hard I'm almost willing to consider your argument that supply-side economics aren't full-bore bullshit.

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Nope. Bitcoin is just getting started. It's not just an arrow straight up.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

JORR is one more good pump and dump away from inviting people to stay at his castle during the world's fair.

just another normal day in bitcoin where the currency loses half its value in in 45 minutes then recovers most of it by midnight.