MetaFilter posts tagged with bitcoin

First they laugh at you, then they send in the Feds

ArkhanJG — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:54:21 -0800

The Department of Homeland Security has apparently seized Mt.Gox's Dwolla account, a key US mobile payments account associated with the largest Bitcoin exchange. Mt.Gox has confirmed that their Dwolla account is disabled, but have not been party to the court order themselves. Dwolla is an unregulated banking service, akin to Paypal. However, as they transfer funds directly from US bank accounts, rather than through Visa, they charge substantially lower fees. Mt.Gox are the largest bitcoin-to-dollar exchange, so Dwolla <>Mt.Gox was a very popular method of converting US dollars to and from the infamous digital currency, bitcoin. It was recently calculated that the equivalent of over 1 exaFLOPS (1000 petaFLOPS) of processing power are being used to 'mine' bitcoins i.e. performing the increasingly complex integer operations to find the bitcoin hashes. That's more than 8 times the power of the top 500 supercomputers combined.

In mathematics we trust.

xowie — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 06:09:57 -0800

The future of Bitcoin. Also, how to buy one at CVS.

Bitcoin The Concert

Foci for Analysis — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:09:32 -0800

Listen To Bitcoin in realtime (Chrome and Firefox 19+).

Government Ban On Bitcoin Would Fail Miserably

Shit Parade — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 01:58:03 -0800

Jon Matonis is responding to a blog post which itself is citing a European Central Bank paper on virtual currency(pdf) Mean while Bitcoin has had a remarkable rally recently, with a market cap of ~$225 Million USD. More charts here. Currently MtGox is the largest USD-BTC exchange(watch it live). previous

Monetarists Anonymous

the man of twists and turns — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 04:42:37 -0800

Three Years In, Bitcoin Gains Momentum Bitcoin, a digital-only currency, has made a comeback since the major crash. But Bitcoin lives in a legal gray area, combining the anonymity of cash with the anonymity of the 'Net. Formerly only readily available for online transactions, debit cards and better public awareness are planned. But there are still security issues - last month, $250,000 was stolen from a trading site. Matthew Feeney at Reason credits the rise of Bitcoin and alternative currencies to fears of a currency collapse. Previously: Bitcoin with Multi-Signature Transactions

Romney in a Brave New World

Clementines4ever — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 09:26:26 -0800

On September 4, 2012, the first ever Bitcoin extortion attempt was made public. The target? Mitt Romney and his tax returns.

BitCoin with Multi-signature Transactions

jeffburdges — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 05:29:45 -0800

BitCoin appears to be gaining a measure of stability, at least temporarily, through anger at banks, paypal, visa, etc., the activities of currency traders, and increased activity, as well as the promise of multi-signature transactions. There is some non-technical advocacy for multisignature transactions in Gavin Andresen's BIP 16 / 17 in layman's terms, and more technical detail in Amir "genjix" Taaki's The Truth behind BIP 16 and 17. "I want more secure wallets. There's unanimous agreement among developers that the easiest, fastest way to get there is with multi-signature transactions—bitcoins that require approval from more than one person or device to spend." - Gavin Andresen

Code is Law

jeffburdges — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:42:57 -0800

YaCy is an open source fully decentralized peer-to-peer search engine designed prevent any single entity from exercising power over search results. In related news, the Namecoin project (.bit) has apparently diverted developer interest away from the p2p DNS project (.p2p), which showed so much promise one year ago. Also, the U.S. has seized another 150ish domains this month, roughly 1 year after the seizure of 82 domains that prompted p2p DNS. Except this round the European Parliament has condemned unilateral domain name seizures by the U.S. Namecoin is heavily based on the Bitcoin source code, but not the block chain that assigns ownership of bitcoins.

Tulip market sees uptick.

griphus — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 06:54:16 -0800

The Bitcoin bubble is bursting.

Bruce Wagner and the Bitcoin Scam

furiousxgeorge — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:37:48 -0800

Has Bruce Wagner pulled off a massive scam on the bitcoin community? Bruce Wagner was for a time the public face of the new electronic currency. He was the go-to guy for journalists looking for insight into bitcoin. He even began running his own online TV network which attracted multiple sponsors. Now, things have begun to unravel for Wagner. MyBitcoin was a bitcoin bank Wagner had heavily promoted on his shows. One day, it vanished from the Internet. When it returned, MyBitcoin claimed to have been hacked and that it was only able to refund 49% of deposits. Wagner's early promotion and history of involvement in equity stripping mortgage scams has led to suspicion that he is somehow involved in MyBitcoin, despite claiming to be one of the biggest victims. Angry posters on the bitcoin forums Wagner frequents have begun to spread even worse rumors about Wagner's past. The viability of the currency itself remains in question as it has never matched the all time highs achieved during the bitcoin media blitz. The exchanges such as Mt.Gox which handle converting bitcoins into real money have faced repeated security challenges which have left the bitcoin market in chaos. Criminal uses for the anonymous currency may save it, but for now it has lost one of its best spokesmen. (via Reddit and SomethingAwful)

Paging cstross to the white courtesy phone

autopilot — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:58:42 -0800

Bitcoin is growing up: early adopters lost money due to bad backups; the US Senate wants to crack down due to possible illegal drug purchases with the digital coins; it had its Black Friday, losing 30% of its value in one day (after a 5,600% increase in the first year); the Economist weighs in; and now an alledged heist of 25k bitcoins (original forum post), valued between $250k and $750k on the Mt. Gox exchange. Currently 154 petaflops of CPU and GPUs are computing SHA256 hashes in tight loops, easily beating the #1 on the top500, the Tiahne-1A with 2.56 petaflops. (Previously and more previously)

No longer do you need to go to the corner for a fix...

handbanana — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:57:46 -0800

The Silk Road, an anonymous way to buy and sell drugs With conversation previously of bitcoin you can now order anything under the sun.

Money doesn't grow on trees.

howlingmonkey — Wed, 18 May 2011 14:23:37 -0800

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency. Trading at eight dollars this week—and being used to pay for everything from freelance programming jobs to magic mushrooms—it has been described as “the most dangerous open-source project ever created” and “an unambiguous challenge to the government monopoly on the power to print money.” Estimated at over 20 petaFLOPS the Bitcoin network is currently the fastest virtual supercomputer in the world.

Official Wiki (FAQ)
Wikipedia
Original proposal (PDF) by Satoshi Nakamoto
Market Analysis
Bitcoin Forum
Block Explorer

Previously: The Free-Banking vs. Central-Banking Debate