Though the internet has allowed artists to connect directly to their audience in ways never before seen, its freedom is under attack. Censorship is common, and the media routinely blacks out important stories or blatantly lies about others. Men’s sites in particular are the target of defamation, and are routinely harassed under accusations of misogyny and hate speech. Since financial independence is one of the greatest enablers for dissenting voices, and many men make their living online, it’s worth asking—is our money safe?
Social justice warriors routinely harass men’s writers by having their Facebook pages pulled, reporting their Twitter accounts, getting their books pulled from amazon, getting their kickstarters removed, threatening to take down their patron pages, doxxing male writers, threatening to take down their WordPress sites, branding men’s sites as hate groups, and threatening physical and sexual violence.
Paypal, the most common payment system used online, has refused to take donations for Wikileaks, an independent journalist organization that has published more government documents than the New York Times has in the last fifty years. How long will it be before social justice warriors and other online bullies infiltrate financial institutions and threaten to freeze men’s bank accounts through false accusations? What can men do to ensure their livelihoods are not threatened?
Enter bitcoin
You’ve probably read a great deal about Bitcoin as an investment, and while Bitcoin has been massively profitable over the past couple years as a financial investment, that isn’t going to be the focus of my article. Rather, I’m looking at bitcoin as a payment mechanism, that allows content creators to receive money from their audience directly, and safeguard that money without intermediaries or banks.
Here are a 11 reasons for men to start using Bitcoin:
1. No middle man. Bitcoin removes the middle men of banks and Paypal. The same way the internet has allowed artists to connect with their audience directly, Bitcoin allows artists to get paid by their audience directly. It is the last step in liberating media from mainstream powerholders.
2. No transaction fees. With no middle man comes no bank fees, no cut for Amazon or iTunes, and no 3rd parties taking your profits and hard-earned money.
3. Micro-payments are easy. Want to charge 23 cents for a blog post? With Bitcoin you can. Since there are no transaction fees, Bitcoins make micro-payments easy, allowing you to monetize content you’d previously have to give away for free, overcharge for, or wait till you had more to sell. Now that short film, 20-page ebook, or short comic you’ve put together can be sold at a price that makes economic sense.
4. No bank corruption. The financial crash has shown that the American financial system is not worthy of men’s trust. Using Bitcoin allows you to opt out of that corrupt system and “go your own way,” the same way men have opted out of other corrupt institutions. Vote with your wallet. Using Bitcoin doesn’t just withdraw your support from the banks, but from the federal reserve and the entire corrupt American financial enterprise.
5. It’s antifragile. If your assets are entirely in USD or American banks, you run the risk that American politics or currency devaluation will destroy your portfolio. Bitcoin allows you to diversify your currency and ensure that even if the American government destroys its economy, you still have another account of value.
6. It’s easy to use. Bitcoin is incredibly easy to use. I’ve put together a short guide to the basics on my site, and there are tons of other good resources across the web. If you’ve got an online store, services like bitpay will allow your customers to pay Bitcoin very easily.
7. It’s international. Bitcoin has no currency or border restrictions. You can send and receive payments from anywhere in the world, and access your wallet from any country you travel to.
8. You can buy anything. Bitcoin has made the news for services using it to sell illegal drugs. It’s no secret that there are online Bitcoin sellers distributing products that would normally require a prescription, like modafinil and TRT. While Bitcoin is not an excuse to break the law, and I would caution all readers not to do anything illegal, it does allow you to send payments to merchants who might not have a regular storefront that takes Mastercard and Visa.
9. It’s growing. Bitcoin is rapidly becoming a mainstream payment method. Already, major companies like Amazon, Target, WordPress, CVS, Victoria’s Secret, and OKCupid accept Bitcoin as payment. It is possible that in several years that Bitcoin will be so common that not accepting Bitcoin as payment will be like only offering a print version of your book.
10. It’s close to anonymous. While not entirely anonymous, Bitcoin allows sellers to accept payments under a pseudonym or wallet address, without using their real name. For writers who wish to preserve their anonymity, or maintain a private life, Bitcoin is a godsend.
11. It’s yours. Your Facebook, your Twitter, your Paypal, your Amazon account, and most of the online services we use can be shut down if the company hosting them decides that your content is objectionable or undesirable for their users. Bitcoin is yours. Even the fed is still trying to figure out how to handle or regulate bitcoin, and advocates for online freedom are constantly devising new ways to preserve the independence of the currency.
Here are three actions steps you can take if you’d like to get started with Bitcoin.
1. Set up a wallet. Here’s how.
2. If you take donations, post your wallet address on your site so your readers can donate Bitcoins. Mine is here.
3. If you sell books or other content online, consider offering Bitcoin as a payment option.
I hope to see all my favorite writers continuing to publish for a long time, and that will require adopting new technologies and ways to make money as they become available. As Roosh said, nerds will rule the world.
Great post – Just the information I was looking for. Thanks.
P.s. I just bought that blog theme you use on RunsOnMagic last week argh. Guess we both have good taste 😉
Artificial Constructs – There are non-physical structures to many things in life that the human can recognize through reasoning. the structures (the constructs) are not physically real, and yet they exist. Logic and philosophy rely on a lot of artificial constructs, ways of defining things that arise only through thought and have no real physical existence.
A fun project…
GoodBit the New Space Age Cryptocurrency
http://goodstuffsworld.blogspot.com/2014/01/goodbit-new-space-age-cryptocurrency.html
Buying a bitcoin( which doesn’t require financial intermediaries) makes it a direct investment (more risky). You might as well play the stock market, which is what I would suggest anyways(at least you can diversify if need be). Even with all the crashes, every $2 you invested in 1929 would be worth $2000 today(if you selected good stocks). Cash as an asset is just a waste of money……………….due to inflation.The green stuff is only a tool for making more green stuff. It should be put to work by the means of (stocks, corporate bonds, rental property, businesses, etc.) Anything beats it just sitting pretty in a bank earning less than 1%. Don’t think that the FED can’t make this a illiquid asset at some point.
Alright so this leaves me wondering about the risks. Any insight on the possible negative outcomes of using bit?
At the moment the state of Bitcoin is somewhat vulnerable, not overly, but there are still some risks. Bitcoin is starting to stabilize and remain on permanent footing as is inevitable of a currency (even cyber) the more it comes to be accepted by countries and be used by businesses as a form of currency. I’ll quickly tell you my story, I’m a veracious forex and stocks trader and about a year and a half ago Bitcoin value was skyrocketing so as any naive trader trying to cash in I thought I’d get in on the action and it was good, really good. My investment of about £1000 had increased to about £2100 in a matter of a few days, instead of selling I was selfish and thought that the investment would increase even further, about 2 weeks later the Chinese government completely banned Bitcoin from their banking sector this was quite a shock as it looked as if the Chinese Government would accept Bitcoin without much fuss as a result my investment went to shit because of course the value of Bitcoin itself took a pretty hard knock.
Don’t worry yourself too much though as that was a bit of a one off I’ve not traded Bitcoin in a while but apart from minor (rare) fluctuations it seems to be stable. Anyway my friend I’m just some random person half way across the world from you always remember to do your own research first don’t just take somebody’s word for it I did that alot for other currencies etc before being dealt a nasty surprise trust me you will never have as much piece of mind as when you research for yourself. All the best!
i prefer using dogcoin
I love bitcoin, I’ve been investing in it for about 1 year now. nice market value currency
Not sure if bitcoin is smart long term. The trouble is that other e-currencies will compete possibly devaluing the bitcoin.
That plus if the grid goes down, your fucked. The next WMD to be developed will be something to create an EMP to fry the net and render chips unusable. That plus and EMP can come from the sun which brought down the telegraph system: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
Most people are not aware just how hypersensitive our electronic communication system is.
If the grid ever does go down, so do the cooling systems of all the world’s nuclear power plants. It would be an extinction level event.
Mulling over the potential value of a currency in such a scenario is silly. May as well sit there wondering what’s going to happen to your car if a comet crashes into the Earth and wipes out humanity.
Cooling systems for such places kike nuke stations do have backup systems. If the grid goes down we will still be alive. That plus the international banking community will outlaw bitcoin and e-currencies and stop at no end to track down people who attempt to use any virtual currency.
I would be careful with Bitcoin. While there are plenty of advantages, there is very little regulation over it, and currency might be one of very few areas where I favor some regulation. The dollar is a very stable currency and even when it “lost value” against the Euro in the late 2000s, it was a tiny devaluation (just look at the chart). Compare that to the bitcoin’s volatility – type in “BTC” into google finance and take a look at that one-year chart. I understand the practical advantages of bitcoin, but using lots of it is like investing in an individual stock, which no intelligent investor should do.
Lack of government regulation is one of the selling points.
women are most attracted to shiny things: gold, silver, bronze, diamonds. I’m sure if you worked it well enough you could convince s girl aluminium foil was some rare precious earth metal and get lucky.
Purest greeennnnn!
Any oppressed class – undocumented immigrants, people doing controversial things, creative people, activists, people into privacy – ought to use a coin.
Whether it’s Bit, Lite or whatever doesn’t matter. I mine some minor coins in the evening, it’s not enough to pay bills, but it’s definitely a good idea to have something outside of mainstream currency.
Bitcon is a fad designed by a handful of people who also happen to have the potential of trillions of dollars of coins in their own wallets (having invented the entire thing) while gullible idiots spend thousands of real dollars on mining rigs and other crap.
Bitcoin is not a fad. It is a new technology that is very much misunderstood by most new people. Yes, many people will become wealthy.
To learn more about Bitcoin go to the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute: http://nakamotoinstitute.org/
Bitcoin is not a topic to comment on briefly; It is composed of various Sciences- Economics, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Cryptography amongst others.
Your best investment is to actually learn about it.
But, after years of fooling everybody, brilliant little you just found them all out, didn’t you?
More seriously; there is still work to be done before Bitcoin, or perhaps derivatives/developments, can fully replace fiat’s, but it has already proven to be very valuable technology.
If Bitcoin ever threatens to be big, the big governments will take over Bitcoin or shut it down.
Stick to physical gold to protect yourself from fiat currency.
The government can deprive gold of its property status immediately by refusing to prosecute thefts of anything made of gold. Gold’s value depends on political construction, in other words.
And how would they go about doing that? By shutting down the internet? Or….?
Telling people to “stick to” one thing to protect themselves against uncertainty, is pretty darned radical, you know. How about hedging against gold confiscation with some silver, and physical anything confiscation with bitcoin, and bitcoin failure with metals? And perhaps against confiscation of all above with lead…? Putting all ones eggs in one basket is generally not particularly clever.
Every smart investor from every age has diversified.
In case of Feast, save some cash and liquid assets.
In case of Famine, save food and common staple supplies.
In case of peace, save gold and harder assets for long term storage.
In case of war, have some weapons and ammunition.
exchange one fiat currency for another? No thanks
Once upon a time many people agreed that Gold is precious metal, i mean it’s just a metal. But the belief of men made it “precious”.
What is stopping you to make bitcoin – precious as well?
two things:
1. gold is a rare metal, and has physical and measurable presence.
2. Gold has intrinsic value in being one of the most conductive materials in ready supply for electronics. Yes, there are other rare earths that are also useful, but they are not in as ready a supply.
However, I am not arguing for gold as a medium of exchange. Silver works better, but virtually anything works as long as it has a tangible use and existence. ‘corn certificates’, calories, copper, gems, anything can work as long as it has a tangible item backing it and keeping it stable.
Currency stability is good for citizens, bad for governments. That’s why for any government to enslave it’s people it must first enforce fiat currency.
Watch, if bitcoin become popular enough, it will become a tool for controlling people. It is inevitable.
“Vote with your wallet.”
Love this phrase. Good article too about the merits of Bitcoin.
The inherent nature of a blockchain means that bitcoin is NOT anonymous — anyone with enough heuristic information will be able to trace all your activity back to you. Given Amazon, Google, Facebook tracking your every move (for their own purposes, as they say) it wouldn’t be hard to connect the blockchain wallets with actual identities.
Gold and cash still are the only truly anonymous forms of currency.
Bitcoin is not anonymous out of the box, but anonymizing your transactions is relatively trivial. Stop spreading misinformation.
RIGHT ON! Its super easy to anonymize transactions. Blockchain wallet has a simple shared send feature which is free. There are tumbler sites out there as well, but with a little ingenuity you can do it yourself.
Wallet apps like Multibit allow you to create unlimited bitcoin addresses. You just keep sending coins to new addresses, then to blockhchain wallet, then shared send and so on and its going to take several lifetimes before your $$$ is ever traced.
Its easy to cash out when needed too.
Matt, I dont think you know what youre talking about on this one, sorry. I know several people working at Big Four accounting companies trying to research the blockchain transactions and they said it looks great thats the accounting ledger is public, but realize, they are effed, when it comes to tracing bitcoin movement.
A few months ago I was in on a call with several big four execs and they said bitcoin will massively disrupt banking.
Bitcoin is really going to F the world the way the internet screwed the music, news and magazine businesses.
If you want to get into BTC on low points, I suggest learning bollinger bands, ichimoku clouds and so forth so you dont buy in at high points.
Good luck to all!
Is it really anti fragile though? The fact the three letter agencies could seize so much when silk road went down not to mention closing exchanges means its not really all that anti fragile
The blockchain itself has never been compromised. That’s what matters. An exchange going down is pretty much like a bank going tits up. It doesn’t affect the validity of the monopoly money in your pocket.
Funny thing about gold, its a fiat currency too. Only valuable because we all agree it is. Other than some interesting electro-chemical properties: highly conductive, non-reactive, malleable and dense, it’s pretty much worthless.
If/when the shit actually hits the fan, only three things will truly have value: Food, Fuel, and Ammo.
Agreed. That is the problem with bitcoin and other unregulated, tangible goods.
Can I immediately buy a car, tv, pineapple or a liter of gas with it? No. I need a computer, software and some guy willing to accept the virtual currency.
It may be interesting as an extra income source in developed countries, but during a power blackout or a hurricane, a bottle of water will be more valuable than bitcoin.
Gold’s value depends on political construction. Right now, in the U.S., the government prosecutes thefts of anything made of gold. The moment the government refuses to consider gold a form of property so that taking a gold object from someone without his consent doesn’t break the law, gold’s value will collapse.
Ironically Bitcoin suffers from that problem already because many of the reported thefts of Bitcoins have gone unpunished.
When the guy who has allegedly invented it (and who, by the way, is still the largest individual holder of the cryptocurrency) appears in public, I would consider it a bit more seriously.
For the time being this smells DAPRA to me.
Bitcoin Was Created By DARPA
There is no way to stop what is going to happen to bitcoin. It’s an issue of sociology. It’s an issue of human greed. It’s an issue as to WHO created bitcoin and WHY.
Who is the single largest holder of BTC right now? “Satoshi”. Who is he? I will say it again. NSA/DARPA created bitcoin under the guidance of the IMF. The IMF has been openly calling for a digital, one-world, deflationary currency for 2 decades. OPENLY. It has been discussed and promoted OPENLY at G8 and G20 summits.
from the early 90s-96 the NSA was OPENLY investigating cryptographic money networks.
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm
One of their researchers and investigators is a man named Tatsuaki Okamoto. When they actively started writing the code they chose the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamura” to ultimately promote the idea that Tatsuaki Okamoto to any and all who investigated the source of bitcoin long enough. But Tatsuaki Okamoto is just a cog. He’s not some rogue savoir out to topple centralized banks. Not at all. He is a crypto scientist who was paid by government and intelligence agencies to do research.
Bitcoin is an NSA/DARPA lab set into the wild. Scientific technology grants issued by government and intelligence agencies are how these labs are funded and promoted. The regulation and control of bitcoin has been actively developed alongside the development of the network. In fact, the controls, policy and regulation are WAY WAY more mature than the bitcoin protocol itself. That’s why we see things like Greenlist written into law without a mention of bitcoin until recently.
This is not tinfoil hattish. This is just reality. No one forced ANYONE to believe the Satoshi fairytale.. The libertarian Satoshi myth has been promoted in stealth to specifically promote ADOPTION and DEVELOPMENT. It’s no different than the internet and WWW itself. EXACTLY the same. That is why you see many www early adopters saying bitcoin “feels” the same as the early internet. I am one of those people.
In 94-96 the public internet was ALL about freedom of information. FREE COMMUNICATION. It was ALL about liberty and freedom. I wish i could transport some of you back in time so you could see for yourselves. The promise of free phonecalls with the freeworlddialup, free media with IUMA and the MBONE. All this freedom and liberty had people pouring their heart and soul into developing it. Now look at it. Facebook, google.. it is a GIANT SURVEILLANCE grid. And if you look for and read DARPA/NSA docs from the 80s and early 90s that was what it was always meant to be. I am not discounting all the socially great things that happen online.. But from the perspective of DARPA/NSA and control freaks.. it was created for the express purpose of control. A military purpose. A strategic purpose.
What is bitcoin? Bitcoin IS the one world digital currency. We all have a deterministic UUID that has been generated from our biometric data. This UUID will be related to all your datastores. This UUID is your mark. This UUID is what is used to buy and sell online and in the real world. This UUID is the primary key in your Greenlist identity.
Coinbase, blockchain.info and it would appear Coinsetter are inline to be the first to roll out the incoming policy and regulation. This policy and regulation is WORLD WIDE. It is CORPORATE. It is not about governments. Governments ADOPT corporate organized policies. If you think this is new than you need to investigate ACH and NACHA. https://www.nacha.org/aboutushttp://www.slideshare.net/Earthport/nacha-payments-2013-complementary-paths-to-global-ach-earthport-federal-reserve-financial-services-hsbc
Bitcoin is THEIR network. And for the minority early adopters that is going to be a hard pill to swallow.. But for those in the know.. Like Gavin, it’s PAYDAY. Realization and monetization of their massive bitcoin holdings is being guaranteed by regulators. That is why they are all literally RUSHING to regulate.
Legitimization of bitcoin is all about hosted wallets. The centralization of bitcoin. Hosted wallet providers approve/dissaprove transactions before they are actually issued on the network. Greenlist enabled wallets will be the fastest. (offline transactions). Greenlist enabled wallets will be hooked directly to your bank account, ease of buying and selling. Greenlist enabled exchanges will have the largest market with the best prices. Greenlist enabled wallets will completely eliminate risk of stolen coins. No more security worries AT ALL. And this is what the masses have come to expect. And this is why it’s going to happen. And Greenlisted wallets will be accepted everywhere. And in the physical world you will identify yourself and your wallet with your biometrics.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=173715.0
TL;DR bitcoin is a global digital currency, regulation was created in tandem with development and adoption, bitcoin is not and never was meant to be a liberty promoting value exchange. There is no “satoshi”. The central banks are already the largest holders of bitcoin. Bitcoin IS going to the moon because of this.
Excellent write-up!
Good to see that some people are actually awake.
Bitcoin is indeed a Trojan horse for a global, cashless currency controlled by the same powers that control the global banking and intelligence networks.
But just like the internet, which has turned into a double-edged sword for the Elites (mass surveillance vs People Power) Bitcoin might also offer some benefits to those who want to live “under the radar.” But I think it will take some extra technological tricks, developed by freedom activists, to give Bitcoin such benefits. What those tech workarounds are, I have no idea at the moment.
For any currency, digital or physical, fiat or not, to have a real diminishing effect on the existing central bank currency control structure, then users of that currency must refuse to trade it for fiat or goods produced through fiat financing.
A group using the currency must communise and produce their own goods, using the new currency as an index of their own social relations, and essentially isolate itself from the outside fiat world. People must collectively stop using fiat altogether.
When you see stories like “guy bought 25$ of bitcoins then ‘cashed them in’ for $600k to buy a house or whatever” this behavior only hurts bitcoin and helps the banks. The story ought to be “guy mines bitcoins, buys house with bitcoins”.
Give it time.
Interesting theory, it may be true, you lay your case in a compelling fashion.
However there has been a separate solution to the Byzantine General’s problem done by an academic trio, not sure you can say they are NSA/DARPA stooges, and alternatives to Bitcoin are likely to supplant it. The monetary dynamics and how they related to network security make it likely that it will be Fedcoined at some point, as you say.
But that’s why I apply tactical asset allocation to a basket of top-competing coins, blockchains, and smart contract protocols.
The Internet was also developed by secret military agency, look how it turned.
No one owns the internet
Sorry, unless you’re speculating there’s really no reason to get into it until it gets more mainstream.
On a side note, Bitcoin pisses off leftists for some unknown reason. Is it because its out of their control? It’s not even their money. The Marxist fan boys on SA think Bitcoin is the devil or something, what’s driving this reaction?
what is SA?
If bitcoin becomes a mainstream currency the leftists can say good bye to welfare state and any other government program.
They can’t shame bitcoin into submission.
And there is a very good reason to get into it. The long term value is likely to keep increasing exponentially until it is widely used in most of the world. I’d get in now if you haven’t.
Great article, but some of these comments are depressing. Gold this, powergrid that, blah blah. It’s fucking amateur hour in here.
Just goes to show that being “redpill” about women is no guarantee one will be “redpill” about anything else. More’s the pity.
The problem with Bitcoin is that the twelfth reason is always…
“The author bought a bunch of bitcoin and is going to be out a lot of money if you all don’t buy it from him.”
3 year bitcoin user. This year over 40% of my consulting income has been in bitcoin. Internationally. My retail sales internationally grew over 300% because bitcoin has allowed me to sell internationally without risk.
I paid for a safari to the Serengeti with bitcoin this year. Airfare, hotel, even one dinner. I paid for 6 future winter flights to Florida already with bitcoin. It’s and fast and doesn’t give the banks the control they used to have.
“Yours” until someone figures out how to steal it:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1TSNP_enUS504US504&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=list%20of%20bitcoin%20thefts
One may be able to “make money” off BTC, but buying it isn’t an investment, it’s speculation. There’s a huge difference. As pointed out in some earlier comments, it is clearly the product of DARPA or similar agency funding. It didn’t just spring into existence out of nowhere. But I also agree with the article’s author that it may be very useful for keeping information about transactions from other individual people although not, of course, from the organizations that invented it… or their major constituencies.
If every transaction is tracked every transaction can be taxed. Think about it.
Head of FinCen stated ‘we already have the technology’ to eliminate anonymity. Here is the policy:
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/8132/obama-initiative-spawns-identity-based-bitcoin-greenlist/
I fucked up Earlier this year with regards to BitCoin.
Bought the parts and built a bit-coin miner. It had decent hash power and made profit of $10/day.
I thought things were going great until the difficulty in mining increased exponentially and now the machine only rakes in about 50cents/day.
The machine cost me and a friend 3000$ investment and we only made back about 650$ before the machine’s returns went nil.
We didn’t anticipate the difficulty in mining would increase so much. Basically newer, better, faster miners were developed within a few months and ours couldn’t match the hashrate. I realize now the risk in investing in technology. Technology hardware can go obsolete almost instantly.
The tragedy is that when the BitCoin exchange crashed the value of bitcoin halved, and then redoubled after 3 months. IF I had invested in actual bitcoins during that period rather than invested in mining them I could have doubled my money.
Another lesson I learned from that whole thing was that the people that made the most money during that period were the ones selling the computer components and jacking up the prices. Like during the gold rush of history, probably the best business investment is to sell the means of mining that gold… whether it is found or not does not matter.
Due diligence as with anything in life is paramount. Getting married, buying a car, finding a mistress, and buying bitcoin miners.
BTC mining is still relevant if you have the money and buy large terrahash systems. 6 months from now those will be worthless. That said, the real money from mining was when bitcoin was $50 a coin or less.
FYI, the reason why mining is not cost effective at all is the electricity these machines use up. A 2TH/s miner cranks 1500-2000 watts. So think a little. Most cities in California offer free electric car hook up. Wire up a van, put a few miners inside and crank out $100 a day for free 🙂
All is not done with mining. I know of at least 2 facilities that are gearing up for massive bitcoin mining “nodes” which will house thousands of mining machines.
For all of the bitcoin naysayers out there, there are tons of business opportunities. This is the wild west or gold rush for modern times.
If you are at all interested in bitcoins or cryptocurrencies make sure to go to the Inside Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas coming up in October. There will be key speakers, lots of classes to learn from and plenty of people to make connections with. If you dont want to make the trip, check for bitcoin meetup groups in your area.
Sorry Runs, gotta disagree with you on this:
1. Bitcoin is highly restricted with very limited supply and a very small part of primary owners.
2. The valuation of Bitcoin fluctuates way too much to be a decent currency. It rather reacts like a commodity in a narrow market or a high-risk stock.
3. There are plenty of signs that Bitcoin was created by the very same Money Power that creates the Global Private Central Banking Scam and the fraudulent Fractional Reserve Banking. http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/is-the-national-security-agency-behind-bitcoin/
Here some few links: http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/bitcoin-impressive-but-flawed/
http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/is-the-national-security-agency-behind-bitcoin/
http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/baffling-bitcoin/
If anyone wants to support alternative currencies, then I would propose the grassroots, interest-free ones, which can be used locally around the world and support the regional economy.
Sounds good for speculation, but not as a currency:
Bitcoin is not an effective transactional currency because its price is not stable. To many people are hording bitcoins and speculating on them. This is causing the price of bitcoin to fluctuate rapidly and having a currency that falls 25% in a month like it has recently makes transactions difficult for retailers because of the currencys rapidly changing value. Also if you want to make a living on bitcoin you are going to have to have to use a Bitcoin exchange and that means you are still dependent on the existing financial system…
Price fluctuation only affects people holding bitcoin. The technology for very low cost transactions is here right now with bitcoin and businesses can easily incorporate bitcoin payments into their POS and online stores for zero to low cost AND more importantly said companies can have their bitcoins converted to cash instantly.
Bitcoin sales have enormous benefits such as almost zero processing fees, instant payments and no chargebacks.
Anything – large or small – that undermines the feminist state is wonderful in my book.
If Bitcoin helps to undermine the feminist state, let’s use it. Let’s at use it for some things anyway.
If Bitcoin has value to a man, it is in its ability to circumvent the feminist state, in its ability (somewhat questionable) to provide anonymity, and its ability to partially support a commercial eco-system that cannot be destroyed by regulations, laws, and censor.
Having said that, I would caution against going into wonderland speculation with Bitcoin. It is very unlikely to replace government sanctioned fiat currency. Think about it this way: What sorts of the things do you think would cause the demise of the US dollar and other major fiat currencies? Then consider the circumstances after the demise. To make a long story short, if the US dollar were to lose all value, then we are in a situation in which Bitcoin will have no value either. After all, Bitcoin requires the electrons to flow. There will not be much electricity available in a total collapse of human civilizations, much less functioning servers in data centers.
So, use Bitcoin with some perspective. It’s good for some things. Not good for other things.
Late to the party, but this is just too stupid to ignore.
The collapse of the dollar, indeed the complete destruction of the United States, does not require for the world to go Mad Max. America is not the world. It is just a small part of it. Travel outside your own borders sometime, there is an entire world out there.
Reading these comments for anyone that actually knows what they’re talking about would be the BTC equivalent of hearing a man say “girls are attracted to a man with a stable job.” If you understood the actual structure of BTC, you’d realise how stupid you all sound talking about DARPA and NSA etc. Oh well, keep paying your taxes to fund your child killing you idiot Americans.
My only caution is that the value is of a number with a mathematical property and not something useful. Money used to be precious metals. Then it became paper certificates (cheques or receipts) for precious metals. Then it became just paper. Then it became just bookkeeping entries.
The difference today between bitcoin and the USD is the bookkeeping entries are kept in a peer-to-peer public block chain. Same for the euro, yen, ruble, yuan, or any other unbacked currency.
How much was a Bernie Madoff account valued at before his ponzi scheme was discovered? You would probably be able to cash out at full value. With shares in a company, you own a bit of that company. With gold, you have gold. With bitcoin, what do you have?
That is the risk. It is backed by the full faith and credit of the user community. But users are sometimes fickle.
It works well as a medium of exchange – switch USD to bitcoin, then bitcoin to something you wish to purchase. As a store of value, not so much. And it is too volatile to be a standard of measure of value.
The problem with precious metals is that they will be depleted. Men are practical, so why instead wasting resources we don’t exchange numbers? After all, we made the precious metals – precious. We make the things precious and change definitions.
Hmmm…I guess no one wants to talk about the Mt. Gox fiasco six months ago, and all the people who lost their ass in Bitcoin when that scam folded. Or when the Feds closed the Silk Road and seized a ton of Bitcoins and they lost half their value overnight. The number one rule for money/investing/saving is ‘If it’s not in your physical possession, you don’t really own it.’ Doesn’t matter what the computer/paper/broker/banker says. Look at how many times the same gold or stocks are sold to multiple ‘owners.’ on exchanges or the stock market.
These digital currencies are also dependent on internet service and electricity coming to your house or business every day. Increasingly, in many parts of the world, this is not always a sure bet. Even in the ‘first world’ you may be SOL in the event of really bad weather or an earthquake.
Braindead, ignorant FUD.
Are you people really not able to learn anything?
Please expound, o wise one. Mt. Gox didn’t lose $400 million? Bitcoin isn’t at all volatile? No one got their dick slammed in the door when Silk Road was busted? Fuck off….
Blaming Bitcoin because Mt Gox, Silk Road, et al lost your money is like leaving your car key in the door lock and blaming the security system when your car gets stolen.
The first step to using Bitcoin (or any new technology) successfully is to not be a retard who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.
I lost nothing in any of these incidents. However, there are certain weaknesses inherent in bitcoin that make shit like this possible or even inevitable, even if you’re not a ‘retard.’ Not the least of which are governments who look at bitcoin as competition for their currencies. Cyber anonymity is most likely a myth, regardless of what people want to believe.