Bitcoins?

Author
Discussion

Some Gump

12,705 posts

187 months

Monday 22nd January 2018
quotequote all
Trolleys Thank You said:
Hardly. BTC has already proved itself to be one of the most secure, un forgeable and cheapest to store assets in existence. If you don't see the value in at least those properties then your'e going to struggle to get to grips with the rest of it's benefits. Probably for the best you don't get involved.
You keep saying it's secure.
Google "bitcoin heist"
Secure. Yep. Totally.

NRS

22,211 posts

202 months

Monday 22nd January 2018
quotequote all
Trolleys Thank You said:
fblm said:
Hand waving assertion. You didn't answer it before because there is no btc equivalent to monetary policy. You can't alleviate recession or depression in a BTC world. What you're ow pushing is that it's somehow convenient and cheaper to use effectively a foreign currency in the UK which is more absurd than suggesting we all start using Swiss Frank debit cards. Why?
You wouldn't have a debt fuelled recession or depression in the first place in a BTC world. Underrated post by Harris_I above on this topic.

Not understanding your comparison to Swiss Franks. BTC is no more "foreign" than the internet. It's global, nobody owns it.
This doesn't make sense to me. The reason the controls from governments are often in place to protect people from themselves. Theoretically they are often trying to stop/ reduce boom and bust. It looks like currently they are just making the cycles bigger. However if you had no central power I'd imagine you'd get a bigger boom and bust on a shorter term scale. Just look at the speed of the current bubble. And it has been pointed out how it has happened in the same way many times in the past - that tends to support the bubble/ boom and bust view - even if it is still growing at the moment.

Boydie88

3,283 posts

150 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
Some Gump said:
You keep saying it's secure.
Google "bitcoin heist"
Secure. Yep. Totally.
So they hacked an exchange? Nothing to do with Bitcoin's security.

Jonesy23

4,650 posts

137 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
Boydie88 said:
So they hacked an exchange? Nothing to do with Bitcoin's security.
It demonstrates the pointlessness of the 'security'.

The coin might be immutable and the transactions records robust but that doesn't provide any security for your personal holdings.

dimots

3,097 posts

91 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
Jonesy23 said:
It demonstrates the pointlessness of the 'security'.

The coin might be immutable and the transactions records robust but that doesn't provide any security for your personal holdings.
No it doesn't. If you run your own node you can store your coins direct on the blockchain. Very secure, no third parties involved.

Why don't you try and compare the challenges involved in securing £10,000,000 of gold and cash under your own management compared to securing £10,000,000 of bitcoin?

If you ALWAYS and FOREVER want a third party to hold and manage your wealth, and to allow you to make payments to selected third parties under their terms, then maybe you have a point. I will grant you that in the UK this is arguably less of an issue than in the third and developing world, but that can change.

Efbe

9,251 posts

167 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
dimots said:
No it doesn't. If you run your own node you can store your coins direct on the blockchain. Very secure, no third parties involved.

Why don't you try and compare the challenges involved in securing £10,000,000 of gold and cash under your own management compared to securing £10,000,000 of bitcoin?

If you ALWAYS and FOREVER want a third party to hold and manage your wealth, and to allow you to make payments to selected third parties under their terms, then maybe you have a point. I will grant you that in the UK this is arguably less of an issue than in the third and developing world, but that can change.
I really do have to disagree with the security side of things.

Whilst I do have various coins and have traded for a while with successes and losses, I am not blind to quite how dangerous "bitcoin" is.

1)The most unsecure part of the process is buying in. You hand over money in the trust that either a third party (i.e. bittylicious) or a seller will give you the bitcoin.
2)To convert your BTC to another Coin, you again need to trust that either an exchange will not run off with your money, be hacked, or the company you are buying the coin from is legit.
3)Transferring coins is blind, all you have is an address to send it to, no way of verifying you have pasted in the right one.
4)For small amounts of money, the fees for taking your money out of an exchange are way too high(cashing out even more so), so mean you end up leaving it in there.
5) To secure your bitcoin requires A LOT of knowledge. You can't trust any website you read as so many are trying to scam you, and most of the secure options are too expensive for most people.

Whilst I love the idea of bitcoin, It has big issues that will prevent it becoming really mainstream.

I left some odds and sods amounting to roughly £200 in an exchange back in 2008ish. The exchange owner walked off with all of it. My fault for not moving to my own wallets, but split across 4/5 coins the fees would have been too high so I left it in.

dimots

3,097 posts

91 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
Efbe said:
I really do have to disagree with the security side of things.

Whilst I do have various coins and have traded for a while with successes and losses, I am not blind to quite how dangerous "bitcoin" is.

1)The most unsecure part of the process is buying in. You hand over money in the trust that either a third party (i.e. bittylicious) or a seller will give you the bitcoin.
2)To convert your BTC to another Coin, you again need to trust that either an exchange will not run off with your money, be hacked, or the company you are buying the coin from is legit.
3)Transferring coins is blind, all you have is an address to send it to, no way of verifying you have pasted in the right one.
4)For small amounts of money, the fees for taking your money out of an exchange are way too high(cashing out even more so), so mean you end up leaving it in there.
5) To secure your bitcoin requires A LOT of knowledge. You can't trust any website you read as so many are trying to scam you, and most of the secure options are too expensive for most people.

Whilst I love the idea of bitcoin, It has big issues that will prevent it becoming really mainstream.

I left some odds and sods amounting to roughly £200 in an exchange back in 2008ish. The exchange owner walked off with all of it. My fault for not moving to my own wallets, but split across 4/5 coins the fees would have been too high so I left it in.
1) You can mine it yourself if you don't want to buy it. Buying is not particularly risky at all. You can use cash at an ATM or do it online. Third party transactions for anything of value carry 'some' risk. Try buying gold online...same thing.

2) Currency exchange online carries some risk if you do it through a third party...what does this have to do with bitcoin security?

3) It is not blind, you have a totally unique address to send it to.

4) What does this have to do with bitcoin security?

5) Securing your bitcoins takes a little bit of effort to understand, but I refer to my previous point - if you had to try and secure £10,000,000 of gold or cash under your own steam you would find it a lot more difficult and more expensive than securing £10,000,000 of bitcoin.

p1stonhead

25,577 posts

168 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
dimots said:
Efbe said:
I really do have to disagree with the security side of things.

Whilst I do have various coins and have traded for a while with successes and losses, I am not blind to quite how dangerous "bitcoin" is.

1)The most unsecure part of the process is buying in. You hand over money in the trust that either a third party (i.e. bittylicious) or a seller will give you the bitcoin.
2)To convert your BTC to another Coin, you again need to trust that either an exchange will not run off with your money, be hacked, or the company you are buying the coin from is legit.
3)Transferring coins is blind, all you have is an address to send it to, no way of verifying you have pasted in the right one.
4)For small amounts of money, the fees for taking your money out of an exchange are way too high(cashing out even more so), so mean you end up leaving it in there.
5) To secure your bitcoin requires A LOT of knowledge. You can't trust any website you read as so many are trying to scam you, and most of the secure options are too expensive for most people.

Whilst I love the idea of bitcoin, It has big issues that will prevent it becoming really mainstream.

I left some odds and sods amounting to roughly £200 in an exchange back in 2008ish. The exchange owner walked off with all of it. My fault for not moving to my own wallets, but split across 4/5 coins the fees would have been too high so I left it in.
1) You can mine it yourself if you don't want to buy it. Buying is not particularly risky at all. You can use cash at an ATM or do it online. Third party transactions for anything of value carry 'some' risk. Try buying gold online...same thing.

2) Currency exchange online carries some risk if you do it through a third party...what does this have to do with bitcoin security?

3) It is not blind, you have a totally unique address to send it to.

4) What does this have to do with bitcoin security?

5) Securing your bitcoins takes a little bit of effort to understand, but I refer to my previous point - if you had to try and secure £10,000,000 of gold or cash under your own steam you would find it a lot more difficult and more expensive than securing £10,000,000 of bitcoin.
1) I thought mining was effectively dead now unless you have 10,000 gpus running?
2) What percentage of Bitcoin transactions do not go through an exchange of some sort? I assumed a majority did?
3) True.
4) Its just a negative that will hinder it being take up mainstream.
5) How about pocket money amounts or a few grand which is what most people will be using if this is to take off? Will people really be willing to spend the time taking them offline etc if they then have to get it all back online tomorrow to buy their tesco shop? Again just another hinderance which may stop it taking off.

Note - by taking off, I mean it being used as an actual currency rather than a store of wealth.

jammy-git

29,778 posts

213 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
dimots said:
Jonesy23 said:
It demonstrates the pointlessness of the 'security'.

The coin might be immutable and the transactions records robust but that doesn't provide any security for your personal holdings.
No it doesn't. If you run your own node you can store your coins direct on the blockchain. Very secure, no third parties involved.

Why don't you try and compare the challenges involved in securing £10,000,000 of gold and cash under your own management compared to securing £10,000,000 of bitcoin?

If you ALWAYS and FOREVER want a third party to hold and manage your wealth, and to allow you to make payments to selected third parties under their terms, then maybe you have a point. I will grant you that in the UK this is arguably less of an issue than in the third and developing world, but that can change.
Isn't this exactly the same analogy as cash/a bank? Cash is inherently quite secure, but if someone robs the bank they can steal all your money (though actually they won't because the bank will cover it).

You can store all your cash at home, but then that has it's downsides too.

dimots

3,097 posts

91 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
Yes but storing all that cash at home is hardly easy. You will need a safe and you will need to use an armed guard and armoured car every time you want to move it around.

With bitcoin you can create a massively secure long-term stash. Paper wallet or offline wallet is perfect for your long term savings. This can be the size of a stamp and can be worth any amount.

You can keep pocket-money accounts on your phone. iPhone backed up to cloud and secured with two factor authentication is actually quite robust. Print and keep the private key somewhere in case you need to restore. Easy.


p1stonhead

25,577 posts

168 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
dimots said:
Yes but storing all that cash at home is hardly easy. You will need a safe and you will need to use an armed guard and armoured car every time you want to move it around.

With bitcoin you can create a massively secure long-term stash. Paper wallet or offline wallet is perfect for your long term savings. This can be the size of a stamp and can be worth any amount.

You can keep pocket-money accounts on your phone. iPhone backed up to cloud and secured with two factor authentication is actually quite robust. Print and keep the private key somewhere in case you need to restore. Easy.
But if you lose your debit card, you dont lose all of your money too.

Trolleys Thank You

872 posts

82 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
Efbe said:
dimots said:
No it doesn't. If you run your own node you can store your coins direct on the blockchain. Very secure, no third parties involved.

Why don't you try and compare the challenges involved in securing £10,000,000 of gold and cash under your own management compared to securing £10,000,000 of bitcoin?

If you ALWAYS and FOREVER want a third party to hold and manage your wealth, and to allow you to make payments to selected third parties under their terms, then maybe you have a point. I will grant you that in the UK this is arguably less of an issue than in the third and developing world, but that can change.
I really do have to disagree with the security side of things.

Whilst I do have various coins and have traded for a while with successes and losses, I am not blind to quite how dangerous "bitcoin" is.

1)The most unsecure part of the process is buying in. You hand over money in the trust that either a third party (i.e. bittylicious) or a seller will give you the bitcoin.
2)To convert your BTC to another Coin, you again need to trust that either an exchange will not run off with your money, be hacked, or the company you are buying the coin from is legit.
3)Transferring coins is blind, all you have is an address to send it to, no way of verifying you have pasted in the right one.
4)For small amounts of money, the fees for taking your money out of an exchange are way too high(cashing out even more so), so mean you end up leaving it in there.
5) To secure your bitcoin requires A LOT of knowledge. You can't trust any website you read as so many are trying to scam you, and most of the secure options are too expensive for most people.

Whilst I love the idea of bitcoin, It has big issues that will prevent it becoming really mainstream.

I left some odds and sods amounting to roughly £200 in an exchange back in 2008ish. The exchange owner walked off with all of it. My fault for not moving to my own wallets, but split across 4/5 coins the fees would have been too high so I left it in.
Of course, there's always some risk when trading anything. However, "atomic swaps" between cryptos will make centralised exchanges a thing of the past. By using Hash Time Lock Contracts (currently being pioneered by Lightning) you can guarantee trades do or don't happen without the need for any exchange holding your funds inbetween.

Meanwhile, the number of Lightning Nodes has doubled again!

https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/

Edited by Trolleys Thank You on Tuesday 23 January 11:22

dimots

3,097 posts

91 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
p1stonhead said:
But if you lose your debit card, you dont lose all of your money too.
I'm not sure if you're serious, but obviously you realise that your debit card is not your money?

e.g. If you try to sell your debit card for the value of your savings how much do you think you will get?

p1stonhead

25,577 posts

168 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
dimots said:
p1stonhead said:
But if you lose your debit card, you dont lose all of your money too.
I'm not sure if you're serious, but obviously you realise that your debit card is not your money?

e.g. If you try to sell your debit card for the value of your savings how much do you think you will get?
This is my exact point - an offline bitcoin store (correct me if I am wrong) literally contains your money hence people sifting through the tip to find old hard drives containing millions of quid.

I wouldnt trust myself literally having £100k sat in my house in the form off an offline wallet or having bitcoins stored on a hard drive. I dont think a lot of people would be confortable with it.

A debit card can access your money same as your offline coin storage can, but if you lose the debit card, you dont lose all of your money like you would with an offline store of your coins.

Is any of the above incorrect (genuine question) in terms of storing bitcoins offline for security?

rscott

14,773 posts

192 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
Trolleys Thank You said:
Of course, there's always some risk when trading anything. However, "atomic swaps" between cryptos will make centralised exchanges a thing of the past. By using Hash Time Lock Contracts (currently being pioneered by Lightning) you can guarantee trades do or don't happen without the need for any exchange holding your funds inbetween.

Meanwhile, the number of Lightning Nodes has doubled again!

https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/

Edited by Trolleys Thank You on Tuesday 23 January 11:22
Doesn't sound quite as good when you look at the actual numbers though.
"The number of Lightning Nodes has just reached 3 digits"

dimots

3,097 posts

91 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
p1stonhead said:
This is my exact point - an offline bitcoin store (correct me if I am wrong) literally contains your money hence people sifting through the tip to find old hard drives containing millions of quid.

I wouldnt trust myself literally having £100k sat in my house in the form off an offline wallet or having bitcoins stored on a hard drive. I dont think a lot of people would be confortable with it.

A debit card can access your money same as your offline coin storage can, but if you lose the debit card, you dont lose all of your money like you would with an offline store of your coins.

Is any of the above incorrect (genuine question) in terms of storing bitcoins offline for security?
You can get a bitcoin debit card if you want one.

You can give the piece of paper containing your bitcoins to a bank to look after if you want to.

p1stonhead

25,577 posts

168 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
dimots said:
p1stonhead said:
This is my exact point - an offline bitcoin store (correct me if I am wrong) literally contains your money hence people sifting through the tip to find old hard drives containing millions of quid.

I wouldnt trust myself literally having £100k sat in my house in the form off an offline wallet or having bitcoins stored on a hard drive. I dont think a lot of people would be confortable with it.

A debit card can access your money same as your offline coin storage can, but if you lose the debit card, you dont lose all of your money like you would with an offline store of your coins.

Is any of the above incorrect (genuine question) in terms of storing bitcoins offline for security?
You can get a bitcoin debit card if you want one.

You can give the piece of paper containing your bitcoins to a bank to look after if you want to.
So back to - who the hell can be bothered to do that in daily life if this thing is supposed to be an actual currency?

its clearly working in some form as a store of wealth, but thats not what it is meant to be.

Trolleys Thank You

872 posts

82 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
p1stonhead said:
This is my exact point - an offline bitcoin store (correct me if I am wrong) literally contains your money hence people sifting through the tip to find old hard drives containing millions of quid.
Strictly speaking, no. A wallet never contains any coins. A wallet simply holds your cryptographic private key so you are able to spend your coins which are on the blockchain. The further away you keep those keys from the internet or other people, the more secure they are.

rscott

14,773 posts

192 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
dimots said:
p1stonhead said:
This is my exact point - an offline bitcoin store (correct me if I am wrong) literally contains your money hence people sifting through the tip to find old hard drives containing millions of quid.

I wouldnt trust myself literally having £100k sat in my house in the form off an offline wallet or having bitcoins stored on a hard drive. I dont think a lot of people would be confortable with it.

A debit card can access your money same as your offline coin storage can, but if you lose the debit card, you dont lose all of your money like you would with an offline store of your coins.

Is any of the above incorrect (genuine question) in terms of storing bitcoins offline for security?
You can get a bitcoin debit card if you want one.

You can give the piece of paper containing your bitcoins to a bank to look after if you want to.
What's the advantage of using bitcoin over conventional currency though?

p1stonhead

25,577 posts

168 months

Tuesday 23rd January 2018
quotequote all
Trolleys Thank You said:
p1stonhead said:
This is my exact point - an offline bitcoin store (correct me if I am wrong) literally contains your money hence people sifting through the tip to find old hard drives containing millions of quid.
Strictly speaking, no. A wallet never contains any coins. A wallet simply holds your cryptographic private key so you are able to spend your coins which are on the blockchain. The further away you keep those keys from the internet or other people, the more secure they are.
Ok, so sort of the same, if you lose the password you still lose the money?

Techincally different but realistically no difference.