pangstrom posted:

Well, probably should mention they went from being worth nothing (10,000 bitcoins for a pizza in 2010, infamously) to $2 around the popular-with-libertarian (LIKE MY FRIEND JOE I AM NOT JEALOUS) time in 2011 to like $800 now. Like, stupid or not I wish I would have dumped more money into them (but I would have sold out at $300 because that's when Joe did).

Leofish posted:

If it makes you feel any better, those bitcoins which are "worth" $800 are very difficult to actually turn back into can-pay-mortgage-with-it dollars. The media reports rarely mention that buy orders can take long enough for the price to drop, or can take weeks at a time, and are at risk of being flagged for suspcious activity, or that some exchanges have put a freeze on cash outs, or have waiting lists of several weeks, or that new ATMs going up in cities are one-directional (cash in, bitcoins out), etc.

Spacedad posted:

Hahahaha holy crap I'm laughing near to tears here.


The unregulated free market will surely provide the most faulty, pandering, and shoddily conceived bazaar-market-conjob-like ripoffs efficient and superior products. Thanks, Reagan and friends thereafter, for removing so many FCC restrictions on news and editorial programming!

ayn rand hand job posted:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/01/15/in-bitcoin-trust/

Warning: John Stossel

Radish posted:

I kind of avoided the whole bitcoins thing since it sounded so dumb but now that overstoked has picked them up I'm hearing real people start to mention them. Is there a high level explanation why it's as stupid as people here say they are?

ReindeerF posted:

One of the reasons anyone but The Daily Paul writes about them for reasons aside from ridicule and crime is because of the Winklevoss twins' ill-fated play on bitcoins.

quote:

Maddow: Did Christie Retaliate Over Supreme Court Filibuster?
By karoli January 9, 2014 8:23 pm
Perhaps endorsements were the last thing on Governor Christie's mind. Maybe nominations were the motivating factor, not endorsements.

Rachel Maddow rocked the house tonight with her opening segment on the Chris Christie bridge scandal. It's worth watching this entire 17-minute segment from beginning to end.

If Christie was telling the truth when he said the mayor of Fort Lee wasn't really on his radar, then perhaps the retaliatory action wasn't aimed at the mayor. Maybe it was aimed at someone else.

Her theory has some legs, because the dates on those emails suggest that there must have been something going on other than Christie's election campaign, which is where Rachel looked.

Bridget Kelly sent the email at 7:34 AM on August 13, 2013 saying it was "time for some traffic problems around Fort Lee." What would have prompted her to send that? What was happening in the middle of August (besides endorsements) that would have given rise to this particular form of political retribution.

New Jersey Supreme Court battles were happening. Big battles, battles that have been going on since 2010.

A heated battle over the high court has been unfolding since Christie took office in 2010. The governor campaigned on a promise to tilt the court to the right, but state Democrats say a court dominated by Christie appointees would undermine key decisions that over the decades have ordered New Jersey to provide housing for its poorest residents and funding for urban schools.

The Democratic-controlled state Senate has approved two of Christie's nominees since 2011: Justices Faustino Fernandez-Vina and Anne Patterson. If his two remaining nominees are approved, Christie's appointees would become a majority on the seven-member Supreme Court.

Board of Public Utilities President Robert Hanna and Superior Court Judge David Bauman — an independent and a Republican, respectively — have been stonewalled by Democrats for more than a year without a hearing in the Judiciary Committee. Democrats have said they want those two seats to remain in Democratic hands.

At the time of the bridge closure, there was an epic battle over judicial appointments that culminated in Christie yanking a Republican nominee after it was clear she would be filibustered. In a press conference, he called Senate Democrats "animals" and said he would not subject his friend the judge to them.

The leader of the filibuster represents Fort Lee.

As Rachel said, perhaps the retribution was aimed at State Senator Loretta Weinberg, who represents Fort Lee and is Christie's primary obstacle to his judicial appointments. Or perhaps it was the mayor's refusal to endorse Christie's bid for re-election.

Frankly, Rachel's theory makes a whole lot more sense to me than this kind of high-handed retribution for lack of an endorsement.

My Q-Face posted:

I love that "fiat money controlled by a central government" is somehow not sound. As if money of any kind would have any value without a government and bank declaring that it did.

Dr.Zeppelin posted:

The best part is when bitcoin people complain about "fiat money" as if a bitcoin has tangible worth outside of being a currency. At least you can burn paper bills for warmth if it comes down to it. It's like the gold standard people all became bitcoin people and literally had no idea what they were originally mad about.

mr. mephistopheles posted:

Extremely Islamophobic? Yes. Hates "liberal Jews?" Yes. Racist? I don't know if I'd agree with that.

ayn rand hand job posted:

Also this is not totally relevant but

HootTheOwl posted:

If someone showed me a link where I could buy these, I would.

ayn rand hand job posted:

ToxicSlurpee posted:

A common libertarian belief, and one that Ron Paul has a huge boner for, is returning to the gold standard and the time where ONLY precious metals counted as money. Because, you know, that went so well in the past and the gold standard is completely free of all corruption and manipulation.

Plinkey posted:

But to get bitcoins you burn your video cards for warmth!

icantfindaname posted:

With the recent surge of mainstream interest bitcoins have become a mechanism for speculators and conmen to extract money from idiot internet libertarians. So pretty much exactly like gold.

nachos posted:

Extract money how? I was under the impression it's enormously difficult to withdraw in a timely manner.

Plinkey posted:

The Tulip Mania of our time.

Plinkey posted:

The Tulip Mania of our time.

Rexicon1 posted:

I should clarify: the gentlemen who will make money off of bitcoins will not have any considerable fortune invested in them. They just benefit from the existence of the market.

nachos posted:

Extract money how? I was under the impression it's enormously difficult to withdraw in a timely manner.

Dr. Faustus posted:

I just want to say that, as far as I know, Rachel was the first to smell a rat in this bridge shutdown, and she and her show took a lot of derision for suggesting it was political retribution from CC. Then the emails came out and it proved her 100% right. The only questions now are a) will the staffers who got thrown out over this remain loyal enough to lie for him, and b) will the "NJ is Stronger Than The Storm" misuse of Federal Money equal or overcome the GWB scandal.

ErIog posted:

They're a honeypot for lovely journalists writing stories outside their depth in exactly the same way science stories are. Journalists don't know poo poo about science and they don't know poo poo about technology. They're here to tell you about !3D PRINTING! and !FUTURE CURRENCY!, though. They can interview an army of libertarian randroids itching to be quoted saying dumb poo poo in news articles.

Dr. Faustus posted:

I just want to say that, as far as I know, Rachel was the first to smell a rat in this bridge shutdown

ErIog posted:

They're a honeypot for lovely journalists writing stories outside their depth in exactly the same way science stories are. Journalists don't know poo poo about science and they don't know poo poo about technology. They're here to tell you about !3D PRINTING! and !FUTURE CURRENCY!, though. They can interview an army of libertarian randroids itching to be quoted saying dumb poo poo in news articles.

The recent bitcoin fad stories are just so because anyone who knew dick about it decided like 2 years ago that all of this was complete loving nonsense. Yeah, a few people made a lot of money. Bernie Maddoff also made a lot of money off his ponzi scheme too.

The only 3D printer story actually worth a drat is the In the Line of Fire scenario where some nutcase prints a plastic gun to assassinate someone. The only place I've seen that covered is on Maddow while other journalists poo poo out the dumbest nonsense about it killing the manufacturing industry when you deliberately ignore the fundamental logical and economic concepts related to economies of scale.

For anything that isn't a random plastic widget or a doorstop, it will almost always be cheaper to mass produce and supply via freight. There are specific tiny industries where JIT local manufacturing could conceivably be useful. That list of industries does not include the automotive industry.

pangstrom posted:

I pass for a bitcoin fanboy here, but I agree with John R. Levine's summary that Krugman posted:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/an-ubernerd-weighs-in/

nachos posted:

Extract money how? I was under the impression it's enormously difficult to withdraw in a timely manner.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Bitcoins are extremely difficult to sell. Bitcoins are extremely easy to buy. They're also easy to counterfeit and steal if the constant hacks are any indication. Person one hacks and exchange, steals some bitcoins, sells them to person two who thinks they're going to be at $1,600 a pop any day know, you just wait and see.

Intel&Sebastian posted:

It is way too tempting to start selling complete flim flam bitcoins to old people now that RW media is ramping up the love. Just a SD card with some zipped file with a dollar sign on it. It's like gold scams where the scammer needs even less substance. John Stossel and Fox News saying "We don't know what the gently caress this is but buy them because Obama and the dollar and the fed and booga booga" is basically a global siren call that their readers are ready to be fleeced.

Phone posted:

I got some bad news for you: Adobe is adding 3D printer support in Photoshop.