[Eran]

Same here - not only are bitcoins not government-issued, it seems very difficult, given the design of the system, to block or monitor transfers using bitcoins.

[SolarCross]

I just spent the last hour or so scanning the net for info on these new-fangled bitcoins, and my understanding so far is that bitcoins are epic genius. The real virtue of bitcoins as I see it from an anarchist perspective is that issuance of the currency is decentralised and that it is spent into existance as a reward for actors verifying transactions thereby reducing the cost of transactions to near zero for the user. No government, no monopolism wanted or needed for its operation; it is anarchist to the bone.

I am techy enough to consider having a go at setting up a rig to help verify transactions or 'mining' bitcoins as it is called.

[mikema63]

Each mining reduces the number of bitcoins produced exponentially to prevent hyper-inflation, Its a nice touch I think since it simulates gold mining in an odd way and its difficult to fake.

Have you ever heard of the Silk Road, the Onion, or Tor? Some interesting goings on in there, very Agorist I would say.

[SolarCross]

Each mining reduces the number of bitcoins produced exponentially to prevent hyper-inflation, Its a nice touch I think since it simulates gold mining in an odd way and its difficult to fake.

Have you ever heard of the Silk Road, the Onion, or Tor? Some interesting goings on in there, very Agorist I would say.

I've done a bit more research and at the moment mining doesn't seem worth getting into for the reason you mentioned. The system self-adjusts bit-coin production according to the work being put in, the more machines mining the harder the difficulty in producing coins and of course the reverse is true. There are real world costs to mining, hardware and (substantial) electrical costs. It seems that at the moment there so many machines mining that the cost of producing coins is more than the value of coins being produced. The value of the coins isn't connected in anyway to the cost of making them but determined by market forces.

It seems fair to say that given the supply of bit coins is limited that the value of bitcoins in terms of other currencies will likely to continue to go up at least if the usage continues to grow. But that still doens't justify starting to mine now, because it would be cheaper to simply buy bitcoins rather than make them if one is inclined to bet on a rise in bitcoin value.

Of couse existing miners who already have the hardware, might still have a rational to mine.

Bitcoins are epic genius, it takes a bit to grasp just how elegant and ingenious the system is and that maybe its only flaw, it is so, maybe too, techno-geek. There will be a some limit as to how many people in the world will be willing and able to participate in a currency that is somewhat incomprehensible (for the tech-illiterati) and is so tech dependant. Making bitcoin exchanges requires tech-gadgets, internet connectivitly and a certain minimum technical literacy, that most people in the world don't have. In contrast other currencies can but don't have to used online making them accessible to people who don't have iphones or broadband accounts.

Maybe the whole world will be wired in one day and then bitcoins could displace every other currency.

I have heard about Tor, actually I have been meaning to donate some of my webserver's bandwidth as a relay, but I don't actually use it much anymore. All that encryption slows up transfers and I don't care that much about the government or other finding out what i am looking at on the internet.

Silkroad and onion are new to me, they more US-centric perhaps.

[mikema63]

You can access .onion websites using Tor, Silk Road is basically a completely untraceable Amazon.com which means its a black market, .onion sites basically allow you to do anything illegal, from buying and selling drugs to rebelling against your government.

Of course that anonymity also allows you to buy Hit-men and look at very illegal porn but there isn't anything anyone can really do about it as maybe not even the NSA can do anything to the onion or trace Tor traffic.

The reason I said it was somewhat Agorist was that it was simply a totally unfettered market devoid of any possible government regulation, it mostly uses bit coins bought with money you mail in instead of an electronic transfer making it nearly impossible to trace purchases back to people. Its also a big
Crypto-anarchist hang out, I've even considered the possibility that if I ever built my own biological wetlab I would sell the resultant products on the Silk Road.

(I'm majoring in Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology so I would be basically be making underground pharma and stuff if I ever got a lab and a bit more education and lab skills.)

[SolarCross]

Wow a Dr Frankenstein in the making. What kind of products would you be making? bio-luminesent skin implants for the fashion conscious cypherpunk? Internal drug dispensers for soldiers of fortune? Vat grown replacement body parts?

[mikema63]

Probably just whatever I thought was interesting, the first and easiest moneymaker would be myostatin blocking anti-bodies, myostatin is part of the process that regulates skeletal muscle growth by destroying older cells as new ones are made.

With myostatin blocked fewer muscle cells are destroyed than new ones are made and your muscles grow, some of the side effects are loss of titanic force per gram of muscle (if you have the same size muscles as someone else you will be a bit weaker), and your joints get easier to damage if you use it for to long.

Big muscles with no effort and minimal side effects would certainly sell well.