[olug] Fwd: [ArchChat] anyone else heard of bitcoins?

[Greg Gerke]

Leo Laporte's "Security Now" with Steve Gibson had a whole podcast on
bitcoins a month or three ago - http://twit.tv/sn287

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 10:04 AM, Luke-Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:

> ...and we just hit mainstream media:
>
> http://techland.time.com/2011/04/16/online-cash-bitcoin-could-challenge-governments/
>
> I am not a financial advisor, but I will say /I'm/ buying. :P
>
> On Friday, April 15, 2011 9:43:40 pm Luke-Jr wrote:
> > On Thursday, April 14, 2011 8:39:36 pm Oren Beck wrote:
> > > They generate their coins from solving complex math problems on your
> pc.
> >
> > No, the SHA256 bruteforcing serves no purpose but to prevent someone from
> > taking over the network. Basically, the idea is that by making it
> difficult
> > to find blocks, someone needs to outpower everyone else on the network
> > combined to effectively chargeback. In exchange for contributing your GPU
> > power, you are rewarded with the newly minted coins. These days, you need
> a
> > good Radeon to profit over the electricity costs (CPUs and nvidia GPUs
> cost
> > more in electricity than they would earn mining now). So, the math
> secures
> > the network's integrity, it does not itself create the coins.
> >
> > On Friday, April 15, 2011 10:12:57 am Monty J. Harder wrote:
> > > Look no further than the guy who was sent to federal prison recently
> for
> > > "economic terrorism" by minting gold coins he called "Liberty Dollars".
> > > The Fed has a monopoly on creating money in the US, and doesn't like it
> > > when people try to compete.
> >
> > He was sent to prison for counterfeiting, because his money looked too
> much
> > like US Dollars, and he suggested people pass it off as such (eg, giving
> it
> > as change). While one might try to argue that in the latter case, the
> > person is getting the same value as real money, the fact is that his
> > "American Liberty Dollars" carried a (significantly) higher face-value
> > than their actual worth in metal. In any case, nobody can argue that
> > Bitcoins can possibly be confused with US Dollars.
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-- 
Greg Gerke
ggerke at gmail.com