Comments | andrewducker: Interesting Links for 08-12-2013

andrewducker

Interesting Links for 08-12-2013

Dec 08, 2013 11:00

art, work, potato, rape, genetics, spiders, rapeculture, university, law, email, theft, advice, petition, superheroes, bears, links, cute, immune_system, viamybrotherhugh, funny, bitcoin, crime, video, censorship, dogs, cancer, lasers, racism, lgbt, food, margaretthatcher, suicide, politics, cats

Comments 21

Bitcoin danieldwilliam December 9 2013, 11:14:38 UTC

I think the heist is a big thing for bitcoin.

If the guy who stole the “money type stuff” isn’t publically caught then I think the credibility of bitcoin founders a little. I know, any store of wealth is subject to theft and fraud but I think the aura of bitcoin is that it’s a bit more robust than paper money.

Re: Bitcoin andrewducker December 9 2013, 11:25:48 UTC

Noooooo - the whole point of bitcoin is that it's like paper money, but online.

Which means that it doesn't do chargebacks (once a transaction has occurred, it's occurred), and it's anonymous-ish.

It is deliberately set up so that you can't just rewind time and extract money from somewhere once it's moved, easily track it to a real person, or require an intermediary who could authenticate any of it. It's decentralised by design.

Re: Bitcoin danieldwilliam December 9 2013, 12:02:15 UTC

In which case - bitcoin only works if the theif gets away with it?

I’ll go an have a look at the Saturday article.

Re: Bitcoin andrewducker December 9 2013, 12:06:07 UTC

That depends - do coins/notes only work if the thief gets away with it?

I'd say that it's the same answer in both cases - the lack of tracking implicit in the payment method makes it easier for fraud/thievery, but that doesn't prevent other methods of tracking someone down. If you were mugged you wouldn't blame the nature of cash for the fact that someone made off with some of yours, I assume.

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