[OT] Bitcoin BIP
Just a heads up / thread for anybody tracking Bitcoin, today and tomorrow is when something called "segwit" is supposed to be activated, which enables a technology known as "lightning network" to run on the Bitcoin network. This will allow Bitcoin network to be used as a payment system, rather than ONLY as a store of value, due to greater rate of transactions. Many people expect that this could raise the price of Bitcoin to ~$5000. We are already almost back to the all time highs from about a month ago, before it took a short-lived nose dive.
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19 comments
Oh, baby!
Perhaps you don't fully understand the blockchain technology, or perhaps you do and I am simply misunderstanding you statement. The technology behind Bitcoin (called blockchain) is precisely what makes it so stable and valuable. I can think of only one surefire event that would cause the Bitcoin blockchain to break: An apocalyptic solar flair that scrambles the entire planet's digital storage devices. Anything short of that: your Bitcoins are pretty damn safe. (unless you lose your password, tee hee).
" It’s actually a lot harder (to do it right) than accumulating it in the first place. First world problems. :)"
Ain't that the fucking truth.
The news you heard was probably correct, but the exchanges are separate from the blockchain. This is why those who responsibly educate the public about Bitcoin (e.g. andreas antonopoulos, see his YouTube channel) will advise people to never store the majority of their funds on a Bitcoin exchange. The exchanges are vulnerable. Bitcoin is not. It is a very young technology, so you really have to understand it in order to use it properly. But it is growing, and becoming more sophisticated.
You can think of Bitcoin kinda like this. Imagine a computer file that contained a secret message (e.g. your balance), and then that message was cryptographically scrambled by your personal, offline computer, so that only one person (you) had the password. And then imagine that this cryptographic scrambling (called SHA256) would take the computing power equivalent of 100 Alphabets (by Alphabet I mean GOOG, the public company) about a 10^100 years, on average, to guess the password (so, literally impossible to guess). Then, pretend that that computer file with the secret message is shared with hundreds of millions of people across the world, on their computers, so there are copies of this message all over the world (but 'cept you can read it). Then, imagine that hundreds of supercomputers are constantly, 24/7, performing computations to continually verify the integrity of that message, so it never changes. And if the file ever does change on one person's computer (maybe because an atom decayed in somebody's hard drive and the radiated neutron flipped a 0 to a 1) then it is immediately detected that the file has changed, that it is incorrect, and is therefore immediately updated. So, the entire world's computers are constantly working to verify and maintain the integrity of that computer file, the one with the secret message (your balance).
And you are the only person with the password.
That's about how secure Bitcoin is. That's why it would literally take an apocalyptic solar flair to break it.
Except, in the real Bitcoin, every single user has that amount of security; not only you.
That being said, I have everything on an exchange right now, because I'm expecting tomorrow to be volatile to put it mildly. (And that's where we are talking about crypto-currencies where a 10-20% move in a day is nothing anyone would rate as volatile. :-) )
http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/03/technolo…
To the moon!
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/ori…
Seems when the consensus view on TUSCL is that something is a bubble you should just go ahead and buy it. We've seen that with the stock market and now Bitcoin.
Lol!