Bitcoins featured in Forbes

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0509/technology-psilocybin-bitcoins-gavin-andresen-crypto-currency.html

by DiabloD3 • 15 years ago

38 25 15 years ago

forbes.com

eliben2• 15 years ago

<fun> Is it just me or the guy in the photo looks like Mr. Spock :-)? </fun>

DiabloD3• 15 years ago

Hivemind. I told Gavin he looks like a Vulcan in that photo, he hangs out on #bitcoin-dev frequently.

eliben2• 15 years ago

OK, guys & gals, I got it - no jokes on HN (even specifically marked with a <fun> tag...) - you can stop downvoting now - I wish I could delete my own comments, but HN doesn't let me do that.

JonnieCache• 15 years ago

The whole drugs thing is just hype. Bitcoins are surely much harder to launder than shiny metal, because they're so unusual. You can't just wash $10,000,000 of bitcoins through a casino or whatever without someone asking questions.

If they become widely accepted this will obviously change.

mukyu• 15 years ago

How can you define it as "hype" when there already exist people selling controlled substances for bitcoins through a Tor secret service? (n.b. it could have been fake and I certainly did not order any to try and find out given I have no interest in either drugs or bitcoins)

trotsky4• 15 years ago

Bitcoin is a fascinating model of how to run a distributed, internet based boiler room. Unregulated + ultra thin market + appeals to inexperienced investors == pump and dump dream.

http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/bcLRUSD#permalinkbox

April 7th: 0.60 BTC/LRUSD

April 22nd: 1.37 BTC/LRUSD

Goooood luck getting out on the right side of this trade...

ghshephard• 15 years ago

Can we also consider the possibility that Bitcoins are precisely what they claim to be - A decentralized crypto currency?

I think the real story become more clear as the Vendor Infrastructure continues to grow.

trotsky4• 15 years ago

If the touts actually wanted the currency to be used for commerce your focus would be on stability - clearly you won't have any kind of substantial trade in BTC (for actual objects or other items that aren't just currency pair trades) until the value can be predicted over short/medium time frames. The amount of hype, hype, hype that goes on by submitting these endless articles to places like HN, slashdot and I'm sure plenty of other places and soliciting articles like this one in forbes makes it very clear what the community intentions are: speculation.

You may personally not be involved in that, or not understand that's what you're doing. But it's very clear that the market is being run by those that are.

mike_esspe6• 15 years ago

In September, when i first heard about bitcoins (unsurprisingly from hacker news comments), they were 0.05 USD/BTC.

I won't be surprised by $5-$10 by the end of the year, it seems that they are getting traction.

eropple• 15 years ago

I think that you are conflating optimistic speculative activity for traction.

markkat• 15 years ago

And yet, almost no one knows of them. What will be interesting, is if/when the average person is aware of them. As it is a border-less currency, that's a lot of average people.

IMO, the great thing is, we will get to find out what happens. This is an interesting experiment.

Joakal• 15 years ago

USA government will crack down on anonymous money schemes [0], especially 'conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business'[1].

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/ [0]

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Egold [1]

tomjen32• 15 years ago

Against whom?

It is anonymous, is it not?

npad• 15 years ago

Presumably against anyone who runs a service that exchanges bitcoins for regular currency.

trevelyan2• 15 years ago

Anyone recommend an exchange for buying and selling bitcoins with Paypal? Thinness of the market doesn't particularly matter - I'm not interested in speculation or arbitrage but rather adding bitcoin support to my site.

mike_esspe6• 15 years ago

There is a http://coinpal.ndrix.com/ for buying but they have a very low limits due to paypal fraud, and http://coincard.ndrix.com/ for converting to paypal.

trevelyan2• 15 years ago

thanks.

Bitcoins featured in Forbes

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