It's disappointing to see articles like this, because it doesn't separate out two completely disjoint concepts: where Bitcoin is, versus where Bitcoin going. Bitcoin has the potential to behave very much like a stable currency system, and at a certain threshold it will. But that threshold is very high. Probably at the $2,000/BTC range (which corresponds to about $25 billion market cap). Once it reaches that level through legitimate growth, then the depth of market exists to absorb all this insanity. Right now, any gambler with a million dollars can swing the market around (and manipulate it) because even the biggest exchange (Mt. Gox) doesn't have enough volume to swallow those gamblers into the noise.

So what Forbes should've said was "it's too volatile, right now, to be used as a stable currency/barter system." For individuals and businesses to actually hold BTC for more than a few days, the volatility has to come down. But he missed the point that depth of market solves that problem. So there is a bit of a chicken&egg problem here, but it's one I think Bitcoin will overcome -- it's virtues are still highly-valued, and lots of people still take on that volatility risk to help grow the system and benefit themselves (such as merchants enjoying the absence of chargeback possibility).

To the people that are saying it's not worth it for malware or botnets to mine coins with CPUs... a single CPU does about 4 MH/s. If 250,000 computers all over the world are affected, that's 1 TH/s, which is about 67 BTC/day at the current difficulty. About $1,000/day, or $30,000/month. Scale appropriately for how many computers are affected.

Yes, it's a waste of time and electricity for an individual to mine Bitcoins with their CPU, but if you have access to 100,000+ machines doing it, and you're not paying for the electricity, it's obviously worth it.

With nuclear waste, at least we can choose what do with it. This is not the same as coal, where the waste goes into the atmosphere and we couldn't reverse it even if we wanted to. Sure, we need to solve the waste problem -- but at least we have the option to solve it, long after the waste has been created.

Yes, there's a lot of people who are in Bitcoin because of become-a-billionaire-overnight fantasies. But you remove all that and you're left with a really fascinating system that should appeal to everyone on Slashdot. It's a mix of cryptography, freedom of speech, computing, networking, finance, economics, and even politics -- most of us here dig that stuff.

Get over the hype and take Bitcoin for what it really is: a fascinating experiment that has, so far, withstood the amazing barrage of publicity, hacking attempts, legal uncertainties, and remains valuable for reasons completely contrary to everyone that says it's worthless. It may become worthless one day, but consider the possibility that Bitcoin is disproving all your wildly oversimplified assumptions about what makes something valuable. It is completely different, and there's plenty of reasons to believe that it could succeed as much as it could fail.

Why does gold have value? Nothing is backing gold. Yet it has value, mainly because of its properties: scarcity, fungibility, density, beauty, etc. Bitcoin is really quite similar but with some different properties. Ease of transfer over the internet, fungibility, scarcity, storage efficiency, near-anonymity and built-in escrow.

I don't think it's any more ludicrous for Bitcoin to have value than it is for gold to have value. And in the end, when I want to sell WoW weapons, buy webserver space, or play a few games of poker online, why would I use gold, credit card or paypal, which all require me to remember log-in creditials, give away information and/or pay a bunch of third party fees. There's plenty of value in being able to pay people across the world, instantaneously, without sacrificing your privacy, and without paying any fees. Why is that not valuable? Seriously... quit focusing on the get-rich-quick kids, and start appreciating Bitcoin for it's unique properties and philosophy.

How about reliability? I require a PSU that I know is going to

(1.) Not die within a year of running at 50-75% load
(2.) Not take any other components of my computer with it.

Power supply problems are the most annoying to diagnose, because the symptoms usually show up in other components (like apparent RAM corruption, HDD stuttering, etc). I would pay $50 extra for a power supply that is *not* 80-plus if it has stellar reliability, because it means I only have to build my computer exactly once. On that note, the Corsair HX series power supplies have not only stellar reliability, but also pretty much silent. I refuse to buy anything else, and you can usually them 20% off if you watch slickdeals.

Efficiency saves you money, while reliability saves you time *and* money. And time is a limited resource for some of us...

FYI, "fracking" has been verifiably linked to flammable tap water. It's no surprise that this had to be pushed quietly through system, because there's a lot of very good reasons fracking shouldn't be done at all, especially near populated areas.

And just for fun: here's a fun video showing what can happen when you live too close to it.

Yes, there's a lot of people who are in Bitcoin because of become-a-billionaire-overnight fantasies. But you remove all that and you're left with a really fascinating system that should appeal to everyone on Slashdot. It's a mix of cryptography, freedom of speech, computing, networking, finance, economics, and even politics -- most of us here dig that stuff.

Get over the hype and take Bitcoin for what it really is: a fascinating experiment that has, so far, withstood the amazing barrage of publicity, hacking attempts, legal uncertainties, and remains valuable for reasons completely contrary to everyone that says it's worthless. It may become worthless one day, but consider the possibility that Bitcoin is disproving all your wildly oversimplified assumptions about what makes something valuable. It is completely different, and there's plenty of reasons to believe that it could succeed as much as it could fail.

Why does gold have value? Nothing is backing gold. Yet it has value, mainly because of its properties: scarcity, fungibility, density, beauty, etc. Bitcoin is really quite similar but some different properties. Ease of transfer over the internet, fungibility, scarcity, storage efficiency, near-anonymity and built-in escrow.

I don't think it's any more ludicrous for Bitcoin to have value than it is for gold to have value. And in the end, when I want to sell WoW weapons, buy webserver space, or play a few games of poker online, why would I use gold, credit card or paypal, which all require me to remember log-in creditials, give away information and/or pay a bunch of third party fees. There's plenty of value in being able to pay people across the world, instantaneously, without sacrificing your privacy, and without paying any fees. Why is that not valuable? Seriously... quit focusing on the get-rich-quick kids, and start appreciating Bitcoin for it's unique properties and philosophy.

This is nothing new at all. It's actually why some super-security-sensitive workplaces have strict control over even the keyboards. A keyboard modification can be made so that the scroll-lock/caps-lock/whatever-LED light actually blinks out a code for every key press. Then, any detector anywhere in the room can detect the frequency and record the keypresses, which can effectively compromise many such systems. And to the human eye, the LED blinking is too fast to detect, so it just looks like it's on.

Many posters here are missing the point of this credit card, claiming that it will have all the downsides of both systems it is merging.

--Bitcoin is not required to be anonymous to be useful, and it's a benefit you can still have if you forego the credit card
--The point of the credit card is to make it possible to leverage your Bitcoins for every day purposes. If you reload the card using Bitcoins, but then you can use the card anywhere people use Mastercard -- now your Bitcoin savings can be used just like USD.

This bridges a huge gap for Bitcoin. Currently, those who own Bitcoins, have a tough time using them to get what they want. They're waiting for more widespread support, because the use-cases aren't diverse enough yet. With this, you can actually use them to buy stuff on Amazon (which you were going to do non-anonymously with your CC, anyway), but you can still maintain the benefits of Bitcoins for your own savings and services that support them natively.

This means that Bitcoins can join the party without being required to be supported everywhere. As merchants realize that they can save a couple percent and not deal with chargebacks, they can start supporting Bitcoin knowing that some part of their customer base already uses it. This normally requires a critical mass of users to be worth it for the merchant to take the leap -- this softens that curve quite a bit. For both users and merchants.

Also, if you are hostile to Bitcoin, please read this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2810657&cid=39797419

It's a new tax to cover the healthcare costs of those who end up in the hospital without insurance.

You can get a tax break for having your own insurance, as proof that you won't be costing taxpayers anything when you end up defaulting on $200k of hospital bills after an accident.

I don't know why the democrats couldn't shape the message that way. That's really what it is, and sounds better than "pay up or pay up".

Two options: take military action against Iran to prevent them destabilizing the region, and possibly starting a war. OR write a computer virus that stops them from destabilizing the region without violating any airspace, starting wars, or killing anyone.

If doing nothing and letting Israel bomb Iran possibly leading to war is your version of "peace", then I'm glad you're not in charge. Life isn't always pleasant, sometimes you have to pick the lesser of two bad situations. In this case, no one died, no one got invaded, no bombs were dropped. That may not be worthy of a peace prize in itself, but it certainly doesn't violate one.

Yes, there's a lot of people who are in Bitcoin because of become-a-billionaire-overnight fantasies. Yes, they are silly. But you remove all that and you're left with a really fascinating system that should appeal to everyone on Slashdot. It's a mix of cryptography, freedom of speech, computing, networking, finance, economics, and even politics -- most of us here dig that stuff.

Get over the hype and take Bitcoin for what it really is: a fascinating experiment that has, so far, withstood the amazing barrage of publicity, hacking attempted, legal uncertainties, and remains valuable for reasons completely contrary to everyone that says it's worthless. It may become worthless one day, but consider the possibility that Bitcoin is disproving all your wildly oversimplified assumptions about what makes something valuable. It is completely different, and there's plenty of reasons to believe that it could succeed as much as it could fail.

I like to think of Bitcoin like gold. Nothing is backing gold. It's a material for which there is a limited supply in the world, and which is universally regarded as value because of various properties it has: perhaps beauty, fungibility, density, etc. Bitcoin is really the same, with a limited global supply, except that it has different properties, mainly ease of transfer over the internet, fungibility, storage efficiency, near-anonymity and built-in escrow.

I don't think it's any more ludicrous for Bitcoin to have value than it is for gold to have value. And in the end, when I want to sell WoW weapons, buy webserver space, or play a few games of poker online, why would I use gold, cash or paypal, which all require me to remember log-in creditials, give away information and/or a bunch of third party fees. There's plenty of value in being able to pay people across the world, instantaneously, without sacrificing your privacy, and without paying any fees. Why is that not valuable? Seriously... quit focusing on the get-rich-quick kids, and start appreciating Bitcoin for it's unique properties and philosophy.