WordPress To Accept Bitcoins 205
angry tapir writes "WordPress has said it will accept payment in bitcoins, opening up the blogging platform to payments from users in countries not supported by PayPal or credit card companies. WordPress is free, open-source software, but the company Automattic offers paid-for features such as blog designs, custom domains, hosting partnerships and anti-spam measures."
maybe... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is Paypal feeling threatened yet?
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Honestly, I agree that BitCoin will fail. I thought the flaw was already apparent - people can game it for profit. It's as simple as having enough money to buy up tons of them, causing the relative value to go up, and then selling them all off at once. Causing the price to crash, so I can start all over once the dust settles.
I called that before it even happened, and people looked at me like I was a tard. Yet, it happened. And it will happen again, just as soon as p
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You still need someone to sell it TO. Also, why doesn't this apply to any other valuable?
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Cash has been played this way before - it was called black wednesday. The main difference however, is that it takes a very substantial amount of cash to accomplish the same effect (we're talking the difference between ~50m and several
or anything else with perceived value only (Score:3)
Like dollars or gold.
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Now (Score:2, Informative)
It's accepting Bitcoin "now" ;)
Bitcoin will never (Score:4, Funny)
Bitcoin will never be mainstream until we can buy a hotdog from a street vendor with it.
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That's already the case, at least in in New York and Berlin.
Re:Bitcoin will never (Score:5, Informative)
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That seems odd. I thought that bitcoins could only change hands when a new block is added to the chain, or something like that. While I'm sure that happens multiple times per day, I doubt it happens in the matter of seconds a credit card transaction takes.
Now, you could probably post the transaction quickly, but it wouldn't be verified/etc until the next block comes along. I'd need to re-read the docs to be sure on that...
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That is not how the Bitcoin network works. When you initiate a transaction, it goes out on the P2P network, and can reach the recipient in a matter of seconds (however fast the network is). People running the "mining" software validate the transaction by seeing what the balance was in the sender's account. That is possible because *everyone* has a copy of the transaction history, otherwise known as the "block chain". So every transaction in and out of the sender's account number is known, and therefore
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What about double-spending? I would think that this would be the main reason to delay accepting a transaction until it is in the block chain. That essentially makes it final - otherwise I could go spend my entire balance at 15 places at the same time and none would be the wiser if they didn't wait for things to propagate.
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There's a pawn shop in my town, in rural Arkansas, that accepts Bitcoin. I've bought guns with it, legally.
Hipsters will make bitcoin popular (Score:2)
But eventually one will hear about it, and when they do - they'll
Seems like a no-brainer (Score:5, Informative)
They're using BitPay. Assuming BitPay's charges are reasonable, it seems like a bit of a no-brainer.
Wordpress makes some simple API calls to BitPay. If someone pays in BitCoin, BitPay converts it to dollars, takes a processing fee, and adds it to Wordpress's balance. Wordpress can treat it as dollars from that point on, so tricky tax/accounting issues.
On that basis, why would you *not* accept BitCoin, if you think there are customers keen to spend them?
BitPay has to deal with tax/accounting/legality issues, but that's their business.
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On that basis, why would you *not* accept BitCoin [...]
I suppose that was a rhetorical question, but one reason would be that paypal and others refuse to allow them to use their (paypal's) service because of it, as has been rumored to happen before. Or was that some other payment service ?
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Intersango
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There's more to such a decision than just tax/accounting issues... What is the 'float' - the time between BitPay collecting on my behalf and when they credit it to my account? How often can I collect my balance from BitPay and are there fees for the transfer? (The answers are "daily" and "yes, but not directly" according to BitPay, and there are sharp daily limits to boot.) Then you have to make what's
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Bitcoin is just another currency, but one without a published conversion value. There's a lot of grey area there, that simply won't be defined until it's tested in the courts.
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That was a fairly fundamental typo on my part. It was meant to be "So no tricky tax/accounting issues".
The point being that if there are any such issues, BitPay take care of them. It's dollars by the time Wordpress have to deal with it.
My offer stands (Score:4, Funny)
I will pay you five billion bigsexyjoe nickels to stop running bitcoin stories.
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What's the exchange rate vs Schrute Bucks [wikia.com]? I think I want to try some arbitrage action.
Interesting (Score:3)
You'll see, Bitcoin is gonna be mainstream before ya know it. And a big finger up into the air to all the naysayers and cynics here.
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Yeah, that or the big banks are about to vaporize it, arresting all the key players in bitcoin on some kind of bullshit currency fraud charges.
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Umm, like how they did with the BitTorrent network? If you think about it though, distributed hash table is indeed more vapor-like than trackers...
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Well, Wall Street hasn't found a way to monetize it properly yet, so, it's not mainstream. That and deflationary issues with it since it's fixed amount - the more people start using bitcoin, the less to go around, so either you'll need fractional coins, or you'll be paying $20 for a cup of coffee as that's the price of 1 coin today, and $40 tomorrow.
The real fun starts when Wal
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since it's fixed amount - the more people start using bitcoin, the less to go around, so either you'll need fractional coins, or you'll be paying $20 for a cup of coffee as that's the price of 1 coin today, and $40 tomorrow.
Bitcoin is divisible to 8 decimal places. So if you treat the last decimal place (0.01 microcoins) as a penny, the total of 21 million full coins to be issued would equate to $21 trillion US. That should be enough for any currency.
Pathetic. (Score:2)
I have no words except these: fare ye well.
So... (Score:2)
Summary of the trolls (Score:3)
That's fantastic (Score:2)
Do you have any idea how many phishing and malware links have wp-admin, wp-content, or wp-includes in the URL?
Take a look for yourself at Phishtank.com [phishtank.com]!
Re:hm (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:hm (Score:4, Insightful)
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With a billion bitcoins, you don't really need a reasonable exchange rate, you just need an exchange rate.
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Bitcoin has never been hacked (Score:4, Informative)
Sites and people handling bitcoins have had their compters hacked - exactly the same thing that would happen if banks had the same low lever of security as these victims (and indeed, this has happened to banks as well). If someone breaks into a physical bank, or steals your wallet, would you call paper money "hacked"? This analogy is apt, btw, because bitcoin behaves a lot like paper money in many ways, and if you store your paper money where someone can nick it, it's bound to happen sooner or later.
The actual currency bitcoin has so far not been hacked. So, just like you don't ask any guy on the street to keep your money and keep it safe, you should only store your bitcoins with someone you actually trust - or have good security on your own (equivalent to having good locks on your home).
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Sorry to burst your bias against Bitcoin, but you are simply spreading FUD. The volume of trade does not exist to launder significant amounts of money. Aside from some drug sales (which still pale in comparison the sales made in UNTRACEABLE fiat on the street) I don't think what actually happens on the network is quite like what you think happens.Your highly regulated and supervised system is still the monetary system of choice to launder money. The Internationale crime syndicate really doesn't need the Bit
Re:hm (Score:5, Interesting)
Money laundering now seems to mean not paying the bank their 6%. I shift a lot of money around the world through some very questionable countries but as long as I pay the bank, no one minds. If I take a lot of cash onto a plane to avoid the bank fees I am a money launderer. It is BS and I no longer take it seriously, to me it is a challenge. I am not a criminal but I will do all I can to avoid paying stupid banks in other countries money that they do not deserve.
Does anyone understand how real money laundering works? It is easy and it does not have to move countries. Just get a shop and sell stuff. If you want to clean some money you sell more on paper than you really sold. It is that easy. You do not need to go to another country with a suitcase of cash, that is stupid.
I really want Bitcoin to become a reality because then I can save 6%. Now the people I work with all want Swift payments or Moneygram. I try to avoid Paypal and Western Union as they charge way too much.
Re:hm (Score:5, Informative)
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Money laundering means the same thing it always has: hiding the origin of income.
In small quantities, it happens all the time, and nobody cares. This morning I found a coin on the street. It could have once been a part of a hitman's fee, or an investment fraud, or the purchase of an underage sex slave. I don't know, and that information's irretrievable now. It's just a coin.
It's the larger quantities that matter. A few hundred or thousand dollars a week can be easily lost in the noise of any business doing
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A pretty big shop is called a mall. 10 years ago I walked into a mall at Thapae Gate in Chiang Mai which was owned by the now Prime Minister of Thailand. None of the shops where selling anything but the car park was full of staff cars, escalators working etc. like something out of a horror film. On paper the mall was trading. I also know of holiday resorts on Samui that do not have any guests, same thing. It is easy and it does not involve moving money travelling from one country to another.
Transferri
Re:hm (Score:5, Interesting)
you do realize that bitcoin is mostly used by criminals for illegal transactions and by people who want to avoid income tax
And you know this.. how?
It is certainly used by criminals - like any other currency - but "mostly" is just baseless speculation.
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So, we are supposed to take government propaganda as fact? Why should we let them have all the fun [fas.org]? What's good for the goose...
We have a right not to be tracked, regardless of your hysteria about 'criminals'.
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I don't care who benefits most.. That's your issue, not mine. I simply wish to protect my right to use alternative methods of exchange. I couldn't care less if you approve. You're either trolling (and I grant you were successful in drawing me into your net), or being hysterical, and we shouldn't let your type dictate how we can live our lives. Don't try to play the 'nothing to hide' card on me.
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Would you use money printed by me instead of officially printed money (government) ?
It's not printed by you, it's printed by a decentralized Byzantine fault tolerant network of computers, where nobody can unilaterally decide how much to print at any time.
And you'd use it for many reasons: extremely cheap transfers, protection from inflation, security and others.
Do you know who benefits the most from anonymous money ?
Bitcoin is not anonymous, all transactions are publicly logged.
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By default facts are true and everything else is suspect.
The You stated that Bitcoins (the untraceable currency) are used mostly by criminals.
It was pointed our to you that you have no facts to assert and are just making an unsupported statement.
You responded by linking to an article about what the FBI fears will/might happen.
You still have no facts. What percentage of Bitcoins are used for money laundering?
What percentage of US dollars are used for the same?
The truth is there are people who can just print
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You still did not back up the statement that it is "MOSTLY used by Criminals".
You just gave us a link to a site that the FBI is "concerned", and provides little actual proof that it is being used.
In fact, the only "proof" was reported nerd-on-nerd crime of malware stealing bitcoins.
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In terms of usage by "criminals for illegal transactions and people who want to avoid income tax" (which for some reason, is not redundant or doubly so), I think USD tops the list. And I'm haven't even counted the investment banks, who are also doing a whole lot of stealing, just legally.
Seeing as how USD is such a huge vehicle for such nefarious activities, maybe we should avoid using the U.S. dollar too.
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I don't know if you can call it a scam when they cover that in their FAQ. Even if you disagree, they are transparent about it:
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1. A Ponzi scheme is a specific type of pyramid scheme, and the only one that makes sense in this context. I was answering a claim that it is a pyramid scheme. It could be some other kind of scam, I suppose, but the grandparent did not make such a claim.
2. It is clear that they are expanding upon the "possible win-win outcomes", not making concrete predictions about the future.
3. If Bitcoin proves to be deflationary, it will fail. People do not part with things that increase in value. 10 years ago people we
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A scam involves deceit. The early adopters didn't deceive anyone. If they benefit from speculators, good for them.
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That said, your sincerity doesn't make you right. You should leave this topic alone until you learn the difference between "what I want something to be" and "what it is".
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Far more criminals use cash than Bitcoin. It is stupid to suggest otherwise regardless of how many links you can provide.
Re:Former Bitcoin Believer (Score:4, Funny)
As if other currencies don't attract crooks and idiots..
Should we stop using all kinds of money or what?
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Abundant free energy, and energy-matter conversion on an industrial scale. That way everyone can have anything they want.
Yup. We pretty much need to live in Star Trek.
Re:Former Bitcoin Believer (Score:5, Insightful)
The US dollar cannot succeed due to the violently idiotic community that has built itself around it.
From common con artists (Goldman Sachs, Enron) to large scale scale money laundering (Bank of America) the community is full of petty criminals.
Accepting USD is a mistake.
The people paying in dollars are all fucking crooks.
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The people paying in dollars are all fucking crooks.
What am I supposed to pay in, chickens?
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There is nothing special about the US dollar that the companies you mentioned couldn't do with bitcoin.
Now, I could agree with you if you wanted to talk about the dangers of a global economy tied to the monetary policy of a single country. We're starting to see the effect of a bit-player country (Greece) having on the Euro and the European Union.
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Im a crook?
Seriously, how did this get modded insightful?
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Your minions ran out of mod points?
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It was in response to a post that rightfully got modded flamebait. The problem is, it was equally flamebait, but because it was anti-corporation and pro-bitcoin, it got modded up.
Re:And Paypal's response will be, (Score:5, Interesting)
So?
Cast your mind back 12 years to what slashdot and similar communities were like when Linux was just beginning to be taken seriously.
"Linux will never mainstream until it does X"
Very similar to how bitcoin will never be mainstream until it's accepted by X. And of course in the mean time big companies like Sun (who?) Silicon Graphics (who?), Digital (who?) and MS of course all ignored it. In some cases it did X. In some cases it didn't. Nevertheless, it ended up as about the #1 operating system in the world. I doubt there's anything in wider use overall out there.
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2013 will be the year of Bitcoin on the desktop!
(Just imagine: all those juicy unencrypted wallet.dat files, sitting on Windows machines on the Internet. Why phish when you can just steal directly?)
Re:And Paypal's response will be, (Score:4, Funny)
What's a desktop and can I get an android app for it?
Re:And Paypal's response will be, (Score:5, Interesting)
I think "Linux on the desktop" is an interesting analogy for Bitcoin, but it's not the only one available. If Bitcoin follows the trajectory of desktop Linux then it will grow and grow until it saturates its niche market, at which point usage will level off. Unable to tackle the challenges needed to advance to the next level, it will become something of a calling card for certain communities but will just be a curiosity to the rest of the world. The underlying ideas or philosophies, though, may have influence out of proportion to its usage (eg, Android being open source was certainly heavily influenced by Googles experiences with Linux).
That's one scenario. Another is that rather than being similar to desktop Linux, Bitcoin is more similar to the web. Bitcoin is about 3 years old, but really it's only more like 2 years old because for the first year it languished in absolute obscurity. If you think back to the internet in the early to late 90s, the net was this technically complicated and intimidating beast. You needed a crazy thing called Trumpet WinSock, and then you needed an ISP (only a few small ones existed) and then you needed even more software and often it just wouldn't work at all, and when it did there was no friendly start page or anything, you just had to know where to go. The de-facto standard for "normal people" was CompuServe and AOL. Movie trailers had AOL keywords at the end, not web addresses.
Despite that the web eventually triumphed and became the standard, replacing the sophisticated and well organized corporations that previously reigned supreme. Why? Well, it was an open and international system where everyone could take part. The protocols were documented, anyone could write software for it. Because it was open that's where the research was taking place. Then the existing institutions started to provide limited forms of web access alongside their walled gardens, lending it legitimacy. It's easy to forget that back then the net was frequently painted as swamped with immoral, degenerate or even illegal activity. In 1995 TIME Magazine ran with a cover story claiming the internet was completely dominated by porn [time.com], based on statistics about USENET that later turned out to be completely bogus. Parallels with some contemporary stories around Bitcoin are easy to see.
Anyway, there's no guarantees of success and either scenario is equally likely, IMHO (in the absence of a dystopian crackdown by governments that simply ban any financial system they cannot exert total control over).
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Linux is the number one OS.
It just is not number one on the desktop.
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This is where people misunderstand badly (Score:2)
The number of bitcoins is capped. That part of the scam is to give the early adopters a huge advantage if there are a large number of people that join in the pyramid.
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You could have the Bitcoin client/network support more than one currency with different rules, either through multiple blockchains or a single blockchain and a new type of transaction to start a new currency. You could then trade between them within the Bitcoin system itself without needing to involve external exchanges.
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The number of bitcoins is capped. That part of the scam is to give the early adopters a huge advantage if there are a large number of people that join in the pyramid.
Right now it costs more in electricity to generate a coin than the coin is worth...
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No thanks (Score:2)
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Doing it purely for your own advantage? That too.
Unexpected consequences later that can screw you up? Watch the news about bitcoin for the next couple of years, and you can see it coming if you think about how bitcoin is structured especially the cap on numbers.
It looks like a very apt analogy to me. People get dazzled by the "on the internet" thing and don't see it as the old fashioned scam in new wrapping that it is.
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It is capped at 2.1 quadrillion Satoshi. That should be enough currency units for a while.
1 BTC (bitcoin) = 100 million Satoshi
1 Satoshi = 0.000 000 01 BTC, and yes, the software manages and reports transactions to 8 decimal places, so the Satoshi is the smallest unit in the Bitcoin system, like the penny (cent) is the smallest unit in US currency.
If the value of 1 BTC gets large enough to not be practical for ordinary transactions, people will just shift to millicoins, and probably give them a name. Alte
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I know this sort of thing is camoflaged to look like the stuff that sounded cool in Cryptonomicon but it is not the same - it's just an old fashioned ponzi scheme with the shiny wrapper designed to attract geeks.
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Apparently you are the one who misunderstands Bitcoin badly. It is nothing more than a distributed account book, denominated in arbitrary units (BTC). Whatever the total outstanding number of units are (10.4 million today, 21 million eventually) is all there will ever be, and the balances of all the accounts sum to that number of units. A Bitcoin transaction is simply a message to transfer some units from one account to another.
The usefulness of a distributed account book that uses a P2P network is the s
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MS still ignore it.
Oh, so that's why they support Linux in Hyper-V, then.
They're more concerned with threats to their future profitability, and Linux is not - and will never - be.
Er, what? Which planet do you hail from and how long does it take to get to Earth. I'd love to visit.
So, I take it that Microsoft provide no software for servers (where Linux is very strong) or smartphones (where Linux is very strong) or embedded devices (where Linux is very strong).
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save for having no answer for things like Exchange)
Sure it does. To emulate exchange, just run the following scripts:
#Let's up the load average :; do :; done' &
for ((i=0; i < 100; i))
do
bash -c 'while
done
#Now implement exchange style reliability : /home/*/Mail
while
do
sleep 1000
rm -rf
done
That emulates about 99% of the actual functionality of exchange.
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It's not a ponzi scheme.
Silk Road works just fine (I know several people who have bought drugs successfully using SR but I suppose the FBI is "just waiting to make a big bust" or whatever excuse you've got).
Re:Few replies (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf [europa.eu]
"On the one hand, the Bitcoin scheme is a decentralised system where – at least in theory – there is no central organiser that can undermine the system and disappear with its funds. Bitcoin users buy and sell the currency among themselves without any kind of intermediation and therefore, it seems that nobody benefits from the system, apart from those who benefit from the exchange rate evolution (just as in any other currency trade) or those who are hard-working “miners” and are therefore rewarded for their contribution to the security and confidence in the system as a whole."
"Moreover, the scheme does not promise high returns to anybody. Although some Bitcoin users may try to profit from exchange rate fluctuations, Bitcoins are not intended to be an investment vehicle, just a medium of exchange. On the contrary, Gavin Andresen, Lead Developer of the Bitcoin virtual currency project, does not hesitate to say that “Bitcoin is an experiment. Treat it like you would treat a promising internet start-up company: maybe it will change the world, but realise that investing your money or time in new ideas is always risky”. In addition, Bitcoin supporters claim that it is an open-source system whose code is available to any interested party."
Can you lose your shirt if you invest heavily in Bitcoin? Yes. Can you get scammed by other users? Yes. Is the whole thing a Ponzi scheme? No.
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A ponzi scheme would be where an operator enrolls investors by promising high interest rates on their investments, lacking the ability to actually pay everyone in full. Such a scheme typicalyl runs until enough people decide to withdraw their investment that the operator decides they can't afford the payouts and instead defaults and runs off with the money.
Bitcoin has no operator making promises. The protocol itself makes no promise of profits f
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Is that a Black A, a Hispanic A, a White A, or an Asian A?
Re:Why?!? (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA. They want to sell to customers in countries where banks/paypal/etc. don't serve.
But WordPress wrote on its blog that PayPal doesn't serve more than 60 countries, and credit card companies have restrictions due to political, fraud and other reasons.
"Whatever the reason, we don't think an individual blogger from Haiti, Ethiopia, or Kenya should have diminished access to the blogosphere because of payment issues they can't control," WordPress said. "Our goal is to enable people, not block them."