How Long Before This House Of Cards Collapses?

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42135963
Now regular readers may know that generally I regard American bankers somewhere between hell and a snakes belly but even they are describing it as a fraud.

[ToraToraTora]

PS my advice is that if you have some bitcoins cash them in PDQ, if you can though I seriously doubt you can.

[Gromit]

// bankers... are describing it as a fraud. //

And they should know, having continually stolen our money for decades. The last thing these Corporations want is for Bitcoin to succeed, because it will take away their ability to fleece us some more.
Many industries have be disrupted by new technology, so why not the banks?

The problem with it at the moment is that it is low scale and unregulated. That will change if hedge funds start to deal in it. There will then be money (and incentive) to secure exchanges and make cryptocurrencies more stable.

I tend to believe that new technology is unstoppable, and that change is inevitable, but then I am an optimist.

[ToraToraTora]

there is no new tech here gromit. Bitcoin is an arithmetical construct.

[Gromit]

// Bitcoin is an arithmetical construct. //

Money is an arithmetical construct. When we started to use bits of metal, and then paper (now plastic) to represent wealth, we separated real physical wealth with a contract of wealth. Your £20 note is worth a few pence in physical value, but the BOE regard it as an IOU £20 which is how we operate the system now. Obviously we guard against people counterfeiting the BOEs IOUs.

We have already largely trnsferred to electronic money, it is just a matter of time before the electronic £ IOUs become bartering in computer code.

[ToraToraTora]

yes but that is not technology, we've had computer code since the 30s. Bitcoin is essentially an algorithm to satisfy a stringent arithmetical construct(mining), a ledger to record it's transactions(blockchain) and a wallet to store them in. Processing power needed to evolve to make the mining possible but programming hasn't really advanced since the Jaquard loom. The internet allows it to function but there is no new technology involved.

[ToraToraTora]

put "new" between not and technology above.

[mikey4444]

Just how does one convert any of this imaginary currency, into pounds or dollars ?

[ToraToraTora]

there are currency traders Mikey but I have yet to hear of anyone actually converting to dollars etc. They are primarily used for dark web deals.

[mikey4444]

TTT....then I take it could buy a shed load of porn, and/or drugs with this imaginary money ?

[ToraToraTora]

if you haven't already!

[New Judge]

"I tend to believe that new technology is unstoppable, and that change is inevitable, but then I am an optimist."

Tell you what, Gromit. You put £10k into a BitCoin (if you can buy a whole one for that by the time you've drawn it out of the bank) and I'll stuff a similar sum under my matress. Let's see who is better off in five year's time