Fwd: [ArchChat] anyone else heard of bitcoins?

[Luke-Jr]

On Thursday, April 14, 2011 8:39:36 pm Oren Beck wrote:
> They generate their coins from solving complex math problems on your pc.

No, the SHA256 bruteforcing serves no purpose but to prevent someone from 
taking over the network. Basically, the idea is that by making it difficult 
to find blocks, someone needs to outpower everyone else on the network 
combined to effectively chargeback. In exchange for contributing your GPU 
power, you are rewarded with the newly minted coins. These days, you need a 
good Radeon to profit over the electricity costs (CPUs and nvidia GPUs cost 
more in electricity than they would earn mining now). So, the math secures 
the network's integrity, it does not itself create the coins.

On Friday, April 15, 2011 10:12:57 am Monty J. Harder wrote:
> Look no further than the guy who was sent to federal prison recently for
> "economic terrorism" by minting gold coins he called "Liberty Dollars". 
> The Fed has a monopoly on creating money in the US, and doesn't like it
> when people try to compete.

He was sent to prison for counterfeiting, because his money looked too much 
like US Dollars, and he suggested people pass it off as such (eg, giving it 
as change). While one might try to argue that in the latter case, the person 
is getting the same value as real money, the fact is that his "American 
Liberty Dollars" carried a (significantly) higher face-value than their 
actual worth in metal. In any case, nobody can argue that Bitcoins can 
possibly be confused with US Dollars.