The End of Bitcoin Part II I wrote here a few months back about the end of Bitcoin. There was a certain amount of pushback as there are many out there who would like to see Bitcoin succeed, become a respectable but anonymous online currency. The thing is, all I pointed out was the economic requirements for a currency to succeed:
For there are certain things that we want from a currency. A medium of exchange, a store of value, we’d also like to it be liquid and security is important as well. No currency can have all of these features (and humans have used some pretty odd things as currency over the centuries, from copper sheets to cowrie shells via butter, salt, gold, silver and even pieces of paper with Dead Presidents on them, surely the final lunacy?) to perfection but a currency which doesn’t have any of them in appreciable quantities isn’t going to last very long.
Bitcoin isn't secure as the thefts have shown, it's not liquid, as the various price crashes have shown when one single large order goes through an exchange, it's not widely accepted so it's not all that good as a medium of exchange and as we're now finding out, it's not a good store of value either:
The price of Bitcoin continues to drop by about a dollar every week to ten days, currently settling at about $2.80 USD, and Bitcoin enthusiasts are starting to get worried. “I am not trying to cause a panic here, but the value of Bitcoin has dropped very low today with huge spikes,” one user wrote on the Bitcoin forum on Reddit. “I do suspect it will hit 1 USD mark this week maybe even lower.We need to be discussing thoroughly on promoting Bitcoin and actively putting more effort to spread the message to newer users as I do suspect the popularity is dropping very steeply too.”
A currency can get away with having more o _NULL_
So, That's the End of Bitcoin Then Or at least, this looks like it's the end of Bitcoin.
<blockquote>The Bitcoin community faced another crisis on Sunday afternoon as the price of the currency on the most popular exchange, Mt.Gox, fell from $17 to pennies in a matter of minutes. Trading was quickly suspended and visitors to the home page were redirected to a statement blaming the crash on a compromised user account. Mt.Gox's Mark Karpeles said that the exchange would be taken offline to give administrators time to roll back the suspect transactions.</blockquote>
The initial problem leading to the price collapse was that one user tried to sell more than the market could absorb. For of course the value of anything is determined by the balance of supply and demand for it. Thus the price crashed (and you can see a chart of how quickly it did here). However, it appears that this isn't the only problem:
<blockquote>Since I began writing this, it has emerged that details of more than 60,000 users have been stolen from the Mt Gox exchange. The compromised information includes hashed passwords.</blockquote>
No, the doesn't necessarily mean the end of the Bitcoin experiment, but it's a pretty good indication of it. For there are certain things that we want from a currency. A medium of exchange, a store of value, we'd also like to it be liquid and security is important as well. No currency can have all of these features (and humans have used some pretty odd things as currency over the centuries, from copper sheets to cowrie shells via butter, salt, gold, silver and even pieces of paper with Dead Presidents on them, surely the final lunacy?) to perfection but a currency which doesn't have any of them in appreciable quantities isn't going to last very long. _NULL_
Letters: Lack of agreement on climate change helps no one The idea that rich countries could even consider abandoning a global climate deal until 2020 borders on lunacy (Rich nations 'give up' on new climate treaty until 2020, 21 November).Floods and droughts are already making millions of people in the developing world homeless and exposing them to starvation and disease. If developed countries persist in focusing on the plight of their own economies, while ignoring those who did the least to cause the climate crisis, they will pay the price in unprecedented levels of death, destruction and economic losses later.Governments must continue to forge ahead by committing to stronger emission reduction targets to tackle climate change, and urgently identify new sources of finance to fill the climate fund, which will help the poorest countries to be more resilient to its effects.Paul CookDirector of advocacy, Tearfund• The annual UN climate talks' progress (or not) is determined by a complex mix of influential countries' year-to-year domestic political space and aspirations to act, coupled with longer-term geopolitical considerations. The Durban talks will remain in deadlock because of both processes. First, almost no country in the world wants a Republican US president (given the likely candidates), so attacks on Obama for not going far enough on climate will be muted to avoid aiding the Republicans' chances of election.Second, the long-term US decline and Chinese ascendancy means that China will be in a much better position to dictate the terms of any future long-term climate agreement. Given this, expect no progress in Durban.However, a 2020 agreement is in neither developed nor developing counties' interests. Given the major climate-change impacts on China, action sooner, and not later, is in Chinese interests.Similarl null, responseDetails: Suspected Terms of Service Abuse. Please see responseStatus: 40
Cars arsons outbreak in Berlin for 2nd night in a row BERLIN, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Arsonists set fire to a range of luxury cars on the street of Berlin deep into Tuesday night after the same attack broke out one day before, torching at least 15 various high-priced car, according to local police source.
The fire attack on street-side cars went off around 11 o'clock pm Tuesday from Berlin-Spandau, Charlottenburg and then spread to Friedrichshain, as the arson lunacy seemed to converge on Charlottenburg on Tuesday night and early Wednesday.
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