# Cryptocurrency



## 7teen4ever

Help me explain what is Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Etherium, Blockchain In a simpleway.


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## The red spirit

Bullshit, that's as simple as it gets


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## SilentScream

Look up Tulipmania. 

It's a pile of hogwash. 

Almost all Crypto is following the exact same trend as the original Tulipmania. I just saw a series of graphs that have shown that all cryptos are in free fall. Don't fall for the bullshit. If you want to invest, stick with regulated stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate. 

Stay away from the unregulated bullshit because that's all it is.


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## Tyche

The easiest way to describe cryptocurrancy? Basically trying to legitimize monopoly money by backing it with real money and pretending it has value. Combine that with a similar premise to Elf: if you believe in it, it's "real," but when the majority believes it's fake, it begins to cease to exist.


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## SilentScream

This is Ethereum. 










Here's Ripple:










Bitcoin:










Dash:










Litecoin:











Stay away. Crypto is for people who have enough money to dabble in the market and short-sell making money off of the idiots who only see the small picture and invest looking at the big numbers. It sucks in the gambling addicts while the big players continue to profit. 

This is a dozen times worse than the stock market in every sense of the world. 

If you're some average joe who makes 18-100k a year, stay the fuck away from it.


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## Ermenegildo

*Dark Web: Bitcoin Alternatives*

*Dark Web News: Dark Web Users Abandon Bitcoin for Other Cryptocurrency*

According to recent reports, dark web users are dropping Bitcoin for new and emerging cryptocurrencies that are more difficult for authorities to track.

Despite it being quite tricky to trace and pin down actual criminal activities associated with digital currencies, there has been a substantial decline in the number of illegal transactions that involve Bitcoin.

What’s more, dark web users are increasingly monitoring other digital currencies such as *Ethereum* and *Monero*. What many users are learning about the reliance of Bitcoin to carry out transactions is that it’s as safe as it is risky.

Bitcoin operates on an exclusive public record known as the blockchain, where all the transactions are available online.

To get payments, one needs an address (public) but unfortunately for the users, this is how intelligence agencies can monitor how the funds are moving to addresses provided by hackers.

This way, they can arrest criminals while they’re attempting to withdraw through several more regulated platforms like banks or exchanges.

Over the last few years, there has been a splurge of new cryptocurrencies in addition to Bitcoin. These digital currencies have cropped up from the necessity for added privacy.

*As opposed to Bitcoin’s now-vulnerable open transaction public record, the underlying Monero technology conceals the identities of the senders and receivers, not to mention the amount.*

Given the relative stability of Ethereum and Monero over the course of last year, perhaps 2018 will see even more dark web users flocking to these alternative cryptocurrencies in the place of Bitcoin.

Just recently, CoinMarketCap’s Monero charts recorded a massive high of $400 in value, which is already a spike for the first week of 2018.

According to recent reports, dark web users are dropping Bitcoin for new and emerging cryptocurrencies that are more difficult for authorities to track.

Data indicates that Ethereum (also a relatively new cryptocurrency) has become a preferred option for cybercriminals. Ethereum has gone up approximately 4,300 percent amid a flurry of Initial Coin Offerings, which brought in around $1.8 billion within the last few years.

According to 2017 data, hackers raised an approximate $225 million in Ethereum funds.

Phishing attacks, a type of messaging that lures unsuspecting individuals to disclose personal information, represents over half of recent total revenue courtesy of Ethereum cybercrimes (about $115 million).

The European Union law enforcement authority Europol has since noted that the dark web would subsequently identify alternative options to escape financial detection.

In their report, they indicate they have observed a trend where “other cryptocurrencies” like Ethereum, Zcash and Monero are continually gaining popularity in the dark web.

Online scammers and many phishing hackers are in recent times demanding ransom in the form of digital currencies such as Monero.

In one of the most recent prominent cyberattacks, a number of WordPress sites were targeted in a Monero crypto mining campaign.

According to industry experts and analysts, Monero is quickly becoming a preferred revenue source for cybercriminals.

As aforementioned, this is mainly because unlike its counterpart Bitcoin, Monero is virtually untraceable since it does not operate by using a public ledger where transactions can be accessed and consequently traced back to the involved parties.

This eradicates the chance of transaction verification for criminal activity.

Zcash is yet another alternative to consider, although it is yet to make a significant mark on the dark web as compared to Ethereum and Monero.

That said, reports still indicate that Bitcoin remains a favorite for numerous dark web users because of its more extensive use which makes it easier to convert it into standard currency devoid of any intermediary.

What’s more, the sharp recent Bitcoin gains have also not gone unnoticed. In fact, they have made Bitcoin even more lucrative for cybercriminals as witnessed by recent high-profile incidents like WannaCry.

Bitcoin simply introduced a scenario where people can easily bypass money mules. Nonetheless, while Bitcoin initially represented anonymity, recent occurrences have gone to show that it may not be that anonymous — hence the new trend. (S)

https://blockchain.info/
Other Important Cryptocurrencies


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## puzzled

Basically it's gambling and is also causing a climate crisis. The tech that underlies it is pretty interesting because blockchain solves the "double spending" problem. The distributed ledger makes it such that you can exchange money on the Internet without a third party (eg paypal).

Bascially they are all currencies based on blockchain tech. Ethereum has a currency but, unlike bitcoin, actually offers a product -- smart contracts.

If you have any more specific technical questions about how these work I can answer them. 

I don't endorse any of the cryptocurrencies.


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## Pexerr

A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency designed to work as a medium of exchange. It uses cryptography to secure and verify transactions as well as to control the creation of new units of a particular cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin is the first ever cryptocurrency invented and remains by far the most sought after cryptocurrency to date. Bitcoin is known as the digital gold standard in the cryptocurrency network.

You can also read more [link removed]here about this question.


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## pwowq

7teen4ever said:


> Blockchain In a simpleway.


Blockchain use cases:
- cryptography
- cryptocurrency
- automated contract verification ("smart contracts")
- distributed ledger
- online voting


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## Eren Jaegerbomb

Another New World Order implementation.


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## HAL

Cryptocurrency is pure bollocks and I'm glad it's starting to die.

I bet it has another boom at some point, bigger than the last, because this is the first online version of tulip mania.

It will fizzle out though.

I know of one guy who's made big money from it. He thinks he's the arbiter of knowledge now, as is typical for people who come into money. They think that their wealth equates to their overall supreme ability as a human being. Really, all he did was buy bitcoin then sell later. Not everyone will get lucky like that.

Five years from now, cryptocurrency will be that craze that everyone looks back on and sees as the most obvious stupid thing ever, "But hey it was the 2010s and everyone was at it!". The dotcom bubble springs to mind. "Hey it was the 90s, everyone was at it!"

Every generation has its stupid fads where the idiot public _with nowhere near enough real knowledge_ gets into a frenzy and tries to make bank quickly, with many more losers than winners.


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## Felipe

HAL said:


> Cryptocurrency is pure bollocks and I'm glad it's starting to die.


Yeah, thanks for raising video card prices, assholes


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## ae1905

*Bitcoin Mining Now Accounts For Almost One Percent of the World's Energy Consumption*


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## The red spirit

ae1905 said:


> *Bitcoin Mining Now Accounts For Almost One Percent of the World's Energy Consumption*


So much waste for useless shit


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## HAL

The red spirit said:


> So much waste for useless shit


Worst of all is that it's intentionally energy intensive.

The complexity of hashing algorithms which must be processed via bitcoin mining is dictated by the amount of mining units working at any one time. So if a hundred new mines go into operation, the algorithm complexity will, for example, change from "10-rating Difficulty" to "35-rating Difficulty", forcing every unit to complete more calculation cycles before a result is found.

That way, it doesn't matter if there's one bitcoin mining unit or one billion, the output will _always_ be the same amount of bitcoins per year, just shared among more or fewer people depending on how many are actively mining.

It's actually very clever. Complete and utter waste of human resources though. Like turning all your radiators on and opening all the windows, or buying a walk-in freezer and leaving the door wide open.


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## The red spirit

HAL said:


> Worst of all is that it's intentionally energy intensive.
> 
> The complexity of hashing algorithms which must be processed via bitcoin mining is dictated by the amount of mining units working at any one time. So if a hundred new mines go into operation, the algorithm complexity will, for example, change from "10-rating Difficulty" to "35-rating Difficulty", forcing every unit to complete more calculation cycles before a result is found.
> 
> That way, it doesn't matter if there's one bitcoin mining unit or one billion, the output will _always_ be the same amount of bitcoins per year, just shared among more or fewer people depending on how many are actively mining.
> 
> It's actually very clever. Complete and utter waste of human resources though. Like turning all your radiators on and opening all the windows, or buying a walk-in freezer and leaving the door wide open.


I dunno why people were so stupid to start mass mining, considering that they get less bitcoins if it is popular.

BTW isn't mining somewhat similar to [email protected]? Result of course is different, but proccess?


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## HAL

The red spirit said:


> I dunno why people were so stupid to start mass mining, considering that they get less bitcoins if it is popular.
> 
> BTW isn't mining somewhat similar to [email protected]? Result of course is different, but proccess?


Never heard of [email protected]

Google tells me it's a thing that uses the idle processing resources of personal computers to help with scientific research efforts.

This is very different from bitcoin mining, because [email protected] simply uses extra CPU power to do what needs to be done. The difference is that bitcoin mining is designed specifically to become more computationally intensive as more miners join the bandwagon, simply for the joy of making the mining more difficult, to ensure all the bitcoins aren't mined away in the space of a few days or something. In comparison, [email protected] does not get any more or less computationally difficult, in fact if more people sign up to the project it would be great - more processing power to help get shit done, actual shit, rather than nonsense arbitrary bitcoin mining shit.

This reminds me, actually, of one of the original 'shared processing power' projects, called [email protected] It used the shared resources of idle personal computers to process the data harvested in the search for extra terrestrial life. I was signed up to that for a while, but it started to have problems so I quit!


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## ae1905

bitcoin is like internet 1.0


a lot of money got thrown at internet startups in the 90s....most startups failed


out of the dot.com bust, however, a few survivors emerged and went on to build the modern internet economy which has transformed the world


likewise, a lot of money has been thrown at bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies...many of these digital currencies have and will fail


but out of this bubble a new technology may also emerge: _blockchain_....and like the internet, it too promises to transform how the economy works


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## The red spirit

HAL said:


> Never heard of [email protected]
> 
> Google tells me it's a thing that uses the idle processing resources of personal computers to help with scientific research efforts.


It can also be set up to use full power and then it becomes very taxing. FX 6300 can be fully loaded by it.



HAL said:


> This is very different from bitcoin mining, because [email protected] simply uses extra CPU power to do what needs to be done. The difference is that bitcoin mining is designed specifically to become more computationally intensive as more miners join the bandwagon, simply for the joy of making the mining more difficult, to ensure all the bitcoins aren't mined away in the space of a few days or something. In comparison, [email protected] does not get any more or less computationally difficult, in fact if more people sign up to the project it would be great - more processing power to help get shit done, actual shit, rather than nonsense arbitrary bitcoin mining shit.


And you help researchers too, that's really nice, but really impractical.



HAL said:


> This reminds me, actually, of one of the original 'shared processing power' projects, called [email protected] It used the shared resources of idle personal computers to process the data harvested in the search for extra terrestrial life. I was signed up to that for a while, but it started to have problems so I quit!


I just tried it out and yeah, it only uses PC when it does nothing or next to nothing


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## The red spirit

ae1905 said:


> bitcoin is like internet 1.0
> 
> 
> a lot of money got thrown at internet startups in the 90s....most startups failed
> 
> 
> out of the dot.com bust, however, a few survivors emerged and went on to build the modern internet economy which has transformed the world
> 
> 
> likewise, a lot of money has been thrown at bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies...many of these digital currencies have and will fail
> 
> 
> but out of this bubble a new technology may also emerge: _blockchain_....and like the internet, it too promises to transform how the economy works


What do you think it will evolve to?


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