5 Likes
I wonder who he/she is? I wonder if we ever will find out?
1 Like
Perhaps someone from a graphics card manufacturer that had a great idea to increase demand… 
2 Likes
I was thinking more of a disgruntled “cyber coder” who got shafted by the traditional banking system. 
1 Like
It’s probably a guy called Nick Szabo, or rather that’s my random guess from reading a bit on wiki/forums over the years. The original source code had British English mannerisms in it, Hungarians are obscenely good at math and he was smart enough to invent it and not use his real name.
Bitcoin went over $7200 a coin today, so his wealth (in theory) jumped $880,000,000 (eight hundred and eighty million US dollars) since I originally posted yesterday. He could order all the pizza.
1 Like
Pizza as a fiat currency.
“OK, that pizza will cost you 4.05 pizzas.”
Wait…
3 Likes
Alright, storytime.
My final year of college one of my roommates went a bit overboard. Our sanctioned on-campus apartment included utilities within its rent, our school was going through a massive tech refresh (lots of old computers being discarded), and he knew a thing or two about networks… This guy’s room was consistently 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the apartment from all the computer exhaust generated by his bit mining operation which ran 24/7.
At some point during the year a bar opened up downtown that accepted bitcoin. This was all a very novel thing a few years ago- my roommate immediately posted his finding on the bitcoin reddit and within minutes he was getting flooded with bitcoin donations urging him to get over there and start the party- I think the final tally was something like $500 USD right before he left for the night.
I heard this all second hand around 2:00 AM when he returned, but apparently he entered the establishment and immediately yelled, “Hey everyone, all drinks on me for the next hour!” which apparently started an incredibly raucous several hours in the bar leading to exchanges like this:
Roommate: “Hey man, want a drink?”
Guy: “Thanks! Hey bartender- scotch and soda?”
Bartender: “Sure man, what whisky?”
Guy: “Uhhh…”
Roommate: “THE MOST EXPENSIVE ONE!”
Guy: “…Yeah that one!”
I forget what the final bill ended up being, but considering that donations continued to roll in through the night he ended up with a hundred or so left over that fueled a more modest trip to the same bar later on.
5 Likes
With Bitcoin and Pizza (for those not in on the joke) a well-known transaction (in 2010) was this:
And that first transaction? A software programmer on “Bitcoin Talk” known as Lazlo Hanyecz offered to 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas. For a least three days, no one took bite of the offer, with Hanyecz writing: “So nobody wants to buy me pizza? Is the bitcoin amount I’m offering too low?”
Yes, he offered (at today’s prices) about $72 million USD for a couple of pizzas and no-one took him up on it at first. Of course, maybe next year the price will be 72 cents…
3 Likes
Is it possible to short Bitcoin? I’m guessing there is some market that allows for it…somewhere…
In 2014, if you signed up for the new Stanford course in Cryptography (it wasn’t initially very popular) then each student was given 100 BTC. Lots didn’t bother claiming them at the time.
1 Like
Of course. Not only that, you can short companies that don’t even exist yet that are claiming to be making new cryptocurrencies that don’t exist yet.
As with all gold rushes, the guys who generally get rich are the ones selling the shovels.
3 Likes
Mudspike Currency Exchange at your service!
2 Likes
4 Likes
The most nefarious use of BlockChain processing I’ve seen so far is websites that are attempting to do a browser based mining via javascript in a webpage. So you visit a website, your CPU goes up a bit, you curse Google Chrome or something for being slow, but what is happening is that (in tiny tiny amounts) a coinhive.js script is running that is actually using your PC (within the context of the browser) to mine a cryptocurrency to a wallet!
Generally only very naughty sites would do this, but do look out for it (or use uBlock and the like, as they look for it). The rewards for the crypto malware (it is really malware) author are still thankfully tiny though.
It does pose a bigger question of ‘How do people pay for free webcontent if they hate ads?’. Could they do it by trading PC or Device processing power (basically electricity?), on the offer than 1 million people doing that on popular content could pay the person providing it?
Odd to consider anyway, as in online content providers trying to keep people reading for longer just so they can use some of your CPU/PC/Phone/Electricity.
(and no, Mudspike would not ever do anything like this, not until PBS and the BBC do it first anyway).
3 Likes
Good question, but to me it’s always been simpler. The advertisement industry is one of the main vectors of malware and viruses that need to be cleaned off every now and then. Unless those websites are willing to pony up money for me cleaning those PC’s, or take responsibility for the ads that they serve up(no, a third party provider is indistinguishable from your website), until that happens I happily block them.
And really, we’ve always had websites, I doubt the internet will suddenly disappear. Besides, they don’t have to provide free content, plenty of news websites have a paywall now.
I’m gonna have to make my articles harder to read so we can keep these suckers online longer. Maybe throw in some math problems or a Sudoku problem in the middle of the images. Yeah…sounds like a plan…
6 Likes
I’ve been busted. You didn’t think the use of (random brackets) when commas work just fine was accidental? 
2 Likes
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
2 Likes