Only reason to use bitcoin is to have a decentralized currency and also untraceable transactions. But with an unstable exchange rate.

I still regret not becoming a cryptocoin prospector during the boom. Take a house loan or something and buy up a whole farm of them R9 290Xs and would've probably paid them back in a few moths.

BTW anyone who think real money is better choice then think again.

Just like every other financial venture, it was a risk and there was no real way to know. Same could be said for Apple and IBM stocks back in the day. Don't beat yourself over it.

I used to get Dominoes once a week, before I moved 300 miles from the nearest one.

That's not an excuse.
They should still deliver to your house.

I accept those....

So in other words, money laundering.

I need to brainstorm how I could convince enough people to buy into a multi-level marketing/pyramid sales/Ponzi scheme to accept Axis & Allies IPC certificates, Monopoly money, Amway//Herbalife//Mary Kay/Vima products as mediums of exchange...

But... they suck.
Well... or just privacy. Why does it always have to be "money laundering" this "tax evasion" that "terroririst financing" this and the other. It's a way to keep your business, your business.

Big Fish Games accept Bitcoins since two years .


Looks like Gabe really need any type of money ( real or virtual ) . Something must be wrong with Valve / Steam .

Nope.
Gold is a commodity. It's valuable because it has uses as a manufacturing material and you can count on people needing it.
The US Dollar is currency. It's valuable because there's a place where people live who are forced to use US Dollars when they trade for goods and services and give away a number of US Dollars each year or go to jail. Also, because it's actively managed and if the managers fuck up, they're likely to be held accountable.
The Russian Rouble is currency. It's not particularly valuable because the government doesn't enforce the above as consistently as it should: deals are concluded in USD-equivalent "arbitrary units" and taxes aren't being paid. Also, because it's managed and if the managers fuck up -- oh wait they did -- they'll laugh and pour more champagne.
Nothing about that is made up and arbitrary. Gold is real. Food is real. Labor camps are real.

Now Bitcoins aren't a currency. They're a commodity which is fucking useless by itself. And no, it's not private. All transactions are public record by design. If you try to shuffle the coins between several wallets of yours, they're still traceable because the cluster of interconnected wallets lights up like a supernova under even remotely competent data analysis. If third-party wallets are involved, you're entrusting your funds AND your privacy to an unregulated third party. And once you pay with bitcoins from a wallet for something that you interact with non-anonymously, there you are.

The coin owners are anonymous and it's your responsibility to keep your wallet anonymous. Then it's completely and utterly private. If you're dumb enough to make an eponymous purchase with an otherwise anonymous wallet, it's YOUR fault, not Bitcoin's, that you're now known.
The exact same thing goes for everything that gives you privacy. Take Tor for example. Sure, you're anonymous in Tor. Until you log into that email account of yours while doing other stuff that you want to keep private and still on the same identity.
That's user error. Not protocol error. You OBVIOUSLY shouldn't go on Silk Road with the same wallet you go on Steam. :P A good resource to read is: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity and you can use services like https://bitlaunder.com/ (just an example, not vouching for its effectiveness) through a tor onion address.

As for the need of gold as a commodity in production, that's still arbitrary. You could choose pizza as a commodity in sustenance and value a currency system on that. I'm exaggerating of course, but only to illustrate a point. Currencies have the value humans CHOOSE to tie them down to.

they are a currency because they're a baseline for the facilitation of trade in a monetary system.

by your logic, USD are a commodity if I'm anywhere but the US.

I honestly don't understand how so much of GOG became so against Valve.

was it just Steam?

did you guys ever play Half-Life or CS?

This sh*t just made my day :P
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At least gold is a physical element, with some amount of intrinsic value such as being an excellent conductor of electricity & heat. Maybe not nearly as much value as we place on it currently, but certainly something.

The U.S. dollar (or Yen, Rupee, etc.) on the other hand is as made up and arbitrary as it gets. Well each U.S. dollar used to be bound to a specified amount of gold, but not any more. It may as well be monopoly money.