Bitcoin for the Befuddled – Our fancy new book and website(befuddled.org)
befuddled.org
Bitcoin for the Befuddled – Our fancy new book and website
http://befuddled.org
7 comments
The yellow "inserts" that pop open are neat but appear too often and become an annoyance. I think you should keep it limited to the fortune teller, cover color voting, and cointagion link. The rest of them seem like filler and add no value, in my opinion.
Jayschwa, you might be right, we'll work to adjust that.
We'll hang out in this thread and answer any questions. (Also happy to answer questions on my other books, "Land of Lisp" or "Realm of Racket")
Questions about ... what? That's simply a teaser with absolutely zero content. Are you going to answer questions about how you drew that crocodile? I must admit the drawings are lovely, though ;-)
It looks like the facebook external hit bot isn't picking up any images or description. You can add some meta tags to facilitate sharing:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11616697/how-to-use-og-me...
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11616697/how-to-use-og-me...
Thanks, this is one of the many little SEO things that we need to get more experienced with... That link you sent is very good and will be followed to the letter.
Looks like the site is having some trouble. In Firefox there's no text on the yellow bars (just two arrows and a drawing). In IE I get a blank page.
Hi, everything is looking fine for me in FF22 and IE11. This site does make heavy use of new HTML5 features... If you can let me know which versions of FF and IE you're using (and your OS) that would be helpful, Luc!
Vista, FF 25, IE 9, all up to date.
I got the text on the yellow bar to display in FF by disabling Adblock Plus.
IE hasn't got any relevant extensions running.
Are you long BTC at this moment? Do you think that makes your opinion of it unbiased?
Yes, I own bitcoins right now (no idea about my co-author.) We are not journalists, just technical book writers. Of course we are probably biased, in the same way that someone writing a stock market book invests in the stock market, or someone that writes about vegetarianism is probably a vegetarian.
When I write newspaper opinion pieces on bitcoin (only one so far) I make sure it says in there that I own bitcoins.
I definitely agree though that bitcoin raises new questions about conflict of interest when writing about technology.
When I write newspaper opinion pieces on bitcoin (only one so far) I make sure it says in there that I own bitcoins.
I definitely agree though that bitcoin raises new questions about conflict of interest when writing about technology.
Are people who instead hold USD, EUR, or CNY unbiased when writing about those currencies or BTC?
I would agree authors should disclose their participation, but I think disinterest/divestment on such matters is an unrealistic goal. Any stake or non-stake implies some personal preferences, and some personal stake is practically a prerequisite for motivating enough attention to understand and explain.
(Or as VC John Doerr has said: "No conflict, no interest".)
I would agree authors should disclose their participation, but I think disinterest/divestment on such matters is an unrealistic goal. Any stake or non-stake implies some personal preferences, and some personal stake is practically a prerequisite for motivating enough attention to understand and explain.
(Or as VC John Doerr has said: "No conflict, no interest".)
Co-author writing here. Although we think Bitcoin has (probably) a bright future, the book is really just about explaining how it works (the protocol and the cryptography behind it).
Question to both authors - The Cicada 3301 group has been linked to BTC (suggestions that Satoshi is a pseudonym for the group), their most recent puzzle had a key code around The Book of Law by Crowley. Just coincidence that your character is also named this, or by design?
Cicada 3301 is fascinating. Taken at face value (and that's a huge assumption to make) it appears to be a self-styled
"cypherpunk freemasonry" of sorts. Care to cite or summarize the evidence and case for a satoshi/cicada link (other than "hey wouldn't that be so awesome if...")?
Has anyone yet been able to articulate a defense for BTC against von Mise's "regression theorem" for the origin of money? or show that von Mises was wrong? "this time it's different" is not good enough.
Isn't emergence of bitcoin falsified regression theorem?
From "Human Action":
No good can be employed for the function of a medium of exchange which at the very beginning of its use for this purpose did not have exchange value on account of other employments. And all these statements implied in the regression theorem are enounced apodictically as implied in the apriorism of praxeology. It must happen this way. Nobody can ever succeed in construction a hypothetical case in which things were to occur in a different way.
https://mises.org/humanaction/chap17sec4.asp
From "Human Action":
No good can be employed for the function of a medium of exchange which at the very beginning of its use for this purpose did not have exchange value on account of other employments. And all these statements implied in the regression theorem are enounced apodictically as implied in the apriorism of praxeology. It must happen this way. Nobody can ever succeed in construction a hypothetical case in which things were to occur in a different way.
https://mises.org/humanaction/chap17sec4.asp
It sounds like there's nothing wrong here -
Bitcoin is (since its beginning) exchanged for something else at market rate (e.g. dollars), so that a more convenient transfer can be made later, and then exchanged back into something else (e.g. dollars). At no point did it have "no exchange value on account of other employments".
Right? It's the same way how physical money works. They were exchanged for goods (e.g. horses), so that a more convenient transfer can be made later, and then exchanged back into goods (e.g. horses).
It is more convenient than our existing currencies, and you should be able to see our existing currencies as being similar to "goods" like horses.
Bitcoin is (since its beginning) exchanged for something else at market rate (e.g. dollars), so that a more convenient transfer can be made later, and then exchanged back into something else (e.g. dollars). At no point did it have "no exchange value on account of other employments".
Right? It's the same way how physical money works. They were exchanged for goods (e.g. horses), so that a more convenient transfer can be made later, and then exchanged back into goods (e.g. horses).
It is more convenient than our existing currencies, and you should be able to see our existing currencies as being similar to "goods" like horses.
I beg to differ. I did have "no exchange value on account of other employments" at the time the very first BTC was mined, and I suspect quite a few months after that. The same cannot be said of paper money as from the moment of its inception and for many long years thereafter it was redeemable in gold, thus satisfying the regression theorem. Even today a tenuous link is still maintained as the gold reserves of every central bank factor, to a limited extend, in the assessment of a currency's health.
> The same cannot be said of paper money as from the moment of its inception and for many long years thereafter it was redeemable in gold
But since the dollars themselves had no inherent value, its value was derived simply from the cumulative belief that they could be redeemable by gold. I could even say that when the dollar was first created, the rest of the world was wary of it since it was so new.
I don't see how bitcoin is much different, except for the fact that a large organization (e.g. government) didn't state that it had value when it was first created, which is actually one of the strong points of bitcoin (a currency by the people for the people.)
But since the dollars themselves had no inherent value, its value was derived simply from the cumulative belief that they could be redeemable by gold. I could even say that when the dollar was first created, the rest of the world was wary of it since it was so new.
I don't see how bitcoin is much different, except for the fact that a large organization (e.g. government) didn't state that it had value when it was first created, which is actually one of the strong points of bitcoin (a currency by the people for the people.)
The passage above should be clearly be understood as "No good can be employed _for the long run_ ...". Otherwise various local currencies that have risen and died over the years (e.g. "Ithaca hours") could also have been construed as counter-examples to the regression theorem.
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Here's an interesting paper on this subject that I found via reddit a few days ago. http://konradsgraf.com/blog1/2013/10/23/on-the-origins-of-bi...
That paper makes a preposterous assertion. Here's the very simplest summary of it and its criticism:
http://themisescircle.org/blog/2013/03/19/bitcoin-and-the-re...
http://themisescircle.org/blog/2013/03/19/bitcoin-and-the-re...
Spot on! I skimmed it very quickly and I also got the feeling that portraying "shiny metals" as something that, in the beginning, only "a few crazy ones" liked to possess (attempting to draw a parallel with BTC's origins) does not stand to scrutiny. Desire for shinny metals and, in general, beautiful objects (diamonds, pearls etc) is hard-coded deeply in the human psyche, is found in myths since the dawn of time and is part of our human nature and our ability to appreciate beauty and being drawn to it. It's preposterous to claim the same for random strings of bits.
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No. At least, not one that has persuaded the majority.
http://themisescircle.org/blog/2013/03/19/bitcoin-and-the-re...
http://themisescircle.org/blog/2013/03/19/bitcoin-and-the-re...
Mises wasn't wrong...
The 'thing' that becomes money doesn't have to have a real world use. It must be desired by some people. People can desire bitcoins expecting it to become a widely used currency. Yes, it's circular, but there's nothing preventing a self-fulfilling prophecy from being compatible with the regression theorem.
Now, if you absolutely need to have some kind of basic usage to feel better, know that to use the Bitcoin blockchain, you must pay a fee in bitcoins. A bitcoin enables you to use the blockchain, the world's most secure distributed financial database.
The 'thing' that becomes money doesn't have to have a real world use. It must be desired by some people. People can desire bitcoins expecting it to become a widely used currency. Yes, it's circular, but there's nothing preventing a self-fulfilling prophecy from being compatible with the regression theorem.
Now, if you absolutely need to have some kind of basic usage to feel better, know that to use the Bitcoin blockchain, you must pay a fee in bitcoins. A bitcoin enables you to use the blockchain, the world's most secure distributed financial database.
Cointagion is the first site I seen that shows how simple it would to buy digital goods with bitcoins. How could this work with physical goods? Would you just have to "tie" a shipping address to a bitcoin transaction?
Were still trying to wrap our heads around the issue of physical shipments in regards to bitcoin purchases ourselves. There is a new "bitcoin payment protocol" for authenticating merchants that is part of the solution and which we discuss in the book... But more and more goods are becoming virtual every day (just consider 3d printing for instance as a way to increase virtualization of products) and this is where bitcoin shines.
I guess I am thinking about it from the perspective of some company like Amazon adopting it. That would be absolutely massive for bitcoin. I think we are still a long way from being able to "3d print" any product you need.
You don't have to do anything of the sort. You negotiate for a spending address using the bitcoin payment protocol, in the process giving them your shipping details.
Seriously cool stuff. Are there other formats (PDF for example) for those who want to buy this and read it on their smartphones later?
Hi, we're releasing the full book and ebook in Jan-Feb. It will also be available in PDF form and will include all the comics from the website.