Behold Bitcoin’s latest competition, Coinye:
Launching January 11 with the catchphrase “WE AIN’T MININ’, WE PICKIN’”, the system promises “no premine, no screwed up fake “fair” launches, shyster devs, muted channels, and f**ked up wallets”. Just like Kanye West, CoinYe West won’t be taking any shit.
Is this a real thing or an elaborate ruse to part suckers with their money? You could ask the same about Bitcoin as far as I’m concerned.
While we’re discussing Mr. West, can someone explain why his latest album got such great press? I’d rather listen to two cats fucking in a plastic shopping bag filled with bubblewrap.
Brian R.
“Yeezus” was the Emperor Has No Clothes moment of modern music.
Such an unbelievable pile of shit.
Mandalay
Get off of my lawn!
BJ is becoming that which it used to deride.
c u n d gulag
Glibrabatarian ‘mony-mony’ schemes iz feckin’ stooopid!!!!!
But, please proceed, suckers.
Please… Please, please proceed…
Btw – I have some Monopoly money I can sell you at face value – how much do you want?
CarolDuhart2
Any currency that isn’t backed by something with credibility (like a real Government with tangible physical assets and real regulations) is suspect to being treated like Monopoly money.
I mean, who makes sure a Bitcoin or something like it is the real thing, and not something counterfeited on someone’s computer? A counterfeiter can run off billions in the fake currency and dilute the value without any legal recourse against that person. The counterfeiter gets real goods and the rest of the Bitcoin universe gets greatly devalued currency.
Draylon Hogg
Put up a cat blog with that image…I dare ya.
GregB
West is incomprehensible and insufferable.
I would rather stick salted ice picks into my ears than listen to his music or his hip-pop psych gibberish.
Yatsuno
This is either one huge troll or someone got a bad batch of weed.
@CarolDuhart2: According to the Bitcoin people that’s not possible because of how Bitcoins are made. Personally I think any 15 year old could make as many as he wanted in a Mountain Dew inspired weekend off from school. But I also have cynic tendencies.
CarolDuhart2
I think its both a troll and Kanye West. My impression of Kanye is that he has succumbed to the syndrome that has affected many a performer: He’s been so famous and cocooned so long that he’s lost his creative touch and touch with real life. Think end-of life Elvis as an example. He’s at the point where just about anything he has, no matter how awful, is greenlighted.
CarolDuhart2
@Yatsuno: Didn’t they say the same thing about gold coins at some point? That gold was so rare that it would be too expensive or something to make a lot of them? Someone managed to do so, even in the days when counterfeiting was nearly a capital offense. With Bitcoin, there isn’t even a government to try to discourge counterfeiting. And I[m cynical like you)-if there’s a will, there will be a way, and this currency is very vulnerable.
My get off my lawn moment: In the old days of pop stardom, the pressure was such that a Kanye would have to at least try to really appeal to the general public to keep his contract. Now, there’s a whole tribe of people who are Kardashians, who manage fame and fortune just by acting like idiots in front of a camera.
They don’t need to produce a product-records, or a movie, or a book. Just do “reality” tv. So Kanye, having disappeared in to the world of Kardashian, no longer needs to do more than the minimum. If he never sells another file again, he’s a reality show star. No wonder it’s bad.
srv
MM, always making fun of the olds that cling to their lattes, patchouli and outdated currencies.
Suzanne
I enjoy Kanye’s music. But it all falls into the genre I have dubbed “DOUCHECORE”, which is good music made by horrible people. See also, Rose, Axl.
Can’t get into Lostprophets EVER, though. Even if I liked them, THAT is a bridge I cannot cross.
Ben Franklin
Is that a Mr T starter kit on his wrist?
max
Is this a real thing or an elaborate ruse to part suckers with their money?
Yes.
I’d rather listen to two cats fucking in a plastic shopping bag filled with bubblewrap.
DUDE! That would be an awesome record!
max
[‘No. Not really kidding.’]
Suzanne
Speaking of cats and plastic bags, one of my cats will lick plastic shopping bags for hours on end if we let her. She won’t puncture them or eat them, just slurp and slurp and slurp. Mr. Suzanne thinks she’s on the spectrum. ;) Does anyone else’s kitty do this?
R-Jud
@CarolDuhart2:
He never seemed like the most stable, self-effacing of gentlemen, but he has never come out of the CRAZYGONUTS batshit phase he entered in 2007, after his mom died during the breast reduction surgery he bought for her.
CarolDuhart2
@Suzanne: My cat chews plastic and paper and actually tries to eat the stuff. But I think he’s a somewhat jittery kitty.
? Martin
My son asked why the field was brown in Green Bay. He was unaware grass dies when it freezes. He was also surprised that anyone actually plays on a grass field – all of the HS stadiums here are artificial.
CarolDuhart2
@? Martin:
Green Bay is an old-school team who can afford the maintenance.
Jose Arcadio Buendía
Shut up and join the DOGECOIN master race.
Roger Moore
If you really want to flip bitcoin people out, suggest that the NSA has already cracked their hashing algorithm and is just waiting until bitcoin is full entrenched before taking over the system. It should hit right at their paranoia centers. Even better, it might even be true that somebody like NSA has broken their hashing algorithm and is capable of taking over the system.
Karen in GA
@Suzanne: For me, news about Ian Watkins just doesn’t register. My brain shuts it out. “Ian Watkins was arrested today for–” No no no no no. “Ian Watkins sent a girlfriend a picture of himself–” Nuh uh, no, no. No. “Ian Watkins pleaded guilty today to–” NOPE! No. No no no no.
CarolDuhart2
@Roger Moore: I bet they have done it, just not said anything about it. Bitcoin is already under the gun for being a currency used to trading illicit stuff, and lets not forget it’s ties to “terrorists”. The NSA has plenty of money and time and expertise to have a dedicated crew just for stuff like this, and no pressure to hurry up and do something.
? Martin
@Roger Moore: Once Bitcoin is fully entrenched and the NSA has secured control, it’ll be renamed the Amero.
scav
A whole bubble-wrap based musical genre! More fun for percussionists. Bigger packs and even balloons extend the tonal range. Balloon animal balloons for a marimba device! (with automated refilling mechanism like they have at bowling).
Ben Franklin
@Roger Moore:
Nice misdirection. Blame it on the Bossa Nova.
Tehanu
No clue about Kanye here except (1) he appears to have what my mom would have called “a big fat mouth” and (2) the SNL parody of him and KimK (with the great Nasim Pedrad as Kim) is absofuckinglutely hilarious.
Morbo
@Jose Arcadio Buendía: Dogecoin should give Kabosu royalties.
WereBear
@CarolDuhart2: Lots of cats go nutz when a new shower curtain appears, for instance. That intense vinyl smell affects them.
I wrote a cat blog about it: They always have a reason
Roger Moore
@CarolDuhart2:
I don’t know if NSA have actually broken bitcoin, but a big part of their job is to look for holes in cryptosystems. As I understand it, bitcoin has used off-the-shelf crypto components, which is actually the recommended approach. NSA might well have found a flaw in the system they’re using without even having targeted bitcoin directly. One of the biggest flaws in the whole bitcoin protocol is that anyone who controls more than half of the power used to compute bitcoin chains can basically take over the whole system and make whatever transactions they want. As long as nobody has a system for computing things that’s better than brute force, it’s implausible that anyone would be able to do that, especially now that the top miners are using custom hardware to do it. But if somebody discovers a serious flaw in their cryptosystem, they can take over with without needing a majority of the hardware. Of course, NSA is an especially serious threat because they have both the crypto knowledge to break the system if anyone can and the resources to take advantage if they succeed.
Ben Franklin
@Roger Moore:
Good on ya, again.
Anoniminous
@Roger Moore:
If Bitcoin used off the shelf crypto-crap components then NSA already knows how to hack it and can hack it any time they want.
Suzanne
@Karen in GA: That is probably for the best.
Ben Franklin
@Anoniminous:
I guess it’s the contractors at NSA vs the White Hats/Black Hats.
My money is on the former.
wasabi gasp
http://youtu.be/pVp4lUE7RXw
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
@Suzanne: our cat loves to lick wrapping paper.
apocalipstick
@CarolDuhart2: Green Bay has a state-of-the-art heating system under the field, but even that won’t save grass when the temperature dips to a certain depth. The grounds crew might forego painting the field green because it makes it look barren and intimidating to the opponent.
MattF
I’m waiting for TulipCoin. Worked once before, amiright?
Roger Moore
@Anoniminous:
Don’t exaggerate the capabilities of the NSA. They’re clearly still the best in the business, but they’re certainly not the only ones out there working on this stuff. All of the best off-the shelf crypto has been bashed on by people outside the NSA who are both competent and willing to publish their attacks. If the whole Dual-ECC PNRG business shows anything, it’s that there’s good stuff out there that the NSA doesn’t know how to crack and is making its way into standards, so they’re falling back on leaning on people to use stuff that they can break. It’s entirely possible, maybe even likely, that much of the best available off-the-shelf crypto doesn’t have any holes the NSA is capable of exploiting. That’s what makes playing off the cypherpunks’ paranoia about the NSA so interesting; their fear is plausible but by no means guaranteed to be true.
Ben Franklin
@Roger Moore:
their fear is plausible but by no means guaranteed to be true.
Guarantees? There are none, except the guarantee that your spin will be plausible.
CarolDuhart2
@Roger Moore: But they have one asset: time and money to keep working at it until they do crack it. It’s not like World War II where they had to crack enemy codes quickly in order to save lives. And those same cyberpumks have their Federal cousins who like a steady job, a challenge and the ability to pay off student loans. Put a bunch of them in a room and give them a blank check, and yes it can be broken-and not only broken, but could possibly be broken and then manipulated for the purposes of any government. And the NSA isn’t the only security agency out there. We as ordinary citizens know even less what foreign and less transparent agencies are doing on their own.
Cassidy
The fear of the NSA is funny.
moops
@Anoniminous:
My view is that the NSA does not have a secret backdoor into BitCoin.
If they have that, then the Snowden slides would not have basically said they can’t break into Tor. If they could hack a BitCoin then they could easily have tracked down and arrested the Silk Road players at any time, and the buyers and sellers, since they could track the coinage. They had to use many other tricks to catch the leader of Silk Road.
The math behind how BitCoins are made is pretty clear and solid. If they could compromise this system, there would have been no point paying RSA $10 million to use special elliptic curve parameters in their Dual_EC_DRBG and make it the default random number generator in their BSAFE product line.
So, NSA doesn’t have a backdoor, or some hack, into BitCoin.
They very well could be the largest BitCoin miner whenever they liked. They have the largest computers on Earth and nobody knows what most of them are doing. It is also possible that several rogue elements with the NSA are sitting on BitCoin “fortunes”. Or one of their private contractors, like Booz Allen Hamilton.
Ben Franklin
@Cassidy:
Not as funny as Your Nubile Statist Apolgies
oldswede
Paul Krugman has posted some biting criticisms of Bitcoin in his columns and there has been predictably frantic reaction from Bitcoin fanatics. As I read these, I recalled the similar reactions of Ron Paul die-hards. The tone is nearly the same.
moops
As for Coinye. Idiotic is probably the best I can muster. BitCoin for the people that don’t know how BitCoin works and wish to be parted from their real money and goods for magic beans. Any currency that has a Kanye somewhere in it is just asking for problems.
BitCoin is dumb for completely different reasons.
danielx
Win.
Although I could totally have done without that image.
Cassidy
@Ben Franklin: A) That was lame. Seriously, if anyone ever told you that you had a talent for comedy and should quit your job to try it, then they probably hate you. B) Your pants wetting fear is still funnier.
Roger Moore
@oldswede:
Some of the people probably are, too.
Comrade Mary
@Suzanne: I had at least 2 cats who loved plastic bags. Hopefully she hasn’t graduated to eating them, because that can lead to nasty, nasty blockages.
Ben Franklin
@Cassidy:
We were talking about your humorous latitude. I was deadly serious, asswipe.
Cassidy
@Ben Franklin: Yeah, you’re making no sense.
FlipYrWhig
@Comrade Mary: our late cat used to lick plastic shopping bags a lot. Never chewed, just licked licked licked.
mainmata
@? Martin: As you surely know, Green Bay’s frigid temps didn’t deter he ’49ers in the end with the Tat Qb having the most rushing yards in a close fought game. I love Green Bay but they got outplayed today.
jheartney
Isn’t it the case that there are theoretically an unlimited number of these virtual currencies? Just change a few parameters on the math and you can create a whole new one? Or is there something nontrivial and unique about the definition for their numerical basis?
Glocksman
@jheartney:
My understanding is that anyone with the prerequisite technical background (not me, as I don’t have a PhD in computer science or mathematics) can create a virtual currency.
The problem is convincing people and governments to accept it as a medium of exchange.
‘Real world’ currency is backed by some legal entity or another, such as the US government, the European Union, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, and so on.
Virtual currencies are backed by what?
The promise of an unknown coder on the internet that it’s uncounterfeitable?
Personally I see bitcoin and other virtual currencies as a glibertarian pyramid scheme designed to separate the gullible from their legal tender and will continue to do so until the day I can walk into CVS and tap my Nexus 5 on the terminal and choose ‘bitcoin’ as a payment method.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
@Glocksman:
Not a pyramid scheme, but glibertarian beanie babies. Valid measures of value don’t bounce up and down like bitcoin does, and the hard limit of 21 million bitcoins, and the tendency of people to hoard them because of the price appreciation curve recently means there’s not enough liquidity to avoid the fluctuations that have been there.
But if there’s 3-6 months of volatility but no overall growth in value, you’ll see the price tank by an order of magnitude or more as everyone realises the stock of Bigger Fools has run dry. But as the saying goes, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay liquid, so it may be a while before we see Bitcoin’s swansong.
IIRC the VCs that are backing bitcoin and other virtual currencies are seeing them as a potential Visa/Mastercard or Paypal killer for financial microtransactions, rather than some big political project to abolish the Fed and gubmint. That does seem a potential market niche, although I remember lots of virtual currencies in the early dot-com era (Beenz, and others) that came a cropper.
gogiggs
Music critics tend to overvalue novelty because they listen to so much same-y stuff. Also, for whatever reason, the idea that artists needed to show “musical growth” took hold in the late ’60s and never really went away. So if they hear something different sounding and especially something different sounding by an established, “important” artist, they often overpraise it.
See also: Achtung Baby (although I think they were right about that) or the White Album
PopeRatzo
@Brian R.:
I know, right? And what’s with the baggy pants and tattoos and all the cursing? It’s not real music, the way Seals & Croft and Jim Croce were. The kids these days need to just shut up and go sign up for Obamacare, because my health care subsidies aren’t going to pay for themselves.
nexus 5 case with screen protector
Today, I went to the beachfront with my kids. I found a sea shell and gave
it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell to her ear and
screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear.
She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is totally off
topic but I had to tell someone!