China's central bank hit by DDoS after Bitcoin blitz Angry Bitcoin users are suspected of DDoS-ing the website of China’s central bank following tough new restrictions it levied this week which appear to have forced the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchange into meltdown. Chinese news site 163.com (via The Diplomat) claimed that the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) web site and weibo …
To the Bitcoin users who have just lost the shirts off their back with this (and those soon to be joining them), don't worry!
I have this new currency - its called TurdCoin. I'll only produce a few of them a day, so they MUST be valuable?! If we all pretend they're money then they're as good as the real thing right?!
They've already beaten you to that. Alternative "currencies" like Litecoin, Feathercoin etc. which are basically just rebooted bitcoins, i.e. the people who start these alternative bitcoins up hope to mine out all the easy coins and then cash in when the rubes buy into their currency. Just like bitcoin.
If you can get hold of a few botnets by writing and distributing malware and start renting capacity on them for Turdcoin that might just work. A lot of hard work, but all at other people's expense. You'd have to try persuading regulatory authorities that Turdcoin has legitimate uses to allow for cash exchanges. Without the latter, you won't be able to cash out.
If it relies on a 3rd party (you) to do that, you've missed the fundamental point that makes Bitcoin different from any earlier attempt at electronic currencies.
If it doesn't - well, if you had really produced a means of exchange, before Bitcoin had done it first, then sure, it would be worth something. But you didn't.
If you mean you've produced something similar to Bitcoin and called it Turdcoin, well sure, plenty of people are producing alternatives of Bitcoin. But being first, and having all the media awareness, does have advantages. Some of the alternative coins sound promising, and Bitcoin's biggest threat probably is an alternative currency. But since you have actually made something, and are just posting on a forum, no, it won't be worth anything.
1. Other people pay for the electricity.
2. They can DDOS anyone they don't like.
3. Lots of CPUs and GPUs at other people's expense.
4. What better way to anonymise each transaction than to use a different proxy chain and responsible IP address each time ?
Consequently BC has become the digital crime economy's preferred method of payment.
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"However, traders in the Middle Kingdom were responsible for much of the currency’s surging popularity over the past year"
Or rather, in the last month or so. 2013 already saw a massive increase from $10 to a price of around $100, which doesn't seem specific to China. The "crash" has seen Bitcoin's 2013 growth fall to a mere 6000%.
The UK is already in the same situation that China now is - at one point, I believe it was possible in the UK to transfer direct to exchanges, but with UK banks shutting down accounts, you now have to transfer internationally, which is what the Chinese can still choose to do. Which is a pain - but looking at it from the other side, it means there's a lot of potential remaining if these restrictions eventually get sorted out.
Bitcoin doesn't. This example shows how Governments can control their currency, in a way that they can't control Bitcoin. The problem is that if you don't yet have Bitcoin, and what to buy it using a country's currency, then obviously you are still subject to that Government's control. Though yes, it is kind of amusing that the hardest thing about obtaining Bitcoin is the very thing that Bitcoin can solve.
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