
Life on Bitcoin: A Documentary - austenallred
http://lifeonbitcoin.com/
======
joshmlewis
They do seem nice, but basically you're asking me to donate to a fund that is
basically your wedding gift and you get to buy things and go on trips with the
money me and everyone else gave you and yes you will have a difficult time,
you still get the experience and at any time Bitcoins could crash or you could
cash all of them in.

~~~
socialist_coder
I don't get why it's even a big deal to "live off bitcoin". Locally, it's
quite easy to find restaurants and bars that take bitcoin. You can find an
online merchant somewhere in the US / World that sells the other goods you
need. And for the stuff you absolutely cannot find, just post on craigslist
and buy it overpriced locally from some hacker who wants to make a profit at
your expense.

pretty dumb

~~~
alexanderh
I don't get why crypocurrency even has to be a replacement for normal
currency. I dont really think it should be BitCoin's goal to be able to 'live
off of it like normal currency'.

It's just another financial tool, of many. People get so religious about it,
and think it has to be "the future" and " the one true currency", and that
some day you'll buy milk at your local grocery store with it... I dont think
that should even be the end goal. Maybe BitCoin will get there some day, but
even if it doesn't, that doesn't mean its failing as a currency.

Like I said, its just another tool of many, good for some things, bad for
others. It's not going to replace normal currency, but it's also not going to
go anywhere anytime soon IMO.

Credit Cards came along, and didnt completely do away with normal currency, so
it shall be with bitcoin. I wish people would stop implying that it should be
a replacement for anything.

(and dont get me wrong, i'm a enthusiastic user and supporter of BitCoin... I
just think some people get kind of silly with where they think bitcoin going)

~~~
betterunix
"I don't get why crypocurrency even has to be a replacement for normal
currency."

The entire point of Bitcoin is to replace "normal" currency. Otherwise, we
could just push for Chaum-style systems, which are better designed, more
secure, and allow for things like offline transfers. The point of Bitcoin is
to remove central authorities, which are the very thing that make other
currencies valuable (yes, even gold, which would have been little more than a
rare shiny metal were it not for ancient governments).

~~~
alexanderh
Bitcoin can remove central control without replacing anything... It's already
serving that purpose.

It doesn't have to be the "one true anything" to be successful.

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vyrotek
I wish them luck. Personally, I think they're going to have a very hard time
pulling this off. I'll be keeping a close eye them though since I know the
couple.

No cheating Austin and Beccy ;)

------
ekr
Bitcoin has a big problem : the block chain size. Right now it is still quite
unknown and still the block chain size is approaching 10GB, which means you
can't use it on devices like mobile phones (without a centralized service,
which somehow defeats the purpose of Bitcoins, which was supposed to be a
decentralized currency). There are techniques to prune unneeded transactions,
but they seem inefficient. If Bitcoins were to become popular, for example
replace dollars, you could easily expect the block chain to jump to the order
of TBs.

About the documentary itself, I honestly don't see its point. But it's not the
only Kickstarter project that seems like an attempt to make some money.

------
contingencies
Congratulations on the marriage! Cool people.

------
ArchD
The donate page lists bitcoin destination addresses for donation but the page
doesn't seem to be HTTPS.

~~~
ISL
It doesn't need to be. Their address isn't any different from any other public
address, like 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. With Bitcoin, you can just send money
to it; no form required.

~~~
betterunix
How do you know Bitcoin is non-malleable i.e. how do you know that a man-in-
the-middle attacker cannot modify your Bitcoin messages so that the money is
deposited to _his_ account instead of the receiver's? Without a proof of
Bitcoin's security, or even a formal security definition, it is hard to say
whether or not such a thing is possible. In fact, the Bitcoin community seems
to be tangentially aware of such issues:

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_Malleability](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_Malleability)

This is one of the reasons I say it is a near-certainty that whoever designed
Bitcoin is _not_ a cryptography expert; this sort of issue is well-understood
by cryptographers and has been the subject of much research. See e.g. non-
malleability in other settings:

[http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~rafael/papers/CNMZK.pdf](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~rafael/papers/CNMZK.pdf)

[http://people.csail.mit.edu/huijia/papers/concnmc-
owf.pdf](http://people.csail.mit.edu/huijia/papers/concnmc-owf.pdf)

~~~
nicpottier
You do bring up a good point that a MITM attack could change the bitcoin
address and trick people to donate there. This really doesn't have anything to
do with bitcoin though.

I don't really understand your point on malleability though. The source and
destination addresses are very much part of the hash and what is signed into
the blockchain, so although you could change trick people into sending
bitcoins to the wrong address using a MITM, the receiver wouldn't be tricked,
only the sender. (IE, they wouldn't see any transaction coming to their
legitimate address)

As to your point on Bitcoin not being 'expert enough', that seems like a
troll. Given the monetary incentives that exist to break bitcoin, and the
number of rather clever people who have given it a hard look, I think you are
vastly underestimating just how solid it is. It may have weaknesses that have
yet to be discovered, but they aren't trivial.

~~~
betterunix
"You do bring up a good point that a MITM attack could change the bitcoin
address and trick people to donate there. This really doesn't have anything to
do with bitcoin though."

That is _not_ my point. My point was that a person might attempt to send money
to the correct address, but that a MITM attacker might be able to compute a
new, related transaction -- perhaps one that deposits money in the attacker's
wallet. That is the point about malleability.

Throwing hashes and signatures around does not necessarily imply non-
malleability. As a simple example, imagine a malleable public key encryption
system. Simply signing messages before encrypting them would _not_ create a
non-malleable system, because the attacker could potentially maul the message
in a way that replaces the original signature with his own signature (on a
related plaintext). Non-malleable PKE is not an easy problem to solve; it took
a lot of work to create such systems (hashes are often _involved_ in the
solution, but it takes more than just a hash function to "get it right").

In the case of multiparty computation, non-malleability is even harder and
carries numerous subtleties. The attacker might desynchronize messages between
the parties as part of the attack. The attacker might be able to observe
multiple simultaneous interactions among different parties, which can be used
in the attack. Maybe a Bitcoin attacker needs to observe a hundred
transactions all involving some target party before they can compute related
messages. The fact that there is no _known_ attack does not mean that no such
attack is possible. It may not be a _trivial_ attack, but non-trivial attacks
are still problematic for a system that is supposed to protect enormous
amounts of money (as Bitcoin is).

"I think you are vastly underestimating just how solid it is"

I think it is hard to even estimate Bitcoin's security, since there is no
well-defined concept of "security" for Bitcoin. That aside, there is _already_
a known polynomial-time attack on Bitcoin (the so-called "51% attack," though
even with less computing power there is a high probability of success), so I
think you are _overestimating_ the security of Bitcoin.

My point about who designed Bitcoin was not meant to be some kind of insult,
it is just an observation I have made. People seem to obsess over who Satoshi
might be, and for some reason people keep looking at experts in cryptography,
math, or related fields. My point is that experts in those fields would almost
certainly be aware of work that has been done in multiparty computation and
would not have simply ignored things like malleability, the "51% attack,"
concurrent security, etc. It is possible for amateurs to design secure
systems; I just do not think Bitcoin is really an example of that.

