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New YouTube Segment – Jack’s Rants – Today Episode 1 on Bitcoin — 60 Comments

  1. I’m extremely interested in Bitcoin and believe that the more diverse we are the better. Some brief questions would be what wallet web site do you recommend? Is there an Iphone app that you like? Finally, is there an exchange site where we can gauge values/fees to determine best possible medium?
    Thanks Jack

      • And block chain is about to release an HTML5 version of it that will make that mean absolutely nothing.

    • Mtgox.com is one if the largest exchanges but recently has had some issues and suspended withdrawals. This caused bit coin to lose some value recently. Coinbase.com is a popular wallet but for anonymity stick with a local wallet and don’t use an online one. Also, for anonymity use bitcoinfog.com as a tumbler. I don’t use iphone, but I’m sure there is.

  2. How about some more discussion on drought and all that goes with it. You have fire danger and thoughts on fire resistance in the landscape such as what to do with Cedar trees and all the lower limbs. What about impacts to watering livestock in severe water rationing such as West Texas and the banning of watering cattle last year. What about fire resistant building?

  3. The resume is dead.
    Online applications are all the rage.
    How to make yourself stand out?

  4. I occasionally get down after learning how much of our freedoms have been stolen from us. I sometimes I feel like we are all screwed and our country is going to hell in a hand basket. Perhaps you can do a rant that would serve as a morale boost for those times when we all feel this way.

  5. On the Bitcoin subject, I’d like to know your thoughts on how/when we might see Bitcoin integrated into everyday transactions. Remember how “debit cards will never catch on”? I’m looking forward to making purchases with Bitcoin on everything from gas/diesel to hardware,…oh, and more TSP shirts!

    Great rant Jack. Keep up the awesome work!

  6. P.S.

    What was the term you used for a political atheist a few episodes back? I didn’t catch the term or the full name of the person you gave credit to for using it. It sounded like Steve Mollingrew? My audio decided to dump that small part of the download in favor of pixelated audio garbage. A can of squelch might fix that……

    • Stefan Molyneux – host of the free domain radio podcast series on philosophy.
      I think the term you are looking for is statheist?

  7. I’ve been learning about bitcoin for a couple of months now and think it sounds awesome in theory. As strange as this may sound, the idea of actually using bitcoin kind of made me anxious. I realized its my dollar bias that makes me feel queezy anytime I thought about giving this a try and exchanging some cash to bitcoin. Even though I understand how it works, I catch myself trying to conceptualize the third party that doesn’t even exist.

    Well, I decided this week to give it a try. I downloaded a free wallet software and made my wallet. I sat there scratching my head when I finished the process after 2 clicks, wondering how it could be complete when it doesn’t even “know” my name or email; just click* and there is my address and wallet codes. Even then, I sat there looking at an empty wallet with balance of 0 btc. Still, that queezy feeling hit me. Even though I could just use something safe like paypal, I was nervous about using an exchange or any other way of converting a little cash to bitcoin. I still had some questions about application, like transactions, the fees, confirmations, etc.

    So, here is what I did. I searched for crowd sourcing sites that pay in bitcoin. I found a bunch that were fake or didn’t pan out. I actually only found 1 that worked. I copy/pasted my bitcoin address and completed a few of the crowd sourcing tasks. I spent like 30 minutes on it. Basically it was things like verifying prices of products, searching with keywords and showing what sites come up. It was just mind-numbing tasks and clicking boxes. Each task paid like 50 microBTC. Each task took like a minute. Anyway, each time it dropped these tiny amounts into my wallet after 24 hours. I had about 1600 microBTC which comes out to about $1.40 or something ridiculous. As for that site, they didn’t even have my name, so I felt safe doing it. They just had my bitcoin address.

    So, the value in this wasn’t the $1.40, it was the experience and making my self feel comfortable with something new. So, I still needed to send bitcoin to fully feel like I understood, so I dropped it in Jack’s tip jar. After doing this, it was a little confusing with the way the fees worked and confirmations, but I did it and I finally said, Ah-ha! I get it now. The most confusing part was wrapping my head around the ease and simplicity of the process. Its crazy that I can have an electronic transaction with someone and not know who they are if they don’t want me to know and vice versa. It is simply awesome!

    So in case there are people out there like me that just feel anxiety and confusion when thinking about using something revolutionary like bitcoin, you can try this approach as there was 0 risk involved.

    • nice comment @Jason

      It is kind of so simple its confusing.. which says something.

      When you boil it down, calling the client application a ‘wallet’ is very accurate. You put cash into your wallet, you take cash out of your wallet. If your wallet gets stolen, no more cash.

      That’s the only part of BTC most people need to understand.

    • Thanks for this comment, Jason. One of the most insightful approaches to explaining Bitcoin to beginners. Very helpful.

  9. Plant a Single Food Plant:

    Select a food (Cucumber, Tomato, Pepper, whatever…) based on ease of planting/growing and utility as food. “Give us from go get this seed” to “dig this type of hole” and scaffolding, watering, etc…

    Call it 4 minutes to Food

  10. What I would like too see.

    1.Rants on stuff happening in the news you find stupid.

    2.Rants that clarify common misconceptions.

    3.Practical tips and techniques on things ranging from gardening to bug out gear and stuff.

    4.Quote of the day. Read some small little liberty and or prepper related verse from some book or something that inspired you.

  11. Jack,

    It didn’t mean much to me because I don’t know word one about bitcoin, it’s purpose or how it works. I can look it up, but perhaps that might have been the first video.

    From what little I gathered from this, if it removes tax revenue from governments, isn’t it destined to become a flash in the pan when the bite becomes large enough? We don’t have the resources to insure that our transactions aren’t taxed like banksters, stock, bond, commodities traders and hedge fund gamblers. If that happens what happens to all the effort we might have put into bitcoin? How do the local currencies of a transition town work in this respect?

    • @Ron, I guess you don’t know much, NO IT IS NOT DESIGNED TO REMOVE TAX REVENUES FROM GOVERNMENT any more than cash is anyway. That is like saying guns are designed for shooting yourself in the foot.

      If you want to understand it this is the best video I have seen on it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4HGVJjqDVk

      No reason for me to recreate the work of another person. But I warn you Ron, Stephan is a full on anarchist, he doesn’t think my anarcho libertarian stance is far enough. You could get liberty kooties or something if you watch him to long.

      • Sorry for being so harsh there, it wasn’t called for. You have really been a pain in the ass lately but I should not hold that against you when you ask a fair question. Also bitcoin is constantly made out to be that which it isn’t not by those asking but by those slandering, that is also not your fault. So I am sorry for the above comment Ron and figured it was better to say so vs. just removing the comment.

    • Now to be nice to you Ron, “How do the local currencies of a transition town work in this respect?”

      OH EXCELLENT QUESTION

      Beautiful and I am not blowing air up your skirt! Seriously I was just thinking the other day that any transition town would be foolish to use “LETS” when they could have their own version of bitcoin. Bitcoin is open source, you can set up your own version of it and if you don’t know how there are folks you can hire to do it for you. Say I figured out a way to get PermaEthos done as the original community idea. There is no reason we could not release “Ethoscoin” and we could do two things.

      1. We could allow it on the open market just like bitcoin, litecoin, etc. BUT

      2. We could run it as an internal internet. All bitcoin and other crypto currencies really are amount to methods of accounting. Jack sent Ron X number of ______coin.

      So there is no reason a transition town could not set up TransitionTown_____coin and keep it on a very small closed network. An off the shelf stout PC with a second for a back up could easily run this type of a network for a town of even a thousand or more. Instead of being public their coins would be private, only used inside their community. A fixed number could be created vs. mined. Basically make the mining easy so that say 1,000,000 bitcoins are mined from day one. They are “sold into circulation” say at 1 dollar per coin and they increase in value as the dollar decreases in value (based on the CPI).

      The town would have a reserve requirement, perhaps 30%, meaning 30% of the cash must be held in a community trust. This allows people to convert to dollars when they need some of their money outside the town. The other 70% could be privately lent at very low interest (again attached to the CPI + say 1.5%) to maintain a stasis in the community. The community would elect a board to approve loans and charity from the community profit. In this model one would set up a 501C3 because one has to so that the pricks in government have their own tools used against them to hold them at bay. One would be a fool to implement this crypto coin BEFORE getting 501 approval though.

      I would prefer to do it outside of a 501, and likely with the right legal wrangling it could be done.

      The key is the internal crypto currency can’t be forged, who gave what to whom can’t be argued. You never paid me, well the block chain says I did.

      Not to mention the blockchain itself is genius. You can make stuff on the blockchain almost impossible to trace but you can also make it auditable by anyone that knows how. So you could run an election, to vote for A send one .00000000001 coin to address xyzpdq and to vote for B send .00000000001 coin to address aeiouy. With that any election fraud is dead, it would even be pretty easy to run a bot that returned all the factions of a coin to their owners and counted them while doing so to tally the vote.

      Election fraud is dead with that and good. Election fraud is very bad even when it doesn’t happen it is still bad if people think it did. I could see it ruining a transition movement, but with this method there is no potential for fraud.

      Clearly the internal LETS model would be totally open, vs. having the ability to be closed.

    • Hi Ron, I was searching for some answers the other day and your name came up, but I still got no answers. Maybe you will read the comments in the ‘Liberty.me’ post here on Jack’s site, and express your feelings as to whether Jacks comment was correct?

      From the comments of yours I have read, you don’t seem very ‘big’ government to me? But I could very well be missing something.

      Thanks for your time,

  12. Will be interested to hear your thoughts on Apple’s recent decision to remove the Blockchain app from its iOS store, leaving no option now for iPad and iPhone users to use Bitcoin.

    Thus far Apple has been vague as to their reasons, leaving one only to speculate. Personally I think it is just one of the first of many to-be-expected attacks upon Bitcoin, and certainly not the last.

    Additionally, it potentially offers new opportunities. For example someone is already working on a web app that will circumvent Apple’s block via the app store; Google is allegedly working on a way to integrate Bitcoin. Additionally, the negative backlash of Apple’s decision is bound to bring Bitcoin to the attention of more and more people.

    All in all, I think Pandora’s box is open – the concept of crypto currency is here to steay.

    • I think it is typical anti competitive Apple behavior. Just like bouncing google maps, Apple has designs on its own payment gateway. Irrelevant though, all anyone should take from this move is that Apple is being a bully and one that can’t win because,

      “Blockchain’s CEO, Nick Cary, said software developers are already working on making an HTML5 version that will work through all Internet browsers, including Apple’s Safari. That would essentially render Apple’s stand fruitless”

  13. good subject.

    About bitcoin. I wonder if we could put together an MSB syndicate to mine bit coins and pool them for a common goal – like funding Perma Ethos. The latest hardware to mine bitcoins cost about $4,500. There is a company that has specific hardware that is considered the cutting edge in the bitcoin mining world. There is a decent ROI for the coins coming out on the mining operation. If we were to form a consortium/syndicate and raise “X” amount to buy a unit or multiple units we then could bank the bitcoin. We may make appreciation on the BTC and we could use the mined coins to put towards the property and other enhancements.

    What do you think?

    • About bitcoin, it is almost impossible for anyone without several hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest to get into mining and even break even. When ASICs hit the scene it became an arms race that all of us small time miners lost.
      I started mining in March of 2013 for fun. I was pushed out by July. I’ve since gone on to mine Litecoin which can still be mined with consumer grade hardware.
      Looking at a standard 1.2Th miner for $6000US if you installed it today and the difficulty increased at the same rate it has since early December of 2013 you would shut the miner off after 200 days because it would cost more in electricity to run then you would make in BTC. Now if everything stays stable as far as price per BTC you would make about $1500 over costs in 200 days before you shut down. But with the instability of the market that’s a big gamble for someone like me.
      The other thing about ASIC systems is the chips are custom built to do only 1 thing. Once the difficulty climbs to the point you don’t make money you throw the miner away because it will never do anything else.

      The interesting thing about it all is in the last year I’ve bought silver with mined BTC, used some to pay for my MSB membership. I have also bought a really nice gaming video card that has just paid for itself since install. If the market stays relatively stable over the rest of this year I should clear just enough with that card to buy a nice new computer. If not then at least I got a nice free card out of the deal.

      I agree with Jack about the market not being a place to try to make a ton of money, it’s to volatile. But if you want to order some stuff from the UK where BTC webstores are becoming more common and have it shipped anywhere in the world and not worry about wire transfers and exchange rates it’s not a bad deal.

        • I’m a crazy bitcoin fanatic and have been following it obsessively since 2011. Please be very wary about getting into bitcoin mining. We are now witness to an “arms race” that is causing the mining “difficulty” to go so high that only the most knowledgeable and well-funded groups will make a profit. And don’t waste your money on “cloudhashing” contracts like I did. For almost every person it is way better to simply buy bitcoin directly.
          P.S. Butterfly Labs is presently being sued for non-delivery so I wouldn’t trust them.

        • hmmm, didn’t know about the lawsuit but they are the premiere shop for mining hardware. I understand an ASIC card is not cheap… that is why I wouldn’t attempt mining on my own but with a ‘group buy’ that MSB could certainly achieve…

          The thing about mining is it can’t (I may be wrong) get sooo tough or monetarily un-rewarding that no one does it or the system itself would be undermined. The “difficulty” the algorithm adjusts to the number and efficiency of the miners in aggregate… If there is a huge spike in the number of miners the algorithm will increase in difficulty to maintain a steady velocity of mined coins. I would also think that if there were many miners bailing out the algorithm difficulty would have to reduce in order for the velocity of mined coins to remain consistent. I’m no expert but I spent two days with a fellow who is (he’s raising funds for a BTC startup) and his partner still mines… this is what I understand about the nature of mining bitcoins

          As far as lawsuits are concerned, this doesn’t mean the outfit is not a good firm. Look what happened to the silver fellow who is under bankruptcy at this point… he’s a good guy and still intends to fulfill his obligations.

          The lawsuit seems a bit murky: http://www.coindesk.com/butterfly-labs-faces-5m-lawsuit-unfulfilled-order/

  15. I need to sell some of my bitcoin. I would prefer never to sell it, but I need cash at the moment. So, if any of Jack’s listeners would like to own bitcoin I will sell at the bitstamp price. That’s a really good deal! I am located in Central Texas.

  16. Hey Jack, there is another podcaster that I sometimes listen to who has a segment called “Random Rush”. He plays a randomly (or so he says) selected 60 second clip of the Rush Limbaugh Show, than comments on it for 90. It’s an interesting concept and I think it would fit in nicely with what you are trying to do here. You could choose from a myriad of different sources as opposed to just one like he does or focus on one particular a**hole who sticks in your craw.

    • Excellent! I hope to get a lot of tips and bitcoin orders while it is down. Just bought 150 dollars in BTC from a private seller, this is a great day for BTC. And yea I am serious. Again anyone worried about volatility either has too much at risk or you should be converting to cash after receiving bitcoins.

  18. Now that I understand that the satoshi is basically the fundamental integer unit (like the penny), bitcoin makes more sense, a bitcoin is really just 100,000,000 satoshis, enough flex to make normal transactions valid for the foreseeable future.

    The biggest problem the bitcoin community needs to solve is the size of the blockchain… https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address= They can solve it with the merkle tree, but in just a few years the blockchain will be too large for the average user to download (13 gigs is already pretty damn big).

    Do we really need the transaction history, or just the balances?

    • Okay first, NOT ALL USERS NEED TO DOWNLOAD THE BLOCKCHAIN.

      I have used bitcoin for several weeks now, I have not and will not download the chain. Period the end, ever as in never.

      The size is a concern but technological solutions are coming. Pruning all irrelevant and dead data, etc. The truth is mining and verifying are becoming the role of super nodes anyway. The people in that game will be running small to mid sized data centers soon.

    • @Jake –
      One of the more interesting things about BTC is that its a ‘set’ system with hard coded rules.. but those rules can be renegotiated if ALL of the parties in the network agree.

      This is why I think its silly to worry about ‘problem x’ destroying BTC in the future.. if the network is still in use, the users of the network can unanimously vote to change the way it operates to solve the problem.

      An example of this that has already occurred was when the block chain forked:
      https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork

      The crazy part about it was how quickly, and unanimously the community solved the problem (very un-Government). For those of you that think you need a ‘central authority’.. here’s a clear counter example:

      https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawiki

    • Sure Jack, but now you’re dealing with the same counter-party, centralized authority risk you had before. Is your 3rd party payment gateway trustworthy? No real difference from paypal there, and the fees will probably slowly increase back to a 2% equilibrium.

      • Jake, I am getting bored so let me put it this way, if you want to find a reason to not use bitcoin, “I don’t want to” is good enough.

  19. Hey have been very interested in Bitcoin and want to own some. Its crashing right now, and though I might try and get in on this dip. I believe that Bitcoin will always be around now for good, as it just has waaaay too much utility to abandon permanently at this point. And because Governments across the globe are calling for its demise makes me want to own just a piece of it on principle. Maybe that is an emotional decision, but I can afford to make that decision as long as I don’t over invest. There seems to be a lot of choices out there to buy Bitcoin. Can you recommend any of these Jack?? Your thought would be greatly appreciated.

    • Why do you say it is “crashing” what makes it a crash, why is any movement down a “crash”.

    • Brandon, there are several ways to buy bitcoin. You can join a wallet service like coinbase.com and go through the “know-your-customer” gantlet by showing ID, utility bill, etc. With coinbase you connect your bank account to their system like paypal does. Or, you can go to localbitcoins.com and try to find someone in your area who will sell you bitcoins face to face.

      I am willing to sell some of my own bitcoin at this time, but outside of a cash transaction the bitcoin seller takes all the risk. If seller takes funds through paypal, he runs the risk of the buyer complaining to paypal and reversing the transaction, but buyer keeps the bitcoin (there is no reversing a bitcoin transaction. Plus, I think paypal loves messing up bitcoin transactions since bitcoin threatens their business model!)

      That’s the dilemma. But my offer stands to this community.

      • Ok, thats about what I thought. I would prefer a face to face cash for BTC transaction. I would give you cash, if you were close, but I suppose you are not. I am in NorCal in the SF Bay Area. Any chance you are close to my local?

        • I am in central Texas. But there are LOTS of bitcoiners up by you! Check out localbitcoins.com, go to meetups, advertise on craigslist.

  20. …sort of like the 0ld school “5 minutes with jack” loved those. Encourage you to keep the youtube vids going.

    From the comments, there seems to be a lot of confusion around bitcoin (although you have explained it very well in at least 2 episodes in the last 10 days.) I think there is a lot of alt-media saying this, mainstream saying that, and infiltration in entertainment outlets that is sort of creating a smokescreen about what it is.

    I think you have a really good bead on it Jack and encourage folks to head over to one of the last feedback calls and this weeks liberty.me interview to catch up to speed.

  22. Ok sorry didn’t mean to say crash, I guess my hopes were projected there for a second. I want it to get hammered so I can buy in cheaper. I believe in the long term it will do just fine. Would like to see it at 200 so I could buy the $%#$ out of it. But I suppose those days won’t come back, but you never know.

  23. My only concern is where my private key comes from. Isn’t it generated online somewhere? And if so, couldn’t someone create software that copies the private keys at the moment they are created?

  24. I would say as you have Jack..have a bit of monetary rescources everywhere…the age old expression of “don’t put all your eggs in the one basket” should come to mind. The bit coin idea isn’t bad, but keep cash, a valuable metal rescource, and cash, even those debit cards are not a bad idea. Buy some of those chain store gift cards and make sure the date is on them…and that way you will have money for buying Christmas presents around November, or buy the presents through the year… just don’t as I mentioned, “keep your eggs in the one basket” as some idiots seem to do in the stock exchange…there are ways of storing cash for later. In an apocalypse situation..I would imagine even cold cash will maybe not be worth the paper it is printed on. In the meantime…start prepping…and do things that can get you off the grid…grow your own vegetables etc…you hit the nail on the head, Jack
    Cheers from down under.

      • I agree, but if you think about what Jack has been saying, you would expect the places where bitcoin Works best to be the first to ban it.

    • Russia didn’t ban bitcoin, Russia invoked a law that was passed in 2002 that effectively banned any and all competing currencies.

      It will have little effect on how bitcoin is practically used in Russia as Insidious said.

      It is getting tiring having to correct so much yellow journalism so fast.

      “Apple removed the last wallet from the itunes store” – No Apple removed the most popular wallet from the iTunes store and BlockChain is a about to put it into HTML5 anyway so it doesn’t matter.

      “The CEO of the largest bitcoin exchange was arrested due to transferring bitcoins” – No the CEO of the largest bitcoin exchange was arrested for ALLEGEDITY trafficking DRUGS and Laundering Money, bitcoin was just the denomination of currency used in the ALLEGED crime. The crime would be the exact same crime with the same charges if it was committed in dollars, euros, yen, gold, silver, etc.

      “Bitcoin is crashing” – No bitcoin is volatile and it went down quite a bit, it is still up about 1,000% over the last two years. People that use bitcoin know it is volatile and only keep a certain amount in bitcoin, volatility is part of the game. Why don’t these same people say “bitcoin is going though the roof” during upswings?

      “Russia has banned bitcoin so bitcoin is in big trouble” – No Russia pointed out that a law passed over 12 years ago had already made bitcoin illegal in their country. They told Russians they can’t use it and that is fine, they can police this (to some level of effectiveness) on the street, they however can’t police it on the internet. Russia also banned gay TV commercials, does this mean that gay people around the world are going to all disappear?

  27. Buying some BTC on Tuesday. Can’t wait to officially be a part of the block-chain. Want to experience something other than this “crappy government money”. Loved the podcast, awesome guest!

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