2012/5/8 Bryce Lynch <virtualadept@gmail.com>

Botnets are already being used to mine bitcoins.

Or so they say. With mining moving from GPUs to FPGA, and ASIC mining on the horizon, what can even a billion CPUs do?

Blackhats are already using Bitcoins to pay for services, including periods of DDoS attack against arbitrary targets and selling weaponized exploits. Judging from the reputation tracking on the Silk Road for such services, somebody's got to be getting their money's worth...

We had best tread carefully.

I can't disagree any stronger. The cashless society is coming up. Listen what RMS has to say: http://bitcoinmedia.com/stallman-likes-bitcoin/ But even he doesn't completely grasp the full issue. It's not only the payment provider who has to nod to each and every one of your transactions. You also need at least your government to agree. And that of the counter party. In a cashless society your government has a level of power over you that even the Kims of North Korea can only dream of having over their subjects. If the government simply does not help you in your purchases, you cannot buy a thing. The cashless society as dreamed up by certain companies and governments will turn out a totalitarian nightmare that will not end. Unless we do something. This is a number of years off. Bitcoin is our best hope that we will never have to physically fight for our rights. So the least what we can do at the moment is to use Bitcoin for every (legitimate) purchase that can be done with Bitcoin. Or start working on developing an

disseminating a memetic counterattack.

Yeah. -R|diger -- Zero State mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/DoctrineZero ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE