my stars are for the accidental irony of wrapping your anti apple PSA in a saccharine revolutionary rhetoric that feels like an apple ad. I thought it was part of the joke, but it seems to be sincere. lol

also I have enjoyed your missives about crypto currency here.

Please tell me more about these 'pillheads' and what lengths they will go to in their frenzied search for their 'next bottle of pills'.

Grabbin' peels!

And why not mention the Bitcoin assassination site? At least that's something you can point to as an abuse of the anonymous use of the cryptocurrency.

I used bitcoin to buy non-narcotic medicine, that I have a prescription for, from abroad, because I can't afford it in the US. If you're not confident in the strength of the currency enough to invest in it, you just circumvent the volatility by exchanging only at the time of purchase. You still need to be able to access wallets though.

Just don't be under any illusion that your activity is actually anonymous unless you take a bunch of other precautions.

The latest drama in these circles seems to be swirling around "Dogecoin" which to borrow from the wiki entry is:

" a Litecoin-derived[1] cryptocurrency that is based on the 'doge' Internet phenomenon, making it the first currency to be based upon an Internet meme.[2][3] As of December 19, 2013, the market capitalization of Dogecoin is approximately .08 million USD[4][5] with 9% of the 100 billion total dogecoins having been mined.[6]

The current exchanges that handle DOGE/BTC exchanging are CoinedUp, Cryptsy and Coins-e, with CoinedUp also handling DOGE/LTC exchanging. The price is highly volatile due to the newness of the currency. As of Dec 19th 2013, the price for one DOGE was ##CONTENT##.00095[11], although this hasn't been a deterrent for exchange since people are trading real-world items in exchange for DOGE on major online communities such as Reddit.[15][16] Dogecoin has also become the second-most used cryptocurrency for "tipping" others online.[8] On Reddit, the Dogecoin tip bot is used about every thirty seconds, compared with the Bitcoin tip bot, which is only used a couple times per hour.[17][18]"

Any thoughts that this was some sort of joke on the bitcoin fanatics was quickly erased by how deadly serious people started taking it in the first week, with people dropping hundreds of dollars into Dogecoin because digicurrency emblazoned with some lol-meme supposedly equals "popular to sell". Some of this drama, or rather quite a bit of it came from how Dogecoin could have no cap like Bitcoin, so the creators said that they're pretty much going to raise the cap ceiling whenever it gets close to overflowing, and people are still investing in Dogecoin despite the fact it's designed for infinite inflation and all of this nonsense has a lot of people getting their feathers ruffled.

misterbuns:

"Pillheads" is a slang term for people addicted to potent prescription drugs, typically implying that the user is in some way abusing their medication, usually through overuse or being used in conjunction with other, more dangerous drugs.

"Their next bottle of pills" refers to the fact that these medications are typically administered in pill form, and, being a finite commodity, requires refilling (i.e. "their next bottle [of pills]").

Apple services their products?

I don't get the frenzy for Bitcoins, it's just Tulip Speculation 2.0, an insane speculative bubble that could go bust tomorrow with no impact upon the economy.

Despite how radical and newfangled the people who've been bit by the Bitcoin bug insist it is, "investing" in them is no different than stock speculation in general only much much worse because there is zero regulation of the "exchanges" and "brokers" in the BTC hustle.

I'm loving how the adoption by some Wall Street types is seen as strengthening the case for bitcoins. You can't trust them with real currencies but I'm sure everything they do in the bitcoin economy will be above board because INNOVATION GOOD.

Don't forget how every story of 'company XYZ now accepts bitcoins' is just a company allowing a bitcoin broker to do the exchange to real currency before the sale.

Some Libertopians have realized that gold isn't going to do them any good in an apocalypse and that it looks like the world isn't going to end just yet anyway, so they want to be able to buy guns, technology, drugs, and just about anything else they fear "the man" knowing about. Plus, they think a currency backed by encryption is somehow more stable than one backed by government, because government is evil (even though Bitcoins are valued in gov't backed currencies).

About the only thing they've kind of realized is that our worldwide currency is basically data on spreadsheets, since there's not enough actual currency for everyone to have the physical money they own.

Bitcoins are an elaborate pump and dump scheme that the proponents are too stupid to see through.

Considering that currency around the world is not backed by the wealth it is supposed to represent, bitcoins are just as valid. All it takes is more popularity for it to become viable for more than just ordering things on the internet.

The only thing that gives validity to a currency is everyone agreeing that it is valid.

Well, no, not quite. Yes, it's true that inherently money has no real worth without a system backing it. Bitcoins, however, don't function by the traditional methods of in-circulation currency. A dollar is pretty much always a dollar. You don't have to "buy" dollars in order to start participating in the dollar-based currency.
A bitcoin, however, has fluctuating value based on the bizarre machinations of the bitcoin market and one cannot own a bitcoin without paying it's value in another currency, which makes it so that people who own and mine bitcoins essentially create their market while people who don't have to essentially "buy in" to the currency. If you wanted to get some bitcoins tomorrow, you would have to pay market value for them which might be several hundred dollars each (or thousands, depending). If you wanted to mine your own, you would have to buy the equipment for doing so (a way more powerful computer and graphics card, etc.). So, bitcoins are actually worse than ordinary currency because they are not tied to an economy per se, but rather on the whims of the people who mine them and what they are trying to get for them. Hence why I said it's a pump and dump scheme, because the value is essentially set by the people who want to set it as high as possible for their own profit, which has no external control or influences the way traditional currencies do. The most obvious flaw in how bitcoins work is the fact that individuals can MAKE their own bitcoins which kind of defies the entire idea behind a unique currency.

From what I understand the creator of bitcoins owns a massive chunk of the coins that exist. Also no one knows who he is.

I have a theory: Bitcoins are an elaborate scheme by aliens living incognito on earth for the past 60+ years. Until recently, our technology was advancing far too slow for them to even consider designing and building a space-capable ship of their species' design with our limited resources.

The "mining" people do at their homes is just a crowd-sourced way to tap into the paralell processing potential of everyone's personal computers. Every time you mine a bitcoin, you're really running complex alien spaceflight dynamics simulation algorithms so the aliens can build a vessel capable of surviving FTL travel.

Dogecoins are just because of reddit. No conspiracy. I would back titcoins before I backed dogecoins.

I'm gonna invent titcoins. It's like money, but with tits on it.

sign me up bro!!!