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posted by Dopefish on Tuesday February 25 2014, @06:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the that-didn't-end-well dept.
lennier writes "Has Magic the Gathering Online Exchange tapped all its mana? MtGox, the first and best known Bitcoin exchange, has abruptly shut down, and CEO Mark Karpeles has resigned from the Bitcoin Foundation after rumors of ongoing theft related to the transaction malleability issue reported several weeks ago. According to the latest news reports, Bitcoin has hit a three-month low of $465 USD per coin."
 
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  • (Score: 1) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:08PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:08PM (#6941)

    I never said gold was valueless, only that it's not nearly as intrinsically valuable as many make it out to be. Yes, it's very handy for electrical contacts. Care to name any other uses? I suppose it'd be an OK wire material, but we already have copper for that, and copper is better. Perhaps for some specialized applications where you want wire that can be bent more, as gold is more malleable, but again there aren't many applications like this where copper isn't already sufficient.

    For electrical contacts, you don't exactly need much gold, since it's used as a plating, and gold is so malleable it can be plated absurdly thinly.

    And yes, if it were cheaper, you could feasibly make more stuff out of it, but that doesn't make it intrinsically valuable, it just means it could be used for that, even though there's other materials that are just as good if not much better (in terms of durability, energy usage to make, etc.). Given how hard gold is to find and its rarity in nature (driving up energy costs to produce), porcelain or even stainless steel are far superior materials for dinner plates.

    If it weren't for jewelry and investment/currency, gold would not be worth very much (though not completely worthless; it'd probably still be more valuable than tin or lead, for instance). It's only highly "valuable" because it's shiny and pretty and people like to make baubles out of it.

  • (Score: 0) by adolf on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:40AM

    by adolf (1961) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:40AM (#7177)

    I never said gold was valueless, only that it's not nearly as intrinsically valuable as many make it out to be.

    Gosh, it's feeling more and more like /. by the second:

    That -was- you, wasn't it? *sigh*

    --
    I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights and I've wasted my youth