638 |
638 |
639 \begin{center} |
639 \begin{center} |
640 \url{http://bitcoinmagazine.com/13774/government-bans-professor-mining-bitcoin-supercomputer/} |
640 \url{http://bitcoinmagazine.com/13774/government-bans-professor-mining-bitcoin-supercomputer/} |
641 \end{center} |
641 \end{center} |
642 |
642 |
643 \noindent |
643 \noindent Bitcoin mining nowadays is only competitive, or |
644 Bitcoin mining nowadays is only competitive, or profitable, |
644 profitable, if you get the energy for free, or use special |
645 if you get the energy for free, or use special purpose |
645 purpose computing devices. |
646 computing devices. |
646 |
|
647 This about ``free'' energy can actually hurt you very badly in |
|
648 unexpected ways. You probably have heard about, or even used, |
|
649 Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Essentially, Amazon is |
|
650 selling computing power that you can use to run your web site, |
|
651 for example. It is \emph{elastic} in the sense that if you |
|
652 have a lot of visitors, you pay a lot, if you have only a few, |
|
653 then it is cheap. In order to bill you they, you need to set |
|
654 up an account with Amazon and receive some secret keys in |
|
655 order to authenticate you. The clever (but also dangerous) bit |
|
656 is that you upload the code of your web site to GitHub and |
|
657 Amazon will pull it from there. You can probably already guess |
|
658 where this is going: in order to learn about Amazon's API, it |
|
659 gives out some limited computing power for free. Somebody used |
|
660 this offer in order to teach himself Ruby on Rails with a |
|
661 mildly practical website. Unfortunately, he uploaded also his |
|
662 secret keys to GitHub (this is really an easy mistake). Now, |
|
663 nasty people crawl GitHub for the purpose of stealing such |
|
664 secret keys. What can they do with this? Well, they quickly |
|
665 max out the limit of computing power with Amazon and mine |
|
666 Bitcoins (under somebody else's account). Fortunately for this |
|
667 guy, Amazon was aware of this scam and in a goodwill gesture |
|
668 refunded him the money the nasty guys incurred over |
|
669 night with their Bitcoin mining. If you want to read the |
|
670 complete story, google for ``My \$2375 Amazon EC2 Mistake''. |
|
671 |
647 |
672 |
648 \subsubsection*{Anonymity with Bitcoins} |
673 \subsubsection*{Anonymity with Bitcoins} |
649 |
674 |
650 One question one often hears is how anonymous is it actually |
675 One question one often hears is how anonymous is it actually |
651 to pay with Bitcoins? Paying with paper money used to be a |
676 to pay with Bitcoins? Paying with paper money used to be a |
652 quite anonymous act (unlike paying with creditcards, for |
677 quite anonymous act (unlike paying with credit cards, for |
653 example). But this has changed nowadays: You cannot come to a |
678 example). But this has changed nowadays: You cannot come to a |
654 bank anymore with a suitcase full of money and try to open a |
679 bank anymore with a suitcase full of money and try to open a |
655 bank account. Strict money laundering and taxation laws mean |
680 bank account. Strict money laundering and taxation laws mean |
656 that not even Swiss banks are prepared to take such money and |
681 that not even Swiss banks are prepared to take such money and |
657 open a bank account. That is why Bitcoins are touted as |
682 open a bank account. That is why Bitcoins are touted as |