Bitcoin Forum

The only thing we have to fear is centralization. That's it. Nothing else can stop Bitcoin. ONLY CENTRALIZATION CAN STOP BITCOIN. If we can find ways to avoid a central controller, we are on easy street to the moon.

That epiphany is a result of realizing that Bitcoin is primarily our digital Store of Value. That is it's primary purpose and function. It Stores Value in digital land. Gold is the primary Store of Value in physical land and has been for 5000 years. Bitcoin is that for digital land, and Bitcoin will always be that forever and ever and ever unless…. we succumb to the ever present beckon towards centralization...

Here's the bad news: Bitcoin is not going to be your everyday buy a coffee go shopping digital currency. That role is going to be played by something else. Sorry to break it to you. Maybe litecoin, but definitely not Bitcoin. That is why the solution to the Block Size Debate is becoming more clear. Do what preserves decentralization at all costs, and do what allows Bitcoin to keep it's Store of Value property which is specifically, the 21 million cap, it's scarcity. Beyond that it doesn't matter. Just DONT MESS THOSE TWO THINGS UP. or else something else will have to become our primary digital STore of Value… and we don't want that… or do we?

As far as what coin will become the day to day transaction coin? I don't think it exists yet, but F. A. Hayek wrote a book called, "Denationalization of Money" right after he won the Nobel Prize in Economics which describes an issuance model for a new nationless stable currency, and I think that model is best. We don't need value storage abilities with that one as much as we need value stability and Medium of Exchange qualities.

So in conclusion, don't fret about Bitcoin, it's not going anywhere, but we must allow for other coins to come in now and serve their own specialized roles. Bitcoin does not have to do it all. It just needs to do what it does best, what it was designed to do, be Digital Gold, maintain digital scarcity and thus be a perfect Store of Value, and maintain it's trust less decentralized nature. Centralization is death. To the moooooon!

I do agree with your view. Centralization is the only fear the general masses have. I don't know whether is technically possible to have a central regulator for bitcoin or not, but without going in to that technical nitty-gritty, I can say bitcoin is born to be not regulated. A country can impose taxes on bitcoin transaction, but that can only happen when they know how to trace that transaction and prove that it has been done someone residing in their country. But there will always be some people, who will want to use bitcoin legally. So you can expect mixed reactions on that.

Secondly, I too believe that bitcoin is not good for daily grocery and food shopping. Rather, it is an alternate way to save for future and unforeseen expenses. Me too is doing the same, only accumulating and trading with a little portion of it.

Decentralization is what makes bitcoin work....take that away and bitcoin wont see the heavens but will go in the other direction!  Imagine this: If R3CEV managed to build their centralized ledger and implemented it into their banking system's pre-existing platforms, then that store of digital wealth, you mentioned bitcoin possessed above, would become more valuable because much of the routine traffic would be offset.  It would be easy to funnel value back and forth between the ledgers, to purchase that cup of coffee, without jeopardizing one's pseudo-anonymity or allowing any other party to control the store.  Let JPMorgan centralize the "tender" part of our transactions while we hold the store of value....right?

OP you're way too optimistic and sure of yourself.   I have doubts as to whether any cryptocurrency is going to survive, but perhaps I'm just in a pessimistic mood.  I agree with some of your points, like bitcoin not succeeding as a currency.   It's way more useful as a store of value but does have utility in dark markets.

I agree that Bitcoin is here to stay.
I agree it is the gold standard of Internet currency.
I agree the value of Bitcoin will rise.
I do not agree that it cannot be used (as satoshis) for the proverbial cup of coffee. If it is not used, then where will it's value come from? Utility is one of the essential prerequisites for value. I can see it being used alongside another coin, like Litecoin or maybe even eth, like gold and silver were used in the past. However I do not see it as being not used yet still considered valuable.

That being said, I agree entirely with the premise - centralization is death.

Its always a interesting discussion when you see some people want to control bitcoin and let government have control.
Always wonder how these people found bitcoin in the first place when they are so willing to give up the anon factor.
If you are not about creating a system outside government or any agencies control,then I am not with you.

In regards with centralization being the key for stopping BTCitcoin, I do agree but couldn't agree with other points made. Although at the moment BTCitcoin usage isn't the ideal case for everyday purchase of coffee, I don't think it would stay like that forever and surely things will develop along the way that will make this happen and honestly couldn't see any other crypto-currency that would do it better than BTCitcoin. Surely it has it's flaws but there's developers in the back-end that constantly try to find solutions to problems, even though there are clear differences (it's just matter of time).

bitcoin is anonymous that's what the greater advantage... bitcoin cannot be stopped suddenly... if it meet some downs one day it has ups the other day... so it will survive and grows far and far everyday..

When, not if, the R3CEV group finishes their $9B blochchain R & D collaboration, then they will have a technology that will be placed within their current banking platform's infastructure (there'll be a button in everyone's online banking app that say's "click to pay with R3CECcoin") and it will be bootstrapped with a pre-existing market.  It will then be easier to pay for coffee with R3CEVcoin than Bitcoin.  However, Bitcoin's value will remain intact due to the nature of it's pseudo-anonymity and its decentralized virtue.  We'll still store, trade, and transfer value with bitcoin like we're doing already but we won't be burdened with the scalability issues of VISA size networks....eazy peezy!  That's my prediction!

I agree with most of the OPs points. However, to retain the value in the store, you need an element of usage. As Bitcoin cannot be used as jewellery, or used in industrial processes, then the usage will have to be as a money transfer service. Centralisation is the major threat at the moment, and centralisation of mining is the emerging focus for this.

The masses don't give a damn about centralization or not and they don't know enough to care. And are we decentralised now? don't really feel that way when the direction it's taking is decided by a room full of Chinese guys being ordered around by a bunch of americans.

bitcoin can carry on as a minor thing but it'll never get anywhere if it isn't accessible to more.

Some might survive but the general risk of cryptocurrencies being banned totally is still there. Which means they might survive as a currency in the dark, with way lower values.

On the other hand it did not happen yet. And the more important persons and organizations would be interested in it the more safe it will be against being banned.

Though the current situation really puts that at risk. The discussion over the future is surely not good.

Centralization is to give the Bitcoin keys to companies like Coinbase.

Sure, Bitcoin is the grand-daddy of crypto currencies. It's - by far - the MOST dominant in terms of the amount of hash power people throw at it on a daily basis. Therefore it's the most secure. Which is why it has secured billions in venture capital and is having a state of the art, world wide infrastructure built around it. Just like the Internet in the late 80's and early 90's.

So is Bitcoin here to stay, 100% yes.

Will it be the defacto currency of the world? Perhaps... But, I don't think it has to be.

The "petro-dollar" is the "world reserve" currency, but there is still a plethora of other fiat currencies that enjoy widespread usage.

Most of the purported "replacements" and "usurpers" of bitcoin's throne (ETH etc) all draw value from the BTC market since you must first buy BTC before you can interact, financially, with any of these alternatvies.

So, I see Bitcoin eventually assuming the role of a reserve currency for the internet, rather than the world at large

Yes, it can be used to buy a cup of coffee. But the problem is mostly Grisham's Law, which says that bad money drives out good. Why would you pay for something as trivial as a cup of coffee with you PRECIOUS VALUE STORAGE APPRECIATING IN VALUE BITCOIN, when you could just toss over some of your WORTHLESS VALUE LOSING DEPRECIATING IN VALUE FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES? People tend to want to get rid of their "bad" money first, and save and hold onto their "good" money.

For instance, you could use gold to buy a cup of coffee, but you'd rather just keep your gold locked up in a safe. Bitcoin serves the same purpose for crypto currencies as gold has served for legacy currencies. It stores value. It can be used to trade and transact, but something else is probably better for that. Something with a flexible supply that keeps the value stable.

The Value Storage property is not derived from it's utility, it is derived from it's scarcity. This, I think, is a very important to understand and may actually require some research into the field of economics and money theory to really grasp. But if you don't understand that the Value Storage property comes from having a fixed supply, then you may be tempted to eliminate the supply clap in order to increase utility under the false assumption that utility is what causes the Value Storage property. In this case, in removing the cap you would effectively destroy the Value Storage property overnight and the value would eventually plummet.

My question is:

Why would you have any WORTHLESS VALUE LOSING DEPRECIATING IN VALUE FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES in the first place if you could count on bitcoin being PRECIOUS VALUE STORAGE APPRECIATING IN VALUE?

Since bitcoins can be spent just as easily as reserve notes, wouldn't it make much more sense to dump all that "bad" money, as quickly as possible (perhaps at an exchange, or by convincing your employer to pay you with the "good" money), and only hold on to the "good" money?  And once you do that, you'll only have the "good" money to spend, which means that you (and everyone else like you) will be doing almost all your spending with the bitcoins (since it would be rather silly to pay exchange fees just to convert the "good" money into "bad" money before you spend it).

Speaking from experience, i have federal reserve notes because my employer pays me in them and all merchants accept them. All of my expenses are paid first in federal reserve notes, whatever is left over is converted immediately into PRECIOUS VALUE STORAGE APPRECIATING VALUE BITCOIN.

In Rome the government started to debase the gold denar coins with copper. Soon people were hoarding the old gold denar coins and spending only the copper based debased coins in the market. The reason why is easy to see. If you have run out of all money and you need to sell one of your possessions for food, you will sell your least valuable possessions first, you will not sell your most valuable possessions first. The same is true of money. If you have gold and silver, you will buy things with silver first.

The other factor is that a fixed supply, while creates the PERFECT store of value, at the same time makes Bitcoin a poor Unit of Account. The PERFECT Unit of Account would be a money that inflates are deflates at a rate that keeps it's value stable to key core commodities and goods. Such a money would never gain value or lose value, it's value would be fixed. Bitcoin priced in this money however would be going up and down at times, because Bitcoin having a fixed supply, fluctuates in value according to the laws of supply and demand. As the supply decreases and the demand increases, the value of Bitcoin goes up, and that value is stored because the supply is fixed.

A perfect Medium of Exchange and Unit of Account crypto currency would have fixed prices, by sacrificing fixed supply.

I agree with what you say, i also think that bitcoin cant really ever be centralised, if it is, say by miners or companies then it will lose what it is and become worthless.

Yes!  I've been thinking about this a great deal.  I think that bitcoin has a store of value that is overlooked.  Something NEW to consider economically.  The value of social networking!  The groups combined knowledge and utilization of the technology control much of its value.  The whole is much greater than the sum of it parts in ways that are only now starting to be understood.  Hive economics, if you will!  How might one debase the hive?

No.

Fluctuations in the supply of base commodities should be accounted for using their market price sold with a fixed supply of money. You imply that 1 grain of wheat during good harvests is equivalent to one grain of wheat from a bad harvest. Not correct. Fixed supply of money takes account of the differing value of differing rates of supply, as it should.

Today?  Certainly, but saying that it will be that way in the future just because it is that way today is not a very convincing argument.


That doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Your expenses don't all come due at the exact moment that you receive payment from your employer.  What are you going to do with those federal reserve notes between the time when you receive them and when you use them?  Wouldn't it make sense to convert most of them immediately to PRECIOUS VALUE STORAGE APPRECIATING VALUE BITCOIN and then just spend the bitcoin directly as needed.


That assumes that you haven't already exchanged your least valuable possessions for more valuable possessions.  If they are so valueless, then why do you even have them?  Furthermore, why were the merchants in the market willing to give away their valuable merchandise for the debased coins?  Any intelligent merchant would have a higher price for their merchandise when customers wanted to pay with debased coins, and a lower price for customers willing to part with the old gold denar coins.


As I just pointed out with the price difference for merchandise depending on the coins used, the validity of this statement depends both on the current exchange rate between gold and silver and the perceived future exchange rate between gold and silver.

If I have a product that you want today and the current public exchange rate is 5 silver coins per gold coin, which would you rather spend for the product, 2 gold coins, or 9 silver?  Does your answer change if the exchange rate between silver and gold has been increasing recently?  How about if it has been decreasing recently?

"…people would agree on a standard set of wholesale prices of commodities to treat as the standard value in which they would prefer to have their currencies kept constant." - F. A. Hayek

"each Hayek is really just a derivative asset. How then would the issuing firm get the public to start treating the Hayeks as money? On the night of the initial auction, after the market price of the Hayeks had been ascertained, the issuing firm would specify a commodity basket (consisting of bread, eggs, milk, and other goods relevant to consumers) that cost, say, $60 at Wal-Mart. Then the firm would announce to the public the following non-binding pledge: "We will use our firm's assets to adjust the outstanding supply of Hayeks such that 5 Hayeks will always (insofar as it is humanly possible) have the purchasing power to buy this specified commodity basket." -https://mises.org/library/hayeks-plan-private-money (https://mises.org/library/hayeks-plan-private-money)

The objection you bring up was addressed by Hayek, and his solution was "constant but not fixed value":

"It would be expedient that the issuing institution (preferable a DAO) should announce precisely the collection of commodities in terms of which it would aim to keep the value of the [Hayek] constant. But it would be neither necessary nor desirable that it tie itself legally to a particular standard. Experience of the response of the public to competing offers would gradually show which combination of commodities constituted the most desired standard at any time and place. Changes in the importance of the commodities, the volume in which they were traded, and the relative stability or sensitivity of their prices might suggest alterations to make the currency more popular." - F. A. Hayek

The answer then is that if the price of wheat fluctuates too frequently because of good and bad harvests, then wheat would not be something included in the basket of commodities on which the currency is pegged.

Let's say you have 50 copper denar and 10 gold denar and you need to buy a loaf of bread which is priced at 50 copper denar or 10 gold denar. Obviously you wouldn't use the 10 gold, and be left with 50 copper and piece of bread. You'd rather use the copper and be left with 10 gold and piece of bread.

To answer the point you bring: why would you spend the time, and pay the fees, to convert your 50 copper into another 10 gold, and THEN spend that on the loaf of bread, when you can just spend the 50 copper on the bread directly? It would add an extra unnecessary stop. This would require extra time and effort, and probably fees, which are entirely unnecessary. This is why you would just spend the 50 copper on the bread instead of converting it to gold first and then spending the gold on the bread. Hopefully that answers your question.

Not interested in Hayek. He got things wrong, as did Mises.


In particular, Hayek was a massive hypocrite. One minute he's opining about the "Denationalisation of money" (a more candid appraisal would, of course, have been "De-gangsterisation of money"), the next he's walking through the door to 10 Downing Street alongside Margaret Thatcher. So it's no surprise that his thesis on removing government from the money supply involved the installation of a fascist one world currency, with the supply controlled by an elite. Because stable prices, lol.

I think the more uses bitcoin has the more value it will have.  By uses I mean store of value, method of payment, way to move money around the world quickly and cheaply, etc.  I hope it is used for all of these purposes to some degree.

attacking the character of the person who came up with is useless, and also a bit childish quite frankly. It has no bearing on whether or not it would make good currency.

The key component is that it is not *forced* upon anyone. Someone events it, and then if people like it, they use it, if they don't, they don't. The beauty of a free market is the open competition. Whatever works best will emerge as the most used. If this idea for a currency is not a good one, no worries good sir, it will fail and nobody will use it.


installation of a fascist world currency? that would require the government make a single currency that we are all forced to use. the entire point of his book and the "Denationalization of Currency" is to take money out of the hands of the government and allow free market competition between currencies to reign. This idea is simply his idea of what would emerge in the free market as a currency stabilized not a central bank, but by the private issuer.

The supply control is not by "the elite" or "the government" but by the PROTOCOL OF THE DECENTRALIZED BLOCK CHAIN BASED COIN. come on now, i thought this was the Bitcoin forum? Of course I am talking about the issuance of a coin based on this model by a DAO with no central controller.

The protocol pegs to the basket of commodities and automatically and autonomously alters supply to stabilize without the need for a trusted central authority. I assumed that was already understood I apologize.

I am not disagreeing....However....

"Fluctuations in the supply of base commodities should be accounted for using their market price sold with a fixed supply of money. You imply that 1 grain of wheat during good harvests is equivalent to one grain of wheat from a bad harvest. Not correct. Fixed supply of money takes account of the differing value of differing rates of supply, as it should."

I believe that would depend on how those grains were distributed.  For example, if the excess grain were stored in silos during good harvests then it could help subsidize the bad harvests....which would have a value averaging effect.

"Fluctuations in the supply of base commodities should be accounted for using their market price sold with a fixed supply of money. You imply that 1 grain of wheat during good harvests is equivalent to one grain of wheat from a bad harvest. Not correct. Fixed supply of money takes account of the differing value of differing rates of supply, as it should."

Again, that depends on how the money is regulated.  For example, are the interest rates set such as to encourage savings or set to encourage spending.  The decentralized nature of p2p monetized networking, especially in an unsaturated market, is a little more complicated.

The actions of the author are at least as important as his elucidations. He talked the libertarian talk, but walked the fascist walk. With Maggie.



Who chooses the constitution of the basket of "representative" commodities? And Hayek had no reasonable ability to predict that any of this could be achieved using autonomous computer networks, so he can only have been advocating for centralised control of the money supply. Controlled by all the "right people", no doubt. Any more nonsense?

Absolute nonsense.

If I can exchange 50 copper denar for 11 gold denar, then you'd have to be pretty daft to spend the 50 copper denar on the bread.  If you expect the exchange rate to be 50 copper denar for 11 gold denar in the near future, then you'd have to be pretty daft to spend the 50 copper denar on the bread.

If the exchange rate is currently 50 copper denar for 10 gold denar and you strongly believe that it will continue to be 50 copper denar for 10 gold denar for the foreseeable future, then it doesn't really matter at all which one you spend.

If people truly desire the gold denar more than the copper, then the exchange rate (and the price of merchandise) will reflect this.  The merchants will price their merchandise cheaper when spending gold denar so that they can acquire what they actually want (gold denar) without having to pay exchange fees.  The customer will benefit by spending the gold denar (since he'll get a price cheaper than spending copper), and the merchant will benefit (since he'll avoid paying exchange fees to acquire what he desires).

Of course we're talking in metaphors here, because the Romans didn't have the benefit of electronic exchange and a global marketplace for use and exchange of their currency.  As such there was a LOT more friction associated with such transactions than there is with bitcoin and federal reserve notes.



Because you get paid on the first of the month, and you won't be buying the bread until the 20th of the month.  You don't want to hold WORTHLESS VALUE LOSING DEPRECIATING IN VALUE FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES for those 20 days, do you?

You'll be buying gasoline for your vehicle on the 29th of the month.

You'll be paying for your car insurance 3 months from now.

You'll be buying a sofa in 8 months.

Sure, if there are things that you KNOW that you'll spend money on in the next few days, you'll keep that as federal reserve notes, but all the rest of it you'll convert to bitcoin immediately upon receiving it. Since your employer will be encouraging their customers to pay with bitcoin (by offering better prices for the more desired currency), you'll negotiate to have most of your salary paid in bitcoins (so that both you and the employer can avoid the exchange fees).

I agree with what you say OP and nothing can stop Bitcoin except centralization but that is just not going to happen.  It was designed to avoid this and I think it will prevail once the devs agree on things.  The question of whether or not bitcoin or cryptos will survive or exist is non-existent anymore with over 8 billion as a market cap - the numbers don't lie and people and organizations are becoming more aware of digital currency and blockchain technology.  One day it won't even be a question - the next question will be how much of the world is using it.

I do not agree that walking and talking with a Fascist equates to proposing and endorsing Fascism. The evidence I present is Hayeks entire body of work which probably one of the most relentless and persistent attacks on Fascism and government control that I have ever encountered.

you telling me he walked with Maggie does not alter his economic and philosophic contributions. Everything Hayek ever contributed to these fields works AGAINST fascism and objectively so!

The equivalent of your argument is to say that Einstein was entirely ignorant of mathematics and creationist anti-science bigot because I saw him waking and having a conversation with someone like that once….


Do you know how a DOA works? Who chooses the price of a DAO's products? How chooses compensation for employees? Who makes any business decision in a DOA?

The initial decision of the basket of commodities is made by the developers of the protocol. If the users reach consensus that it must be changed to something else, a hard fork is required.

Who decides the block size of Bitcoin?


You are a victim of growing up in a world in which the state grants a monopoly of the issuance of currency to single group, and you are projecting that model onto this one unnecessarily.

Hayek's vision (having no way to foresee decentralized organization and crypto currencies  as trust less and without central authority) envisioned removing the state and governments from the money issuing business and leaving it up to the free market to make new moneys. Many different places, probably all banks, would issue their own currencies, along with the usual gold and silver, and from there the free market would decide which was best.

His model of pegging the issuance to a basket of commodities was simply a model he suggested would be best if it were tried. It is not a model he suggested the state should impose and force all of us to use and we cannot choose on our own to do nothing else. no no no no no my good man. let all the different kinds of money exist and compete, and lets choose what he like best.


 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

i kinda agree with your point of centralization being devastating for bitcoin,but i do believe that there are plenty of other things that can affect and destroy bitcoin. first thing that comes to mind is the pump and dump that bitcoin do, the volatility it causes makes tons of people leave bitcoin and also makes bitcoin look bad to newcomers.

What you've done here is gotten it completely backwards. If 50 copper is worth 10 gold today, and 50 copper is worth 11 gold tomorrow, what just happened? THE PRICE OF GOLD WENT DOWN, AND THE VALUE OF COPPER WENT UP.

You have completely reversed the conclusion by completely reversing the scenario. We were assuming that gold was "good" money and therefore going up in value, and copper was "bad" money and therefore going down in value. Now you have come in and said, "ABSOLUTE NONSENSE! IF COPPER IS GOING UP IN VALUE AND GOLD IS GOING DOWN IN VALUE, OBVIOUSLY I'D SPEND MY COPPER ON GOLD FIRST!"

Sure… i guess… maybe… but that is not what I was saying at all. If gold is "good" and copper is "bad", then I should expect that gold will be more valuable tomorrow than it is today, and I should expect that copper is less valuable then it is today. So if 50 copper is worth 10 gold today, then tomorrow 50 copper will only be worth 8 gold. See how you got that backwards?


Here is the main point of Grisham's Law: You want to spend your debased currency first and fastest. You want to hang on to your appreciating currency and not spend it, you want to hang on to it as it gets more and more valuable.

What you are suggesting is that all debased currency should immediately be exchanged for "good" money and then only the "good" money will be used. Yes that's one strategy, and would probably work if the government weren't' forcing the debased currency into use. Im just saying Bitcoin is made to hold value by design, if another currency that is made to hold stability and therefore become a Unit of Account by design, it would make sense that people would have their savings in Bitcoin, and their daily cash in the Unit of Account coin.

Different properties serve different functions and meet different needs. Bitcoin does not have to do everything.

No, Maggie used Hayek for a photo-opportunity and overall political endorsement of her gorvernment and her policies, that's what that walk was all about. That's how I know it happened at all: the media publicised it, as was the objective of the act.

Did Einstein walk and talk with religious people? Yes. Did he do walk and talks with religious people as a publicity stunt, tacitly approving all their actions?    


Sorry, too subjective. Pricing blocks centrally is one thing, the dynamics of that can be computed.


That is no adequate explanation for what Hayek intended as the mechanism to choose the commodity basket. You got through 3 paragraphs without even addressing the point (I removed the first 2 from this reply. Notice how the text I choose to reply to actually relates to the reply I wrote)

Well, that's not the classical Gresham's Law at all. You're suggesting that government coercion plays the main role in breathing life into fiat currency... whoever would have guessed such a thing, lol

In theory Gresham's Law works in reverse in the absence of coercion, and Hayek suggested private issuers who decided which commodities based on consumer choices, these were probably banks that issued the currency, and people would use whatever currency they liked best. If they didn't like the issuer that issued a money pegged to this basket of commodes, they would gravitate to an issuer that issued a money pegged to a different, better basket of commodities. Free market competition would ultimately decide.

In practice, Gresham Law is bullshit fiat propaganda, and Hayek was a fraud. But you keep on imagining, that's what's so fun about theory, proof is not a pre-requisite

I like most of your statement.
Now the question is if the price is to the moon, then why we can't buy everyday needs like a coffe?
I don't get the point here. If the price is high, it's supposed to be used in every corner shop. CMIIW

OP, so you saying the other technologies like SegWit and Side-chains will not improve the tech to such a degree that it will not only be used as a store of value, but also as a payment network? I do believe the road map of Bitcoin is paved with secondary options to allow for safer scalability and also improvements to extent it's function to include mainstream payment options. A Alt coin will not be necessary, if all the other things fall in place. I am not saying Alt coins will have no place in Crypto Currency, because that will be similar to saying the Yuan has no place in the fiat system, because the US Dollar should be the only reserve currency.

If Bitcoin cannot scale to accommodate a global payment network, it can be supplemented by other Alt coins or some side-chains. ^smile^   

It's interesting that you've provided such an emotional response. Remember, I was attacking the reputation of your hero economist, not your personal character. And I did so on the basis of facts, not some vague over-emotional assertions.

I think I'll leave the childish dummy spits to those that can't play nice, but bear in mind that your intransigent nonsense that actually constitutes adult discourse will be getting disseminated, rigorously. I hope you'll find it easy to maintain your *ahem* moral resolve while your blind faith in some other non-entity institution is decimated. Be seeing you!

If it were just designed to be a currency then it wouldn't have had a 21M limit built in (as there would be no need for that as most currencies in the world inflate at a fairly constant rate).

Additions such as payment channels will enable "coffee" purchases down the track so it is very likely we'll be able to "have our cake and eat it too" but without a doubt preventing centralisation is the most important thing for Bitcoin to really be any serious game changer (so IMO that should be the main focus of development).