Bitcoin Forum

        
        First of all, Bitcoin is going to make it to the mainstream because of the HUMAN FACTOR - Incentive. People are always talking about the pitfalls of the current system - the laggy centralized exchanges, the instability, no decentralized exchange, the fiat payment problems etc. All these problems are going to be solved over time. How? Incentive. Consider who these early adopters are. These speculators include some of the brightest technical and creative minds in the world today, all working and helping each other to solve the same problems. They all own Bitcoins, all their potential fortunes are tied to communally solving these dilemmas, they gain nothing from secrecy and competition, and they are not going to fail. See, this is very new.

Before, a startup company may have hired or included the best coders and strategists they could find, perhaps offered them future stock options to provide incentive to work harder. But these projects were not made public because they needed privacy, otherwise ideas and information might be stolen and used by possible competitors. But in doing so they missed out on the input of the world talent pool.

On the other end of the spectrum are open source Internet projects. Everybody come and work as you please. But because these projects were open to the public, there was no central company to fund any of these coders. Sure, they no doubt worked hard, as it was a hobby or a personal cause - but that nowhere near matches the Bitcoin project momentum. An open source project to replace the currency system for the financial benefit of everyone involved, with the brightest minds in the world able to hop on as they please.

So yes, you are going to have the best, brightest, and richest working towards a common goal. All the while little people - like me - cheer them on, doing whatever little things we can to help(advertising), praying that they succeed.
Microsoft, Google, IBM have never been able to match such a workforce.
We already have more "working employees", all incentivized with "stock options", than they EVER will. You must understand, this is the first project of it's kind in human history. All these petty beginning-stage problems will be overcome - why? Simply because because for the first time we all WANT them to be overcome. You must account for the solutions to problems that we don't understand yet - because they are being attacked by a motivated workforce quality we have never seen before. The problems will eventually be solved, and this is why Bitcoin will make it to the mainstream.

Now once Bitcoin does get there(or perhaps just before) we will run into a problem that many people have pointed out. Market instability. Hoarding by the rich investors, the people who have 10's of thousands of Bitcoins. Detractors rightly say that these overly rich early speculators will simply have too much damn money for there to be room for a stable economy. The graphs bounce with every move they make. However, you are still thinking in terms of the archaic currencies we use today. New systems require new ways of thinking. If this problem is obvious to you, do you not think it is obvious to them and their financial advisers as well?

In the present archaic system these activities continue because the government can just print more currency in order to balance or stimulate the economy, and keep these barons in power. Since this is not possible with Bitcoin, the ultra rich will be forced to do it out of their own pocket. No choice. It is now in their best interest - if they want to have a market to spend those billions in. They will have to spend of some of their money to stimulate the economy in order make their wealth usable, and the distribution of wealth will equal out slightly. The market will stabilize. And because there will be no bureaucracy to support these billionaires' financial staying power, finally the little people will have a chance to make their own fortunes out of hard work and ingenuity in a truly free market. The rich will have to maintain their wealth in the same way.
This is an unprecedented turn of history. It is an evolutionary stage of society that cannot be stopped. To you soon-to-be-rich: remember your responsibilities.
We are finally all in this together.



My fellow humans, Welcome to Bitcoin.



 

Well spoken, BobDude17.

+1

(we need bitcointip)

Exactly. If Satoshi really thought all of this out he is a genius beyond comparison.

This post made me want to buy a little more BTC.

Thank you guys. I've just been getting a little irritated about people downing on the little things and not seeing the long term. People act like the Winklevii twins are going to throw down 11$ million dollars and just sit around and watch the graph go up and down. Trust me, they are busy throwing money at the best Silicon Valley talent they can find to try and work out the same problems that we are concerned about.

That's an important aspect of this bitcoin idea. If big money types are getting in on bitcoin it will be harder for the government to throw its weight against it.

love it. put it on other topics!!! put it in the speculation topics....or i will, I want everyone to see this!!!

Exactly. You can tell pretty immediately who's just here for a quick buck and missing the point, like Bitcoin is some kind of scam or elaborate casino (further pushed by those idiotic "its a ponzi scam!" people who have no clue in hell). Those at the technical level understand exactly what this is, and why it is so important, the ones who don't care about the price and never will, its about the technology and making it work.

I think another point, especially when it comes to the current BTC rich, is remember that in the earliest days they mined coins that were fascinating, but ultimately useless in the real world for years. Obviously they probably have a stockpile or two. But as the world begins to accept it, more large merchants get on board, there will be somewhere for their wealth to go, which will only help the economy over time. Until now it was basically like having a million prussian francs in your account. Why call em out though? They were the first to start driving and testing this tech, had they not this wouldn't be possible, I hope they become very rich people in the future economy.

Though it is young, short term it seems like the bets are in, but I also see long term, and this is only the beginning and is anyone's game.

The miners are arming for battle with new ASIC devices and spawning an entirely new growth industry around it, and that is real world impact by creating jobs and new industry, in a world where much of that is crumbling by the day in other markets. So, this is really just Year 0 for Bitcoin going mainstream. I'm very excited to see where it goes from here.

This is the new wild west, and we're all digital cowboys staking our claim in new territory.

Thankyou so much bobdude17
This helps me to understand the FORCE for good that is behind Bitcoin.
Really beautifullly written, I tweeted you... hope many come to read you.

I nominate this to be a sticky post here.

Really enjoyed reading this  ;)

Paid a tip  :D

What a wonderful post, Bobdude17 !

OP message tweeted, tip sent

Very detailed and quality post. Something which people don't consider very often. I think you got your point across. I also think you made it clear how everyone else should be thinking; more positive.

Very possitive!

THANKS!
BTC and other coins surely need this kind of thinking!

Great post!

The interesting factor is definitely there. The more people research the currency the more BTC fever they get, can only be a good thing.

+1


Though, I have to admit there are some serious flaws re: transaction volume that none of the elite dev's are taking up in a serious way to provide an elegant solution.


The more I hear prominent dev's use concepts such as 'off-chain' transactions or micropayment channels the more I fear for the utility of Bitcoin.

As a sidenote, I wonder if the porn industry will adopt bitcoin; one of the biggest challenges they have are chargebacks (i didn't order circle jerk 5, how the hell did that charge show up on my credit card?!). They loose millions because of this. Bitcoin being anonymous - good for the buyer, chargebacks not an option - good for the businesses.

Where would the internet be if it wasn't for porn?

While I am inspired by your enthusiasm, I think that you are assuming people like the Winklevii twins actually believe in BTC. Even if they claimed to, i still wouldn't know it for a fact. Their economic profile points towards them merely attempting to hoard and turn a huge profit. Even if they did(and others), what does this mean?

Like you, I also believe that the rich nerds of the world, (i.e. silicon valley money and talent) are who is going to truly catapult BTC into the mainstream. People who want to make money, but are self made and worked their way up from the bottom which gives them the unique perspective of knowing what it's like to be outside of the financial inner-cirlce(rich). Not to mention the luck factor, but that is another discussion.
The Winklevii do not have this perspective. They were born rich. Their struggles are derived from a wholly different perspective. Their privilege has enabled them to enjoy the best of everything with out necessarily deserving it. Do you think they were accepted to Harvard on their own merit? If they were poor, they would have went to their local community college.

The main issue is that BTC is a new abstraction and we are still making sense of it.

Anyway, I only attempt to be slightly contrary to your post because a balanced perspective is the key to managing expectations.  :)

I wouldn't be surprised if they already did but the problem is that it would only serve to exacerbate the negative image BTC has as funding the immoral pursuits of the world. Not that I agree with that notion but must always take into account the mindset of the 'mainstream' as that is where BTC aims to be.

Nicely stated.

This is a truly epic response that hits the nail firmly on the head, bashing it to splinters.

The amount of human ingenuity if we bothered to consider Ray Kurzweils estimates; 1 PetaFLOP of general computing power on average/person, there is at least 60 ExaFLOPs of human ingenuity potentially available at any moment to solve any problems the network might have.

We are running on a nearly ExaFLOP SuperComputer that is running the highest grade Cryptography Experiments every ten minutes, all while actually doing something very useful; Transfering your money to where it has to go and monitoring it's own network for efficiency.

Not to mention the effect that this technology is having on real industries; The FPGA sector is getting a boost, their new Vertex 7 2000T design is truly revolutionary... the advancement and refinement of this technology will open the road to more complex processes that can be paralleled. The video card industry too, it is beginning to be affected by this, more adaptable compute units will be needed with higher efficiency.

This system seems to be self optimizing itself with the assistance of all it's members, from the developers to the common folk who just use the system to transfer money at a low cost; We are all testing the system, adapting to it, evolving it, This is forming the foundation for Web 4.0 a leap ahead... of what has been imagined for Web 3.0, the web automating and assimilating aspects of the real world and virtualizing them; it's a leap that may take us eventually to a self optimizing Internet; The internet will be aware of you.

The proof of concept has been established, Bitcoin is the foundation for this new technology, p2p distribution of resources and a motivated work force ready to take it to it's logical conclusion, the automation and distribution of virtualizable Institutions.  

What a hell of a way to take back the 1% and spread it out to the rest of the 99%, truly ingenious.

By the way in it's current form Bitcoin is a Semantic web machine, a web 3.0 device.

Tim Berners-Lee originally expressed the vision of the Semantic Web as follows:

I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A "Semantic Web", which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The "intelligent agents" people have touted for ages will finally materialize.

Just no. Please stop it with the Web X.0 and all the idological nonsense.

The 1% can crush the bitcoin system in a second between taking a shower and brushing their teeth, they could destroy bitcoins with a smoke signal.

What future do you people really see for the bitcoin? I don't doubt it's usefulness as a currency that surpasses the hoops of the established institutions (instead of making them convert to a simpler internet reality, bitcoin users are going the way of pirates in forcing change by adopting a new, better system that benefits all), but it's anonymous and decentralized, don't anyone see how nations and financial institutions will put a bullet through the proverbial skull of the bitcoin once it becomes a thorn in their sides?

You sound very afraid of the 'Big Club'. Why wasn't the Internet killed then (same FUD, different technology)?
The truth is that there is no 1% actively chaining the 99%. It's much more complicated than that.

great post!

Well that would be true if Bitcoin was a currency instead of an incredibly complex cryptographic engine.  

the Core of Bitcoin is the secure transfer of data from one point to another... The core Technology is almost indestructible; What has been built on this foundation can be as shaky as it wants when you think that that data can be anything... financial information, computational data, virtualized work loads, the undisputed transfer of data with no errors from one point to another.

the 1% cannot crush bitcoin... because
        1)most of them don't want to, why would you when someone has just solved the problem of securely transferring funds from point A to B. Who are Bitcoins customers? Individuals and institutions with a vested interest in moving capital value, I.E banks can replace part of their system with this and can reliably send their transmissions by including a transaction fee to incentivise only the most powerful Bitcoin miners; they just saved themselves 1 billion dollars, and thats just in the banking sector!
        2)Bitcoin is a program, it can function anywhere, someone just has to keep a copy of it and distribute it, even if things get ugly they can run it behind a p2p Tor network, tunnel through the system, the system remains secure from external attacks because of the distributed nature of the network and the secure distribution network
        3)Bitcoin is nothing more than a new competitor in the financial markets, with thousands of employees with vested interest in seeing the possibly first open source corporation that has ever existed to cater to the financial sector.

Well said! Bravo!

+1

OP retweet :)

+1

Great post!

Great points! Post more.

Yup, and here's an article by BitPay's Tony G in which he was describing how owning bitcoins is like investing in the whole Bitcoin ecosystem:


How Owning Bitcoin Is Owning An ETF On The Whole Bitcoin Space
 - http://www.pymnts.com/briefing-room/PYMNTS-International/2013/02/How-Owning-Bitcoin-Is-Owning-An-ETF-On-The-Whole-Bitcoin-Space/


Well, this isn't the first time that mass collaboration around an open protocol has changed the world.  You might have heard of things like Wikipedia, or the world wide web itself -- both great examples of this.  Look up Don Tapscott's work for more on this.

What is unique to Bitcoin is the others all were mostly web-based/online.   There will be a growing amount of collaboration with a local impact.  Patronizing a merchant versus that merchant's competitors specifically because that merchant accepts bitcoin is something that will be recognized at the local level.  Here's an example of someone drawing from the global Bitcoin community to provide local help:

https://i.imgur.com/JsTdOhn.jpg
 - https://www.smore.com/e36w-sean-s-outpost

What is also unique to Bitcoin is that with other mass collaborations, the contributor generally receives no compensation or receives less compensation than could be obtained through other means.  The mass of collaborators were mostly participating as a labor of love.  Bitcoin could be the first mass collaboration that is financially rewarding to nearly all participants.  Bitcoin could be so rewarding to where the collaborator can justify allocating greater and greater involvement -- including obtaining all income needs as a result of that collaborative work.

Stepping back and looking at this "mass collaboration", it is simply the re-discovery of the concept of free markets.

Agreed, they may not have any real belief at all. However, them wanting to turn a huge profit still means that it is in their best interest for Bitcoin to make it to the mainstream, so their goals would still align with and help ours despite their intentions. They and their advisers will be looking to do whatever they can to turn such a risky huge investment into a "sure thing".


I was referring to an Open Source project in which all contributors had direct financial incentive to see the project succeed. This is the first of its kind. As you also said later in your post. Very cool seeing Bitcoins going to charity work! And just the kind of good press Bitcoin needs to balance out the bad publicity lately.




On a sidenote, I wanted to thank the people who tipped me, you unknowingly made my dream come true. I can now scratch "Get paid for writing" off my Bucket List. Thank you so much!


And try and tell me that would have happened without Bitcoin. Like anyone is really going to set up a whole dumbass credit card transaction just to tip someone a lil' somethin over the internet. Maybe now some of the musical artists that we have been downloading discographies of all these years can finally start getting some of the financial support they deserve... It will be the 21st century version of tossing a dollar into the guitar case, except with a LOT more people walking by. Lovin it.

hah I'm with you there

I love the way you think man! feasible micro transactions, I had never thought of that, hell I can send several denomination lower than a penny with this system!

 Jeez now that I think about it, this technology makes it really easy to transfer any amount between any currency... It may act like a buffer between currencies to prevent massive inequalities between buying power among third world countries vs Developed countries.  What if it established a gold standard of value between all currencies?

Thats epic. Just the thoughts I have been having about BitCoin, only phrased greater than I ever could.

Keep the good news coming!

How about sending this post to a couple of mainstream media?


/Bob

I agree,

I really like this post, seems the people are fighting back against the missinformation.

 http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/mining-bitcoins-takes-power-but-is-it-an-environmental-disaster/

there has been a story going around that Bitcoin mining is the same as gold mining, that it uses resources that are destroyed in its creation, (of course not, the miners secure the system, a necessary expense)
People began dismissing it an bringing up the calculations on how much energy was being used, but this article left out the fact that it is in the miners interest to have the most efficient machines possible.

hmmm, your right, someone should do an article about Bitcoin, a nice thick article that is thorough and split-able into different sections so that media outlets with different known positions can take their spin at it and base it all on fact, pure unadulterated fact straight from us.

We are trying to get the funding for a massive Press Release distribution, spreading the facts about Bitcoin.

Can be seen here: https://bitcoinstarter.com/projects/31

Also we will include that mining is necessary energy expense to maintain the integrity of the Bitcoin network and to make it function at all!

Does the efficiency of the hardware even matter? If the hardware is more efficient the difficulty will rise and thus any gains there will be lost eventually. People are likely to invest as long as they get returns.

And with widespread use. How high will the cost of coin go and as such the amount of energy needed to mine coins. What is expected return for mining? That is price difference between used power and hardware cost and value of gained currency. Likely rather low in sub 10% range would be my guess.

And that is the cost of running network.
 

They left it out for a reason, and the reason is that it changes nothing.

Miners don't have a hash target they are trying to hit, they have a total profit available to them that they are fighting for. (3600 * price, daily)

Having the most efficient miners raises the total hash rate, yet the running costs, electricity mostly, are the same, and they would be the same even if all the mining was running on CPUs.

Will it also answer the question of who is paying for this expense?

Yes that's a great idea. Please see how you can contribute here: https://bitcoinstarter.com/projects/31

I don't know sufficient amount of macro economics to give real answer. But likely at somepoint the cost of mining is near equivalent to gains of minings as coins. So as many coins are spend for mining as are gained from it. Who exactly ends up losing in this case. In any case it's rather lot of waste...

+1

First of all - what you wrote borders with communism.

Second - they said that the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Titanic, the Internet Bubble and Facebook would not fail.

Well guess what - they were wrong.

Simple law of nature - everything could fail. Nothing is certain.

The common currencies are not 100% although there are 3 levels of backup for them.

The whole deal with human societies right now is a house of cards. It's all in our heads and does not really exist.

Computers are getting more efficient (using less power), and in the future who knows next gen solar panels installed in the home may supply most power for next to nothing so what you have argued above is very short sighted imho, as it doesn't take into account advances in technology.

So the limit will be still return of cost for hardware. Supply and demand in case like this is an excellent fundamental... Supply will rise to demand. If there is money to be made by investing some will invest untill it's not profitable anymore.

Hash rates and efficiency has nothing to do with this.

But what if the miners know their costs? They don't have to settle for the market price, they can set it to gain a return on their investment; right now the price is steady at 100, obviously the network has reached concensus and the speculators have been chased away.  Now lets hope it stays that way.

 the miners need to set the market price when they sell their Bitcoins.  they need to start acting like independent business owners calculating their expenses vs production; there are just not enough people with an understanding of supply and demand/business practices... you sure as hell ain't going to see a business owner sell what he has created for less then it costs for them to live.

and that is an awesome idea!!! Solar panels, an increase in hashing power efficiency to factor other than the hardware itself... genius!

OP, I agree that the open source model is a strong characteristic of bitcoin which gives it value. However, It's definitely not the first time that a cooperative
model has won over a competitive one - any successful open source project is an example of this (Linux, Firefox, Wordpress, etc.). In all of these
cases, companies sprang forth to support these software projects as soon as it was determined that there was money to be made, and
many contributors ended up having a financial incentive to succeed.

Only the closed-source giants were opposed to these projects, because they cut into their business model. By analogy, only banks and
payment processors are currently opposed to bitcoin. As discussed in other threads, we should probably be "expecting the Spanish Inquisition" from them...

Regarding these Winkeltossers, I don't think these guys are smart enough to do anything besides "buy low, sell high", and "sue somebody".

+1

I think this going to be necessary, I've been exploring the legal cases worldwide and Bitcoin has a legal problem... in some countries. how do we address this? we need to spread the truth ASAP!
somehow we must integrate the system to our Banking customers to minimize legal scrutiny.

What if Bitcoin goes far beyond that? What if Bitcoin is an architectural foundation for an evolutionary step in the internet?  What if we have just made a fountain of value in the middle of the digital dessert? Ready to nurture any project that uses it as it's foundation?   No one has ever been paid for doing something like this directly; No one has thought of the bigger picture :) The many can become one.

I like this thread very much :-].

Isn't google servers crunching our real time search results a disaster for Mother Nature? Isn't by just looking for stats to prove the bitcoin network bad for the polar bears and write an article about it contributing to the death of 1 and half baby seals?

Of course Bitcoin Is Going to Succeed.

It could very well be, no one has done a study on the ratio between search results and death by seal, but I am sure that only a small fraction of the seal pup dies per search result :)

Sure, it's possible. However, I do think people overestimate the ability of money to change the world... it's really about hearts and minds.

Also remember that real wealth can only be extracted from nature by labor. All technology The computers that make bitcoin possible are built on the backs of children mining metals in Africa...

You, as well as millions of others, obviously do not know what technology means.

The term "technology" means a production process. For instance a technology for baking bread. From the way the ingredients are mixed, to the conditions of baking to packaging, etc.

What you mean is technics. You cannot build technology. Fact is that 90% of the people are illiterate and do not realize what they're saying half the time.

Obviously. And that's why we invented currency to manage the movement of that wealth, so that you don't have to take a backpack full of tin or sweet potatoes down to 7-11 to barter for your slurpee.


And that right there is the power of money to change the world. Power goes both ways. So the current management scheme isn't working, especially for the kids in Africa, time for a shift methinks.

Join us, comrades!

http://rexcurry.net/ussr-stalin-nazi-salute.jpg

Who cares? We all understood what he meant. Words exist to convey meaning in the context they are used. This isn't an academic paper, why be a dick about it?
Changing the word "technology" to "technics" in his post would not have changed the point he made at all. Besides I've never heard anyone refer to their microwave as technic. Common usage.

Nice call OP !

Cooperation is way better than competition, and Bitcoin promote cooperation like you're saying.. It's doomed to succeed well beyond expectation !

Gratz for this text OP !

Joseph Stalin would roll in his grave if he saw Bitcoin,

  It is the free market, That asserts the right of the individual to control their own destiny and that of their community(The Economy); to be entitled to the fruits of their labours, to defend their right to live by casting their ballot every time they purchase the goods and services that they want, the way they want it, when they want it.  

Bitcoin is a assertion of these principals in a way that has not been seen, but it does this with this realization.

That it is of greater benefit for the individual to be open and share their knowledge and efforts to the greater community accelerating the pace of innovation, increasing over all efficiency, pooling mental, physical, technical resources together for the good of one and all. The fact that this movement is happening is proof that people understand this... they are getting access to resources they would otherwise not get... it is logical and yet somehow the general market has fought this idea for decades...why?

Bitcoin Asserts the right of individuals to collaborate collectively to incorporate for the collective benefit, there by asserting an individuals right to make a living.

Bitcoin is the Free Market 2.0, the system itself is designed so you cannot use money you do not have, your money cannot be taken from you, the right to spend your money where you want to with no direct restrictions, money is created to offset the money lost only, At it's appex Bitcoin will not have inflation,  300 years of market principles built right into the design so you cannot tamper with what works.

Bitcoin does away with the inflation tax, I'm sure a lot of governments are not happy with this right now, It's affecting their operations.

but there is a lot of missinformation circulating, I just read this article... see if you can spot the missinformation

http://theweek.com/article/index/242753/want-to-make-money-off-bitcoin-mining-hint-dont-mine


The miners are the foundation of the network, this seems to me to be a circumvention to reduce the integrity of the networks over all hashing power there for bringing the system within attackers reach or merely causing large pools to inadvertently reach the 50% threshold.  I believe the miners are what is causing the market to grow, if they set the price for their labours it means the market can even out properly regardless of hardware costs or efficiency, they set the bottom price, without the miners Bitcoin cannot scale, it cannot stabilize.

Yeah let's not overreact to misuse of the word "technology"?  I edited my post to make it more clear.
I refuse to use the word "technics", but maybe someday I can still become literate like the zombie-guy...

Back on topic - of course I agree that money has increased the velocity of trade over the past 1,000 years or so,
and the increasingly global movement of money will only exaggerate such effects. Bitcoin has the potential to do
exactly this. In theory, accelerating trade should distribute goods and services more efficiently (especially if the
transaction costs are lower), resulting in higher quality of life? 

However, if bitcoin moves in the direction Wall Street wants it to (speculative instrument, derivatives, etc.), it won't
create any tangible gain for society.

<logging off to go buy some alpaca socks>

Yo are very right, it is the hearts and minds of the people that will perfect Bitcoin, and their is plenty of labour to be extracted from the network, did you know that the world wide market for online transactions is 2.7 trillion? Now imagine Bitcoins technique of distributed p2p labour, the miners labours to safely transfer that money to anywhere in the world... now how do you spread that 2.7 trillion dollars/year? you pay fees, payable to all the miners in the network. Don't you see? the misinformation that is being distributed in the world? Bitcoin is a more frugal choice than all the competition, it is more efficient, more secure, faster(for international transfers)  we gotta get our money! Are people willing to work for 2.7 trillion dollars by believing in the p2p wealth distribution model?


well Teodore you are right, Bitcoin is a Technique for transferring economic value built on Encryption technology

I don't think Wallstreet is really aware of Bitcoin's existence yet. I wonder what their take on it would even be.

Also check out this great presentation by a Google engineer on Bitcoin applications that can be implemented right now. That's what I'm talking about as far the workforce overcoming hurdles.

Link?

Shit my bad, up way too late.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD4L7xDNCmA

The only way I see to do this is to make bitcoin speculation unprofitable. That would consist of creating a stable bitcoin economy.
That seems possible. Hopefully people won't be stupid enough to buy Wall Street's speculative instruments, but from the looks of posts in this forum....

I know! Everyone is trying the get rich quick scheme, but maybe it's a good thing.  
yes I know it's really a bad thing... but the reason they are doing this is cause they think that by pumping up the price and then dumping it they get rich and laugh all the way to the bank. The idiots!! They're still thinking of it like the inflationary fiat currencies! they don't realize Bitcoin scales all the way to 21 million USD/BTC!!

There must be a better way, we have to figure bitcoins nature as soon as possible, and tell these people what they are doing is wrong.

but just to balance it out... at what point in the Bitcoin economy would the inflationary characteristics begin to rear their ugly head? I'm thinking along the lines that at one point the usd may of had the same characteristics of bitcoins when it was being adopted. We would have to do some historical research into the beginnings of currencies and barter exchanges to find out at what point bitcoin will begin acting like a inflationary currency.

Would that point be reached when all people are on Bitcoin and Litecoin? and if so what would control the value of Bitcoins? would it be rock solid stable as soon as people stopped converting their bitcoins to fiat?    :o!

I believe it will take time, but it can be done. The get-rich-quick types will depart once the bitcoin valuation stabilizes.
If the dumazzes are capable of seeing derivatives for the scams that they are (or they just lose all of their money),
they won't effect the valuation much.

House of cards?  Given structures are, yes.  But the human has built in compulsive striving to build, to design and create, and to organize things.  Many a huge city has been flattened in war, then rebuilt better within a decade.

This reality does exist.  Any given structure is of course, temporal.

OP is a thought out piece of text. I would instruct the poster to create a new self-moderated thread with the same OP, to make the discussion a more sensible read. I advocate that the OP deletes unworthy stuff as soon as he sees it, and compresses the thread to max 2-8 pages every 24 hours, like I have done with my diary.

Dammit! How did I miss the best thread on the whole forum?! I'm PISSED!! >:(

--

Anyway, this is a great insight in the OP: Bitcoin is the only (or at the least by far the greatest) open-source project where there is a direct incentive to contribute. Someone implied the Winkelvii twins are too rich to care. No no, that misses the whole thrust: when Bitcoin makes them 10 or 100 times richer than they already are, and there's "trouble in paradise" in the Bitcoin ecosystem, as owners of 1% of all bitcoins in existence they are going to want to try to fix it. Whatever kind of rich they are now, they are going to a whole new level, and then a whole new level beyond that if only certain problems would be solved. They are going to care. Not to mention, this is their chance to deliver the sweetest FU to Zuckerberg.

Also, someone wondered how Satoshi was so smart to think of all this. Well that's the great thing about the market. Satoshi understood economics enough to know that setting up a system where the incentives are right will automatically result in the system building itself, scaling just on time, maintaining exponential growth by ways that no one can anticipate because millions of minds are all working on it together and separately. Bitcoin is the market, harnessed. Harnessed more effectively than it's ever been.

Others commented about all the "speculation." Well short-term speculation may be bad, but just because someone is "in it to win it" as a long-term holder in this digital gold rush is not a bad thing; in fact it's a very good thing, a wholly necessary thing. The more strong-hand Bitcoin believers we have - people who understand the revolution-upon-a-revolution that is taking place - the better, because they drive the price higher and only sell small amounts as needed, creating a net deflation, which results in more stability as the price rises and it is harder to push the market around or do a pump-and-dump. So "speculation is the enemy of speculation"...read: long-term speculation solves all the problems now being attributed to short-term speculation.

Finally, Bitcoin is just the beginning. As amazing as the changes we are seeing now and will see in the future thanks to Bitcoin adoption, the things that are built on top of it will be even more revolutionary. It's like the Internet² or even Internet^Internet. Whereas the Internet enabled a zillion more things having to do with easy transfer of information, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin itself will in turn enable a zillion more things having to do with easy transfer of value/claim (smart property, insurance, many other things no one can yet imagine...then many many more things on top of those).

cryptocurrencies will most likely succeed, though bitcoins design lends it to massive volatility and cumbersome user adoption requirements, so eventually it will succumb to a competitor.

I disagree, I tend to think that one or two or three more financial crises like the recent Cyprus boondoogle, paralleled with a rise in volume of trading and price of bitcoin, would firmly establish it as a safe haven.

That's far more powerful than the elite of the nerds.

Ask a simple question:  Can hyperinflation occur in a country if the bitcoin option is available?  If the answer is no, then you have evidence of a major change in outcomes for countries and people under severe financial stress with imminent collapse.

I am deliberately giving this a bump. Its originally dated April 2013 and much has happened already (dont forget the Doge  ::) ).
A great read of Tucker from the same period will get the bright minds started again: http://lfb.org/blog/what-if-this-is-happening/

For thoughts about the future, a great summary on emergent networks here: http://greatestinstruments.net/the-rise-of-emergent-networks-part-2-of-2/

A 4 years old idea that is still mind blowing.

Hey - thanks for bumping this. Missed it back in May. A great read, and some very cool links... and yes...still continually mind blowing years later.  :o

I am so grateful to be on this journey.

I like you broda...  :)

Excellent thoughts.

This is such a brilliant, concise description of what sets btc apart from other up-and-coming things we've seen.  Thanks for the bump!

You had "brained" it into the post though ... :-)

It will succeed simply because crap obtained by fear and force of the few upon many, is nothing compared to what is obtained by want and desire of many from the few.

It is the Ohms law... The path of least resistance is where everything flows freely in volume. High resistance is the point of failure, where excessive losses occur. (Restrictions)

It is the law of nature... What is mine, is mine. Go get your own shit. If I wanted help, I would have paid you for it, voluntarily. (Taxes)

It is the law of chaos... The more you attempt to control it, the less control you have on it. The more you allow it to grow without control, the more it controls you. (Freedom)

It is the law of internet... ZOMG, WTF, TYSM, ILU, LOL, STFU, GTFO, TMI, L8R!

Oh, yea, and because there is no board of CEO's draining its value too.

+100 and "Yup".

A very logical post in a bitcoin forum. I really don't understand why there are so many people in bitcoin forums wailing about how its going to crash and burn, like the one now quoting some guy I never heard of who's respected in the finance world saying BTC would be 10 dollars this year? What does he know about BTC really apart from what he's picked up or read? IT's like people wish to fail?

3 months ago no-one I know personally knew much at all about BTC, but when I go for a pint tomorrow in my local I'm sure at some point someone will want to talk about it...normal people, non techies. That's good, more people seeing how it could benefit them in many different ways.

As for companies adopting BTC and that swinging exchange rate, Bitpay helps there and others will pop up. I can''t help thinking that a really large sector could push bitcoins right into the public eye though, one with no reason to worry about the swings. Charities. Quick, no fees, a lot of people with fairly large value stacks of funds they never really expected to have and more of an ethical stance than the average bear to draw on as supporters? It seems ideal for fund raising for charity to me. They have nothing to lose at all, yet the exposure bitcoin would get by being associated with charities..that smells nice to me. Would you run a charity branded USB eruptor to mine for kids in a hospice? I bet a lot of folk would, and I bet the press would like that. A great use for all that old kit.

Bitcoin hasn't even warmed up yet IMO. This time next decade we'll be millionaires Rodney :)

I haven't read the entire thread yet, but I started one called "Economic Idiocy" that had some interesting posts.

One thing I am interested to see, should it come to pass, is what many of the present supporters of BTC will say once they start to see their beloved gov't programs (guns or butter, public schools or Section 8, either side, it doesn't matter) become threatened?

We have always had those that are for fiscal conservatism or social liberalism or whatever, then they say "but, when it comes to (insert their favoured pet BS gov't program here), we have to...".

THAT is what I find to be the biggest threat to cryptocurrencies. Get the uneducated masses riled, and who knows what will happen.

Not really. Very sad and useless thread  :(


This is not actually a threat to cryptocurrencies or bitcoin success. It is one of the possible untended consequences of a crypto/bitcoin future. Massive disruption of underlying social and economic structures is always messy and often violent.

As this thread OP points out, the crypto future is certainly coming - and seems faster than most of us expected. How we move through this transition and beyond will be an amazing thing to watch. A great historical shift. Utopian, dystopian,  or more likely, some wild combination, it is going to be interesting and the world will look very different because of it in a decade or maybe two.

Meh. To you maybe. Several rocket scientists in there demonstrated my point quite nicely.


This, is quite true. Using massive generalizations, this will be the first time people will be able to earn and trade their money without the gov't knowing or being able to tax it. Doing so will likely involve breaking some laws, but we shall see. I look forward to it as well. 8^]