Bitcoin Forum

I have been trying to promote bitcoin a bit on facebook and other pages for the 15th october global protest...

Isn't what the protesters want, exactly down to almost the tiniest detail, what bitcoin will offer?

Or do they just want to protest?

Does anyone have tips on how to best communicate bitcoin when talking to occupy protesters?

bitcoin can be hard to explain to non-techies...keep on trying.

On Oct.15, people at occupymadison will hear about it in Wisconsin.

Yeah, I'll be out with fliers as well. It's just so weird that the same people who are out protesting for a cause they believe in, respond "but they dont accept it in the big stores" when i try to say why they should support bitcoin and help it grow, to further their own cause.

If anyone has some tips on how to penetrate the minds of these people, please share them.

The occupy wallstreet movement is a charade at the moment in the hands of the press. It had grass roots beginnings but those are now long gone. Bitcoin isn't going penetrate a nanometer into its ecosystem. It can't because it won't even be reported on. Its image will be whatever the corporatist press wills it.

If you want any luck, you're better off entering the Occupy the Fed movement.

No Occupy protester has come out desiring a cumbersome electronic cryptocurrency.  What they do want is to prosecute bankers, reinstate Glass-Steagal, limit derivatives trading, and work towards overturning Citizens vs. United.  Please explain how joining the Bitcoin Ponzi scheme so late in the game helps them in any way.

Yeah, all they want to do is alter a system that's rigged against them in the first place. There's no room for actual change in this movement.

Actual change like investing your dollars in pretend internet money in the hopes that they become worth more dollars so you can withdraw your dollars and spend them on things in real life? 

A currency that can be used as a store of wealth that can be transferred globally, with the ability to be transferred anonymously, is not something those carrying the sign "tax the rich" wish to see gain wider use.

On the other hand, there are many in attendance with whom the following message resonates: "Stop giving the bankers your business and your data.   Instead Use bitcoin, an online digital currency.  bitcion is decentralized blah blah blah"

How about, uhm, completely obsoleting banks? Anyway, I won't bite your FUD any further.


Are you saying every single person out protesting the financial institutions, are actually put in place by the financial institutions themselves? I'm not interested in media coverage, im interested in the protesters understanding that the way for them to get the change they want, is to adopt bitcoin. This could literally be the most successful protest started by the lower class ever - financial disobedience.

Actual change like displacing the need to have our money issued by the wealthy elite in the first place.

I see your point. But i honestly never even start to touch on the subject that bitcoin would mean reinventing taxes (its actually not that advanced, it just means VAT and land tax will take the place of all other taxes)

When i tell them to stop giving banks their business they say "yeah, so we are withdrawing all our money", and they seem to think that is solving the problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Q4T_mrwoyZ0#t=109s

Yep, clearly a 'charade'.

I expected better of you Atlas.

There's people much higher than the public institutions on Wall Street. These companies are only acting on the regulations and benefits given to them on the first place. They aren't the real villains. If you want real change, you have to aim for the top and it's the people who create and collect our money in the end: The central banks.

Do you know where the majority of our taxes go to in the end? It's not the government nor its services. It's the interest and debts placed by the central banking system. It's the shareholders of these banks that are really collecting from us.

Yes, like all hell, it would mean reinventing taxes.

The truth is in plain sight, people. Wall Street is only accountable to a government that acts in the interest of the true wealthy elite in the first place. The game is all rigged. You'll get nothing yelling at the puppets.

We have to aim for the top. You're only repeating history otherwise.

The bankers tried this whole "We need to pay more taxes." propaganda decades ago and the people fell for it and they raised taxes on everyone including the high-skilled specialists of this country. The true wealthy are hidden. You can't touch them.

You are all being duped by the corporatists. The whole lot of you.

Dude at least give Alex Jones credit because those are his talking points.  Please also talk about how the millionaires are "our job creators."

The millionaires are mostly small business owners, doctors and specialists. They are certainly very valuable members of society.

What about the crony-capitalists that are screwing you over? Nope. They aren't even on the fucking record. You really think they are going to keep their wealth on-shore and observable? Hah.

Couldn't you guys have chosen another thread to dump your conspiracies/FUD in? I was actually looking for constructive debate on a specific issue as posted in the OP.

Does anyone have tips on how to best communicate bitcoin when talking to occupy protesters?

It's not a conspiracy. It's the fucking truth. Look where the money flows. The banks will benefit from everything that is being proposed. The top 1% tax records don't add up. There's too much money not accounted for. All future regulations only benefit the corporations. It's all in plain sight. You just can't handle it. It's much more convenient for you to believe you can change your puppet governments and that they may actually care about you. Keep living in your dream world.

It's a distraction concocted by conspiracy theorists and forefronted by a guy who HATES banks and the fiat dollar yet oddly does millions of dollars worth of business with banks using fiat dollars. 


You're young and impressionable.  You think you've stumbled upon secret information about the world and that it gives you a leg up on your peers.  This is extremely important to you because you have low self esteem.  You will grow out of this phase once you have to face an actual hardship in life.

You haven't refuted anything. There is no incentive for there to be a distraction from this end. Anyways, Alex Jones is highly invested in precious metals. We have similar views but I am not a rigid follower. All I want is the truth and the truth is where the money flows and it goes right to the banks.

I've been against the banks far long before I found out about AJ. I've been fanatic about Bitcoin since 2009 for a reason.

The fact is you have no truth of your own. You follow what is convenient.

I tried but they are the absolute definition of MTV Generation.
Package your ideas up in a socialist/communistic wrapping, and they might listen.

It truly is-
"I am pissed and lazy, and I am certain I will never contribute or amount to anything significant. So give me something."

I don't even have the words for how disappointed I am in those people.

Fine.  Please explain how the banks will benefit from reinstatement of Glass-Steagal, which drastically reduces the amount of money they can lend out at a time?


I know you've seen the infographics depicting how the rich keep getting richer at the expense of everyone else.  Pretend I posted one of those here.


Aww isn't that cute.  Please explain how you would know this?  Or did you mean he _claims_ to be highly invested in precious metals?  And this is while one of his chief sponsors is willing to sell you gold and silver for your worthless dollars.  How generous of him.


For the same reason as everyone else here: you saw dollar signs.  That's why you're despondent about the low "value" of BTC in dollars: you want more dollars.


Flouride's gonna get ya!

You sound like the liberal media arm with regards to the Tea Party.

Don't discount them yet, from what I can tell, they're sticking to their leaderless movement principle.

The more people scream "liberal shills!" the more it's likely to happen. Have you actually been to one of these yet?

Atlas is literally just repeating things he hears on Alex Jones.  I highly recommend listening to Alex Jones ironically.  When he gets into the CIA weather control stuff, you'll know you're through the looking glass.

Please explain how the banks will benefit from reinstatement of Glass-Steagal, which drastically reduces the amount of money they can lend out at a time?


This will allow the central banks to enact a more monetarist policy when it comes to its lending practices to the consumer banks. So, it means more printed money, more printed money means a dilution of wealth, increased taxation and more money in their pockets in through their PM holdings. I am sure they will be insert more provisions that benefit them in the back pages of the bill through their paid-out politicians.

I know you've seen the infographics depicting how the rich keep getting richer at the expense of everyone else.  Pretend I posted one of those here.


Alex Jones is hardly rich by any rational standard of measure. His income only measures in the millions or so and only from the attention coming to his radio show which is under 5 millions viewers. He isn't conspiring against anybody. He isn't making enough nor have a large enough audience to justify any large manipulation of the populace.

Please look at the tea party today and tell me it hasn't been taken over by the mainstream establishment.

Of course it has, but I don't see any indication that something similar has happened to OWS (yet). Yes, they've received some media (not much) and union support, but like I said, from what I've seen, they're sticking to the ideal of a leaderless movement. All of the political support I've seen has been "yeah, I agree with some of what they say, but they NEED TO FOLLOW THE LAWS!!!111one"

Which seems like a good selling point for our (yours and mine) ideas. If they can organize themselves without leaders, why do they need to appoint leaders to fix the problems they see in the world?

All I have seen from the media so far is twisting it into their constituents direction. I haven't seen them cover the movement as it truly is: leaderless and diverse.

For the same reason as everyone else here: you saw dollar signs.  That's why you're despondent about the low "value" of BTC in dollars: you want more dollars.

Dollars are nice but all I want in the end is liberty.

Amsterdam and The Hague will hear about Bitcoin.
I've seen some enthusiastic bitcoin people there.

I advocate calmly using Bitcoin in support of the efforts and making known in a simple and straightforward manner how it was used.  E.g.,

  "$524.89 of funding was made possible in spite of the PayPal block using the P2P currency system 'Bitcoin.'"

Period.  If the currency cannot be used in a tangible and construtive way in this effort, that might explain why it is having some trouble gaining traction rather than the general retardation of non-believers which is so often used as a scapegoat.

We have a bitcoin presence at many of the occupy rallies around the U.S. and world. FeedTheProtest and others are accepting BTC donations. Are we sure it is not getting attention?

Do you have an example of how you would package it up in socialist wrappings? But you are right, they are people who want stuff from others, so i think the idea in operationbitcoin.org of handing out free bitcoins is really good.

DUH. It's the media. There's your problem. Go see it for yourself.

The problem is the majority of the population is never going to see it for themselves.

I disagree. And it's is still not a mark against OWS.

anyone work up a decent flier on bitcoin for these people? I'm thinking of handing them out at the occupy richmond thing going on this weekend.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47956.0

^^^ Will be ready by this weekend. :)

you might want to ask deslok (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=23737), he made a poster

Probably automatic banking system

Just tell them there is a workable alternative system that does not need any bank to print money and transfer money. Now they can abolish the bank and there is no need to feed banker anymore. They should show interest because they hate that governments give them money and no punishment. The protest has no solid theme yet and it suggests that there is a way to change the system. Then tell them roughly how it work...

They can ask the gov to change the system, or use bitcoin. It is not likely that the system can be changed in 10 years time so they will pay more attention on bitcoin

The question is very interesting.

In my opinion it is a matter of adoption. People are trained to work in exchange for colored pieces of paper. They are accustomed to it (although they protest this custom).

Now comes a guy telling you to

1) go to a website (fine)
2) download a program (fine)
3) install the program (ah, hm, well, ok)
4) keep your antivirus up to date (what is antivirus ??)
5) secure your wallet.dat (my WHAT ??)
6) backup your wallet after creation of new private keys (whose private parts ????)
7) tell your employer to pay to account number (what is that funny string meant to be ??)
8) not to turn your pc off but to let the bitcoin program shut down properly first (???)
9) think about wallet security (what ??)
10) update the bitcoin client once in a while (aha ?!?)

and finally, when the money is stolen or lost, that it is your fault since you did not properly backup your junk or kept your system secure.

Ok. I'd also rather have my colored pieces of paper.

We must solve the usability issues of Bitcoin for the end-user, who is not a computer person.

built in backup and 'first run' backup method would be a good start. Plus alerting you when it has changed the database enough that you need to run another backup.

Why is the Occupy movement not immediately embracing bitcoin?

Probably because they have no idea it exist.

Feed the protest is currently accepting bitcoin doinations, #operationbitcoin (irc.freenode.net) is currently working to raise bitcoin awareness during such protests

Fixed that for ya. 

America != Socialist _______
Shouldn't have to be wrapped up. Info is widely available, they are brain dead by their own doings. Just like the fact that you are supposed to learn all laws pertaining to you on your own time. You are held responsible for all laws you break whether you knew of them or not. This is old roman theory, and we use it today. Basically, It's their fault they are dumb. They should no better than to promote socialism in a capitalist country. They need to learn the problem better so they can see how to fix it. They will never try to research though, so what are you going to do?

I'll explain why:

You :  Use Bitcoins!  They avoid the banking system entirely!

Protester :  Wow!  Sign me up!

You :  It's Easy,  just go to bitcoin.org,  download the client,  wait 3 hours for the blockchain to update your client,  make sure your firewall has the port open,  you'll get a huge hash string.   Then tell people that went though that same process to send you bitcoins!

Protester : huh?

You : Didn't you get it?   See the client is the way you can send and receive bitcoins!

Protester :  Ok I got that, but I still don't have any bitcoins?

You :  Ok now you gotta sign up for Dowalla,  get an account and link it to your bank account it will deposit 2 charges in your bank account in a few days and then you have to verify those deposits with dowalla.    Then you can send money with it.

Protester:  Wait,  I have to use a bank to get out of the bank?

You : Yes

Protester :  go on.

You : Now you have to go on an exchange,  like Mt. Gox or Tradehill and link your dowallah account and your bitcoin address from step one,  and start bidding and paying for bitcoins.   If you get any then you have to transfer the bitcoins from mt. gox to your personal bitcoin client.

Protester :  holy shit,  I'm going to just hold this sign.   This is way too complicated.

You :  Wait until you hear how mining and block chains work.

Protester :  forget it.   

Awesome lol, well done.

You don't need to wait for the blockchain to download to receive money. As soon as you start Bitcoin you can create addresses, and you will even see incoming transactions appear right away. They just won't confirm until the appropriate block is downloaded.



Also not necessary, 8 connections is sufficient for average use.


Most exchanges don't accept Dwolla anymore due to the risk of "chargeback". If you're already talking to a protester about Bitcoins, why not just sell them some?

So... mostly FUD. Designed to make it appear that a centralized solution (FlexCoin) is superior.

Don't be so sure.  I'm across the pond so I can't be on Wall St. but the leftist ideology I share with a lot of the protestors is exactly why I believe so strongly in Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is the only solution to allow the people to truly monitor and regulate the wealth of the bankers.  When all transactions can be observed and the total supply of money is limited the redistribution socialists like myself have been clamoring for can finally begin.  The Government will not be able to sabotage the process anymore by printing unlimited money to give to the banks to cover their losses and falsely protect their wealth.

Not even close.    Not by 1000 miles close.

Even a centralized solution still has the problem of how do you get bitcoins in the first place.     It's a complicated process that does not allow (in the instance) for the protests to take the cause.

So as much as you would love to twist this...   my solution still doesn't sell you bitcoins.

How do you plan on redistributing the wealth of the rich to yourself?

For that matter, if you think it is possible, what makes you think that they can't do the same to you?

Through taxes if possible, with pitchforks if necessary.


Nothing stops them under the current system, for the most part they already did it which is why the world economy is in the situation that it is.  In general, the answer to the question is that what stops them now is that there is barely anything left for the rich to take from the poor.  We are at the point where everything they take endangers the ability of the poor to support the consumer society which made the wealthy the wealthy in the first place.

The Avatar and 'inflammatory' content of your post smacks of SA goonishness.  But whatever the case, I agree fairly significantly.

BTW, I am mostly a believer in democracy.  I'd be as compfortable as anything with a majority of the population deciding how the wealth should be distributed.  I've never met anyone who honestly believes that a ditch digger should have an equal slice of the pie as a doctor.  Not even a ditch digger.  While I am sure that some people exist, I am confident that they are a tiny minority.  Thus, I feel that the most 'stable' (although not necessarily 'fair') decision for distribution of the wealth of a nation should be made by a majority of the population.  

Leaving the decision about distribution of wealth to the wealthy is a proven looser in my opinion.  One thing that drives me up the wall are these bleeding-heart Libertarians who somehow think that all people are created equal.  They are not.  In a mud-hut+ society, an tiny advantages in some areas are magnfied into a singificantly increased ability to exploit one's fellow citizen.  So, the cost of living in a stable society and enjoying the benefits thereof, are social constructs which even out the playing field.  (All my theory, of course, though I suspect that they mirror various scholars works...possibly Marx for all I know.)

It should be easy. It is not.

More important: It should be safe. It is not.

Even more important: The employer should know how to send me Bitcoin. He does not.

Absolutely essential: It should not be gone in case my hardware fails, my room mate catches a virus on a porn site, my cat chews the USB disc. A "real" bank usually does not lose money due to a IT issue.

You can back up your wallet to any number of storage media, both online (Wuala, Dropbox, web mail, etc) or offline (USB drive, CD, paper, etc). In the case of the offline options, you can even put them in a safe or bank safety deposit box for extra security. You can encrypt the wallet before you do all this, for even more security.

Everything but trust and security with the other users.  I slowed recommending Bitcoin to anyone I know big time until a lot of those things get resolved, which I am not sure there is necessarily solutions to all the security issues.

Step 5 is the sticking point for a large number of people.  Their day to day living expenses need to be paid in their local currency and getting paid in Bitcoins would mean having to withdraw the coins from their wallet and sell them in order to obtain the cash to pay their bills - with the added risk that the Bitcoins will have dropped in value between the time the employer sends them to the account and the time the employee sells them.

It's hard to sell people on something which is actually more complicated than what they're currently used to and which adds extra layers of inconvenience to their lives. 

Pretty unlikely.  If the OWS protestors fully understood the implications of bitcoin's deflationary economics, they would be totally against it.  If it were ever to become a dominant currency, it would lead to even more severely entrenched concentrations of wealth than we have now.  

Most of them DO NOT see the politics of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve as the core problem.  In those they see a political discourse dominated by alumni of powerful financial institutions, and leads them to suspect (with some justification) that what's happened over the last three years has simply been stupendous wealth maneuvering to acquire still more stupendous wealth.

It sounds as though you are probably focusing on bitcoin as a way to short-circuit the political machinations driving central bank policies.  To the typical OWS protestor, this is going to look (with some justification) like attacking the symptom while ignoring the disease.

From my (leftist) perspective inflationary or deflationary is not the key question here, it's ease of redistribution and regulation.  The ease with which that can be accomplished with Bitcoin is a huge selling point.  I prefer to end the central bank policies as well.

I'm totally serious.  The idea that a bitcoin-dominated economy would ease redistribution of wealth, given its anonymity and irrevocable transactions, is ludicrous.

It's not anonymous under a properly regulated system though.  The government would simply force people to only use identified adresses so they could monitor all transactions, and they would tax and redistribute using the force of law just as they do now.

It is far more difficult to hide transactions in Bitcoin than it is with a combination of cash and electronic transfers once people know your address.  You just made an irrevocable tax dodging transaction?  Well, we can't get the money back but you can't hide the evidence, you can't spend the money because nobody will take your money from an anonymous address, and we are putting you in jail.

I'm not seeing how Bitcoin offers any ease of regulation now or in the future.

You could be right...I've not made up my mind on it yet.  An alternate projection is that, compared to hiding bricks of gold off-shore, Bitcoin is a much more shaky proposition for holding wealth.  This because if a majority of people decided to update their software to screw those who did not use the currency for mutual benefit, your wealth goes poof.

I don't see why this would be any more difficult than assigning people unique social security numbers.

Capture of political discourse certainly plays a role in maintaining existing wealth.  But wealth will always concentrate, and always seek to entrench itself.  To someone who is interested in fighting that tendency (and I think you will find that that is most OWS protestors), an unregulated currency is a problem.

Not really, it's too easy to audit.  Did you get a new car?  Did the coins for it come out of your assigned address and go to the dealer?  Easy to see.  Cash and multiple bank accounts are much easier to hide and fudge and require much more work to audit.

With a fully electronic currency a lot more of the process could simply be automated.  Did you catch a drug dealer or mobster?  Now we can see every person who gave them money.  We can see where they sent it.  It's a huge benefit to law enforcement and regulation.

The Dollar is a regulated currency... that doesn't seem to be working out all that well.

It's my perception too that the last thing the Occupy movement is seeking is less oversight and regulation.

It would be a challenge to ensure that everyone runs the right software and nobody passes around secret keys and such.

I don't think that a police state is necessary (and certainly not desirable) to achieve the majority rule monetary management that I see as possible for a Bitcoin-like solution.

I'm not holding my breath for Bitcoin to carry society to this utopia of majority empowerment and re-distribution, but it's fun to hypothesis about.  If nothing else, I hope it irks the Libertarians ;)

  I'm not going to argue the merits of the position.  This thread is about how to talk to OWS protesters about bitcoin.

They can pass them around all they want, but legitimate businesses will not take payment from them or they will face penalty.

Ok... so tell them the truth, don't invent some convenient fiction.

If make shit up about Bitcoin, they're not going to like it once they find out how it really works.

If you explain that a currency that has been tightly controlled by the central bank/federal government since 1913 has lost 95% of its value, and that Bitcoin offers an alternative, then maybe they'll come around.

Cast a wide net, some may not be at all receptive to the idea... it's probably best not to bother with those people. Make an announcement like "anyone who wants to learn about a form of money and exchange completely separate from any bank (or government), meet at X at Y o'clock".

Then you can be like, "Your currency only lost 95% of its value in a century?  Bitch, please.  Bitcoins have lost 86% of their value in less than a year.  Beat that!"

Then out come the occuplyBlah and eventually the pitchforks again.  Rinse and repeat until the people running things decide they are just going to have to live without control of the currency.

Control is with the people, in this scenario.  They will be free to change the policy through the Democratic process if they desire instead of leaving it in the control of an unelected central bank.

There wouldn't be much reason to change it though because only those who wanted to break the law would have anything to fear from having their transactions be trackable by the government. 

I'm sorry (http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360zvzlztgSzm1g10zm2g25)?

Looks like it's quite significantly up from $0.01.

Compare to this:

https://i.imgur.com/PTlMA.gif

Ha ha, maybe next you can pull out the bitcoin value log graphs and push the delusion even further.  Bitcoins are down 86% since their peak less than a year ago.  Are you disputing that fact?

Also, nominal yearly inflation in the low single digits like we've seen with the USD is pretty rad.  It's pretty much ideal, actually.  Wage stagnation isn't cool, though, which is the real problem at the moment.

Those were both log graphs.

Yes, Bitcoin is down 86% from it's June peak. It's also up 400% from its one year low. Do you dispute that?



Ah, silly me... nice troll.

Log graphs are pretty misleading, which was my point.  Not trolling at all, though I am laughing at your grasp of Economics.

Sure, 2-3% is probably the ideal inflation level, and we're usually a little higher than that, but around 4% and lower like we've been seeing is pretty damn good.  A low steady rate of inflation encourages investment and lending and is overall good for the economy.

They're not misleading when you're talking about exponential growth. Constant growth is exponential growth.

I recommend that you watch The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY).


Why is 2-3% ideal? 3% inflation per year means that every 23 years the supply of money doubles. Is that beneficial?

Why should investment be encouraged? I don't think people should have to play stock broker in order to save money. That sort of system benefits those who can afford to lose money at the expense of those who cannot.

If the majority of users have a tenable way to destroy the currency at will and re-distribute it as they collectively choose, I have some confidence that the structures and players who develop a control over the currency will use their power in such a way that will not be too abusive.  I suspect that in such a situation I would personally be tolerant of some level of oversight and management.  I've got no real problem with that.

History didn't have Bitcoin.  Previous attempts at redistribution were flawed in lacking this technical marvel protected from Government interference.

I guess I missed class the day they taught us about how the Romans bowed to the power of state and programmed their iphones in accordance with the laws of the senate.

It just needs mining instead - and the #1 thing you need to get lots of mining power that you fully control is money. Have you taken a good look at the level of technical expertise that goes into something like HFT or investment risk calculations? If Bitcoin were ever to take off, the banks would be more than capable of getting a ton of enery-efficient mining grunt and skimming their take off the top.

They wouldn't be skimming their take. They would be earning every satoshi by securing the network, just like everyone else.

I already do employ people, but the free market is ruined by bad actors like central banks who have perverted the system to give too much wealth to the unproductive rich.  Once Bitcoin has solved that problem there may have to be a period of forced redistribution if the wealthy continue to game the system, otherwise the egalitarian society should rise on its own.

I don't see this happening. The cases of stolen BTC show that there is no viable way of quarantining "evil" addresses. Is the thief passing the coins back and forth? Are third parties involved? An Analysis of Anonymity in the Bitcoin System (http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.com/)

Even if the black/grey market can be tracked effectively, what happens when somebody sends money from a "tainted" account to a "legitimate" account without permission? Will the business be required to immediately return the coins to the sending address? What happens if that money is sent to an off-line wallet? Would you be able to use legitimate businesses for laundering money by forcing them to give you "clean" money? If client changes are used to prevent the initial send, I smell blockchain fork.

Can you please define "egalitarian"? Do you accept that some people will accumulate more wealth through their actions than others? How do you define the maximum "allowable" disparity in wealth before violent action is permissible? I assume by "forced redistribution", you mean that the rules of private property no longer apply, that those targeted lose their right to defend their property and can have violence used upon them to take said property, up to and including that which is lethal?

Anyway... get rid of the state, and I see no system left to game. Keep it, and it will always turn against you.

I think part of the point is that Bitcoins are scarce and that the elite would not be able to create money out of thin air to the detriment of the working class.

You don't blacklist, you whitelist.

I see no reason why the 'elite' (or generally wealthy) could not obtain a lionshare of the Bitcoin just as they can a lionshare of the precious metals, property, bandwidth, or just about anything else.  In fact, I suspect it would be easier with Bitcoin, at least during the high inflation period.

Yes, but they cannot print their own money to artificially retain their position.  If they collect too much Bitcoin it can be confiscated and redistributed more easily because we have a total log of how much they have from the transaction history.

There's nothing stopping them from buying bitcoin, and I'm sure some will. However, I think it's far too risky for them to acquire a significant amount of them. You have to remember, the ones to worry about are entrenched in the current system. Buying into Bitcoin means buying into an alternative to the current system.

What if it's me, and my wallet is encrypted? Are you going to torture me until I give up the passphrase? Murder my family in front of me?

When you speak of "confiscation", you are nothing but a common thug or a tax man.

Also, I feel that you really don't understand Bitcoin. The "log" is pseudonymous, how do you propose to determine which addresses belong to which individuals in the first place?

I think people generally don't like being told they need to prove the provenance of cash transactions over $10,000.

Most people will keep two sets of books. If they need to launder small ammounts of cash, they can simply send it to one of their "whitelisted" addresses. Large transactions would obvioulsy get the attention of authorities.

Bitcoin will be the only currency considered valid, they won't have to choose to buy in or not. 


If it doesn't come from a whitelisted source it will be considered illegal and be confiscated.

This will happen when you are appointed dictator of the world? lol


Good luck funding your police state without control over the money supply!

He uses his sixth sense to track down the recipient (and the sender) of the ILLEGAL transaction. Then, he asks oh so nicely for the encryption key to your wallet. When you refuse to give it to him, he holds a gun to your youngest child's head and blows their brains out if you don't, killing your family in order of age until you comply. If you still refuse, you die.

SIMPLE!

I would expect that if/when the Bitcoin project looks like it has much potential for traction, some wealthy person will snap up a pretty fair chunk of the total currency base for what amount to chump change.  And some of his buddies, most of the rest.

As I've mentioned before, I think that worrying to much about who actually 'has' bitcoin is not seeing the forest for the trees.  A much more critical line of thought revolves around what the owners of the currency 'do' with it, and why.

Maybe  people at OWS are completely fine with the nature of our monetary system, and are rather upset at the politics and influence that led to it being so unfairly and unequally distributed.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and it's because the neurotypicals can't understand tech concepts like Bitcoin.

They are just angry peasants sans pitchforks and torches. Few people even have an inkling of what is wrong with the present economic and banking system. Bitcoin is way over even most professional economists heads. There is still not a good case made about why bitcoin should fail, but even so, most people don't realize that it will very likely succeed. So they dismiss bitcoin until it proves itself. The OWS folks may have a few more intelligent people in the crowd than any other protest group, so that makes it worthwhile to try to reach them.

I don't think it's so much that they can't understand Bitcoin (really, the concepts are not that difficult), but that they do not understand the nature of the monetary system. That system revolves around the concept of centralized control over the supply of money. What most people don't consider is the possibility that the system itself was created for the purpose of unequal distribution.

For example... why did the progenitors of the Federal Reserve act, who were representatives from wealthy banking families, meet in secret for 11 days (along with Senator Aldritch) in order to create the bill, if it was in fact for the good of the public?

I talked to the Occupy crowd here at my college a couple nights back, they seemed fairly interested...or maybe they were just humoring the drunk guy. I got a few of them to download the android wallet though.

This will be achieved via the Democratic process demanding Bitcoin be made the currency due to the many advantages it offers to the people.  There is no need for a Dictator.  Bitcoin will be confiscated the same way any money is confiscated, via threat of legal action.

There is no need for six sense.  If someone is caught dealing illegal drugs, for example, he would have to be using a whitelisted adress since legitimate businesses will not be accepting non-Bitcoin currency, it would be worthless to take money nobody would be able to accept..  After the arrest, we can see the entire transaction history of the adress to also capture the people who were buying the drugs and who supplied the dealer.

We can do the same thing to track people who try to purchase illegal weapons or engage in illegal gambling or are otherwise engaged in transactions with criminal elements.

Is Bitcoin any better at equal distribution? Once again, the people who "get in early" or start out with the means of production (video cards, FPGAs, etc) get access to the lion's share of the Bitcoins.


If Bitcoins are still "over most professional economists' heads", I doubt you can say it is 'very likely to succeed' in good faith. If professional economists can't see the merits of it, how on earth do you expect the average person to fare any better?

I'm going Occupy Amsterdam tomorrow (October 15th) with the following sign:
"Nobody should control the money! - Bitcoin"

 ;D ;D ;D

The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. Bitcoin will survive and eventually thrive on its own merit. It is a newly discovered technology similar to the discovery of fractals. It took many years before the true power of fractals were discovered and the same will become of bitcoin technology and cryptography in general.

The problem with central banking isn't early adopters. The problem is that there is an entity which can create as much money out of thin air as it wants. This benefits those who receive the money first - banks, government, those politically connected, and then on down the line - at the expense of those who receive the money last - employees. Then there's the problem of the institutionalized fractional reserve system. This further dilutes money, benefiting the banks at the expense of savers.

It is true that a similar system could be built on top of bitcoin, but I find it highly unlikely that people would voluntarily exchange their hard-won decentralized currency for central bank notes again.

Fractals are not a technology, they are a part of mathematics.


Bitcoin is an invention, and one with a bit of an idealogical slant at that(non-inflationary currency)

They are wildly different things. Fractals are not something that is 'thriving' or was invented, they just exist. Cryptography, too, has a proven track record backed by mathematics. Bitcoin only has fanatics backing it who believe that their particular solution to currency and economics is correct, which is purely opinion.

This is not at all how fractional reserve banking works, no one walks into the Reserve, prints themselves $1 billion, throws it in a backpack and goes home.

Government is not some dark, 'other' separate entity out to get you. It is made up of people just like you. The problem isn't that they have stacked society so far in their favor by themselves, it's that our greed set up society in a way that allows them to do it.

Nice straw man. Honoring your namesake? The Treasury tells the Fed to make them some more money. The Fed then magics money into existence and provides it to the Treasury. Then the treasury spends it on projects for which the corporations and special interests lobbied. At first, this money buys the same amounts of goods and services as all the other money in existence. Eventually, it trickles down to you, the employee, and it can now has less purchasing power, as the market has taken into account this new money.

Fractional reserve banking works in a similar way, except debtors take the place of the government. It transfers wealth from those who save to those who go into debt.


Bullshit. I've never held any political power, and only once while I was still naive did I vote to support the use of political power. Don't lump me (or the many like me) in with the rest of you statists. We're the ones trying to show you why the world is so fucked up. But no, it's those horrible rich people, always building new factories for profit and... oh... jobs.

There is a pretty big difference between having a big pile of wealth and having a machine for systematically robbing all productive people indefinitely.

I think it changes the whole world to end that machine. It would take some people out of the parasite business and into doing more desired stuff and it would let the already productive people enjoy their own gains and possible be incentized to produce more.

Sure it would be nice to take back ill gotten gains. But goddamn that would be messy. And if you make one misstep you are essentially a thief.

The government will assign them much like they do social security numbers.


It will be illegal to accept payment from an unregistered address.


There would be an initial grace period for you to consolidate your holdings, that is it.  After that you may only use your assigned address in legal commerce or face penalty.


Hardly, the system could practically be automated.  It's as simple as checking if transactions are between whitelisted addresses and blacklisting any addresses found to be involved in illegal activity. 


It's not a technological problem, black markets will be taken on with traditional law enforcement as they currently are, with the added bonus that any attempts to launder into legitimate currency will be far easier to uncover thanks to the transaction log and whitelist.

I think he's talking about Bitcoin. I also think he may be trolling.

Rarity, if you're not trolling... here's the problem you need to solve...

I receive a transaction to a "black market" address of 1ABC... Your block chain police scanner application sees an unauthorized transaction. How does it find ME?

Without having complete control over the entire network, you cannot enforce this.

Very likely trolling.  I expected so from the first post on this thread due to the SA style avatar and the tone which was pretty obviously designed to reel in Libertarians.

As far as I am concerned it was a good troll in that it got people thinking about this and that.

Oh, I have avatars disabled, so I didn't catch that.

All of the money from the budget/the Treasury comes from things like bonds and taxes, not straight from the Federal Reserve - that money is used for loans to make sure that the scale and value of the money supply roughly matches the scale of population and economy growth over time. Naturally these things cannot be perfectly pinned down, therefore you want the money supply to slightly outpace growth (inflation) to both make sure the needs of the growing economy are met but to also discourage the act of saving versus investing to ensure further growth



No, but you do vote, even though you somehow soak up all the bullshit the rich feed you about regulations being bad, about how they are the 'job creators', and how they aren't leeching disproportionately off the work of others and the 'risks' they take on. Nobody "creates jobs" just to make them, and sometimes the most profitable things to do is to squeeze your workers harder, lay them off entirely, replace them, or find a way to avoid paying taxes back to the society they 'earned' so much from.

You are directly supporting the stratification of power and wealth in this country by not being willing to put 'statist' limits on both businesses and government to reduce the influence the rich have over people.

I hope you can achieve your dream of being a serf someday. Don't think Bitcoin will help you either, a limited/deflationary monetary supply like Bitcoin only increases the relative wealth and influence of the wealthy compared to you as the economy grows but the available money stays the same.

Voting. Not even once.

Ok, just once. Then I realized that it's ridiculous to create a system of institutionalized violence to prevent violence.


What? You know what they say about assumptions?

Trust me, the rich don't like what I've got to offer, at least not the ones that use the coercive tool of government to increase their wealth.


Only if you believe that the increasing reach of government regulation and increasing size of the corporations are merely a coincidence. A magical, magical coincidence. More government MUST solve our problems and make the corporations smaller!


Go learn economics. Disparity of wealth does not matter, if everyone's standard of living is increasing. Disparity of wealth does not matter, if there is no centralized power structure to manipulate.

Why are you here? SomethingAwful getting boring? Or are you going to sell me your Bitcoins for cheap?

The threat of government force is a far less effective coercive tool than the one that they used against everyone: capital


We've been de-regulating all kinds of shit, especially finance, for the last 30 years. Can you name some regulations you really think contributing to our problems, since both of our last economic crashes were caused by deregulation of lending rules and securities laws?

Right. Because they can make you give them money. No, only the government does that.


The Federal Reserve's policies for one, propped up the housing bubble instead of letting it collapse when it was much smaller. This wasn't helped at all by the laws requiring lenders (at least those fed by tax money) to loan to those who were in greater risk of foreclosing. Nor by the fact that financial giants knew they would be bailed out by the government if their wild risks failed.

Don't forget that corporations are granted their status as entities by the government, and their number one legal responsibility is to their shareholders. There's also the fact that as a regulatory body financed by taxation, the government has no economic incentives to keep costs low or service quality high. Had it been a private regulatory agency in charge of overseeing the financial industry during our crisis, I guarantee you would not be calling for them to have increased power, but to be shut the fuck down.

Please don't think that I'm pinning our problems on some new oversight rule that the government is imposing on the financial sector. As I explained above, a private agency would have better incentives for properly regulating, but these are the least of the government's flaws. The big ones run deep, like central banking, inflationary money supply, public schooling (I consider it a form of religious indoctrination).


Please produce evidence, or at the very least a coherent argument, that this is the case.

They dangle their dollars over your head and you dance


Once again, this money wasn't just "printed and stuffed into the economy", it was loaned through bonds. The crashed wasn't really caused by lenders being forced to lend to those that couldn't pay back so much as it was caused by a lack of regulation of the finance sector, allowing them to package up the shitty loans as securities, get the falsely rated as "AAA" by private ratings agencies, and then dump the toxic "AAA" securities on organizations like pension funds, meaning that the banks really had no risk whatsoever in taking the loans as they could disguise them as something better and sell them.
While I still don't know what to think about the bailout (More people would have lost their homes if the bailout didn't happen, but we probably should have seized the assets of the banks and bankers who caused this to cover the costs)


Private ratings agencies like S&P helped enabled the finance sector to get away with what they did. I do call for all those involved to be changed or shutdown, but since they are private and not accountable to me they don't give a shit. At least with the government, I get a vote.

Also, government should not be in the business of "keeping costs low" and shouldn't need "economic incentives" to do things, it should be using all the resources it can collect from it's populace to in turn provide profit-less services beneficial to all the people as best it can - once the need for "economic incentive" is introduced to the government, the need to profit will cause them to provide services less valuable than the money people pay in taxes.

So a private agency, given the choice of running an honest business and profiting a little, or pulling a grift and profiting greatly would choice to stay honest for what reasons? I believe the standard operating procedure in America is: pull a scam/do something bad, get caught, reform organization under another name so the "vote with your dollars to keep them honest" crowd will continue to unknowingly support them (if you didn't do the illegal stuff through a shell corporation).


also, lol at this:

Public schooling exists solely for the reason that we believe that your children are people and not your property, and should therefore be given some kind of baseline, uniform and structured education so you can't deprive them of knowledge they will need to be able to function later in life by telling them they don't need any math past addition and subtraction and that science is all gobbledygook because Jesus said so when he created the world in 3000BC in October.



The biggie would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act, which removed a bunch of post-Great Depression reforms that were introduced under Glass-Steagall and basically broke down the barriers between banks, securities agencies, insurance agencies, and ratings agencies and allowed the financial market to grow into the mess that it did.

Facepalm

Yeah sure, only rich can get instruction is much better instead. And if you are poor, well then you deserve to be a SLAVE!

Occupy won't embrace bitcoin because bitcoin is simply another rigged system.  They don't want to replace one rigged system with another.  It's rigged to benefit the early adopters.  Maybe if it were designed so you earn bitcoins by sleeping outside in a park in cold weather rather than wasting electricity to run a fucking computer all day.

Occupy World St. will embrace bitcoin simply because it is not a rigged system. You can still be an early adopter for the next ten years. There are plenty of bitcoins to mine. There is no reason you cannot have your mining computer running while enjoying the camaraderie of your friends at the protest. Maybe you can even profit a little by selling some of your bitcoin to them.

Just want to point out that slavery is illegal, so all you are saying is "if you are poor, you deserve to work hard to get rich, and shit if you work hard enough and make smart decisions naturally, then you may be able to afford to better you and your family"

So i agree with you...

Since when something being illegal stop it from happens?

Roman empire once had more money than needed, following some successful conquests and A LOT of money. They abolished the taxes for some decades.

But a government having a surplus? It's a bit impossible since it has a lot of expenses and the only income is from taxes... if you remove taxes you only have expenses...

I have joined this thread rather late, but it seems the answer to why the Occupy movement hasn't caught onto bitcoin is two fold:

1: Only nerds and special interest groups really 'get it'.  Try explaining bitcoin to a non computer savvy person.  It's virtually impossible.

2: Adopting bitcoin is replacing one group of greedy people with another.  Greedy bankers and their greedy customers caused the financial crisis.  Now we're asking the Occupy movement to support the early adopters of bitcoin, who are sitting on a mountain of them mined or bought when they cost cents per dollar.

There are not many early adopters of bitcoin. There are many millions of millionaires in the world. There is no comparison. There are not only millions of bitcoin left to mine, but there can be millions of bitcoins in transaction fees to be made by us instead of the greedy bankers.

Having 1% of the 99% would be nice already. There's no need that all of them see the light by tomorrow.


Beside the point. This is not a radical movement. No one (OK, some, but not many) wants to abolish money. I think everyone remembers the only large scale experiment of a society without money in recent times. A substantial part of the population of Cambodia did not survive.

donate thru this address and old_eng will match
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48120.msg575288#msg575288

The timing is just too perfect. Disenchantment with the global financial system and the protesters looking for a more cohesive message. Wall St dropped the ball when they stopped paying regular dividends on common stock and instead took huge executive bonuses. Common people no longer have good investments with compounding interest for retirement savings. Bitcoin can give them just that. Transaction fees will accumulate and reward those who save by deflating the economy and raising the value of savings. The best thing about it is you don't have to trust slick salesmen selling junk investments because businesses will have to earn their profits rather than cheat investors.

No, efficiency in government means using your resources as completely and optimally as possible. Throwing in the need to have profit left over drops efficiency, since some of the value is needlessly privatized.

edit: Also your concept of value and profit changes daily so I'm not even going to argue with you

I will agree to what you say if once everyone gets on board we hand out videocards to everyone and start a new blockchain. Then it would be an actual 'fair' system'

Well I guess the system isn't fair at all then

Why?  All of those words are present in any government ever, having laws and police doesn't make something a police state.

The voters who decide whether they keep their jobs come next election cycle.

Also remember that efficiency means that after collecting all taxes you want to spend as much of it as possible, anything not being spent social services should be invested into infrastructure to improve future efficiency or value for the citizenship. Nothing should truly be left over as "profit" - If you do collect more than you spend and don't need infrastructure, you add it to the social safety safety net in case future years do not have as good tax revenues.

'Profit' implies that the value of revenue is greater than the at-cost (including labor) value of services provided, which is not the government's place to do since we are not so much 'investing' in the government as if it were a business but are collectively pooling our resources as a state/population to ensure the continuity and stability of our society.

Unfortunately this is a very inefficient and unfair way to structure the world, and is certainly something we should have evolved about as a species. We certainly have the ability to regulate around this kinda of Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest (fittest being the one that starts with the most means for profiting) primal system we've built, but everyone convinces themselves that they deserve to be and are intelligent enough to be the person on top one day, and think they should wield disproportionate power over their peers for it.

We are literally no better than our primate ancestors, though by this point, we should be.

^ How many are children or retired?


  You need zero control of the network.  The whitelist is a government list, all you do is check the transactions against the bitcoin log.  You understand we already have tax policies and financial regulations, right?  It doesn't result in your fever dreamed dystopia.  You don't have to go prying into people's affairs to look at their transactions when they are all publicly available in the transaction log.

Anonymity is pointless because an anonymous address is automatically not considered valid by the government.

This is partially true as well, which is why people soak up ideas like 'low taxes' which sound like a good idea up front.

Also I'd say the number of people 'not paying the bills' is only around ~70-80 million, which is roughly the number of people 17 and under. Don't forget, even people who don't pay income taxes still pay sales tax, which accounts for a much larger portion of their income that sales tax incurs on someone who can afford to save or invest a significant amount of their income instead of buying thing.

Well you wouldn't be able to legally use bitcoins that are in an illegal address...

I've always been an advocate for spreading information on how marginal tax rates, progression taxation, etc work and informing them about them. The best indicators of how likely someone is to be politically informed and make the best choices for themselves are their level of education. Perhaps, part of the solution to have a more intelligent, informed voting population that can collectively vote in their best interests over bread and circuses is to provide them with a robust education while they are growing up so they are equipped to make those choices later on. Deregulating society, not requiring education to be provided for children by the whole of the population, etc gives people an even greater chance of making poor decisions for themselves and others.

The funny thing about OWS is it is full of people who did make reasonably good choices, like students who invested in themselves (and indirectly, in the society they will work in) by getting an education, union workers who organized their skilled labor to prevent themselves by being taken advantage of by their employers and so on, yet realize that the system is still fucking them hard. Since America is pretty close to what I'd call laissez faire as a whole (see everything large corporations can get away with both here and foreign countries, unrestrained finance, credit, insurance, and banking markets), I'm still pretty sure the actual way to even the playing field a bit is better education and social support for laborers and more regulation to prevent the eternal pattern in America of capitalists constantly trying to soak up every bit of resources they can, most that they will never used, just so they can be 'richer' or more powerful than their neighbors.

To get the right people in office, we need better checks and balances in government, we need to start respecting credentials in choosing our leaders over "military records" or "sexy Alaskan looks" or money or celebrity, and we need to put heavy reigns on the money in politics; hopefully these will lead to people more driven by ideals or the desire to improve society to seek public office over people who get into politics for money or power, since the money and absolute or relative power would be dampened.

There is no need to stop anyone from sending Bitcoin wherever they want.  It's just that any Bitcoin received from a non-whitelisted address will not be recognized as currency by the government.  What would stop people from using such blacklisted coins is that no legitimate business would want to accept a currency that is only usable on the black market since it inherently has less value than a clean Bitcoin.  It might as well be counterfeit. 

Rassah <- Used to be socialist democrat. Got Bachelors in business Finance. Now finishing up Master's in Business finance with concentration on globalization. Classes based off of materials from Harvard Business School, and university is in top 20 in the world, so not just some crappy college. As education kept increasing, and understanding of business and economics kept improving, became more and more economically conservative to the point of being pretty much free-market capitalist (still very left-leaning on social issues though).

So, regarding education, be careful what you wish for.

What government's whitelist/blacklists?  Do you believe that two waring states are going to honor one another's lists?  Or are you anticipating a one-world government as a foregone conclusion?  Or extreamely difficult to implement travel and international trade restrictions?  Or what?

^ I am talking about the currency of the United States of America. 


Of course there will be enforcement, where did you get the idea there wouldn't be?  Say you want to buy a car, is the car dealer going to be able to pass on the sales tax in your black market coins?  Nope, so he's not going to take them.  Now that your coins can only be used for a subset of products at illegitimate businesses, they are less valuable than whitelist coins.  Why would anyone take them?

Quit trying to annoy the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is important, with a dying pyramid scheme that has about three months of life left.

It wears off.  In certain cases at least.  I remember how superior I felt to my anti-globalization friends in the mid-90's because I understood the efficiencies of making trade curves line up and all that.  IIRC, I had just come out of macro-econ class of several hundred with the top score (albeit in a 100 level class at a low end university.)  In fact I had learned nothing more than what the tiny minority of wealthy people wanted me to learn regarding capital and currency and such.  I wish to God that I was still in touch with those friends to I could apologize.  Whether they understood capital better than I at that point I'll never know, but 15 years later I see that their instincts, at least, were much better than those which I had implanted in me in school.

It's not that I understand enough to believe this system and my beliefs are better, it's that I understand enough to know that the way things are going with globalization, it's pretty much inevitable. It's not about capital as it is about private contracts, as well as the ability to compete around the world and no longer be tied down to a specific geographical region.

Even without government sanctions, something analogous to a corporation can arise in a free market, either through investment, price fixing, trusts, and so on, especially in a market without the regulations to prevent this from happening. The fact that the government recognizes them makes no difference, except that with government recognition the corporation must pay some taxes (if it actually pays) back to society instead of none at all.

The difference between governments and businesses in laissez-faire societies is that the government starts as a 'monopoly' (although once again, checks, balances, and more protections for citizens can be seen as a way of deconstructing the 'monopoly' a government branch has over public policy), while the business can use collusion, buying up of resources/competitors, and other means to lock itself into a monopoly. The government is still somewhat accountable to voters, the monopolic business is accountable to no one.


Human nature, especially in the forms of government or corporations, leads to corruption. Trying to eliminate any chance for corruption to take hold in government and constantly making a push against the corrupt who come into power is the best means we have of combatting it we have. Letting a corporation or individual in charge of a business do whatever they want will lead to a beast far too similar to a corrupt government, only without all that "accountability" and consent of the people.



Was it education that led you to it, or greed? I'd imagine a large number of Harvard grads buy into libertarianism/free-market capitalism, but since Ivy-League education is often costly, you generally see well-off people going there. In our current society, well-off, well-connected, or well-educated people usually benefit the most from free-market capitalism, therefore would support it.

I think that if everyone was better educated, we'd realize that free-market capitalism often leads to a situation where there are 10 losers for every 1 winner, and we would decide by majority vote that a more socialized society would provide a much more equal society and ensure the most people possible could be content with society's structure.

I'd bet everyone with degrees in Finance is a free-market capitalist, as the lack of regulation our finance system has lets them soak easy money off of labor - why bite the hand that feeds you?
You didn't "learn" something that led you from socialist-democratic principles, you just succumbed to the greedy part of your nature we all have deep down.


"Voting with your wallet" has always been an ineffective strategy against companies who spread out their unfair, manipulative or harmful dealings into shell corporations

I see nothing whatsoever wrong with stirring people's imagination with alternate forms of currency generally.  I am sure that at least a fraction of these people have contemplated alternate money systems, and are aware of various efforts, most of which have failed.

The technical hurdles of decentralizing the currency in the way that Satoshi has done, and the skill with which he has done it are actually quite novel,  impressive and interesting.  If that inspires and interest people, what's the harm?

I can say for sure that if I were a protester who had never heard of Bitcoin, I would be very thankful to whoever took the time to inform me of it.

Sounds to me like you are guzzling down the cool-aid so I have every expectation that you'll finish up that graduate degree.

Does your curriculum cover trade considerations in times of war?  Or is war thought to be a novelty of history which is impossible in a form involving two powerful belligerents in these modern times?  Or is it assumed that Oceana, Eurasia, and Eastasia will be large enough to allow the 'contract' principles you are learning about operate within?

Tax evasion will still be illegal.  


If the miner is registered with the government for identification purposes.


  Simply randomly sending a blacklisted coin to a whitelisted address would not blacklist the receiver, once you receive one you simply turn it over to the government.  You would only have an issue if you tried to spend it.  There would be no point in selling your whitelisted account as you would no longer be able to buy so much as a pack of gum in a legitimate business without one.

Illegal purchases will be handled by the criminal justice system exactly as they are now, but with much more ability to track the flow of money.  Buy from a drug dealer and you go down when he does.

Shell corporations can exist with or without a government. and disparities of information can be hard to see when a business would do its damnedest to obfuscate or block their links to shady or harmful dealings.

I suppose I'd rather have a controlled structure in place that we can keep modifying to weed out corruption than a lack of structure that could lead to far worse corrupt institutions.

Only a Socialist deals in externalities

In instances like this I have no expectation of, or particular interest in, engaging the author in anything.  Lotsa people know how Nagle is, but others not.  I simply aim to provide an alternate view.  Sometimes it is even a viewpoint which I have some belief in (as in this case.)

There is no such thing as perfect enforcement, but Bitcoin provides tools to make it much easier to detect evasion in the form of the transaction log.  If an address is receiving a large amount of coins a certain percentage should be leaving in tax.  Random checks could be entirely automated against a formula that could look for suspicious activity to be passed on to a human investigator to check.

You're still delusional if you think linking a Bitcoin address to a human being is easier than linking a bank account to one.

Of course it's easier.  You can take cash out of the bank and engage in anonymous transactions.

most people don't even know about it
i approached a marijuana seeds company who had never heard of bitcoin who basically pioneered alternative internet payments in my area, now they're using it

if you have a bitcoin service print out some flyers and pass them out, then dispatch a friend to sell bitcoins on the other corner

So is the use of physical money illegal in your ideal society too? What about barter?

Also, if it's so easy, please explain how to turn a bitcoin address into a human identity.

so, I gave it a shot, explaining it to some one who only used word, browser, and email... guess what, they got it. Of course i had to explain what encryption was, what a key pair was, what all that was... but they got it.

I approached the problem by explaining what a hash was and how after trying enough, one could by chance get a kind of magical hash.

Then that the blockchain (which I referred to a 'ledger') was hashed and distributed around to 'everyone' without a central controlling system.

Both my mother and sister, neither having much computer experience,  were able to understand this and appreciate that solution is plausible and could be fairly resilient.  Neither was interested enough to actually do anything with Bitcoin, but they are also not as interested as I in monetary issues generally.  The current monetary system has been fairly good to most of my family so far and other of life's offerings are more interesting than Bitcoin at this time.

Bitcoin is the only legal tender.  There is no fiat currency allowed so as to avoid the manipulation of central banks.


I have explained several times that valid addresses will be assigned in much the same way as social security numbers.  Please review my posts before continuing, I can assure you this system sound and your questions have already been addressed.

You have not explained how you will track down someone using an invalid address...

Honestly? Education. When you learn how the system works, you learn thatthere's really not much you can do about it, and though not guaranteed, the outcome will usually be good in the long run. So, maybe education, and a bit of surrender and hope.


Hm, maybe? I wouldn't know. I don't go to Harvard. Just lucky to have gotten into this school (though busted my butt like crazy to get in there). My parents aren't rich, and I'm paying for the $30k a year or so that it costs pretty much entirely out of my own pocket and through loans.


If everyone was a winner, no one would be. We either have one very skilled and driver winner with 10 not so skilled and risk adverse employee losers, or we have one somewhat lazy welfare recipient with "needs" as a winner, and 10 people working and payi g taxes as losers. I'm all for equality, I just don't think it will work, since it will naturally degenerate to communism or free-market libertalianism over time. Always has.


Finance doesn't actually suck money off labor. It sucks money off debtors and investors. Human resources sucks money off labor. I don't know if human capital management degrees are free-market capitalists.
Likewise i can say the same about you. You didn't learn something that led you into supporting socialist-democratic principles, you just saw that some people had things you didn't, got jealous, and wanting to have what they have succumbed to your greedy nature. Everything in the world is done for selfish greedy reasons, even if the reason is so that you can feel good and smug about yourself.

hurray, voices from the insane libertarianism, and from the insane comunist sides :D can we say /end thread now?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=2646;type=avatar     <.<  Furries..   ::)

The system would be the result of Democratic change in the United States as people rise up and demand Bitcoin and the fair wealth distribution that represents the ultimate power of this new electronic commodity.  You would be free to leave for some country still dependent on fake fiat currency if you do not like the system, but the revolutions there won't be far behind once they see the American economy dominate with the power of Bitcoin.

Checking with the government is a strange way to put it, the whitelist will be public information.  Vendors will check it for the same reason they check dollar bills to make sure they aren't counterfeit.  

I think your view of what people want is severely distorted by what you want.

Take a step back and ask yourself if people really want to give up one financial dictator for one that is even more dictatorial.

The only dictation here is that money cannot be used for illegal purposes (we already have that) and that Bitcoin will be the money.  The fact that it is better at preventing illegal activity is just a bonus, the technological power of Bitcoin is the real star here, forced redistribution will only have to happen at the start if the wealthy try to cheat the system again.

The benefits of Bitcoin are so obvious there is no doubt people will soon want to adopt at as their currency.

The wealthy can only cheat the system because the system is designed to be cheated. Your system will be no different.

Get rid of the system, and you get rid of the problem. Institutionalized violence will never be a solution to the problem of violence!

The system is irrelevant if you allow the wealthy to take their massive wealth and power advantage into the new system.  Bitcoin cannot be cheated and all my system does is use the tools Bitcoin provides to implement and maintain that level playing field.

Not with properly monitored Bitcoin.  We aren't ignoring history with Bitcoin, we are making it.  With the transaction log and personally identified addresses instead of totally anonymous cash it becomes near impossible to hide illegal activity.  Of course no illegal activity can be wiped out 100%, but with Bitcoin the black market would fall from the massive torrent it is today to a tiny, irrelevant drip which would finally make the problem of a manageable proportion for traditional law enforcement to handle.

BZZZT. Not Bitcoin. Try again.

BitterTea, why are you still arguing with that troll from SA? He obviously doesn’t believe the BS he spouts.

I’m surprised at how incredibly susceptible many Bitcoiners still are to this.

^ Feel free to debate if you like, but don't try and vilify and other someone just because you don't agree with their point of view.


The Bitcoin system itself does not care if you personally identify your address or not, or if an entire country does or not.  


Laws would be determined by the Democratic system.

The will of the people makes law.

Then use the Democratic system to abolish them.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

So what are you doing?

I did not read all, so maybe someone else answered this question like this:

They are not interested because they are socialists. This means they want a central control of all resources. They want the resources allocated by some non-elected comission, not by free individuals.

They are the natural enemy of people who are interested in something like a free, uncontrolable cryptocurrency.

The lots of good people (young people who are concerned about injustice etc. in the world) in this movement do not know about this. They are blinded by idealism and instrumentalized by some sneaky socialist control freaks.

I reckon if you go down to Occupy and give out a load of bitbills (and gold?) you'll get your money back later in  investments to the currency.

Did a search on youtube for 'occupy bitcoin' and got 3 vids. Opportunity!

+1

It is true that an uncontrollable cryptocurrency has a more natural appeal to moochers who want to ride on the back of society's efforts for free and who use code-words like 'violence' in a pitiful attempt to gain sympathy.

If/when the other groups get off their asses as have these protesters and actually do something it might be easier market Bitcoin it more direct ways (e.g., 'you can easily cheat on your taxes!')  In the mean time, these protesters are unlikely to have much love for the Fed and the financial institutions who control the USD so just showing them that Bitcoin exists and is useful in a tangible way should be plenty good enough.

English is not my mother language and I did not understand the real meaning of your post. Sorry :) ...


"these protesters are unlikely to have much love for the Fed and the financial institutions who control the USD so just showing them that Bitcoin exists and is useful in a tangible way should be plenty good enough."

There are reports that this movement is some sort of controlled opposition. To assimilate the unsatisfied frustrated ones and use the force of their ethical demands to establish some global currency, managed by a non-elected comission. Please google and think by yourself.

Key concept of my opinion is, that the people in power do not really care, if they use capitalism, socialism or ...ism to apply their power on me and you and most of the other people.

I'm really confused. Who are the moochers?

I don't want to pay taxes, but I also don't want to rely upon government services. Unfortunately, they do not allow competition, so I have no choice.

I suppose those who refuse to pay protection money to the mafia are "moochers" too?

People who want to use the bridges, jettys, buracratic infrastructure that makes it so I don't need to shoot people who trespass on my property, etc, etc which my taxes built, but don't want to pay their fair share themselves.


And I don't want some unregulate nuclear power plant melting down in my area under some whackadoodle theory that the free market will put people out of business when they melt down enough power plants.


No, you are supposed to have a functional justice system so you have options.  Unfortunatly, this is part of a 'society' (where the word 'socialism' comes from) and it costs money.

Sorry, no:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=Socialism

I won't deny that they have common roots, though.

And WTF is that:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=moochers&searchmode=none

Maybe this:
http://www.moocher.de/

I think using "that's how the system works as a justification is a cop-out answer that is used for justifying some pretty terrible views. None of our ancestors, from those who served under feudal lords, to the people who fought for civil rights for women and minorities, ever fully accepted "the way things are" - if they had, none of us would be as well off today as we are.


While hard work + out-of-pocket/"bootstraps" stories are inspirational, but they are the exception, not the rule.


I would rather there be no winners and no losers than a few winners and a ton of losers, but I genuinely care for my fellow human beings. I also don't believe in this "lazy welfare recipient" meme; welfare is not some glorious thing. People want to be productive, nobody likes feeling useless. The best solution you can have for this is to offer a bunch of "public works" programs to allow them to take on jobs that make them feel productive while they are in-between full-time public service jobs or private industry careers, Of course there will be freeloaders - that happens, but it is far more better to deal with a few freeloaders than demean ourselves as a species as cast those who cannot get work, are too disabled, or are too depressed to be motivated to the side like trash instead of taking care of them and leaving open opportunities for them to improve themselves.


I'm not jealous at all, I'm reasonably well off, since I was born into a well off family.
Maybe what you could more accurately accuse me of is "feeling guilty". People like you and I have been lucky to have many opportunities available to us. Hell, I haven't even had to pay for my college education. I'm very thankful for all this.
I also know that not everyone in the world, hell, not even in this country has had even close to the chances I have. I am also aware that many of the things I buy, including clothes and even food, are products created or retrieved by slaves. My anger at the "rich" comes from the fact that I know that the ratio of 'labor/work' they do compared to the laborers at the bottom is much different than the ratio of pay they both receive.
Also, finance very much does suck money off labor: it may not be directly; but it still does. It's similar to what I said above. Debtors/investors are actually laborers often, too.

The strong are rewarded and the weak are left to subsistence or death. Man isn't just this way; nature is in general. I embrace nature and it seems many do here. The determined and strong ones who strive for forced equality will find themselves achieving the same power they once hated; creating a fresh elite.

It's an endless cycle. True equality will only be achieved by rewarding strength and allowing all to become strong. If your preference is happiness and sustainable life, this is all you can reasonably strive for.

We are the most advanced species on this planet. We don't have to accept that nature - the mere fact that we can identify it as a problem and possible solutions to it means we are more than capable as a species of rising above that nature.

Have you found the problem or are you just recognizing the symptoms? That is the real question.

Microorganisms are the most advanced species on the planet. You would die without them. They have existed for hundreds of millions of years and will outlive us. They can live for thousands of years and even survive interplanetary travel hitchhiking on a rock. One of them can kill you or your whole species.

I did not mean to imply "that's the way things are,"I meant to imply that's the natural progression of things. Like there is a natural progression for people whi's rights are restricted for no reason to get more and more equal rights, there is a progression for business to becompe less and less regulated, or the government trying to regulate the business more and more corrupt by those they are trying to regulate.


I don't see why what I did wasn't that particularly hard. I didn't even have all that good of grades in high school. Just took some part time community college classes while working, then took out a loan to go to one university to finish my bachelors, then after graduating found a job (which i might add pays WAY below my skill level), and while working there took out a loan to get my masters degree, taking classes in the evenings part time.This isn't particularly hard. The only major difference between my friends and me is that I don't have every video game console out, don't buy games and movies all the time, don't buy junk and trinkets every time i want something, don't go to a restaurant every week, have only the most basic cable, don't buy clothes unless i need them, eat the cheapest stuff I can find, drive a crappy old car with 200k+ miles on it, and don't have a lot of free time what with the work, classes, homework, and some extracurriculars I do. So, you want to be the "bootstraps" rich guy? Just don't waste your money on shit and get better priorities. That's about it.



I'm not against the idea of infrastructure or welfare for those who genuinely need it. But if everyone was equal with no winners or losers, everyone would be a loser, since why bother working if you know you'll be taken care of anyway? What's the drive/incentive to be better if you know you won't be a winner even if you try to be?


Well, the reason for that is because not many can do the stuff the "rich" can, but plenty can do the stuff the laborers can. It's really just simple supply and demand. If laborers demand to get higher pay, someone else wil come around and offer to take the limited number of jobs for a lower pay (like Chinese and Indians did). The whole union and minimum wage thing may have worked when we were more or less isolated, but in a globalized world we entered just 15 years ago, free market is king. There's no more single all-encompasing rules to keep workers from competing for jobs. So, the only option we have, really, is to create a one-world government that passes minimum wage laws globally (impossible), or have workers become more and more skilled with more unique and specialized skills. Lucky for them, we now have plenty of evidence that the sweatshops people were complaining about ten years ago do, in fact, progress to more competition for employees, which means higher wages and better working conditions. Though if you have a better, WORKABLE idea of how to solve that problem, i'm all ears.


Finance is a tool and a service that at the very core simply tries to match up risk with the estimated cost of that risk, nothing more. People with too low an income are too much of a risk, and shouldn't attempt to buy things like videogames, junk, and even houses, with borrowed money.

Yeah but they don't have Xbox. Humans FTW

Why?

Because 0.1% guys hold 50% of Bitcoins. It's worse than Wall Street.

Calling all early adopters. Bitcoin is cheap enough now that you can potentially earn 10x your money. It has seen $30 before and may again if you act now and buy at $3. Now you can own 99% of bitcoin and be the 1%

Discussed here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47747.0

This stats is BS. I own none of the addresses in there. But if I had combined all my addresses into one I'd be high up the list. So am i one of the 0.1% of oscenely rich guys or am I 50 poor guys?

And even if true - anyone can currently buy BTC 1000 - it's less than $4000. So your chance. Buy BTC 1000 and you may be one of the richest people on the planet in 10 years. So stop complaining and buy.

Red makes an excellent analysis in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48521.0

Sorry, my fault - it's just $2600.

That people's jealousy could hinder Bitcoin?

Sorry, just sold $2,400 worth of Bitcoin over last 24 hours to pay for my flight and hotel to London. My bad!
Besides, I was just "using them" like the anti-hoarders/speculators said I should be.

This link was end to me by a friend who did a Bitcoin promotion during the occupy demonstration in Amsterdam last Saturday (look right in the middle):

http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2720/Nieuws/photoalbum/detail/2968967/309348/25/Occupy-demonstratie-trekt-dik-1000-man-in-Amsterdam.dhtml

The site is one of the larger news papers in the Netherlands

Perhaps they are unable to be duped by the promises of the Bitcon community.

That people who aren't already in the game have little incentive to join.

That's where networking effects come in, and what the community needs to build. Even people who hate facebook and twitter eventually join just because their friends are on there. If bitcoin starts being accepted everywhere, even SomethingAwfull goons will have no choice but to embrace it.

Have a look at Red's post. It's a good post that details the problem.
You think Tenebrix was unfair with 7M premined coins? Well, try Bitcoin that in about a year will have 50% premined. A tiny minority controls 50% of all coins, leaving the rest of the world to split the rest. If the rich minority stop mining, which they won't do. Try to get acceptance for that system from those who believe that the current elite have a too big share of the wealth.

Since when has wealth been a limited pie? I'm lost with you folks.

If we sit on our coins doing nothing, they aren't worth anything. If we use them and spend them, they will keep getting distributed through the rest of society. OP's claims could have also been applied to Google stock (or any stock, really), yet people still buy. Those same people can be just as ignorant about bitcoin as they have been about stocks.
Besides, considering the concentration of USD, I'd think people would be used to bitcoin.

There is plenty of competition.  There are 196 countries in the world for you to choose from and find the government most to your liking.  There are plenty of countries that will let you live as a subsistence farmer and never trouble you for taxes at all. 

I have visited about 19 of them and lived in four seperate continents. Different sceneries, different people but different political systems? No. You have to look where the money flows, my friend. Political sovereignty today is a myth. If we look at the UN and our current banking system, there is now a higher power and it isn't our governments. I don't know why people haven't figured this out yet. We are becoming more globalized by the second. We'll see if the coming powers know what they are doing.

Subsistence farmers pay no mind.

Anyway, I've only lived in the US and here in London but I've noticed a ton of difference in systems of government.  It's just that the solutions to common problems tend to be similar at the macro level, but even among states in the US there is a wide difference in laws from who you can marry to what medicine you can use to how much tax you pay.  There was another poster here in the past who talked extensively about how the UN banking system controls the world, he had much less life experience than you but I think both you and he have missed how much variety there can be in how people live even aside from financial matters.

Ragnar I feel like I've read all these exact posts somewhere before but I just can't put my finger on it...

Why is occupy Wall street movement not immediately embracing bitcoin?


Because they behave like monkeys (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/monkey-anonymous/).

Probably because Bitcoin is a pretty complicated concept to get ones head around- not that the Occupy people aren't smart- but I don't think it's really up their alley.

Because they don't want Liberty and true Freedom at all. They are just a gaggle of collectivists looking for a red nickel, and only willing to pay a red cent. They whine and complain about the mega-banks meanwhile, most of them voted for mr. goldman (OBAMA) sachs (at least here in the US). They don't want to lift a finger they want the nanny state to wipe their behinds and dress them. Then they have the audacity to ask the upper middle class to give up what little remains of their bourgeoisie lifestyle. Whilst the ultra-rich benefit from the welfare schemes they demand.

Bitcoin doesn't fit Occupy.

Occupy doesn't fit Bitcoin.

All Occupy is likely to embrace is EBT cards that look like Visa cards and free services on their children's debt dime.

Pardon my rant.

Wait, There's still an 'occupy movement'  ???

I thought that was dead & debunked.

And we should get rid of pesky problems...

Damn, you hit the nail on the head, this is exactly what's happening.

because bitcoins aren't accepted at Starbucks or Whole Foods and they can't use them on their iphone as an app.  Also, hippies don't have any money.

Fear is the only real currency. Money is a reminder that there are weapons pointed at you.

Man, you really mean it. To improve your situation, you should consider getting rid of yourself, since then you no longer suck ;)

Occcu is a joke, but they're still working on Freicoin. I'll be happy when Freicoin starts trading for Bitcoin, if nothing else so the following conversation can take place:

Me: "Bitcoin is everything you want but it deflates and is decentralized."
Occupant: "Pure deflation = no deal! We want some board to vote on how to spend our money."
Me: "Ok, then use Freicoin."
(Months pass...)
Occupant: "Now I understand the technicalities of cryptocurrency, and have diversified into at least some Bitcoin."

IMHO it will be much easier to cooperate than to be combative. What matters is that we give people free choices, and if we're right they'll come around gradually.

Occupy is not a movement based of two reasons.   Once these are settled, then you may have a movement.   


1.  Leadership (no leadership, no direction, no way to gather real influence)

2.  No single message with simple goals


I know people will debate this our outright disagree.   This time is not different.  People need to see progress and you can't have 600 different messages.

Is this thread truly trying to assert that Occupy Movement people will not embrace basically as many whole bitcoin as you are willing to hand over to them free for them to use?

I had thought that something as simple as giving them a few million to do with as they choose would have been welcomed by them.

But maybe instead you have been taking much the same tack as the bankers they are protesting: "having a medium of exchange is a privilege not a right, if you want to conduct split-barter transactions you must buy from us a medium in which to conduct the splitting of your barter"...

-MarkM-

Occupy protestors are really a bunch of spineless idiots who don't balls to invent and use a new currency like Bitcoin.

Hey look!  I found a picture of every occupy douche-tester ever.
http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p227/wizzerd911/7gr7.jpg

Not at all - I'm sure anyone would take almost anything given for free.

What we're asserting is that "the Occupy Movement" (your caps not mine) isn't a movement, isn't in any way constructive and has no hope of achieving anything other than what they've already done (which is simply to provide comic relief, humiliate themselves and annoy anyone who isn't a moron.

Based on this thread, my guess would be that the Occupy movement isn't interested in Bitcoin because bitcoiners seem to be more interested in bashing the Occupy movement rather than highlighting Bitcoin's features that most likely would appell to them.

Off the top of my head, I would focus on these two features:
- Removing the power of the big banks/financial industry.
- WikiLeaks (overcoming funding restrictions for WikiLeaks and organizations that are banned from the payment industry. If you're feeling especially cheerful, mention how outlawed socialist revolutionary movements all over the world could potentially benefit from this.  :D

I'm certain that there could be more than these to.

Generally, I would say that if all of BItcoin's features would only appeal to libertarians, and nobody else, I'm certain Bitcoin is doomed to forever stay the marginal phenomenon it is today.

Freicoin has to be among the worst concepts in a currency ever conceived. Why? Because it does the exact opposite of what it tries to do. If I were to create a currency to benefit the wealthiest 0.001% of the population at the expense of the poor then demurrage is the way to go. To understand this one simply needs to consider that the typical billionaire may actually have less physical cash than the typical occupy protester. Billionaires can easily avoid the cost of demurrage or inflation for that matter by "putting their money to work" but the poor cannot because of the fees involved with "putting their money to work" relative to the small amounts they have.

As a pretty left-wing socialist type as well as a Bitcoin enthusiast, I would have to say that it's not the 'features' of Bitcoin that I consider 'libertarian', but more that the solution is most actively embraced by that group.  As I understand things, the philosophy is generally that it is OK to leverage any power that one can muster for personal benefit because the 'free market' will sort things out.  Eventually.  My observation of the economy which has grown up around Bitcoin does very little to disabuse me of my understanding of the philosophy, and needless to say I consider the philosophy to be objectionable and generally a fail.  Thus, to the extent that Bitcoin is considered 'libertarian', it certainly has some negative connotations to me and probably others of my general orientation.

Framed differently, I have about equal interest in having 'Joe Sixpack' be raped by 'banks/financial industry' as by any other group or exploitative individuals.  As long as Bitcoin facilitates this (in the real world vs. in some theoretical landscape) it is not especially much of a step forward.  But it does have potential at least if developments proceed in healthy directions.

That's not exactly what Freicoin intends to do. Their goal is for Bitcoin to remain the long-term store of value, while Freicoin becomes the high-velocity everyday currency. Even poor people could exchange effortlessly back and forth because they're both cryptocurrencies.

"Why would I ever use Freicoin, then?" everyone asks. The theory is that loans would be easier to get in Freicoin because of its interest rate. I'm personally not 100% convinced that these loans are desirable, so the Freicoin forum would probably be more inclined than I to debate its economics. I say we just do an experiment.

So if one believes that demurrage is a good idea, they can put their money where their mouth is. Freicoin will either confirm or disprove the merits of demurrage, and IMHO that's better than arguing until we're blue in the face.

Wow, this is an ultra necro-thread.

Neither Apple nor Starbucks accept Bitcoin as of yet.

(Edit: Sorry if that's already been done. I didn't realize this was a 13 page necro-thread)

(Edit2: My salute to Desolator)

No poor people cannot effectively change small amounts between crypto currencies because even with crypto currencies minimum fees and limits can cripple them. I actually ran into the following situation yesterday. I received 10 NMC from a mining pool and decided to sell them on BTC-E for BTC to produce a grand total of 0.042 BTC. When it came to withdraw the BTC I find that there is a minimum of 0.1 BTC for a withdrawal amount and a fee of 0.01 BTC. This is not intended as a criticism of BTC-E in any way as there are many valid reasons an exchange to do this but rather to illustrate how even a very small minimum and fee can hurt the very poor. To put this into perspective the daily GDP per capita in Somalia or Burundi works out to 0.0457 BTC (based on an annual 200USD per capita GDP and a BTC/USD rate of 12). This means that a significant proportion of the population in Somalia or Burundi earn way less.


The issue here is one of perception (image) vs reality (substance). The perception is that a demurrage currency (Freicoin) favors the poor over the rich while a deflationary currency (Bitcoin) favors the rich over the poor. After all the rich have more money than the poor. The reality is the exact opposite. Bitcoin actually favors the poor while Freicoin favors the rich. Unfortunately we live in an age where image more often than not trumps substance so it is not surprising at all that the Occupy Movement would come up with Freicoin and be skeptical towards Bitcoin.

What is your benchmark? You are talking about $1. That is not a lot of money anywhere and is not crippling anyone - a device capable of running Bitcoin is still in the order of $50.

Right. So only well-to-do merchants can afford such a device, and folk limited to brainwallets and earning 0.0457 BTC a day might well find a cheaper blockchain based currency, with its presumably lower fees, more suitable than bitcoin for their needs.

-MarkM-

http://sp1.aspweb.com.tw//pictureexplorer/Website/1085/PictureFiles/2_25.JPG

$4, runs java. You'd maybe need a public/shared terminal and there may be security implications but there are options out there.

The fees and limits I mentioned arise only because of suggestion of using Bitcoin in conjunction with another crypto-currency such as Freicoin requiring the trading between crypto-currencies. If one sticks to only Bitcoin then the poorest of the poor can use it in an extremely cost effective manner.

As for devices to run bitcoind for free or very close to free there are all sorts of options including the many perfectly good computers that are discarded or "recycled" every day because of problems with Microsoft Windows. Ditch Windows, install GNU/Linux and give it a way to a needy person. This has the added benefit of addressing the growing environmental problem of e-waste.

The answer is simple: they have their own coin.  They don't believe in store of value or permanent reward for work.   They have their own demurage currency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency)) called
Freicoin: Bitcoin with demurrage (http://www.freicoin.org/). Basically, money not spent decreases in value to encourage spending and decrease people saving money and getting rich.

ADDENDUM: didn't realize this thread started october 12, last year!

And nobody will actually use it.

You mean something like Coinapult? http://coinapult.com/sms-wallet

I'm thinking it could have a QR code. Or maybe be totally custom. Of course, QR code would imply preloaded with a key.

I think he means Brew?

I am on the same page. Mobile payments (SMS) are already big in countries like India. BTC could fly if smartphones and mobile Internet massively penetrate developing countries.

Because they are broke. People that are employed do not have time to protest.  :P

That's possibly the best explanation.  Which gives me an idea for a poll.

The issue here is one of perception (image) vs reality (substance). The perception is that a demurrage currency (Freicoin) favors the poor over the rich while a deflationary currency (Bitcoin) favors the rich over the poor. After all the rich have more money than the poor. The reality is the exact opposite. Bitcoin actually favors the poor while Freicoin favors the rich. Unfortunately we live in an age where image more often than not trumps substance so it is not surprising at all that the Occupy Movement would come up with Freicoin and be skeptical towards Bitcoin.

+1

To be demonstrated.

Has anyone mentioned that occupiers tend to be statists (or at least try to influence government) and bitcoiners tend to be libertarians (or at least distrustful of government)?

Occupy has all kinds of people, from statist leftists who believe only more regulation can help, to left-anarchists and libertarian socialists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism) who want no state, to market libertarians and Ron Paul folks.

Also Freicoin has not much to do with that movement. In Germany, Silvio Gesell and his idea of demurrage money is actually considered rather reactionary and right-wing.