Your post makes zero sense. The dollar is a means of exchange, it is not an asset.

People don't have many dollars and people don't hold dollars as an investment. Dollars is what things are priced in and they are a means of exchange. Graphing the value of a dollar against an asset or comparing it to an asset over time doesn't even make sense.

Examples:

I work 40 hours a week. Is that dollars? No, I get paid in dollars. The number of dollars I get paid over time increases or decreases depending on the value of what I can produce (supply, demand, etc.)

I own a house. Is that dollars? No, that is priced in dollars but it is not dollars. The price in dollars increases or decreases over time depending on supply, demand, etc.

I own stocks, bonds, clothes, computers, furniture. Are those dollars? No, those are priced in dollars. The value fluctuates over time.

How many actual dollars do I own? I own what is in my wallet. How does that compare to my net worth? It is basically nothing.

I have money deposited in a bank account. Is that dollars? Not really. Dollars don't pay an interest rate (granted, the bank doesn't pay much these days). And the dollars aren't even in the bank, they are loaned out to someone else. That is the way banks operate.

Many bitcoin people fail to understand that the dollar is not an asset. Dollars are designed to go down in value over time a bit (inflation) because otherwise people would simply hoard them and economic activity would be much lower than it would be otherwise. Look what happened in the 2008/2009 timeframe when we had deflation. The price of everything went down. People lost their jobs, etc. That is what happens in a deflationary scenario.

But the main point is this, the dollar is not a n investment. It is what things are priced in. People don't hold dollars as an investment. They use them to exchange one asset for another (or service, etc.)

I've read some long discussions about the pros and cons of miner's publishing zero transaction blocks (as 'some' are doing now).

The TL;DR is that:

Let's say the blocksize was 10MB and it took 10 minutes to solve a block. Miners would work on solving it but a large zero-miner would quickly solve a zero sized block. They would them publish it to their "large miner friends" who would start solving a next block.

Whoever solved the 10MB block would likely get their block orphaned if the empty block + next block was published immediately after the block was solved/broadcast. And whoever was working on the longer chain would be already working on the next empty block + next block.

In a way, publishing empty blocks seems to create an artificial cap on blocksize, does it not? As the blocksize gets larger and it takes longer to solve blocks, publishing empty transactions can cause more and more transactions to be orphaned.

Additionally, some (many?) people support miners publishing empty blocks. There seems some back and forth whether this should be allowed at all. As it is part of the protocol, disallowing it would seem about impossible at this point in time.

Doesn't this basically put a blocksize limit in the hands of the large miners? And isn't this just a way for the largest miners to gain an advantage over the others? Or is there some reason this is a "good thing"?

Correct. And if you boil it down, what he is really saying is that the miners should have the power to determine what changes to make to the protocol and when to make them. He talks about "the users", but the users have no control over anything.

As, according to the game, there is only one correct solution, I will assume you mean that my analogies are the only correct solutions to the questions posed. 

That's akin to saying the US government and Fed can't force the dollar on the citizens. It is true, US citizens can trade in whatever they want. However, that doesn't mitigate the fact that the dollar is centrally controlled by the US government and Fed.

Similarly, bitcoin is controlled by a small group of Chinese miners and core devs, as the recent meeting where a complete fork of the blockchain was determined clearly shows. A small group of people centrally control the entire thing.

The fact that bitcoin is centrally controlled is actually a good thing for bitcoin. There exists a group that can determine what changes to make going forward. If a hard limit on the number of bitcoins isn't workable because it doesn't make enough for the miners, the cap could be lifted. If mining inflation is too low, it could be increased, etc. Any changes to the spec that needs to be made can be made, regardless of user consensus.

The fact that the vast majority of mining power is comprised of Chinese companies and the fact that China's government is completely corrupt is not a good thing. Tomorrow, each of those Chinese bitcoin miners could disappear and a state controlled operator could silently appear in their place. It happens all the time.

Paper dollars do exist. Do you know what they are called? They are M0.

Do you know what M1, M2, M3 and all the rest are?

Now, how much M0 is there in the US? There is about $1.39 trillion dollars.

That's up from 2008:

http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/the-value-of-united-states-currency-in-circulation/

That is all the US paper dollars and coins in the world. That's it.

Now, let's talk about assets. How much is all the real estate in the US worth? $14 trillion. How about all the stock? $22 trillion. How about the value of all the bonds? $37 trillion.

US Real estate + US stock + US bonds = 73 trillion

And that's just some of the assets owned by people in the US. The US GDP alone is 18 trillion.

Nobody holds dollars. Now, if you are saying some drug dealers has $20,000 in $100 bills somewhere for some period of time, sure. But in terms of economics and wealth, that is as meaningful as the $140 or so I have in my wallet right now.

Whatever you were reading was written by someone who knows absolutely nothing about money and economics.

Reality check:

1. Half of Iran's assets are still frozen by the US and other countries, about $50 billion dollars. Of course they don't want to trade in dollars, Iran's biggest trading partner is Europe. Russia the largest oil trading partner with China. Do you know who the #1 producer of oil in the world is? The United States.

2. SWIFT is an international transfer system that is not run by the US and which doesn't have much to do with the dollar. It is under the law of Belgium, if I remember correctly.

3. Zimbabwe did not dump the US currency at all. China forgave $10s of million in debt if they would also use the Yuan as a currency. Zimbabwe uses the South African rand and dollar as currencies and will continue to along with the yuan.

4. There is zero chance the US dollar will be worth "toilet paper" any time in the future. The US dollar has appreciated against almost all major currencies in the last 5 years including the Euro (1.5 -> 1.1), Japanese Yen (1.2 -> .87), Canadian dollar (1 -> .72), Swiss Franc (1.3 -> 1.01). Against the Yuan it's basically been flat in the last 5 years because the Yuan went up and down. It peaked around .165 dollar/cny and is now .15.

In the last 5 years, the Russian ruble has collapsed against the dollar. From .034 dollar/rub to .01 dollar/rub

No, corrupt people do not hold dollars. A bank deposit is not a dollar, it is a loan to a bank. A deposit of dollars in a bank doesn't just sit there. The dollars are lent out by the bank as debt. Nobody "holds dollars". I have the dollars in my wallet, that's it. My holdings are in stocks, bonds, real estate and a variety of other assets. None of those are dollars. The same goes for "corruptioninists", whatever you mean by that.

If that guy works for Xapo, why the hell can't he look at the list of transactions in your Xapo account? He's asking you to download stuff from your Xapo account and send it to him? Are you sure you are talking with someone who actually works for Xapo?

A server that can't handle more than 1024 simultaneous connections? LOL I've worked on servers that handle millions of simultaneous TCP connections. WhatsApp was handling 2 million per box back in 2012.

This one is handling 12 million albeit with 32GB of system memory:

https://mrotaru.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/scaling-to-12-million-concurrent-connections-how-migratorydata-did-it/

Given the bitcoin system as a whole can't handle more than, what is it, 10 transactions a second or so now? Maybe I'm not that surprised

This thread is so full of unbelievably wrong information that I wonder if most of the people in this thread have ever actually used a credit card. Are most people posting in this thread either 13 years old or broke?

This information relates to the United States. As a customer, you don't pay a fee to use a credit card. In fact, many times, you get cash back. For many (most) cards, you pay no fees at all as long as you pay the balance off when it is due. And you don't need the money in your account to buy something, you pay what is due a month or two later.

The merchant pays fees, yes. But the larger the merchant, the lower the fees they pay.

Let's look at a real example. Chase's Freedom credit card. I have one:

https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/chase-freedom.aspx

When you sign up, you get a free $150 to spend (after spending $500). Annual fee is $0.

If you pay your balance off when it is due, you charges are $0. The annual rate shown is if you float a balance, that is.. if you don't pay off what is due and you leave your account owing them money.

You get 1% cash back on all purchases and 5% cash back on certain purchases.

If your card gets stolen, according to US Federal law, the FCBA, the maximum you can lose if your card is lost or stolen and then used is $50.

http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0213-lost-or-stolen-credit-atm-and-debit-cards

US credit cards now have a chip so credit card skimmers no longer work if you use a terminal that has a chip reader. Unlike the EU, the US is chip + sig and not chip + pin. My chase card has a chip.

People in this thread are saying "bitcoin is cheaper because there are no fees". How many people get paid in bitcoin? People get paid in their local currency. Then they have to convert that to bitcoin. There's a fee and a risk because to do an exchange you usually use an online exchange and many of them have disappeared, along with the bitcoins and cash, on a regular basis.

Then you send the bitcoins to someone paying the transaction fee. Unlike a credit card, if they keep your bitcoins and send you nothing you are SOL (seriously out of luck). Unlike a credit card, if your bitcoins are stolen, you are SOL. On the other end, they likely need to convert them to local currency to buy something. There's yet another exchange involved.

Now, if I want to give someone $20, I can hand them a $20 bill. There is no transaction fee at all. The transaction is immediate.

If I want to give someone $20 with a check, I can write them a check. No transaction fee. Online, I can send an echeck (ACH).

I can send an electric bank wire in the US to anyone for no fee because my account balance is high enough. I can send $10MM with no fee at all. And there's a record of it so if they say they didn't get it, I can prove they did.

The misinformation is just unbelievable.

When you pay someone in bitcoin for a service priced in Euros, they must declare the Euro-equivalent bitcoin as income on their taxes. Not doing so is tax evasion.

Additionally, if you buy bitcoins for 50 Euro and they go up in value to 60 Euro and you purchase 60 Euro worth of something, you need to pay tax yourself on the 10 Euro difference as a gain.

The only "bitcoin is not taxed" ruling applies applies to exemptions from VAT (tax) in the EU.

You obviously don't know much about Donald Trump.

https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/

and

https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate.php?id=N00023864

His net worth is well over $4 billion. If he spent $200 million on his campaign, which he doesn't need to do, it would cost him 5% of his net worth. A years worth of interest, basically.

The cost for me to transfer a $20 bill to someone to buy a cup of coffee is zero. The transaction time is 0ms. There are zero confirmations needed.

The cost for me to transfer $20 to someone in the form of a check is zero. The transaction time is 0ms. The money does not show up immediately, however, and there is counterparty risk if I don't have the money in my account.

The to transfer $20 to someone in the form of a credit card payment is $0 to the buyer. In fact, the buyer can get cash back on their purchases. Credit card costs are incurred by the seller. Small businesses bitch about their merchant fee they pay. Larger merchants pay almost no merchant fee. The fees are negotiated and the customer generally doesn't see them. The advantage to the merchant is that the customer doesn't need to have the money to buy their goods or services because with a credit card, the money is borrowed money. A person can buy a $500 pair of shoes when they have $50 in their bank account and pay back over time. That means the merchant will have more buyers for their products than otherwise. The transaction time is a second or two however, it takes time to clear to the merchants account.

The cost of ACH transfer (eCheck) from bank accounts is generally zero.

The cost for me to transfer $1MM to someone via wire transfer is zero for me. I get free wire transfers because I maintain a high balance. For normal accounts, the cost is $30 or so. Wire transfers are generally irreversible but there is a legal trail so the receiving party can't say "we didn't get your money". They are not immediate, they take a day or so. But they are generally only used for large transaction amounts.

Nobody holds US dollars. People hold:

- land
- houses
- public stock
- bonds
- private equity investments (private stock)
- bank deposits (these are not dollars, they are loans to the bank)
- CDs
- beenie babies

And, in fact, many people are short the US dollar. They bought a house with a mortgage. They spent money they didn't have to buy a house, they borrowed it from a bank.

And by doing so, they went short the dollar. If you have a $500,000 mortgage and a $1MM house, you are short the dollar to the tune of $500,000. You are hoping the value of the dollar goes down over time again your house value. It is a leveraged bet on real estate.

In that situation, they not only have no dollars, they are short (negative) dollars.

Nobody holds dollars. Dollars are not an investment. Dollars are a means of exchange. They are what things are priced in. Thinking about the value of something vs. the value of the dollar doesn't even make sense. A dollar is worth a dollar, year after year. It is not an investment.

Let's say you have two people.

One has no debt and earns $100,000 a year.

A second doesn't work but has $10MM in debt. They used that money to buy commercial properties that bring in $800,000 a year in income (8% cap rate). They pay a debt rate of 3.5% so after debt payments, they net $450,000 (before tax).

Debt is not inherently a bad thing.

There are two small groups that control bitcoin 100%, the miners and the developers. Either can implement whatever changes they want.

Other may argue the "community" could reject these changes but the community really has no power other than voicing their complaints to those two groups.

You would never know about the collusion, they could simply pre-mine 80% of the time. This only has relevance to the Core discussion because the miners controlling the hash power are likely the most powerful cohesive group in the bitcoin ecosystem since the development group appears fractured. Outside of general consensus, they will likely be the group that really decides which fork in the road everyone will travel.

Want to try and explain how you don't really have many bitcoins while a 240 pound crank addict has a .45 in your face saying "transfer all your bitcoins to me right now?" Doesn't happen?

http://nypost.com/2015/06/05/nyc-man-robbed-at-gunpoint-for-his-bitcoins/