I was on that program, I was the taxi driver.  Ha! Nicely done, sir! |
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Just allow subscription to state services to be voluntary. The rest will sort itself out as/when people are ready.
You don't need to list endless "what about the X, what about the Y" etc. Solutions will be found to such problems. You just need to ask yourself whether it is acceptable to use force to make people do stuff or not.
It's interesting that these debates are becoming more frequent. A few years ago, voluntarists/anarchists were very few in numbers. Now they are all over the place. That's what I call progress.
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Hey Birdy buddy, you sound dumb.
You want a tax, which literally means "let's pool our money together and decide together what to do with it". But you're dumb, about as dumb as a monkey. I don't want to pool my money with a monkey and then negotiate with him what to do with it. What if he wants to eat the money? Or throw it away? Or build bombs?
Screw you, you can take my money from my cold dead hands.
P.S. nothing personal, I don't know you I'm just trying to make a point.
P.S.S. Pro-tip: never assume that new technology has to adapt to old folks like you. Usually new technology presents a new world which is different than the old.
I was expecting a lot of resistance to this idea, but I didn't expect that amount of hate. States do exist for a reason, because you are stronger, if you are not alone. Despite all the negative things happening in those we still have states, because there is some benefit to it. I'm not an "old folk" btw. You don't have to be alone without a state. If you want strength in numbers, then freely associate with many others. |
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Voting is just mob rule. It's a majority imposing their will on a minority. As I heard elsewhere, it is the original 51% attack!  Anything desirable can be achieved through voluntary association. If people want it, they will pursue it. If it helps, think of the state as a big cooperative, with a non-voluntary subscription model. Just change the latter to voluntary and let people figure things out for themselves (over time). |
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Now TransferWise have had the rug pulled from under them: Their bank has told them to stop transferring money to Bitcoin exchanges.
CurrencyFair is a suitable replacement for Transferwise for those in the UK (and other countries they support), correct? My father has used them in the past for GBP/Euro transfers and rates them. I've signed up and will see how it goes. I've used localbitcoins a few times too and that has always worked well. The prices tended to be higher and slower to move (down) than the exchanges though. Saying that, the prices are pretty close to MtGox atm. |
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I was trading OTC through my HSBC account until I had received a stolen payment through no fault of my own. They very nearly shut my account and banned me from using my account for buying or selling bitcoin. Plus they said they would be monitoring my account for signs of bitcoin trading and if they found any that they would shut my account down immediately.
OTC? Cash, I assume? |
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Now TransferWise have had the rug pulled from under them: Their bank has told them to stop transferring money to Bitcoin exchanges. http://transferwise.com/blog/2013-04/notice-to-bitcoin-users-april-2013The UK banking system is a joke. They don't like the competition, for sure. Notice to Bitcoin users - April 2013
As you may have noticed, we stopped processing transfers to Bitcoin exchanges this week. We’re very sorry.
In many respects it breaks our heart to have taken this step (we’re a firm that champions financial innovation after all), but our banking providers are not comfortable with Bitcoin and want us to restrict payments to these firms. This is happening everywhere - notably Bitfloor and Bitcoin-24 shut themselves down recently.
The banks – just like everyone else in the sector – are nervous because they don't know what to think of Bitcoin. The regulators and politicians’ silence on the topic leaves us all in the dark.
Financial firms make choices on the basis of clear rules. Without them, things like Bitcoin fall into the hands of those who use it for illegal activities. This leaves businesses like ours that meet their obligation to anti-money laundering and “Know Your Customer” procedures unable to deal with it.
It’s a shame because Bitcoin offers solutions to some of the absurdities of the traditional banking system. For example, a virtual currency like Bitcoin could dramatically speed up and reduce the cost of sending money abroad. It’s ridiculous that it can take four banks (all taking a cut) over a week to send dollars from a UK company to a Chinese producer. Implementing this change alone could save the real economy billions of pounds in card fees and transaction costs every year.
And it’s not just the big guys that would benefit. It could transform the prospects of millions of small businesses. The reduced cost and simplicity of a digital currency could circumvent laborious bank processes and give small merchants quick, fairly-priced access to online and mobile payments.
But to gain any of these benefits, the financial regulators need to take a stand. They have many questions to answer - how should the banks treat Bitcoin? Should it be regarded as cash or something new? Are new and specifically tailored “Know Your Customer” rules necessary? Unless the banks are told what is expected of them, they will happily keep on blocking Bitcoin, and consequently blocking our hope for financial innovation.
by Kristo Kaarman, TransferWise co-founder
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Having an open credit clearing system, rather than one run by governments, is both a useful and an interesting concept.
An ideal monetary system should facilitate both credit clearing and settlement. The former is what gives a currency 'elasticity', while the latter allows people to choose their exposure to it.
If one party wants to exchange goods with another for IOUs, then great. Trust is extremely liquid and allows easy trade. If both parties would rather not rely on trust, then they can both exchange goods instead. Where is the problem?
I'm not sure why there is so much hostility here, tbh. Ripple and Bitcoin are two separate things. You don't have to abandon one, in order to find the other useful.
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... it could tax land (owners or renters)...
This ^ Except that land taxation always taxes owners not renters. except where it doesn't, like in the uk. i wish more people here would learn more about the actual world before coming up with grand political or economic theories (or at least before trying to correct me). There is no land value tax in the UK. Besides, why would a land lord charge less than he otherwise could? I'll answer that for you - he won't. Therefore, tenants are already paying the maximum they can afford. That's why land value taxation hits the landlord instead. Land rent is just privately collected tax. It's exploiting a coercive monopoly on a location. |
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If Bitcoin were to replace fiat currency, government would move from taxing incomes to taxing resources. Think water rates, road tolls, etc. The state system would tick along just fine.
Yes, agreed. However, this would likely hit rent seekers the hardest. As rent seekers exploit violent monopolies in order to extract wealth from others, it would likely be a better situation than we have now. In the UK for example, less than 1% own much of the land and charge rent upon it. As said people influence the state heavily (House of Lords etc) governments won't tax them until they absolutely have to. That's not to say that you need a state in order to identify and respond to coercive monopolies (the state is one too, after all). It's just that they are more likely to tackle them when they have no alternative. Ofc, at the other end of the spectrum, there is nothing stopping the state offering voluntary subscription services. They could then compete with any other service providers and if they do the best job, then good for them. Ultimately, states will go after anything which can't be easily hidden or moved. However, expect their actions to come under close scrutiny when they can't print money and fund folly with other taxes. It's difficult to bury things in the figures when there are only a few sources of income. |
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Deflation will kill bitcoin businesses - why spend your bitcoins today if they are worth more tommorow, or next week, or next month...
Bitcoin simply becomes an asset to speculate in or hedge against inflation instead of being used as a trading currency.
The best thing that can happen to the bitcoin community is a crash followed by a stable price for a long time so people get used to spend their coins instead of just hoard the coins.
One solution to the deflation problem is that if everybody votes for a change in the bitcoin protocol so a 2% inflation can go on for ever even after 21 million coins have been mined.
That's not true. If it were, no one would hold inflationary cash, as they would be spending it today, rather than lose value tomorrow. It would also mean that no one would buy any computers. Just as contracts can account for inflation, they can also account for deflation. The only real difference is psychological - more stuff has to be better than less stuff, right? There is nothing to stop people taking out inflation rate trackers, which can go negative. That is, the repayments get reduced during a deflation. The real value remains positive regardless. |
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The problem is in this statement: Logically, the hash rate only needs to be sufficiently high to process all of the transactions requested.
The hash rate is technically independent of transaction volume. If the hash rate were to drop to 1Mhash/s right now, then the target difficulty would soon follow. Bitcoin is set up to produce a new block every 10 minutes, regardless of hash rate. Thus block space remains constant. Yes, understood. However, this is just asserting that if the hash rate falls, the difficulty will adjust. The problem isn't the difficult level, but the falling hash rate (reducing the barrier against a network attack). Now, given that block space is a finite resource, there will be competition. More competition (more transactions) will drive up fees, which will make mining more profitable, thus increasing the hash rate as more miners join in to get that profit. Conversely, less transactions means less competition, less fees, less mining, reduced hash rate.
Sure, I'm fine with this too. I asserted that 'if the transaction rate becomes stable', then so will the competition for block space. In turn, this implies a stable hash rate (fluctuations considered, ofc). Now, when hardware becomes cheaper, mining becomes more profitable. Thus more miners join in to get that profit. Any guesses what that results in? Bottom line: as long as there is competition for block space, this entire thread is moot. I asserted that 'mining ceases to be profitable' as a boundary condition. I'm not convinced that miners drive the price of Bitcoin; It's the people who value Bitcoin that dictate the price. If it becomes too expensive to mine at the market rate, mining will not be done. Therefore, I'm not convinced that miners will necessarily step up to increase the hash rate. To conclude, I am still unconvinced that this thread is moot. The hash rate needs to increase proportionately to Moore's Law and I'm not certain this will happen automatically (without some relatively minor alternations). I'm happy to be proved wrong though, if you think I'm still missing something. |
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If a single, cheap, machine had enough hashing power to process all the transactions in the world, then the fees would be tiny.
No - block space is independent of hash rate. Competition for block space => increased fees => increased hash rate. Assuming that: - Transaction rate becomes stable. - Mining ceases to be profitable. Why would there be increasing competition for block space (in turn, an increasing hash rate)? Logically, the hash rate only needs to be sufficiently high to process all of the transactions requested. If hardware to provide said hash rate continues to fall, at some point the cost of hardware to do this will fall to a price where it is economical to attack the network. Apologies if I am misunderstanding something technical which is critical to this debate. |
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EDIT: * To add, the reason why a minimum fee would be preferable to a market solution is due to the 'tragedy of the commons'. If same miners start dropping their rates to catch more transactions, then it will price out those with high rates. Setting same sort of minimum fee, for the good of the network, would seem appropriate to combat this. There may be alternatives to this though.
Tragedy of the commons doesn't apply as long as there is sufficient demand for block space (transactions), and some form of limit on block space to facilitate competition. See this ongoing thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=157141.0I don't think that is the problem (although I haven't read that thread yet - will do later). The problem isn't that there would ever be insufficient block space; the problem is that providing sufficient block space may become too easy. That is, the hashing power needed to confirm the transactions may get so cheap that it would be economical to attempt to take over the network. If a single, cheap, machine had enough hashing power to process all the transactions in the world, then the fees would be tiny. Equally, anyone with a couple of servers could take over the network. Ofc, this is an extreme example, but I think it is what the OP is concerned about. I would assert that it is a valid concern too, but one that can be rectified. |
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The problem with a minimum fee, is it puts a floor on the exchange rate.
Do you mean a floor on the price? If not, I'm not sure what you mean. If you have a minimum fee as a percentage, then there should be no hard floor on the price. |
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I've read the initial assertion and it seems that the primary problem is of Moore's Law resulting in hashing power getting cheaper, which could threaten a static/shrinking Bitcoin network.
Surely this has a simple solution - agree a minimum fee* (a percentage, perhaps - TBC) and apply it to the software. This doesn't need to be decided now, as it would only become useful when the total hashing power starts to flat line. Adding a minimum fee wouldn't fork the block chain either.
Why a minimum fee? It would mean that as hardware halved in price, the amount of hashing power could be doubled to soak up the return on the minimum fee. Therefore, hashing power would scale up, at a similar rate to the drop in hardware costs.
Additionally, the fact that you can't charge a fee over 100% is irrelevant. You don't need an ever increasing hash rate [EDIT: relative to Moore's Law], you just need a total hash rate which is large enough to make network attacks uneconomical (which means tracking Moore's Law - see above).
EDIT: * To add, the reason why a minimum fee would be preferable to a market solution is due to the 'tragedy of the commons'. If same miners start dropping their rates to catch more transactions, then it will price out those with high rates. Setting same sort of minimum fee, for the good of the network, would seem appropriate to combat this. There may be alternatives to this though.
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Surely, a client on a machine without a dedicated IP address could do the actual transacting?
From the client, you could then poll the server to see what transactions have been requested, before completing the process. The hot wallet would then be completely detached from the server and could either be supervised (manual confirmation) or unsupervised ('hot').
Ofc, it wouldn't stop someone hacking the process to create spurious transaction requests, but a secure protocol would make that very difficult. However, it would prevent attacks which focus on the stealing of wallets on the server and so forth.
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Those who don't want wallets, apps and so forth can just use bitcoin debit cards and such.
It's as complicated or as simple as people want to make it.
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All great posts, I also love this thread title because it's much more realistic than the typical "million dollar" expectations (which probably won't happen because when it gets that valuable, a better competing currency will be created by the free market).
Never underestimate the power of the exponential! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSYWith 20% growth per month, the price doubles in less than 4 months. If the price continues to grow at the current rate*, $100 Bitcoins will arrive in about a year. * Over the last 8 months, the price has more than doubled twice. |
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