That's your right.  I encourage you to consider everyone a potential scammer.  I do...and I very rarely get scammed unexpectedly.


You go right ahead and rely on any government to protect you and your Bitcoin habit.  Lemme know how that works out for ya.

My logic is fine...MyBitcoin.com patrons willingly sent their BTC to an address they did not control.  I'd question your logic, but you've not tried to produce any that I can see.

Your bank actually probably is walking off with your money, but in such a way that you do not recognize it.  When they do in a more noticable way (a-la MF Global) you have full recourse to whatever services are offered by the justice system in your jurisdiction.

I am attracted to Bitcoin because it does not rely on such organizations as the SEC and justice department for protection my assets.  The main thing I need to trust is verifyable source code, and that a decent majority of the user base choosing the right version.  I feel that I have much better visibility into and control over this than I do with more traditional monetary solutions.  In short, Bitcoin and various developers in the open source community have already given me (and you) much more reliable tools to protect ourselves than has our government...one just has to use them (or, again, stay out of the kitchen.)

I distinctly do NOT want state sponsered enforcement to be involved with Bitcoin, and if anything pisses me off it is that so many users were so nieve that they got themselves ripped off by MyBitcoin and put the system in danger of such things.

As far as I'm concerned, MyBitcoin never had any stolen BTC.  The operator had BTC that a bunch of people gave him thinking that he would give them back.  Poor judgement and/or laziness and/or lack of understanding of Bitcoin/money/human nature.

'jav' has got some coins I gave him using  his instawallet.org service.  If he walks off with them, sad day for me, but I'm certainly not going to go crying to the police or bitcointalk or anyone else.  Nor am I going to hunt him down.  I've put a significant amount of thought into how to protect various of my assets, and those who cannot stand the heat should stay out of the Bitcoin kitchen until the system develops more in my opinion.

Unfortunately we are in a phase now where it is becoming less practical for people to protect themselves in the 'real' way (by running a bitcoin client) due to bloat, but as far as I am aware there are not any on-line wallet services which allow the customer to control their private keys.

I did.  Then I turned around and quadrupled some throw-away money, gave the gains to charity, and have not used Bitcoinica since.

In my opinion, Bitcoinica is pretty equivalent to a slightly complicated and undocumented coin-toss (unless one is actually hedging a more real-world endeavor.)  Happily I have the means to finance my own gambling and thus the luxury to avoid paying Zhou Tong for the privilege of playing in Bitcoin markets.

Allow me to suggest, if it has not been considered already, that a variety of possible displays planned in advance and queued up.

It would not surprise me to see some of the possible services DDOS'd for lulz (if nothing else) during the show.  If not simply fail for shit-house-luck reasons.

I have very little doubt that processing and network bandwidth capabilities will advance well in excess of the needs of Bitcoin.  Probably even if Bitcoin became the dominant currency solution of the world.

The problem is that these technologies will be available through and controlled by a very small number of powerful entities.  It will be decades before such technology becomes available at a consumer level, and will likely be restricted by law if not by normal economic factors.

When Bitcoin is an operational system only at the pleasure of Amazon, Google, AT&T, and a handful of other technology providers, my interest in the solution will long since have evaporated and my stash will have been sold off for a more promising store of value.

I Bitcoin having an affinity for 3.14159 once on Mt. Gox for some reason.

I remember it because in an attempt to lose the money I had at Bitcoinica and at around 2.30, went long at 3.14159 with pretty high leverage.   Or was about to, but changed it to 3.139 after thinking about it for a second.  In the end, going long on Bitcoinica does not seem to require picking any sort of a price target, and whatever one picks seems to have no noticeable effect.

I'm not much for being in club-ee things, but I'm certainly on-board philosophically.

A popular theme for Bitcoin scaling is that it could become your grandma's e-currency and be 'as big a Visa' with some engineering.  My problems with this are 1) it's setting it the sights to low, and 2) the system would start to resemble Visa in some important ways that I would very much like to be away from...hence my interest in Bitcoin in the first place.

Happy Birthday.

I'll critique your paper and contrast it with my own thoughts on similar matters.  While from a mile high view some of the solutions I envision have some similarities, I have some rather diametrically opposite views on a lot things.  I may someday produce a contrasting whitepaper, but don't hold your breath.  Also, forgive me in advance for any lack of tact, and everything I say should be prefaced by 'in my opinion'.

1)  I do think that it is almost unconscionably presumptuous to title the work 'The Second Bitcoin Whitepaper' given the nature of the content.

2)  I find one of the biggest threats to Bitcoin's long-term viability is that the blockchain will be bloated with spam (or more accurately just small transactions.)  Your solution perpetuates that issue from what I can tell.

3)  I believe that the most viable design philosophy is one where it is assumed that all parties are interested only in maximizing their own gain and will do so at the expense of all other considerations.  Good engineering practice would be

  3a)  to ensure that there exists no chinks which can be exploited by any party which create more harm to the system than the attacker suffers himself.
  3b)  to harness this force and leverage it to benefit the system.

4)  A currency system which is to live along side a state sponsored complement should anticipate state sponsored attack.  Probably the best strategy would be to outwardly ignore any state level legal services while considering internally how to mitigate potential avenues of attack.  The last thing it should do would be to rely on any form of legal protection from any state.

5)  Any form of centralized control should be avoided.  Minor centralized development decisions are probably unavoidable, but there is a great deal of experience to turn to in the long history of open source endeavors for resolving disputes

3,4,5 R)  Your 'Trust Entity' structure, although vaguely defined, seems to violate all of these concepts (except arguably #4 as I re-read things.)  Similarly, your Appendix B on Moral Issues.

6)  Between the complexities of initial distribution, ongoing reward, and hopefulness of fairly astronomical wealth generation, things 'feel' a bit scammy.  Whether the intent is there or not, I would expect that things would devolve to that characterization for a variety of reasons...or at least become fairly dysfunctional when more than a handful of people are involved.

7)  Most of the child currency features and protections you mention do not seem to require a 'MasterCoin' construct (though the 'distributed exchange' probably would and is a nice feature.)

  I felt a visceral abhorrence at the thought of destroying Bitcoin.  I suspect that it would take a lot to make that fly, and getting over the initial adoption issues necessary to make it fly seems unlikely.

8.5)  Trying to range-bind Bitcoin and (something like) MasterCoin by manipulating the supply of Bitcoin seems like a moonshot given that nobody has a crystal ball, and would likely produce to few degrees of freedom anyway.

No reward (#1) is without risk (#you).  I would want the tools to protect myself (#3 & #2) before I would risk my assets.  I'm not planning to be MF-Global'd/MyBitcoin'd with Bitcoin or any other asset I hold.

And I'm very unlikely to loan my BTC to a bank/exchange/whatever for a paltry sub-inflation % as I am forced to with the USD I hold (and mostly dump as quickly as I get them.)

I'm a 'believer' in both.  Multiple block-chains deriving much of their value and lending much of their support to 'the chosen one' (bitcoin of course.)

In this way the 'chosen one' remains simple, robust, and not in need of a OC-48 network connectivity to run while the myriad of offspring compete, evolve, and spread the (possibly enormous) load of supporting as much economic activity as needed.

Not many disciples...but not much code either so I've got nothing to complain about

There is a good reason why fractional reserve banking has been ubiquitous for eons.  It has the potential to be very sound given good management, and provides the flexibility to dampen features inherent in an economy.

The key is 'good management'.  As long as there is money to be made by neglecting 'good management', it is unlikely to occur on an ongoing basis.

I believe that management of a monetary system should be devoid of a profit motive and that all of the benefits of having one and using it should accrue to the citizens who use it.  In short, a monetary system should be a public utility.

What we in the USA have with private ownership of the monetary system with state enforced 'tender' laws is the worst of both worlds, and is fascism by my definition.  The construct always had a built in life expectancy due to it's reliance on inflation (which the owners can scrape), and I suspect that we are likely near the it's end-of-life.  The replacement will be as much like what we have now as possible, or even better from the standpoint of those who have been milking the current system.

The success of Bitcoin is important to me in large part because this could provide tangible evidence of the possibility for alternative monetary solutions when they are needed.  If Bitcoin (or something like it) could be chosen against the will of 'the 1%' (for lack of a better description) that would be a great thing, and this is why it is some important to me that the network itself retains it's ability to operate against the types of concerted attacks which seem improbably to most people.

---

Oh ya, I would happily patronize a 'fractional reserve Bitcoin bank' if there were a reason to do so.  My criteria would be that 1) I get a fair cut of the proceeds, 2) I hold the power to get out imediately and autonomously if I choose, and 3) that I can verify their books to my satisfaction.

I had you pegged as a goon for some reason.  Maybe just 'cuz someone labeled you as such at some point.  But that never mattered much to me.

The most important thing to me is that a system remains firmly within the grasp of the all classes of user-base and can be operated successfully in the face of a dedicated attack by parties who control global network infrastructure.

A solution which I would be OK with would be to pay whatever fee is necessary to keep the block-chain spam-free enough to achieve the objective that I would like to see.

A better solution which I have elaborated on earlier is to simply break the problem into multiple block-chains thus distributing the load and providing better tuned currency solutions in the process (while paying particular attention to protect the 'satoshi block-chain'.)


I'll dig it up this weekend.  I've at least read some of his stuff, possibly a slide-show from the presentations you mention, but don't know that I've watched such a thing.

But from your description and my other observations within the community, it strikes me that there is some room for more creative thinking.  I get the strong sense that exceptional computer resources considered a given for problem solving (very common in this space), and also that what I consider a 'problem' is not considered as such by very many people.

I run a full client, but also use Instawallet.org for times when it makes sense and keep some spending money there.

A Bitcoin banking service which allows me alone to control my private keys is a giant step ahead of traditional banks as we know them, but...

The real magic of Bitcoin that attracted me in the first place is that the entire economy can be operated independently and autonomously 'normal' people with very little organisation.  When operation of the network requires specialized connectivity available mainly within datecenters or large private organizations, this will spell to me a very significant weakness against attack in the system and thus a much less interesting solution.

Now that I think of it, I bet I would have been on the goon side also at that age.

In fact, even at my age were I to lack one of two of my properties, I likely would ignore or even be hostile to Bitcoin.

  1) ability to grasp the technical concepts underlying the Bitcoin system.

  2) disdain for the features of our modern monetary systems and what they do to a majority of people.

So Bitcoin came at a very opportune time for me (or at least that will end up being the case if Bitcoin attains it's potential.)

---

For better or worse, I really never lost the enjoyment I get out of making fun of ANYTHING, and very very little is sacred to me.  Certainly Bitcoin is not.

Hey, cool whoever split and re-named this thread.  I didn't know it could be done.

I was just looking again at SA, and it looks like they closed down the last Bitcoin thread which is why it ceased on 12/12.  Maybe this thread will create some more interest and they'll come back.

If BTC values continue to go up I would be surprise if any of them are going to come back with egg all over their faces.  Hopefully Bitcoin will live up to it's potential one day some of the goons will be kicking themselves over not doing a little bit of independent thought and and missing the boat.

As far as they being whacked out homicidal freaks, I really did not get that impression.  Similar to this board, a percentage of them seemed pretty sharp and/or decent, and the remainder seemed to be your run-of-the-mill floatsam and jetsam of humanity without much to say.

The last SA post I could find having anything to do with Bitcoin was from 12/12/2011.  I looked around yesterday.  I really miss the bastards, and they did the Bitcoin community a great service by exposing various things that we were to closed-minded to look at IMHO.

I used to read the Bitcoin threads when they were open.  Sometimes there were some real gems, but near the end it got to where there were only on per several pages.

Also, the SA forum was an amazingly good study in groupthink.  They would basically ban anyone who said anything potentially positive about Bitcoin.

I really miss FAtlas who was head and shoulders more funny than any of the other goons.  Near the end of his interest on the SA threads he was lamenting the fact that he was to lazy or stupid to figure out Bitcoinica so he could short Bitcoin to the end.  Lucky for him that his deficiencies kept him safe.

If a merchant cannot figure out how to protect themselves against the BTC volatility at this point, there is little hope of them having the skills to run anything much more complicated than a hot-dog stand.  They would probably be better off flipping burgers rather than losing their money trying to run a business anyway IMHO.

I'm suspecting that I'll be operating a few in one cloud or another or some corner of a datacenter.  It would be most distasteful to me if/when it comes to this however.  I very much like the fact that almost anyone can run the full block-chain almost anywhere, and Bitcoin will be a much less compelling proposition to me when this is no longer the case.


I don't really see the necessity for banks (though I've got nothing against them as an option and recognize some of the nicities in terms of efficiency and speed.)

With a myriad of different kinds of crypto-currencies distributed the load of a fraction of a global economy, it seems to me that people could opt to use crypto-currencies independently of banks as an option.  I might choose to run (and possibly mine) PeepCoin and NewNameCoin because they cover my needs, but neglect SilkCoin because drugs are not an interest of mine these days (and if I get an urge to toke out again after 20 years, it's easy to trade some PeepCoin for some SilkCoin on an exchange.)  I might also be forced to mine Bitcoin because that is one of the requirements of mining (or just using) PeepCoin.

Or I may choose to avoid the hassles and just use a bank.