I suspect as much.  It's a big world, and Bitcoin has certain usefulness regardless of the price as long as the exchanges remain viable (which is, to me, a big question mark.)  Bitcoin is great for funding out-of-favor efforts which mainstream financial institutions have cut off (like efforts to change the financial institutions, for instance.)  It also seems to me that it has some usefulness to 'ratchet in' a large trades between non-trusting parties though I'm not aware of that being done in a systematic way.  And, of course, good old fashioned money laundering could be helped by some of Bitcoin's properties.

I expect that these uses will eventually set a floor on the BTC price, and if such use grows (faster than inflation), so to will the floor.  The rapid re-cycle would put that floor pretty low, though.

Although I keep a position in cold storage on the long-shot bet that a disruption of some sort will cause a spike, and some slightly more complex but wholesome longer-shot hopes as well, I've kissed goodbye the actual USD's I've put in as well as the remainder that I have earmarked for BTC purchase when the price falls some more.

I do tend to snap up some BTC on the exchanges when I want to donate right away to some effort.

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.

You guys are both a little bit mixed up by the look of things.  It does not sound like it would be terribly productive to try to explain 'open source' to ya'all so I won't waste my breath.

Sounds like it's along the lines of what the 'operationbitcoin.org' thing is working on.  And a reasonably good idea.

I hacked out what is probably a serviceable solution for generating handouts which you are welcome to use if you need it.  One should be able to put just about any URL you like on them with potentially a tiny bit of python hacking (if you wanted to put full instawallet-type URLs for instance and needed to shrink down the text size since I did not make it auto-adapt.)

I guess I'll just put a pointer to it here rather than a PM.

  http://www.huppi.com/t/bitcmp/test/

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.

How about burning through another post by elaborating on the thought of putting the code in github?

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.

OP:  I would suspect that a straight count of your list would not accurately reflect a count of people who control more than 1000 BTC.  It seems dumb to me to keep more than a certain amount in any wallet.dat (or any group of addresses within one.)  I split up my stash so as to keep a bulk of it in offline deep storage.  So some of those addresses are likely controlled by the same person, and a fair fraction of the sub-1000 addresses are likely to be owned by persons who control more than 1000 BTC altogether.

The low price indicates to me that although the world has 6.7x10^9 people, a tiny tiny fraction of them have much interest in Bitcoin, and a small fraction of those have enough disposable income (and questionable enough judgement) to take a semi-significant position.  On top of that, a lot of early adopters may choose to sit on their relatively larger stashes no matter what.  It would not surprise me if your .1/50% estimate were off on the 'low' side.

I would not consider Bitcoin 'centralized' unless and until the holders of the currency base form a cartel (which could easily happen and for all I know, already has.)  But I would not consider Bitcoin to be well distributed either.  That is probably not tenible without a re-boot or major re-implementation, and even then it would likely be at best transient.

I pin my hopes for Bitcoin(-ish solutions) not on an equitable distribution of the currency itself, but rather on an equitable distribution of the value that use of currency system can provide.

I hope that it is possible to make the point that, as a percentage of the currency base, the donations in Bitcoin have been fairly generous compared to that of USD.

I wrote some software to do progressive business-card sized QRs and adapted it slightly for this.  Unfortunately the ink from my laser printer does not seem to stick to the bill.  The first scan took me to bitcoin.org nicely, but subsequent ones not.

OK, I sent a few.  Think about putting your code on github and I may drop a few more.

Addy looked legit as best I can tell.  Sent them a few coins.

In order to show my gratitude, evoorhees, I'll drop a coin on Cato as soon as they accept them.  And another one on 'stop-the-beaners-at-the-borders' with a nod toward WiseOldOwl

+1 and +1

I would strongly suspect you are right on the first point, and I know for a fact that a part of my own interest and some of the work and money I've put in is in hopes of obtaining a more favorable ROI at the end of the day.


I agree with that and have stated so many times in several forums.  Let's try to make Bitcoin generally and obviously useful here.  That should successful and the rewards (and/or backlashes) will fall into place naturally if so.  If Bitcoin cannot make a positive impact in an effort like this then it's probably just as well that it fails generally IMHO.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 use the service and find it interesting.  I'll likely make a donation sometime today.  I very much like Eli's suggestion in principle.  If you (OP) can think of some ways it might be implemented that might help loosen my wallet.dat.

BTW, one thing I miss about the site would be an obvious place where you (OP) could put explanation for certain kinds of artifacts which appear on the charts.  I am sometimes left wondering if certain gaps, dips, and blips are for real, or a failure of your system.

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.)