Casascius already touched on this subject way earlier in the thread, but I'll reiterate what I think is the same idea:  It's not necessarily about benefit to the userbase, in the sense I think you mean.
Today, there was a lot of hoopla about Amazon supposedly adopting Bitcoin. Now, that's not likely to be true at all, but let's assume Amazon or some other big player really did think the idea was good. Would they just go and start accepting Bitcoin, as is? Maybe. It seems just as likely to me, however, that they would just create their own equivalent, maybe with some alterations. There's plenty of talk about what works and doesn't work currently already here, from the perspective of the current crowd of enthusiasts. A big retailer might well have ideas of their own about that. So, it's far from given that Bitcoin is what they'd go with, and any currency they might create would get huge exposure simply by virtue of being proposed by a big company. That doesn't necessarily mean Bitcoin would just die off, but it could set severe limits on the growth potential.

Personally, I think the big guys are still very interested in creating more centralized internet currencies, like Facebook credits etc, since that allows them more control. Personally, I think that's not going to fly, we've seen centralized internet currencies before and they haven't worked out very well, but that doesn't mean it won't be tried again. I think we're going to see more experimentation with centralized currencies before serious consideration is given to decentralized ones. If that does come to pass, then the question is what kind of features do big retailers want in a decentralized currency, and those may be very different from what Bitcoin offers. Anonymity isn't likely to be of interest to them, or for the mainstream userbase, either, for example.

IMO a big player taking interest in Bitcoin right now might not be such a good thing for Bitcoin. The whole system is still very small. The bigger the userbase gets, the better the chances of Bitcoin being the currency of choice for everyone are, but push it too early and you might just see a fork backed by one or more of the big players gain traction instead.

Regarding the spikes of doom... Who keeps leaving their computer on so their cat can walz all over the keyboard?

It tends to blink on and off a lot, doesn't it... But yes. Lesson learned. Only use limits (and stops of course)

Hm. Now that I think about it (my short term memory isn't the best...) I may have placed several smaller orders in quick succession. It's a bit weird that the orderbook only shows a price for one of them, 6.841, executed at 6.6293, and the ones that got executed higher have no price listed.

Well, it may well be my fumble, but I do remember first hitting buy, then a few seconds later seeing the sell price skyrocket on the charts, and sure enough I was the proud owner of several bitcoins with a base price of over 7 USD. Can the "no reserve" situation cause market orders set at one price to execute at a higher price if they get held up? Do the orders get a price set if the bull's eye is winking, or do they simply get executed at any price as soon as buying becomes possible?

That doesn't seem to have held. My order was under that limit.

Or maybe I should think of the obvious explanation first - it's 50 BTC combined, for all trades on Bitcoinica. Is this correct?

What exactly does it mean when Bitcoinica say they have 50BTC guaranteed liquidity both ways for market orders? I thought it is a way for them to guarantee you get the price quoted if you use the instant buy function, but I placed a market order around 6.8 (it was moving pretty wildly) and had it execute for values between 6.6293 and 7.1312 during that big spike. Basically I tried to catch the downspike but before the order got executed in the queue, the upspike came.


So anyway, what exactly does the guaranteed liquidity stand for?

Got to the second flip this time, which said to hold long. So still bullish, in the face of turbulence. P/L currently 2.522% in the green.

Another effect is to get amateurs like me who put a market order on Bitcoinica when the spike goes down, and don't close it when the price swings wildly up again... Lesson learned, use limits. To add insult to injury, I shorted down from 7-ish and closed at a minor profit when I felt I wasn't so sure it would go lower. A few minutes later, the dump. Good thing I'm playing with pennies.

Fun and games!

I'm very skeptical as well. Amazon accepting Bitcoin would be huge, so huge it would steamroll the whole Bitcoin economy. Amazon must know that, if they know about Bitcoin. It's too soon.

Seems to me it means the investors here don't think they can store the value. That's the part that worries me.

I think metaphysics is somewhat beyond the scope of this discussion, that's all.

I fully agree.


I just don't think religion is something that can be used to further this discussion. I worried you were hinting at a deity behind these rights, which is a dead end to me since I don't believe in any. The discussion can't go on from that. That's the main point of a secular society, to create a common ground.

Given by who? I should note I'm not interested in religious discussion here.

An agreement, which makes the participants subject to the system they create. Subjecthood doesn't imply a personified ruler.

Inherent? What do you mean?

Rights ARE given, they are something subjects have. If you are subject to the rule of some party, they may grant you rights. If you are sovereign, the concept of rights is meaningless.

Today's first flip said to hold off from doing anything, so I stayed long. Looks like that bullishness was justified, with the exchange rate up to 6.9 or thereabouts, the profits are now a solid 7%. Unrealized, of course...

Setting aside the problem of getting this adopted, there are a bunch of reasons why this is a bad idea in the first place.

1. Sudden introduction of a level of centralization in the protocol. You're proposing to hard-code an address to skim fees into, presumably run by someone "trustworthy", and to mandate this for the entire network. Try convincing the people screaming "ponzi" Bitcoin is not a scam if you have someone skimming off the top like that.

2. Who gets the donations? How do we decide? Is it going to be the same party from here til eternity, or do we change it up from time to time? Do you have any idea what kind of hell that will entail if the sum ever becomes large?

3. It completely goes against the principles of voluntarity the whole project is founded upon.


Charity shouldn't be built into the protocol, though Bitcoin enables you to donate to whoever you like should you choose to do so.

Again the first flip is 1 for act, the second 1 for Bullish. So I'm sticking with my BTC, currently holding 15.0 BTC at a base price of $6.4299, unrealized loss of 0.155%. I sure hope the price doesn't drop below 0.12 or so or I get zhoutonged...

Do you play russian roulette as well?