Yeah, good luck feathercoin - you've already shown you're vulnerable and add zero to the existing coins that are way ahead of you.

The house of cards known as IRS tax law falls in a pathetic heap when you don't go outside of the bitcoin network. What are they going to do then? Recognize BTC as a currency and tax in bitcoins? Somehow I doubt that.

I wonder if the Bitcoin Foundation realizes that if the government turns on Bitcoin, they're the prime targets of harassment - since DC doesn't understand decentralization at all.

I also don't see the point in playing the corrupt lobbying game either. That money would be better spent in establishing mesh networks free from commercial internet providers, a type of redundant BTC-Only backbone.

No my myopic friend - because it can be adapted to a wireless meshnet that doesn't rely on Google being a gatekeeper. The implications are obvious.

I think its very relevant to bitcoin - an internet currency - when a project that can provide wireless to nearly anywhere on the globe is being developed. You realize these things ride on air currents? And they're working on how to steer using the opposing jets at different altitudes?

Even if it doesn't have bitcoin in the text, it still is interesting to me - thanks for posting it.

More like Bitcoin's meth-addicted little brother, with his too-rapid confirms and undeniable scaling issues.

Also wired is doing its best to cement in place the "Irrelevancy Award" I see. They stopped being interesting many years ago, which coincidentally, was when the ratio of actual text to ads declined as well. Now they're a few hops and a skip away from being a technical ad-rag.

The whole thing is fairly obvious, its an attempt to prevent 'n' mining technology from participating. In computing, we call this the "walled garden" approach. That strategy hasn't worked out so well for other people who have tried it. Even Apple, who uses the biggest walled garden of them all - in the form of "captive computing" offered by their various i-devices, is seeing declines in revenue/usage compared to the "boom" years.

So lets compare, shall we?

BTC supports - CPU, GPU, FPGA, ASIC, < Insert New Tech Here! >

LTC supports - CPU, GPU, FGPA*, < Insert neatly trimmed garden hedge wall >

*FPGA and ASIC implementations are more expensive to create for Scrypt than for SHA-256 as used by Bitcoin, according to the wikipedia article. So, you could make the argument that they are economically unfeasible in LTC's current valuation. Also, every article/post I see about LTC is how proud they are about blocking out ASICs, so I doubt we'll see it occur.

When I look at Litecoin, beyond the obvious scaling problems the reduced time between confirmations produces, (witness the latest update due to 'age' blocks produced by miners - another casualty of tweaking the confirms setting.) I see a closed-end technology that doesn't embrace the latest advances, supposedly to "save" everyone who won't be buying new technology.

You might as well make a computer that only accepts BASIC programs and nothing else, or some other contrived notion - like cassette tapes or 8 Inch floppies - just because you don't want to go to SSDs and SATA drives.

This is a mindset that makes no sense to me, which makes me wonder what in the world they'll do when ASICs get bumped down in price, because 'n' technology is released - and becomes the new defacto standard in securing the Bitcoin network.

A.) Will they even be around at that point?

B.) Will they ditch their self-professed creed of not embracing ASIC and decide the next 'new' technology is the new boundary for the "garden wall"?

All of this makes me question its very existence, indeed.

There's also the painfully obvious point that if Litecoin had anything to offer, the main Bitcoin client would be soft-forked to include it, rendering Litecoin useless. (again.)

My measured reply to the author:

More like the weaknesses of the human element and bad development decisions when crafting a website. The distinction is important.

America losing world currency status is inevitable, the only question is how long until it happens, and what replaces it.

The USA has gutted their manufacturing capacity, their overall GDP due to bad monetary policies, is swimming in debt that is truly frightening, and has vulnerable concerns all over the globe that could become a big mess back home if energy becomes an issue.

Its going to be an "interesting" next ten years, I can tell you that.

The fact that we're on Gartner's radar is a big deal. A lot of businesses use their research to back business decisions and future planning.

As far as the article itself - there are steps that can be taken to shield any type of transactional analysis, and some businesses like Foodler already do this. Not exactly the "land mine" that is implied, just proper security practices.

Okay, perhaps we have different ways of dealing with situations. If MP is the problem, I'd stop using MP - not give up on bitcoin. But you're different, and you are leaving.

That sums it up, basically.

I'd hate to see your reaction to life's other little inconveniences. What do you do when there's traffic? Give up on your car?
Long line at the supermarket - well, better just push that cart to the side and forget shopping...

Just seems the pretext to be done is a little... slight.

I posted a reply but it was rather scathing -- I didn't get a chance to copy it here, but if they post it - you'll get a kick out of it.

Update: Ah, they did post it - must be an automatic delay. Here it is:

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I think this is a duplicate.

More like "As central banking crime has encircled the earth, only Bitcoin has the power to stop it."

This is precisely the dinosaur that we'll be marvelling at in the financial museum of past failures, when they open up their "Sovereign Apologist" Exhibit.

The wake-up call this guy is going to get when Bitcoin kicks down the feeble hedges in his sheltered garden will be priceless. I wish we could watch it streamed live.

Bitcoin - the Central Bank and Centralized Monetary Policy bunker-buster.

The next few years will be a lot of fun indeed.

I would absolutely LOVE to see a government try to "corner" bitcoin, then realize what they've done. The price swings would be legendary. I have zero fear of a "corner", just knowing what the market dynamics would be.