Only accept cash deposits. Problem solved.

If that happened then you can't say it succeeds. The truth is the value cannot go to zero and it be a success. If anyone copies it, I expect the value of the copy to be even higher than Mastercoin or at least higher than Bitcoin. The real question is why would anyone need or use the copy?

If we already have Mastercoin there is no incentive to buy another Mastercoin2 and start over. There is no incentive to build another Mastercoin if we can do everything we need to do with this protocol.

It may be a case where you have competitor products and they all are going for 2-3 BTC each and that could be what keeps Mastercoin from reaching 20-30 BTC each but so what? Just making a clone doesn't mean people will download your clone.

If I want to issue a currency or make a bet what incentive do I have to use Mastercoin2 if it offers no increased functionality and no economic incentive for me to switch?

I'm the one who said Mastercoin could someday be worth 20-30BTC each.

That is 18,000,000 Bitcoins if you're doing 600,000*30. This number is irrelevant though because you don't have to buy Mastercoins with Bitcoins so it's not really known how much it could be worth. A Mastercoin could go for way more than that too.

Honestly I don't know how much Mastercoin will ultimately be worth, but I expect 1-2 BTC per Mastercoin at some point. 20-30 BTC per Mastercoin depends on too many factors which no one can predict and is years away from happening if it happens at all. Kind of like how Bitcoin will probably go to $1000 but $100,000 we just don't know.

I would say don't buy Mastercoin under the certainty that the protocol will work. It's an experiment, it's high risk, and if it fails then the Mastercoins could be worth 0. If it succeeds then the sky is the limit.

Many will.  Yes.

Any transaction that can trace any of its history back to block rewards that occurred in the orphaned chain will cease to exist as valid transations.

Transactions that are completely funded from block rewards that occurred prior to the split will simply become unconfirmed and be added back to the memory pool to be re-confirmed, unless any user in the forked chain transaction history leading up to that transaction happened to have somehow created transactions using the same unspent output from before the fork in both forks.

The most important thing moving forward is without a doubt theft prevention, although theft itself is not that common, the "fear of theft" is almost an epidemic.

Its just a scary thing to have a large amount of coins on a computer, even though its offline and all precautions have been taken, especially for novice/new users this is a turnoff. Many new users wants to join not as an active user but just to store wealth/invest.

So what if we did this:

The bitcoin devs create a function that enables users to create a "holding wallet". This wallet permanently make it so that the wallet can just send a transaction to a set of addresses which users enters upon wallet creation.

Then the day the user wants to use some coins, he initiates a transfer to one of the saved wallets and he is free to spend the coins.

It think this would open many opportunities and improve safety a lot and perhaps make third-party sites like blockchain.info a safe "middle man" alternative. The coins would not be there until the owner of the coins decides to spend them and the attacker would have to have both the original "Holding wallet" and one of the destination wallets/accounts.

What you guys think? Would love to hear other ideas, everyone should put some thought into this

This, then our difficulty would be half and everyone would celebrate.

You make so many assumptions in this response that I'm not even going to bother.

I had typed out a good two paragraphs of my thoughts on this and accidentally hit the back button, so decided to just summarize. From my understanding CC (potentially) accomplishes a small list of important features but is ultimately limited in what it can achieve. Mastercoin can (potentially) solve these problems also, and beyond, having broad implications in ways that we don't even know yet because of the way it is implemented. And consider Bitcoin. Although it's purpose was not to function as a speculative device, that's what nurtured it into legitimization (if you consider BTC legitimate at this point). There's no lack of talent looking to be involved in the bitcoin world. Provided the technical hurdles can be overcome, I think the fact that it can be directly monetized and the approx 3/4 of a million dollars of funding puts Mastercoin in the lead. The amount the project has accomplished in one month is quite impressive.

Thanks for all the replies. I've looked into it more.

I see another potential problem for mastercoin: it is easily duplicated with little work. Unlike alt coins a new mastercoin clone doesn't need to build up an army of miners. This makes a clone have the same security as the original. All the security comes for free from bitcoin. Someone could come along and clone the project, rename it, and have all the same features with the added benefit of not having to purchase mastercoins. Is that scenario likely?

If you call a 35% price drop on Bitstamp or a 25% drop on MtGox "NOTHING", you could be right.  

Bitcoin will not have a huge price increase, it will not even get to $200 again.  Watch and see, keep your money out of BTC!

LiteCoin is poised to pop way up soon.

That's not how the protocol works. There is only one refund tx. The settlement/contract txns are sent from client to server, but the client never gets a fully signed copy.

Micropayment channels are still under development and I've been making steady progress, bugfixing, refactoring, and so on. I'm hoping to have a demo app to show soon.

Most of the people in the forum including me is quite optimistic about Bitcoin.

But after so many weeks why didn't it go up but difficulty is shooting up?

When Gox will solve their withdrawal problems the insiders will start selling, then Gox will sell quite a chunk of their holding (price will fall quite much) and release the news about solving their withdrawal process. Then the crash is inevitable (not flash crash and flash rise like the SR one).

Maybe we will see a small rally before so insiders and Gox will get even more profit.

Has there been any implementations of these micro-payment channels in the wild?

I'm exploring the code and wonder if there are any implementations that exist yet.

Thats crazyness.  You would think that Satoshi would have worked in some way for all this electricity and power to be useful for something else also.  Kind of sad actually.  Fold some proteins at least

If Bitcoin ever gets mainstream and replaces the fiat/debt system who will protect the people from being stupid? Even with all the precautions and arbitrary limits that the debt system sets for added security the average person who isn't aware of computer security can still easily compromise his account (it is especially obvious since fiat accounts with tens of thousands of dollars are sold on the deepnet).

Elitism? Natural selection anyone?

Expected potential returns since inception have been on average 200% per year (avg turnover vs avg house bankroll), meaning you will triple your amount of btc in 1 year if dooglus is legit. If not you will lose it all.

What is the chance that dooglus is a fraud? I think chances are low, I would say 10%. Let's take 20% to be certain not to underestimate.

Ofcourse there are other risks too, he might get robbed, there might be a flaw, there might be gov attack etc. Let's say there is 50% chance it fails for whatever reason.


So 50% to triple your money, 50% to lose it all.

That's a good bet to take. Not with all your capital as chances are considerable it will fail, but some capital as chances are higher you will make a profit. For such odds Kelly advises to invest 25% of the capital you are willing to risk.