Can you expound on this point? What does "global scale" defense look like? Do we have that today?

When contrasting SolidCoin to Bitcoin you said of SolidCoin "inflation is not exponential". I assumed this to mean that you were saying that Bitcoin's inflation rate is exponential.


Which of X or Y is increased by higher difficulty?


Really? That's quite a claim. Moore's law has held true for about 50 years, and by the time we are no longer able to place more transistors into a 2D space we'll probably be ready to go 3D. So this is a very naive assumption. If difficulty is related to mining technology, and the inflation rate is related to difficulty, then inflation will be exponential.

Only the centralized pools, not Bitcoin. If everyone used p2pool, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Bitcoin's inflation rate is not exponential, it tends toward zero.


So as technology improves and hash rates increase, so will the rate of coin generation? Sounds pretty exponential to me...

So everyone's going to build business models relying upon leaked movies? No, most are going to stick with the contract because it is more reliable.


Some do. It's not a necessity though.


Some people are creative, and will express that creativity regardless of a profit motive.


So what, if people want fewer movies?

Are you claiming that it is not possible to provide private defense of persons and property?

You only see what you want to see. If people want order, it means there is a demand for services which keep it, which means there is money to be made supplying it. What about examples like Egypt where the community formed groups to police itself, when the police no longer would?

People are just so used to relying on the state for such things that it takes longer than a short period of chaos for people to self organize. Remember, anarchy is not chaos, anarchy is self order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Read up and then get back to me with a question that doesn't consist entirely of fallacy.

He has a point though. Some people don't seem to realize that they have a responsibility to spent a fraction of massive bitcoin holdings if the economy should get booming so there is a overall 50% coins in circulation.
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Responsibility? As in a moral obligation? Why is that?

I'm explaining to you where that "unearned value" comes from.


Did you dedicate time and money to Bitcoin before it was worth anything? Would you have done so if you had known about it?


Yes, Bitcoin has an inflationary period, which is public knowledge. It is also known at the inflationary period will slow down, leading to a period of a stable amount of money. Can you think of a better way to initially distribute a digital commodity in a decentralized fashion?


Yes. The total amount of currency and inflation rate - past, present, and future - is known to all.


Monopolizing? Again, why weren't you mining Bitcoins at the beginning? Transparency for the system, not individual accounts. Do you demand to know how much your neighbor has in his bank account?


No it cannot.


I think perhaps you should seek therapy.


You still don't understand what you're talking about when you use the word "deflation".

Here's a hint, there's nothing the early adopters (or we) can do to change the rate that Bitcoin are created.

I'm going to piggy back on your comment and quote myself from the previous page, because I don't want the point to be missed and I think it's relevant to your own:

*facepalm*

So, what is the reason you "would never consider such behavior"? Do you forego rape and pillage because the government forces you to? Or perhaps it's that you think yourself superior in your lack of desire to do so, when in fact most people feel the same way. Those "rape and pillage" types, guess what they're attracted to - power. The same centralized power you say we need in order to protect us from rape and pillage.

If a search engine is an index of the internet, then my brain has become a meta-index of the internet. All I have to remember is what key words to type into Google and a significant portion of human knowledge awaits me. Now all that's left is to speed up this process, and to speed up the process at which I can consume said knowledge...

It's actually part of a really cool independently produced video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu4VIhsUQtE

If you're not trolling, I really feel bad for you.

$2 is an opportunity, to me. Your subjective value judgement is no more special than mine.

I don't think you can build virtual freedom on top of real slavery. At the end of the day, you're still subject to the whims of whatever state you reside in. I just think our time is better spent trying to live as free as we can in the real world, instead of a virtual one.

Then again, this says I who argue about the nature of the state with strangers on the internet.

You seem to be unaware why the purchasing power of money increases when there is no change in the supply or demand of the money. Let's say the total yearly output of an economy is a dozen apples, and $1 buys one apple. If there is a breakthrough in apple production and the economy is now 25% more efficient, 15 apples are now produced. If the supply of money remains the same, $1 will now buy 1.25 apples.


Now it seems you don't understand human incentives with regard to risk.

Early adopters spent time and money working on a project that produced a worthless digital token. Had they not done so, we would not be here to discuss Bitcoin. However, one of the real reasons they did so is the knowledge that due to its properties, it could one day be worth much more than nothing. To say that it causes "unwarranted gain" is to say that you don't believe Bitcoin is worthwhile.

Also, you can call Bitcoin a "digital trash token" all you want, but the fact that individuals of their own free will exchange dollars with which they can buy anything for Bitcoins flies in the face of that claim. I can already hear you foaming at the mouth, spittle flying everywhere "BUT THEY JUST WANTS THEY PROFITSSSS!" - so fucking what?


Nope. It is a creation of wealth. Bitcoins were worth nothing, then early adopters came along, now Bitcoin is worth something. They built this system that drew others, which increased the value of the system and their holdings in it. No central bank forced people to exchange dollars for bitcoins, they did it freely.


Kind of. There's two complaints about inflation in a system such as ours.

1) The inflation is arbitrary - those with information profit at the expense of those without
2) The inflation is centralized - those who receive new money first profit at the expense of those who receive it later
3) Inflation disincentivizes saving - saving is consuming less than necessary in the present, in order to use that surplus to build better capital for the future

So really, I think a decentralized, crypto-currency with algorithmic inflation would be much better than the current system, but it still disincentivizes saving.

Yes, Bitcoin is currently going through an inflationary period. That's how the initial units of money are being distributed. It was never designed to have a stable exchange rate against the dollar. The rules of the network have been public for anyone to see since the beginning. There is complete transparency here, unlike at central banks.


What? How about you use more logic and less rhetoric?

I really think the only thing that draws people to platforms such as that is that they do not simulate reality. Do you want to go to your job for 8 hours every day and then go home and do your simulated job for another few hours?

Explain why this is a bad thing. Why should people not be able to save money and have it benefit from the increased productivity of the economy, rather than having it sucked away by monetary inflation?