You are changing the basis for your argument.  Now you are making your claim based on common law, whereas with this statement "The Constitution is a wonderful thing." you clearly implied that you were arguing from a Constitutional perspective.  Implying that this sheriff stuff is in the Constitution is blatantly dishonest.

I'm not going to get into a discussion about common law.  Well one thing, I'd just like to point out that many (most?) Americans live in places where there is no such thing as a sheriff.  They have police instead.  As far as I can tell there is no difference between police and sheriffs but I admit my ignorance.

Why do people say this nonsense?  There is absolutely no truth to it, and thank heavens because then we'd clearly live in a police state.  Sheriffs are not mentioned at all in the Constitution (not all counties have them, the one I grew up in didn't), nor are counties (not all states have counties).  The Constitution clearly states that the States are the basic unit of sovereignty except for in specific areas which are left to the federal government (such as the ability to declare war) or to the people (right to bear arms).  Administrative subdivisions of the states (such as counties) have no sovereignty whatsoever (unless it derives from the Constitution of that state).

I hear a lot of good things about George Mason University in Virginia.  I really doubt that you can find a quality economics education in Europe.  Austria isn't at all interested in Austrian Economics.

I chose to use Bitcoin because its algorithm.  I would not adopt an inflationary currency unless I had to.  Any source that talks about a "deflationary spiral" is automatically discredited.

On the surface this sounds like a good idea.  But then how would it work in terms of the bitcoin creation schedule?  What would happen to the 21 million coins around 2030?  If you gave out more coins when the difficulty was higher that would just encourage the difficulty to go higher.  If you gave out fewer when the difficulty were lower that would encourage the difficulty to go lower.  The whole point of the mining schedule is to build up a nice stable base of miners to support the network.  The point of the creation schedule is to give people confidence that bitcoins won't be debased by a central bank and that their money will retain value.

Of course I am suggesting that 1 bitcoin become 100 (or 1000) bitcoin.  Mexico actually moved the decimal point on their currency.

Not only did I refute this, but you actually quoted me doing so.  This is not a coding issue, but a community issue.  I personally don't need a client that moves the decimal point.  No one on this forum does.  Everyone else in the world does.  We need to do some outreach to the mathematically challenged.

I am a programmer and I could change it.  However this is not a coding issue in the slightest.  It is a community issue.  We need a consensus.  We all need to switch at once.  MtGox and TradeHill need to switch.  Bitcoin.org will need to switch.  The vendors would need to switch.  In order for that to happen we all need to agree.  That is what I am trying to do.  I am trying to convince you.

It is entirely possible to change the definition of "one Bitcoin".  Mexico did it with the peso.  The chopped three decimal points off in a country of millions of people, many of whom live in remote areas and/or are poorly educated.  The bitcoin community is small and well-connected.  If we all agree to do it there would be no problem.

Perhaps the best that I can hope for is to get everything listed in bitcents and drop the notion of bitcoins.

Oh really?  Walk down street and ask 10 people how many kilobytes are in a gigabyte.  No more than one person will get the answer correct.


Once bitcoin is very well established people will have no trouble with having 2-3 different units in the mix.  We do not live in that time.  As it is right now bitcents are also a reasonable unit to use, because of the similarity with the dollar.


You are in the top 10% of mathematical ability, most people would have trouble with that.  That said the next group of people that we need to reach (hip urban people) would have not too much trouble with 1.0001 compared to 1001.  However understanding 1.001 vs 0.001001 is too hard for them.


You do not know me.  I am not a speculator.  Right now we have a nice core of technically-adept people to build software and nice core of liberty-minded people to evangelize the currency.  However the problem with these people is that we don't spend a lot of money on junk.  We need consumers.  We need people who actually make purchases with bitcoin.  We need people who will buy stuff because they want stuff, not for the novelty of using bitcoin or because they want to make the world a better place.

Yes, too bad for us.  We (those of us who have bitcoins) could be millionaires if it weren't for people like you wanting to keep the bitcoin economy exclusive.



You are incorrect.  Switching to mBTC is inferior to actually moving the decimal point.  Regular people do not understand SI prefixes.  People memorize the relationship between meters and kilometers.  You are kidding yourself if you think that normal people have the skills or desire to understand the concept of mBTC.  We need to actually move the decimal place.

Bitcoin has stagnated because the decimal point wasn't moved.  We need to move it 2-3 places.  Normal people might be willing to throw $10-20 into bitcoin.  For that they get.... 1 coin?  If they could get 100 or 1000 it would seem like a better deal.  The psychological barrier is far, far, more important than most people on these forums realize.  Believe it or not, most people in the world aren't mathematically adept libertarian engineers.  We need to go after the humanities people, the liberals, the people who don't understand fractions or decimals.  We need to move to a "points" model, like xbox points or credit card rewards points.

*sigh*.  Do you really think that normal people will EVER understand fractions?  The answer is no.  It will never happen.  NEVER.  This is why we need to move the decimal place.  The wider public will never accept a bitcoin that is even worth $15, much less 15 million.  Bitcoin cannot succeed unless the decimal point shifts.  The decimal point will move, the question is whether we will do it soon enough.  The price of bitcoins will drop to a nickle.  Are we going to be the ones to do it, or will the market do it?

Look, those of us who understand economics obviously understand that widespread adoption of bitcoin is a game-changer and that governments would have a hard time adapting fast enough.  Here's the thing: pointing out that possibility prevents that scenario from ever happening.  Most people are afraid of uncertainty.  Many of them actually like the governments that they have now.  If we are to change the world we have to stop talking about it and just let it happen.

Moving the decimal place and keeping it moved.  We need for people to be able to get 60+ bitcoins for $10.  Ideally bitcoins should be worth about 5-15 cents.

I agree.  Unless the decimal point is handled property (moved) bitcoin will never take off.  The ideal solution would be to move it two places now and move it one place at a time after that (to keep the value always worth less than a dollar).  An adequate solution would be to move it all the way over, so that there is no such thing as a fractional bitcoin.

Actually the average Joe does understand how dollars work: you keep them in a little thing in your pocket and then you had them to people to pay for stuff.

Bitcoins require a "wallet" that is really some sort of mysterious "file" that can't be found.  Normal people cannot find files unless they are on the desktop or, for more sophisticated users, in the "My Documents" folder.  Your bitcoin wallet is stored in a HIDDEN folder.  Normal people will never be able to find their wallet files, even if they were forced to use bitcoin.

To buy with bitcoins you have to use "addresses" that are really long and often changing.  That is pretty hard for a regular person to grasp.  Also they are case-sensitive.  Most people type in all caps or no caps.  Very few people use mixed case unless writing something very important.

This is really a decimal point issue.  Right now mining produces 300 coins per hour.  In order to keep the price stable new people need to buy that many per hour.  Basically unless we increase the number of people inflation will eat our money.   We can't get new people because $17 seems like too much.  It is a psychological thing.  If the decimal point were moved two places we could tap whole new markets.  People with fancy phones would drop $10 to try it out.  "Oh I can get 60 bitcoins for $10, I'll try that".  "Oh I can get half of a bitcoin for $10, that doesn't sound fun"".

The complete failure of your thread has nothing to do with bitcoin, in fact it indicates that people want the bitcoin.  Of course the comments are downvoted.  If you want to win the BTC you have to have the highest, and since no one is going to vote for you you need to vote everyone else down.

The account history was great before.  It is much worse now.

When you try to claim your account you have to get the password correct.  I kept trying the wrong one.  Eventually I tried a different password and it worked.  So if you can make a claim then you have your password correct.