Damn... is there evidence that this has ever happened before?

By the way, I thought browsers would display a warning if suddenly the certificate for the site I'm used to visit changed...

Just like everything else. "Intrinsic value" is a contradiction in terms, like "squared circle".
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-fallacy-of-quotintrinsic-valuequot/


Even if it happens - and I don't think it will -, fine enough. It will remain a good way to protect your savings against inflation, like precious metals, only better.

So, the guy is going to do it tomorrow.
Does he know bitcoin well enough to answer questions people might ask him?

This will be cool.

This sounds a better idea.

Actually, as soon as there are better GUIs out there, I think the default GUI itself could be "retired", and we keep just the command line application. Keeping it simple...

You don't need an intermediary step to change a country's official currency. Brazil changed currencies many times... I remember at least 2 before the Real, and I was a kid at the time. Every time the numbers were getting too high, they would just divide everything by 1.000...

I think this intermediary step of URV was needed to handle state debt. I'm not sure, but I think state debt was attached to the country's currency, which was hyperinflationary. If that was the case, the interest rates needed to be huge. If they just stopped printing in order to control inflation, they would end up with unpayable debt bounds and would need to default. I guess they used the URV in order to switch the debt to this stabler unity, making interest rates lower. Then, after all debt has been rolled-out in new bounds attached to the URV instead of the Cruzeiro, it was ok to make the URV the new currency and decelerate the printers.

Really, congratulations for all this catch-the-scammer task force! Amazing!

That's probably bitcoin's greatest advantage! Easy to transfer, easy to stock/protect...


Well, if both parties trust each other, they can transfer offline. Trust is needed due to the risk of double-spending.

And, as people said, with 3G and smartphones, internet is available mostly everywhere. We shouldn't really worry.

Please, just don't make it that expensive! 

If you're just "using it as money" you won't really keep it for long. You keep it if you also see it as a way to save/invest.
By money I was talking just about "means of exchange", not a way to store savings.

Requirements for "good money" are features like:

• Slow inflation
• Easy to transfer, protect, store
• Easy to verify as authentic

And so on. It's on this sense, of "good means of exchange", that I'm certain that bitcoins beats gold.

I do think that the "sound money of the future" will either be bitcoins, or something else on the same line (something digital, not physical). It doesn't make sense anymore to keep using something physical for the role of money, imo.

You do have a point though, it is difficult to separate the role of "means of exchange" from the role of "store of value". For this latter role, bitcoins are still riskier than gold.

Maybe, but don't compare currencies with drugs... the latter have a very "hard" demand, in the sense that, if it becomes more scarce, people will stop consuming other stuff in order to continue consuming drugs, that's what pushes their prices so high.

Currency, I'm not that sure... if it becomes dangerous to use bitcoins, people could simply switch back to government controlled currencies. That may cause a big devaluation. In the long run, the value would tend to stabilize and then slowly grow due to scarcity, but if you bought a lot just before the decrease, you're screwed.

So people are really paying just to get a more frequent supply of minted coins?

Yes for both questions.

That's what I meant by "lack of trust".
Faking digital signatures? Has this ever happened with the algorithms used by bitcoin?


That wouldn't change what I said. Bitcoin would keep being better as money than gold. This new, better online currency would only be even better than that.

Don't confuse "being good as money" with "being good as an investment". Bitcoins are definitely more risky as investment than gold right now.


All this rich criminal would be able to do is to fraud transactions, by double-spending. That's not an "attack to the network" but rather an attack to some individuals who are unlucky enough to deal with the criminal. And, I really doubt that the eventual benefits one could get out of such criminal activity would be even close to the great cost of gathering more processing power than the entire network. Somebody with that much resources would probably earn more by just generating, actually.


Worthless, I doubt it. At most, it would see a decrease in value if, for example, a better currency shows up or most governments worldwide declare a War on Bitcoins Exchangers. But that has nothing to do with bitcoin's qualities as money.


Again, you're confusing "being good as money" with "being a safe investment". I don't doubt gold is a safer investment right now than bitcoins.

If block-space becomes so scarce that miners start rejecting paying-transactions like in your example, I bet people will quickly re-enable this resending feature.
Currently, there's enough space on blocks for all transactions to be free.

Could I just translate an article of mine already published in another language?

That's quite obvious to me too.

I think the people who don't believe in this either aren't geek enough to understand bitcoins (so they lack trust), or they just worship gold without really understanding why this noble metal was such a good money for so long. If you understand what are the features that make gold useful as money, you'll easily that bitcoins upgrade each one of these features, by orders of magnitude in some cases.

Well, a 60 blocks reorganization could cause some disasters anyway, couldn't it? That's 10 hours of transactions...

It's ICANN who controls the root level domains, as far as I know. So, on the current architecture, only them could attribute .foo to some domain name authority.

Now, nothing prevents people to invent other domain name systems, that are not under ICANN control, like the .p2p initiative. But that would only work after many DNS servers (or browsers) learn how to use these new DNS systems.
That could lead to some name conflicts, if more than one system define the same root level and attribute it to different authorities.

I just hope it doesn't act given all other countries the same power...

Ok, that means they cannot easily block just like they did with these 84.000 domains... but VerySign itself is under US jurisdiction, isn't it?