You, good sir, have earned one hand-frosted cupcake for promoting bitcoin. Hand frosted FTW.



BTW its hand-frosted.

Guns don't kill people.

Precisely.

Gold has been preferred traditionally over other states of mass as physical store of wealth primarily because it is a very stable element.

The properties of gold that we desire, its physical beauty, malleability, weight, corrosion-resistance, etc. are all backed by mathematics, physics and electromagnetism.

Gold has its merits. But these days, there isn't enough of it to go around when used as a general medium of exchange, and its ex-changeability is questionable (few people will accept gold as payment).

What if there were an alternative, stable store of wealth and medium of exchange worthy of the information age, stored in digital form, also backed by the physical properties of the universe?

The culmination of technology is currently the information age. Why shouldn't the culmination of currency be a an info-currency, or bit-currency (bitcoin). The internet and computer systems are now sufficiently stable and redundant that we now can be virtually assured of bitcoin surviving anything but a world-ending apocalypse.

Satoshi is a genius.

Yes you can hold tangible bills, they are called bitbills. Google them.

No matter what you hold, both parties must agree on a the value of a currency in order to trade in it. The value is not built-in.

You are just holding a promise to pay, a debt note. That's all it is. It is only tangible because there is no way to do business by trust alone. There must be a physical exchange. Does that physical exchange have to be made of paper? No, it can be electronic as well, or it can be a signature on a contract. Electronic data is physical matter, bits of data describing a unit of exchange. We can observe the electronic data visually in software, if we wish, like the ink on a dollar bill.

The real issue is trust. Do we trust that bitcoin payments are safe? Trust, but verify, the saying goes. Paper money can be (and often is) counterfeited. So in summary, bitcoin can be a valid currency, if people accept it.

US citizens own way, way more guns than the government. The government guns don't back up the US dollar. Government guns protect the citizens. Without us, there is nothing to protect. To destroy the US Dollar forcibly one must attack the people that stand behind it.

Is bitcoin not similarly backed by its proponents?

Quiet! This is progress at work. 

Yes. This is a step in the right direction.

Another possibility:

1.1 - - 1.1
0.001  - - b.1
0.000001 - - b.b.1
0.000000001 - - b.b.b.1
1.00001 = 1.b.10
0.100099 = b.100.99
0.230001 = b.23.b.1 b.230.1
0.001100999 = b.1.1.999 b.1.100.999
0.999000000099 = b.999.b.b.99
0.464928532585 = b.464.928.532.585

I hope I didnt leave any mistakes there! Its tricky to convert, but much easier to read. It is easier to think in this format than do a conversion. Gotta put a b function on all calculators & cash registers, or we learn to convert this in our heads when doing calculations. Wow this is a tough problem. A lot of possibilities for mistakes.

Only 8 GPU's left in stock.

Deepsea mining has to be 10x more costly than onshore extraction.

Mining difficulty is already priced in.

Price follows difficulty.

Thread successfully derailed.

I love bitcoins.

But I don't see the average person adopting this color/name scheme for fractional bitcoins. A much simpler approach is needed. I don't know what the solution is. Obviously I could be wrong, but who, besides bitcoin enthusiasts, wants to remember seven different colors and names for amounts of bitcoins?

This is going to turn many people off bitcoins. It turns me off. This is way, way too geeky.

You know what it reminds me of? A resistor color code chart. Something only a geek or engineer would ever memorize. The average person is not an engineer. They don't want to think about bitcoins all the time. Bitcoins must be so easy to use, there is never a need to think about the process. Just click send! That's what the average person wants.

No, not inevitable.  But why would the Fed ever consider backing off with intervention? They know Americans will turn on them if they stop the flow of new money. Since most Americans are in debt, deflation will hurt them just as much as inflation.

99.9999% of all humanity knew Harold Camping was wrong.

I dare you to find five economic experts who agree that US economic health will improve going forward.

Also please note: if the US economy crashes, its not the end of the world, but the end of an era.

I run a medium-size bitcoin mining farm. Haven't sold any coins for weeks.

Then I suppose the meaning and implication of runaway debt is completely lost to you.

US debt will not be paid off. It can't be paid off. NO AMOUNT of taxation, reasonable or otherwise, can put a dent in the US's ocean of debt.

That means a DEFAULT, an overnight trashing of the dollar's value (20-30% inflation in less than a year, it happened to the UK in 1975), large increases in gas and food price, and widespread unemployment of perhaps 30%.

Oh, and world reserve currency status? Say goodbye to it. That will be a killer blow to the USD.

This is coming within a few years at the most, and there is nothing anyone can do about it, except get out of US dollar assets.

Can you personally know Ayn Rand's motivations? She was famous for being anti-faith and an atheist.

Perhaps it was not her intention to misquote the bible, but 1 Timothy IS the root source of the paraphrase.

Just being analytical, money is the root of all evil is an obvious fallacy. Rand's character, d'Anconia, does not address this. Instead he goes off on a tangent about how money is a basis of morality. Which I think is as nonsensical as saying it is evil.

I believe the original goes: "the love of money is the root of all evil." From 1 Timothy in the NKJV Bible.

So this d'Anconia guy makes a passionate "man is behind money "speech based on a misquote? Ayn Rand ought to know better.

Wouldn't it be the most tragic story ever, Lardycake OD's on peppermint patties the night before bitcoin soars to $100?

Maybe you're just getting old.

How about:

TROLL THAT ANNOUNCES INSIDE KNOWLEDGE (BUT CAN"T NAME SPECIFICS) OF IMPENDING DOOM THAT WILL KILL BITCOIN DEADER THAN DOORNAIL.

IN ALL CAPS.

$20+ by the end of July. $30-$35 at end of year. With higher spikes to $45-$50 in between.