Idk if this is what you are talking about, but in terms of avoiding centralized exchanges in the US due to the IRS stuff going, you could just use bitsquare.io ... I know it's not exactly the best "noob friendly" exchange place to buy bitcoins, but it's definitely an option for people to avoid places like circle and coinbase.

Right now the interface and liquidity isn't exactly the best... that's why I still am always tempted to use a site like localbitcoins to buy P2P.

Is this really a good thing though?  I mean, price point isn't really an indicator of how good an asset is... rather I see price point as an indicator of how many "investors" there are speculating and trust in the asset as being valuable.  I feel that there has been the same amount of speculation going on, but just a slight increase in "trust" because of segwit... but if that goes south then, who knows what will happen.

Whether investors care about the fundamentals of block sizes or not, they will end up caring about it when the network gets so jammed that they can't send their coins to exchanges.

Are you kidding me? It's been pretty well established that Bitcoin isn't that anonymous and yet, rather pseudonymous.  To be honest, the whole notion of saying the "government will never allow Bitcoin because DNM's will use it" is ridiculous. I can imagine they absolutely love Bitcoin primarily because of it's traceable blockchain.  

There's a reason why you see people say they have issues with exchange sites like coinbase due to their Bitcoin "taint".

Doesn't NamWorld have to give the green light for the payment to be processed anyways? I would think that is the case because of how the payment stalls before being processed and sent out usually like one day a week.

If not, I mean... yeah... hopefully there aren't any jerks willing to take advantage of an accidental bug.

A person who is not very knowledgeable about the history of the Internet (in America) could say that AOL was the humble beginnings of the Internet we know of today.  Why would that be?  Because AOL was the first phase to make the Internet easy to use for the masses; and Bitcoin has definitely become the first real successful attempt at decentralized cash that is peer to peer while also being the first cryptocurrency to be easy to use with nice looking GUI's, exchange sites, and that sort of thing.  A whole lot better than what digital currencies that were being used before it, such as e-gold and that sort of thing which never really gained as much attraction from other people.

This didn't stop the progression of the Internet, and people didn't just decided to use AOL for the rest of their days to gain access to the Internet... and that is the point where I think we are at today with our little analogy of Bitcoin being the early Internet.

I'm not saying that Bitcoin is destined to failure, or less use than it's hay day (who really uses AOL now and days?) but if there aren't significant improvements in confirmation times and fungibility, then people will continue progressing the idea of cryptocurrencies using the blockchain with or without Bitcoin.

It's important to note, that the global economy simply has to change in some form within the next 20-30 years or so in my opinion.  Whether if it becomes a pure crypto-global-capitalist economy or a Utopian future where money doesn't necessarily matter; something has got to give.

I can definitely see a world that nations that cling hard to capitalism such as the US or even the EU fighting for ways to keep their position as a dominant global force; no matter if they have to give up power of controlling the money supply either...

For some reason I keep thinking that it's going to be inevitable that there has to be a point in human history where we have to decide if we are going to radically change, or not, in order to survive as a human species.  Capitalism was a good system when we had "infinite" supply of resources and a huge need for people to work on farms and that sort of thing; but now it's proven to be extremely wasteful.  The majority of work is being done by machines and machines are progressing to be machines that "think" and have potential to take over professional jobs and can make all humans worthless in the work force.

If you can imagine a world that is a replica of the one we live on now, and all the rules were wiped clean and we needed a fresh beginning... your first thought wouldn't be to make as much money as possible... it would be to collaborate with other humans and try to live a comfortable life with little to no suffering.  We technically have all the necessary resources and knowledge to have a life of abundance with the help of machines so humans can go about doing other things and specializing even further to do stuff that they actually enjoy doing and at their own schedule.

Sorry, I know this was kind of a rant, but it's been something I've been pondering lately; and can't really shake this feeling of what a "post capitalistic" world would be like; especially in the technological advancement era that we live in now.

Yeah, I just now started looking at the stuff on the main website; and under the finance section the biggest thing that popped out to me is when it said it's goal is to "increase transparency" in the financial market.  That is perhaps the worst, most malicious thing that we could hand over on a silver platter to governments. 

This is the kind of things tyrants dream of; a way to always be able to see who's sending money where and have a way to stop them if it doesn't please them.  They could single handedly control people by forcing them to make it illegal to purchase anything from "Mom and Pop's general store" and force them to buy things from "Walmart" if Walmart CEO's give political figures incentives for doing so and passing those type of laws.

Cryptocurrencies need to be permissively transparent... not forced to be transparent on default.

Ok perfect, that's good to know.

Just a fyi, the transaction actually ended up going through and I received my change back from the extra taken out. Thanks for the help Jhanzo!

hmm.. that's weird, because my peer count is a 10 and I just now verified it.  I'm still confused about what it's saying about "Waiting for feedback about this transaction from the bitcoin network".. how long will something like this take since the tx id isn't showing up in blockexplorer?

Here's the raw transaction details:


edit: Status #1 meaning the first status I get when going through the details.. also the address was 1CXth4bzYYwPbLCv3Dxpyj9HbNsekni1V9

So, I've been using multibit for a while now as a lightweight client and haven't ever had a problem until now.  I tried to send a small transaction of 5mBTC and here are the following issues that happened:

1) It failed to send the 5 mBTC
2) It ended up taking out 136.15 BTC from my balance and is, I guess (?), sending it back to me.  In the top I have "+Unconfirmed 136.15" so I guess that's what's going on, but I don't understand why.
3) It looks like there was a problem with the nodes it was connected too.


I set my transaction fees to .15 rather than the usual .1 and this still happened. How can I fix this problem and (hopefully) get my bitcoin back? Do I just wait and let multibit do it's thing?

This is the main thing I want to point out.  What I was trying to say in the OP, is what would happen if the USD and every other fiat system collapses.  I would imagine it would be pretty hard to have a fiat currency, such as USD, to go from representing nothing to representing either gold, silver, or Bitcoin.

So with that being said, I'm curious as to if creating a new "fiat-like" paper/physical currency would be feasible.  I know something like this is a total long shot of actually happening, but I mean hey, Donald Trump is the US president for god sakes...

And the reason as to why I think it would be necessary to have Bitcoin be in physical form on either paper backed currency, or whatever, is to help with microtransactions and not over load blocks; plus it will prevent having people having to wait for 2 hours to get 1 confirmation to get their cup of coffee or whatever.  Then in that instance, you can have larger volume type transactions and/or transactions going across international borders be used on the actual Bitcoin network.

I know that central bankers and people in power are not going to want anything like this to come to life; but I would like to think of a world where this is possible.  Even if it's just entertaining the idea and nothing will come of it.

I mean theoretically it could be done though.  In past human history, and even recent history, banks would have notes that would represent, or guarantee the person accepting the note, that it would be redeemable to get X amount of gold or silver for that note and or currency in general.  It worked for a while, until governments and banks had the incentive to keep the precious metals for themselves and overprint their currency to help fund wars, or "pay off debts", etc; thereby making people placing value in the notes in terms of having "trust' in the American/global economy.

Now what would happen if you could create a fiat system where you could just strap the gold or silver to the note itself?

Would it technically be possible to have a system in government where we send Bitcoin, or even another cryptocurrency, to an address that is attached to the note it self?  

I know that there are already things that have been created for stuff like this; such as OpenDime and Satoshi Notes.  But, I'm curious as to what you guys think would be a "do-able system" if something like the fiat system were to collapse and there were need for a new currency for the masses... since block size limits probably wouldn't allow for that high of tx/sec.

The US is already in a bubble and more than likely it's going to have to bust at some point in time.  Janet Yellen (current head of the Federal Reserve) has been keeping interest rates low throughout the rest of Obama's term which has made the economy look good to everyone else who is not paying attention.  People aren't hurting that badly, and are finding it affordable to get loans from banks to buy a new house, car, etc. they might "need" at the moment; so at this moment, every one seems to be kinda happy-ish.

But the sad reality is that the fed, and same goes for all central banks, are heavily politicized and basically controls everything in the economy, whether it's domestic or global.  So, since Yellen has been known to be in close cahoots with Obama; you can bet she is going to want to jack up the interest rates.  It's not only necessary to stabilize the economy in the long term, but it also makes the POTUS look like he is doing a bad job... which is a win-win for Janet.

Oh yeah, no doubt it's purely only speculation... but I can definitely see where this type of situation can be possible if someone like Trump, who is a political outsider with a huge ego, were to come in and want to try and expose these guys to the national public.  I would feel as if they would bring Trump down with them.

I think I feel this way because 1) Janet was approved by Barack, and therefore the Democratic party; and 2) the fed will feel that they have "lost their grip" on the throat that is democracy.

Idk, I definitely feel that this year will go down as a major pivot point for the US in terms of politics, global relations, etc.

Here you go, if you are feeling insanely confident on that you can make a bet on directbet:

https://directbet.eu/Event.cshtml?EventID=27713489


So, not really good odds if you want to put a lot of money on HRC since you can only win 14% of what you bet.  But the reason why I think the economy will still shit, even if HRC is in office, is because Trump will stir up so much shit about how rigged everything is, I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to (*puts on tinfoil hat*) start some sort of revolution or something.  Civil War pt. II

Not saying it would definitely happen... just saying I wouldn't be surprised if he attempts something of the sort.

You know, it is interesting thinking of what would be the short term outcome of the election if Trump were to win instead of HRC. Trump has said before in the past (doesn't mean he won't flip flop once he gets in, of course) that he wants to audit and revamp the federal reserve.  If that's the case, the federal reserve might just go full out YOLO, and let the economy tank to make Trump look like he is doing terribly as president.  There's no doubt you know what you don't know what you are getting with Trump, and on the flip side, you know exactly what you are getting with HRC, same old shit.

Cryptocurrencies, gold, and silver are always a good bet.  Lots of investors may hedge their value in Bitcoin because it has been the most reliable to hold it's value (looking at a short term view of the markets).  But make no mistake, Bitcoin isn't nearly as "fungible" as gold or silver, with Bitcoin, there is a certain level of 'taint' that comes along with it.  That's the risk someone investing in Bitcoin has to worry about before wanting to withdraw fiat out of Bitcoin through online exchanges.

Believe me, I can totally understand not being interested in this election looking at it from the outside.  But if there is no trust in the Dollar/US economy after someone who is that corrupt, or that much of a loose cannon, it effects everyone; primarily because the USD is still tied to oil.

The Clinton foundation is probably very corrupt, it's a private charity... they have actually done some "good" things in the world, but probably most of it is for show and to look good to the media. Thing is, they will hide their faults until all evidence is out on the table, and when that happens that will just give you the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ response.

Trump's "arguments" are usually so short sighted and he makes these "arguments" based on emotion.

Regardless, it's a bad situation all around... and hence why there is so much uncertainty in the American economy. The USD is based on "trust", and it's really fucking hard to trust a government that's run by either of these two shmucks.

I wonder if they would do this right away if Clinton gets elected though...

I know Janet Yellen has been doing a good job in the eyes of Obama to keep the economy afloat with low interest rates... but something has got to inevitably give in.  I wonder if they will keep the rates low for a little while after/if she wins and wait for something "outside of her grasp" to happen to hurt America's economy.  If they are keeping the rates low for Obama, I would just think that they would keep it low for Hillary too.

Ehh, I'm not quite so sure about wanting to sit on cash right now... just assuming that you mean cash = USD.

Plus, it kind of depends on what stocks you are talking about.  I think there is going to be a huge instability on wall street, but certainly certain stocks can always withstand the storm.

I just think that regardless there will be a huge distrust of the new president, regardless of who it is, and that will in turn affect the S&P and devalue the dollar for a bit.  If that does happen, then usually the worlds economy will follow.  I think investing in assets such as gold and silver is the best play as of right now, but definitely currencies such as Bitcoin and hedge in other alts are a good idea too if you are feeling in a gambling mood.

It's no doubt Gold and Bitcoin are correlated in this manner.