There is lots of fluctuation in hash rates. The 4-day average still supports Erik's point.

http://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=4days

The title asks a question. All the sorry discussion in this thread answers it. Now we need to move from "why?" to "how?".

Why not? They disclose lots of other things. Publishing a current total of funds held would in no way expose personal information on individuals. Also, publishing makes it public, so there is no unfair advantage to anyone.

No.

There are really two very different options under "yes" -

1. Living off of bitcoin-related income (three or four top-volume exchanges, SR and SR sellers, few of the payment services maybe). This really means living off of your work that happens to involve Bitcoin one way or another.

2. Living off of your btc savings, assuming you mined them or bought them bravely at a fraction of today's value. If you are not in this category, but hope to be in the future, you've got to ask yourself where this value will come from. Seriously, the only way is to work hard on making Bitcoin useful and accepted. Otherwise your investment will be worthless.

I see. There is the easy way, and the samurai way. The easy way is to ask the exchanges politely to publish compounded data.
The samurai way cannot be discussed in public, plus the samurai would keep the answer for themselves.

Why?

I am not a trader. Here is my uneducated attempt: a bubble is the increase in price of an asset caused mainly by the demand due to expected continuing increase in price. Good enough?

From what I see, these things only make sense in retrospect, or with the help of insider information. You are brave to make predictions, although that's easy without providing a time frame.

As far as I am concerned, yes, this is a good time to sell because I bought them and mined them cheaper. If the price next week shoots up or drops down, I won't play captain hindsight with "should've" or "told you so" - my decission to sell was good, and based on what I knew for sure.

If and when it becomes widely adopted for merchandise, yes. There are many uses of Bitcoin which would not be reflected in CPI, though - store of value and online tipping, for example.

We know exactly how much of it inflation will eat up - it's hard-coded into the protocol.

In my most optimistic estimates, bitcoin will be valued at few thousand 2012 USD, so my current opinion is that BTC50 will not do the job, no matter what. Besides, why would anyone put all their retirement savings into a single asset?

I'm starting to warm up to this. I apologize if kicking at an open door, but private key can in principle be encrypted, and POS infrastructure could be decrypting it, right? The system could be assymetric and involve public key and denomination as seed/salt...? (Haven't thought this through at all)

I do keep coins on various exchanges - about as many as I need. Never had problems of any kind. I keep money in the bank, too. I use credit cards, too. Once I had my credit card cancelled without prior warning or post-mortem notification. They thought they noticed "suspicious activity" and killed the card.
Seems like you are complaining about Gox. They are transparent about how they do business, and comply with government regulations. If you don't like it, don't go there, and don't waste everybody's time here bitching about it. You have a plenty of non-regulated, free, anarchic choices available to exchange your coins. Good luck.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=98586

These are skimmed much more easily than credit or debit cards - all you need is a camera, not even physical access. There is also the issue of change. Wasted paper, too. Any smartphone can display QR codes on demand, only when needed. Perhaps a nice chimera would be an e-paper note. Sounds too much like the "Bitcoin Card"? It does, but I think Casascius is more than qualified to look into similar solutions and to innovate.

That's one way to look at it. Another way would be to notice that the study actually suggests best ways to protect SR. Also note they were very mindful about ethical implications of their methodology and publication. The title of this thread is inappropriate.

Unless you're making fuel from the seeds of cannabionoid varieties. But we stray from the topic.

We should make it a habit to revive old threads with predictions.

I don't use FB, so can't vote. But I do cheer in here.

A similar service is also offered by paysius.com. They also explain Bitcoin well to anyone willing to read for five minutes.

I wonder what producers of hemp fuel do with all the waste product (everything but seeds)... SR?

Kijiji in the rest of Canada, too. I add a sentence stating that I gladly accept bitcoins, and offer a discount for bitcoin payments. This is a sensible way to popularize and legitimize Bitcoin.