Splitting and merging wallets is another thing that would be nice to have as feature on the client.

But anyway, you can do it with a little work.

I think these steps would help:

• Make a backup of your wallet.dat somewhere safe.
• Stop bitcoin (if running) and remove the wallet.dat from the default directory (your user home)
• Start the program, it should create a new wallet.dat file on your home, empty.
• Create a new address with your new file.
• Follow first 2 steps again, for this new file.
• Put your old wallet.dat file, with all your money, back into your user home.
• Send the amount you want to the address you created on step 4.

Voilà, you now have two wallet.dat files with different amounts on them.

In what way these alternatives you present here are better than paypal?

You can't even check that you received a transaction. Actually, I suppose that without the wallet.dat file you can't even run the program, so you can't generate either... (I suppose it would create a new wallet.dat, but then there is no easy way to merge the files, you would have to run the program with one, get an address, restart the program with the other, transfer... )

It would be really nice if the client could manage private key password encryption on its own. It could encrypt all address but "remember" the address the wallet has (not the private keys), in order to check reception. It could also continue to receive blocks and generate, since this doesn't depend on the previous private keys.

As far as I understand, there is no "waste" of addresses. Anyone can by chance generate one of the addresses that he discarded during the process.
If in the process he was saving each attempt, then there would be two owners of a same address.

The chance of this happening is so remote, that there is no reason to worry. (I guess)

Have you tried showing him that they are already worth around 0,06USD each ?
Actually, try to explain what value is... gold itself has no "guarantee"... nobody can really guarantee people will keep valuing gold.

What kind of harm one could do by breaking cryptography in a super-speed like the scenario suggested?

AFAIK, the block building is a process of cryptography breaking itself. So, if the "enemy" could gather more processing power than the entire honest network, s/he could generate his own block chain where s/he could undo some past transactions and cause other troubles. But, even for the government, it sounds too much of computing power.

Another thing they could do is try to break the private key of someone. That would be an attempt of stealing... it doesn't sound profitable since people rarely would have too much money under one same private key, and if it takes months to break it, the money will probably change keys before that.

Besides running a parallel block chain or stealing someone's money, what else could be done with a super-key-breaking-computer?

@bitcoin2cash:
Just find a way to use the private key of this address of yours to sign something and post it on your site. This would at least prove you own 50kBTC.

Regards

It should be easy to prove he has the 50k if he could sign something using the private keys that hold these 50k, shouldn't it?

Of course that doesn't prove he'll sell them at the price announced, but at least prove he has them, or at most, proves that somebody who has them is his friend. 

The worst is that this reaction of these dumb-ass third world* central bankers isn't really Keynesian.
The reason they want to devaluate their currencies is because they want to boost exports. You know, it's always better to sell than to buy, right hein?

Impressive. It's pure "mercantilism", centuries after it has been proved a wrong economic thought.

And then, of course, the means through which they will promote this devaluation is through Keynesian ideas, what will make things even worse than plain simple inflation. Following a bad idea through horrible means.


+1

* Before the politically correct police jumps on me, let me just say I'm a "third world" citizen.

At a first glance the idea sounds interesting, but you're suggesting to create an unofficial stock market. Being unofficial, no enforcement of any kind would be available. You can't enforce companies to publish real data, or even to pay owed dividends. You can't enforce decision power to be given to someone that buys enough stocks either...

Just a remark, not saying it couldn't work.

But you can treat your CD, with whatever it has in it, as your property. The same thing for your hard drive and the bitcoin keys in it. They are your property, and if I use them without your consent, I'm violating your rights.

But as long as you allow a friend to copy the content of your CD to his property, without imposing any sort of contract, then the copy this person has belongs to him only. Celine Dion can't accuse this friend of yours of violating her rights. Maybe she could accuse you, if you had signed a particular contract to obtain such CD that prevented you from doing that. But your friend has nothing to do with it.

No, it's not just about downloading music and movies...
This whole IP industry is "lost".
I've worked in companies that pay you just for creating them patents. Whether these patents will be used or not, it's not important. Many are just kept as "protection" or to attack competitors that decide to implement it. Many small companies specialize in create ridiculous patents and use them against companies that have been doing that for a while. And due to different regional laws, many of this "patent trolls" succeed.
In the end, a legal resource meant to protect and stimulate innovation is actually preventing it from happening.

I doubt that in a society of voluntary law such a thing could happen.

 

But then what would be the point of my e-mail ?

It is not really correct to say that.
First, there is no inherent value in anything (I explained that in another thread). The value of everything is subjective, it is not a characteristic of stuff... it's an opinion people have of stuff. But anyway, I understood what you meant.

And also, the labor/energy spent on the production of something does not determine the price of this something. That's by the way the labor-value theory used by Marx to justify his theory, which, obviously, is wrong.
Something may be worth less than what was spent to produce it (that's why many business have losses!). Actually, I think that the current value of bitcoins is below what we spend in energy to generate them, but I never tried to calculate it.


Ok, point taken, without computers/internet, no bitcoins. But if these things cease existing, bitcoins will be the least of our problems!
(unless you meant like people who do not have access to these things... that is not a problem... I think that if bitcoins ever get enough popular, there will be physical means to exchange little amounts easily... )

Nice that you tried. Once I have some time I'll do the same. Maybe multiple people writing them might convince them to at least read something about it.

I tried with Brazilian Mises Institute as well, and they also rejected so far, apparently because it's money "backed by nothing", as said above. I'm waiting a little before trying to explain them the difference between bitcoins and fiat currencies, but I'll try.

Exactly like gold and silver. 

We need to make they understand that...

Well, they've been trying something similar against piracy, labeling people "thief" and all... so far the results haven't been that effective

But it is better than gold. I am not saying that it is a better investment option right now, just that it is a better currency.
Any commodity is a potential currency. What made gold and silver excellent currencies are some inner features of such precious metals, that are not only shared by bitcoins, but improved.
If you have patience with automatic translations, I tried to explain it here: http://tinyurl.com/38llgfq

To help it grow we should try not only the geek community as mentioned above, but the libertarian community as well. If we make a good number of libertarians realize that bitcoins are even better than gold as currency, they will support it.
If anyone here has any sort of contact with any libertarian think tank, please, talk to them about bitcoins!

Regarding avoiding governments to shut it down... well... if it ever gets sufficiently widespread to threat their monetary policies, you may be sure they will try to shut it down.
But... how do you shut down a P2P system? 

They are probably wasting money if doing so.... I think that the electricity costs of generation highly exceed what you can get for it.
But, well, let's not complain... they are helping the network by donating processing power to the block building process, as well as allowing us to buy cheaper bitcoins