http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Render_unto_CaesarAll three synoptic gospels state that hostile questioners tried to trap Jesus into taking an explicit and dangerous stand on whether Jews should or should not pay taxes to the Roman authorities.
The accounts in Matthew 22:15-22 and Mark 12:13-17 say that the questioners were Pharisees and Herodians, while Luke 20:20-26 says only that they were "spies" sent by "teachers of the law and the chief priests".
They anticipated that Jesus would oppose the tax, as their purpose was "to hand him over to the power and authority of the governor".[Luke 20:20] The governor was Pilate, and he was the man responsible for the collecting of taxes in Roman Judea. At first the questioners flattered Jesus by praising his integrity, impartiality, and devotion to truth. Then they asked him whether or not it is right for Jews to pay the taxes demanded by Caesar. In the Gospel of Mark[12:15] the additional, provocative question is asked, "Should we pay or shouldn't we?"
Jesus first called them hypocrites, and then asked one of them to produce a Roman coin that would be suitable for paying Caesar's tax. One of them showed him a Roman coin, and he asked them whose name and inscription were on it. They answered, "Caesar's," and he responded: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's".
The questioners were impressed. Matthew 22:22 states that they "marveled" (ἐθαύμασαν) and being satisfied with the answer, they went away. Basically, Jesus is saying if you exchange your bitcoins into fiat, you have to render some fiat back to the owners in the form of taxes. Otherwise, if you keep your bitcoins and never sell them, you can use them to buy stuff in heaven after you die. I'm hoping that by then I'll be able to buy a few stars and maybe a nebula.
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I believe this. I've had at least 6 people call me in the past 2 weeks asking for help setting up Litecoin mining rigs, and all were asking if I knew any sources for AMD cards. One even offered to buy my year-old 7970 for retail cost. Also, the Litecoin difficulty has doubled in the last 2 weeks - http://bitcoinwisdom.com/litecoin/difficulty |
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My regret is that I changed jobs. In 2009 I was in a dead-end IT job with nothing to do, so I spent my time doing folding / seti / etc. distributed computing projects with as much hardware I could utilize. Then I made the brilliant decision to get all career-focused and change jobs to a fancy big-name consulting company that demanded all my time with on-call rotations and all-weekend data center upgrades and software installations. If only I stayed at my dead-end job, I would have surely discovered bitcoin earlier and mined the crap out of it, but noooo I had to go an advance my career. Stupid rational choices.  |
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If it seems too good to be true... received an R290. I inquired and they acknowledged it was a pricing error and provided a return label.
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Sweet, thanks! FWIW they appear to be $445 now.
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Either this is the end of profit opportunities in mining... I think it's been this way for a while, at least for consumers / end users. Personally, I concluded that as an individual I have no real chance of successfully competing with big money interests that are now in the mining game. I also think it is very likely that there are many private / secret ASICs and mining clusters being developed behind the scenes, and unfortunately I suspect a subset of ASIC companies are simply announcing delays and mining for themselves with little fear of customer backlash having any impact on profits. People have been pointing out the fact that ASICs purchased today with BTC will never ROI, but customers just keep buying them. For someone with a profit motive this is completely irrational, yet it continues. I'm sure the ASIC companies are happy to sell them hardware as far into the negative ROI window as possible. As long as the mining hardware can be sold for more than it costs to manufacture, the ASIC companies will generate profits. They just need to maintain a minimum ratio of difficulty vs. exchange price, which suggests that rising BTC value is necessary for ASIC manufacturers to survive. Considering that some of the ASIC companies are probably sitting on millions of dollars from private investments and pre-order revenues, they could probably buy up coins on the exchanges an drive the price up themselves if needed... and that is how a proper bubble is created. |
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  I have a set of 5 holo-error 1 BTC Casascius coins in their original sealed packaging. When I bought them the order was for 10 coins. It's hard to tell in the pic, but the anti-static bag is compartmentalized into 2 sections. The first 5 coins were given away long ago, but the remaining 5 coins are sealed into the bottom of the anti-static bag, untouched. Address of the coin visible in the pic, transaction date is 2011-11-13 - https://blockchain.info/address/19MmYCXv568r9f8Pw3fWSq1XZgg4RtamZFI have been debating whether or not to sell them for a while, but it's going to take the right offer. I will not be splitting them up for obvious reasons. PM if interested. |
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I was just looking for the same video..!
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Do I get a prize?
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lol, that's a really impressive list.  Looks like the size of the list of places that accepted bitcoin 2 years ago. Litecoin right now reminds me of when I first got into bitcoin. It's only 1/2 way to the first block reward halving and the first generation of dedicated scrypt mining hardware is just around the corner. I believe there is value in having a "digital silver" to trade, and I think litecoin is the best secondary chain BECAUSE it isn't that different from bitcoin. The mining algorithm separates the mining economy from bitcoin (and the current ASIC market) and I consider that to be positive as well. Long live the queen!  |
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I enjoyed reading this and share many of the same sentiments. I have one disagreement to note: A safe life of luxury, and comfort closed in by 4 walls- or a life of freedom. Freedom to make love, play loud music, create art, wrestle naked, and raise confident kids that think. These are not mutually exclusive, and I would say I seek all the things listed! In fact, having 4 walls enables you to do many of the things listed in the second sentence without pissing off your neighbors who may enjoy their privacy/peace/quiet. I would suggest a more accurate representation of the opposing wants on the liberty/security spectrum specific to a particular topic (i.e. no counter-party trust vs. consumer protections) or possibly just leave it open-ended. |
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Hi everyone, I've been running an electronics classified site for some time now and just finished adding multi-currency support for Bitcoin and Litecoin with realtime exchange prices. To view prices in another currency, just select it in the upper right near the login button. www.bitlist.comFeatures: - no registration required - quick and easy to use - community moderated w/point based flagging system - search alerts - receive email when a listing is created with your search parameters - multi-currency support - USA / Canada locations are enabled, Europe/Asia/Oceania locations will be available soon - additional features for vendors and accounts Coming soon: - reputation system - user home pages / "my listings" - multi-language support One thing that I never liked about typical classifieds sites is that searches are usually just text matches on the item description. Our classifieds engine lets you narrow down results with drill-down navigation, just like NewEgg or Amazon. When a listing is created we automatically extract tags and auto-populate the description fields. Users are able to select additional tags for the fields, as well as enter their own tags. The result is a classifieds site that you can easily browse just like most commerce sites. Right now there are only a handful of items listed for sale for bitcoin. If you have something for sale please consider creating a listing and let me know how it goes. Any feedback is appreciated. We are constantly adding new features to the engine, so if you have any suggestions let me know, and please report any bugs if you find them. Thanks for looking! |
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this is very bad press for the bitcoin community.
I'm not so sure. It may be seen as an indicator that bitcoin is "growing up". VCs and investors are increasingly becoming interested in using bitcoin for payments, and with the upcoming implementation of the payment protocol, the so-called anonymity of bitcoin is effectively eliminated - a step that is necessary for bitcoin to gain mass adoption with approval from regulators (in the US). That will certainly rub some people the wrong way, but consider the incentives at play for early adopters who have no choice but to sacrifice some privacy in order to preserve their bitcoin fortunes... It will be interesting to see the market reaction over the next few weeks. |
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Because Bitcoin violates the law of "too good to be true".  |
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Tough decision. I agree with a lot of the positions of the candidates, but in varying contexts. I personally feel that the Bitcoin Foundation should represent the global bitcoin community, and that it should be powerless. I think that other organizations are better suited to focusing on legal issues and interfacing with authorities in specific jurisdictions. "Freedom of transaction" is a powerful mission statement that resonates with me.
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The value of any money is a shared illusion, or delusion! If you are trying to make a quick profit trading crypto-currencies, the fundamentals don't matter because you are merely playing a strategy game against others with the same intention. I believe most speculators are lazy and factor their perceptions of the "community momentum" into their decisions of when to buy and sell, and the LTC/Gox hype cycle is a perfect piece of speculative momentum for experienced traders to leverage. Pumps and dumps will happen, but they can also provide a great opportunity for investors who are operating on a different time scale. Sometimes so-called bag holders get the last laugh.
If you believe in the long term viability of Litecoin and other crypto-currencies, then stop worrying about the short-term price and focus your efforts on contributing to the infrastructure/economy/awareness/etc. If you have a long term position, doing so is a way to directly affect your investment. If you're long enough, you may reach a point where there isn't any need to "cash out" - after all we are talking about a currency and the whole point of acquiring money in the first place is to acquire purchasing power!
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I support the merged-mining additions, but I think the retarget and anything else should be left untouched. IMHO the focus should be on keeping the codebase in sync with current bitcoin release.
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