I'd probably just shove it in cold storage and see what happens. Everything else offers far too little potential profits for the amount of risk and effort involved. Not to mention that even only a decent rate of 5-10% a year you'd only be looking at BTC0.25-0.5 a year which in reality is peanuts.

Surprisingly I found a response that mirrors reality.

In general gambling is an expected loss - while you can get lucky - from basic probability you'd more likely than not find yourself in the red. The exception to this rule is in any form of gambling where skill plays a factor (i.e. poker/sports betting), but for you to safely make a profit you'd have to be far far superior in skill to the rest of the people you're effectively pitting yourself against. In poker it would be solid play whereas in betting it would be the ability to extremely accurately predict the true probability of the event (which in reality would only be do-able by modelling).

People on this forum will pretty much hammer PayPal all day and promote Bitcoin until they believe it's a deity. The reality is that PayPal and Bitcoin are useful in differing scenarios (ie. if you want difficult to trace transactions Bitcoin is clearly better). However, at the current time (if I had to choose one), PayPal would be a better choice simply because it has more merchant adoption - I've rarely seen a website that doesn't offer PayPal as a payment method - where the converse is true for Bitcoin. While Bitcoin may be a better option in future - currently IMO PayPal is the better of the two for overall purchases.

I don't think you're going to be able to find a buyer (or at least a meaningful offer). Start-ups are only really useful if they either have a patent for the idea their using or their brandname has huge value (i.e. is well known and attracts consumers already) and potential for growth in the future. Right now there's nothing stopping someone from copying you're idea (without buying you out) and using their own branding - because buying you out would really only be for the branding and you're branding doesn't do anything at the moment.

There are a lot of these 'math geniuses' who have spent considerable effort in producing the ideas behind ECC. They have been reviewed by numerous people (and I have no doubt cryptographers at various intelligence organisations would have had their own look) and there doesn't appear to be an significant weakness. Having a great understanding of mathematics makes it easier to understand the principles behind ECC and ECSDA but it does not mean you can find a flaw if there isn't one.

If all of the banks agree - and share data (which they already do in most countries) then you'll be hard pressed to continually open accounts. I'm not saying it's impossible to attain or spend Bitcoin without a bank intermediary - I'm saying that it's such an inconvenience to do so that a majority of people will not bother. Of course there are hardcore adopters who might be happy to do so - but you can be pretty darn sure that if it's a ton of additional effort a majority of laypeople will not adopt. There is already enough difficulty in explaining Bitcoin's workings, how to secure coins, how to acquire them etc. that more problems aren't going to help Bitcoin at all.

But this is all in theory - the reality is that the banks won't do much unless they feel threatened - and they're not threatened enough yet to accept the losses that come with turned away business.

I doubt we'll come to the need for denominations smaller than a satoshi in this lifetime (i.e. 80 years) and that's being hopeful given the uncertain nature of Bitcoin in the short term. As to 'retrieving' coins via a fork - that would be a definite no-go simply because if you could effectively steal someone's coin by getting a network consensus very few people would trust Bitcoin (and a great number of people would never support such a fork in the first place).

The miners won't be perpetually be making a loss - the system runs on an equilibrium. Block rewards and fees compensate them for the "effort" up to the point where it is either break-even or profitable. If it's extremely profitable you'd expect more miners to come into play and therefore the system becomes less profitable for any individual miner. On the same point, if it isn't profitable the ones who are making significant losses will leave until such time that it is viable and therefore decreased hashing power will lead to greater profitable for those who remain mining.

I doubt 2016 will be particularly great - but the future is nigh on impossible to predict - let alone something with as much volatility and uncertainty as Bitcoin.

They could make it an extreme pain in the arse to use it which would hurt Bitcoin in the extreme. Given that literally every person I've seen only cares about the price relative to fiat - if the banks all agreed to close every persons account who they tied with Bitcoin transactions (which is perfectly acceptable under their TOS) then you'd have no way to get fiat (outside of raw cash transactions). Not very many people are willing to deal in raw face to face transactions (especially with the personal security risks) and thus Bitcoin would be rather hard to use given that you have no way to spend it (as no one accepts Bitcoin as Bitcoin - everyone denominates it as fiat - much like a commodity).

Used to - but unfortunately download speeds are rather slow where I am so it's not worth the time and effort to maintain. Now I mainly use a mix of Electrum and online hot wallets if the need arises. Aside from network security I don't really see a need to have the blockchain - especially given that there are currently enough nodes operating.

Stunna being a professional or not has no relevance on statistical probability. There is no known way (and I'm extremely confident in saying there never will be) to stay permanently ahead of EV. EV is called that because of the fact that as you approach an infinite sample space you would expect to converge to your EV.

Also, IIRC - in dice sites which offer investment the owner should be able to bet having complete knowledge of the server seed (because they have access to the server side) as well as the client meaning they can bet with guaranteed wins. Alternatively, and probably easier is the option to just run with the investments. For PD, this is obviously a non-issue as it is funded by Stunna but it is notable. 

Possible but unlikely.

As to economic effects - this has none until it is confirmed, and given that he hasn't spoken out to date since he left - it's quite likely you'll never find him and there will never be a confirmation. Not to mention, even if you did - do you think he would just casually state he lost all of his private keys? If anything that would reduce confidence in Bitcoin - if it's creator couldn't even store his own keys safely how is a layperson meant to?

If you want to memorize something (for peace of mind I guess) - just memorize a seed and use that to generate addresses. Problem solved - you have infinite addresses available. Honestly, I don't really bother - I have enough back-ups as it is and they are all secured well enough for me not to worry.

The thing is though in most cases if you have been legitimately hacked (and not casually given someone you're password to commit fraud - which is stupid because it's easily traceable) the bank is willing to reimburse you're losses. Bitcoin is the exact opposite - if you are ever hacked - you're completely screwed, there is no recourse, no one who will help you.

But here's the problem - we're assuming a government of a meaningful nation will ever adopt Bitcoin as its official currency. That'll never happen because of the reasons you state - government requires some degree of control over financial markets (through regulatory reserve banks) so they can modulate and respond to economic changes. Bitcoin doesn't allow for that to happen at all - it's completely a pure market - which means government will never see it as viable for official adoption.

It can take a significant beating however. Take the 2008 GFC - the value of the USD plummeted against most of the major currencies and only stabilised around '11/'12 and started making a recovery.

In theory it could completely collapse if something catastrophic happened (i.e. US was nuked) and investors lost confidence in America - but the odds of something like that happening are incredibly low.

Just out of reference - most governments also raise money through the sale of assets (usually it's an issue when things fall out of public hands, but not always) as well as various business interests on publicly owned land (mining comes to mind). This all being said - I honestly don't understand how Bitcoin helps in any of this - unless there is a system societal change beyond government this kind of system will remain.

If you win - usually you'll get a thrill (associated with neurotransmitter/neuropeptide release) which across a long term creates a positive feedback loop leading you to enjoy gambling and continue to do so. Furthermore, if you gamble regularly you reinforce the habit - so regardless of how much you enjoy it you'll be more inclined to gamble.

I can't see a reason why gambling wouldn't have been invented - some humans find the thrill of risk innately enjoyable - whereas other would be happy to provide such a service and make a profit from it. Even if it wasn't invented as early as it was - there is no reason to think it wouldn't have been invented relatively soon after anyway.

Hi, I'd like to join this campaign (both signature & avatar). Let me know if you're interested. Thanks.