While from a technical perspective I'd like to see some double-spend attempts on an alternative chain - I don't see how you can argue it has no legal ramifications due to some implied consensus of other miners.
You may as well argue that some HTTP software 'agreed' to send you some private documents when you sent some perfectly valid HTTP requests that were crafted to take advantage.  
It's not what the protocols or systems allow - it's the intent.  

Deliberately invalidating other people's transactions that were made in good faith can't be defended on the basis that you had the technical capability to do it.

Now.. given that there is no specific company behind the chain.. so therefore no obvious terms & conditions.. it might make the case very 'interesting' and/or difficult to proceed with, but in theory any affected individual could argue that you had defrauded them.

If you could perform a double-spend against another of your own wallets, or with a party who agreed to it - then I guess that would be fine so long as you didn't invalidate any 3rd party transactions in the process.

EDIT: I guess you hinted at this with "you get to decide it's history. "     If you meant that in this history you ensured that all other legitimate transactions were maintained.. then I suppose this could be done without any 'damage'.. aside from proof that the system is vulnerable.

I'm not terribly concerned with people who are already familiar with bitcoin, getting into these things knowing the risks.

It is a bit of a worry that some people may come across i0coin.org or solidcoin.info etc as their first taste of cryptocurrencies and not realize that bitcoin is the serious chain.

The new user may think that bitcoin is the 'older' one and that the newer ones are genuine improvements.
e.g from the solidcoin.info site:
"It features improvements over the original Bitcoin protocol which aim to keep the transaction network flowing freely and to avoid deliberate denial of service attacks by malicious pool owners."

The existence of these crap chains is another point the bitcoin naysayers can use to push FUD.

Hopefully this is a relatively minor issue .. as presumably it's the ability to spend coins with merchants and exchange directly to national currencies that will be the real driver.. and bitcoin I think will remain the obvious leader in those regards.

I've no idea..  the article just turned up in my bitcoin googling.  There are some earlier posts on bitcoin too... all pretty good stuff.

You might take heart from this perspective then: http://presentcynosure.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/bitcoin-and-ethics/

Like the author of that piece - I don't think bitcoin is represented by such a narrow part of the political spectrum. There are plenty of people who are on board for more pragmatic reasons.   

Sounds like a plan for the global bitcoin conference  to turn into..  local meetups.


Bruce has a friend who want's to make some money from bitcoiners?   Well I guess it may be fun for those bitcoin entrepreneurs who make a lot of coin by then and feel like having a party with some fellow bitcoiners.


I was surprised at how this whole conference thing seemed to be thrown together at short notice. Was onlyonetv worried someone else would host it and steal their limelight if they didn't go ahead with it immediately?
I do like what onlyonetv does in general...  but they did seem a bit dismissive of people's concerns pre-conference and seem to have rushed it all.
Hardly a snatch of live video when it's run by 'onlyonetv'.. wtf??

I'm disappointed they didn't arrange to have the Bitcoin ATM guy (Todd Bethell) on side and at the show. (was bitbills at least represented?)
Something physical and exciting like that would have been perfect to show the media.. as it is.. what are they going to report on?

Looking forward to more reports from community members anyway..  I'm sure it was a great opportunity to meet and share ideas.
Even if it is just a somewhat hyped meetup.. I'd love to attend some day.

I don't know which way it will go.. but that's not quite 'no idea'....   it's 3 ideas..  none of which I can choose from. (The sum of all ideas is no idea?.. I guess so)

1) it'll go nowhere for a long time.

2) up due to a bit of conference media coverage and new users

3) down due to disappointment in lack of conference media coverage and new users.

There are also the usual 'down' ideas of .. yet another major hack/incident....  government intervention...  banks refusing to deal with any bitcoin related entity etc etc..  but I don't particularly see any of those as imminent.  If they come - they may just strike out of the blue.
   

Nicholas Jackson declared only a couple of weeks ago: (Aug 8 )
"The Bitcoin Economy Is Collapsing With No Sign of Recovery"

He's clearly a trashy journalist. Ignore him.

Just a blog item.. but makes an excellent point on people's assumptions about political aspects.



A repost... along with the "What is Bitcoin?" video.

Ok.. This is a *verizon math* class mistake.
(http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/)

Either you mean 10 cents   - or you mean .10 dollars   - you don't mean .1 of a cent in this case.

If you don't understand the difference - or don't understand why the way you have written it is absolutely poor communication - you are not the person to be proposing decimal shifts.

I have an admission to make - I've been heavily involved in just one of the *many* previous discussions around decimal points, and had a modest proposal. (which itself was of course just a collation of existing ideas)

This was not to have the whole world do some seizmic 'decimal shift' - but to allow the GUI to be flipped to the appropriate size range for the type of transaction.
( bitcoin unit colour chart: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27663.0 )

At the touch of a button you can flip the price to BTC, millis, micros while entering an amount - whatever the merchant has priced in.  
If the merchant priced in micros and you're a bit fuzzy on the maths and don't like those micro thingies..  before paying you can just flip it to the millis (or whatever) which you are familiar with.

Given that right now there are vast wealth differences across the planet - and in some parts of the world, people's daily transactions occur in the order of a few dollars  or less (USD equiv) - it seems pretty presumptuous that we can decide for the whole world when to shift the decimal.
The answer is *don't*.
It's a display issue... and a personal one at that.

EDIT: Recently I saw an example..  the gambling site Dragons Tale.  It already prices in what it calls 'bitmills'.   This demonstrates that because the general transaction size is so small - it's convenient for this merchant to already be working in a different unit.  It simply makes no sense to make this decision at a community level when it's one for the individual markets, merchants, and customers to make.
Even on the big exchanges..   massive traders holding other peoples funds will continue to trade in whole BTC even if the average user is only buying a few millicoins.  There will never be a unit suitable for everyone at once.


Thanks for almost giving me a bitcoin.. haha..  It's a nice thought - but I need to keep my credibility as an honest whinger and critic

My first 2 criticisms are little more than nitpicks...

1) You talk of 'current activity',  'near term',  'present day Bitcoin'  etc etc  - but the document appears to contain no date.  Sure.. I know it's 2011-08,  and I guess you'll address this in the eBook format - but if you let something escape as a pdf it should probably also be dated.

2) In the list of monthly expenditures you have:
Utilities (water/electric/trash)

- No specific mention of internet connectivity?  Seems a little odd in the context of Bitcoin where aside from a few experiments like Bitbills that allow offline transactions, it's pretty much a requirement to have a connection.



I guess this means the entirety of Bitcoin goes in the 'nice-to-haves' category because of the internet connectivity requirement... whereas fiat cash would be classified as critical to have because you need something to use to pay for the 'fundamental' requirements?

Nice theory..  but if concurrent issues of bitomat.pl losing it's wallet + mybitcoin only brought it down to approximately that level.. then your 7.50 catch point is probably only good if bitcoins are trading at around $15 or less (approx where they were before these problems)

I don't know how best to estimate the effect of major service failure/hacks... but I have a suspicion that if we see a rise to around $15 again soon, then people will realize that even these perceived 'major' events are really nothing more than a transient side issue as far as bitcoin itself is concerned.  Future such dips might therefore be less drastic.

No way.. the judge would describe it as a complex case which raises serious issues..  and that in order to preserve the innovation that patents and copyright protections so obviously promote, it is imperative that after a lengthy legal battle, Apple be both heavily punished and richly rewarded.

^THIS^
How do people not get this by now???

Also.. promoting alternative chains to allow those with experience in cryptocurrencies to rip out a few dollars from some starry eyed newbies is a nasty idea which provides ammunition for bitcoin naysayers and skeptics.

Alternative currencies as experiments for particular technical and/or economic features may well be interesting.. and I've no particular concern with some people speculating/gambling on those provided they understand the risks...   but to promote this sort of gambling because as you say we should not 'underestimate the stupidity of people' does not do bitcoin any good.

The TL;DR for the eBook announcement is "BUY BUY BUY!!!" (notwithstanding the OP's claims that it's just an 'expectation')
...  so I think this is more a speculation than an announcement and should accordingly be moved to the speculation section.

Not only that - but unmeasurable as a standalone price-influence due to release on bitcoin conference day.
That's no doubt going to be true for various announcements coming out of the conference itself... but still..  
if the OP makes claims that the price rise due to the eBook content will be large, the OP shouldn't be surprised if people are skeptical of this both before and after the release no matter what happens.

A plan for whom?  For individuals, the community as a whole... your company?

How is just another eBook on some obscure (to the masses anyway) technical/economic subject  going to grab attention... aside from a post here? Are you publicizing this eBook somewhere else? 
(or does it only need attention from some existing bitcoin users in order to acheive your mysterious aims?)

Yes.. already reported in this thread. Please do a search before posting.

The writer doesn't seem to understand the 21Million limit, or divisibility.. so the trading card analogy is pretty useless really.

I think all the rallying from the previous $11 up to the current $11.50 is purely in *anticipation* of good news coverage coming out of the conference.
This means if there is too much more upwards movement before the actual news - and the news isn't particularly good at pulling in more interest for bitcoin - then we may just see a 'disappointment' drop after the conference.

I'll be happy if there's just enough news coming out of this to consolidate and stabilize the anticipatory gains we seem to be seeing now.
If it spikes up to $20 or beyond.. how can you have a reasonable confidence that this is sustainable and isn't about to crash back to $11 or so?
What we really need to see in bitcoin is a slow uptrend as new services and users come in to the community.

According to Bruce on the Bitcoin Show episode 38 - yes, he 'finally had to say yes' -  you can pay in cash at the door.

Adrianne Jeffries from the Tech newssite Betabeat (part of The New York Observer) has been writing Bitcoin articles for a while now..
(She appeared recently on the Bitcoin Show - Episode 34)
Betabeat even has a 'Bitcoin Wire' section with a bitcoin icon on the front page. (http://www.betabeat.com)

For some reason these articles haven't always turned up in searches and aren't posted here..

Some of the recent articles:
2011-08-19 Search for Owners of MyBitcoin Loses Steam
2011-08-15 You Can Now Buy Bitcoin With Cash at Any Chase or Wells Fargo
2011-08-09  Upcoming Bitcoin Conference and World Expo Upgrades Venue

Today also, within 'Rumors & Acquisitions: Now, Flex'