I don't think there's any conspiracy or ill-intent at all involved. As with many things, someone invents or creates a thing and releases it to the world, and people use it as they desire, regardless of what the intentions of the creator were. You can see this with bitcoin, certainly. Did Satoshi intend for Bitcoin to become the currency of choice for websites like Silk Road? No, he created a currency he intended to hold value and not be subject to manipulation, it just so happens that it has features that also make it a suitable currency for illegal websites. So the intent of any conspiracy is absent, it's just a coincidence.

It is possible (and likely) for many institutions to use blockchain technology and not do a thing with bitcoin. Many major technology and financial institutions in the US are already working along these lines. So the explosion of blockchain proliferation does not necessarily mean anything for the value of bitcoin in the future, as many people interested in blockchain technology are not interested in bitcoin, and will separate the two to use the only part that has value to them.

It doesn't need to be a legal currency to be taxed. In the US, bitcoin is taxed as property despite the fact that it's not a currency. Gold also is not a legal currency, but you still have to pay tax on that as well. So its status as a currency is irrelevant. Anything that has value can (and probably will) be taxed.

It's been more than 3 years since bitcoin crashed from it's all time high, and it still hasn't recovered the price that was lost. Would that fit into your definition of "recovering quickly?" Because to me, it seems there's no such thing as a guarantee, but many people on these boards seem to be blindly believing that if you lose money, you'll just make it back. Life in general, and bitcoin specifically, does not work like that.

Right now, increasing fees are the main enemy of Bitcoin. It makes commerce is bitcoins too expensive. When you have to pay 50 cents to $1 on small transactions, that's not price effective. You could do a digital fiat transaction with a credit card or debit card and pay no fee for the transaction.

What kind of tax are you talking about? Because when you buy something from an online merchant that accepts Bitcoin, they collect sales tax. It's not like using Bitcoin is a license to avoid taxes.

When there's this much money at stake, referring to bitcoin as "an experiment" seems overly reductive. Bitcoin has created millionaires out of thin air. Once that wealth is created, it's much less theoretical or experimental to the people who have it, and they're not likely to do anything to jeopardize it. That's part of what makes bitcoin resistant to change or further innovation, the fear of losing the wealth it has created for the people who are major players in this scene currently.

Ah thanks. I thought you said I had been whitelisted at one point, so inwas surprised about having my tier one halved again after that. But glad it's resolved again now.

That's a ton of money to pour into a project. I can't imagine what it would be, other than renting a bunch of server capacity to host some type of mining operation or something along those lines.

Hey wetsuit, any news on that touted announcement from a couple weeks back? You piqued my interest, but then there hasn't been anything since then. If no news, do you have a timeframe of when you expect you'll be ready to announce?

Yeah, it seems to happen to me every couple weeks. But the good thing is that wetsuit always fixes it promptly when I bring it to his attention. Annoying that it happens, thankful it's resolved quickly though.

Gold mostly acts as a hedge against inflation, and Bitcoin is highly volatile. We've had a sustained bull market here and everyone is back to thinking that it can never go down again, just like 2011 before it crashed. When everyone is universally optimistic, it's often a sign of a bubble.

How is it so much easier to confiscate gold? First of all, Bitcoin doesn't have to be "confiscated," banning it would be effective. If all these payment processors whobdeal with Bitcoin become outlawed, it will make it hard to move money into Bitcoin, and cause a mass exodus as people liquidate to protect their money from losing value as the price of Bitcoin collapses. You couldn't "confiscate" it, but you could drive the value down so far as to make it virtually worthless or too worthless to bother with the risk of dealing in a banned currency. That can be done as easily, or probably much easier, than finding and confiscating physical gold.

This is interesting, especially the range of 1200 miles. However, I'm skeptical of fuel cell technology. Companies have been promising this technology forever, but it's never been cheap enough to be a viable alternative. I don't anticipate t becoming so for the trucking industry either. Natural gas is a far easier, cheaper, and likely technology, and there are already companies in the US serving that emerging trend, including Clean Energy Fuels, and Westport engines. Natural gas is already viable as a fuel alternative, and cheaper than diesel even in this repressed oil price environment.

Fat chance. War will increase the price of oil, and "bombing oil producers to hell" will destroy critical infrastructure needed to extract and transport oil. Not to mention it would further destabilize the region in areas that are presently stable.

Oh ok, that's what I figured. I wouldn't expect the page to update in realtime if it's open, just to reflect whatever values there were when the page was first opened.

Btw, my first tier reward is halved again. Can you fix me?

So do you manually update the prize tables then? It seems to me that would be a lot of work. It always seemed to me the tables updated to reflect the current price of each, which is why I figured they updated automatically.

Two reasons bitcoin is never going to "replace the banking  system."  1) Transaction fees will soon be unwieldy for bitcoin, and 2) banking system provides too many other functions to be replaced by a digital currency.  

Bitcoin fees are rising. Every halving and with the more congested the network gets, fees increase in nominal bitcoins. On top of that, the more valuable bitcoin is in USD, the more those transaction fees are. We're currently on the edge of where bitcoin is not competitive for small transactions. Paying 50 cents to buy a $10 item with bitcoins is not economical, considering you could buy the item with digital fiat with no extra charge.

Also, bitcoin is not condusive to credit. Lending and therefore economic growth would seize up in a bitcoin denominated economy. People expecting bitcoin to replace the USD and create an economic paradise are delusional.

Oil consumption in China is not going down. It is still rising, and will continue to rise. http://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/global_oil.cfm

Those projections are the November 2016 short term energy outlook from the EIA. It shows an actual increase in oil consumption by China and the world as a whole that is projected to continue rising presently.

Are you unaware that the IRS already is already taxing Bitcoin as property? It hasn't had much effect on the price at all.

In regards to number 2, I don't find the argument convincing. We have too many real world examples of this for a logical argument to refute it. Look at areas where there is a weak government or weak rule of law. There are often factions that grow large enough to operate as a quasi-government and they are rarely fair or stable. Arbitrary law rules these organizations. (Drug cartels are a good example, ISIS, Farc, Yemeni warlords, Boko Harem, etc.) These are the groups that come to power in anarchistic settings.