It's not even really in secret anymore. It's common knowledge know now that they meet, and their writings show they're pretty open about their end goals.

When European royalty, U.S. government officials, the CEO's of major multi-national corporations, and other assorted powerful figures are filmed regularly meeting every 2 or 4 years, it strains credibility to ignore the possibility of conspiratorial motives, and presume they all just want to discuss the best schools for their kids or some other fluff.

I'm sure plenty of people would have done that, mainly due to their pro-Bitcoin bias, but also possibly because they fall into the fallacy of ignoring a sound argument because of other, unrelated opinions of the source. People are what they are. *shrug*

It wouldn't change that her views don't sound nuts to me, considering that I know at least a couple of those opinions are true, and most of the rest are plausible, and that they were all at least tangential to the main focus of the interview (the failing dollar, not Bitcoin.)

I assume you mean the first *spend*? Good question; it's possible to find it, but neither of the two main block explorers are set up to give that detail right off--you'd have to do some blockchain analysis. Someone posted a fast C++ analyzer a while back, so I'm sure the answer is forthcoming.

Odd...

Both blockchain.info (http://blockchain.info/blocks/1231459200411)

and blockexplorer.com (http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000839a8e6886ab5951d76f411475428afc90947ee320161bbf18eb6048)

give a date of 2009-01-09.

EDIT: Nevermind. Those are for block #1, the first block that was actually MINED. Can't forget about Block #0 though, the foundation for the subsequent blocks. Dang programmers! (of which I am one, so you'd have thought I'd have seen this....)

I didn't think she sounded nuts at all, although I can understand how people who don't know what's really going on might jump to that assessment.

I've heard most of what she said before. US taxes going to UK? True, if you consider the private (undisclosed) banks running the Federal Reserve as "the UK." That money going to the Vatican? I've heard rumors to that effect, but have yet to see evidence... but given the weirder things that HAVE turned out to be true, I'm not going to just dismiss it because it contradicts my current "normal" worldview.

All fiat monies eventually fail. All of them. It's human nature... eventually TPTB succumb to the temptation to endlessly produce more money, and that's a situation that is unsustainable in the long-term. Nations can force people to use their currency... they can't force people to actually value it. Now, whether they'll fail tomorrow, or fail in 100 years is another issue.

But just like gold, Bitcoin's backing is both its monetary usefulness and its inherent utility. It allows me to send the world's first ever decentralized, pseudonymous virtual asset to anyone, anywhere, in seconds; that alone has enough power to make national governments quake and (dumbly) attack it. Yet even if it's monetary usefulness somehow disappeared, the technology itself still has numerous other uses (demonstrated in part by the proposals based on it, including Namecoin, which actually exists and works.)

Great tip. Thanks.

The minimum fee is an anti-spam measure. IIRC, any small transaction (under 1K?) that is at least one "bitcoin-day" old can be sent for free.

A "bitcoin-day" is 1 BTC-to-144 blocks.

So if you have a one-bitcoin output, and it's been sitting in your wallet for 144 blocks, you can send it for free.

If you have a 2-bitcoin output, and it's been sitting in your wallet for 72 blocks, it's likewise free to send.

And if you have a 0.1 BTC output, it's going to take 1440 blocks of confirmation (roughly 6-7 days, considering our current hash rate growth) before it can be sent for free.

So if you're accumulating small amounts of BTC from a lot of transactions, and trying to spend them relatively quickly, then yes, you'll likely have to pay fees to get the transactions into a block (you might be able to do some transaction-voodoo to send the coins for free, and get lucky and have the transactions wind up being confirmed, but that's asking for trouble--we're talking unsynced wallets and coins "stuck in limbo" trouble.)

I'd say it depends on how badly the crash affects things.

If it just causes some global social unrest and hyperinflation, with the infrastructure still pretty much up-and-running, I'd say bitcoins would skyrocket.

If we're talking a "Mad Max"-level collapse, well... forget anything digital, better to be stocked up on ammo, and just have your gold buried... it'll be worth a fortune, but probably not for several years at least.

This is nuts. Surely there's no way the Swiss would be foolish enough to fall for this.

From what I read elsewhere, the basic income is meant to be unconditional. Which means passing this would have immediate, drastic and far-reaching consequences.

Many people would quit working immediately. More would follow over time. Meanwhile, should the taxes on the rich be raised to provide for this, they'll start to leave (or just move their money elsewhere and live off their "entitlement" themselves.) Should taxes be raised on banks or financial assets, money will flee Switzerland, and depositors will start preferring Austria, the Cayman Islands, or any other place with banking laws similar to Switzerland but with fewer fees. The impact on the work ethic and general mentality of the masses will be absolutely corrosive.

This is something I would have thought would come from The Onion, not from an actual Swiss legislative proposal.

But I guess it's proving the point: democracy can only last until the populace realizes they can vote themselves largesse from the treasury.

Including a small amount of BTC as a "party gift" would be great, if you could do it in a manner where they'd be sure to keep them. Leaving a gift card with a QR code on it attached to each bag of rice (or bottle of soap bubbles, nowadays) you hand out would be the convenient way to do it, but would likely just lead to many of them being thrown away.

The Free State Project of New Hampshire is quite serious, and very active. They're making a number of inroads.

There was a Free State Wyoming too, but from what I understand it's pretty much fizzled out.

You don't think humans can be perfectly aware of something, and yet for any number of reasons, including spite, refuse to act on it (or worse, act in a detrimental fashion?)

You honestly think knowledge == incentive?

We don't know how strong the ill-will is. Yet it's there, and is clearly having a notable impact.

Why wouldn't you want to reduce the ill-will (and the impact it has) if it took no effort to do so?

Fair enough point, considering that quantifying that would be quite subjective in the first place.

Yet the ill-will is there, and is having a notable impact.

If there were steps that activists could take on their own that could lessen the generation of ill-will (without a disproportionate expenditure of effort to do so,) then wouldn't it make sense for the activists to take such steps?

This may seem like semantic nitpicking, but I wouldn't say privacy is a right, anymore than cars are.

Privacy isn't free, it takes effort to create, and the greater the privacy, the greater the cost. If you don't want people walking down the sidewalk to see what goes on inside your house, you need to take appropriate steps to prevent your activity from being seen (no windows, thick drapes, etc.)

I'd argue that the people have the right to acquire and maintain their own privacy. But not that anyone has a right an obligation to help them create or maintain it. Otherwise you get laws dictating that people turn their heads whenever someone is flaunting something they don't want you to see and then demands some privacy.

So, what steps do you think environmental activists could take, independent of others, that might alleviate the ill-will that much of society seems to have for them?

Are you high?

Do you have any inkling of the response your posts on this thread would get from the majority of folks I know? Do you understand that you're helping make their case for them? Or why?

That... makes no sense.

They dislike environmentalists, and I know in good detail the general reasons behind why the bulk of them do. It's not complicated.

I live in Western Kentucky. Believe me, I'm well educated on the opinions of a good segment of society toward environmentalists. And, like them or not, Kentuckians and people of similar mindset vote; it might be wise to at least acknowledge that their opinions are what they are.