Well:

1. Buy some BTC.
2. Announce conversion date 2 yrs in advance.
3. Educate public (no tax breaks for mining wtf does that help??)
4. Give BTC for old currency at a set (favorable) rate.

I think it would be insanely profitable for a country to do this.

Think about it; if such an investment was really the only choice all of mankind would be in the process of dying out.

And usually you can ALWAYS put your money in some kind of metal/cigarettes/what ever that will not depreciate. (though then there's a security cost in keeping the stash safe)

I dont remember who it was exactly, but some Richard Branson or Warren Buffet type who said "he would never invest in a start up if the guy still owned his car".


Anyway I somewhat agree with the OP, but I will put it like this: You have to consider the opportunity cost and research cost too:
1. Risk cost - Chance of loosing investment.
2. Return on investment - return at success.
3. Research cost - cost of finding investment opportunity AND fully understanding it.
4. Opportunity cost - money not gained because of binding capital elsewhere.
(5. Inflation cost - anything with ROI under the rate of inflation is stupid no matter what)

So basically in any situation you should scope out these numbers and do a simple calculation.
This is why I laugh at pension funds spreading their investments all over the place - getting low ROI and poor research (equal to errors made) just to minimize risk.

Im using it and its pretty awesome.

(If you have issues with synching just switch the server you are listening to.)

Numbers don't lie. You just had it from the horses mouth.

Sure eventually all the world will be Bitcoin land, but so far Argentina is not its capitol or even close. I hope this changes of course.

Agree, this screams: "The government will help keep you and your Bitcoin safe"

(while strangling you with regulation, but anyways...)

I loved the story: "Bitcoin saves the people"

.. but it just doesn't match the realities:

1. Argentina has less node activity than New Zealand and is about as bad as Africa and the rest of South America.
2. Of the 5 largest transactions I checked none were from Argentina.
3. Argentina has 25-50% the transactions it should have to match the US in txs per capita and about the same as some countries 5-6 times smaller.

Now my theory is this:
Those countries that need Bitcoin the MOST will get it the LATEST.
I think this is the same as a kid falling behind in the school: Even if a new better teacher comes along the student is so far behind it handicaps him in following the improved teaching and he gains the least.

Same with Argentina; they have bad government and banking which makes them poor and have bad computer/internet coverage (66% compared to 97% of say Denmark) - which combined makes it difficult to learn about, buy and use Bitcoin.


Already based on the stats we have now I think we can say that by and large the "Western world" holds and will hold for a time the vast majority of all Bitcoin - even though their financial systems are superior and cheaper compared to the rest of the worlds.

With a lot of second wave investors being big shots like the Winkelwoss twins, I think we can also say that Bitcoin will not lead to a major redistribution of wealth in terms of type of and location of the people holding the wealth.

Awesome.

What is your fee?

Thanks a bunch.

Where can I find the source code for the Android version?

Look at the all-time price graphs, the volatility is decreasing as total Bitcoin value goes up.

Step 1: Buy USB key.
Step 2: Install Ubuntu Live USB thingie.
Step 3: Copy the HTML file for BitAddress.org onto the USB.
Step 4: Use the USB and the HTML file offline.
Step 5: Under the "Wallet Details"-tab write your OWN private keys.
Step 6: Print the key/address pairs onto 3-4 pieces of paper (possibly on an offline/old printer etc.).

This takes care of every cyber attack possible and is doable cheaply for most people.

This also makes wallet.dat corruption impossible.

We already have ISO and other bodies taking care of standardizing things in a voluntary way participants can agree on.

The foundation does nothing and they are proponents of regulation which goes entirely against the ideals of Bitcoin.

That figure does not reflect their actual worth as those people probably farm the land and live in houses they built themselves - thus most of their economic activity is not measured in money.

Even so with that money you can still save up for a Bitcoin card or as a small business a solar panel and an old android phone. If this gives you access to the entire world financially they may well deem it worthy.

Some very successful businesses already micro finance Indians so they can get a small lamp and a solar panel to use for studying or selling hot dogs at night.

Not with only 11 mil coins so far. When we have 15 mil coins BTC will be mainstream.

I have made predictions before and been rather spot on. The recent bubble I predicted months before it happened as well as the crash. I even made 1 BTC betting about it with one guy.

This is a pretty big picture one so maybe things will go a few years slower or faster but I will be right in the end - mankind has never found a new superior technology and NOT used it.

Even if Bitcoin itself is somehow broken, the users will just download a patch, roll back the blockchain a day or two and the price will climb back up after a year - I know this because it already happened 2010 where they found a SERIOUS bug.

No it is not.. but it will be.

The protocol allows for it, its just a question of when we have nodes working together to store and validate rather than doing it all by themselves. When that is programmed (and it WILL be by SOMEONE when Bitcoin goes to a 100 billion market cap in some years).

BTW:
http://torrent-clients.findthebest.com/q/45/2067/How-many-people-use-Torrent-uTorrent-torrent-client

Mostly illegal, completely open to tracking in most cases (more so than Bitcoin), still used by everyone. Bitcoin will be the same and with just that market share the price would be at least 10 times higher than now.

People say, including one of my close friends, that Bitcoin will never be used and accepted by normal people and businesses if it is illegal.

Well that might be true enough, but consider this: What would the value of Bitcoin be if it was used "only" by everyone sick of the current system in the world? If it was "only" used by small to medium sized pioneering businesses in the world?

I think more than 1 billion $ market cap would be a safe bet.


This is when you must realize that all this regulation stuff is going to fall flat on its face. Sure price will dip in coming months, maybe like in 2011 down to around 30$ (twice the pre-run-up value as in 2011 where it was 1->2$ ignoring the bubble in between). Maybe some people will even become very pessimistic about Bitcoin as after 2011.

But then (~1. Jan 2014) something is going to happen:
1. People will realize how easy it is to exchange Bitcoins. We will have more sellers on sites like localbitcoins and new smaller exchanges.
2. If need be, how easy it is to hide - send to a few addresses and even without coin-mixing a long trial would be necessary to link you to all those transactions - on larger scale making regulation unenforceable.
3. That regulation is not doom - big players will do it, normal people will ignore it and some areas or countries will have none.

(Think about it; today it actually works when a company says "Golly gee all my profit was on the Cayman isles, no tax for you!" a near childish lie - what chance do they have with Bitcoin?)


After this stage (~1. Jan 2015), with the new BTC products and software also out by then making things easy, Bitcoin will reach mainstream at least one or two places in the world (new bubble anyway) (some would say it already has in Kreutzberg and Argentina).

In ~2017 Bitcoin will be boring and simply another money we use (though not the only one) - even a small country jumping on the wagon will not be enough to see those x10 price spikes any more.

10 years

This is why we need a BITCOIN card.

(doesn't have to be mine, I know)

Can't they just use Google Wallet?




*trollface*

Interest is not that big in Denmark I think because the banking system is quite fast, cheap and efficient here.

However Bitcoin has been mentioned in the national radio at least twice including on one of if not the largest popular channel. This Metro Express article and at least two other articles in a popular business paper "Jyllandsposten".

I think Fimp was also in the intellectual paper Weekendavisen recently.

Saw it in the train today, maybe 200.000 other Danish as well.

Mostly about Silk Road, but mentioned Bitcoin 3 times, mostly as "100% untraceable" and what you pay with on SR.