Yet.

It's a design flaw, but actually represents an improvement over the original design.

IIRC, the first version of the client didn't even have a keypool at all.

That's what's called a wish fulfilment fantasy.

I'm not really impressed with them either. Apparently some other organization is going to have to take on that role instead.

Why could there not be a crowdfunding effort to pay someone to push improvements upstream from the reimplementations?

Do BoP and btcd both have more comprehensive unit tests than the Satoshi client? Surely everyone would benefit from getting that same level of coverage in the reference implementation.

At some point all there needs to be inter-implementation coordination of features and specs, kind of like the W3C for HTML.

I have a hard time believing that it's actually possible for a dozen people to all cash out a total of 72000 BTC from that market.

We've seen this before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

In reality nobody is going to accept a fork that causes >100 block reorg, which is what it would take for that attack to work.

At best you cause a severe temporary disruption until the network adapts.

Still as true today as when I first said it last October: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=368431.msg3955248#msg3955248

That's the closest thing to Snow Crash I've ever seen.

It is highly likely that Satoshi (whomever he, she, or they was) did match those motives and political leanings, however this is not presently falsifiable since we can't ask Satoshi and expect to get a response.

How about we change "intended" to "can be used as"?

Also "better" is an extremely subjective term.

If you're a primary dealer, then USD is obviously better money for you because you get to be the first spender of new issuances.

For everybody else, it's terrible.

Whether or not you call Bitcoin a weapon, the effect it will have on the livelihoods of people who get their wealth from monetary rent-seeking is going to look a lot like violent devastation from their point of view.

I'm not sure about that.

The people you want to placate are the people I'm more than happy to jettison the instant pleasing them threatens the long term viability of Bitcoin or undermines its potential to help the people who need it most.

I'd call it a defensive weapon, but that might be quibbling.

With regards to the marketing aspect, I agree that not characterizing Bitcoin as revolutionary technology helps avoid disturbing the delicate sensibilities of relatively wealthy and comfortable first world users.

You can probably already tell how much value I place on their sensibilities.

There's a reason Andreas Antonopolus doesn't do North American Bitcoin conferences any more - there are six billion people in the world who are acutely aware of the downsides of government currencies because it affects their day to day survival. Those people don't care if you describe Bitcoin as a technology designed to destroy the banking system because that's exactly what they want.

Remember the Arab Spring started because a bunch of Egyptians were literally starving because inflation meant they couldn't afford to buy food any more. How many Americans know that the US government has used various methods to convince foreign central banks to peg to the USD, much less what the implications of that are in terms of allowing us to export our monetary inflation to the people least able to defend themselves?

Whatever that number is, I guarantee that more Egyptians than Americans know. For many, these issues are literally a matter of life and death. There's a whole world (literally) of people out there who will be more than happy to adopt a technology marketed as intended to destroy the global banking system.

That's incredibly naive.

Central banking and the people who control it are at war with the rest of humanity, or at best see everybody else as subjects to be ruled over or livestock to be harvested.

The clash between Bitcoin and central banking will be violent, not because Bitcoin is violent, but because they are ready, willing, and able to bring violence against anything that threatens their monopoly.

Why do you think Krugman said "The US Dollar is backed by men with guns"? That wasn't simply a quip - it's as clear and honest a warning as you're going to get from them.

You're not talking about fundamentally honest people who will gracefully step aside when something better comes along - these are ruthless mafiasos who don't care who they have to crush to maintain their position.

The only problem is they don't have the skills to combat a technological phenomena like Bitcoin themselves, so the determining factor will be how many programmers defect and sell out compared to the number that won't. It's a human resources game now.

First World Problem

Few things piss me off more than first world self indulgent armchair academics spew mindless drivel about how deflation and early adopters make Bitcoin a bad deal for the poor.

I want them to go somewhere in the world that experiences actual poverty and tell those people that monetary inflation is good for them to their faces.

Go visit Greece and talk to the people living in towns where every house still has rebar sticking out the top, because the average person can't afford the property taxes on "completed" homes, so leave their houses unfinished for decades to qualify as "under construction".

Talk to some Peruvians who are effectively forbidden by "progressive" labor laws from working at a single job for more than 90 days. Those laws require lavish benefits for permanent employees, you see, and since only governments and well-connected business can afford most of the population is relegated to temp work. In order to get in an extra "fuck you" to the regular Peruvian, the banks there won't give you an account unless you're rich or have a salaried position.

Maybe when these people have some actual experiences in the real world, outside their ivory tower intellectual circle jerks, maybe when they've been a house guest in a home whose master bedroom had a dirt floor, maybe then they can say something meaningful about poverty then.

I have it on good authority that Stefan Molyneux will be taking on Krugman and Stross in a combined rebuttal.

The "agenda" which Krugman and Stross don't like is the hoi polloi are tired of having their purchasing power stolen by central planners and are starting to realize they don't have to put up with it any more.

Isn't it funny how people who hate Bitcoin and believe it will fail will somehow still take the time and effort to register on this forum and talk about it?

How often do people actually do that in real life?

I know I've never taken the time to register and hang out in a forum relating to things I'm not interested in, and I also know there are people who are paid to do exactly that:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/18/revealed-air-force-ordered-software-to-manage-army-of-fake-virtual-people/