Since you know what's "the right thing" for everyone, perhaps you'd be willing to propose bans on other dangerous things people do that you probably see no significant benefit to -- rock climbing without ropes, skiing (some horrible parents even let their children do this!), and American football.

Actually, it could have been done without too much difficulty. The trick would simply be to select two integers 'a' and 'b' correctly and then doing this at each difficulty adjustment:

blockReward = (blockReward * a) / b;

Integer math is used, so the results are exact. With a bit of care, 'a' and 'b' could be selected such that the total number of bitcoins produced is still well-known in advance and still very close to 21 million and still takes about the same amount of time. While an integer multiplication and division do take longer than a shift, they're trivial compared to the many other operations that have to be performed on every single block, and this is only done on each retarget.

Most likely, a solution could be found with 'b' being a power of two. So at least the division would just be shift.

I eat a banana. Is that aggression? Well, not if it's *my* banana. Yes if it's your banana.

So you can't decide what is or isn't aggression until you first have a system of property rights. NAP simply says to respect those property rights.

This should make it uncontroversial. I mean, who argues for theft, fraud, or violence? But it doesn't do what those who argue for it thinks it does.

For example, does a NAP argue against the war in Iraq? Well, no, since NAP permits retaliatory force. There are no shortage of violent acts Saddam Hussein committed that the United States could retaliate for, such as the Al-Anfal Campaign. You need complex principles and arguments about international engagement and entanglement to get there.

Does a NAP argue against taxation for any reason? Well, no. The government may take its own property by force if needed, and laws determine what belongs to whom. Once a law is passed that taxes you, the tax amount is no longer your property.  You need complex principles about the scope of laws and the just applicability of laws to get there.

So really NAP just says something we all agree with -- force is the last resort when someone doesn't do what they're supposed to do, and lying to get a thing of value is bad.

Sure, that would be relevant if some government forced people to hoard. However, ask yourself this -- why would there be an increase in hoarding? And what's the right reaction to that? (Hint: It's an increase in hoarding.)

Same thought exercise: Why would the velocity of money go up? What's the right reaction to that? (Hint: It's an increase in the velocity of money.)

Sure, if you imagine a health, stable, productive economy suddenly has some magic change in some parameter for no reason, the effect will likely be bad. That's the problem with government interference in a free economy. But it's not a problem when people react to real changes with sensible responses.

The "store of value" / "medium of exchange" balance for money is like the supply / demand balance of prices. It pushes consumption and production to optimum times just as prices push production and consumption to optimum items. Sometimes, the optimum time to produce is now, the optimum time to consume is later, and the optimum time to invest is later. When this happens in a sane monetary system, deflation encourages hoarding.

They're just arguing the broken window fallacy in reverse. If you contribute to society but don't consume, you're somehow hurting everyone else by not doing your part. We all have to break windows, lest all the window factories go out of business.

Worse, such a system will make changes in course easier and faster. One of the biggest problems with many governments in the world is that people can't rely on their laws remaining constant and being enforced over a long period of time. An unpredictable government is generally worse than a consistently oppressive one.

One of the problems States like California have had with their public initiative systems is that a mere 51% vote can basically do whatever it wants. So you'll see things like initiatives prohibiting car pool lanes from being built because 53% of California doesn't car pool.

If 10% of the people really want a law and another 42% prefer having it to not having it, it doesn't matter if 38% are totally screwed by that law. They effectively don't count at all. And sooner or later, you'll be part of that 38% on one law or another. There is no effectively balancing of interests in direct Democracy -- no "you get this, but I get this". Representative Democracy tends to make this problem much less serious -- a politician can't afford to piss off 47% of the people on issue A and a different 43% of the people on issue B because now he has only 30% support.

Direct Democracy is not all good, by any stretch of the imagination.

The storage of value is the goods the currency didn't buy. If I buy a can of beans and eat it, that can of beans is gone. If I instead save my money, that can of beans is still there.

When you do work, you are paying into the economy, providing goods and services for everyone else. When you spend your money, you are taking out of the economy, cashing out the value you deposited. When you hoard money, the economy has the benefit of the goods and services you provided to get that money but hasn't had to pay you out. You have invested in the economy as a whole at that point as your goods and services provide benefits to others that grows the economy as a whole. At some point, you spend that money and cash out the investment of the goods and service you provided.

Under ordinary circumstances, deflation reflects a healthy economy. You invested goods and services into the economy and then deferred withdrawal, earning interest because your contribution to the economy continues to make possible other economic growth.

The myth is that spending grows the economy. In fact, spending withdraws value from the economy. There is no difference between your buying a banana to eat it and your buying a banana to destroy it. That consumption grows the economy is our old friend the broken window fallacy. It is production that grows the economy.

In an economy that isn't manipulated by people with guns, deflation reflects the return on investment of deferred consumption -- providing value and then not taking one's compensation until later.

I agree. Eventually, they should agree that if nobody else claims them in some reasonable amount of time, you are entitled to the money, not them. (But they may well tell you to never do business with them again, which is their right.)

They want receipts for the purchase of the paks. They want *his* copy of *their* receipts to prove that he has some legitimate connection with the purchase of the paks. He can't create those receipts because he wasn't even a party to the transaction they record.

Green dot neither sells nor advertises MoneyPak as suitable for person-to-person transactions.

If it included the taxes paid by illegal immigrants and the money saved by companies who hire illegal immigrants, it would show a net positive. Immigration is what built this country. The desire of people to slam the door shut behind them sickens me.

The problem is that you would get much less hoarding than is ideal, leading to wasteful consumption. A currency with no demurrage provides as close to the optimal balance of saving and spending as we are likely to be smart enough to manage to get. Every factor that increases the value of the currency to the hoarder also increases the value of the currency to those who would try to ply the currency from the hands of the hoarder -- if the currency is worth more, the price will just be lower, but the trade will happen just the same. However, demurrage disrupts this balance by injecting a "hot potato" factor, leading to inefficient spending and discouraging saving.

Yes. You just have to watch out for the equivalents of 0, 1, and infinity if the two parties don't trust each other. There are no caveats if the two parties interests are aligned in securing the combined key.

Wow! I didn't mention that the two initial messages in this protocol must be signed. That was really careless of me. Had someone implemented this without that, they would have been vulnerable to precisely this attack!

With the messages signed, he can't give GxD-GxH, since he doesn't know the corresponding private key. His attempt to sign the message giving it would fail. These messages are analogous to certificate requests and must be signed for the same reason.

Nice catch.

Do you have a link? Because I have a proof that anything that breaks this algorithm would be a general break of ECDSA. Obviously, if there is such a vulnerability, the proof must be incorrect and I'd love to figure out where it's invalid.

Here's the proof:

Call the honest party's private key H. All the honest party reveals is GxH.

Call the dishonest party's private key D.

The public key of the combined key is GxD + GxH. The private key of the combined key is D+H.

To break the private key, the dishonest party needs D+H.

If the dishonest party can calculate D+H, then he can calculated H by subtraction, since he chose D.

Thus, the dishonest party can calculate H, given only GxH.

Thus the dishonest party has broken ECDSA entirely.

Maybe the vulnerability involves the equivalent of an infinity point? Doesn't multiplication have precisely the same problem with zero?

This actually doesn't work very well. But a very slight change makes it work perfectly:

1) The first party generates a private key (S1) and a corresponding public key (GxS1). It passes (GxS1) to the second party. It stores S1.

2) The second party generates a private key (S2) and a corresponding public key (GxS2). It stores S2.

3) The public key you use is the sum of the two public keys (GxS1 + GxS2). For OpenSSL, EC_POINT_add does this.

4) When you need the private key, you use (S1+S2) modulo the order.

This works because Gx(S1+S2) = GxS1 + GxS2. Neither party alone can get the needed private key.

Update: Actually, now that I think about it, it might work. But the way I mentioned above is simpler.

These kinds of vague answers are entirely unhelpful and destroy confidence. How many people? How much money? How long have they been waiting? When do you expect a resolution?

If it's 5 people, $100,000, nobody's been waiting more than a month, and you expect a resolution in a month, that's one thing. If it's 250 people, $5,000,000, people have been waiting three months, and you have no idea when there will be a solution, that's a completely different problem.

People are trying to decide whether to trust you with their fortunes and livelihoods. "Some people are having a problem we are working on" doesn't cut it.

With a Martingale, the majority of people can have a positive balance. The problem is that the few people who have a negative balance have lost every single cent they were willing to risk. For example, with a typical Martingale system, for every 20 people who have won 100 bitcoins, there's a guy who lost 2700 bitcoins. Your odds of being that guy aren't that high, but if you are, ...

It's like a lottery where you get paid $1 for buying a ticket. But if your ticket gets drawn, they shoot you. Martingale = Hunger Games.

I'll ask if I can use the picture of me from Bitcoin magazine. It's equally horrible, but the "cartoonizing" makes me less painful to look at.

No, you're not wrong. It's just another way to view the same thing. Remember, your expected loses are proportional to your total bets. Thus the more you bet in total, the more you can expect to lose.

To put it another way, the more money you are trying to win or willing to lose when you do a Martingale, the more you can expect to lose.

You are handling other people's money. They are supposed to 100% understand *precisely* what procedures you will follow in all cases, and they should agree to them when they agree to use you as an escrow service. I've never heard of an escrow service with secret rules. Any scheme that leaves you discretion in what to do with other people's money is, IMO, broken. The rules should be 100% precise and clear.

Following the rules to get the result the rules entitle you to is how rules are supposed to work. It's not "taking advantage" of them.

For example, here are some very simple escrow rules:

1) The parties to the escrow agree on the amount to be escrowed and who will deposit the money. The escrow fee is taken from the deposit amount.

2) The parties to the escrow specify what courts or arbitration agencies they will use for disputes.

3) The escrow agency will release funds only on approval of both parties, upon order of a court or arbitration agency they specified in step 2, upon order from a court with jurisdiction over the escrow agency, or upon special, easily objectively-verified release conditions agreed upon by the parties. (For example, one special release condition could be if a particular party fails to present the escrow agency with proof of a particular document by a particular date, the other party gets the escrow amount.)

4) The escrow agency assumes liability only for failure to follow its own rules.

You can, if you wish, also offer your own arbitration service and permit parties to select it in step 2. But if you do this, you should practice 100% separation between the escrow and arbitration services. You can do arbitration by email.