Indeed, it is.  No matter the length of delay, the bitcoin network can pick up right where it left off once the Internet was back up, regardless of whether or not the outage was a local, national or worldwide event.  BTW, the Carrington Event wasn't worldwide, and another similar solar flare event would also be unlikely to be worldwide.  The hardest hit area would be the side of the Earth that leads into the flare, and high latitudes are better defended by nature of the field density of the Earth's magnetic field, so there would be variations in the extent of damage.  Some banks might have their records competely destroyed, others hardly effected.  Bitcoin would be safe somewhere.

A bigger issue with a Carrington type event would, sadly, be clean drinking water.  90%+ of the population of the United States is dependent upon regular electric service to maintain the municipal water utilities, since most don't have water storage that exceeds three days of regular demand.

You're obviously already beyond my skill level. I'm sorry, but I can't help more.  But I don't believe that this particular idea ever got much traction.

Um, no not quite.  What Gavin was talking about here is a form of two factor authentication, as applied to how the bitcoin system works.  Roughly what is being suggested is that one device is creating the transaction according to what it knows about the spender's wallet.dat file, less the private keys that go with the addresses that contain value; and the second device's job is simply to securely hold the private keys, and sign the transaction with the correct keys when presented with a verifiable transaction and proper authorizasion from a human being.  But the second device does not have access to the transaction inputs in the wallet.dat file, and therefore couldn't create a valid transaction on it's own.

Actually, that's not quite right.  What I've described above is a split wallet.dat system, which can be done now; but what Gavin is suggesting is the development of a new kind of address that, even if the second device is compromised and the private keys stolen, the funds cannot be moved without access to the first device.  Currently, a split wallet.dat system is employed by a couple of light android clients (such as Mycelium) to permit a server to hold the wallet.dat while the actual private keys are kept on the android phone.  When the user, from the android phone, initiates a transaction; the server creates the transaction and then sends it to the device for signing by the user's phone.  This protects the user's funds both from a hacker tricking the server into thinking that they are the user's phone and from similar server ended theft/fraud, but the user's funds are still at risk if the phone is stolen.  'Split addresses' would permit two factor transaction signing, requiring both access to the user's phone, and another of the user's devices; so that the attacker would require both devices to agree.  This may not be useful for most people, since if someone is mugged of their phone they are likely mugged of any devices that they possess at the time.  But the second device could be as simple as a bluetooth only device that must be within range of the cell phone, with a keypad to enter a code upon POS.  Or it could be the user's home pc, that can be set to remain open (within limits, say a max BTC per day rule) for a full day or week, so that if the user's phone is stolen, the amount at risk is limited to what can be taken before the home PC client can be stopped.  Either device could be backed up as well.

This only works for some use cases.  There are a few cases that the transaction must be valid and signed, and broadcasted to at least one third party.  Which still works, because it's not required that said third party distribute further, so long as they are willing to accept that one into their own queue.

Out of convience and habit only.  When I can actually buy a loaf of bread with bitcoin at the grocery store, without a series of inconvient additional steps, it will be used muchmore often.

I have been for four years, you just seem to be either impaired or intentionally thick.


You're presenting a false choice.  What I, or you, think is a 'fair' anything is irrelevant.  Historicly, money has always been the most marketable commodity available to a culture.  The point is that government manipulated currency is a recent invention, and was never instiuted for the reasons offiically presented.  The only 'fair' money is one that can be freely chosen without political pressures.  Bitcoin is that money in our information age, or some alt-coin that come and take the crown away.


Not good, but not theft.  Inflationary periods did occur, mostly by regions, during the gold standard.  During gold rushes, and during local monetary upheavals, for reasons entirely unrelated to artifical expansion of the monetary base. (I'm considering mining of gold a natural cause of expansion of a gold stnadard monetary base)  In almost all cases, these periods of inflation (and deflation) were regional to local in scope, limited in duration or reversed by other forces; or any combination of all of those things.  Overall, the (naturally occuring) gold as money age saw deflationary trends so mild, they were only identifiable over generations.  For that matter, silver has been so stable over the past 2K years, that it's actually experienced very slight inflation during that time compared to the cost of Judas's betrayal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_pieces_of_silver#Types_of_coin).  As another example, during the Roman Republic, prices were so stable for so long, that the price of a handmade iron nail became the unit for it's size; and that is a unit that we use (in American Standard).  We call it the penny, the English called it the Pence, but the Romans called it the denarius; so to this day nail a size 16 "penny" nail is written 16d.  No one really noticed the descrepency until the Roman Empire began to debase the silver content of the denarius.  You would argue that the wealthy would prefer to hide nails (or gold) under the matress, and thus no investment were possible, but of course the history of the world contradicts sucha theory.  Yes, some people did exactly this, and still do; but on the net, investments wtill occurred.  Even the wealthy guy who saved in nails intended to use those nails for some project down the line anyway, or use them to pay his workmen.


The Federal Reserve bank itself does not loan out money of any real nature, but you're right that (historicly speaking) most of the expansion of the monetary base has been due to the leanding reserve ration of member banks.  But the result is exactly the same as if the central bank had printed the money first because the US $ is a credit based currency anyway.  The only difference of note is that some portion of that inflation actually goes into private banks, becaues businesses are paying real interest on not-yet-existant dollars in principal.  And while that is true, it only confuses the issue of conceptualizing the reality that the spending power of the fiat currency moves from the existing base to the first users of new funds, which is the banks doing the lending, not the borrowers of not-yet-existing funds.  The Fed then uses the resulting demand for cash (because interest on not-yet-existing dollars is drawing the real cash out of the market and into banks) as the offical cause for creating more currency, and the cycle repeats at whatever rate the Federal Reserve deams ideal.  But ideal for whom?  Not the public, the Federal Reserve is neither beholden to you (or even us as a nation) nor does it exist for your benefit.  The Federal Reseve exists for the same reason all central banks exist, for the benefit and protection of member banks.  Bitcoin does not have that problem.

I don't even understand how a bank account can be used for bitcoin mining.  Did they mean bitcoin trading?

Naw, they still make great room heaters.  It's been pretty cold here.

I have said no such thing, again you are misrepresenting my position.  I have stated that inflation, due to 'artificial actions' by people other than the owner, should not occur.  Stated another way, expansion of the monetary base by a central issuing authority is theft whenever such actions devalue the currency already in circulation not because inflation is necessarily bad, but because it's (almost) always involves the transfer of buying power from the diverse holders of the present currency base to a small group of people with first access to those newly created funds.  For the most part, that actually means employees and contractors of the Federal Reserve itself; so such inflation can be honestly compared to a tax, because the effects are the same.  However, this tax is imposed upon all of the currency users, regardless of consent or even democratic representation, so it's particularly insidious.  Of course, I regard income taxes as legalized theft as well, so take that wherever you like.

BTW, Bitcoin isn't immune to this effect, since it's currently quite inflationary.  However, the big difference is that 1) I can choose not to use Bitcoins and 2) the degree that inflation will effect my own position is entirely predictable and not influenced by political forces nor human error.  I don't have to trust that said transfer of buying power goes to support the infrastructure of the network, I can know it to be so.

What client were you using?  I used Mycelium on my cell phone, and the QR code option.  Worked perfectly.

No, I haven't.

A good percentage of the coins available on the exchanges come directly from mining operations that must sell some percentage of their earnings in order to pay the bills.  This is easily checkable via blockexplorer.com, as those coins you just bought can be traced back to the coinbase transaction pretty quickly.

Who-Hoo!  That was easier than Paypal!

I've done no such thing.


https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

I specificly contested this claim, and provided examples of 'idle' resources that naturally maintain, or even improve, their economic usefulness over time.  I also specificly argued that, as money is an abstraction of such natural resources, no artificial (i.e. caused by the direct decisions of non-owning men) depreciation should be acceptable to any society, since (as such an abstraction) such artifical depreciation always has the net effect of transfering buying power from the owner|saver to someone else.  This is theft in any other context, there is no rational reason that it shouldn't be treated as such simply because the commodity being examined is regarded as 'money' by anyone.


Again, I have already provided examples of resources that for which we, quite literally, could "put under the matress" and expect equal or better utility at a later date.  While it may, or may not, be more efficient for a society to strive to employ all such capital "continually"; doing so doesn't lead to continuous economic growth, or even stability.  In fact, it's easily provable that resources kept in 'conservation', often as a direct result of the deflationary effects of hard monies prior to 1912, had a strong suppressive effect upon the magnitude (not the period) of the busniess cycle.  Put into a more modern context, speculative investing has a net effect of stablizing price changes in commodities and everything else over time.


The above two paragraphs are so far from reality as to not be worthy of response.

And don't forget the potential effects of Fourth Turning social theory.

Does it matter?  Keep in mind, the 100 years war is generally consider one continuous conflict.


This would require that we agree on a lot of details, and the outcome would be highly subjective to interpretations anyway.  So I don't think this is going to happen.

The costs of single payer are just hidden in your taxes.  It's not necessarily cheaper, and almost certainly not more equitable.

First, it doesn't matter if you "agree".  Your consent is not required.

Second, even in this context, savings in a monetary unit is still investing, in the sense that there is only one reason to 'horde' money, and that is for future consumption.  If saving surplusses in a monetary unitis the most efficient method, then that is the most efficient method.  Investing in other productive enterprises in teh internim may not be the wises path, as all investing comes with risk.  But for a central bank to inflate the currency unit, thus depreciating the small savings of individuals, is not a natural risk.  It's entirly an artifical one, and because that decision is made by men with theirown vested interests, it's theft and fraud no matter the scale.  You can justify it however you like, but it's still the transfer of spending power from the (monetary based) savings of all currency holders to those who directly benefit from the existance of the central bank, and without their consent.  (because consent is impossible)  If the value of the monetary unit flucuates for natural causes, beyond the direct control of a central bank, that's the risk of using that method to save.  Also, bear in mind that no matter how dilligent the individual investor may be about keeping as much of his savings in assets (instead of currency) there is always someone who owns those fiat units at any given time.  So whether or not it's wise to invest in other ways doensn't change the fact that, to a point, doing so completely is impossible.  Also, on a percentage basis, the largest holders of currencies are the middle class and the poor, so this method of buying-power-transfer is particularly harmful to the lower classes.