If we can agree on something and setup a system to send a consistent message to the standards group, that would be fantastic.
Great! I will look at doing a poll to see which X code is preferred by the community. An ISO code is essential to get Bitcoin accepted as a mainstream investment in the world's financial markets. There is a commercial argument already. Tonga's paanga currency has its own ISO code "TOP". So Bitcoin deserves its own code as it already has a much bigger monetary base (M0) than Tonga which has about US$100 million equivalent. http://www.spc.int/prism/tonga/index.php/economic/money-and-bankingSo the SIX interbank agency, in the OP, can be lobbied to give Bitcoin an X-code. This is the immediate strategy. If this fails the alternative strategy is based upon BTC. Because Bhutan might be persuaded to register it on Bitcoin's behalf, which would require a fee for them. I am thinking how Tuvalu licensed its .tv top-level domain for all the companies which wanted a .tv website. Getting Bhutan to accept the idea of allowing BTC to be used would require north of $10 million. This might be doable if Bitcoin was worth many billions, but not before. Much cheaper to get an X-code registered. If an X-code such as XBT or XTC was used on all wallets and websites then it would eventually force the standards authorities to accept it. They can, however, permanently ignore BTC as it is within Bhutan's allowed set. |
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Bitcoin makes FRB obsolete by providing the Austrian ideal of an inelastic monetary base.
I'll pay you 3% APR to deposit your bitcoins into my bank. To earn that 3% you must sign a contract stating you will not withdraw those coins for the entire year, and you allow the bank to loan or invest these coins as they see fit during that period. Voila, Bitcoin FRB. Yeah, the inelastic base just makes it far less feasible to run huge leverage throughout the whole FRB system. Since there's no ability to print new money, bank-runs can't be backstopped with it... But, you can still do "safe" FRB levels (10x seems to be about where humans start to get twitchy, so maybe 5x would fly without any panics?). I did say obsolete, which is not the same as impossible. IMHO the existing central banks, faced with a bitcoin economy, will have a huge dilemma. Which is to regulate bank lending with very high reserve requirements to minimize bank failures or accept backstopping failed banks with real, taxpayer money. So CBs would probably sacrifice FRB to maintain a semblance of control over the banking system. |
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Can't see this obviously spelled out elsewhere...
What about non-US, non-Canadian Mt.Gox customers, do their records and day-to-day interaction with MtG stay in Japan, or is everything moving to California...?
None-US and Canadian Mt.Gox customers stays and will stays at Mt.Gox in Japan. This partnership (we did not sell anything) is ONLY for North America in order to speed up things there and help to the development of Mt.Gox. Thanks guys for the crystal-clear message. Much appreciated. |
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Can't see this obviously spelled out elsewhere...
What about non-US, non-Canadian Mt.Gox customers, do their records and day-to-day interaction with MtG stay in Japan, or is everything moving to California...?
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Like everyone I'm enjoying the Bitcoin price rampage upwards. But lets remember that it could just be a pump and dump from a shadowy figure with deep pockets. Here's the mechanism, for those unfamilliar:
1) In a stable market, The Pumper buys the market heavily.
2) As all offers are taken by the buyer, the market price rises rapidly.
3) The masses see the price move upwards and get excited.
4) The masses start buying at higher and higher prices
5) The Pumper starts selling his bitcoin to the new buyers at the new high price, making a profit
6) The Pumper sells all his coin
7) The market falls back to its original state, losses for the masses
This could be what's happening.. easy to do in such a small market.
nah look at the log graph its on the line it make overshoot a bit, but its on trend A real-world metric of actual bitcoin usage shows an exponential increase similar to the price chart. https://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-tx?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7×pan=&scale=0&address=Only if this was level would the pump&dump theory have legs |
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So it is possible to trade bitcoin off the blockchain in a similar way that cash is traded outside of banks. Guess that is gonna KILL the US dollar banking industry because banks can not profit off of every transaction.
.....
Hmm, you do know how banks make most of their money don't you?? (here's a hint: I've deliberately highlighted a word in that question) (incase you still don't get it: it's NOT by transaction fees) The merchant bank I used to work for made their money in many ways, but primarily though through spreads, commissions, interest and capital gain on prop positions. Retail transaction fees are not essential. |
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+ Fill up part of the block with the highest transactions, regardless of fees
I guess you mean "highest priority transactions". It would appear so. From src/main.cpp: // How much of the block should be dedicated to high-priority transactions,
// included regardless of the fees they pay
unsigned int nBlockPrioritySize = GetArg("-blockprioritysize", 27000); So by default only the first 27k of each block is dedicated to the highest priority transactions. hmmm.... roughly 65 transactions.... edit: currently about 14.4% besides of what gavin said: do you seriously think a couple of days of bitcoin not working would not affect the price?
Maybe calling it "not working" is just a little too harsh. A couple of days where the average user experiences massive delays for at least a part of his/her transactions and where bitcoin based services face unexpected extra costs for their infrastructure, is what i would call it. And that seems tough enough. agreed So, is this yet another plus for an algorithmic block size limit, which could then absorb such an "attack" and still allow most other legitimate transactions through in a timely manner? |
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Ripple was smarter and started to market their currency as XRP from the beginning.
Yeah, I noticed that too. It was a really good move by those guys. XAA, XIO etc have their merits, but the standards authority prefers an easy mnemonic. If someone had forgotten the codes for Bitcoin or Ripple, and saw a choice between XAA and XIO (for example) then it would be a 50/50 guess. But, remembering XBT and XRP is easier in the first place. |
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Yes, ideally XBT gets included, but you might as well lobby in Bhutan to inquire at SIX for using the symbol BTC for Bitcoins.
Now that IS a good idea! |
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I've been going with XBC but someone recently pointed out that EUR is used for the Euro and it's not a country either so it should be possible for ISO to accept BTC as standard symbol for Bitcoin on the same basis. Using BTC would be optimal but after that I kind of lean towards XTC as an homage to the drug trade.
I like XTC too. Very clever  The currency EUR does conform to the ISO country standards as "EU" has been reserved for the European Union, of which the euro is meant to be used by all member countries, even though, so far, half have transitioned to it. I have experience dealing with standards authorities directly, and I know how they think, and they will never accept BTC as an official code because it would break their own standards to do so. However, BTC is fine for unofficial public use, just as US$ and CA$ are commonly seen. But these codes are not found in any significant financial/FX system. It is theoretically possible to get XBC, but that is an uphill battle as there are many computer systems with bond transactions denominated already in XBC, and confusion would occur if it was re-assigned. There is one thing that markets are bad at, and that is defining standards. Standards underpin successful markets, just as mathematics underpins physics. Having standards makes markets work efficiently as everyone is exchanging fairly, price discovery works best. An ISO currency code for Bitcoin will greatly help cement its future as a rival for fiat. |
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Sounds reasonable to me. Would this be easier as a poll maybe?
I'll make a note of other suggested codes and kick off a poll based upon feedback to the idea... The standards body will have their own view on this as it should be a recognizable abbreviation.. |
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Bitcoin adoption is achieving a critical mass for exponential growth. To maintain this growth Bitcoin needs to be supported on the world's FX systems and seen on data-feeds such as Bloomberg and Reuters. All the world's currencies have 3-letter ISO standard codes which are used to identify them in computer systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217The first two letters must match the ISO standard country code .e.g. USx codes are reserved for the United States, hence the dollar is known as USD on all FX systems. BTC is not available as it is reserved for the country of Bhutan.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2Transnational or world currencies begin with an X, for example XAU (gold) and XAG (silver) XBC has been taken by the European central bank, which leaves only XBT as the most suitable ISO code for Bitcoin. Below is the institution which needs to be lobbied to assign Bitcoin its currency code: ISO 4217:2008
Codes for the representation of currencies and funds
Maintenance Agency
c/o SIX Interbank Clearing Ltd (acting on behalf of the Swiss Associa tion for Standardization)
P.O. Box
Hardturmstrasse 201
8021 Zurich
Switzerland
Tel: +41 58 399 4255
Fax: +41 58 499 4550
E-mail: office@currency-iso.org
Web: http://www.currency-iso.orgThe Bloomberg screen used by tens of thousands of people who continually buy and sell the major currencies...  Let's see Bitcoin elbow its way onto this screen! |
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Yeah. Saw that too. I rely on this very good site to keep a handle on the difficulty.
The last block depth at 218k shows it is not up-to-date with the current blockchain...
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But that is why we don't want to scale it up to the napsters and megauploads scale, we want to keep it lean and mean so millions of pople all over the world can run full nodes at home. Millions of people all over the world can run already Bitcoin at PayPal-like transaction rates if a few identified optimizations are implemented. You'll never get millions of users, though, if you ration them to a couple of transaction per person per year. +1 I am amazed that some people just cannot understand this point... All those wanting higher fees should check out this chart! https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd?showDataPoints=false×pan=&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=Do we really need to ration blockspace? Why not let this plateau out and then decide whether fees are high enough? |
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Silver has been in a positive demand since about 2006, meaning that investors are buying more than selling.
The total above ground silver grows only very slowly, about 0.5% a year, less than anything, even the population grows more.
I used to be a gold and silver bug for years until I discovered Bitcoin. And then suddenly it hit me as to the reason that gold and silver only slowly appreciate, even though fiat money is being printed like crazy. It was a mystery to me why gold has only just reached its 1980 peak in inflation adjusted terms, and silver is still way behind. No wonder stupid conspiracy theories float about price suppression. The real reason the PMs languish at the margins of the world economy is that they are no good for remote payments. Yet 99% of payments (by value) in a modern economy are transacted remotely! People are all forced to use fiat because of the technological society we live in. Drum roll.... That is why Bitcoin has so much potential, it is scarce like PMs, but fantastic for remote payments. There has been nothing like it before. |
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The problem I have is the two narratives do not seem mutually exclusive. I don't see why the possibility of a malinvestment fueled misalignment of sectors rules out the possibility of a demand shortage brought on by an irrational change in consumption behavior, or vice-versa. How do we know which one we're facing at any given time?
Surely, the principle that the market is always right must prevail, because it is made up of thousands, or millions, of human minds weighing decisions about investment, consumption or saving. While temporary misalignments will always occur, in the Austrian system these will be smaller in relative size and self-correct faster. The Keynesian principle that elements of an economy can be controlled (e.g. interest rates) is assuming that a few people (e.g. a central bank committee) can be wiser than the market. Time and again this is proven false, and it is governmental interventions that makes misalignments much larger and longer-lived than they would in a free market. Consider China's centrally planned empty cities as an extreme example. |
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everything else (that is not legal tender) is just an alternative currency.
So, then you admit that Bitcoin qualifies as currency under this definition? What happened to gopher? I was waiting for his response to this question. In the meantime I am suggesting that XBT should be the ISO currency code for Bitcoin... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=147827.msg1570253#msg1570253 |
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How about "X10", where 1 and 0 represent bits.
"X Ten" would sound better than "X zero one" or "X Oh one"
Saying "x one" seems missing zero.
Sounds nice, but all the others are alphabetic, which is also the convention e.g. USD, CAD. There is a separate numeric associated with each one as well. XBC has already been taken by the European central bank, unfortunately. |
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