I would go for a Daily account, as long as the "Vault" and the "Bank" were separate entities (look at what GoldMoney does). One should not know what the other is doing. This way, a "Mtgoxing" incident on the bank would cause no harm absolutely to the funds, although it would create a temporary publicity problem for the bank. The Vault should be liable to the bank for the security of the funds, and if something bad happens to the Vault (which should NOT happen in the first place - there is enough paranoid security advice here which applies in this case), the Vault should be legally bound to reimburse the bank for all losses in full.

The Timed Deposit Accounts seem to created an interest for the Bank to try to manipulate the price of Bitcoins lower.

Example:

• Customers deposit 10K BTC for a 30 day period.
• Bank sells those 10K BTC on the market when it finds that there is little depth on the bid side, so that the price will drop more than the percentage of the transaction fees.
• Price moves lower.
• Bank immediately places a bid to buy back those 10K BTCs on the market which, having moved lower, has most probably created selling pressure with relatively large sell orders appearing at lower and lower prices.
• Repeat as many times as possible within the 30 day period.

 

Or just create a trading bot which would do this much more efficiently. That's what I would (be tempted to) do anyway.  

I must say that you seem to be honest with this, but the possibility of such a manipulation happening is not really far fetched, or is it?

Just started listening to Episode 1, my CPU fan noise caught my attention, and then I see a 88% CPU usage by java.

Tried it with different browsers, same result.

Are you guys using your viewer's computers for mining? If yes, you should disclose the fact at least.

In any case, the talk would be interesting for anyone that hasn't spent more than a few hours on the forums in a productive way. In other words, nothing new.

But all in all, a good first attempt.

Do you have a problem with making people happy? Or at least happier than they will be in their destroyed economy?


He will, but they will as well. As long as they both remain reasonable in their demands. Abuse and exploit on the other hand lead to dead ends.


There's many places in Greece, (and I guess in other countries as well) where you can be really safe from the extreme environmental changes coming. And really, I don't believe the environmental refugees will be that many. I see more people dying because of denial, instead of thinking clearly and taking the steps to save themselves and their loved ones.

Yeah Billy, we are ready. More and more people are realising that the second letter in TPTB has been provided by ourselves in our folly and ignorance, and that if it gets taken away by our conscious decision there will be no 4th letter in TPTB either, and will come down to TT which is essentially nothing 

Interesting times ahead.

Greece and Italy should unite again, we have common roots. Una faccia, una razza, one debt, one revolution. 

Onesalt, to be fair, I don't have economic studies or background, I just see this happening over and over again. Yes, it definitely is more complicated, I cannot analyse it fully, but it makes sense to me and others also here. Don't take this as a result of any theory or set of beliefs, it's not. It's just the damn obvious fact.

I personally don't care if any Libertarian, Marxist, Keynesianist, Socialist or whatever-ist can explain this better with a theoretical background, mathematics, economic sociology or anything else. It just happens. And it creates a mess out of my life and other people's lives.

I hope you see my point of view. If there was a theory that would work, it would already have been found and applied. My view is that there is no possible solution in any of the already known economic Schools.

We need something new. But we are not yet desperate enough to actually find it. Maybe soon that will change.

All the best.

Stable -> artificially inflated -> easy credit -> increased government spending -> debt balooning -> default -> unstable -> black market -> new currency -> price balancing -> stable -> artificially inflated -> And so on ad infinitum...

I hope you understand. It's all too obvious for us Greeks. We are in the "Debt ballooning" phase. Been through the whole cycle before quite a few times. Now Europe will see what this looks like like on a 100x scale.

I would start a Bitcoin attempt here, if not for the fact that its possible failure would lead to the reinstatement of the Death penalty and public hanging for the brave soul who would do this. I have a family to take care of. This has happened too many times over again. And no, I am not a revolutionary. In fact I am probably a coward deep inside.

In a society where the overwhelming majority prefers to blame someone else instead of looking in the mirror, there is no actual freedom to do anything new.

Now if THAT changes, then yes, maybe Bitcoin or any other solid solution would stand a chance.

+1 Yankee,
+1 Bitcoin7

the forums are very much like The Fight Club. It hurts in the beginning, but you get used to it .

Dear Bitcoin7, can I buy BTC with EUR cash on-site at your offices? I can drive there (from nearby country).

Bulgaria FTW !!!

Exactly what I was thinking. My mother actually lives in a village, and we have already discussed moving in with her if trouble gets unbearable. There is a community of farmers and animal breeders there, which would be the best possible scenario to start working with alternative currency. Getting as close as possible to native food production seems very important in such times.

I had a talk with some people there few months ago and they told me verbatim:

"If there is an economic collapse, and subsequent riots, hyperinflation, etc. do you think any one of us will be loading a truck with products and come to Athens to sell them? No fucking way!"

I was also thinking that a localised attempt (say within a 25km radius) would have much better chances, because there is already a "web of trust" in the society there. Trying to work with bitcoins in a city like Athens (4M people) or the whole country seems too futile to start with, too much risk, too many unknowns.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts !!!

Well, I can only say watch this space.

We are about to soon find out how Bitcoin would work in the case of a sovereign default and all that goes with it.

Maybe this will turn out as a big historical record for this community.

I'll keep you posted.

What you guys doing when the exchanges DON'T open?

Guys, cut the crap and go buy or borrow a caclulator:

http://www.calculators-online.co.uk/index.jsp

This thing WORKS !!!! It can even calculate percentages for you. Google's calc is for code-junkies !!!

I got some similar models for sale at 0.1 BTC (worldwide shipping included).

I tend to think Bitcoin is in a very early stage still, and unfortunately cannot work in the coming collapse of our countries.

Think that the value that people (at large) assign to Bitcoin is the value of the exchanges, and the exchanges need the current banking system to be able to work. This is the only way at the moment to spread adoption and usage.

If Greece collapses, the banking system goes out the window as well, so who would have a way to objectively determine the value of a bitcoin? What good would it do to get a 100$ quote for a BTC on Tradehill, if I cannot actually execute this trade because fiat money cannot be moved around since banks are closed for business.

It takes years of wide adoption for a new currency to get a balanced fair value on the market. We've had this in Greece with hyperinflation after the German Occupation in WW II. People were giving out a gold sovereign for a pair of shoes or half a dozen eggs, because they could not negotiate prices, since they did not know what the fair value of gold was.

So, all in all, this is a nice thought, but like our bailouts it's "too little, too late". And Jaime's post above shows exactly how we are being treated (no offense to you Jaime). Last thing we want is another bailout, from Bitcoin miners this time. All those who are "saving" the country right now, are in it for the sweet deals.

We might just as well get a hard-backed currency and give up our Internet connectivity. Simple and tried.

In any case, time will tell. I might be wrong.

I am thinking of proposing to the admins a Greek subforum, I just don't have that many posts to support my position.

You didn't put Satoshi as an option.

LOL! I was reading this fast and i read "servertohell". Then I realized I was wrong, but for a second, I thought "OMG, tradehill is doomed..."

Goes to show how emotional I can be when things are unstable... I need to calm down.

I would like to share your optimism, and I do understand what you are saying, but aren't we doing it to get people using it in the end?

Namecoin.us is an excellent initiative, which could be the basis of this, but how would we deal with a "hijacked" purchased from ICANN TLD? Should we ask people to change their DNS servers whenever they want to access our namecoin-based domain? Change their hosts file every time? Go to namecoin.us to access it? Or install a Firefox extension just for this?

It just won't work, apart from marginal users, outlaws, hackers, etc. I got no problem with this (I actually got my first job at a university after hacking their mail server 15 years ago) but you can't expect wide adoption this way.

Foo, you are correct in what you say, but if people and websites are going to actually use the .bit TLD, then what are you going to do if someone goes and buys it from ICANN?

Tell everyone "please inform all your clients and your partners and everyone who has ever visited your .bit website that as from today your website address DNS postfix will be .bit7 instead of .bit" ?

Having one TLD only for namecoin DNS would be practical, because it could become widely known and used in the future. But now it is at the mercy of the ICANN.

It's not practical at all. This decision by ICANN in my view means that nobody can ever have their own guaranteed domain name, unless of course they are willing to pay the price for it. Thus the argument that "if you buy a domain with namecoins YOU OWN IT" is not really valid anymore.

I do hope however that I am overly pessimistic about it and that the community will find a workaround. I can't think of any at the moment.

Of course, this news just means that someone can go buy the .bit domain and screw every namecoin domain owner. They will probably charge you for your domains, and probably NOT in namecoins.

Yes, this will happen next year, and yes, someone would have to put up a 200k$ bill to do that, but why not? Think of who would want this domain. Cisco comes to mind.

Good luck then trying to prove that you are already using it with a distributed P2P architecture when the root nameservers start hosting the "official" .bit zone.

Instead of talking about ways to control and regulate, how about:

Instructions for using the Bitcoin forums:

1. Trust no one

2. Before you read something, read the title and answer the question: "What does it have to do with ME?"

3. DO NOT at any circumstance get emotional with anything.

4. After you have read a post or a thread, answer the question: "Can I think of something constructive that I can get out of this for MY situation?"

5. Before you post anything, answer the question: "Will I be adding anything of value to the discussion, or will I be wasting someone else's precious time?"

6. If you want to casually browse and read posts, make sure that you HAVE NOTHING BETTER to do at that time.

7. Ignore the above at your own risk.

Number 4 is the key, as an example my take on all these "stolen bitcoins" stories is that I need to take conscious steps to protect myself and my wallet, NOW rather than later. This is constructive and progressive for ME, and it saves me from all the trouble of having to take sides in arguments, denouncing bitcoins, looking for conspiracies or any other option you can think of.

Bitcoin appeared as a self-regulated currency in the face of centrally controlled ones, and I think the forums should match that.

Get 20,000 self regulated users (on their own terms each) and you don't need any verification or other patronizing schemes.

Are those who propose control plans the exact ones that can least control themselves? Because if you can control yourself, why do you need some other authority to do so? And if you can, wouldn't it be better to try and share your way of doing it with your fellow humans, instead of asking for overlords?

And if the case was that people on the forums were actually responsible and conscious about their actions for themselves, what would be the harm that a provocateur could possibly do? A lot of it to themselves I would think.

QED.

Add to it the fact that in my life I have never seen efficiency in these areas. Maybe you're right, but nothing seems to work here for the last 30 years or so, I can't talk about earlier as I was too young.

And about the "living-in-fear" nation : I'm afraid what you're describing is coming anyway, pretty soon, at least in my greater neighborhood.

All the best.