Here's some feedback:

Piggybacking protocols that solve the same problem: don't do it. Especially if the existing protocol already has massive scalability issues.
Naming your system 'Bitcoin2' although it has little to with Bitcoin except for the above-mentioned piggyback: don't do that either.
Attempt to 'stabilize' the value of currencies without being an economist well versed in the theory and history of such endeavors: don't.

There are many more problems and open issues with this proposal (such as how would 'voting' go, who would count the votes, etc.), suffice to say it's a non-starter.

This is my reply in the thread there, it does not seem to go past the moderation filter:

Unless some of the "luminaries" will foot the bill themselves, I assume we are talking about premined coins. Good luck with that.

Has this actually happened  ? (the depositor forced to prove the "coins are not tainted", whatever that means)
From what I understand up to now in all cases where funds were frozen the customers could not be contacted by email. Until shown otherwise, we must assume that MtGox will be satisfied with a photo ID of the owner and a description of how they acquired the funds. Both of which are regularly requested by my bank.

They also stated they only act upon notification from a law enforcement agency, and depending on the local law returning stolen property to the lawful owner might be mandatory. So they might have no choice over confiscating the coins, other than compensate the alleged thief out of their own pocket.

The point of view of the "anti- early adopter" crowd, which I consider myself part of, is severely misrepresented.

What I don't say: "Hey, bitcoins are such a fabulous invention and they are concentrated in the hands of a few people - so when bitcoins make it big time it will be so unfair to the rest of us who did not get it at those low prices... We need communism, redistribution !"

What I do say: "Bitcoins are a flawed monetary medium because the early adopter crowd has already priced-in the chance that they will sometime be a widely used for exchange; so in order for Bitcoin to achieve it's potential as an exchange medium, an implausibly massive transfer of wealth must occur from the millions of people that would use it to the hundreds of people that currently hold it."

The unfairness is not yet realized, it's a potential unfairness that will materialize if and when bitcoins become widely used. At that point the early adopters would be able to exchange their bits for huge real-world assets without tanking the market, and that would be quite unfair - they have contributed nothing of substance to our society, with the exception of a few individuals like Satoshi or Gavin.

In fact this potential for unfairness is precisely one of the reasons bitcoin fails. It's a self-defeating prophecy: bitcoins are valuable only in as much as they can be widely used as an exchange medium, yet all those who acquire or have them treat them as a long term investment, preventing their very spread which would enable bitcoins to fulfill their promise. Therefore the promise is a lie.

In actuality, bitcoins are simply a zero-sum speculative commodity and there's nothing unfair in taking money away from fat geeks. So there's no "early adopter unfairness" to speak of - with the exception of the inherent unfairness of arriving late at a Ponzi party.


If you claim those are the only chairs the world needs, and that sometime in the future millions of people will give an arm and a leg for a few seconds on your chair, then there's nothing unfair about it, you are simply delusional. Yet that is the exact mantra of the Bitcoin people, with the nuance of "indefinitely divisible chairs".

They are not seizing the money, they force you to identify yourself in order to redeem them. There is nothing illegal in doing so, in fact most jurisdictions require financial entities to know their customers. If MtGox has reasons to believe the customer might be a criminal, then asking the customer to identify himself is unquestionably legal.

This is exactly what PayPal does on a regular basis with account limitations until you submit ID info. And they do it on a massive scale, there are much more limited accounts in PayPal's system than there are regular accounts in MtGox. It should not be surprising that Bitcoin processing sites start to look more and more like PayPal, they are shaped by the same real-world laws.

Coins are not fungible, that's a given. MtGox has full rights to chose it's customers. Don't start with that liberal bullshit about non-discrimination. Bars frequently reject customers that score positive for cocaine on their hands (they have very sensitive scanners). It's not a stretch to imagine they could reject drug-tainted money:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency

So MtGox if fully within it's rights to reject or confiscate "stolen" coins, as long as it makes it perfectly clear in their TOS. Of course, it's a stupid stunt that will only harm innocent bystanders. The fact that MtGox can get away with this is a testament to the flaky nature of the bitcoin economy, which is basically composed of miners and speculators all centered around a single site, MtGox.

For a self-proclaimed "banking reformer" this guy is surprisingly dull. When he started talking about how MP don't understand the true nature of money, I was almost sure he doesn't either. Surely enough he confirmed it seconds later.

Apparently it's not default leverage, it's maximum leverage, and 'special' clients can increase it if they provide 'valid justifications'.


Why is that frightening ? The entire account turned into profit for some other client of yours, generating fees in the process. It should be exhilarating - you are making money.
You surely understand this move reeks of unbalanced positions and a shady operation, your quoted reserves notwithstanding ?

If this a fancy way of saying  Bitcoinica's solvency is threatened because your long clients can't cover their loses ? I can't see any reason to limit the freedom of your clients as long as you are balanced overall; it's their money to lose.

No. There's still a long way down.

That makes no sense whatsoever. I know you think it does, but in all honesty it doesn't. That's why it's so hard to talk to the "Occupy" wackos. They have very strong, but wrong ideas, and any attempt for a constructive dialogue stops in a brick wall: you either "get it", or you are one of the sheeple, a puppet of the financial elite.

It seems bitcoins emit a powerful reality distortion field, strong enough that those who poses bitcoins become impervious to logic, reason or common sense.

Why would any country adopt a foreign currency, that they must buy with products and services, when they can print their own ? Assuming the government is irresponsible or despotic and can't be trusted to print money (Zimbabwe), why would the people of that country adopt say, linden dollars, an online currency that no exporter will accept, as opposed to real dollars or euros, currencies backed by powerful states , having single digits inflation and good for any foreign trade ?


It's easy: make every Icelander own 20 bitcoins on average by giving up his entire wealth to those pushing the scheme. Unleash the Apple stock etc. flawed analogies.

I'm offering TEN TIMES what he's paying ! I will pledge my whole stash of one billion premined trollars, the alternate currency i'm releasing.
C'mon man, give us a chance to invest in this baby. It's a monster I tell you !

joeyjoe, thank you for working so hard for the good of the community. An unhackable wallet is a much needed product, it can't arrive any moment too soon. If only allinvain, the infamous wallet.dat victim would be alive to see this day ! Sadly the pressure of loosing half a million dollars to a hacker was too much for the poor soul, he succumbed to deep depression and took his own life by homoerotic asphyxiation. Sad indeed.

However I cannot but wonder why would men with such genius waste time on a small fish like the Bitcoin. Banks are wasting billions of dollars on things like security tokens and authentication methods. A method guaranteeing that only the bank software has access to say, a certificate file used in the authentication, is pure gold. It's easily the invention of the decade in the field of security. Your company might very well be the next Apple. Since I see it's potential, I'm more than anxious to buy stock in an IPO, please keep me posted !

Hush now, stop wasting your talent on these unworthy simpletons, disclosing the glorious invention. Together the three of us will make billions !

I haven't made myself sufficiently clear. Eventually all coins are spent (or almost all), so a temporary drop in the CDD value corresponds to an increase later on, in a constant sum game. Let CDD=(# of coins sent)*(# of confirmations on sent coins at the time that they are sent) in a week. Let's say we have a simple inversely proportional algorithm for the block bonus in a given week:
CDD = 1000 -> Block bonus = 50
CDD = 1100 -> Block bonus = 45
CDD = 900  -> Block bonus = 55

So a high velocity corresponds to a reduced block bonus to stem inflation, and vice-versa. Well then, in this situation although the block bonus depends on the CDD value in a given week, the total long term monetary expansion is roughly the same as if the block reward is constant 50 because of the tendency of the CDD value to even itself out on the long run. So while it might achieve some degree of price stability, the long time value is still governed by the average reward of 50/block.

On the other hand, an exponential system like this:
CDD = 1000 -> block bonus = 0.0001% of the outstanding monetary base
CDD = 1100 -> block bonus = 0.00009% of the outstanding monetary base
etc. will lead to an entirely different long term shape of the monetary base (exponential) although both systems modulate their block reward based on CDD.

You are telling me you have gas pedal with which to control the car's speed; I'm asking you where you want to go.


I've found an error in our initial assumption, the idea that holders of wealth could create hyperinflation by manipulating speed. In fact when the velocity is high that's a sign of inflation, so the system should react by cutting the block reward. This create a dangerous pro-cyclical situation: the holders of wealth have a vested interest to minimize the block reward, thus they will simulate a high velocity even during deflation.

Bitcoin is not by any stretch of the imagination dead. It's an effective way to launder money and this alone is good enough to ensure it's survival, despite it's flaws. Bitcoin is not going anywhere because it will be replaced by better crypto-currencies, not because the concept is dead.

Bitcoin is not going anywhere because it's economically and technically flawed. That being said, a new bubble can very well re-emerge after the current one cools-off, successive bubbles are historically documented. The bubbly appeal is certainly still there: revolutionary, this time is different, game changer, paradigm shift etc.  Maybe we can see re-ignition in the pennies range, 0-20c, but that price will not be hit very soon, judging by the subjective interest I see a bull trap is long overdue.

However a second bubble with gentler slopes will not in any case comfort the owners of the 1 million or so coins sold in the 15 - 30$ range. Those are millions of dollars of wealth destroyed through mining overvalued bits, and millions of dollars into the pockets of a hand full of "early adopters" pushing the scheme.

What are you talking about ? The Japanese stock bubble took 5 years to inflate and 12 years to reach pre-bubble levels, and that's patently clear form the graph. A similar shape can be seen for Japanese real estate, fast upside, long and drawn-out downside:



Notwithstanding, your definition of a bubble is arbitrary and wrong - the slopes of the upside/downside are irrelevant. A bubble is defined by speculative overvaluation of the fundamentals driven by herd behaviour, and we had and still have plenty of that in Bitcoin.

You can change your own definition, but that won't stop everybody else to call the bitcoin price evolution what it is: a speculative bubble.

Oh, oh ! I get it now, that makes perfect sense! Thanks for setting the record straight.

BTW, I'm still waiting for demand to pick up to the normal levels for my Japanese stock and property. Anyone in the market for a 3 million $ Tokyo flat ?