Had you known about Bitcoin back then, you would have thought (like everyone else) that it wasn't worth bidding $50 for smoketoomuch's 10000 BTC.

In 2012, people have exactly the same opportunity as they had back then. If they have $100 to invest, they can buy $100 worth of Bitcoins if they think Bitcoin's value will increase in the future. If the price goes up 500%, the 2012 investor makes exactly the same on their $100 investment as the previous investors would have made if the price went up by the same amount. The number of coins involved is irrelevant - the only thing that counts is the % increase in value.

Maybe Instawallet needs to be operated by an autonomous agent rather than a human.

And here's the same thing, written in a 1964 child's book as a prediction:


http://web-owls.com/2007/06/25/google-as-predicted-in-1964/

I would attend in December if it were in the Canary Islands. They're in Spain, so they're almost part of Europe.

I think you're being impatient. Probably only 5% of the readers of this forum have even seen this thread so far. And anyway, people need to hear about a new concept at least three times before it sinks in.

GLBSE is being rapidly improved as a platform (although it has a long way to go still), but the commitment seems to be there.

And your own reputation at GLBSE will increase over time as more dividends get paid out. Sure, you have plenty of reputation elsewhere, but not everyone at GLBSE follows those other places.

So I hope you will stick with this platform long-term, and offer many interesting and innovative assets.

I'm sure people will find lots of ways to profit from autonomous agents.

One trivial example: if you operate a business that rents server space, you will increase your profits by making your service agent-friendly.

Oh, don't assume that. This is by far the most interesting asset seen so far at GLBSE.

But GLBSE as a platform doesn't exactly make life easy for new investors. (Why is PureMining not listed under the "Listed Companies" link on the GLBSE home page, for example?)

Some lawyers have been taking this quite seriously for a number of years. In a 2005 conference on the "Law of Transhuman Persons" they considered the legal ramifications of an autonomous software agent that made money by answering questions on the (now-closed) Google Answers paid research/Q&A service. The software agent was then able to do things like paying for improved hosting in jurisdictions whose laws suited its purposes better.

Obviously, Bitcoin makes the whole thing more practical.

http://web-owls.com/2007/05/01/the-transhuman-google-answers-researcher/

Suppose someone persuades the courts to force Linode to pay the $200,000 that was lost. What happens next? Hosting for BTC becomes unaffordable, because service providers need to charge enough to cover the possibility of big losses. Oh, and lawyers pocket much of the $200,000.

Suppose no-one takes this through the courts. Cheap hosting remains available for BTC businesses, and those BTC businesses beef up their security.

Which is the better outcome?

The good news is implicit. People can see, despite the stream of bad news stories on SlashDot, that Bitcoin keeps functioning.

Why do you assume that only centralization can work?

My own property in the UK was unregistered when I bought it. The previous owners had sufficient papers for an uncontestable transfer. Basically the owners showed that their parents had bought the property in 1910, then willed it to them when they died. The owners also showed that they had "enjoyed uninterrupted use" of the property for over 12 years, which (at the time) was legally sufficient to show that no-one else had a claim on the property. It needed three documents, and was very straightforward: a property conveyance from 1910, a will, and a council tax statement.

Even if a seller doesn't have all the documents, you can buy insurance to protect yourself against the risk of buying a property that is not the vendor's to sell. In the UK, this insurance is not expensive, which suggests that there's not much risk.

After buying the property, we chose to register it. That was a big mistake. When we wanted to exchange a tiny sliver of land with a neighbor, this became a very expensive operation needing lots of lawyers and surveyors. If we had done the same thing with unregistered property, we could have done it with a handshake and some signatures on a sketch map.


In the UK, they tax the dwelling (the house), not the earth (the land). It's obvious (even to a council worker) whether or not there's a house.

This is no big deal. If land isn't on the register, ownership is established by looking at past transactions on that land.

In the UK, some property is on the land register, and some isn't. It's possible to transact both kinds of land safely.

Eric Schmidt's enthusiasm for Bitcoin was very clear.

Eric reminded me of how Steve Jobs dismissed the idea of a tablet, about five years ago when someone asked whether Apple was going to produce one. Jobs said something like "We've been looking at tablets, but we can't find a way to do it for under $500 that wouldn't be rubbish". He chose his words carefully, to start sowing the idea that there would one day be an Apple tablet, and it would be great, but expect it to be expensive.

I think the "real message" behind Schmid's dismissal of Bitcoin is this: "Bitcoin is so cool. We wish we could do it at Google, but it's difficult politically. We sure hope others will make it happen."

Google already did a great service by writing the Android library for Bitcoin, and Schmidt's endorsement is icing on the cake.

No, I didn't mention "without the state". I said that with the state, there is no private property.

Most property "owners" know that the property will be seized unless they pay the taxes that are assessed on it. And that if the state wants to put a freeway on their property, their "ownership" won't enable them to keep the property.

Well you certainly don't have property rights with a state, since every state takes property from its citizens in order to fund itself.

That word is misspelled on your website. It should be "medications" or "modifications", according to what you are trying to say.

It's a great service. I think you should add a block of links to functioning .bit websites, so that people can easily see that there is good content on .bit.

Then, in the future, you can sell these links as ads, instead of providing them for free.

If the Greek government was to sell a few islands with self-sovereignty, the price received would be much higher.

The government of that country would announce that they would accept payment of taxes in BTC, and would be making all of their payouts in BTC.

Nothing else would be needed. It's not like they would need to get Gavin's permission or anything.

X=$52,500
each BTC will worth $0.0025

Laszlo's payment of 10,000 BTC for a pizza will turn out to have been about right.