Dollars are designed to always be decreasing in value, to encourage investment say the Keynesians.  So measure the market in something that isn't changing it's worth, such as gold.


Since the "bottom" of the market at the last crash, the market has gone down.  But in nominal dollars it seems higher, doubled!  But the Dollar is not worth as much.
Still due to dollar inflation, market investors owe a lot of money in capital gains taxes, because the stock prices are hitting new highs, so selling them is a "profit".

I'm not much for currency investment, but I do respect Gresham's law when it applies.  Yes I would rather spend my dollars and would rather accept bitcoin payments.  Am not so worried about the carry risk with bitcoin, the average has been in my favor.  I also enjoy spending my bitcoin, but I do so preferentially with those with whom I have some personal compassion or ongoing business relationship, because I want them to still be around if there is some currency crisis.

I also like to spend bitcoin with folks that are new to bitcoin or just curious.  It provides a great way to introduce someone who is just contemplating it.  For every new person we bring into the new monetary economy, we do each other a favor that will never be forgotten.

Who among us does not remember their first bitcoin transaction?

The point at which you buy the Top Off Coupon is where the bitcoins are sold, yes?

(You are not storing value in bitcoin on the card itself.)

Michael Huemer is genius (and a close friend of my family for decades, shared many meals together).

Was the violence initiated by the theft of food?
Is law enforcement necessarily violence?

As a coin collector, and maker, the more the merrier!  It would be awesome to have a lower cost piece.  Just that alone could make it more likely to circulate.  I love that potential.  Also I'm aware of the work that can go into a piece, as well as the shortcuts available.  There is a lot of room in the physical crypto coin space.  I hope to contribute to that as much as possible and am open to working with anyone that is interested in improving the available offerings.

One of my first fascinations with coins came as a child.  I had a whole bunch of coins from all over the world and I would engage my childlike mind for hours on end making up stories of the people that would have used the coin and what they could have bought with it.  Weaving tales of how it came into my possession through the years of circulation was a delightful bit of creativity that also led me to research much more of the world  than many of my peers in childhood.

The same can be done with the block chains, and the localization of IP addressing and imagining where and who might have used the coins, and for what.  My adult mind also engages destroying the imagined and uses block chain links for forensic fact finding when called to do so, but I would be a fool if I didn't acknowledge the origin of this fascination.

Exciting times, both numismatically as well as for Bitcoin and Litecoin.

Do you imagine that Snowden is in control of the edit?  Or even when the camera is on or where it is pointed?
Or that he has a choice of whether a picture of PRISM or his face is on the screen for the masses?
If so, than even you sir, have been duped along with all the rest of us.


He may be his generations Annie Machon (MI5 whistleblower on the Qadaffi assassination plot), if he survives so long.
http://anniemachon.ch/

Americans generally do not know any of this, mostly because of apathy.

Snowden's other option (if he wanted to out these systems due to his burden of conscience) would have been to leak the information anonymously.  What would have happened then is a massive internal manhunt to the great detriment and suffering of a vast number of his colleagues.  So taking the heat on it personally was probably less to do with his egoism than you might suggest.
I would never have done it myself.   I have far too much to lose to be revealing secrets, about anything.  And I selfishly value my trustworthyness more than any imagined potential benefit to society that might come from what he did.  Due to the the political perversity principle, it is just as likely to have the opposite of whatever effect Snowden intended.

But it can be fun to point out what is in the public domain already, and taking a fresh look at the relevant interests and how they are aligned and opposed is engaging for some strategic thinkers.
I don't have any reason for, (or even any way of) either being for or against him as a person, a criminal, or a hero, but observing the interplay of reactions has to be engaging food for analysis.

Bitcoin's value is supported by people's confidence etc, but that is different than being backed.
The world is so unaccustomed to a backed currency, that the meaning of backing is at risk of being lost to time.

Ought we do something for Bitcoin Wednesday?

suggest something, or we can head back to Warzawa...?
http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Bitcoin/events/132696642/

This is to be discussed at the OHM conference..
http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.3257
It is related?

So where have you folks camped?  I'd like to stop by.

Since you got that joke, here's one even funnier...
That Guardian Webpage you just browsed and linked here has all the social media "like" buttons and "share" buttons embedded on it.
You can see them on the left.

The Java script those buttons include on the page are enough to provide this tracking information through those social media sites,
So even if Guardian were not providing this browser tapping directly, the java from those "like" buttons would be doing it anyway. EVEN if you don't use them, or Facebook.
Every time you see that little thumbs up, you know you have just added your browsing data to the XKeyscore system.

You might be surprised how little Americans know about what the government does.
Do not underestimate our capacity to ignore even what might seem obvious.

Your assessment of the media is also interesting, but consider the media coverage in the Snowden case.
It focuses 99% on the personage of Snowden.  Almost zero coverage about what was revealed.
This method is not new, it is repeated with each whistleblower.
The effect is to maintain the ignorance about what is revealed, and focus entirely on the intrigue of the manhunt.  It becomes an adventure and human interest story rather than anything that can affect policy or government.

It was the same with Bradley Manning.  Americans know a lot more about his sexual issues than they do about anything that he revealed.

Americans are instructed to be afraid of our "enemies".

Bitcoin does this by the simple virtue of what it is, a non-inflating currency and frictionless payment system open to everyone equally.

Inflation is the most regressive type of tax there is.  Government money when inflated hurts the poor and disenfranchised the most of all.  Newly printed money starts within the government, so the government receives the benefit of the money before the inflation takes effect, because the first time it is spent, the inflation has not yet taken effect.
The second time it is spent, the effect of the new money on inflation has only had its effect on the first recipients, to everyone else it is the first exposure.  In this way inflation ripples out into an economic system from the central bank out to the edges.  
Those that have high wealth, and high credit can get giant loans, the money to pay those loans are inflated, which makes them easier to repay.  The hard assets that were bought with those loans go up in value.  The richest are not affected by the inflation and many of them benefit from it.

The poorest, the rent-payers, and the last to get the money spent into their pocket only see it after the effect of inflation has taken its full effect.

Bitcoin avoids this, and has the opposite effect.  The banks and the central bank and the government are outside the circle of new money creation.  Bitcoin is already doing a good job of helping the poor, just by virtue of what it is and how it works and what it does.

http://bitcoin100.org/

When you add on top of this the massive charitable giving that is occurring from the bitcoin community, the notion of intercepting that charity and philanthropy with an institutional welfare taxation that pays people to not work or pays them to be sick seems worse than redundant.  It seems like it breaks a good thing by removing the joy of the giving from the giver and replaces it with the resentment and broken institutions that it can otherwise replace.

If you consider the Winkevoss as the Institutional Investor?  Then no joke.
I'm at OHM2013, a hacker conference in the Netherlands.  I gave a presentation on non-government money.  About 75% of attendees (at this talk, not just the whole conference) had "heard of" bitcoin.  Less than 10% at the presentation had ever owned any, and this is about as deep as you can get in the target market without being at a bitcoin meetup.

These are the early days.

Every woman's dream is to have two men.








One to cook, and one to clean.

Too late.  The abstract value of Abstract Coin approaches an abstract value of 1/0
Very "Highly" valued.

I have kids.
If there were only one computer it would be in a common area.

But.. in the spirit of your putting some answer to your weird question, the computer would go in the room of the first one to ask.  Presumably it would be the older of them.  I can't see a reason to put a computer in the room of a child or not selectively based on the gender of the child.  Do you?
Kids are much more expensive than computers, or rooms for that matter.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2256305/U-S-internet-connected-gadgets-people.html

Looks like she is right to be pessimistic in discussing it.

The "meaning of life" pretty much takes a back seat to the "experience of life" and the "endeavor of life" for this philosopher, as a practical way of avoiding the preponderance of existential angst.