Anyone can start their own block chain and genesis block. The question is would people adopt it or not.
Im of the opinion that this is going to happen as soon as bitcoin becomes popular and the people realise they can setup their own currency. There might be endless crappy wanna be bitcoin chains in existence at that point each with their own rules. After all why struggle to generate on the existing network when you can be your own bitmagnate lol. There may even be proprietary ones that companies set up and promise to back at a certain rate.
Agreed. This will happen. I wouldn't be surprised if big companies such as Google or Apple started their own block chain. In this perspective, cryptocurrencies could be used as a replacement for equities. I think it would be a great improvment for equity market, and more generally for capitalism. Also, some people will want different versions of cryptocurrencies. For instance one with a non-fixed aggregate. The market will have to decide which of all these currency will have more value. Personnaly, I'll stick to bitcoins. But I may buy a few GoogleCoin if this appears. |
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ok, well I have no moral problem taxing the rich to provide free healthcare and pay for science. Fine by me.
Yeah, as if taxing rich people was the solution for all problems in the world... |
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If it doesn't float, there has to be a peg? And who picks the peg price?
It has to float. At least a bit. Because the total amount of bitcoins can not be perfectly controlled. Nor can be the total amount of gold. Wallets can be destroyed. Gold can be lost (in the ocean for instance). Therefore it's better to let the market fix the price of gold. But it will likely be more or less constant. |
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jgarzik leads at 150 BTC.
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I bid one (1) BTC
LobsterMan initiates and leads the auction with 1 BTC. |
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Grondilu, we are in agreement, especially regarding your comment on token representation. My point is that a pegged rate to gold will provide bitcoin with stable value representation (and put an end to the crying deflationistas and inflationistas). A floating rate to gold is what exists now but you still have to go through someone like Mt. Gox where the quoted exchange rate is dollar-based to get the expression in USD. I understand the irony here because a gold peg seemingly would overlay a centralized structure from those providing the gold-backing, but it doesn't have to be centralized if the bitcoin forks grow with the injected amount of gold. The gold peg can be software-established in the same way that the 21 million threshold is established. This would therefore be distributed because it is a distributed system of bitcoin exchangers worldwide providing the backing at generation.
I will remain open about the forked block in bitcoin being unnecessary, but I don't see how a stable bitcoin is feasible without parallel bitcoin economies having the option to provide the convertibility function.
Well, I have just started an auction for a 1g gold on the marketplace forum. Direct bitcoin to gold market. Not mtgox nor dollars involved. http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1730.0 |
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EDIT: This auction is closed. See end of thread.
I launch an other auction for a 1g gold mini bullion this time (see attached picture).
Price will include postal fees to wherever in the world. Payment will be required before sending.
No starting price.
DO NOT BID IF YOU DON'T REALLY INTEND TO BUY THE BAR.
Auction will end at block number 92,000. At block 92,000, I will lock this thread. I may lock it a bit earlier and organise a IRC auction just before the end, though.
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The reason that I think a fork may be required is that there are already so many bitcoin issued without a value injection (other than gen time and power). We wouldn't value paper dollars based on the amount of paper and ink utilized. Bitcoin is not "legal tender" fiat by decree.
I am referring to a stable rate of x bitcoin to x grams (just like the Chinese Yuan to the USD or other dollar pegs). This would allow bitcoin valuation to take place in an expression other than USD and one would not need to go through the USD for valuation and/or two-way convertibility. A pegged link would then allow bitcoin to also take on the "unit of account" function of money in addition to the "medium of exchange" function.
I think we don't need value injection. Right now bitcoins are generated without any relation to gold, but it doesn't mean a fixed rate can not be reached in the future. I personnaly like to compare bitcoin to silver. There is no "official" price of gold in silver. Those two metals are not convertible into one another. And yet, there is a more or less constant ratio in price. It's only due to their relative constant scarcity. Same would apply to bitcoin, imo. Even if bitcoin is generated with no value injection, as you say, it is anyway in fixed amount, and therefore can be used as the unit of account you are hoping for. |
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Agreed, the article is bollocks. The greatest threat to the current bitcoin economy is probably a parallel (or forked) bitcoin economy where large block issuers align themselves somehow to issue bitcoin which is convertible to a predetermined amount of gold from the outset. This will bridge the link to the physical world via 24/7 convertibility (using exchangers and even gold ATMs now in some places). Additionally, it would benefit from the relative stability of gold that everyone understands.
By delinking the medium of exchange function from the store of value function,this strategy would also exploit the "scarcity" token feature of bitcoin in a positive way (because, yes scarcity is different on the Internet). Prepare for parallel bitcoin economies.
That's what I have been thinking from the beginning. The main use of bitcoin will be to exchange gold. I doubt however that it would require a fork of bitcoin. It's much easier to use the mainstream bitcoin block chain. I mean, say I own 1 Kg of gold. If I trust bitcoin to be in a fixed amount, then I can ensure the convertibility of 1kg of gold into the whole bitcoin stocks. That would price a gram of gold to 21,000 BTC. If someone thinks the same but owns 10 Kg, the price of the gram will be 2,100 BTC. Eventually, the price of gold will be the total amount of bitcoins, divided by the maximum amount of gold owned by someone who is willing to use bitcoin as an exchange tool for his gold. I confess that I'm not so sure about that right now. I still have to think this more thorously. But it's my opinion right now. |
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Great post, thank you.
...
Please use paragraphs. |
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The problem is not the lack of food, but the lack of cheap, healthy food in our society.
The market is providing what choices people want; apparently, large volumes of people want cheap packaged junk food or drive-thru junk food. Even with "free" food vouchers, via food stamps, the nutritional choices made by the purchaser trend towards unhealthy junk. I indeed underestimated the problem of food, especially in US. People who use food stamps do get some food. So there is no shortage of food, and the demand is here. The problem is therefore the fact that prices do not adapt to this demand. I personnaly think this is only due to excessive market regulation and terrible monetary policies. Maybe a good micro-payment system could solve that. |
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Most of what is said here could ne said about any fixed aggregate money, such as gold. I guess this guy also thinks gold is useless and will never be used as money. |
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I'm very hungry person, if I can't get something to eat it's like torture! I wouldn't wish something like to onto my worst enemy! And those starving people are not even my enemies ...  Anyway, is there any point to these questions? It's just that, as I was reading your post, when you were talking about exploited and starving to death people, it seemed to be very very far away from the reality of the society I live in. There are problems in our society, but ... starvation ? Hum, I don't think so. |
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I think I've never ever seen a starving person with my own eyes. Why should I even believe there are such people ?? Because television and hippies like you tell me so ?
Is this supposed to be a joke? I do not know what to think about this ... do you others here identify with such thinking? Is this who you are? I'm trying to identify the species I'm talking to because it doesn't appear to be human ... Well, when is the last time you saved someone's life just by giving him some food ? If you never did, then where does your concern about starving people comes from ? If it can't come from personnal experience, then where can it come from, apart from television and other medias, i.e. mass propaganda ? |
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I do not think it is "morally superior" to care about exploited or starved to death people, do you?
I think I've never ever seen a starving person with my own eyes. And as far as "exploitation" is concerned, this is very much a subjective judgement. We talked about that already. |
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You need to encourage an free intellectual atmosphere so that science will prosper.
Then do it. With YOUR money. YOUR work. Don't force people to do the same. You can't make laws on assumptions like that. You can't say : "If we don't do this, then that will happen, and it would be not good." It would be too easy. This is almost similar to blackmailing. It reminds me the banking system, crying for some money from the government : "If you don't give us 700 G$, it's gonna be the end of the world...". Are we supposed to just believe it and comply ?? No way. Your predictions about what would happen if we do or do not something, are no justification for taxation. Therefore I won't even try to explain to you why I disagree about your belief in government being necessary for scientific progress. It would be irrelevant. |
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This community is still too sparse to support a face-to-face economy. Maybe a good place to start the first local Bitcoin economy would be a university campus.
This would be nice. Unfortunately I'm not a student anymore. I hope that some young people will learn about bitcoins and get enthousiastic about that. Young people have indeed access to large places were they can gather and exchange stuffs. They could indeed trade bitcoins. |
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Excuse me for my ignorance, but isn't the difficulty there exactly to prevent what the topic author fears?
Yes, it is. I should have explained that earlier. There is indeed a maximum difficulty for SHA-256, but it means being able to invert the hash function. And as pointed upper in this thread, it is just impossible using brute force. |
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Let's assume there will be a technological breakthrough, and the computing power will go up 10-fold, or 100-fold in a matter of year. Is Bitcoin still safe ? I think not. It will be much easier for somebody to redo a part of the chain and perhaps fake some transactions.
Technological breakthroughs do happen, it is not something unrealistic at all.
That's a huge hypothesis. We'll talk about it if it happens, ok ? But meanwhile, there is no need to mess with the protocol. Especially about a change of the hash function. Again, if you really want a sha512 cryptocurrency, then fork bitcoin. That's the good thing about free software, if someone is not happy with the direction of the code, he can fork it. We don't have to argue endlessly about those stuffs. Changing the hash function would imply the coexistence of two hash formats inside the block chain. This is not good for the coherence of the protocole. |
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