We're saying the same thing. We're in violent agreement. Deflation is irrelevant because you have to buy the right to hold a deflationary asset at its fair market value and you can sell it for its fair market value. So it cancels out.

That's not true. You don't have to hold over time to enjoy the benefits of deflation. You can simply sell the right to hold the asset as it deflates for the full present value of that deflation. Say we all knew that gold would be worth $5,000 per ounce next year to a certainty. When you sell an ounce of gold, you are selling the right to have $5,000 next year. So the price of gold will be at least the value of $5,000 next year, whatever that is. You can sell the right to the deflation to someone else for its full value, so long as that deflation is predictable.

Right, because future prices are unpredictable. That is, a Bitcoin is worth $300 today because we *don't* know that it will be worth $400 next month. If we knew that, nobody would sell them for $300 today because there would be enough people who want $400 next month that they'd bid up the price.

Exactly, and as a result, he has to make his prices low enough that consumers will buy them, even though those consumers know they can buy cheaper computers with more power next year. So a consumer will find the deflation already priced into today's computers. You don't have to wait to next year to benefit from the fact that computers will be better and cheaper next year, you can buy one today and that is already priced in.

Right, so all these factors are already built into today's price. If apples lasted forever, they'd probably sell for a higher price today.

All the factors that make it hard to price the future for things like apples, computers, and oil don't apply to Bitcoins. They are essentially free to hold, have low transaction costs, and are easy to transfer. There is nothing stopping future expected price changes from being priced into present prices, except that nobody knows what future prices are.

Whatever people expect future prices to be, with Bitcoins, nothing stops them from pricing that into the present. The reason Bitcoin prices aren't higher today is that people are *not* sure they'll be higher in the future. People who want to speculate on the future price of Bitcoins can buy them today at a fiar price. There is no need to "hoard" Bitcoins because the market price is fair to both the buyer and the seller.

Apparently, their jurisdiction has new regulations that apply to companies that hold customer funds, which they do because they provide escrow.

There basically no point in mining without a miner. You won't even come close to covering your power costs.

Well, there was this reddit post:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1czrua/just_lost_160_btc_from_address_managed_with/
The reporter has essentially rescinded this report: "it seems likely that my blockchain.info account wasn't the one that was compromised since the 1PcXspQbZWxUkS9bHcbgMUsb8HsUzP5noT address wasn't loaded in there and I did have other archived addresses in the blockchain wallet with some BTC left in them that wasn't stolen."

Can you link to any of these threads? It's not clear what you're asking us to verify.

Right, that's why merchants generally won't do that, nor should they. They can just sell the Bitcoins at the present rate and *still* benefit from their future value because they are selling that future value for its full value. When you sell a Bitcoin today, one of the things you are selling is the right to hold that Bitcoin and benefit from its appreciation in value. The price you get will include the value of that.

That's not what I said. I said if the deflation is predictable and reliable, it will be reflected in the current price. If it's not, it won't induce hoarding. You can't have it both ways.

But that's the beautiful thing, you don't have to. You can get the benefit of the fact that computers get cheaper over time without having to delay your purchase. The price of computers *today* already reflects the fact that they get cheaper over time. The prices would be higher if not for that. The price of oil today reflects the expectation that it will be more expensive in the future. Google "speculators raise price of oil" for a thousand articles explaining how present prices come to reflect expected future changes in value.

It doesn't help people who already bought miners and for whom buying the miner is a sunk cost. It may help newer miners make ROI because the cost of mining hardware relative to Bitcoins goes down. But that just raises the difficulty, making things even worse for those who already bought miners.

It also means you have to keep mining for longer. Because the cost of electricity goes down, everyone's miners will mine more than they cost to operate for longer. So you have to keep mining for longer to get the same return. (Because everyone else mining for longer also raises the difficulty.)

Litecoin does one and one one thing -- allow you to send Litecoin from one account to another. Ripple allows you to send dollars from one person to another. Ripple allows you to hold the currency of your choice and make payments in the currencies of other people's choices with direct access to the very same liquidity regardless of whether your transfer is for one penny or a million dollars.

Ripple pays a price for these advantages, of course. There are no free lunches. One of them is that it can't move the assets directly and therefore requires gateways.

Right, but this discount is already built into the price of Bitcoins. If people want to hold and hoard Bitcoins, they'll be willing to pay more dollars for them than they would otherwise and people would only be willing to trade Bitcoins for dollars at a price higher than it would be otherwise. This is already built into the price.

The exchange rate between Bitcoins and dollars already takes into account expected future price changes. To the extent people think Bitcoin will be worth more in the future, they will demand higher prices for it today.

Why do people buy computers today even though they can get them tomorrow for a lower price? Simple -- they demand a lower price today because the fact that they can get a better computer for less in the future makes that computer worth less today. This is already built into the price of computers.

Ripple is now open source. Both the client and the server are available on Github. Opencoin is now Ripple Labs. We still hold a significant fraction of the XRP (over 70%), but our plan is to give away most of that, and that's what we've been doing. Ripple Labs has almost 30 employees working full time improving and promoting Ripple.

https://github.com/ripple/ripple-client
https://github.com/ripple/rippled
https://ripple.com/wiki/Introduction_to_Ripple_for_Bitcoiners#Distribution

This is a self-contradiction. "Ourselves" is a "someone". A Ponzi scheme can use current investors to bring in new investors. (And usually does, particularly when some of the current investors know, or strongly suspect, that it's a Ponzi scheme and still want to make a profit.)

There is one and only one reason Bitcoin isn't a Ponzi scheme -- there's a realistic chance of real value being created and the investors getting a profit from that real value, not just from the investments made by others.

You can always keep a copy of the key your friend holds somewhere.

US Domestic transfers can be reversed.

It won't be "for free", it will be at a loss, that is, costing you more than the value of the Bitcoins.

There's really no point. You don't have any hardware that's suitable for mining. Mining, of all crypto-currencies that have any value, is a highly competitive field and you are starting out with a massive handicap.

You mean you should lie to PayPal to get them to do something they wouldn't do if they knew the truth? Really?

If you are asking if the payment can be reversed, of course it can. The sender just has to say they didn't authorize the payment and PayPal will reverse it. Gifts are the easiest to reverse -- for what possible dishonest reason would a person want to reverse a gift? There are clear reasons to dishonestly try to reverse a payment, but surely someone who wants to reverse a gift is almost certainly telling the truth when they say it's unauthorized.

Not Bitcoins, no.

Yes, or mines at a significant loss unless they steal hardware, get free electricity, or something like that.

Yeah, give it a few hours and you might see a blip. Each share is worth about .000000064 Bitcoins right now, and you've not mined one yet. You mine may 1/100th of the cost of the additional electricity your laptop will consume.

Actually, that would be assuming it's actually mining. It may be smart enough to know not to bother.

Nothing. You don't have any hardware that's suitable for mining Bitcoins.

You believe it's unfair for the people who develop a new technology that will improve the world to profit from it? You'd prefer Bitcoin enrich ASIC manufacturers and electric companies rather than people who devoted years to developing Bitcoin?

When people got Bitcoins nearly for free in the early days, that was because they were nearly worthless then. They invested resources, at super high risk, to bootstrap the currency.

A Bitcoin is worth $200 or so today. Long after the early adopter phase was over, Bitcoins were under $2 apiece. So 99% of the profit early adopters made, anyone who wanted to could have made by buying Bitcoins at $2 each. You know why people didn't? Because they didn't think it was worth the risk. Now think about contributing hardware and electricity when Bitcoins were a hundred to the dollar.

Now is your chance to be an early adopter. If Bitcoin takes over the world, it's still early.

If hoarding Bitcoins is good, sellers will want to hoard Bitcoins, which will mean they will offer buyers lower prices for paying in Bitcoins.

Why do gas stations ever sell gas? They know they can wait until tomorrow when the price of gas will be higher due to inflation. Simple reason: The price of gas *today* already takes inflation into account.

Same for Bitcoins. The price of Bitcoins today already takes into account the fact that people want to hoard them.

Or, to put it another way, if you felt this way, why would you ever buy anything with dollars unless you had no choice? Why would you handle dollars at all?