Honestly I think it belongs here more than some articles that DO mention Bitcoin, but only in passing.

We wouldn't remove all the Silkroad news stories either right?

Wikileaks is changing the world and scaring world leaders and Bitcoin is like 10% part of that - that is effing news worthy.

Hi Sweeney, are you still the only BTC guy in all of Manilla?

How do you get Pesos for your Bitcoins if everyone is only sending money into the country?

I'm just curious as I will likely use your service.

Anyway if a friend of my wife has a Smart brand normal SIM card, can you send money to that, given just her phone number and can she then cash out somewhere?

This is the first reward drop, I am almost certain there will be SOME kind of chaos even if only temporary.

My guess is 12-25$.

First read about it in 2011 during the 30$ spike, I understood it to a large extent and put it in the back of my mind as the way of the future - unfortunately since it was distributed peer technology I assumed the protocol was entirely unchangeable.
This meant I wrote Bitcoin off on some of the fixable flaws it still has - divisibility and performance mainly.

Probably lucky I did so I didn't buy during the 30$ spike

I got in again when I realized it was the only way a computer program could do finance without depending on human cooperation, something I needed for my bachelors project.

In short? Etlase is getting/got his head bashed in by people taking turn arguing with/getting tired of him.

I wonder if he ever gets tired of being wrong so much.

I mean "loans are not for consumption"... that's like the whole point of loans! To buy a machine, food or whatever, so you can be more productive the next day.

Stupidest thing I ever fucking heard.

FYI I never use the address generated before encryption, in fact I mark it as "unsafe".

I keep my wallet.dat encrypted at all times and my backups are encrypted password RAR files of said ecrypted wallet spread across my devices and email accounts.

I have also double checked the backup wallets work and were not corrupted in the process.


I would like to generate my own keys with my own fully understood software and store on paper only until first usage, but I'm not that far yet.

X is years from founding and Y is total value (Bitcoin)/revenue (paypal).

Dude fuck the rest of this news; if VALVE is looking into Bitcoin that is amazing.

The crowd on steam is both computer-versed and often, as gamers, used to digital in-game currencies traded elsewhere. Steam alone must be like a billion dollar market place - 10 times Bitcoins entire current value.

This is huge and even more amazing it might be for real since the Bitcoin community is probably full of gamers which might sway Valve to actually take that risk.

No one can control Bitcoin, not even the Bitcoin foundation, so why fear them?

Gavin seems like a nice guy that care about the right issues how bad could this possibly be?

Yeah that's the one. Being on the board of directors is not the same as ownership it only means some influence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_directors

Bank officers could likely have been elected into those boards by stockholders to get better bank deals - but JP could own 0 shares.

Yeah I can tell:

The steel union controlled 60% of the steel industry, but to avoid a major collapse of TC&I and further panic the steel union had to acquire TC&I.

This went straight against Theodore Roosevelt's anti-monopoly regulation spree so JP had him convinced an exception was necessary - hence dereg.

The whole ordeal was still a house of cards as I see it so maybe THAT was what came apart during the great depression. Just speculation that last part though.



I'm putting you back on ignore etlase, you are annoying me, being overly obtuse and talking down to me for no reason.

Sorry to hear your bad luck.

I only lost 3.75% of my stock value during the 2008 financial crisis and those were stocks I had bought when 16-17 with no experience.
With no proof to back it up I remember saying that the housing bubble and peoples spending habits were crazy before it all went sour.

I am now 23, I got some BTC at 4.8 and recently bought more at 10.10.

My strategy is to think über-long term because I know despite all emotion and manipulation that markets are ultimately logical. This means on a long time frame you CAN predict them.

An example:
Right now I could probably buy Italien bonds or similar at ~7% and be pretty sure that the ECB would print the money to cover it despite all logic that they are a corrupt state that should fail and then reform.
(Much like I thought about pirate bonds)
However I would never invest in such a way because it is not creating real wealth - even IF it worked I would be living in a worse off world which then hurts me.

I heard of BTC in 2011 but wrote it off because you could not divide them by more than 100.000.000 - that's how long term I am. I ONLY changed my mind because I realized the protocol is not as set in stone as I originally thought it was.
I would have sold all my BTC months ago if I had not been able to invent the swarm client (search forum if curious).


My advice to you is to stay in BTC with at least some funds and in general invest small in many things. Also: Invest in small things, big things are MORE likely to fail not LESS.

But creditors are not spending real wealth because they are not buying anything while debtors in general ARE consuming something of value. It would make sense just fine that they are punished unless they are very careful not to waste stuff we all need.

(See my island example.)

This particular part of your counter is an appeal to the emotion of fairness. You are not substantiating it by also explaining why creditors and debtors should be treated equally. (feel free to do so though)

Now I spend a good deal of time reading about the 1907 situation and two things strike me:
1. The economy was in recession for other reasons already when there was a crisis of faith in NYC banks.
2. The whole ordeal sounds like a massive card house/gambling business that SHOULD have been allowed to fail.

It was saved by JP Morgan at A LOSS to him. Likely he did it anyway because the house of cards falling would have cost him MORE.
Now when used as an analogy for a very basic premise (stable = good) it is unfortunate that you have the facts somewhat backward.

The mess was saved due partly also to deregulation pushed by JP, basically a lowering of the bar for the gamblers. I personally speculate the mess came apart in the great depression.

Now both credit holding manipulators actually lost money in your analogy here (the other being a botched copper cornering attempt starting the ordeal) so I don't see it as supporting your case for stable average prices in ANY way.

This is a new premise to back the other one. Here you are making the premise that stable average prices lead to a perfect level of general investment.
A premise based on the first premise almost.

Now that's the first good argument I have heard.

However there is a problem. We both agree that changes to individual ware prices are necessary and unavoidable. This means that there will always be SOME menu costs.

The question then becomes, how great are they?
In a digital age I would say very small. Additionally super markets and in fact ALL salesmen will often change prices beyond need to confuse or attract customers into paying or buying more - this means the cost to doing so can not be all that great.

Another counter is that if menu costs were a serious detriment to anything people would display prices in a third medium - like dollar prices today paid with BTC.

The money illusion would arguably be made STRONGER if everything always cost the same. I guess what you mean is that the cost of falling under the money illusion would be smaller.

Under inflation you would be paying too little and under deflation too much if you went by "the usual price".

Again sales people will try to make you pay more in so many ways, this is a bargaining problem that the free market solves nicely through cutthroat competition.

If market competition reduce prices to their correct level there is also no illusion cost so I don't see it supporting your premise.


So your answer is "I don't"? How is BTC crashing from $32 to $2 due to a localized bubble stable?

So you didn't answer my question because bubble collapses are not going to ensure stable prices.

The only sustainable way to lower prices I see is to remove currency from circulation which will require theft, taxes or selling real assets (which central banks don't have enough of to manipulate prices down again).

Could it be that monetary inflationists only care about stable prices when it allows them to GET money and value aaaand... not so much when they theoretically should go out and spend it to lower prices?
That's not ad hominem btw that's occams razor - simplest explanation: "I want free stuff" - like ALL human beings.

Okay so basically its fancy talk for the money printing required to keep prices stable in a growing economy.

Lets go one level deeper: Why are stable prices good? What is the facts and basis behind this premise?

Money "demand" assumes that stable prices is a good thing, but that seems very loaded/biased to me.

Say it IS a good thing, how do you LOWER prices again if the economy contracts?

If stable=good, why is it okay for each individual commodity to fluctuate in price and what is the point of average stable prices if each individual ware changes in price all the time?

I know of very secure investments which pay 1-3.5% in REAL interest rates for something that "lasts forever". A bigger and more informed investor with the right "ins" may well know of something even better.

The fact that many interest rates today are negative in real terms should tell you that its fucked up in real terms.

Yeah we're just brainwashed and emotionally ideological, there's some neat ad hominem.

Let me explain it to you:

1. 3 peps are on a deserted island with NOTHING there except some def. money that THEY hold.
2. YOU plant some crops, harvest and sell it for their worthless currency - lets say because you don't like to see people starve.
3. Now you do nothing and sit on your new money.
4. Because they are now well-fed and more energized they now plant two fields MORE with leftover seeds or with seeds from where you also found them.
5. There is now twice the amount of food on the island as when you finished harvesting.
6. NOW you spend your money for twice its previous value when you got it.
7. The value was "stolen" from people you helped earlier, from an economy that would not be where it was without your prior work.

With inflation? They print more money and buy your second harvest too without doing work, YOU have to keep working to keep "your value" on the island - who's brainwashed NOW?

But sure if it makes you happy I will call you a monetary inflationist instead of inflationist 

You are the one constantly talking about the market running out of loans, credit, investment or money.

"Demand for money" - what does that even mean... no SERIOUSLY; explain it to me, I don't get it.

Inflation usually refers to an inflation in the money supply. Prices in said economy are irrelevant to the concept of monetary inflation.
ALL inflationists usually justify their inflation with "stable prices" - and that's FINE, stable prices would be neat - but you're still an inflationist.

I think this is your problem right here; you think money is a necessary commodity or something that society can somehow "run out of". This is simply not the case, its a system of IOUs and there can NEVER be scarcity because you can always "rip an IOU in two" so you have twice the amount of tokens to go around.
This ESPECIALLY goes for Bitcoin which is digital and infinitely divisible.

A "credit crunch" is not a bad thing; its just the market figuring out that some or many main activities it was undertaking were stupid and so everything slows down until the market finds something NEW and more SENSIBLE to invest in.
Forcing the market to invest will just lead to bad investments as I see it.

Because distributing the new money equally is the same as moving the comma, think about it. Give everyone 10 times as much money and its exactly the same as moving the comma once to the left.
Mentioning banks is just appeal to emotion btw

Well Bitcoin needs those fees for a reason and not to control price levels or something.

Anyway if you pay 0.01 as fee and on average win the same all you are doing is subsidizing miners and allowing them to charger higher fees perpetually. This would either lead to a NEW wasteful banker-class or over consumption of CPU time.

I am assuming that A people prefer good investments and that B if they are investing in bad things they are also investing in good things to similar extent.

Businesses can operate on emotion, low pay and volunteer work. Many "human aid" orgs are nothing but money machines today.

0.1-0.5% is a horrible investment, no one should accept that. But moving on with 1-20% in mind (low to very high risk).
I think people would take normal investments because there would be less risk compared to ponzi operations.

Why would anyone invest with 3% deflation?
1. Well for starters deflationary currencies may well be less stable so it could be to hedge or profit from temporary drops in BTC price.
2. Many valid investments can pay more than 3%.
3. Deflationary currencies may have years of little or negative growth where real-returns would be great.

I am not saying it is bad I'm just calling it what it is. You even mention "new money" in your quote above.

More money will always equal higher prices at some point.. unless you also plan to remove credits?

Off topic, but I also don't see how your system avoids being gamed to death: Hold a bunch of coins, send them to your own addresses once in a while - system awards you with new coin due to you being an "account holder that is trading".

If you are truly giving the money to everyone why not just make a Bitcoin client that moves the comma once in a while?

I don't do that stuff.

You never mentioned anything about the investments being GOOD, just investments in general - you're "moving the goal posts". Surely the real world is no less riddled with bad investments and scams.
If something good did come along, and it will I think, people should start to choose that over the scams.

Its an app that has a paid version... how is that not a business?
I was talking about the TOR amory site for illegal guns.
Dice and poker is legal in many countries I think.

News reporting is a business right? Fox news, CNN - all businesses, why not wikileaks?

Alpaca socks are also legal

Here's a list of more businesses: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Toys.2C_Games_and_Hobbies

Anyway BTC is only a few years old so a "few" businesses is fine for now. I promise you I will be the first to complain if golden opportunities arise and people just sit on their BTC.

When discussing the investor willingness in a deflationary economy; yeah it immensely helps my case that people gave a guy named "pirate" 5% of the entire economy (okay maybe he only got 0.5% for real, who knows).

... which quickly is cast into doubt when you use words like "almost certainly" and tell us you have zero experience.

Conclusions require premises and premises require facts.
If you have no experience, how can you have facts and thus meaningful logic or conclusions?

Your conclusion could be right, it almost certainly is - the BTC market is very new and rapidly growing which means inefficiency - but it has nothing to do with any of your reasons.

Allow me to demonstrate:
"Bitcoin prices are almost certainly a random walk, hence the Bitcoin market is perfectly efficient." Its pulled-out-of-ass-logic.

As for inefficiency I'm sure people learned lessons from Pirate, Matthew, the hacks and others so that going forward we will see slightly less of that.

Converting from DKK to BTC recently became cheaper I know and Finland is at 2% for fiat->BTC so we are going forward.

I skimmed YOUR alt currency proposal and it contained the idea of adjusting the block reward at economic down turn or something like that. Here it is:
"Unbounded" - That's also called inflation.

As for inflation used as a bad word, I am not, it just so happens that you have a link in your signature to an inflationary alt currency and
it just seems clear to me that some here believe in inflation or deflation, so I grouped them.

That is a local change seen over ~1 year after a huge run-up, how about the more relevant 2-3 year range?

You're looking at a fluctuation trying to refute my argument that the market thinks BTC has real value - who's fallacious now?

"Cherry picking" is that the fallacy you used here?

MPEX, GLBSE, Android wallets, Satoshi dice, silk road, armory, coinabul, BTC camgirls, BTC poker and at least one Chinese businessman said he used it with benefit... is wikileaks a business?

That's more than I can count fiat/BTC exchanges btw.
Is ignoring the realities a logical fallacy? I am really not versed in logical fallacies
(Arhhh its ALSO "cherry picking")

There are probably more I don't remember or don't know about.
... and for a start up currency I don't see the problem with a bunch of exchanges. Its just the first needed thing really so your counter-argument makes no sense either way.


But GLBSE is not just seeing a trickle; pirate alone had 500K in debts which is 5% of ALL currently existing BTC and there is a whole BUNCH of other stuff on there that people are investing in.
What percentage of their dollars do people invest, do you even know?

And you just accused me of arguing there would be NO investments when in fact my wording was not near as strong as that - a straw man fallacy.

Do you understand the economic consequences if only very few DID invest in a BTC world? Clearly those few investors would have MUCH more clout as economy is all relative so the net effect is the same.

Yeah right. These "logical fallacies" can be applied to almost any argument, though of course yours are begging for it.

IMF, ECB, bank union, QE3.. all the same BS.