Logically speaking, how does being able to subdivide a currency into smaller portions devalue the total net worth of that currency? 

When I found out that the bitcoin economy could be divisible into 2.1 quadrillion units, it clicked for me that everyone in the world could use it.  Before that point, I was confused because it appeared that only .3% of the population could ever own even a single one, and what good is that for a currency?  

That realization skyrocketed the value of the bitcoin ecosystem as a whole in my mind, and with it the value of a bitcoin.  Did that realization devalue it in yours?  If not, why would further subdivisions devalue it for you?

Let's compare apples to apples.  There are about 10 billion ounces of gold in the world.  Divide that by 21 million and you get that the final supply of each bitcoin equals about 476 ounces of gold today.  A Satoshi is 0.000 000 01 bitcoin, so it is equivalent in supply to .000 004 76 ounces of gold. 

.000 004 76 ounces of gold might sound small, but the equivalent value of that amount of gold at current prices ($1276/ounce) is .6 cents.  That seems oddly close to a reasonable base unit for a currency to me.

Coincidence?  I think not.  Satoshi knew what he was doing and probably based the final supply and initial divisibility off of similar calculations. 

You bring up a good point that cash yields buying power during opportune times.  For example, there will never be an opportune time to buy BTC with only BTC in your hand.  

At this point, I believe USD will continue to fall in the long run.  However, I also know that it has been getting small boosts of faith here and there on the way down, so maybe the opportunities of those boosts warrants me keeping a minor percentage in cash to take advantage of those opportunities when they arise.

So I've been hearing a lot lately about a currency called the "US Dollar" but I'm really hesitant to invest in it at the moment.  For those of you that don't know, "dollars" are pieces of paper printed by a centralized authority called the "Fed", which distributes these "dollars" by purchasing Government bonds that keep the government and its people permanently indebted to the Fed.  Also, dollars used to be backed by gold, but now nothing really backs them except tradition as far as I understand.

Economically speaking, the dollar started the year at 1/15BTC, which was pretty good at the time, but it then hit an all time low of 1/395BTC on Mt. Gox last Friday.  I was thinking that maybe it could be a low and a great time to get in, but I find it a bit scary.  Especially when considering that the dollar has lost over 96% of its value over the past year, and the government associated with it is arguably the most fiscally irresponsible organization in the history of the world.  

However, it did great at the end of last April and part of this last weekend.  Oh, and it was kinda decent in June too.  I just don't know...  

Whatever shall I do?

My theory on the trading lag:

   Gox saw how well manual processing for USD withdrawals was working, so they decided to manually process all trade orders too!  

But really, speaking as a software engineer, this is painful to watch...

I think we can all agree that a centralized one-world mining pool is something to avoid.  Thus, let's use this thread as a place to mark potential selfish-pools before they gain too much momentum to be stopped.  

Warning Signs:  (Here are some warning signs that a pool has started using the Selfish Mining Protocol)
1) Drop in the blocks produced by the selfish pool as they build up their private chain and submit more orphan blocks in the beginning.  
2) Increase in orphan blocks by honest pools as the selfish pool releases their private block(s) immediately after the honest block was mined.
3) Drop in the global hash rate as consequences of #1 and #2.
4) Increase in the proportion of sequential blocks submitted by the selfish pool as they submit multiple blocks at a time to stay ahead of honest blocks.
5) Potential candidates should have had >= 25% of the network before going selfish.

Questions
1) What other indicators can we look for?  
2) Do you see signs that a pool is currently selfish-mining?  
3) What can we do if it becomes clear that a pool is selfish mining to prevent them from coming into power?  I.E. What are the best arguments to convince a miner to move from a selfish-mining pool to a (temporarily) less-profitable honest pool?

Let us be watchful!

The paper does not consider multiple selfish mining pools fighting against one another.  For example, in Section 4.4, they say:

  "Note that the pool is only at risk when it holds exactly one block secret"

This is not true. 

For example, Selfish pool A has 2 private blocks and Selfish pool B has 3 private blocks.  When Honest pool C finds a block and publishes it, A publishes their 2 "safe" blocks, only to lose them when B publishes their 3 private blocks. 

Furthermore, if everybody was selfish then blocks would never get published.  When an honest block eventually did get published, there would be a mass publish event of all private blockchains where all but the longest selfish block-chain(s) would be worthless.  If there was a tie there would be a fork-fight to determine whose blocks were eventually kept. 

Long story short, if you DO decide to be a selfish pool, be certain that you are the biggest selfish pool in the world.  Furthermore, even if you are the biggest, know that the smaller selfish pools will cut into your "safe" profits every time they get more private blocks than you do.

You might, but it depends on the luck of the pool.  Your "missing" coin is in shelved shares right now.  Each lucky block will unbury some shelved shares (and maybe get to some of yours), while each unlucky block will pile more shelved shares on top of yours.   See the CPPSRB page for more info:

http://eligius.st/wiki/index.php/Capped_PPS_with_Recent_Backpay

The USD withdrawl issues are slowly killing gox in the USD market. 

The current visible USD buyer depth is a little over 40,000BTC and centered at $136.5 (http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html).  July 30th, that depth was at 70,000BTC (http://decentralizedhashing.com/2013/07/july-30-bitcoin-price-update/), which means a depth drop of approximately 25% in less than 2 months if you convert the depths to USD.

Looking at the historical data (http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg90ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv and click 'Load Raw Data'), there has been $217,693,425.40 worth of trades since July in the last 3 months (mid-June was when withdrawals started having big problems).  Assuming .6% USD was taken out by each trade (actually up to 1.2% if you consider both sides, though for heavy buyers it would be lower due to the fee schedule), that means $1,306,160.55 has left the trading system. 

Likewise, the Average daily trading volume is dropping (in USD):
June:    $3,689,480.02
July:     $3,183,861.17
August: $2,196,336.10
Sept:    $2,172,255.06

Look at the major drop in August as people realized that "USD withdrawals resumed" was a huge stretch of the truth.

Also, as for Gox's cash-flow, would you deposit USD into Gox when you don't know if you can withdrawal it?  NO!  On top of that, their price/BTC is way higher!  That is a formula for zero USD into the system. 

However, cash IS flowing out of Gox (at least out of available trading funds).  How?  Why in trading fees to Gox!  If you assume .6% for each trade (could be up to 1.2% if both parties are considered and there are no rate discounts) and no deposits since the beginning of July, that means $1.3 million less in the USD trading depth users have to work with.


For these reasons, if I were Gox my number one priority would be getting USD withdrawals back online.  If they do that, USD will start flowing for them again, BTC price indexes would include them again, trade volumes will rise, and thus their profits will go up.  However, MAJOR damage has been done, as they have left gaping holes for other exchanges and have lost the faith of most of their USD customers.