Well, theoretically, let's just say that a lot of people are starting to use Bitcoin every where in the world, and now it's the new "global" currency for literally everything.  Think of how many transactions are going to be on pending on every block in that scenario... I mean we are having somewhat trouble at the rate transaction are going right now, and "normal" people aren't using it.

Unless there is some revolutionary way to make the blockchain handle that incredible amount of transactions in "visa-like" fashion; there is no way to expect everyone to transact easily on the network without paying a ridiculously high transaction fee (which is what bitcoin is trying to get away from in the first place).

From what it looks like, that is the case.  I think it's using the same blockchain platform as ETH, but also making it it TOR/I2P/etc. ready for increased privacy in the market place for both the buyer and seller.

I think it's pretty cool though they it allows you the option on being a "public" or "private" store on the market place though... pretty neat. 

I looked for a bit on the white paper and it doesn't really go into details about the coin itself?  Like how many of them will be in circulation? PoS vs. PoW? Or is it completely different? 

You're forgetting a very important feature of banks that make banks "profitable", and that is that they lend out loans for profit.  I mean, in a sense people are in a way becoming their own "banks" by doing this exact thing... just look on the lending board in the market place.  People are making profits that way there, or even on exchange sites like poloniex.

Truth is, is that a large majority of people on the planet don't know what Bitcoin is, and this, in itself, makes it not a "hot" asset for banks to accumulate or offer to their customers. Plus, "normal" people don't need Bitcoins to start up a business idea or pay off student debts... they need fiat.

Actually I remember watching an episode of The Blacklist a while back that mentioned Bitcoins.  I forgot what episode it was though....

The whole premise was that "Red" (One of the main characters) is a guy that is a criminal master mind that turns himself into the FBI to get back in touch with what seems to be his daughter (?), Elizabeth Keen, who works in the FBI.

What happened was Red was trying to figure out if someone in the FBI could do him a favor in order to see if he was the mole informant that was giving away information to other people who could use it against him (long story).  Anyways, in order to see if he was "loyal", he threatens this guy who's a computer geek/hacker for the FBI to steal money from this random bank account number and put it into his own account "anonymously"... So he does it as fast as possible (because he has a gun drawn on him) and completes the transaction.  Afterwards he describes how he did it, and one of the parts of explaining was that he took the money from account and put it into bitcoin and then transferred that to another exchange site or something which he then put the funds into his account.

It was a while ago since I saw that episode, so some of the details about the whole transaction stuff is pretty hazy, but that was the general just of it... The Blacklist is a great show regardless, so if you haven't seen it, you should... That episode was in the first season if I remember correctly.

I'd like to apply! I've been not so active the last couple of months, but I'm ready to start being more active again on the forum.

Post count: 178
Bitcoin Address: 165EJR3m7YvMAzXsz1L4mLiRJ6AkY7QuzZ

Thanks.

LTC falls into the same category as doge and the other copy and paste type of coins.  ETH and Monero (and maybe Maid) are the only coins out there on the market that really fix issues that Bitcoin can't solve.  

While ETH is a completely different animal, in that it is a sort of recreation of the cloud platform used by Microsoft; Monero gives users a whole bunch of new features that other coins can't do using the cryptonote protocol.  I can already hear some DASH supporters screaming at their computer screens right now when reading this... but the fact of the matter is that Monero does what DASH does without the premine and doesn't require masternodes where people who invested early on can inevitably control everything.

Monero also has a solutions to the block size debate where they use dynamic blocksizes... this type of solution is a critical factor of why monero is better in general, in that there will be no politics in trying to figure out what block size is the best... because in all reality, you can't predict how many transactions there are going to be in the future and so it should change as it is needed.

It just seems that Monero fixes a lot, if not all, of the problems bitcoin is facing.

You know there are altcoins out now that are different from Bitcoin's code now and days right?  There are certain coins that serve different functions that Bitcoin can't seem to fulfill, and not just exact replicas of the code with a clever name attached to it.

I agree with you here.  You have to also realize that silver is also a nice way to go about saving up as well, since generally all precious metals tend to command a higher price when fiat inflates and the general economy goes downward.  Since we are living in some crazy times right now, that's why I hold more of my assets in gold and silver than anything else... I like having bitcoins around in terms of speculative purposes, but precious metals are going to hold their value no matter what.

You can't really just assume that the price of bitcoin will just go up primarily because of the halving.  There are a lot of factors that go into the price of bitcoin... so don't put all of your eggs in one basket, if you are protecting your wealth, I would put a little into bitcoin and some into precious metals.

If Bitcoin is only good because it "holds the most value", then that doesn't make it seem good.  You can theoretically pump some shitty P&D coin to the value of Bitcoin right now, does that make it any better?  Of course not, but people just see the price tags of something and automatically thinks it's better because it's a higher price.

Same thing happens in capitalism in general.  For instance some teenage girl goes to the mall and sees a fancy "name brand" purse that cost $1K, then her mom redirects her to another off brand version that only cost $20... The girl is always going to go toward the $1K purse because it's So-and-so's name brand... Does that make that purse better? Hell no, it's just a way of making the same product look better.

I see the same thing happening with bitcoin right now.

I'm interested and I've been sitting on an idea of mine for a good while, but don't have the coding knowledge to make it a reality... My question is though, how can we trust that you aren't going to take our idea and run the site by yourself and reap all the profits?

[img] [ /img] ... just insert the image url between. (of course don't have a space in the brackets).

It's alright, I mean... you have to think about what's in your best interest in the long run of things... and if you truly believe that bitcoin is the next future currency and have a passion for it, then why does it matter about what anyone else thinks? Fuck 'em... Just make sure you don't invest more than you can lose on this type of stuff though, because bitcoin could fall at any given time really with the volatility in the market.

Good luck to everyone by tomorrow   ... This will definitely make a nice Christmas gift to whoever wins.

Ahh, shit... yeah I didn't see this until just now and paid to play the #6th drawing and the #7th one as well... well, if by some kind of miracle I win, I will definitely do everything in my power to verify it's me. I'll just register later when it comes time for the #8th drawing I suppose. I'm going to bed now as well, hope to wake up and see that my ticket is the gold one 

Do we need to provide a tx id when we place a bet here? I'm confused in how you can know who to contact if someone does end up winning if you just have the address it was sent from?

I feel like I have a really good idea for a game that no one has tried yet, and have tried in the past to gather some people to go in on a partnership with me to get it developed and to get it up and working.  The only problem is, is that there is really no interest from people who can code to get all this stuff set up without knowing if it's going to be a huge success or not.  I've tried in the past talking with some people about getting a plan together, but people just tend to be very skeptical... Since I can't really protect my idea if I start explaining the concept in full detail, I'm just going to wait until maybe sometime in the future, I will learn how to code and create my own website.  I guess it's the only way this would be possible for me to start my own gambling website, because of the fact that I can't afford to pay someone 5,10,20 BTC to code something for me, I just simply can't afford that... and also the fact that there really isn't really any "premium" of any kind on ideas where coders will be willing to give me a reasonable chunk of the profits from the site deters me from trying to make my idea come to life.

Unfortunate, because I really believe this would be a fun game for everyone with insane winnings if the person who plaid were to win (not a "lottery" though).

.015