Are you suggesting that the average user may never even desire to have more than one wallet? Minus the bit about addresses which can be dealt with in other ways, do you realize that you are essentially describing Ripple? :-)
What is a wallet? In my thinking, a wallet is a tool to hold money. My wallet might hold some dollar bills, a few Shire Silver cards, a couple coupons, some loose change, and a debit card. When its time to pay I pull out my wallet. I don't carry multiple wallets with each one holding different currencies. I do still have to decide which currency to pull out of the wallet to give to my payee, but often that decision is made at the last second. For example, I'm at the grocery store buying $23 worth of cheetos. Man I love cheetos. Anyway, at the register I pull out my wallet and see that I have $34 in dollars, but I also have $50 on my debit card. I make the decision then which one to use. Maybe I'm making an online purchase later that night so I want to preserve the amount in the debit card. Maybe I'm going out later and will want to have cash handy. In this case the store probably doesn't care how it gets the dough as its all the same base currency. From another angle, I run an online store. When someone buys from me I need to have most of it in dollars in an account I can use to buy supplies. I love bitcoin, and I give a 3% discount for using it because its less headaches, but I do need to quickly convert most of it to dollars. But the person buying my goods doesn't care, nor do they need to know what I do with their payment. So whatever currency a user chooses to send me money isn't all that important. If I have more dollars than I want/need I can convert it to bitcoins myself. So really, an online wallet is simply a way to keep track of balances and create transactions. Of course it should hold different currencies. How about this for a dream wallet. It keeps your balance divided up between your preferred currencies in roughly the proportion you specify. Maybe 10% dollars (in PayPal or whatever), 60% in bitcoins, and 30% in litecoins. When you make a payment, it sends it using the payee's preferred currency, converting from the others as needed and rebalancing the portfolio automatically. But all the user sees is "Sending $50 to Joe" or "Sending 1.3btc to Alice". But the main point is that most people don't care about choosing between currencies. They use their local fiat because that's what everyone else uses. Somewhat off topic, but I'm still pissed that Peter Schiff's gold based debit card can't be sold/used in the U.S. because of stupid regs. |
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IMHO, the point of an app is to make it easy to send money to a friend or a store. Users probably don't care what currency they're using, they just want to settle their debts. So one use case would be you want to send some money to a friend. You look them up on your app, and it says "Joe accepts bitcoin, litecoin, and paypal" (It wouldn't mention litecoin if you don't have any). You input the amount to send in your local currency, and the app shows three buttons: "Send BTC", "Send LTC", and "Send PayPal". You click "Send BTC" and it handles the rest. You never see a bitcoin address, and neither does Joe. In an advanced case, your app connects to Joe's app to ask for a green address to send to so you don't even need to keep track of that. Most of the folks here are giving very tech driven answers. Not all that helpful for a user interface discussion  Just saw this today, and its pretty cool. http://vimeo.com/52354666 |
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the other was a delicious box of salted honey caramel with a note that said sorry about your house fire, hope these will sweeten your day. They did, thank you amagi.
I'd bet those were from Stateless Sweets. The proprietor works for Amagi now, and yes her stuff is fantastic. I've bought some of her Orange Dark Chocolate with Shire Silver, and it is great with some morning coffee, just put one in your mouth - don't chew - and let the warm coffee melt it into delicious decadence! |
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Here's the relevant quote:
"Prefer symmetric cryptography over public-key cryptography. Prefer conventional discrete-log-based systems over elliptic-curve systems; the latter have constants that the NSA influences when they can."
That seems like a pretty serious allegation to me.. anything to it folks?
No, I believe what he means is the the latter options are more vulnerable to improper use. For example, people often use weak private keys, thinking they are safe. There is a thread even now about someone using a dictionary attack to find accounts with funds in them. Similarly, about the NSA using influence they've done the same thing with security recommendations for the open-source Android OS. That doesn't mean Android is directly vulnerable to them, because it's still open-source and can be scrutinized widely. This only means they may attempt to slip something in while still having plausible denial of intent. I took it to mean that he thinks that symmetric algorithms are less susceptible to publicly unknown attack vectors than elliptic-curve algorithms are. EC is newer and less well understood/analyzed, and he specifically mentioned that some of the selected constants used in the EC algorithms may have been intentionally weakened. |
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We're glad to see the Shire Silver model grow in India, and hope you have great success! |
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This piece does represent a piece of history. There has never before been specie of any kind that was not only money worldwide, but also translates its value through a QR code link into local currency as well as bitcoin.
Shire Silver has had a QR code linking to its suggested trade value for over a year now. Its also significantly easier to carry for everyday use as it fits in wallets the same as credit cards. It comes in several denominations ranging in MSRP from $40 all the way down to $1 so its much easier to make smaller purchases with than any traditional bullion. You really should check it out. |
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I'd suggest just using bitpay's ubercart plugin. No need to worry about securing a bitcoin daemon (or even having one running), and it just works well. [I've been a Drupal developer for several years now, and I'm using BitPay's plugin.]
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I'm just pissed that I clicked the link and gave those evil bastards a tiny amount of revenue. It really helps when people post at least a little bit of information about what it is they want people to check out. If I would have seen this thread before all the other threads and social network links to the same damn story, I could have saved myself the embarrassment of the NSA thinking I was interested in the subject.  |
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I think the NSA are really building a giant bitcoin mining farm. If you can't beat them, join them.
You never know, it might actually be true.  And like I said on another forum, they're incompetent enough that they'll be CPU mining. |
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NSA has monitored all data outside the USA already for over a decade...  Google "Echelon". The new thing is that they now are also spying (surprise, surprise!) on their own citizens. Well, actually the real new thing is that someone found out about it, they are probably spying on them already for quite some time. I hired a foreign national back in the 1990s, and have since that time assumed that the NSA was capturing/recording everything I do electronically because they can get away with recording me with the excuse that any conversation might be with a foreign national. |
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Unless you're really into self-sufficiency and way out in the boondocks then you're going to need good neighbors. That's one of the reasons why New Hampshire is a good place to be. Not only are there already over 1,200 libertarian types here, but the natives are pretty darn good. We have places like Grafton, where 5-10 acre places are available that can allow subsistence farms; plus there's a lot of Free Staters and natives there that are into self-sufficiency. There's small towns all over where you can really get to know your neighbors, which helps with the safety aspect. We have two large gun manufacturers and a bunch of smaller ones, and a climate of acceptance of the right to self defense. It is a little hot in the summer, but its worth putting up with that for the freedom that comes with it.
[But I do think the total collapse scenario is unlikely. In either case though, taking steps towards self-sufficiency and good neighbors is wise counsel.]
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One thing I find missing from this discussion so far is the effect of switching from inflationary fiat currencies to deflationary bitcoin. Much of the current system has been so slanted towards overproduction and overconsumption due to the inflationary nature of dollars, euros, etc.
An example of what I mean: I've been playing around with bitcoin based investing for a while now, and one of the interesting things I've learned is that some assets will naturally decline in price due to deflation. Think about "mining turds", which should have declining prices as mining difficulty rises. They can still be a good investment though, as long as the price plus accumulated interest (dividends) does add up to more than the initial price. [I'm not sure any of them meet that criteria, just that it is possible.]
How will deflationary currencies affect store profits? Capital accumulation? Business investments? What opportunities will arise for new businesses that can only exist/survive in a deflationary period? What will happen to businesses that exist now only because the primary currencies are inflationary? These are the things I'm thinking about. The fact is that bitcoin is here and it is going to change things. No Utopian wishing is going to change its essential nature, so best to deal with it as it is.
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The problem with the gold standard wasn't the gold, but the standard. Any attempts to "fix" the market, whether by trying to set a price or manipulate the amount of currency, is doomed to failure. Simply allow free trade and the market will balance itself out. FYI, you might not be aware of my Shire Silver cards, which complement bitcoins pretty well. They make everyday use of gold and silver much easier than with traditional bullion products, eliminating the need for any sort of backed notes. [The reason Americans used paper notes during the gold standard era was because using traditional bullion is a pain.] But to address your concerns about the supposed need for flexibility in the currency market, the exchanges and market price will alleviate most such concerns, and layers on top of the base currencies will handle the rest. To explain, you can think of bitcoins as being the M1, and things like Ripple can build the M2/M3 supply. |
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No trollbox.
Reducing the fees while maintaining the volume discounts is an idea I like.
IMHO the biggest problem with WeExchange is lack of competition. Can other services be added? Maybe ensure that the new API will have functionality to allow other services to arise naturally.
I'd like to see something like the BTCT value analysis page.
As far as verification, maybe require it for public listings but still allow unverified private listings so people can outsource their shareholder management.
I like the idea of optionally bonding assets. Maybe don't have a fixed value, but each asset could have a bitcoin address that BitFunder controls that is publicly shown on the asset page with its value - perhaps as a percentage of the asset's market cap. Investors would know that their investment would be worth at least that percent.
Optional email notifications would be nice.
Getting the messaging framework up will be good.
Bring on the bots!
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The key is to have the alternative already available to people before talking about getting rid of the government service.
I've been saying that for years now, trying to get the folks buying traditional bullion in case TSHTF to realize that just stacking silver coins in a safe until all of a sudden people miraculously decide to completely switch overnight to sound money isn't realistic. The alternatives need to be in place before TSHTF so the masses don't scream for a dictator to "solve" the problems. Build up the voluntaryist/agorist businesses to compete with the government to the point that the government's solutions become irrelevant. But between bitcoin and Shire Silver we have currency pretty much covered - just need to grow them to the point that fiat currencies die off due to irrelevance. I can envision entrepreneurs seeing this challenge and taking it up, selecting one service the government provides and outcompeting it. Of course, here in New Hampshire the people pursuing politics have actually made some headway, and I appreciate their taking some of the scrutiny off of us working a bit more under the radar  |
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The caveat to this is if there is a niche which Bitcoin cannot fill, then an alt-coin might live there. But this is the exception to the rule that one main coin should come to dominate.
There is a niche that Bitcoin can't fill. It's what led me to start promoting alt-coins in the first place. That niche is that they are not Bitcoin. That niche is in-person non-electronic anonymous transactions, which Shire Silver fills nicely So far I haven't seen any alt coins that make significant improvements over bitcoin. A few have tweaks that seem like small improvements, but certainly not enough. |
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