Such an hypothesis is a bit too big for me.  I doubt it complies to Occam's razor.

Also, quantum computers would make quantum cryptography easy.

So it would kill bitcoins, but would allow the arrival of a quantic cryptocurrency, which would be absolutely unbreakable.

This is a perfectly acceptable point of view, apart from one thing :  I doubt the word "abuse" is appropriate.

Abuse is the improper usage for bad purpose.  When a gangster is using bitcoins, he's using it in a proper way, for its real purpose.  It's only his motivation which is "bad" or, more precisely, illegal.  When a ganster is getting in a train to move a stolen marchandise from a A point to a B point, we can't talk about any "abuse" of the train.  Otherwise we could say exactly the same thing about pretty much any single thing he uses : from his car to his telephone, not to mention his computer, his shoes, the food he eats or the air is breathing...  This would be ridiculous and would make the world "abuse" lose all its sense, turning it into a synonym for "used for criminal activities".

I agree with what you say about people refusing to do business with people who seem fishy.  But this has absolutely nothing to do with the business medium.  It could be bitcoin, fiat money, computers or telephones, Internet...  The list is long.

Crime should not be an obstacle to technical progress.

Nice metaphore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truecrypt#Licensing

« The TrueCrypt License has not been officially approved by the Open Source
Initiative and is not considered "free" by several major Linux distributions
(Arch Linux^[25], Debian^[26], Ubuntu^[27], Fedora^[28], openSUSE^[29],
Gentoo^[30]), mainly because of distribution and copyright-liability
reasons.^[31] »

TrueCrypt is not free software.

I definitely need to learn the free alternative, which is cryptsetup on GNU/linux, I guess.

I don't think so.  No enforcement is necessary as long as you consider that an investor is responsible from his investiment choices.

If an investor wants to buy shares of a company, that means he has some trust into this company.  Therefore it's up to him to believe or not in the company's published accounts.

Sure, an enforced company would have a better price, since it would be possible for non-much motivated investors to invests in it.

But it should be possible for a company to rely entirely on its reputation, and on its reputation only, to have investors trust her.

Sure, but it's a centralized system.  So it's easy to make a rating system.

The question is :  how would work a rating system in a decentralized network ?
Is it even possible ?

Should I care about organised crime using bitcoins ?

I don't.  Shame on me, I know.

On the contrary, the fact that organised crime will spend energy in using bitcoins ensures me that governments won't be able to control the bitcoin network.

Crime should be fought for what it is.  A murder is a murder.  A theft is a theft.  But when a criminal is using a car, he's just a person who is driving a car.  Fast cars are important for thieves, for they allow them to escape from police.  Still, I don't think it would be a good idea to forbid the use of fast cars.  It's the same old debate regarding the tool and its use.  A hammer can kill someone, if it is used in this intention.  Still, we don't ban hammers.

Therefore, I don't care if organised crime is using bitcoins.  I don't care at all.  There are other ways to fight criminals than tracking their expenses.

Thks for this warning.  I'll try to keep it in mind.

What I like about cryptocurrencies, whether it is bitcoin or any other yet-to-become major cryptocurrency, is that it is impossible to steal it, unless you use torture.

I know very few theftproof things.  Actually I don't know any of them.

I can put some gold in a safe, but any thief with appropriate tools can open any safe.  I can hide it somewhere in a desert place, but anyone could just find it and take it.

Real estate is so easy to steal if not protected by public force.  Diamonds are small so you can easily hide them, but still, it's not perfect.  I've heard that during WWII, some jews hid some value using very rare philatelic stamps.  It's good, but not very reliable, imo.

Cryptocurrencies are theftproof, as long as cryptographic functions can not be broken.  And so far, they can't.  Therefore the only key to access your wallet, is the passphrase you stored in your mind.

If I'm right, if cryptocurrencies are really theftproof, then they are priceless.

Honnestly it must be difficult to be bigger a fan of bitcoin than me, for I've been waiting for such a currency to appear for years now.

I am so selling my gold now.

Indeed maybe the winning cryptocurrency won't be bitcoin.   But it's the first one, in what I consider to be a new area in history of economics.

2009 will be written in history as the year when cryptocurrencies were invented.

In 2000, the smart move was to buy gold.

In 2010, is it to buy bitcoins ?


Could it be the winning trade of the century ?

Seriously : could anyone replace "Kriptomonunuo" by "Cxifromono" in the esperanto page ?   "Kriptomonunuo" is very ugly for it means "the money unit from the crypt".   In esperanto, "kripto" is the underground cell where we burry dead people.

Please !

It may sound presomptuous but I think I have quite an accurate idea of what Satoshi's goal is.

I've been thinking about digital money for quite some time now.  At least two years.  First it was because I was curious about the main theoretical problem :  what is the best way to send money through internet ?  Why can't we send money via email ?   Then it was because I was disgusted by the banking oligarchy and the "too big to fail".   While I was imaging the concept, I came to the conclusion that one should use asymetric key pairs to indentify every single monetary unit, and that the knowledge of a private key would equal the ownership of the associated monetary unit.  I couldn't find a way to get out of the centralized server concept, though. 

When I red Satoshi's white paper, it kind of freed my mind from this reflexion theme.  Now I don't have to think about it anymore, since Satoshi has found the solution with his very clever decentralized time server idea.  The fact that Satoshi's idea is exactly what I was looking for, makes me think he had the same initial goal :  creating an efficient and rational way to transfer value on internet.

Is there any political/activist intent from him ?  I don't know.  As far as I'm concerned, I'm a very liberal person and an enthousiast supporter of free market and individual freedom.  I guess Satoshi is too, but I can't speak for him, obviously.

For some reason I don't like this idea.  At all.

Against spam I prefer the X-hash idea, which is already used.  It's a proof of work attached to any sent email.

I'm not sure that free riders are an issue as long as the seller can make sure he raised the expected amount of money.

If you buy a car, and then lend it to a friend, I'm not sure your friend can be considered as a "free rider".  Once your car is bought, you can share it with someone else : it's not the initial seller's business anymore.  Selling divulgation allows alienation, while selling diffusion doesn't.

Indeed, it's likely to be less profitable, of course.  But since sellers presently use public force to sell, I can understand that they make more money than if they wouldn't.  A gangster certainly makes less money with no gun.

why ?  Is 0.3.12 that bad ?

Well, they haven't so far, but their terms of service allow them to do so any time they want.  See above.

Ok, I may reconsider my position about LR then (I guess if they start charging monthly I can just close my account).  Won't be soon, though.

Good luck with your business.