I feel the reputation component is really missing from this. We either have to rely on trusting BTCJam that they actually have the personal credit score they say they do, and rely on them to pursue defaulters and their credit reputation for us, or rely on something like the OTC system, which isn't very robust of updateable. I think BTCJam is digging themselves into a corner with trying to stay so legal,  protecting themselves against lawsuits from the borrowers whose privacy they have to protect, at the expense of the lenders who are getting ripped off.
Is there a market for a third party, more reliable, and easier to use reputation tracking system?

He was laughed out of it for being a scammer, making somewhat blah talk shows, and heavily promoting an online wallet that eventually stole half of everyone's money. Reputation ruined, so he's not coming back. He's probably still involved somehow. Even tried to start his own forum that he would try to moderate for trolls. Don't know what happened to it though.

I'm not sure that Icanhascheezburger Corp has a space program.

^^^ Depends on who gets there first. If NASA or a coalition of governments, then our laws. If some corporation that is mainly interested in mining or operating a low G space depot, then whatever corporate law they use.

One problem with that theory: Bruce is not an IT guy and doesn't really understand tech that well. An online Bitcoin wallet requires one to know how to set up a web page with background code/database, how to actually write web code, and how to specifically write Bitcoin code. Bruce doesn't know how to do any of that, other than setting up a rudimentary web site. I don't think his bf knows any of that either. And his previous scam had nothing to do with internet or tech. So, about the best you can claim is that Bruce hired someone who is really good with IT and Bitcoin to build the site for him, 1.5 years before he decided to steal everyone's money, back when Bitcoin was worth under $1. And that's a bit of a stretch,.

+1 The only reason I even went to that one restaurant, among the hundreds in the immediate area, is that I'd hoped to spend some bitcoin directly. Now, unless they start accepting it again, I'd rather explore other places in the area. Though, granted, there probably aren't very many of us Bitcoin users for them to make accepting them worth it.
Since Bitcoin is an Internet currency, it would probably be best to keep expanding its use on the web, as we had been over the past year, and only start bugging merchants once it's fairly well established. Besides, with the BTC debit card coming out soon (ish), we'll still be able to use our btc everywhere, anyway.

They don't take dollars (usually), they take credit cards. If those are hacked, they are not returned, either (chargebacks, hacked credit accounts, etc). Only checking and savings accounts are insured, but it takes a bit for the money to actually get there.

But, yeah, whatever, "it's just fake money" and all that. Just as fake as the digital 0s and 1s that made up the first credit card accounts. It was just some piece of plastic with numbers on it representing some fake "digital" monopoly crap that wasn't even insured, not the real, actual printed paper money that everyone knew was real because you can touch it. No one accepted credit cards for those reasons, either, and then credit cards failed spectacularly!

Wow, a year? I guess, considering the girl working there knew what I was talking about, they still get somewhat frequent inquiries about it.

^^^ That. It takes 10 to 20 minutes for a signal to go from earth to Mars. It takes 10 minutes on average to mine a block. This means unless earth and mars take turns mining a block, each waiting for the other to finish, they will each be in a permanent state of forking each other (each will take 10 minutes to mine it's own block, only to receive a competing block from the other planet 5 minutes later). I guess the dispute could get settled with whoever mines the highest difficulty block, but it would make confirmations and mining rewards way too chaotic.

Edit:

Oh god, I forgot about this. That likely blocks any chance of using Bitcoin between two planets with anything other than sending it at a few batches at a time over a span of a few hours. Send with error checks, receive confirmation, re-send whatever was errored, wait for block confirmation, and receive confirmation of the block could take as long as 20+20+20+10+20=90 minutes. Just for one Bitcoin transaction.

Stopped by Meze Grill today. It was one of my must-visit places during my trip to NY. The food was DELICIOUS! But, I was informed that they don't take Bitcoin any more. "It didn't work out" Anyone have any idea why?
I hope that even if they lost some money on the MyBitcoin fiasco last year, they made it all back and then some from the extra publicity.

Perhaps in that case the issue is that you are too much of a defeatist. You think, "well, all this crap will happen anyway, so let's just let it and figure out what to do when it does," while others think, "all this crap has a damn good chance of happening, so let's figure out what we can do to prevent it in the first place." Very subtle difference.

Venus, Mercury, plenty of very large moons.

On a serious note, though, since it will be impossible to mine the same blockchain on both Earth and Mars, the only two options would be to either keep Earth as the central mining point, and let Mars deal with the huge latency of broadcasting and confirming transactions (which people there really won't like), or fork their own local chain. The same would happen if Bitcoin got stuck behind some country's firewall. Anyone know how something like that would work? I figure it would be similar to trying to bootstrap another Bitcoin from scratch, including setting up its own miners. Would that even be possible any more?

That's why people say you have a Keynesian plan. Your mistake is that you believe the monopolist will actually know what is good for himself and for everyone else, and won't fuck up. Also, I STILL don't see a difference between a monopolist using some convoluted blockchain mining scheme to control and distribute currency, and a central bank just running a single centralized ledger to do the same.

I think the most likely scenario is the one that has already been happening: humans will keep using technology as a tool to improve their lives. Meaning that any advances in memory recall, AI, or communication will be used as a tool, first through devices we carry, and eventually through devices we wear, implant, and possibly even grow within us. I'm of the "continued self-guided human evolution through technology" camp, as opposed to "we're all going to die through a Terminator scenario" camp. Though I guess we won't really be the same humans once that all happens.

A "floating exchange" means an exchange between two currencies that is based on open market trading, not on one currency being pegged to the other. Just like the current BTC to USD market is a floating exchange. It doesn't mean there will be an exchange floating somewhere in space. But, of course, you didn't know that term because I'm a moron.


Aww, that's cute. I bet you also think lasers make pew-pew sounds when they are fired in space. Sorry, but from a thermodynamics point, space is actually very hot, and vacuum makes a great insulator. In fact, if you found yourself out in space, and were somehow able to survive without dying from decompression or suffocation, you would actually find space comfortably warm. After a while you will even find it very uncomfortably hot. A mining rig in space would have the same issue, getting way too hot and not having any good way of cooling itself off.

SA troll posted

The same way NASA is able to keep a constant link with the Mars rover. You guys do know we have rovers on, and satellites around Mars, right? If we ("we" the human race, not "we" the bitcoiners, you idiots) do eventually get a colony established on mars, do you honestly think they won't have any communication channels with earth? Chances are there will also be a heliosynchronous satellite in orbit at a 90° offset to our planet, so that we will always have a way to send signals to whatever destination may be on the other side of the sun at the time. (I'm expecting you can figure out what heliosynchronous orbit at 90 degree offset means)

P. S. Please keep the "I don't understand any of this basic financial, technological, and astronomical stuff... you must be the idiot, herp-derp-lol" stuff coming. It's rather amusing.

First of all, you can take a private key with you wherever you go; it doesn't need to be plugged into the network to store value. The network is only needed to verify that it still has coins (that's why brain wallets are possible). And second, it doesn't matter how long it takes to transmit a signed transaction. As long as my Earth-Bitcoin transaction is transferred from earth to mars, and gets accepted by Earth miners, it will work. Latency is only a problem for transmitting mined blocks, not transactions. It will take a very long time to verify, of course (15min to transmit to earth, 10 to put in a block, 15 more to send confirmation back to mars).  As for the rest, it'll work same as currency exchanges between countries here on earth, where one exchange is in one country (planet), and the other in another country (planet). Nothing has to be between. People flying from New York to London don't land in Iceland to exchange GPB for USD.
Yes, once in a while, when the planets are on opposite sides, the sun will be a problem. Maybe by then we'll have relay satellites. Or maybe we'll all be dead before any of this happens, anyway.

BTW, the SA retard above thinks that
"perhaps there's already other civilizations that have created interplanetary communication technologies, perhaps we one day will get in touch with them, and start using their technology"
is the same thing as
"They're discussing the possibilities of trading bitcoin with alien species to buy their technology."
Holy crap you are stretching   Besides, the right thing to say would've been "It's much more likely that advanced alien tech would have ways of breaking SHA-256, making bitcoins useless, rather than provide improved communication tech." As I said, no imagination whatsoever.

It costs way less to mine for water and materials in space, and transport those materials through zero gravity to the space station, than it does to mine for them on earth and launch them from here. The plan is to provide water and resources for the ISS to start with, and then space hotels and other space tourism venues once they become available.
So, it's mostly the gravity thing

Mars would end up playing a part for things we may need to process first, and a processing factory in space is too costly to build (building airtight caves on mars is cheaper than building large airtight can in space) or for things that we do need on earth that may be hard to get here (gold, plutonium, platinum, rare earth metals, etc.)