. . . But absolutely it's legitimate to be in the table of currencies . . .
Most here would agree with you that Bitcoin is a currency, but there may be room for discussion as to what the "base" unit is and what the relative value is of that base unit. If the "Satoshi" (the smallest integer unit of represented value in a transaction) is considered the base unit, then calling 1 BTC a "currency unit" would be like calling a Franklin (U.S. $100 bill) a "currency unit". They are both just names for a multiple of the base unit. If the "Satoshi" is the "currency unit", then it doesn't belong on that list. Yet.The base unit of a dollar is a cent, but the chart doesn't utilize that unit. It is listing the nominal unit of the currency. Bitcoin may be divisible to eight decimal places, but 1 btc is the standard currency unit, just as 1 usd. As I said, I think there is room for discussion on that. Perhaps the Satoshi is the nominal unit, and we simply use the "Bitcoin" nickname for ease of use when we are dealing with exceptionally large quantities. If inflation drives prices up until every thing we buy costs over 1000 USD, and we all start talking in terms of "grand", ("Sure, you can have a diet coke, that'll be 3.5 grand.") does that make the "grand" the nominal unit? No, Satoshi is not the nominal unit just as 1 cent is not the nominal unit of a dollar. 1 bitcoin is the nominal unit. If in ten years we all talk in terms of millibits, then perhaps that page should be updated. But today, 1 btc is a clearly defined and known unit of account. |
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The pricing of risk is a specialized industry. I don't think that you should be so "specialized" when you give credit to people that you know day by day. You aren't forced to give credit to anyone. Yes correct, and that's good. But to the extent that Ripple users abstain from credit issuance to others, what is the use of the system? And to the extent that Ripple users proceed with credit issuance to others, can/will it be done in a profitable/efficient manner? |
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. . . But absolutely it's legitimate to be in the table of currencies . . .
Most here would agree with you that Bitcoin is a currency, but there may be room for discussion as to what the "base" unit is and what the relative value is of that base unit. If the "Satoshi" (the smallest integer unit of represented value in a transaction) is considered the base unit, then calling 1 BTC a "currency unit" would be like calling a Franklin (U.S. $100 bill) a "currency unit". They are both just names for a multiple of the base unit. If the "Satoshi" is the "currency unit", then it doesn't belong on that list. Yet.The base unit of a dollar is a cent, but the chart doesn't utilize that unit. It is listing the nominal unit of the currency. Bitcoin may be divisible to eight decimal places, but 1 btc is the standard currency unit, just as 1 usd. |
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Another concern I have is the following...
The pricing of risk is a specialized industry. It is difficult to do. It requires work, focus, skill, and experience and like any competitive industry many/most people will fail at it.
And yet what Ripple is asking every average Joe to do, is to price risk efficiently with the people they know. Joe may know that his sister Susan is trustworthy, and is thus willing to extend credit on Ripple... but how much credit? Is he not likely to extend far too much, or too little? Why should we expect him to be able to price risk efficiently?
Just as we don't all grow our own food, or make our own shoes, because it is extremely inefficient, why should we all be pricing risk on a daily basis among multiple contacts?
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I'm curious what would happen, in a world which used Ripple widespread...
Because "money" is created in Ripple via debt/credit issuance, and because there is no hard limit to the debt/credit issuance, it means that there is no hard limit to the money supply.
Example:
Bob wants to buy widget from Tom
Tom trusts Bob to repay in future, so extends him $100 credit
Bob pays for the widget with his credit
Money in this case is created by the debt (not altogether different than our current system of fractional reserve banking).
So, if this was used all over the world, the money supply could shift very dramatically. In theory, the money supply could double overnight, then double again, then double again, all in a week. Upon bad debts not paying, the supply could similarly fall to a fraction of its former self the next week (actually the money supply could/would shrink just based on the genuine repayment of debts as well).
Interest rates are what prevent such fluctuations to be too wild... but I wonder in a world where the average joe can offer massive credit at the push of a button, or in other words the average joe can create a theoretically unlimited amount of money, how would things play out?
What is concerning here, is that in Ripple when you extend, say, $100 USD of credit to someone, you have created one hundred potential US dollars, in effect. Even with the soft discipline provided by interest rates, I worry about the usefulness of money itself under such a system.
Usually a monetary system has a base money supply plus a credit supply on top and these together equal the effective money supply. In Ripple, there is no base money supply, is there? Or at least, in the current world there is a notable relationship between base money and credit that can be built on top of it... in Ripple I'm not sure such a dynamic exists. It seems that the potential credit has no necessary relationship with any base money.
Would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this?
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I don't know anything about editing Wikipedia... if it should have a "reference" then yes please someone put one. But absolutely it's legitimate to be in the table of currencies. The table doesn't say "only government currencies."
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There's a Reddit thread about this... thought you guys would enjoy  Bitcoin tops the Wikipedia list of highest valued currency unit. This is actually a meaningless/arbitrary indicator, as it's only a matter of notation, but still this makes me smile  What's far more important is the relative change in these values over time, and Bitcoin, in just four years, has gone from being worth far less than a penny to now over $13 USD.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest-valued_currency_unit |
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Very nice |
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I think this is good call on Silk Road's part. It should reduce scams and ensure a high quality of service (uptime, etc.).
It provides an opening for lower cost competition of course. This is also good news.
I agree. Keep the bar high there. |
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Right now a majority of our economy seems to be monopolized by illegal drug trade
Sorry to be nitpicky, but very incorrect use of the term "monopolized" here. One could argue that drug trade is a large part (though nobody knows if it's even a majority), but even if it were 90% of the economy there is no "monopoly" going on. Monopolies cannot exist in a free market... or more accurately, they can only exist if everyone loves them, and then there is no issue. |
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Seems coinbase is a bit slow, took a good 3 seconds to load that page. Lets hope that no Bitcoin payment processor is ever able to upgrade fast enough to meet server demands  |
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I stumbled on this article tonight randomly, and discovered I'm quoted in it lol |
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Erik,
As a developer I'd recommend that you change the format a little for medium sized awards like 300 BTC. Bounties are great for quick stuff like "get this to compile on Ubuntu".
Instead ask for proposals and then award the best one the opportunity to do the work. Proposals should contain how the system will work, resumes, how bugs will be fixed, license, and a completion date. If they miss their completion date you have the opportunity to extend or move the offer to someone else.
Offering a coding bounty -- AKA a "race" -- is going to get you shoddy (as fast as possible!) work, people with enough time on their hands to out-race other coders, and who are willing to risk their work being wasted just because someone else was a little faster. But there has never been a time essentially since computers were invented when top quality programmers were not in great demand, so what kind of programmer really wants to grab at this?
Cheers!
I think you're right about this. Anyone have a problem with this format? I'll approve a proposal, and then if it's completed successfully I'll pay the bounty. But, you have to get my proposal sign off first. Any issues with this? |
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[...]
you have to do a lot of scrapping, but I think if someone was to make a tipping bot they would have to clear it with theymos first. Since this bot would use a lot of bandwidth and could be confused for a DDOS attack.
Erik please make the good post feature happen! How does a good post feature avoid the self-inflating problem? Ideally, this forum tipping system should double as a good post feature. |
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Do tips really need to double as a reputation system? The goal is to encourage posters to post more, right, not act as a publicly visible measure of reliability. If you just don't display the total amount of tips gathered by a user, or just show a list of usernames that pressed the tip button on a post, then the issue of tipping yourself goes away.
I think it'd be cool if the tips doubled as a reputation system. Right now, forum users have their post count shown, which builds a rep somewhat... but showing an amount others paid to you for your wisdom would be far more valuable. But yeah, there does need to be a defense against tipping oneself in this case. |
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I think an important feature of the reddit and twitter tipping bots is this: they allow you to tip people who haven't done anything special.
In other words, the recipient doesn't need to have set up a tipping account, or advertised his address anywhere. On reddit you can just send a tip to someone who has never heard of btc, and that's the beauty of it.
So, this potential forum system, probably requires this. This is also why the practice of people putting their btc address in their sig is not equivalent. I want to be able to tip someone who has never solicited it.
I agree the forum shouldn't fuss with building an ewallet to hold the funds for this. Instead, it could use an API to a secure wallet system, like Coinapult.com
Idea:
1) I like a comment Theymos made, so I click the "Tip User" link (maybe similar to how theymos showed in his screenshot)
2) A window pops up, with a BTC address and QR code
3) Upon receipt of btc to that address, the forum emails the user (via coinapult.com api) his donated coins.
4) User claims the coins at his leisure
With this system, the user's email address is never exposed to the public. And, the user never needs to enter a BTC address into his profile. And, the forum doesn't need to host any wallets or store funds at all.
Thoughts?
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Keep in mind that Dwolla was founded by "some guy" who was selling "speakers or something" online from his couch: As a high school student, Ben Milne sat on his couch till he wore a deep groove in it and sold speakers online. He says his promotion strategy in the early days was answer audiophiles’ questions on message boards and link them to his online speaker store, Elemental Designs. Not exactly the horse that I'd be betting on to shake up the zillion-dollar banking and e-payments industry, especially when that horse is sitting in the middle of Iowa. Granted, I give them credit for finding a niche in processing payments for Bitcoin and for milking the state-backed VC funds that presented themselves, but I will certainly not be the least bit surprised when I see the whole thing implode. If anything, if and when this implodes it should be yet another lesson for good-intentioned state legislators to keep their evil fingers from meddling in the "free marketplace". That's not really a fair criticism. Many great business people had humble beginnings (not saying Milne is great). And indeed, I guarantee many of the people who get rich with bitcoin will fit a similar description. |
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Theymos - I'll add 100btc to bounty, payable to you, if you help make this happen.
I'm not a programmer, so how else can I help move this along? Theymos - are you in?
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Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one who know about btctip.com. Tipping service for Twitter. It's simmilar to btctip bot on reddit. I love BTCTip! It hasn't been marketed enough, but it's absolutely as awesome as the reddit bot... maybe moreso since Twitter is a much larger world. |
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