Theoretically, Bitcoin would be capable of solving the issue, but the fact of the matter is is that Bitcoin is not functionally capable of handling "fast"food transactions at all.  Think about it for a second.  There's been a constant debate about the block size and whether it should be bigger because blocks are being maxed out with more and more transactions going into each block, and that's just with us nerds.  Think about what would happen to the blocks if just one Wendy's location started accepting Bitcoin for payments during a lunch rush.  NO ONE would be able to get their transactions confirmed and it would take forever for Wendy's to be able to verify if the transaction went through or not... which would absolutely hurt their business.

This is one of the main reasons that major business and restaurants won't accept Bitcoin (at least the ones who have heard about Bitcoin and relatively understand the concepts behind it).

It's sad though, really, that Rand or Ron never had a chance to begin with.  They are trying to be put on the Republican ticket, when the party affiliation is a completely different way of thinking with their philosophical beliefs.  I think they would honestly have a better chance to run on their own "libertarian" ticket, than to try and succumb to straight and narrow line that they have to fall on to gain the "approval" of hard core republicans.

It's pretty surprising to me how much support Bernie has gotten, because in a way, he is a totally different way of thinking than the typical "liberal" mindset.  Democratic socialism is more of a grass root following that, I guess, has gained more traction over the years.

Yeah, I really do think they work.  I hesitate bringing up alt coins on the "bitcoin discussion" section of the forum, because usually it brings out some anger towards my way.  Both do a very good job, as well as aeon... don't know much about boolberry though.  The reason why I own XMR only, though, is because it was fairly launched and wasn't ninjamined from the beginning.

The amount of sophistication and dedication of the core team is unreal.  They use ring signatures along with ring CT, that it is essentially pointless to try and find out who sent what, how much was sent, etc.  Here's the white paper for those who would like to read it (some of the stuff goes wayyyyy over my head though):

http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/Ring%20CT%20for%20Monero.pdf

Getting back on point though..


You've got a point... hiding your identity is not the point here, it's all about security.  And the fact of the matter is, is that Bitcoin has a real chance of being rendered less secure after the halving and people are forced to shut down their miners due to costs and not being able to afford the bills.

I've been actually reading some stuff on the altcoin section where there is a coin (aeon) who's core dev (Smooth) is implementing a type of "ASIC resistant" mining technique that lowers the possibility of centralization... It's called "smart mining" and it allows any type of low powered computer, whether it's a laptop or even possibly a phone can start mining and only is "turned on" when connected to a power source.  But essentially it lowers the hash to such a level that's automatically determined to not burn up/ruin the computer your running the smart mining OS on, or won't drain an insane amount of electricity/energy.

This will allow anyone to be able to start mining, whether it will get you anything out of it or not.  I really haven't looked more into it, but it sounds like a really cool idea to me; because the level of centralization and barrier to enter the mining space is a real problem that should be addressed by bitcoin devs.

Bitcoin isn't actually that anonymous... You can track and trace where bitcoins go and how much, also you can possibly trace and identify who bought those bitcoins, and even scarier, could possibly get your CC info and personal info if you bought it from an exchange site like coinbase and coinbase ended up getting hacked.

Bitcoin is primarily pseudonymous, but it's a hell of a lot better than using debit cards/credit cards.

Yeah, I think that would be easily done with the (relatively) new API "Skeleton" that was created by Shapeshift.  This would be quite huge for LuckyBTC.  For pretty much every popular altcoin out there, there are people who advocate pretty whole heartedly for the coin, and want to do business with only those coins.  I can say I've seen this when looking at the cryptonote coins like Monero, Dash, Boolberry, Aeon, etc. since I hold some of those coins personally.  People use other coins for other reasons as well.

It would be nice to tap into the altcoin community so people who want fast(er) transactions can use LTC, people who are very paranoid and want to remain anonymous can use Monero or the other cryptonote coins, and so on.

I don't think any other online casino has done this yet, so LuckyBTC can strike it big if they ended up putting this into the website.

I would say that's a risky play putting that much of a percentage into stock & bonds...

When pouring your investments into stuff such as Bitcoin or gold, you are essentially betting that the economy & fiat system is going to be going down soon... so to say that the monetary system is going down, I wouldn't put more than 15-10% of your investing capital into stocks and bonds.  I understand it is a way to hedge bets so you wouldn't lose out so much if you are proven wrong, but still... I just don't see the stock market/global economy doing so well in the next couple of years.

You've got a very good point..

It's not so much a good thing, because of many factors.  For one thing, miners will drop out and the total mining power will end up becoming more centralized, which I'm not trying to say that it is going to become fully centralized... but as time goes on it will start to weed out the smaller guys and then after a while, I think it will become a duopoly or oligopoly where only a couple big guys will be the only ones mining.

This is definitely a bad thing, because of the fact that when miners are dropping out, it decreases the hashing rate and thus decreasing the security of the blockchain that we depend on.  On top of all of that, there is still an issue with what the block size should be, so that just puts more fuel on the fire of what's about to occur...

Sure, you as a holder of some bitcoins will be happy when speculation starts up and the price per bitcoin rises, but there will come to a point where the people will start selling because they will start to realize that they shouldn't be pouring money into something that essentially is a huge risk to lose everything every time they move bitcoins around to other wallets, cold storages, or simply just buy things with.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree on you there.  I can understand that he is not really controlled by any big bankers, and to me seems to be alright in a sense of becoming a good president... but the thing is, is that "being so liberal" doesn't mean that he will accept every single thing.  Bernie is a democratic socialist, and the fact of the matter is is that he wants the governments to have so much power, that it would as a government not allow bitcoin to be accepted anywhere, nor would he ban it (I don't think at least).

Even if he were to want to use Bitcoin, there would have to be some notion that goes through Congress to discontinue the Central Banks... and as of right now, I'm pretty positive Republicans hold the majority. 

It would be a lot easier to pass a bill or new law with Rand Paul, because he's pro-privacy and pro-decentralization and, just because of how politics work, would be easier to pass a bill/law just because he's on the Republican ticket.

Yeah, that's very true... I think Colorado is still the only state that allows recreational use of marijuana.  There are a lot of states starting to allow medical uses of marijuana with a doctor's prescription, but definitely not a wide spread thing as of right now.

I'm pretty sure you have people moving to Colorado to start growing it in mass quantities and then selling them to people in states through the dark web markets still to this day.  Marijuana is definitely the cash crop out west though.

I really do think the only candidate out there who would even consider supporting Bitcoin as a contender for the new national(/global) currency of the US would be Rand Paul.  Rand has a big stance for privacy and a stance against the big banks.  He's riding on the coat tails of his father (obviously), but he supports all of the same notions as he did when he was running for president.  


Hillary would be the absolute WORST president for bitcoin, and would probably try to do something in the future to get Bitcoin criminalized in some way.  She is supported financially by big banks, it's no secret.  So she is essentially a puppet being put on the podium by these guys, so they can essentially pull the strings in the white house and start doing something to wipe out all the people in the US who support or use bitcoin, and put them in prison (for profit, of course).

The thing is though, that unless you are a coder or have some other type of knowledge in the computer science field, whether that's graphic design or whatever... you aren't going to be getting much work.  I would like to start seeing some companies like Uber start allowing people to be paid in btc.  It would be super easy for them and the person receiving, because they pay them not in a "check form" but rather a direct deposit.... it would be a lot easier and quicker for them to be paid (not to mention a lot cheaper) in bitcoin, and I think it would allow for people who aren't computer geeks to start doing something that they can easily do for an "income" in bitcoin.

It would be nice to have some sort of other miscellaneous jobs like that to start actually working for bitcoin.

Yeah, tbh, I didn't feel like going through the hassle of having to form a new unique password, remembering it, linking my email to the website, etc.  It's more of a privacy type of thing for me, and I don't think that people will ever feel like leaving a substantial amount of coins on a website anyways... so it all just points to better things to come for LuckyBTC.  Once the new update comes about, I'm sure I'll test my luck a couple of times on the roulette wheel... but definitely didn't want to have to sign up for anything.

So all in all, good job LuckyBTC! You're definitely tapping into what the everyday online gambler wants when it comes to gambling... easy deposits and withdrawals with no hassle.

Lol, if only we could put beer on the block chain and be able to send it any where in the world...



But in all seriousness though, I thought that the 2 MB block size proposal was already a legitimate topic?  But I thought it was more of a "kick the can down the road" proposal, where for the mean time they would increase it just to 2 MB to avoid any more conflict for right now, and keep trying to figure out a better proposal after that?

I might actually get on this, but I want to be able to watch it, and I wouldn't think that match gets any coverage on regular channels that don't need you to pay to watch.  For me personally, I prefer to watch the sports that I gamble on if I decide to gamble.

Maybe I can just go to a bar though that has the match on.

We need to get back to this point.  OP, you need to define what you are talking about, because if not this is going to be a continuous thread about complete nonsensical debating.

Is Bitcoin's price being manipulated?: Obviously.  There are people who do this stuff for a living.  They were very early adopters who got Bitcoins for peanuts.  They wait until the bitcoin's prices stagnate for a good little while and then dump a good amount of coins, which causes panic selling, then they buy back at a cheaper price and pocket the profits.  This is a widely known thing.

Are bitcoin miners manipulating things?:  This is a more interesting debate, tbh.  There are some good arguments being made that they are, and the big time mining farm operations are starting to run their organizations like a government, or maybe more accurate, like a union would.  They debate about what the block sizes, fees, and that sort of  thing... and threaten if they don't get their way, they will "protest" and stop their mining, which leaves the blockchain vulnerable and less secure.

But until then, I'm not voting on such a thing because I don't know what I'm voting for.

Yeah, that's very true... and the fact that people think it will just be a sure thing is ludicrous.  If you think that the government and central banks are just going to readily "give up" the power (in the US's case, the petrodollar is a good example) to a bunch of nerds on computers, is insane.

If the economy fails and fiat is going down the tubes, where bitcoin is looking like the next thing that everyone has to move toward (or maybe gold); get ready for a major civil war battle between regular civilians who are trying to get away from the dollar and governments trying to stay in control of their people. 

Yeah, I like it too. 

But here's the thing though, and I know most people on this forum don't like to talk about alternatives to bitcoin... but there are a lot of up and coming coins out there that pose true benefits, and "threatens" bitcoin in a way because of how different it is in general.  So what I'm saying, there is still time to become an early investor into something else that will end up being the "Yin" to bitcoins "Yang".

I know Ethereum holds some credit to being a major blockchain database that might make it's way through Microsoft into being the "next big thing"... or you have the new cryptonote technology that serves as being completely anonymous and impossible to tell where the money is coming from and how much is being sent.  Out of all the cryptonotes I've come across, Monero seemed to be the most fair.

But, again... it might become nothing and fall completely flat on it's face.  It's easy to look back in the past and gone, "Oh god, how was I so stupid not to buy a shit load of this stuff when it was a couple of a dollars", but if you have that inherent feeling of self doubt when reading the above paragraph about altcoins might breaking through (especially with all the debates not being solved in the bitcoin dev space), then you can kind of see how it felt back in 2010 when people where really trying to figure out if it was worth it to put in $50 or so for 5-10 coins and see what happens with it.

Cryptocurrency is an experimental currency and is no sure fire bet to get you rich... but the way that I see things, it just makes sense that there will be different forms of it in the future that serve different purposes; just like there are different banks that are known for having good brokers, to other banks that have a high interest rate on your savings account that might seem beneficial to keep your money there for a long period of time, and then you have other banks that are more popular because they are more widespread and have banks in every city.

Just curious, where do you work?  You know you can just get a trezor, or something of the sort, and a shift debit card; and when you need to pay the bills, you can just transfer the amount you need to pay into your coinbase account and pay it with that... So essentially there isn't really a need any more to sell your bitcoins.

I am curious to find out where you get your salary based in bitcoins though... I'm assuming you work for a bitcoin based company?  I can't imagine it's another completely random job that has nothing to do with computer science.

Exactly.

I agree with the sequence of events, with the assumption that one thing will be done in that span of time... That the bitcoin devs start agreeing with each other and fix the core foundation of bitcoin before it's too late.  If that's not done, and there still hasn't been anything that has been accomplished to help enable more transactions to be made without maxing blocks out, then there might be some big trouble (for us bitcoin holders).  I mean think about it, if that's the case where every single block is being maxed out and people can hardly use bitcoins for every day transactions, then how the hell can we expect that if there is some sort of collapse of the dollar that everyone will just readily go to bitcoin?

They will just simply go back to the old way of doing business, and that's with a system that goes back to the gold standard.  I would imagine that in the future, if/when all the worlds fiat systems collapse, that bitcoin or any other future cryptocurrency will have to be priced in the amount of gold...

Bitcoin needs to do some serious work "under the hood" before this happens, because if it's not ready by the time of the collapse, then there will be no adoption at all.