Why? 

democratic -> pertaining to or characterized by the principle of political or social equality for all: democratic treatment.

Note that it isn't capitalized and shouldn't be confused with a certain American political party.
 

Which is kinda my point. We already have a natural candidate for a "Bitcoin Day" that people will already celebrate
without need of them being coaxed or enticed. We don't need to try and contrive something else.

I suppose there is always the fear, for some, that Bitcoin may not last another four years... which, I feel, will make
it all the more worth celebrating when the day arrives.

My opinions.

Why does it have to be every year? Why can't it be every four years like the Olympics or the World Cup. It will make it a more special celebration people will look forward to.
I like it having a floating date instead of pinning it down, and will make it something that will generate a lot of buzz and anticipation as the date approaches. That may make it like the flash mob phenomena in some ways.

/edit the best celebrations are not those we plan and organize ahead of time but those which just happen... organically; spontaneously.    

um... no photo of  [the|a] mining rig?   

They should... We should. But I for one won't hold my breath waiting for it. 

And the thing about (sub/un)conscious reactions is that we don't know about them, by definition, and don't have much choice about their influence on us. 

"Bitcoin cannot be turned off - it is like a benevolent cancer which, so long as a few hosts survive somewhere in the world, can perpetuate itself and regrow at the speed of information."

 

Even with the qualifier "benevolent" and even if it is technically accurate... in my opinion... that is a terrible metaphor to use.

Do you know how many people in our modern world have lost loved ones to cancer?

No amount of qualifiers are going to remove the negative psychological weight from a word like that.  

And surely you must know how the enemies of something like bitcoin would just love to have good key words to jump on and
use against it.  

( below said in something like a Rush Limbaugh voice )
"Harumpf! And here we have another article where we have another bitcoin "expert", comparing this new "technology", to cancer! People, I ask you!"

What if, for example, a band had their own website and they wanted to sell their songs for bitcoin from their site.

Could you act as a bitcoin payment processor for them?  Could they just paste some code, that you would provide,
into their own website pages to allow them to do something like that? 

I also know others, like photographers, that have their own sites and might be interested in something like this, as
long as it wasn't too much hassle to setup themselves. They already have their own website and would prefer to
keep visitors there rather than pointing them to some other (less attractive, less organized) website where they
would have to search and dig for the content they wanted to sell.
 

Thanks

p.s. I think the prices people are asking for stuff at this site are too high by a factor of 10.

I think with the reduced disposable income people have these days they are reluctant to pay much for music (etc.)
especially from non-established artists. 

Think about it people. Is it better to try and sell a song to a few people for $1 or to hundreds of people for 5 cents?

Bitcoin microtransactions makes such equations work! 

What, no more fixations on masturbating furries/muppets? 

Good! Thumbs up!   

I like things like Robot Chicken but that type of thing always seemed out of place here and took away from what you seem to be trying to do with Bitcoin.

It was the reason I was never interested in getting a copy of your Bitcoin magazine. ( that and the fact that by the time a magazine, any magazine,
comes out all the news in it is usually old. But that is just me. It is perhaps targeted to a different demographic. )

Although some of your humor on these forums had a point to it, unlike Bruno's, it won't be missed too much by me if it means a more professional
attitude from you.   

Btw, you could've probably said what you said in your letter in a lot fewer words.
We don't need your life story; much of it is perhaps best kept between you, your therapist and your Matt/Atlas voodoo doll.   

+1

I didn't think my opinion of certain members here could get any lower... I may give the benefit of the
doubt to the OP and others who may be truly interested in helping a person they see as a victim, but
for those ( or at least the one scumbag ) who seemingly sees everything, including tragedies like this
one, only in the light of, "How can we use this as an opportunity to market bitcoin."   wtf? 

In common usage it usually means doing all things primarily in your own interest, at the expense of others.

More and more scientific evidence seems to show us that cooperation tends to get one a better life than cut-throat
competition.  Some may suggest that is what separates humans (potentially) from wild animals... but even modern
studies seem to show us that there is more cooperation in, wild and red in tooth and claw, nature then we had previously
thought.

This little ancient allegory below I feel illustrates it very well ( despite it appearing on the surface as some sappy sunday school story,
it was originally Taoist, I think, but often gets mangled into some Christian form for use in the modern West ):

There is a story about a man who left this earth and was taken on a tour of the inner realms.  He was shown a room where he saw a large group of hungry people trying to eat dinner from a single large pot in the center of the room, but because their spoons were longer than their arms, they were frustrated.  "This," his guide told him, "is hell."  "That's terrible," the man exclaimed.  "Please show me heaven."  "Very well," agreed the guide, and off they went.  When they opened the door to heaven, the man was perplexed to see what looked like exactly the same scene:  there was a group of people with spoons longer than their arms and the same pot of food in the center of the room.  But as he looked more closely, he saw happy faces and well-fed bodies, for there was one important difference:  the people in heaven had learned to feed each other. 

Yes... 'but'... or 'and'... instead of getting into narrow technical definitions of the words people use in their questions and concerns, about something like
bitcoin, it is perhaps best to get to the essence of what they are looking for. Confidence in the value of something. When someone wonders if bitcoin
is backed by something they are really wondering that if they get some today, will it have value tomorrow. Can they use it to buy things and services
that they need? Do they have the support of their society to use it in the ways they have to come to rely on with other currencies they use?

With dollars even though you say it isn't technically backed by anything it is taken by, for example, utility companies so one can pay to heat their
homes. And while one may say that there are no guarantees that anyone should accept this or that currency in exchange for their goods or
services that utility company would need a good reason to refuse to accept dollars from someone looking to pay their heating bill. There would be
legal recourse, and if the utility company didn't want to follow the courts decisions they would have to face government law enforcement. And so
I don't see that it is entirely wrong to say that dollars are backed by the Government... by society.  This gives many, if not most, people confidence
( a misplaced confidence perhaps but important to them just the same ), and so it these types of concerns of average ( non-techie ) people that
we want to address. 

To say that bitcoin is backed by math and cryptography ( and robust networks etc. ) is, in a way, of saying that there 'are' laws that one can have
confidence in. A different kind of law that doesn't need to be interpreted by lawyers and judges, but rather mathematical axioms etc., that are
politically neutral and beyond manipulation and coercion.  2 + 2 will still = 4 even if you point a gun at their heads.

But of course that doesn't make it easier to instill confidence in non-techie people. While they may have a reasonable confidence that they can
use their dollars and they will be backed-up by the rules and laws of the society they live in they may not be as comfortable trusting, what they
may see as, a bunch of nerds or hackers and the incomprehensible math and science they play with in their dark basements. 

I am not sure what is the best way forward. Educate people to help them understand and learn to trust the bitcoin protocol/network? Show them
how existing systems are untrustworthy?  Of course it isn't an either/or equation and many approaches can be used at the same time... including
individuals and groups helping to build and nurture a new type of fair, sharing and caring society... 

"Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together." - Red Green

+1

I feel it would work especially well with a p2p project like bitcoin. 

Bitcoin, I feel, is best portrayed as 'not' just another way/scheme for one to get wealthy, but as a fair system that just works, for everybody.

Such ideas, I think, are best put across using as little as possible the usual slick formulaic advertising/propaganda tricks that have become
ubiquitous post World War II; instead appealing to higher centers within the human psyche.   

With all the posts expressing concerns about the mystery miner,

Miners that refuse to include transactions are becoming a problem

and the posts expressing concerns about Vlad's ASIC operation,

[ANN] A public company will build a huge Bitcoin Mining Operation (ASIC).

It seems there are a lot of people who still think this is a subject to worry about.
 

Thanks.
Added to the OP.

Thanks Graet, I hadn't seen those threads before. 

The next (last?) in a series of threads in the project to update and fill-in the New to BitCoin? Start here! sticky.

If a thread already exists on this subject please let us know and the moderators can add it to the sticky instead of this one. These questions may have already been answered and addressed many times, which is why it is good to have them included in one location and pointed to from that sticky. Please give us your definitive answer to this question, to help out new users coming to this forum as well as existing members who see these questions asked over and over again. Everyone is welcome to give their view of the subject, which is better perhaps than getting only one answer from one central self-appointed authority who thinks s/he knows it all and is only interested in pushing their obnoxious agenda or boosting their own ego ( This is a general hypothetical statement. No particular individual is being referred to here. ).

Thank you for your participation and input; karmacoins will be sent to those with the best Bitcoin community spirit.  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This thread is meant to answer the question asked in the sticky, New to BitCoin? Start here!:

Could miners collude to give themselves money or fundamentally change the nature of BitCoin?        Thread coming

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Could miners ( or mining pools ) collude to give themselves money or fundamentally change the nature of BitCoin?

Well perhaps one saving grace is that the more greedy and sociopathic one entity becomes the more likely they
are to not want to cooperate with others and would rather stab others in the back to get more for just them...
( e.g. see the movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre )
which is why I tend to not put too much stock into the big world wide type conspiracy theories.

Also some say about the pools that if one of them start doing something that the majority of bitcoiners don't like
then miners will leave that pool for another ( like the p2pool ) or to mine solo.  But others may counter that a lot
of miners are too sheep-like and/or apathetic ( like voters in countries like America and Canada )  and wouldn't
do much at all, even if it was pointed out to them that it would be in their own best interest to do something like
consider leaving the pool they are in. Another might bring up the time factor and suggest that a big pool could pull
something off before miners could react to do something about it.

Hmm...  what does everyone think?  Is this something to be concerned about?

+1

But this thread is about "What happens if someone starts another blockchain or cryptocurrency?"

Please check the OP to remind yourself what the intent of this thread is.  Thanks.

Is the talk about deflation and hoarding a call to start another cryptocurrency that doesn't have the deflationary feature?

How would that work and would people move from Bitcoin to it, killing Bitcoin, or would people just give up on the whole
decentralized crypocurrency experiment and keep using the existing centralized banking systems? 

 

Yes this is the way I feel when I hear people say things like, "We need this new cryptocurrency to solve this problem X with Bitcoin".

If there is a recognized problem with the Bitcoin protocol as it is why not just fix the problem with it instead of creating something new.
That way people won't have to worry about being stuck with coins of an obsolete cryptocurrency. 

Another question about alternative cryptocurrencies is, how much is it about solving some particular problem and how
much is it about trying to make a quick profit by getting people excited about the next big thing which could take off? 

I notice many people refer to many of these alternatives as "scamcoins".