look @ bitstamp... doesn´t their logo look like a stamp?? than you might know how they got this idea... and yes one could say it is a collectible asset....

I've become cynical

Is really my question to the mathematicians and cryptographers out there.  Is THAT possible?

The third is the deliberate sabotaging of security. The primary example we have of this is the NSA's BULLRUN program, which tries to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communication devices." This is the worst of the NSA's excesses, because it destroys our trust in the Internet, weakens the security all of us rely on and makes us more vulnerable to attackers worldwide.

That's for sure. Come to think of it the big 5 private banks in Canada are doing the same thing as Chinese banks. Cavirtex are asking for government legislation so Canadian exchanges before they are forced to use other nations banks.

I have to agree with kjj. The PKI solution is simple and a guaranteed way of giving a proof of identity, which despite problems, has and will continue to work.

Is there some other thread where this inane prattling about altcoins can go to?  This thread is for inane prattling about gold and bitcoin. 

Why the fuck are you accusing me of whinging about a fantasy scare story?

What an unpleasant climate-change-denier you are.

When Daniel wrote about the coming demise of alt coins, he based his premise on the importance of bitcoin's liquidity and market cap (http://themisescircle.org/blog/2014/03/14/the-coming-demise-of-the-altcoins/).  I think this was an important contribution, as it is waking people up to the reality that most alt coins will collapse.  

But Daniel missed one thing: bitcoin's market cap and liquidity are very important, but the most important thing is the record of wealth distribution encoded in the blockchain itself.  It's taken us 5 years, 3 crashes, and $600,000,000 of unrecoverable mining costs to get the coins distributed as they currently are.  The value of bitcoin is based on our shared agreement that the blockchain is right.  

Since the value is in the blockchain, any promising alt-coin can be cloned with a bitcoin-blockchain based wealth distribution.  Immediately the blockchain-based clone has more users and a more efficient wealth distribution.  Just the credible threat that this can be done will now slow the proliferation of new alts.  

Consider the coming IPO of Ethereum.  

I could create a clone called æthereum which is functionally identical to Ethereum except for the initial distribution of coins.  One month after Ethereum IPOs, the unspent bitcoin outputs of block XXXXXX become the "nucleus" of æthereum.  I publish this nucleus to the æthereum.org website and give the community another month to confirm that the æthereum nucleus has the identical coin distribution to the bitcoin wealth distribution at the agreed-upon point in time.  We correct any mistakes (there shouldn't be any except for maybe weird n-locktime transaction, etc).  

One month later, the "æthereum nucleus" undergoes a big-bang event creating "æther."  Bitcoin users can claim their æther by signing an æthereum address with their bitcoin private key.  The æthereum network cross-checks the nucleus and confirms that the æther is valid.  A new universe is born!

If I can very easily do this, and I see no reason why I can't as all the code is open source, why would anyone purchase ether when they get æther for free?  

If there is any value in Ethereum (and I'm doubtful that Turing completeness is anything other than problematic) then it is in the code.  But the code is freely available.  Yet what you would be buying during the IPO is spots on the "Ethereum ledger."  Why would you do this when you already have a spot on the bitcoin ledger and thus the æthereum ledger too?  

If we want to experiment with Turing completeness, let's just run it off the unspent bitcoin outputs and see what happens.  

Anyway, the amount of energy being consumed is small compared other sources of consumption. Assuming $1000 per bitcoin, $0.10 per kWH, and 1,314,900 bitcoins mined per year, a total of about 13 GWH is consumed each year. Compared to the 20 million GWH consumed each year by the entire world, that is minuscule. Even if the price rises to $10,000, it would still be less than 0.1% of the total energy consumption.

It is an imprecise unit, because there's a huge amount of variables when gauging the amount of CO2 something produces. Still, it's the best we have and it represents fairly well the impact on air quality that a process has.

However misleading the calculations are, it is undeniable that crypto mining is using a LOT of electricity and is not enviromentally friendly. I am not saying everyone should stop mining, but asic manufacturers should do more about power efficiency. 

Am I missing something?

This is a punishment and actually it does work well as most people are scared to get arrested and go to jail! So it's less expensive to keep some people in jail while other are trying to avoid it and so pay the bill as expected

I don't think the same games can be played as they are with PMs. Comex gold derivatives take advantage of the difficulty and expense of opting for physical delivery of gold contracts. There is no case to be made for the situation being the same for Bitcoin, and so if the Wall Street exchanges refuse or stall withdrawals, then they'll get tarred with the Gox moniker. Not to say that this won't happen, but I think the problems with Bitcoinica, Mt. Gox and Vicurex will be way too fresh in people's minds to permit recklessly large deposits on an exchange run in Wall Street (of all places, at this point in the history of that institution's reputation). Watch closely the language that gets used to describe their processes, if "withdrawal", "deposit" and "balance" are passed over for some other euphemisms, tread carefully, and deride loudly if necessary.

Any exchange that joins in with Second Market's 'hub and spoke' arrangement can expect to see some very guarded use of their deposit facilities. Sounds like a situation where mutual finger-pointing will replace meaningful responsibility if there was ever an issue.