A healthcare system that is only free for those who have serious/catastrophic conditions can be funded by a $100/month compulsory insurance rather than a 50% tax on everyone's income.

The problem with a system where everything is free for everyone, even for people who could easily afford to pay $5000 for a IVF treatment out of their own pocket, is that people overuse it, leading to ever increasing costs and eventually, severe rationing or state bankruptcy.

Anyhow, the American public healthcare system isn't shit because there is a lack of government funding. It's shit because it's wasteful.  The American government spends the roughly same amount of money per capita on healthcare as the German government. No joke.  (source: WHO).

And quite an active Bitcoin community. The first ever IRL Bitcoin meetup was in Zurich, although I missed it unfortunately.  


I'm not Swiss, but I don't  have to pay taxes in my passport country if I don't live there.  

If I earn in income in Switzerland while living in my passport country, then yes, I pay the difference.

Unfortunately, the US is unique in its US=World attitude of taxing its citizens wherever they live.


Actually, not even renouncing your citizenship may save you from certain taxes.

You should talk to the forum member Mike Gogulski, who went the whole way and became stateless.  

No I'm not.

Here in Switzerland there are no taxes on capital gains.  

On the other hand... ebay, wikipedia, and youtube never got replaced.  

It's much easier to switch to a different social network than a different currency.

The same way that air travel's path to success was to work within existing regulations? (before manned flight was invented, people owned all airspace above their land).

No, regulations will need to adapt to new technologies. Not the other way around.

Is that person living outside Switzerland?

Oh no, my browser crashed because of fucking flash player (on a different site) while I was waiting for the transaction to arrive.  Now I'm going to have to pay another 0.02 btc.  Consider the first payment a donation 

The world market for commercial CP is rather small because it's, well, a "niche product", and most producers of CP are sadists who don't do it for commercial gain.

commercial CP will only ever constitiute a tiny, negligible part of the Bitcoin economy.

once the low-hanging fruit have been picked by law enforcement, CP trading is probably going to happen over extremely secretive darknets and friend-to-friend networks, where it's out of sight, out of mind, as far as politicians and mainstream media are concerned.

That's why I don't think it's going to destroy Bitcoin.

Also, there is probably tons of CP bouncing around the Tor network and that hasn't brought about its destruction.

Hah.

Most politicians still don't get bittorrent, a decade after it was invented.

Do you expect them to get the concept of a p2p cryptocurrency? 

If you don't want an international bank, go with the Zurich Kantonal Bank. I am pretty satisfied with them. Their customer service is not as good as UBS but they are a little cheaper.

I disagree.

Just like Tor, bitcoin can never be 100% anonymous. An investigation team with enough manpower and time on its hands can track down any bitcoin user, with one exception: The bitcoin user who never spends a single bitcent in his wallet.dat.  But what use are bitcoins if you can't spend them?

However it is anonymous enough for most people going about their daily honest business.  Discovering the identity of bitcoin users takes a large amount of resources, so governemnt will only ever bother going after serious criminals, while ordinary people can enjoy the benefits of financial privacy.



They can't control Bitcoin itself. All they can do is prevent selected individuals from spending their bitcoins using traditional police work.

The guy who wrote this article, Christoph N. v.Dellingshausen, lists "Querdenker" (= unconventional thinkers) in the "Wants" section of his XING profile:

http://www.xing.com/profile/ChristophN_vDellingshausen

Unconventional Thinkers  Yeah he could surely learn a few lessons from them

This is incorrect because money ≠ utility.

True, commodity speculators are not adding or subtracting the commodity from the economy.

But they are adding utility to the economy by giving more people access to that commodity at a time when they desire it.

That is also a form of added wealth.

bitcoin-otc could take over that function.  the heart of bitcoin-otc is the GPG web of trust which could be ported to any website/chatroom.

Network effects for Bitcoin are stronger than for Facebook.

Joining the losing social networking site results in a minor inconvenience the day you switch to the winning one.   

Joining the losing p2p cryptocurrency results in substantial financial losses the day you switch to the winning one.

I don't wanna be part of a new elite replacing the old one. Fuck the yachts. If I become a Bitcoin Billionaire I'm going to open entrepreneurial academies and startup incubators in developing countries. 

How disappointing.  Seems like the EFF is case of "dogs that bark don't bite".  A charity that doesn't practice what it preaches will not be getting my donations anymore.  Perhaps I'm being too harsh?

Anyhow, soon Bitcoin won't need the EFF to speak out for it anymore.  The money will take care of the talking.

Retailers are a bonus, but Bitcoin doesn't need them to succeed.  The remittances market alone is worth $300 Billion USD per year. Then there is: online gambling, bitcoin-as-a-financial-instrument, supply chain management, MMOGs, cloud storage, commercial Tor nodes, and many other uses we can't even imagine right now...

Can you prove a causal relationship between the two events?

The exchange rate shot up a few times in the last 30 days - even without mtgox changing their policies.

I don't think it's going to be any more dramatic than the financial crisis of 2008 in terms of sudden job losses. It's a gradual process that will take a decade or two. People are not going to give up on traditional banking overnight.  The banking industry will adapt and continue to provide jobs.  People are still going to need loans.  Bitcoins need to be secured just like fial money.