Others have pointed out that there may be an equilibrium where the marginal income from fees is less than the marginal cost of a potentially orphaned block (where the size is greater than 0).

I can think of a few issues related to that suggestion.

1. The subsidy has a big effect on this equilibrium.
2. Without increasing the max size, it may not be possible to find the equilibrium.
3. The equilibrium only exists if the probability of being orphaned increases faster than the size of the block.

Ithaca Hours started out by crediting time just like TimeRepublik (1 Ithaca Hour = 1 hour), but it didn't work so they switched to 1 Ithaca Hour = $10.


If person A can produce 10 widgets in an hour, and person B can produce 100 widgets in an hour, then how much is a widget worth, 1/10 hour or 1/100 hour?

Person B sells his widgets for 1/100 hour. He gets 1 hour for one hour of work. In order to compete, person A must sell his widgets for 1/100 hour. He gets 1/10 hour for one hour of work. A's time is not equal to B's time.

This forum is for posting links to articles about Bitcoin. That article is not about Bitcoin, but it mentioned Bitcoin, so I guess it is appropriate. I posted the quote that referred to Bitcoin so that people could see the reference to Bitcoin without having to read the entire article, which was about something else.

Seeds are generally not compatible across different clients, but there are some that are. This thread has a link that shows the incompatibilities between the various wallets: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1000544.0

You can go one step further and ignore everyone that has joined a signature campaign. It is quite a different forum experience. Click on the link to DannyHamilton's ignore list in my signature.

Typically, the private key is printed on a piece of paper and placed under a tamper-resistant sticker attached to the coin. There are some variations of this method.

The only mention of Bitcoin is:

The idea is to have money backed by time. When a person does work, they earn a credit for each hour that they work. The credits have value because they can always be exchanged for an hour of someone else's work. For example, you work for an hour and someone pays you 1 credit. You take credit to the grocery store and buy some food. The grocery store pays their employees and wholesalers with the credits from customers. etc.

Keep in mind that if you join a signature campaign, you will be ignored by many users (including some of the most experienced ones). Members of signature campaigns are ignored because they tend to spam the forums in order to increase their post counts.

I recently ordered a 2014 Original and I have yet to receive any kind of confirmation of my order (except for the receipt from Coinbase). Is that normal?

The article has little to do with Bitcoin except for this mention:

The "scotpound" has nothing to do with Bitcoin. I would simply be another fiat currency. The difference between it and the currencies of other countries would be that no paper money would be issued -- a trivial difference in theory, but a fatal flaw in reality.

At first, both branches of the fork would contain the same transactions because the issue does not concern most transactions. The only transactions that would be rejected on one branch would involve the bitcoins rewarded to miners on the other branch. The branches would become more incompatible as the bitcoins rewarded to miners after the fork are circulated.

There would be an interesting situation where coins created before the fork can be spent twice (once on each branch) after the fork.

Why can't Bitcoin Foundation members pay with bitcoin? Also, is it the 16th or the 18th?

Miners can't force anyone to use their branch of the block chain any more than Litecoin miners can force someone to switch to Litecoin. Miners just produce a block chain. If there are two branches, then full nodes and other users decide which branch they want to follow.

The winner of the block size debate won't be decided by the miners. It will be decided by the users. If 90% of the users pick the Core branch and 10% pick the XT branch, then the Core branch will dominate even if only 1% of the miners mine it. Miners will be forced to mine the branch that users choose because if they mine the losing chain, they won't be able to use the bitcoins they mine.

Unfortunately, it is possible for both branches to persist, though that would cause major problems (what Nick Szabl calls a "civil war"). To avoid a disaster, there must be enough users choosing one branch to coerce the rest of the users to also choose that branch. This is why Gavin is working to convince exchanges and wallet providers to jump on the XT bandwagon.

Before bitcoins had value, miners spent money mining worthless bitcoins. Once bitcoins had value, the value of the mined bitcoins were still less than the cost to mine them.

Holding bitcoins has been very profitable for some people, including the miners that mined at a loss.

His requirement for permanent inflation makes his presentation moot.

It is not POS, it is Proof Of Work. You try over and over again and eventually it will work for one lucky person.

As I predicted, this thread was simply an attempt by a scammer to try to get money out of people. I'm happy to see that it did not succeed.

That is a myth. The "average joe" has never been able to make a decent (if any) profit from mining. Even when CPU mining dominated, people generally mined at a loss.