Ah Vikings! Let's be Vikings! "Behold your fields so green, whisper tales of woe." |
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I would like to see a real Libertarian plan for a civilization that would actually work. If there is one, why haven't they created it yet?
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I don't get it. People invest Bitcoin with Pirate. If he sells the Bitcoin it drives the price down, how does he drive the price up without using his own money? Is there a new leveraged short-selling exchange?
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Bitcoin will never replace fiat because it can't be easily controlled by a central government. It's a parallel currency, like gold. Its best uses are: - Store of value (hoarding)
- Unregulated/illegal trade (silkroad)
No government will ever allow a legitimate business to pay its employees in an unregulated and untraceable currency. Bitcoin is the currency of the black market. Here's a milestone to keep an eye out for: the first kidnapping with ransom demanded in Bitcoin. No more briefcases of cash and police stakeouts. Take my wife, please. |
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"Have you come to enslave Mankind to mine gold for your Overlords?"
"Nah. We have robots mining asteroids for gold. We came to flood your gold market to enslave you with your Bitcoin."
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Useless reading. The author just avoids the topic. I repeat if someone missed my words: The only true point why deflation was chosen as a feature of Bitcoin is to make early adopters (and Satoshi) rich.
Q: "Will deflation be the fatal weakness of bitcoin?" A: No |
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Who insures the insurers?  That would be the Reinsurer (Wikipedia) Before someone asks who insures the reinsurer, you do in higher premiums. |
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Stocks are deflationary. Aren't we told to keep our money in stocks to counter inflation & grow our money for retirement? So if everyone is hoarding stocks & they are deflationary, how come they haven't failed yet?
Stocks are not deflationary, when the demand rises they just give out extra stocks. They split the stocks sometimes. |
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Yeah in another post I suggested making your gold into bullets for your personal carry. :p
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It's also possible (since we are talking hypotheticals now) that official currencies will all fail (or become unattractive) due to inflation and over-regulation. Black market trade will then fill the void. Don't overestimate government competence. In a world with no official currency, is there anything better than gold and Bitcoin?
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These m-of-n transactions (when nested) are starting to look like discrete components and Bitcoin is the energy. Combining different types of transactions could create logic gates of money. The circuit would be traceable by the blockchain, though it would create a lot of transactions. That's something to worry about later. I'm thinking that this could be a way to create community based lending systems that amplify funds for borrowers that meet the criteria of key persons in the circuit. There would be many different functions for different amounts depending on the setup, enough to meet the needs of borrowers of all sorts. Thoughts, or should I just start drinking?
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Ya, The problem is there are no outlets in Madison, they are all out in the sticks. My old stompin' grounds. You gotta get Bitcoin Magazine on State Street in the college bookstores. They won't buy them, but they'll read them ragged and maybe subscribe. |
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Gotta love the straw man argument. By your reasoning, burglars only enter a home while you are not present, however, many burglars are discovered by a resident returning home. At this point they are caught and quite scarred. Have you ever heard the saying that a nervous dog is more dangerous than a mean one? It is simply because they are unpredictable. What is to stop the "family man" burglar from grabbing a kitchen knife or table lamp and removing the witness? Personal possessions are really meaningless in such a situation. Also most reports I see of burglaries, the perpetrator has been caught before or is suspected in other B&Es. Not the ideal image of someone trying to feed their family. I mean how many flat screens does it take to feed a family for a year?
Killers are out there, but they mostly work for gangs and cartels. There are a lot of thieves and they rarely get caught in progress. They case the area and know when to get in and out. They get caught with the goods later or during a drug bust. They only get surprised in the home in movies. Besides, shoplifting is the big thing now because there is hardly any risk and penalties are minimum. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a gun in the home, but there's no reason to go all Rambo. Criminals these days are more afraid of cell phones than guns. |
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If the third party service is too expensive, perhaps a TOR based automated service can be created that arbitrates with a coin flip.
That would be the worst of both options. You made it an "auto-win" for scammers and a loser for almost anyone else. With a 2 of 2 a scammer has no little economic incentive to enter the agreement. If the scammer has absolutely no rep (and thus no cost on the tx) it could be economically viable to use a 2 of 2 escrow as hostage to get some free funds. That can be negated by requiring one or both parties to put a deposit into the escrow. The scammer now has something at risk (either reputation, or the deposited funds). If the deposit is more than the expected value of future extortion the "game" is now a net loss for the scammer. Generally people don't work against their own economic interests. However with a coin flip on deadlock the scammer will win 50% of the time. It is unlikely any extortion attempt would be successful 50% of the time so you have improved the odds. If we consider all the disputed transactions and grouped them into the following categories which do you think makes up the lions share: * one party is intentionally at fault (scammer) * both parties generally believe they are in the right (failure to communicate) * some technical issue (lost wallet, one party dies, funds are stolen before payment, etc) I would argue that the first case is the overwhelming majority of disputed payments. The scam and run scenario. A coin flip hurts the prevention of that scenario. Go after the biggest problem first. It doesn't have to be a 2 sided coin. Think of it as insurance. The service might payout to the vendor a percentage based on agreed terms. Depending on the relationship between the buyer and seller it could be 50-99. It's like insurance. In fact either side can scam, but depending on each reputation in the community it might hurt if arbitration is used a lot. The vendor already has a down payment and not as much to lose. The arbitration service can even keep track of arbitration stats and publish them anonymously if desired. |
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I would buy bitcoin and gold. The Bitcoin only needs to be encrypted to be safe. The gold I would melt into bullets and keep them loaded in a high cap magazine concealed and ready. :p
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If the third party service is too expensive, perhaps a TOR based automated service can be created that arbitrates with a coin flip.
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The output from several randomly generated k-of-n keys could be the inputs of user defined m-of-n transactions.
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Australia has some of the worlds strictest gun laws and the worlds highest rate of burglaries. Probably completely unrelated.  It's not worth killing a human being over a burglary. It's just stuff that can be replaced. Likewise, it's not worth risking getting killed over a burglary. That's not a burglary. Burglars run away. Home invasions are another matter, but they are too rare to worry about. Burglars also don't enter homes where there might be an armed occupant. This. So you would kill a desperate person just looking to feed their family? Is your shit really worth more than human lives? We are talking about burglars, not armed robbers. |
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OK, I have baked the M-of-N wallet code into my Casascius Bitcoin Utility, just as a proof of concept. The M-of-N calc is under "Tools". Source and binaries are included in this ZIP file. This is for Windows. https://www.casascius.com/BtcAddressMN.zipThis won't yet print any M-of-N paper wallets - it will simply produce the M-of-N codes (which you can copy and paste away), and recombine any M of them back into a regular private key (if you copy and paste them back in). It could probably use a lot of scrutiny and testing, but it seems to work like it should. Nice! I'll come up with a cross-platform python utility for this when I have time. I did not know this was possible. A utility like this combined with with user created m-of-n keys by nesting could create a system where a quorum of individuals could unlock certain amounts of funds depending on how many keys are used. I'm tripping over this. |
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I'm not really sure what benefit a "cheat sheet" offers. I like to think of a brain wallet is something you can use in a prison without internet access or something to cross borders with nothing in hand. It's not that I want something "torture proof" because that's just unrealistic, but having a little extra security never hurt.
I just want to have a backup in case my memory fails without compromising too much security. As I said, I'm intrigued by the idea of using guess-and-check for additional security like retep touched on. How about this. Instead of a huge sprawling list of questions, we limit it to smaller number x. We then run an algorithm that makes a random combination of y (repetition allowed) keys and a random iteration# within a fixed range and generates the address based on that but doesn't store the combination. When we want to retrieve the private key, we have to run an algorithm to brute force the correct combination of keys. Memory failure? Check. The keys could be answers to personal questions and the algorithm could be recorded in a semi-secret way. Random dictionary attack? Check. The hash key will be too long. Finding the list and brute forcing the answers you don't know? Check. The existing brute force makes this impractical. This would be much more secure than my first idea, and much easier to remember too. The only question would be the optimal values of x, y, and iteration range. Hmm...Using questions to create keys is the method I use in Buried Keys. So far nobody has answered my questions correctly, heh. |
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