What if you modify your client so that the coins are sent to an address for which no private key was generated? Is the network still at fault?

I don't know enough to have an opinion of this particular situation, but obviously to some extent custom miners need to make sure they understand how the network works.

If somehow it was said or implied that what they were doing would be fine, then obviously that should be fixed or made clear.

I don't know where you live, but it hardly matters. You cannot live any kind of life whatsoever without guaranteeing that you will break the law at some point.

Even if you pay taxes on that haircut that you bartered with you your neighbor you are probably in violation of zoning laws.

Okay, I was a little over the top.

If you go to the market and buy a bunch you push the price up for yourself, and then when you sell them you push the price down and you lose money.

If anyone is doing this then they are just giving money away, which is fine.

What is actually happening is that people "make the market" by offering some for sale and offering to buy some. If they offer the best deals on both sides and other people take those deals then they make money. They are getting paid for offering the 'service' of a lower spread.

And this decreases volatility compared to what it would be otherwise. I realize it doesn't look this way. When ever the prices move a lot it is true that speculators trade a lot, but the price would have moved more if market makers did not have those offers out there.

Do a little thought experiment. Look at the order book and imagine what would happen if 20k worth of market orders for coins suddenly came in, how high would the price go? Now remove from the order book which ever asks you consider to be "speculative", how much does the price move now?

It's really weird at this point to still not have the whole order book at mtgox. Not to mention that it is always skewed toward showing more asks than bids.

wallet.dat is the only file you need to save. If you have the newest version 100 addresses are "premade" and stored in your wallet which means you have a buffer and don't have to backup every time. Previously, you would need to backup after every SEND because the change would go back to you at a new address which wouldn't be in your backup.

An SD card is smart. I don't know why I didn't do that before, I'm going to do it now.

Unless I'm badly mistaken there is no reason 95% of people agreeing to accept generates of 50BTC forever requires the remaining 5% to do so. Smart merchants will insist on the limited chain and those finite coins will hold value while the others will decay. Some people will change their mind and use the limited gen chain and as the value diverges the new chain people will probably decide they aren't generating fast enough and increase to 1000/block and beyond. And this fireball of stupidity will probably last less than a month since there won't be an army and swat teams to enforce acceptance of the dummy chain.

If this happens, which it likely won't, it'll look like the collapse of any fiat currency played out in extreme speed.

edit: I'm not say the bad chain is fiat, only that their collapses will look similar. I think it would happen faster because it isn't fiat, it's just straight inferior with no force propping it up.

This is silly. "Extremely large scale speculation"? How am I not seeing the billions of dollars of BTC derivatives?

People are buying however many bitcoins they want at the price they find, you think there should be more "little people"? So, what. I think there should be more Jews and midgets.

It's strange to have a problem with someone thinking bitcoin is going to be huge and puts their money on it. Anyone buying is "speculating" that it will work out well for them.

Don't hold your breath for 'stable' BTC/USD either. It probably won't be stable until you can't get 1BTC with all the worthless dollars ever printed.

Proofs are cool for sure. But I don't see how they can be money since you still have them after you 'spend' them.

Why does it matter if they vote or not?

I vote for #2

Tropics, but I'll move eventually. I would generate if the gpu stuff was easy to set up.

Electricity is included in my rent, so the marginal cost is zero, but I don't generate anymore anyway. A GPU would heat the place up and I don't have AC. Other people with my arrangement and different weather would be printing money.

It is good. It was delivered promptly. I highly recommend.

That is a lot different though. PayPal had investors, and the currency they were using already had value to people. Also they required you to prove who you were to get the $5, that would break a major advantage of bitcoin.

"Total amount" is either a known finite number or it is not. If "total amount" changes it never was and still isn't the "total amount".

It's so good.

Lol, I read the article earlier and it didn't strike me as overly ominous. But hearing it in that voice is scary! The first 30 seconds sound like a warning.

I'll let you know when my brother comes back to NYC. Cash in his hand, bitcoins from me, just one step.

So... epic change later on? 

Also you should copy your post to Bernanke, he's into this sort of thing.

edit: not the "give to everyone" aspect. But if you want to create the coins out of air, he might have some tips.

You should give out your coins to strangers. I'll keep mine for myself, my family, and my friends.