Ok, but that person has to have gotten them somewhere, and it's likely he/she directly or again indirectly falls in one of the three mentioned categories.


Right. Some assumptions were made, you could of course have 0.03 BTC from the faucet and just sit on it. This would arguably also fall in the 'hoard' category

Not to the fundamental technical function no. But for practical/economic function very much so, at least in the beginning.

Without them, there is no influx of capital possible, which is needed to enable the merchants taking part to continue taking part until the economy grows large enough so they don't need this external capital (USD, whatever).

Maybe something like Ford starting to pay employees and taking payments in BTC could kickstart a closed loop growth, but this is an extreme balancing act, especially while pricing is volatile.

Ok, strictly speaking you are right, I'll rephrase that as "there is a reasonable chance one of these attributes apply to you, but whether or not they do, they will definitely not apply to the majority, who will need exchanges until the economy grows large enough to be sustainable as a closed loop - which I don't think it will for the next decade at least".

I would like to know what other attribute applies to you for this not to be true (which would constitute an exception in itself ), if your anonymity isn't hurt by it. I can't possibly know for sure, but according to the same probabilistic reasoning as above, I will assume you are not Satoshi

Yes, that's why you need to trace the web of trust. If it's a long chain of Bitcoin related people but all on an island, it might all be fake. At some point some of those people will have ties to say well known kernel developers, who in turn have a large web of trust. Those are unlikely to be fake so you can have reasonable trust in this key, unless somehow one or more people were duped into signing the key of course.

Do you mean none of the three possibilities I listed apply to you? I'm sure there are others that fit these constraints, but you and they are still exceptions if you look beyond the first few thousand early adopters. Imagine millions of users in a year's time. The majority of those will not be paid in Bitcoin, mining will be off the table by then and of course they aren't early adopters with a hoard. Some will be able to accept Bitcoin for their services. The average corporate Joe will not, for quite a while. In this context corporate includes any organization that employs and pays in USD.

Only if the algorithm also includes stretching, which salting by itself does not necessarily do. If that is the case then you're right of course (I haven't downloaded the file to look at what format they use).

Linux is ahead 67-65 right now, unless you also count the 'Linux for Bitcoin' number, in which case it's 83-65. Unless you mean in general, in which case it should be the oblivious majority

ORly? OpenBSD may not be that good of an idea
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=129236621626462&w=2

Which makes you an exception. You either bought them at an earlier stage where due to a lower price you can have a hoard that does not need an exchange to be replenished, or you were mining with a low difficulty level to the same effect, or you are one of the few people getting paid in Bitcoin.

The majority of Bitcoin users will be none of the above, so they'll need an exchange.

As far as I'm concerned the sooner you don't need an exchange at all the better, but I'm not saying that's going to happen soon, or is very realistic to begin with either.


Seems laborious to use Bitcoin as some kind of token, why not just use signed messages then? If the keys are in a web of trust that is just as good and a lot simpler, no problems with valuation/exchange, dependence on mining network (or any network really, as long as you have the other's public key) etc.


But this presupposes that both ends have the required liquidity. Which in turn would have to mean a symmetrical flow of Bitcoins, or going over exchanges. As soon as the latter is involved, valuation of BTC is going to play a part (and these agents may influence the price too).

This isn't any kind of serious journalism, it's some dyslexic hit piece ("psuedo-currency", also check out the article heading beneath: "Court scambles to accommdate Ryan Cleary" - noone even proof reads this stuff).

BTW, respect to OP's convictions.

Since it is extremely unlikely that all 60000 passwords were the same, you still have to brute force the rest.

If you assume a more reasonable 3000 passwords that are either identical or the same as the mail address for example, the difference between everything salted or not is only 60/57=5% more work.

Salting only (significantly) helps against rainbow tables.

Speaking of Asperger's: http://www.theonion.com/articles/bill-gates-grants-self-18-dexterity-20-charisma,837/


The ideas that drive Bitcoin have decidedly more affinity with the ideas behind Linux than Windows though.


I don't think anyone claimed that. Lots of Linux users don't even remember the root password BTW, and use sudo instead. Which is not quite the same as running as root, or Administrator as it may be. And most Linux users will use the official, signed repositories to install software from.


The mindset is. Look beyond the product and see the motives driving it. The fundamental difference between Microsoft and something like Linux will not only have influence on the product and how it behaves (Linux lets you do anything, Microsoft views their customers as the enemy (DRM)), but ultimately the mindset of the user as well. Think of the generic response to bullshit copy protection that makes it impossible to play the game you paid for: piracy. This devalues everything in the Windows world and instills a throwaway culture that is destructive in every sense, including security. Rocketfella illustrates above: "If your account gets cracked and is used for spam, you can create another email address and continue with what it's about: communication." - "Well, computers get slower over time, I just have to buy a new one or hand mine over to my neighborhood geek to fix it". Also, it doesn't matter if their HDD breaks. They don't have backups, but the files on their computer weren't important to them anyways and all their important holiday photos are on facebook anyways. - Incidentally, Facebook just threw away a whole bunch of user photos because they were uploaded by some third party software that got too many dislikes (the pictures that were uploaded through them, not the software..).

Windows apologists should realize that Microsoft is the Federal Reserve of computing and just maybe they don't deserve to be supported. Same goes for Facebook but that's another story. In practical terms Windows may finally be getting more secure technically, but the business model invariably taints the user which eventually results in diminished security.

I'm not advocating people use Linux for 'over 9000 security!', but simply because in the long run humanity is better off with it than with Windows.

The typical Linux box gets hacked through misconfiguration of third party software. The difference with Windows is that the 'typical' Linux box is a server, not a desktop, so it will run network facing services and lots of times will be administered according to the 'what bushfire needs to be extinguished next' principle since security is usually subordinate to other considerations in a corporate setting (mainly deadlines), even if the admins know what they are doing.

That doesn't mean Linux is less safe than Windows (I would argue the opposite), it just has different attack vectors. I agree that Linux offers a lot more tools compared to Windows

This is what I meant by ethics. It seems clear they will not do anything against it as long as it's in their interest, and apparently don't mind lying about it, or at least being extremely cavalier about fraud.

They do, since at some point they want to buy cars, boats, food etc. that the regular economy provides. Without an exchange these are not possible, unless as I stated, a legitimate economy already precedes it.


I'm not sure what you mean to say. Either why use Bitcoin in the first place when you can just talk to eachother on the phone and make a gentlemen's agreement? Or, Alice gives 100 USD to Bob, Bob uses his network to tell Charlie to give 100 USD (or equivalent) to Donald for an IOU. If this involves Bitcoin for 'network', then Bob and Charlie will have to deal with an exchange, or be one themselves at some point.

Unless of course you are talking about a future where Bitcoin is so big you don't need local currencies, but my point is exactly that in order to get there you have to solve the above problem first.

IMHO this is possible, but not by pie in the sky valuations to attract speculators; rather by attracting merchants who use it for its currency characteristics.

I don't think anyone has anything against casascius, this is a theoretical/practical discussion of the merits of his proposal.


Not quite, they receive/send you Bitcoin, which is a final transaction and should immediately be obvious whether it worked or not. The proposed scheme here could retain or lose in transit the private key, which can be used to control future balance in the associated account. It's like introducing the possibility of chargebacks, except on all of the balance as long as the account is in use

Thanks for the videos but please focus on the analysis instead of getting into Youtube pissy fights

Rawdog is not a shill BTW, he's just your typical silver bug who may or may not be scared of what Bitcoin may or may not do to his commodity investments. Not that he is very bright but it seems to come from the heart. If you want to attack him, don't do it ad hominem but do it on the (lack of) merit of his arguments, such as when he says Visa and the gubmint stand for his credit card losses so it doesn't cost him anything: he either doesn't see or doesn't want to see that the cost of his losses is rolled into the cost of his credit card, everyone else's (and everyone else's losses into his etc.) and indirectly into taxation by inflation for everyone, not to mention the loss of privacy and freedom to police the whole system.

If you mean a barely visible to 'first world' citizens but nonetheless thriving second/third world use is enough to sustain Bitcoin and the current speculative pricing, I'm not sure this could be reached without the 'mainstream' taking off before.

As long as the exchange rate for that $20k is fueled by speculators for lack of a stabilizing, legitimate economy, noone in their right mind will use it for large sums that could move the market and lose quite a bit on exchange, or during regular swings over time if it was offloaded slowly to prevent market swings. Chicken and egg I'm afraid.

Also, if you exchange the USD to Bitcoin for transfer into Azerbaijan, unless they are going to use the BTC themselves, they need to exchange it back out. If they can do that, they could have probably done a straight USD transfer without Bitcoin as intermediary. It would only be interesting if USD wire to local exchange + USD wire from exchange closer to Azerbaijan with Bitcoin in between would be quicker or cheaper than USD wire to Azerbaijan directly.

The only way I can see a non-mainstream economy taking off earlier is if maybe druglords or similar will use it and set their own prices for stability, but if they do they'll probably fork the blockchain and make sure noone interferes with pricing by running their own private exchanges.

Short term, scarcity may or may not be a problem. Medium/long term, invasions of Iraq, at some point Iran maybe, and right now illegal bombing of Lybia should tell you that control of the largest available sources is playing a major role. If you don't think that is motivated by scarcity, here's some recommended viewing.