Pump and dump of voucher values is legal as it isn't a financial product.  Bitcoin isn't legal tender, or a currency or anything that the whole world can agree on, and so its value is going to be subject to these pumps and dumps for the foreseeable.

Calling it fraud is very naive and would only be valid if you were only willing to buy and sell at a value you felt it was worth - like maybe the $10 a coin it was 12 months ago.  Selling at current market price would seem to suggest that fraud is only an issue when the price drops!  ;-)

I think I understand the confusion, the instruction in the transaction script, includes an area where more complex script instructions can be placed.  Currently, that is limited to just one instruction, but it will be extended.

The articles in this thread might be useful to explain  - its where I asked a similar question and found my answers.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=360087.0

We are still in the awareness phase, or am I missing something?

If the contract is set up with a value to transfer at a future date, then its already spent, according to the script.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script

This is not yet operational, but when it is, then the transaction goes through to the blockchain, with its post dated value transfer. the bitcoin will be recorded as being spent, but with no value, allocated, that will still show up in Alice's wallet.

This way Alice can't spend it either - think of it like a first confirmation delay that lasts the entire period of the contract!

A bond takes this transaction as its value and time stamp for existence - but this is where things start getting a bit complex because it starts following financial rules!

This is exactly what I've been looking at, and it seems it links to script contracts and bonds.

You can post date your transactions through contracts, and that does limit the spend as you can't transfer the bitcoin once you have assigned it to a future transfer.
However, you can use that value as part of a bond, where the bond assumes the value of the contract, and you are free to spend it, as long as you buy back the bond before your contract hits its time to transfer.

I am thinking it would be a fantastic way to create a community credit card which gives a credit union the facility that currently are only available through banks.

this is really useful - more people need to understand the mechanics of how Bitcoin works because they can then understand the potential!

Thanks, the info on bonds helped a lot.
:-)

Why does everyone seem to think Bitcoin is a threat to government?

Its not!

Its a big threat to the banking industry though, and because of that, its actually something that government finds very useful.

I would not be surprised that in 20 years, Bitcoin, the protocol, will be used to do all small value internet transactions but it won't be bitcoin, the coin we are currently trading - that will never actually hit the big time, with the government releasing their own version, a bitdollar or bitsterling as soon as it becomes idiot proof to use. This will be the cash of the future, and be linked in value to the fiat its representing.

The banks, on the other hand, are going to find that Bitcoin removes their unique relationship with governments, and will find that they will start losing their huge protected profits as people can start doing crowd sourced mortgages at real free market low rates.  This does the same to the banks that email does to the postal service.  It doesn't kill it, it just makes it irrelevant to the public.

However, for Government, bitcoin offers automatic taxation on all trades, the removal of the need to chase debts, and the costs of having to do so. The only problem is knowing where its borders are - much like the issues that the US has with knowing who it can spy on and who it can't - and what it does about it!

Personally, I don't see my current Bitcoin investments having any value by 2030!

This is very interesting, but I do see a slight problem in that by making it impossible to spend the bitcoins during the time of the contract, it reduces the contract makers cashflow. This would, theoretically ensure that there was a reduction in the total number of coins in potential circulation and possibly create some form of inflation.

I know this is mostly theoretical risk, and I love the idea of seeing a new market for bitcoins, but I do wonder if the advantage is limited?

Have I misunderstood a crucial element of the plan? ;-)

Actually, I can see bitcoin failing, but subtly.

There is no reason that Bitcoin can't be used to prove the concept and get the legislation worked out, and then it gets upgraded to a Government controlled version.

This could easily happen in the same way that the people who bought all those great domain names found themselves being called domain squatters and eventually had to hand everything over for free.

Rather than calculate where bitcoin will be in 7 years, why not work out where it may be in 25 years - that is the sort of time frame the finance industry works to.

 

I've been away from the bitcoin world for a few months, but the US sitting brought me back in as it signals a new era for bitcoin.

However, I have realised something in the time I've been away from the forums which is that the loser if crypto currencies become popular will be the finance industry.

What we have now with bitcoin is like HTML 1 - its the web in 1993. Bitcoin is being talked about, is in the newspaper, but nobody is really understanding the potential.

It isn't a replacement for fiat, its a replacement for the banks - and on that basis, governments are going to be interested in being friends.

However, its going to take 5-10 years before the mainstream pop their toes into the pool, and that is plenty of time to get some laws in place. 

It will be interesting to see how the law on illegal lending and contracts is developed by the US government when they find out Bitcoin has some unused features built in. What happens when it can use some of its more advanced programming features - forget holding bitcoin as a store of value - imagine starting your own working global bank with your bitcoin savings?

Government might not want to be friends then! ;-)

Talking to support staff is no way to find out what a company's future business strategy is!  

Would you expect a Google developer to know what plans Google had for Ripple?

I would put this down to any info being better than no info - but its probably better to just start spending the LTC on stuff!

Seems to me that Fontas is doing well with his pump n dump scheme for LTC, you might not need MT Gox!

Why are there so many people who are really pushing Ripple, yet can't explain how it works in a sentence or two?

As a test of any ideas, I use the Einstein test of saying every good idea has to be simple enough, but not too simple - and that isn't Ripple!

The key for me is that a number of big name companies including Google are getting involved with Ripple, which they wouldn't do if it wasn't going to bring in a very large amount of money, or, and possibly more likely, it gives them a very large slice of a new industry!

Considering how Google have placed their virus all through Android, making it unusable without a Google account - I would guess the same idea is planned for Ripple!

They can't be that smart or they would already be a part of it - unless they are so smart that they don't see the need for it!

Maybe its better just promote to everyone and avoid creating a presumed hidden agenda and ideology?

Personally, I would have thought its when the stupid population (the 95% of us who don't need to get our ego massaged in a group thinking club) that bitcoin will actually see success!

This is a non issue - until we get some real big transaction volume and that isn't going to happen for a number of years.

The original white paper mentioned the number of visa transactions in a day as a guide, and the infrastructure of bitcoin allows for it to be managed with no real problems.  However, what isn't being added to the mix is Moore's Law which is also going to help the whole chain be managed without serious pruning.

In general, there is nothing to see here!

This is exactly wrong!

Sorry for being direct, but ignorance doesn't stop something being successful!

For instance, do you know how your electric is produced - down to which power station is supplying your electricity, and what size fuses you have in your property?  

Do you know exactly how your food is produced, down to which farm your burgers came from?

Do you know exactly how to produce, write and perform in a sci fi movie?  Do you need to to pay for a ticket and to enjoy the show?

For almost everyone, the answer is no - yet they help do their part in making the economy work for those markets!

The general public don't need to know hardly anything about bitcoin - except that it works, and is a trustworthy way to buy and sell goods.

This isn't about education, its about trust and benefits - without enough of these, bitcoin isn't going to work!

Great discussion but it needs a little more depth from the big picture!

What is the time frame for success? Everyone using bitcoins tomorrow? Next year? by 2020? Without a goal, we have nothing!

Secondly, as many people have pointed out, Bitcoin is the Internet circa 1992 - I was there, it was awful. If we use this as a guide, then we have a number of hurdles to deal with.

Firstly, we are beyond the technical issues, bitcoin works as it should, and it can be tweaked for scale, just like the interest in 1992.  
The current problem is legal, which the internet also had to deal with.  Online copyright was a huge problem in 1992 - who owned what? What laws counted?  Who was responsible if? etc - these are the same questions that bitcoin needs to address.  Once that happens, then its the next stage, mass adoption.

In the UK, we had a number of ISPs who gave us the push to make the internet popular, the most famous being Freeserve.  The downside of this popularity was that the freeservers knew nothing, and blocked up the bandwidth!  
Who will be the market makers for bitcoin?  We need to grow the current market from its 2 million users to at least a billion, if not more before bitcoin becomes something.

With mainstream we got economies of scale, and finally e-commerce stared making sense - and this only really stated happening in the last 10 years.  Bitcoin needs to find its niche, which I agree is probably micro payments of less than $100 a deal. It needs to be better, and cheaper than paypal - and be able to prove it to anyone who doubts it.

There is a huge difference between being an asparagus type geek who can handle the foibles of bitcoin, and the rest of society.  The mindset change needed to turn bitcoin into a a must have useful and appealing tool of the mass market is so big, I can't even start to describe it.  We are talking about thinking like a 15 year old girl, and getting her to expect to use bitcoin everywhere - because she finds it better than anything she currently uses!

Please don't think I'm being ageist or sexist or whatever offensivist I might be! The point is that mainstream take up has far more 15 year old girls than it have technical libertarian geeky types.

Once we turn that corner, then the son of bitcoin will be in every digital wallet on the planet, but in reality, its not going to happen until at least 2025!

Why does everyone seem to think Google is the fountain of knowledge?  Google trends is a comparison tool, not a final answer.  Its also based on popularity, which contrary to public opinion, is very a good way to solve a problem!

Its a tool that just highlights how many people searched for a term, over time.  So, if bitcoin was most popular during its $235 peak, then that is what Google trends also shows, however, if something happened tomorrow, that would effect the trends figures for yesterday.

Let's imagine that Obama was assassinated tomorrow, by a man wearing a bitcoin forever tshirt.  Bitcoin on Google trends would go sky high.  How are you planning to forecast the price of such an event today?  Its not possible.

More importantly, Google trends looses its power over time, as everyone becomes educated. To prove the point, do a search for Bible, and its peak was at the start of 2004, same time as Google trend started.

I do agree that 2011 is a good indicator of how the near future is going to look, but in the long term, nobody has any idea, and its just luck if anyone gets its right!

MTGox has a very big user base, far bigger than this forum, and a large number of those people who are willing to spend $1000s on bitcoin, don't know that litecoin exists.

If you do know it exists, you are going to be buying it on BTC-e or where ever, but very many people don't trust that site because its not American - damn racist, I know, but that is life!

Anyway, once they see it on MTGox, they will start to buy it, because they trust it

Simple!

Although, you may get killed or seriously injured by a bus!

Them is the risks you take - and they say bitcoin is dangerous!