So exchanges are needed - but how would one do that?
I have the same problem in my country - there are no bitcoins to be had, so difficult to get any business going using it. But starting an exchange means selling bitcoin for the local fiat - why would one do such a thing, if one sees the ARS dropping and BTC rising? If you're fan enough of bitcoin to set up an exchange, you're probably also more keen on keeping BTC than ARS anyway.
Especially if your only way of getting those bitcoins are to convert ARS to USD illegally, then exporting those USD illegally to an exchange where you can buy the BTC you need to sell.
I'm not criticizing, I'm genuinely curious, because I wanted to set one up locally (at a small scale) to help get bitcoin going, but I just don't see how.

Question about seasteading: Just because nobody claims a territory currently, doesn't mean they won't in the future. And then it's your army against theirs. I'd think a ship (being mobile) would be a better option. You'd need a solid internet connection for bitcoining though...

Do most people there have savings, and would lose money if the currency drops, or have loans, and would benefit?

How about building an underwater city ala Bioshock?
Or an aircraft carrier ala Snowcrash?

This.

I know it's a stupid question, and impossible to answer, but this is speculation after all.
What do you guys think will be the total value of the bitcoin economy in say, a couple of years, when we're close to having most of them mined? (or the price of one BTC at that time)
There are so many threads where zealots insist the price will climb infinitely because of scarcity, but scarcity, supply and demand are not the only factors in the price / value of bitcoin. There is also the risk of catastrophic failure due to (already discussed or as of yet unknown) various factors. And also the intrinsic value of the ability to do transactions across borders, and the value in the number of exchanges and services and infrastructure built up, the value in the p2p network size and hashing power providing security.
A lot of zealots also imagine bitcoin replacing fiat currencies and becoming a major factor in world economy. For that to happen, the size of the economy (price x 21 million) must be significant. (Yes, the technology behind bitcoin might become a world changer.... but will the current bitcoin blockchain get big enough?)
I'd love to hear some more realistic thoughts on this.

IMHO, unless you are these traders' parents, you have no right telling them what they should or should not be doing with their time and money.

Any chance the site could show the fees when transferring out, instead of just saying "You don't have enough bitcoins"?

So… if bitcoin becomes exceedingly useful in f.ex. China - more so that in other countries - won't sooner or later the market move all the bitcoins there? What mechanism ensures there's an even/sustainable distribution of the 21 mill bitcoins? History has seen one sided flow of gold and silver before?

Agreed. Bitcoins are much harder to get hold of than to spend.

What's the status on selling bitcoins on your site?

1) Slowly start buying up all the bitcoins
2a) At some point there'll be so little liquidity left because the attacker and everyone else would be hoarding
and / or:
2b) The price would have been pushed so high compared to the size of the market / number of users, it would be folly to buy any.
   (especially considering the risk of the attacker suddenly dumping)
3) The usage of bitcoins outside of speculation would drop to make it virtually dead.
4) Possibly causing a collapse in price, allowing the attacker to get a commanding share of the 21 mill bitcoins.

And no, 21 mill times 5$ or even 10$ or 20$ is not a lot for, say, any government or bank or corporation or billionaire wanting it dead.

Thanks for the answers so far!


A few times (in the wiki, and once in your answer) there are mentions of "picking randomly among peers". From an implementation standpoint, how would this be feasible? How would I know which peers are trustworthy or not? If I don't know which peers are trusted, how can I pick among them?  Bitcoin solves this by the consensus of the blockchain and proof of work etc.

Also, who exactly gets to do the picking? In a p2p network - if each node picks randomly, they're not likely to pick the same peer.

(I'm asking a bit stupidly here on purpose - just that it needs to be clarified)

My point was not that it drops below zero. It's that initially it's worth zero.
Why would you assume you can buy a pizza for it in the first place? If you simply create a currency backed by nothing it will initially buy you nothing.
My question was then whether you see a problem in that it starts with no value, and a tendency to devalue (or stay at zero) built in.

Isn't there a problem in that your proposed currency will start with zero value, and rapidly devalue from there?

Sounds like reasonable changes to me. At some size of the economy the number of lost coins due to lost wallets etc will probably equal the 25 created and stop inflation naturally. I like the requirement of needing to include half of known transactions as well - though this change could probably be made to bitcoin as well.

I'm opening a thread here to discuss the Encoin proposal - to clarify uncertainties, and get more details out, as well as to open a discussion so we can find flaws and solutions before getting deep into the implementation.

I'll start off with a couple of questions:

1) Will I when I receive a payment in Encoin, be able to see who sent the payment? Or will I have to deal with generating a new address every time, as with bitcoin? Anonymity is nice, but not always necessary. If I'm paying a bill, I want to make it loud and clear, at least to the recipient, that I did in fact pay.

2) Is the mechanisms in Encoin meant to keep the cost of production of a coin stable, or the actual market price / value stable?  If the first, why does that matter? If the latter, how?

So you're saying, it's not going to be much help to Argentina now, but it could be in the future, if the price goes up a lot?
Seems to me, at a million dollars pr btc, it'll be a toy for the very rich, not something that can help the people being screwed over in Argentina right now.

Gold is also very divisible, down to the atom in fact. And also very valuable, and scarce, just as bitcoin is/will be. You don't see poor people trading with gold though.

I do appreciate bitcoins, but I just don't see how it can help out in this kind of situation. Sure would like to be enlightened though.

I don't understand this argument about divisibilty. If fractions of a bitcoin are nearly worthless, then they're not going to be a good substitute for money, are they?
If I want to replace the local currency - and I somehow was able to convince my employer to pay me in bitcoin, and my landlord and grocer to accept bitcoins - I'd still need to pay the grocer enough bitcoins to equal the value of the bread he's selling.  I can't simply divide it and pay him 0.00001 btc just because I don't have more. I also wouldn't work for 0.001 bitcoins a month.

Besides, the bitcoin client doesn't (currently) allow such small payments - it refuses with an error message.

Interesting thread - if it could get back on topic.
I'm curious. How exactly could bitcoin help here? How would one even get enough bitcoins into circulation (in Argentina) to make any difference?