Farad

If the client is the one that controls the wallet then it doesn't need to trust the node to do any cryptography, does it? All it needs to do is to have the node forward the transaction to the rest of the network. A node can't tamper with transactions if it lacks access to the private keys, can it?

My LAN at home has three computers on it, two of which have GUIs installed and one of which serves as a headless router/firewall. If you count my smartphone then the network has four computers on it.

From my point of view I would like to see a complete separation of the blockchain tracking/network communication functions from wallet management/user interface. It doesn't really make sense to run more than one copy of the server on a single home LAN but there are three other computers (counting the phone) that might be using clients.

In an ideal world I'd run the server on the headless machine and it would advertise itself via zeroconf/avahi so that any client that was started in that network would automagically who to connect to in order to initiate a transaction.

The increase in the quantity of Bitcoins more quickly than an increase in the number of real goods and services being purchased with Bitcoins is responsible for the decrease in price.

MtGox is irrelevant as far as the remittance market is concerned.

Most of the people receiving remittances do not have bank accounts. The are currently served by a network of physical locations where they receive transfers in cash form.

Setting up these physical kiosks is a prerequisite to making inroads into the remittance market.

I believe you completely missed the point of my post. I'm talking about using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, not as an investment. I did mention using it as a means of forming capital in point 3 but that's more of a long-term effect than something to aspire to in the immediate future.

I'm just pointing out some constructive things that people can do to make a positive contribution rather than useless, silly pledges to not exchange Bitcoins for fiat and other such nonsense.

I must plead ignorance since I don't read the Spanish section of the forum but can a middle/working class person in Colombia, Peru or Chile go to a physical location and exchange Bitcoins for local currency?

In order for Bitcoin to succeed as a currency people need to use it but unfortunately only about 0.00001% of the population will use an alternative currency for purely philosophical reasons. Everybody else needs a very clear and compelling reason that's sufficient to overcome the switching costs and increased complexity of dealing with multiple currencies. Here are three areas in which Bitcoin could potentially offer the rest of the world sufficient value to cause more people to switch.

1. Superior alternative to Paypal, etc

I listed this one for completeness but I think everybody understands this one and many people are actively working on it already.

2. The remittance market

Anybody who has ever sent money to friends or family members in other countries (or even within the same country) knows how expensive and inconvenient these services tend to be. There's a lot of potential here especially since the Bitcoin network takes care of the transfers itself.

The missing piece that keeps people in the developed countries from using Bitcoin to send remittances back to the less-developed countries is a lack of exchanges in those countries.

People who have sufficient knowledge of international business, local laws, contacts in the recipient country and access to capital can start exchanges there and then put out information campaigns in the developed countries to let the target population know that if they send Bitcoins to their family abroad the recipients would have a way to turn those Bitcoins into local currency (emphasizing the speed and cost aspects of doing so).

3. The informal economy

There are billions of people in the world who are trapped in poverty due in no small part to their inability to accumulate capital. Any segment the banking and legal systems can not or will not serve yet where the participants have internet access is a potential area in which people can benefit from Bitcoin. Any time that technology can be used to bypass legal obstacles to supplying a good or service there's an opportunity to grow the Bitcoin economy and provide the individuals involved in that activity with the benefits that come with having access to the services normally supplied by banks.

MV=PQ

P=M(V/Q)

Where M is the number of currency units, Q is the number of goods and services and sold, P is the price of goods and services and V is the velocity of money.

In the Bitcoin economy M is rising linearly and not subject to adjustment (beyond the periodic halving specified in the protocol) so all other things being equal P will rise with it (P is the inverse of the price of Bitcoins).

What happened earlier this year was an increase in Q (more goods being sold for Bitcoins) which brought the exchange rate up but more importantly a lot of publicity that caused people to buy Bitcoins and hold on to them as investments. Bitcoins that aren't being spent don't contribute to the V so the velocity of money slowed down and brought the exchange rate up.

There's just one small problem with an increase in the value of a currency due to a drastically reduced V - it's got nowhere to go but down. V has a lower bound at 0 (which it approaches asymptotically) but it wasn't particularly high to begin with. Q has an upper bound of the GDP of the entire world, which it's nowhere near.

An increase in Q is the only sustainable, long-term way to bring the price of Bitcoins but when you're starting from a situation of both a small Q and a small V then increasing Q is going to necessarily raise V because Q only goes up if people start spending currency. Unless the increase of Q is very high (unrealistic) the effect of increasing velocity is going to dominate the effect on P.

That's another way of saying that it had to get worse before there was any possibility of it getting better.

It won't get better though until the volume of goods and services sold for Bitcoins starts growing consistently at a rate at least equal to the generation rate of Bitcoins. There are three obvious growth areas for Bitcoin but realizing that growth will require business and technical expertise, access to capital and hard work. Nobody wants to be the ones to actually do the work though, they just want to get rich via speculation.

Everything seems to work well except than when I have "Minimize to the tray instead of the taskbar" enabled clicking on the close button doesn't do anything.

The first and most compelling use for Bitcoin is a better Pay Pal - an online payment system that is not subject to chargebacks, arbitrary limitations or prior restraint.

One thing you should know is that most merchants hate Pay Pal. They use it because there really isn't a viable alternative out there but it's a pain in the ass to deal with and expensive. That's will be the driver for Bitcoin adoption once the software and services are polished enough to make it easy for the average web store to switch over.

Speaking as a non-developer user I would love to see a complete separation between the two.

It would be awesome to have a server that assumes that it will be managing the wallets of everybody on a LAN and authenticates users via PAM (or whatever they use on Windows to do the same thing) and that the GUI clients were just that and nothing more.

The windows installer could install both the service and the client at the same time so those users wouldn't even know the difference and you could even use zeroconf/avahi to make it easier for the clients to find the local server.

Who are these "people" exactly? Would YOU go around raping and robbing people if there were no laws IRL? How many of your friends or family would do this?

That's an interesting theory yet I've haven't met a lot of people who consume gold or silver on a daily basis.

Value is what people consume to satisfy their needs and wants.

If you reflect on the things that you consume on a daily basis you'll see that the overwhelming majority of it is either not capable of being stored (services) or is consumed a very short time after it is produced (food).

Currency is a claim on future production. If the number of currency units expands and contracts proportional to the expansion and contraction of the underlying economy then the currency appears to store value because the amount of production available to be bought with each unit of currency remains constant over time.

But now matter how much you believe that you are actually storing value it's not true in fact. No amount of gold can satisfy your need for a root canal if there's no dentist around. Nor will any amount of Dollars (or Bitcoins) spontaneously transform into a ribeye. Both of those things require someone else to produce them for you as you need them. Since it's not possible to store what hasn't been produced yet clearly currency is not storing value itself.

As mentioned above, a properly-managed currency will create the illusion of value storage and that's a perfectly useful abstraction just as long as you realize that it is an abstraction and not reality.

This rant isn't directed specifically at you, but I've seen this same thing played out with other alternative currencies - people want to get rich off of speculation and live off of passive income.

Well, it doesn't work that way for everybody.

Wealth is created by people transforming lower value inputs into higher value outputs. If you want to increase your wealth in a sustainable way then increase your ability to do this. Learn some kind of trade, put down the video games and go get your hands dirty. Bitcoins is superior to other means of exchange in many ways but having a better means of exchange doesn't benefit you if you don't produce anything worth exchanging.

Only a tiny minority of people have savings. The overwhelming majority either have no savings at all or debts that exceed their savings and debts need to be paid in legal tender.

When incomes drop more quickly than debt loads people will need legal tender so they'll sell Bitcoins to get it. Until they give up completely on trying to service their debts and maintain their previous lifestyle, but by this point it's too late and they won't have any currency to buy Bitcoins with anyway.

Right now most of the money by individuals is part of their disposable income. When economic conditions deteriorate people generally have less dsposable income so some of the people who have money tied up in bitcoins will be forced to sell them in order to pay rent, buy food, etc. This may or may not be happening right now but until it becomes adopted widely enough that people can pay for the basic necessities of living with Bitcoins it will always be subject to this effect.Value can't be stored in a currency whether that currency is metallic, fiat or electronic. For the most part value is produced as it is needed just before being consumed. Currencies are means of exchange but can emulate the ability to store value under certain limited conditions.

Is there an alternative plugin for OpenCart that doesn't use mybitcoin.com?

Italy and Greece