I read it.

As far as Introductory pieces go this was of a very good standard, particularly compared with the FUD-filled, error-ridden offerings bitcoin has had in the past from other first-timers.

And the author knows her audience so has pitched it appropriately I expect. It is a good foundation to build a following upon, i.e. the truth.

These are exactly the kinds of articles that need to be making the rounds imho.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClLbv1yisG4&feature=plcp

Enough "I believes .." in here to make the beginnings of good creed 

All hail science and reason.

Satoshi delivering the protocol ... notice much wailing and gnashing of bankster teeth in the background.

It is actually pretty effective, take a look around .... "no one will see" is misguided. Asymmetric information is all about getting it to the "right" people ... who cares if Mosler knows about Silk Road? If he can't find out for himself he's not doing the right kind of research and is probably a dinosaur from the old days where knowledge was found in libraries ... he talks like that.

His arrogant dismissal of the question deserves all the opprobrium that should come to him ... he's just not a good economist because his mind is closed shut, and he made that patently obvious in the space of less than 5 minutes. He is the worst kind of economist typical of the dismal science branch (i.e. not scientific in the slightest but politic to the full).

Yes, this whole "ECB releasing a report on play money bitcoin" could go down in history as an epic example of literally ..... "fiddling while Rome burns"!

The enemy of our enemy is our friend .... ECB bashing bitcoin just made us some valuable allies I think.

Spitefull little chappy aren't we?

Yes, it has been thought of. There is also already a python OT API library.

Further, da2ce7 has some interesting ideas that will integrate server contract ID with bitcoin addresses themselves and via P2SH amybe able to piggy-back on to the bitcoin network's hash power to secure OT servers against attacks and malfeasance ... stay tuned.

It sounds like you'll never be convinced of your wrongness, so I'm not going to attempt it, except to point out that you have seem to be involved in some kind of self-justifying circular loop where all money has to be proven to be morally correct (like some kind of a reverse Mises regression theorem for the pureness of all money since time immemorable) ... good luck with that approach. Just think of all the slave/whore/drug trading that was done with the gold in Fort Knox that begot your 'pure' dollars ...

Keep your "pure" coins close ... they maybe the only ones left in the fullness of time, but then who would you trade them with?

And you just know that the guy(gal(s?)) at the ECB who beavered away doing research for this report then quickly and quietly went about getting themselves a USBful of bitcoins anonymously ...  

(just for research purposes of course!).

It's the powerful ideas that are the most corrosive to the old orders ... even the established actors just give up defending the status quo and move ahead eventually.

Notice that they never discussed the merits of centralised versus decentralised monetary systems based on a systems theoretic analysis ... cause that's where they lose.

You don't understand money. Hint: research fungibility.

Your wallet is full of cash that has been used for all sorts of nefarious activities ...  ... feeling slimy yet?

Money is dirty. ... if you want to be pure give it all away to the poor and give your life to god.

Preaching about clean money is an oxymoron.

Disregarding the fact that preventing criminal activity is not in ECB mandate, rather price stability (failed) and financial system functionality (failed) are .... the massive criminal activity in the financial sphere that they have been silent on like LIBOR rate riggings (and perhaps complicit with) seems to take a back seat in importance to bitcoin commentary ... 

My approach would be ... tell them nothing, let them do the leg work to figure it out.

Central Banks are past masters at keeping their servants (the public) in the dark and bull-shitting them for decades ..... what goes around, comes around.

Kind of surprised the ECB hasn't got it's too hands full with the massive cock-up they have wrought on the 400 million minions of Europe with the Euro centralised currency rort ... to be writing fluff pieces about virtual currencies threatening their system ... they seem a little panicked, like they are losing legitimacy.

120 potential more bitcoin converts ... some of those ex-Paypal contractors will be good financial IT assets ... bitcoin is an equal opportunity 'employer'.

Welcome aboard.

The OT servers doing the exchange do not have to be trusted, in fact they shouldn't be. You do not deal with a
single centralised server rather you are dealing with a federation of untrusted servers that are kept honest by a
web-of-trust model via an audit protocol based on voting pools (federations) of untrusted servers.

Some reading of your own, you know, like research, would answer these questions (not very much at all either).

Ummm, in what way are your RPM's "The offical frontend for the bitcoin cryptocurrency" ??

And what guarantees, (sigs, etc) do you supply that you actually built these binaries from the "official" source?

I ask because you post this in the official announcement thread for latest version release.

As I said he's a theoretician of money not a practitioner.

Ask some self-made from nothing, super rich guy, not an economist, if you want to hear what a practitioner of money thinks.

There is both an individual and a social incentive to want to mix, so I'd guess that many if not most users will select the "mix" option if it was offered.

For the individual:
Simple question, given the choice, ask yourself would you rather have a bank account that is totally private with no possibility of anyone gaining information about your financial transactions or another bank account that is maybe private, but has no guarantees against who your financial transaction behaviour maybe data-mined by?

For the bitcoin community:
If an option to "mix" coins was used nearly globally, bitcoin, the currency, achieves a higher level of fungibility and is thus worth more to the market creating added demand over other less fungible (e.g. traceable) digital currencies ... leading to a higher valuation for bitcoin, simply put.

These are very similar arguments to why holding wealth in bitcoin, that cannot be frozen, is better than holding a digital fiat currency that can be seized without notice or due process ... most people will never have to worry about such a seizure but if you give an individual the choice and point it out plainly they will chose the superior option, it is simple, rational behaviour to minimise risk to one's financial well-being, albeit that risk is small for most individuals. And these are the reasons why gold has prevailed over many centuries of attack by state monies with inferior qualities, seizure and privacy being two of the primary ones.

Pretty fluffy piece ... the way the masses like their news these days by all accounts (could have thrown in reference to Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Charlie Sheen, etc something for a broader appeal).

What i did get a kick out of was the clip that come up on the scroll bar of related clips next to it ...  seriously funny (i'm a matrix fan.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng0HsVkpFu4&feature=relmfu

Mr. Andresen!