Haha.  Thanks for the laugh.

Sure, the blockchain is public, but good luck linking a cautious criminal to a wallet.  And good luck tracking coins through a well-designed mixing service, not to mention portions of ill gotten coins being sprinkled like pixie dust across innocent wallets to throw off the authorities.  Really, this isn't supernatural.  It isn't complicated.  A patient, thoughtful criminal will have no problem evading even the best forensic specialists.  It's a nice feature for Bitcoin users and a pain in the ass for investigators.  A losing battle.  Does Bitcoin offer true anonymity right out of the box?  No, not directly, but the tools are there.

You're arguing that since most money laundering is done through banks, then money laundering through Bitcoin isn't practical?  You realize how ridiculous that argument is, I hope.  Essentially all of the world's wealth sits in banks.  Thus, I would expect most laundering to originate from those banks.  Besides, you're talking about a technology that hasn't even been around for a decade.  It'll take just a little time to catch up.

Lol, oh brother.  Listen to what he's saying.

1) Recourse.  There's no recourse for a fraudulent transaction in the Bitcoin world.  Sure, it's possible that in the future a bank or insurance company could act as an intermediary to shield people from these risks, but as it is right now, you're on your own.

2) Ease of use.  Bitcoin wins in some circumstances.  Charge cards win in other circumstances.

3) Transparency.  No one likes oversight into their own financial matters, but like it or not, people in general want those who engage in illegal trade to be brought to justice.  They also expect everyone else to pay their taxes.  This isn't about what you want, it's about what the voters demand.  Bitcoin makes forensic accounting more troublesome, so naturally law enforcement and the tax collectors bristle at the idea of criminals utilizing technology that makes their job harder.

And no, I'm not saying he's 100% right, but to say this is "scary", "dangerous", etc. is simply fear mongering.  MasterCard isn't going to embrace Bitcoin competition, but I don't think anything he said was outright disingenuous.  If anything, his arguments were tepid.  He didn't even mention the tax implications of using Bitcoins for something as simple as a cup of coffee.  I don't find anything troubling about his statements, they're pretty much what you'd expect from someone in his position.  May the best man win.

yep, totally ridiculous.  the good thing is he twisted himself all up in knots and hypocrisies which to any intelligent person was laughable.

We are in agreement, this is also why most of bitcoin's earliest adopters are those who were already looking for a sound money alternative with independent control of the money supply.

That said bitcoin's payment or remittance functions are what make the store of value function valuable. The more useful the payment functions are and are used the more valuable the store of value function becomes. Imagine bitcoin with no payment function but the same store of value function, yes the store of value function would work and remain fixed, but it wouldn't be valued very much.

This is the fiat money as a technology invention argument on why dollars beat gold, better payment functionality makes a given money system more used, which in turn makes it more valuable. The fact that bitcoin's payment functions are superior to fiat is what makes the project have a fighting chance.
 

Mastercard head of SE Asia goes all out with every myth, stereotype and piece of FUD he could possibly fit into 4.30 of attacking bitcoin.

This is scripted propaganda and it is excellent to watch. It really shows how worried they are that they have to make such an anti bitcoin informerci that can easily be taken apart. The part about what their core business is shows just how stupid they think their customers are

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=bO4jHXjCXw8

I don't understand how a gold-standard could be considered credible. Whether it's the Switzerland, Russia, China, or anywhere, how is it not obvious that after implementing a gold-exchange standard at some fixed peg, they'll eventually just move or eliminate the peg?

Not only is it obvious in theory, but there's historical precedent.

Pegs don't work. Clinging to the idea that a peg somehow conveys credibility is ludicrous.

Interesting discussion and analysis on the possibly of Russia backing the rubble with gold and reinstituting a gold standard.

http://www.goldmoney.com/research/analysis/russia-s-monetary-solution

Assume, for example, that SHA-256 is broken, then the protocol would have to be changed but of course that does not result in a change to the currency.

As of November 16, 2014
(Updated November 20, 2014)

Total Cases: 15145
Laboratory-Confirmed Cases: 9427
Total Deaths: 5420

does Liberty Dollar have a crypto yet?

I also attained L9 in 1500, if it is allowed I will buy 2 shares.

We don't have a single currency in the world today, and not even a single reserve currency (where presumably the network effect of liquidity could reign supreme, unfettered by legal tender laws, etc.). I doubt in the history of civilization we ever really have, except perhaps in some isolated simple economies.

The get rich quick crowd will pump and dump these experimental coins from the alt coin. Nothing more. They would be the ones jumping on them from Bitcoin as well. The waters will be muddied either way, it might as well be the altcoins. The network effect would still prefer the stability of Bitcoin over smaller forks. Besides, the side chains are about counterparty risk, so they are unlikely to even be accepted until Bitcoin itself gains wider acceptance. Let ApplePay experiment with SC technology, it could be their chance to break into crypto.

That's the problem with tail risks. How do you know what is a "long enough time?"

This is why the catastrophic failure issue suggests there shouldn't really be one coin after all, and trying to maximize "network effect" may be over-fitting. Monoculture is fragile.

i would prefer NOT to see the spvp implemented, period, for all the reasons i've already made ad nauseum.  let them experiment on federated servers.

i'm not even sure how you'd bring an altcoin into a SC with spvp since the monetary properties of such altcoins are usually so divergent and non-sensical to most Bitcoiners it wouldn't be worth anyone's time or effort.

the pt that i was getting at is that until Bitcoin fulfills Satoshi's visions as a generally accepted and large enough form of currency or money, there will be no such trust or confidence given by the masses or larger financial institutions to embed asset derivatives into the blockchain as the "legal" ledger.

what will drive Bitcoins growth is a maintenance of its Sound Money function along with transactional growth which we are fortunately beginning to see w/o a doubt.  once it becomes a generally accepted global and apolitical public good as money, then it might be used to embed more riskier assets within the blockchain as with CP.

otoh, the blockchain may only ever be applicable to Bitcoin as Money.  in which case, all those speculative assets may just be bought and sold with BTC as they will become denominated as such with the records continuing to be maintained by those organizations responsible for enforcing those contracts.

if we use Bitcoin to win the Money Game, we win Everything.  that is where the problem lies.

Tuesday morning at 9:30, a federal judge in North Carolina will gavel his court into session to pronounce a sentence on Bernard von NotHaus. A monetary gadfly in an age of fiat money, Mr. von NotHaus, 70, could be looking at the rest of his life in prison.

Nearly four years ago, a jury convicted Mr. von NotHaus of “uttering”—putting into circulation—coins of pure silver that he called Liberty Dollars. The government is also seeking the forfeiture of 16,000 pounds of coins and precious metals whose value it reckons at $7 million.

The federal prosecutor, Anne Tompkins, put out a news release stating that “attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism” and “represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country.”

This is something to think about at a time when the China, the Europeans, the United Nations and various leaders of the World Bank are wondering whether we need a new or better reserve currency. And when Congress is fizzing with disquiet about the dollar.

Mr. von NotHaus suggests that likening him to a terrorist is absurd. “This is the United States government,” he told the New York Times two years ago. “. . . it has nuclear weapons, and it’s worried about some ex-surfer guy making his own money? Give me a break.”

ENLARGE
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Whether Judge Richard Voorhees will—or should—give Mr. von NotHaus a break, this is beyond a newspaperman’s ken. But it can certainly be said that Mr. von NotHaus has, despite his zeal, done a public service by raising serious questions about U.S. currency.

I have no financial interest in his case. I have never owned a Liberty Dollar, and I have met the coin’s creator only once, over a cup of coffee. My interest is journalistic. The scoop is that Mr. von NotHaus’s Liberty Dollar poses the opposite danger of Copernicus ’s famous monetary principle.

That principle, also known as Gresham’s law, holds that bad money drives out good. Mr. von NotHaus has instilled in the government the contrary fear—that good money in the form of silver dollars will drive out the bad money issued by the Federal Reserve.

Since the collapse in 1971 of the Bretton Woods system that since midcentury had tied most industrialized countries’ currencies to gold, the value of the dollar that the Federal Reserve is supposed to protect plunged 90%, to less than 1/15th of an ounce of silver. The Foundation for Monetary Education calls Federal Reserve notes “legal tender irredeemable paper-ticket electronic money.”

These matters were considered by Judge Voorhees, who has been presiding in the von NotHaus case. They were raised most pointedly in an amicus brief by the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, a charity that fights for a constitutional view of money.

That brief argued that Congress lacks the power to prohibit private coinage of money. It argued that the Constitution’s grant of the coinage power to Congress isn’t exclusive. If it were, the Constitution wouldn’t have had separately to deny coinage power to the states.

The fact that the Founders specifically denied coinage power to the states but not to the people means, the line of argument suggests, that private coinage ends up as a right reserved to the people. In fact, private coinage existed long into the 19th century, particularly, but not exclusively, in the West.

Judge Voorhees took a few years to let the post-conviction arguments percolate, but, in the end, he didn’t buy them. In upholding the conviction last month, he conceded that the Constitution doesn’t “expressly state” that the coinage power belongs exclusively to Congress. But he went on to assert that the exclusivity can be “reasonably inferred” because the power is prohibited to the states.

The judge accepted what he characterized as the “jury’s implicit finding” that the “Liberty Dollar is counterfeit despite its intrinsic value.” He was unfazed by the fact that the Liberty Dollars during much of the past decade had been worth more than their face value and more than Mr. von NotHaus sold them for.

One “weakness” in the intrinsic-value argument, Judge Voorhees wrote in sweeping aside the constitutional objections, is that “von NotHaus and his organization were making money off their sales of the Liberty Dollar.” If that’s such a crime, though, what is one going to do about the director of the United States Mint?

The U.S. Mint, after all, is hawking a “50th Anniversary Kennedy 2014 Half-Dollar Gold Proof Coin” for $1,165. The mint boasts that the coin, featuring a relief of the bust of the 35th president, contains “Three-Quarter Ounce of Pure, 24-Karat Gold.” So it’s selling the coin at a 29% premium over the price of gold.

It isn’t my purpose here to suggest putting the director of the Mint in jail. Or even to suggest that Judge Voorhees failed to apply the law. But “if the law supposes” what the judge has found here, then Mr. Bumble in Charles Dickens ’s “ Oliver Twist ” had it about right: “the law is a ass.”

“The worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience,” Mr. Bumble added. Not bad advice for this astonishing case. If Mr. von NotHaus is sent to prison, justice will have to come from a higher court—or even from Capitol Hill.

Congress, as it turns out, has got the matter in its sights. It is considering H.R. 77, a bill called the “Free Competition in Currency Act” sponsored by Rep. Paul Broun (R., Ga.). It is a radical measure that brings to our laws the ideas of Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel-laureate economist who came to favor the denationalization of money.

H.R. 77 would end the legal-tender laws, repeal the provisions of the federal criminal code used against Mr. von NotHaus and nullify “any previous convictions.” The website govtrack.us reckons that its chances of passage are zero.

Things can change, though. “Audit the Fed,” which started out as a hyper-long shot, passed the House in September in a 333-92 vote. Monetary measures will have better chances in the 114th Congress. And the septuagenarian Mr. von NotHaus, who faces up to 22 years in prison, could yet appeal.

Dear Lord Marquess and Asenath,

We will have to point you to the secondary market, since this IPO (despite its commendable size of 2 billion) was fully subscribed in a few hours.

Secondary market is opening in a few hours.

Also Joseph has been mentioning his marquessly bad game finances. In fact the servants could easily be supported with the current income from being a Marquess alone, it is the overdraft interest that is taking its toll yearly, and the remedy is to deposit more money or sell some ingame possessions. (The reason for the bad overdraft is partly that other Nobles have been selling their Noble Palace shares to the Marquess.)

I also.
It seems that in USA is completely different mentality and culture than in Europe.
In Europe we have public kitchen for homeless and many civil organizations helping them (including individuals).
I'm happy that I live in Europe.

for those assets, what are the advantages of decentralization?

Side Chains are how people like this will engage in Bitcoin, in his evolution of understanding John Mauldin is conditioned and primed to accept a Bitcoin derivative on a SC. The risk is people like him flowed by the Keynesians will form the economic majority during the next growth stage, and there are more of them than there are of us, so there is a lot of change that can happen if we dont keep a tight rein on the Bitcoin incentives.