Yes Stars rakes. They don't rake transactions though, those are free. We could wager privately though and only play the lowest stakes there which would cost 10 cents each.

Until a Bitcoin poker client is set up we will need to manually transfer all entry fees and winnings anyway. 

I think it would be better if you found a source of random digits that isn't controlled by one or us. Maybe the last digits of some absurdly precise meteorological data that is published frequently.

It's not that I don't trust someone for a few coins, but it'd be nice to have a system that scales and new people and unlucky people know can't be rigged.

I don't like to either, but I haven't been able to swear off dollars yet.

I just got private tournament creation privileges at Poker Stars. The lowest stakes are $1 + .10 fee. I would gladly send a dollar for Bitcoins at a very good rate. Poker stars software is topnotch. I will also cash the winner back to Bitcoins if they wish.

Let me know if this sounds good.

If someone organizes, I'm in for any stakes.

The expected number of Bitcoins has been going down, but the expected value is not really. 10 days ago coins were worth like half a cent. They've been between 6 and 9 cents lately. 15 times harder for 15 times more valuable coins.

It would be neat if someone could think of a way for users to agree to commit to pooling received coins. This would smooth it out a bit.

Excellent work.

It all sounds good, but this especially.

I am not 100% clear on this and would like someone to explain.

I read that you can have problems if you backup, spend some, and then load the outdated backup. This is because you will have the key to the already spent coin, but not the key to the "change" that was generated and is not in your backup. So you need to redo the backup after every transaction or risk having unspendable coins.

I think a solution to this would be to have a "savings account" that rarely receives transfers and always keep a backup of it. And have a "spending account" that you wouldn't be devastated to lose.

Each coin will be allocated in this arbitrary way exactly one time. Every future allocation will be based on voluntary transfer, usually gifts or in exchange for value.

Yeah, the initial distribution is arbitrary. To me it is vastly better than someone saying "This is the money you all must use; only I can create it and I can create as much as I want."

The initial distribution will end up being unimportant. If BitCoin succeeds it will be the people who provide value who are the BitCoin rich.

If it ends up being a fail and is rarely used for trade then the generators will have most of the Coins, but they won't be worth much.

What do freeloaders do on craigslist? Are listia credits pegged to the dollar?

Just buy 100 BTC as insurance against this happening. If the terrible deflationary spiral does happen you will be crazy rich and not particularly care about overpaying because you just can't break that 100millionth down into 10 billionths to buy a sandwhich. just tip 9billionths, be a baller. You can afford it, after all you socked away 100 billion billionths.

These two paragraphs seem contradictory to me. In the first the problem is that there is too much excess computing power required to get the stamp. In the second the problem is that you only need 1mhash/sec to give false stamps.

The beautiful thing about it imo is that as incentive to list false transactions increases the difficulty  will rise right along with it. If we had static difficulty you could certainly say "Geez, we're burning so much to accomplish such a trivial thing" after a while with more interest it might be about right, but then as it grows more and the difficulty of sending false blocks does not increase you could say "It takes hardly anything to tip this beast over" But in the current model this doesn't happen because the difficulty is linked to the most recent observation of power being dedicated.

What happens in those few seconds if the coin was double spent? Are you notified before the next block comes in?

Every 2014 blocks the difficulty is automatically adjusted so that at the average hashing speed of the last 2014 blocks it will take 2 weeks to create the next 2014 blocks.

What this means is that if you load 1000x more computing power into hashing than the rest of us combined you will get nearly all of the remaining 2014 coins until the reset, but then even at your phenomenal speed the next 2014 will take you 2 weeks. Only about 2 blocks will be generated by other people, but you won't generate anymore than all of the blocks. Now if you could increase your power 1000x every 2014 blocks for a long time then yes you could get a lot of blocks. You are still going to run into the halving of coin awards and are absolutely maxed at getting the rest of the coins that will ever be created, about 17.5M more.

Anyway, the point is that if you hold 21 BTC you will never have fewer than 1 millionth of the coins, no matter how fast your computing is or how fast your computing speed increases.

Absolutely nothing stopping you. Imagine a newcomer hears about both though. The older one will have a larger community, more development, more shops, more nodes, etc. To lure people to yours something will probably have to be different.

A new one will have the benefit of quicker generation for an individual. This is offset by the lower value of them, but there's still something to be said for the psychological rewards of consistent generation. Although maybe it would get boring to quickly generate cheaper coins compared to the thrill I just got randomly getting my second generation in a week, worth about $4 I suppose.

Clearly the wiki community knows how to run an open encyclopedia, and clearly I'm biased. I still feel the need to say though that the "human race" has not been independent verified. It's only those damn humans ever talk about it.

Thanks for those links ichi. I haven't finished the gun one yet. Both are very cool.

I'm wary of sending much money to near strangers before anything has been done. But if the basics are built I'll buy in then and supply money to improve, market, maintain, etc.

It's not that big of a deal really. When you buy something it often ships the next day. For trading on the exchanges the coins have already cleared so that isn't a problem either. I guess it could be annoying if you had to wait to get a software code or something instead of it being instant.