The short answer to your question, "can the government crack Bitcoin encryption within a couple of months?" is both yes and no.

Yes, because we should assume the US government (or someone else) does have the resources to accomplish this within the timeframe.  It's actually unlikely, due to the degree of resources required, but it's best for us to not assume that any single security feature is unbreakable.

No, because those resources are nearly always in demand from multiple agencies, and spread across multiple agencies with multiple missions to begin with.  Neither the Federal Reserve nor the US Treasury has any direct access to these kind of resources.

But you need not worry about it, for several reasons.  First, they could only "crack" one address at a time, and as has been mentioned by others, could expect little for the effort.  All that they could do with that information that they could not already do by datamining the blockchain is transfer the funds associated with that particular address.  It would tell them nothing at all about who the address belongs to.  There is, intentionally, no message data that is managed by Bitcoin; so no messages would be laid bare for the efforts.  No information means no motive, at least no motive beyond petty theft.  Also, the very nature of Bitcoin ensures that the odds are high that even if someone mined the blockchain and identified a single address with enough coins to be worth the effort, they would likely be transfered out before a couple months had passed; as every transaction empties the address from which it came and generates a brand new address to receive the balance.

Give it time.  Even a common tool such as a kitchen knife is heavily regulated in parts of Europe already.  Smokers didn't think that smoking in public would ever become verboten just 20 years ago.

I think that might depend on whether the person you are talking to is an 'Eric Raymond' or a 'Richard Stallman'.

Asked and answered.  Either search for "Aristotle" in the search box, or simply start from the beginning of this thread.

It's not impossible, just incrediblely difficult, which is the best that can be hoped for.  Don't get the idea that your bitcoin balance is "as good as gold" sitting in your safe, because it's not.

If you intended to ask what economists would think Bitcoin was, then I can certainly say that the answer would be a currency.  No economist who ever stated that Bitcoin was a money in any serious capacity should ever teach students again, and could never expect to get a paying job outside of academia, with the single exception of the New York Times.  But the last I checked, the NYT already has such a pretender on the payroll.

The consensus is that bitcoin exchanges should rely on reputation rather then the enforcement of contracts.  Any agreement to exchange is a contract, even if there is no document to prove that such a contract exists.  There is a very real, ideological reason for this "consensus"; namely that much of this community is some flavor of classical liberal, most of whom either pledge or otherwise generally agree with the "Non-aggression principle" in all facets of life.

Was mentioning your cousin's work intended to improve our opinion of your cousin's economic education?

I can, and have, explained Bitcoin to random people in under a half hour, including my own mildly autistic little brother.  None of whom had a ridgid, preconcieved understanding of what money or currency is.

Granted, none of those same people care about Bitcoin after understanding it, but I'm confident that they understood it well enough to know that they don't really care.

Creighton

How, exactly, does that change the argument?  Are we talking about the same thing?


These are all examples of attempts by failing governments to prop up their fiat currency by artificially increasing the demand of same.  That is the exact reason that every government that I know of expects payment of taxes within it's own currency.

I agree with all of this so far, even though I disagree that it's as much a burden as you imply.  The vast majority of casual contracts never need any kind of enforcement, and even those operate within a civic standard for the vast majority of the above.  In the modern age, that civic standard is the government court system that we are all aware of, but this is not the only way these things have been done in the past.  Common law courts of the western societies prior to the rise of strong, centralized governments are one example; and international business courts are another more modern example.  Most of the contracts occur under some kind of default environment known to both parties, and the nature of said environment has no bearing upon Bitcoin or vise versa.


It certainly does behave like property.  Property is an abstract concept that existed long before nations or governments, and is independent of the existance of either.  To get right down to it, bitcoins are property because users behave as if that is the case.  As I see it, Bitcoin passes the 'Duck' test just fine.  Care to share how you have come to the conclusion that it does not?

This could take a couple thousand years.  Gold has a history as a stable form of money for all of recorded human history.

I shouldn't have to say this, but Bitcoin isn't a fiat currency.  It is a currency by the choices and designs of those who choose to use it.  Fiat currencies are currencies as a matter of law, so your obvious counterexample, isn't.

As for your belief that governments go to great lengths to get paid in anything other than their own currencies, try paying your property taxes in gold coins or in another fiat currency from another country.  If you can do this without the additional step of conversion into the local fiat currency, then I'd like to hear about it.

In the way that people act in a manner that implies that, for them, there is no practical difference between the output of the accounting program and the physical trade of money.  Money is a social method of accounting, just a special one. 


The blockchain could be considered the unit of measure, as that isn't owned by anyone in particular.  But the ownership of a particular sum of bitcoins by a particular collection of addresses at a particular point in time; is, indeed, a form of intellectual property.  In the manner that it's is an abstract concept that we (the society known as the bitcoin community) assign a value to, and also agree upon a particular possession of.

It's not the best way to think of Bitcoin, I admit, but I was playing off of the post that I was responding to.


I am, in a manner of speaking.  I have always agreed with you that bitcoins are not money, but money and currency are not quite the same thing.  My disagreement with you is that I can't agree that bitcoins are a commodity, since they have no known alternative use in order to grant them value outside of the context of a medium of trade.  If they did, then they would be money in the literal sense.  As such, bitcoins are a new/unique form of currency unit.  Nothing more, nothing less.  To even call them a commodity is granting them more attributes than they posses.


All currency, fiat or otherwise, are simply numbers at their core.  Gold is money, but is only a currency in a form that can be considered a unit by the market, such as the troy ounce or the gram.  An undefined lump of gold isn't a currency, but it is still money.  All currencies are a unit of measurement, and all units of measurement are numbers.  The conversions of one currency into another, at a particular moment in time, is akin to the conversion of American Standard units into Metric.


I agree, and it is in that manner that bitcoins are similar to gold or silver coins used in trade.  I don't have the time to write an article on the subject.  Again, please read Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? before continuing with this debate.  I know that you don't realize it, but you suffer from misinformation that you can easily correct.  That book takes the reader back to the beginning of the formation of natural commerce, and explains why and how money developed.  You really cannot understand money until you start at the beginning.


You have the right to imagine a separation of program and the community, and I can see the logic.  However, you have neither the authority nor the ability to impose your rationale upon others.  This is why you will consistantly fail in your goal of defining bitcoins in any way that appears inconsistant to others, regardless of the logic or legal motivation of such a goal.

Basicly, you are 'pissing up a rope' in your attempts to get forum members to call bitcoins a form of commodity.  They will call it as they see it; be that a currency, or even money.

So this is like a futures market for gold mining, as you are selling contracts based upon your mining capacity.  Hmm.

I like the idea, but there is no way that I can see that your customers can audit you, or otherwise verify for themselves of your honesty.  Would you be willing to go to the extra trouble of a self audit, and publish it in some manner?

What is your business model here?  In other words, what do you expect to gain from the renting of this generation capacity that you could not otherwise get from the generation capacity directly?

And there is no certainty that even that even such a hard crash would keep the market price down.

Sure...

^true^  and  ^goal^

But why use two different, but otherwise identical, image urls to write an emoticon?

Individuals aside, I'd wager that Bitcoin is already fairly popular among FS/OSS types whom are aware of it's existance.  I am such a free software geek from long ago, even though I'm not a coder.

The new way, fiat currencies, require both the implicit enforcement of the issuing governments and the condition that taxes due must be paid in said fiat currency in order to grant a fiat currency it's initial demand and maintain it's value.  Hard moneies, such as gold or silver, do not require such institutional support.

It's a form of intellectual property, or property by way of contract.  US FRN's are property in the same way, as the value that exists is by reason of the information that is printed upon the paper that implies that it is not counterfit.  You have the physical paper note as evidence that you possess a 'dollar', but the paper object isn't the property.

I understand that this stuff can make heads spin.  Which is why it's generally considered a specialized profession.  But it's not really all that hard if you start from the beginning.  Once again, I recommend that any confused member read Whatever happened to Penny Candy? by Ray Bradbury followed up by Economics in One Lesson.


This is not true.  When people on this forum claim that "bitcoins are like gold" this is what they are actually trying to say, regardless of how accurate that statement actually is.  Neither bitcoins nor gold needs the protection services of governments nor courts to perform their primary functions as a trade medium.  That is a primary point about the design of bitcoins as an Internet currency, because such online trades are functionally beyond the enforcement capacities of most courts or governments.  The main page refers to Bitcoin avoiding the neccessity of a 'trusted third party'.  That third party is any institution that both parties trust to enforce the terms of the agreement (i.e. contract) upon the other should the deal turn sour.  This can be courts or governments, but can also be private institutions such as banking, Paypal, or whatever.  Thopse private institutions may (or may not) be limited in what kind of punishment that they can dish out to a bad player, but usually they also have the implicit backing of the courts via contract law anyway.  However, there is an overhead for such institutions; both in actual funds and in surrendered liberty/information.  The primary aim of the design of Bitcoin was to avoid both those costs as far as is possible, without prohibiting such institutions from acting within the Bitcoin economy should some individuals desire them.


In the same way, you don't "own" the balance in your checking account that the bits in the bank's computer says that you do.


The only way that you can owe anything is via an incomplete contractual agreement.  If you agree to sell something to someone for bitcoins and you don't send it after receiving said bitcoin payment, then you certainly do "owe" that sum of bitcoins back to the original owner; both morally and legally.  Practically speaking, there can be little enforcement of such a contract, whether you agreed in bitcoins or US cash in the mail.  This is exactly why third party institutions are, thus far, so neccessary for online commerce; and why such institutions will likely come to exist within the bitcoin economy eventually as well.  However, such an institution isn't required for trade between two parties who otherwise trust one another.  And if you attempted to do such a thing on this forum, your name would be trashed, and no one would trade with you ever again, so long as they were aware that it was you.


Actually, not everyone agrees that a physical person has any certain rights.  This has no bearing on what Bitcoin is, nor what it could be used for.

And there is nothing we can do about that.