Greece should:
1. Default on the loans they can't pay. Its just the ECB paying them right now anyway.
2. Now, they would no longer be able to loan a dime.
3. Not being able to loan a dime, they would be forced to live within their means.
4. Continue using the euro - who can stop them? Enabling inter-European trade.
5. Continue to cooperate with the EU, free trade and travel etc..
6. Build better country as resources are allocated intelligently.
7. No great "cascade effect" ever happens - EU is stronger, Greece a new growing economy.

What is GOING to happen:
1. Goldman Sachs/others will have them paying back their loans until the card house collapses.
(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-06/goldman-secret-greece-loan-shows-two-sinners-as-client-unravels.html)
2. Then it all falls down and mostly small bond investors are screwed over.
3. With everything collapsing huge under-valued asset grabs are made in Greece by the big bankers.
4. Country suffers for at least a decade.
5. Massive amount of resources are/have already been allocated to bankers and politicians.
6. Corrupt elite spends robbed money mostly on robbing more nations and themselves - EU is weaker.

If you are Greek keep your euros in cash or invest in BTC or you will loose every dime.

In the end BTC will probably rise because of all of this.

The original client was supposedly kinda badly programmed... just throwing that out there.

Yeah I know... I just wanted to sound cool.

Lulz I have better security for my 2.14 coins and thought of buying more and hence the need to be even more secure!

Who trusts 4 email accounts with root access?

Seems like we have a new BitCoin rule of thumb: "A bitcoin site is not safe until it has been hacked at least once"

My friend is into SEO and I know a little too - everything in that quote is correct.

(Doubt google would bother with BTC when they will not bother with China!)

Did you ever see this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7539.120

I know you programmed a POS terminal, but using QR codes.

What do you think of our/my design?
2$ a card.
Tops 100$ a terminal including your android phone in that price.

The card just signs transactions and gives them to the terminal which broadcasts them.
If they are invalid I assume they will just be ignored by the network.


If China starts using bitcoin it is game over. They have a lot of restrictions on moving money I believe so bitcoin really would be like pandoras box there.

That was a pretty stupid article...

That is incorrect: Invested capital moves human effort towards some endeavor, but that endeavor may well fail and produce nothing at all.

The overall success rate of human adventures is what will give you the true growth rating.

If there is crisis (such as now) due to fundamental factors such as resource scarcity (such as now) everyone may indeed see worse times (such as now, especially in the west that has the most to loose).


Some of the few things really growing today is bitcoin and renewable energy - which are both things I am invested in.

In a pure bitcoin economy prices will be deflating, but as mentioned the decimal will be moved.

The bitcoin protocol can be updated to allow extremely small amounts such as nano-satoshi, there is no limit.

Alternatively 1 satoshi could be made the permanent block reward and coins unmoved for 200-1000 years could be deleted to save harddisk space.


Those and cryptographic updates are the only ones anyone will really accept when it comes to their OWN bitcoins, nor will I update my client for anything else.


Deflationary death spiral?
1. Bitcoin deflation will be small once adoption is broad - people are unlikely to loose very many coins with better and better software helping them.
2. Even if it was high investments in the important things would still happen, if not people or their economies would die and smarter ones rise.
3. Consumerism and its slavery might well die, who will miss it? Only the looter elite.
Those who opt out with bitcoin and choose the important things in life will come out as the new more rightful elite.


If BTC deflation was 20% and no one worked I would still make bread and as the only guy with bread sell it for something that gave me minimum 21% return on investment.

It is weak currencies that invariably die, not strong ones like gold which is a useful today as in biblical times.

Think inflation protects the little man? Think again; the poor hold most value in pure currency as they need it all from day to day while the rich protect themselves with stocks etc..

Bitcoin is for the poor and the smart.
Inflating fiat is for the stupid to use and the filthy rich to control others.

That is not necessary, a smartcard just needs to sign transactions and updating the future multi-gig blockchain on that vapor devices connection is not gonna happen anyway.

We need someone to make a pure BTC smartcard... would decrease the hassle significantly and you could get them by mail easily since they are so light-weight.

I think it could even hurt bitcoin to introduce it to stores before there are valid payment methods OR enough customers.

With BTC cards an interested store like this minimarket could offer cards for ~2$ to anyone who had no BTC and extra $ to charge it.

In the beginning it would be a discount/gift card until all the shops converted. Said discount would come directly from the removed VISA fee - making it a self carrying system avoiding the chicken/egg problem.


(The theoretical concept of a card has already been worked out in another thread)

People will lend the decreasing currency as there payments on the loan will be of less and less value, while the things they may have bought with the loan might increase.

Above: They WOULD borrow dollars and they would NOT borrow BTC.


Op is correct in his observations BTC solves a slew of problems with the banking industry.

Another interesting thing is that giving a loan and buying a stock are very similar - risking your money for potential gain roughly equal to the risk.

Insuring loans against default is hence logically impossible: The fee the insurance company would HAVE to take to stay in business would be everything you could charge in interest by market rates.


If I was a gambling man I would loan a million fiat and put it all in BTC, my BTC would raise much faster than my loan would mature and I could then pay it off and come out with a profit - or go to jail!

Do you want me to pull up statistics for the life expectancy of most people in Africa?

This woman is entirely reliant on others, her intellect is low and she has no will to work or live.

The second food stamps go out of favor she will be the first to starve.


At some point there will be too many stupid people and society will be unable to provide for them even if it wanted too.

Then the weakest die off until society is once again able to provide for the rest - unless someone declares war and just kills a bunch of people.


The surviving Jews from WWII Germany are some of the smartest people in the world.

The Soviet Union collapsed when it had a national peak oil moment.

China is buying up Africa, but are migrating Chinese workers there instead of using blacks - the Africans will be replaced by the Chinese race.

Farm fields are increasingly being used for bio fuel, driving increased hunger and starvation caused death.

All of these facts support the theory of ongoing relentless human evolution and that rosy utopias with free wealth are very temporary.

Yes obviously I was talking about pure muscle strength and consider gorillas a superior species to mankind!

/Sarcasm

As for their numbers that doesn't mean much if they all die off in the next 50 years because they can't feed themselves.

The weakest parts of mankind have grown greatly with the easy access to food modern society gives, but they will also be the first to suffer.

Take the woman in that video; if times get worse her and all her kids will likely die in the street.

Lots of people will be screwed if the random number generator is implemented badly:

Example:
"Gen()->Return time*12"

I can now easily find a bunch of keys by searching (generating key/address pairs) only the times from 2009 to 2012 - my chances would then be VERY good for finding some private keys with cash - even if "time" was milliseconds.

I am however assuming that the implementation is a lot better than my example or by now massive theft should have happened to all those with bad clients.

The weak will never oppress the strong into paying for them.

Those who come out on top in even populist revolutions are the elite or the new elite (young elite people just getting started in life).

It is evolutionary fact that the weak will eventually die.

Lots of that will go down with peak oil hitting harder and harder in the coming years.


If the government force their elite to work hard to provide for the weak then the the strong have fewer kids and the weak more than they can support and in a few generations the country will be bankrupt and filled with useless masses.

It only takes 20 generations to completely breed out aggression in a wild fox, that's around 400 years with humans - but your country will probably collapse before that.


The only solution is the poor have fewer kids or if they break that rule the extra kids get no benefits - eugenics.

I'm building a program that will use bitcoins.

I wanted to buy pure alcohol on the silk road for disinfection purposes, but of all the drugs they have, they don't have that lol!

Well I have been rooting for mesh networking a while but I think a normal open source BTC smartcard would be better for btc and a phone would be a better... phone.

Their design includes a trusted server, which should NOT be necessary for bitcoins.

That said it sounds technologically impressive.

I'm flexible; I will go where the chances are the best.
Most people just stay put out of habit.

Right now I'm in a rich country with low corruption, decent freedom and high bureaucracy.
If something better was available I would go there.

I have thought about going to one of those oil boom towns you hear about... maybe I will in the future after taking some chances here first.

Cross border transfers.

According to wikipedia remittance alone is more than 250 billion $:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittance

If 1/1000 part of that was temporarily stored in BTC the exchange rate would approach 28$/BTC even if all other BTC markets and current BTC value was 0.

Using other services sending costs around 15% (WU) - with BTC 0%.

Go ahead and add business transfer and tax avoidance amounts to that...