Nor would all nodes show up on the IRC channel.  I, for one, would not.  IRC is blocked for me, so my client on my thumbdrive wouldn't show up, and I imagine that mybitcoin.com would only count for one.  Any user's client who was offline and not interested in generating coins wouldn't likely show up either, since is a good chance that he turns off his desktop at night.

Why would the addresses need to be fake?  It is a good way to inexpensively referrence a purchase online.  Say, for example, that you wish to order something from an automated commerce website that costs 205.53 bitcoins.  There is still six digits of the bitcoin that can be used to imprint an order number.  Say the order number is 633729, the total cost of the order would look like 205.53633729 bitcoin on the blockchain.  Granted, the commerce site could issue a new address for every order, but what if they had some reason not to do that.  What if each unique customer had an address assigned to them, but the ecommerce site desired to positively identify each of that person's orders from one another without requiring some kind of additional message parameters that bitcoin does not support, and even if it did, would provide TMI about the transaction.

Yes, but there are two points that you overlooked.  First, the software transceiver ususally requires four of these chips.  (two for receive and two for transmit, one does digital signal processing and the other does digital filtering of the raw signal.  Said another way, one is the virtual mike/speaker and the other is a virtual tuner.  Not all such software radio setups need four, however)  So if a ham has four of these, all four could be programmed to this end.  The other point is one that I didn't explicitly mention, one FPGA does not equal only one sha-256 processor.  It is possible, even likely, that more than one such processor could be programmed into a single FPGA chip.  These chips are fairly large so that they can 'virtualize' some pretty complex logic circuts, and a talented programmer could program one chip to be several sha-256 processors running in parrallel.  All this, and his main CPU and GPU are still available if still more Kh/s are desired.  Any hacker with the skills to program one or more GPU's in the same system to crunch hashes is already elite, and doing multiple sha-256 cores on a single FPGA would be child's play.  And we already know that there is some elite talent within the Bitcoin community, some who desire to run it, and some who desire to break it.

I can't say that I'm familiar with them, but I soon will be.


EDIT: It's interesting, and I would call the project well intended, but I don't have faith that a return to hard money in any form is likely to occur within my lifetime.  In fact, I hope that it does not, because that would imply a dystopian future such as depicted in "A World Made by Hand".

I would be willing to bet that someone used one of these...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array

to do this...

http://www.springerlink.com/content/765kta4qr92daea8/


which is something that I, myself, obviously has considered.  Whoever is doing it is probably representing a great deal of the current hash percentage, and hogging a pretty good amount of the new bitcoins.  Considering that up to four of these programmable arrays are used by modern ham radios for this...

http://www.dsptools.com/Radio.htm

and this...

http://www.softrockradio.org/


The successful coding of the sha-256 algorithim into a fpga and recoding of the bitcoin client's generation function to use one or more such fpga's would produce a khash per second rate that no desktop could match.  It would look like a super-computer from our perspectives.  As a ham radio operator myself, I was aware of these devices, but I don't presently own any.  Even connected to my netbook over USB2, the khas/sec rate would be sick.  The program for these things are normally kept on the master computer's harddisk, and only take a few seconds to swap out; so a ham could use his software radio whenever he wants to, and then rewrite all of his FPGA's with the sha-256 algorithim before going to bed, and make money while he sleeps.

Another possibilty is that someone owned or bought one of these...

http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/padlock/features.jsp


or some other cryptographic coproccesor on a daughtercard.


I'm sure once Bitcoin takes off, anyone with enough of the coins to have a deep personal interest in the strength of the currency will be running clients with hardware exceleration for the sha-256 has function.

That also makes me wonder if there are PCI daughtercards with FPGA's on them yet.  The last time that I looked into them, they were only available as external setups.

What is the GSM?

This is not quite right either, I think.  However, I have heard the explaination that the US FRN is akin to a national stock with a reverse dividend, so if this manner of thinking about it helps some people wrap their heads around it, then I won't object.  That is, other than to say that this is an analogy only.

Personally, I don't think that there is anything we really can compare Bitcoins to that anyone really would have any prior experience with.  Bitcoin is something altogether new in the realm of trade.  It is a solution to a set of problems, and (potentially) serves as a solution well.  I don't, personally, think that it's a good idea to compare Bitcoin to *anything*.  Expecially since most people, including most people that seem to post often on this forum, lack a true understanding of what these other comparitive things are.  The best thing to say to describe Bitcoin is to talk about *Bitcoin*, and accurately describe how the system works as well as what it was designed to accomplish. 


Think about this, children have experience with money very young, but have you ever tried to explain what money actually is to a child?  Complete understanding of a monetary system is not a requirement of it's successful use.

I read about Loom at loom.cc.  First, it's by invitation only, so it's an online  barter club, really.  Second, Loom isn't really a currency.  It's like trading in digital titles or digital 'shares' of real assests.  An individual can 'create' a currency within Loom, but Loom itself is not a currency system but only a slick online form of secure barter.  A member can create crypto-titles to assets, such as a car or a bushel of wheat, and trade them online, as a form of contract barter.  It is very different, in practice and in intent, from Bitcoin.

Sounds like either "Alongside Night" or "The Diamond Age".

But a legal defense fund isn't a bad idea.

Considering that the website is ran by and frequented by people who don't believe in free trade, or even *money*, as a positive social order; I wouldn't think that any argument for bitcoins would be well received.  Other sites might prove to be worthy places to make such an effort, but not this one.

I'm assuming that this was a sarcastic response, since I didn't make an argument.  I didn't make any argument, because I considered such an effort futile.  I am starting from a given that you do not accept, and you will cling to your interpretation no matter what I come up with. 

You would need to be more specific, I would think.  What other cryptocurrencies would you be referring to?

I already have a mybitcoin.com account, but I'd still like to have one running one my thumbdrive.  And now I do, thanks to the many suggestions that I have already received.

Hmm.  Yes, the transaction fees as 'negative interest' I can agree with; coin generation as positive interest is a bit tricker since it doesn't require that there be any positive account intended to draw the interest.

Regardless, I can see the logic and I think that I understand your point.

It doesn't matter what your or my opinion about it really is.  Bitcoin *is* a currency.  And to call it a commodity, which it is *not*, will offer any enemies more legal ammo than calling it what it is.  Calling it a commodity is *fraud*.


A wonderful definition.  It's also completely wrong.  I don't even care where this came from, it's wrong.

It would be helpful to me if someone willing could set up an email(website) to bitcoin gatway to post transactions, and perhaps a website to download a relatively recent blockchain regularly.  I have not been able to find any network that I can use that does not block bitcoin *very* effectively.  I'm sure that I'm not alone in this modern world, either.  I'm only willing to go so far with regard to getting on the network at my workplace, which has an allergic reaction to anything peer-to-peer; and I don't have a computer at home.  Even the local library computers have a pretty strong firewall, and prevent bitcoin from making any connections.

How does it differ from a LETS regarding the "no interest" condition?  How does bitcoin imply interest without a bitcoin banker?

This statement is not true.  A commodity based (backed) currency is such because it physicly is (or represents) a particular commodity of a defined metric.  The nature of foreign trade is irrelevent.

A strong enough of a node could do *anything*, the entire point of the proof-of-work is that as the bitcoin network grows, this kind of takeover becomes; if not really impossible, increasingly and astronomicly improbable.

A big thing that would help the bitcoin community would be to get zazzle.com to *accept* bitcoins.