That is correct, HOWEVER unlike DKK you can NOT "flood" the market with BITCOIN.

To introduce them in a region you would first have to drive up demand and buy some for your people.


The only thing that COULD lower the value would be if the Athenians dumped them as soon as they got them - the BTC value would then go back to normal, not lower though.

This is however unlikely to happen as BTC has a wide range of good qualities.

This is incorrect:
1. The cost of converting from BTC to say EUR is pretty low.
2. A BTC merchant may thus only increase his price with the amount of that conversion cost.
3. Should he increase FURTHER people will just convert to EUR and go to his competitors.

Actual bitcoins, most likely on smart cards, would be best:
1. Bitcoin does not hold value in the minds of REGULAR folks yet - a BTC reserve would not impress anyone into accepting the bills.
2. Gold is the go-to reserve/currency builder, in this use it may even beat BTC, at the moment anyway. Additionally, they (Greece) already hold gold! (For now)
3. A BTC backed bill could be taken off the BTC standard and inflated to pay for an oversized government, just as happened with the dollar.

That said physical bills from a government might be some use, like Casascious coins on huge scale.

I am starting to not trust the trade data I see at all. Its too easy to place and remove orders or for mtgox to swindle us with a few ghost walls.

I am using http://btccharts.com/#m=mtgox-BTC-USD now - zoomed into the 5000$ range; much harder to swindle when it may actually get bought/sold up.

Right now I think someone is trying to push it high and get us to buy - I won't, already sold at 4.935.

At least I haven't lost money with my new strategy yet: Stay calm, calculate and buy/sell only with auto orders at the lows/highs.


I will need better data to trade by though, mtgox' feed is not it.

Of course all investments are not OK...

Money should not guide you, but REAL resources and your philosophical goals.

I'm with jon.

People should take their families seriously - I see so many in my country who have 1-2 kids and then spend all their time travelling the world and in all ways possible wasting the limited resources available to mankind right now.

Our culture has degraded from a proud socialist working culture where you got educated, worked hard and when you were old or down on your luck you would get help.
I remember my old math teacher who would teach more than all the other teachers even if he qualified for a handicap pension.

Now its all "me-want", "me-deserve" and "paperwork/covering your ass instead of responsibility".


Anyway a working mother can't raise the 5-10 kids she biologically needs to to help the species along. Some people die or are unsuccessful, with 1-2 kids you can only go downhill.

My grandmother was a major and she took a lot of time off while she was having kids (3, good enough) so it really doesn't need to be as degrading as its portrayed today.

All these fancy travels, empty houses and oversized cars we are sacrificing our future for don't make anyone truly happy.


Our public schools are horrible too, just now they are trying to get my little cousin on medicine because he is so bored out of his skull by their slow teaching.
I'm not sure homeschooling alone is the best as kids need social interaction, but a re-think is necessary for sure.

What the f kind of society puts KIDS on medication if they don't fit in!?

Yeah I agree with 2nd poster, you're misunderstanding inflation - its like saying our danish crowns are worthless because we have a lot of them right here.

BTC would most likely RAISE significantly in value if a country or even a small town took up using them.

This would happen even if people sold them right after usage:

1. Forced user buys BTC. Price raises to Y.
2. Uses BTC.
3. Receiver sells BTC. Price falls back down to X.

This pattern is repeated by many people and as such once saturation happens someone will ALWAYS be in step 2 at a BTC value Y and to trade you will have to wait forever or buy at this higher Y rate.


Now since the country would be an early adopter later generating its own huge BTC interest/price spike the central bank of that country could make a HEFTY profit.

Further the country would not have to worry about trade balance as regards to its currency value anymore (here we have to worry since we are small = if too much money goes out the country and not in -> inflation/huge currency drop).

With BTC the price is determined internationally.

All in all unless robbing your poor populace is your goal BTC would be a great boon to any community.

Well perhaps the "next node" could be part of the protocol so that the nodes themselves could not freely choose who to send to.


I will read up on twobitcoins proposal later.

Not just fault tolerant, but decentralized as bitcoin. ie. lets call this language Torrent sharp or T# - if I publish a program in this language, as long as someone uses it with their T# client it must keep running.

It must be independent from me and no node should be able to see the data or variables inside the program.

E just looks distributed to me which alone is simple.


With this envisioned language I could program a bitcoin currency with a program-centralized DB, no public key cryptography and no work proofs and it would be every bit as safe as the bitcoin we have now.


I am thinking that a client adds points to a given program, but does not itself necessarily get that programs bits.

Instead hosting and storage distribution is randomized with programs "buying" hosting time automatically for their points.


Program used files/variables (say a JPEG or w/e) would have to be hidden, broken up or ciphered from the hosting node somehow.

Bitcoin is decentralized which provides it both safety, security and performance.

However Bitcoin is pretty simple. My question is: Could a programming language be created that is completely decentralized?

Necessary characteristics:
1. Each node must be unable to access at least some critical data.
2. Each nodes individual instruction execution must be verified to be correct as defined by the language.
3. Protocol enforcement must either be maintained cryptographically or via strong incentives - such as "program-runtime-points" for instance.

We know bitcoin is possible. Multi-sig txs are also at least theoretically possible, though I don't know much about it.

To what degree can we take it? My vision is like torrents but with programs.

I'm thinking data protection might be achieved by never executing subsequent instructions on the same node - context information is thus lost.
Maybe all types should be split up too so that one node never has a full variable... basically each node would emulate a small part of a micro processor getting some, but not all bits and would have no idea of what was going on.

Performance is a bitch though.

Bedtime for me I think...

Well I think there's overall growth so that's nice, the last crash point was below 4.62.

Price seems too high for me with all the sellers piled up close on the right. Maybe everyone is hoping for a quick upswing and thus got it.

Taking the average price for 200k$ sellers/buyers gets you ~4.67, 10 bitcents lower than the going value.

I think I will wait there until the next monthly crash if necessary.


Still getting the hang of this though. (Hence only trading like 10$... my gf rolls her eyes every time I make or loose 2% )

I say someone is manipulating the markets and maybe even hacking mtgox.

I was watching for a specific event, everything thought out (and I was right), but JUST as that event happened the mtgox live display was down so I blissfully went to bed.

Next time that happens I will just assume the event has happened.

I expect the price to go a bit lower, then I will buy in again and ride it up.

Ok so the problem with instability in case a wallet is found:

My theory goes like this; if some number of BTC are in circulation, some percentage will be lost due to various human and software errors.

If the value of BTC go down, more coins will be lost as people become more careless with them.


If we set the block reward to a certain amount forever, then the value would eventually stabilize; if it drops in value more are lost and if it rises less is lost and thus more accumulated - assuming steady state economy; the value may stay high in a growing economy.

Of course this poses a problem in that many like BTC specifically because it will never inflate:
Even if people loose coins, if you keep creating them people will at some point begin to generate lost addresses with coins on them.


There is also another point to consider: How to distinguish between "treasure" addresses and a rich guy? Impossible.

A final thing; the dump may not be as catastrophic as could be feared - while it may pose a big chunk of total value it may not be a big chunk of the total transaction volume.


Anyway if it becomes a problem I think future users should solve it, not us - likely by raising the block reward to a permanent 1 satoshi.

Well the real size of the BTC economy, whether traders, users or miners will ultimately define how many people need to buy BTC at any given time.

If that number is stable while BTC are being created and sold by miners then there would be a decrease in value.

Since the USD/BTC is pretty stable there must be an increase in regular users/buyers to offset the BTC creation roughly equal to the creation rate.



If BitCoin was a start-up company I would say it has entered its linear growth phase and in the future as the easy BTC markets are conquered and you run into regulators its growth will flatten out.

Facebook, paypal, ebay, Google and oil production have all had similar curves.


However if utilities such as POS systems, smartcards or new exchanges are developed it will be like a new product launch over again and "the BTC start-up" may see another exponential phase.

Until then BTC is limited to easily convinced rich people with personal computers and internet access - a rather limited market that perhaps needs BTC the LEAST.

mtgox, lots of people moving their money in and out all the time...

Yes the economy of BTC is currently growing by about the BTC creation rate.

If this holds BTC should raise its value growth rate after the 25 reward begins.

If BTC econ. growth is ~30% BTC would appreciate 15% extra a year, after December, this year.

However with markets as emotional as they are, who knows.... BTC has yet to establish a full economy cycle and is largely dependent on investors.

The rate is closer to 31% though than your number as the growth is linear and NOT exponential: 6*24*365*50/8.5 mil=0,309 right now.

Yes I think there's no debate that those cards would be safe, but what do they cost?

5$ range is fine, but I think above 15$ will hurt us a lot.

Anyway there is no reason our protocol cannot include both smart cards and super cards at the same time:
* Same form, shape and chip connectors.
* With normal cards the amount is sent and then you punch a PIN - tx sent.
* With super cards the amount is sent then button pressed - tx sent.

-> The terminal won't really need to know the difference, just send the amount and wait for tx (relaying the PIN with smart cards of course).

I have given some small BTC birthday presents.

I just sent some wallet.dat files loaded with BTC to their email address.

When they are ready to play, its there. Otherwise its no hassle to them.

And honestly whats a better way to argue ease of use than to send it through a damn email?

Timing mechanisms:
1. Capacitor:
* Not a full power supply, could keep it running for those 30-90sec or at least enough for you to pull the card out.
* Just before it runs out it unlocks the card.

2. Clock:
* While the card has power from the terminal it counts chip cycles.
* The time from giving PIN and pulling the card will only be half the necessary waiting time.
* The other half will be counted down in the next terminal used at another merchant.
* This adds maybe 10s of waiting time when you start to use your card.
* This waiting can be mitigated by slotting in the card while the cashier is scanning your wares.

I believe that solves things?

BitCoinAndie:
1. I don't think new supercards are the way, at least right now - as it has been said we don't want to have to train people in new tech + they may be expensive hindering BTC market penetration.
2. For the paranoid super users it may be an option though - our protocol should just allow for communication with both types of card.
3. One-time codes are safe, but I don't think it is practical without super cards - which I again do not see as an option.

I think I kinda mentioned it in my second market ("businessmen"), but yes definitely a good way to go.

I think a "third generation" market would be something like my grandma using it.

First market would be "converts" and BTC dependent business start-ups (run by converts).

Alright first; GREAT post. Cleared things up - nice to see my research was correct.

I disagree with the PIN thing though: It offers some safety:

1. PIN is used and the card is locked 30-90 sec.
2. User removes card and leaves.
3. Merchant secretly stored the PIN.
4. Merchant does not have the card - how will he use his stolen PIN?
5. He has to either A rob the guy or B get the person to come back another time.
6. He can then destroy ALL reputation he had to make 5. happen for maybe 40-200$!

WITHOUT a PIN:
1. Send money request of "ALL YOUR BASE... PLZ".
2. Done.
3. His reputation is still ruined, but it was a lot easier to do the stealing.

(90% of the times you use your card a new place, you will never use it there again - hence you're safe)

So smartcards are still saf-ish?

EDIT:
Looked it up a bit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card_security
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mifare
http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~dinoj/smartcard/security.html

So okay hacking the card is totally possible in a few ways:
1. Physical abuse.
2. Storing PINs and waiting for the customer to return.
3. Advanced hacking after stealing card.

HOWEVER: Special access pin connectors do NOT exists. Once the private keys are loaded to the card and programmed as NEVER-access level you have no practical way of getting them.

To summarize as I see it:
* If you only store what you spend in a week on your card the cost to the attacker would be MUCH MUCH higher than the return.
* If your card is stolen it can NOT be forced (by common thieves).
* Over-/double-charge using either my checksum scheme or "super cards" would be impossible.
* Even if no police will help you most merchants would not take the extreme risk of robbing a return customer for very little gain - it would loose him his customers rather quickly.
* Even storing the PIN and later overcharging would require a good deal of programming + being a merchant + getting a victim to come by minimum twice.

If people use BTC cards with a bit of care (like all else, including normal BTC) smard cards will be completely safe (safe as VISA or more anyway).

Well... can't the card be locked immediately after a purchase (say 30-90 s).

That way the merchant would have to wait for you to come back AND remember who you were?

(he only gets 3 PIN attempts)


As for special override PINs I did not know about that? Is it real does that exist?
It seems to defeat the point of even making a smartcard...

If it does what stops anyone from hacking any VISA card in the world?