Well last time prices rocketed up.

Largely it depends on how big a part of the supply flow the rewards are.

I'm guessing 25-50% miners rewards/fee being instantly sold and the rest from all these merchants taking Bitcoin and instantly converting to dollars.

This would mean something like an immediate 33-100% price increase on the exchanges with more increases possible due to the resulting positive market reaction and speculaters flooding in.

We will also see mature P2P markets by that time I think. OpenBazar and other stuff is already in the works.
 - these things together could mean big price jumps.

Well as has been recently shown someone could make a bunch of clients acting as servers for coinjoin transactions and gather a lot of data so the current simple version is a bit too simple I think.

I think you should describe your complex version a bit more in detail. Its also not entirely without consequence if an algorithm is very complex, it leaves room for error if no one understands it.

HTTPS is great example of this, yes people just click a button, but the security doesn't work because the certificate system is flawed.

If you do a couple of coinjoin transactions and you require that you will be the mixer in one of them, won't your anonymity be perfect?

Normally the mixer would know who was who and you would only have anonymity towards the public - but if you do the mixing only you will know where the money went.

Is this already how it works or would this be an improvement?

Well if "bad decisions" is not sufficient explanation neither is "too few paper notes"

As for what bad decisions can do Mao's "great leap forward" where many resources were poured into steel production for largely no benefit directly led to millions starving.

I'm not going to argue with you or disprove all the examples you may think you have, I just wrote to say how it is.

There are no historical precedent or empirical evidence of deflation being bad for the economy.

There are many historical examples of strong currencies - ie. deflationary currencies - supporting strong and growing economies.

The only example often mentioned is the US "Great Depression", however reading into the details of that the problems were caused by a lot of bad investments by banks and a drought.
When all these investments went belly up the investors fled to cash which caused price deflation.

In other words deflation was not the cause, but just a side effect.


There is no such thing as "Laws of economics" the whole field refuses to practice the scientific approach.

All money are just virtual points that mean nothing. What means something is what people are doing: Take the US, lots of banking, insurance costs and wars. Not so much education, healthcare or manufacturing.
These REAL things are why the US economy is doing badly.

If all Americans woke up from their stupidity and started doing productive things their economy would do well again - even if they burned all their money.

"Money" and "the economy" are entirely ephemeral things.

If you measure "the economy" by the monetary unit, more inflation is always the best of course... such is the stupidity of mainstream economists.


Now to really answer: Inflation means the government gets to spend most virtual points and direct the flow of resources. Deflation means that individuals get to direct the flow of points and resources.

Which spender is best for an economy? Again history shows that big bureaucratic empires are not long lasting.

In conclusion deflation improves the efficiency of the virtual points system we call "Money" - Bitcoin is deflationary once mining rewards taper off and is therefore superior to fiat.

I'm not saying I'm right because 60% support the 20mb chain, I'm saying I'm right because Bitcoin won't WORK without a 20mb chain.

What I am then also saying that 20%/40% of people opposed/agnostic is too small to be a road block so we don't have to care.

I would still use the 20mb chain even if only 10-20% made the upgrade - eventually all would follow anyway.

Just do this already.

The Bitcoin chain that only allows 2-5 million people really using it will quickly die as people migrate to the 20 mb one simply in order to actually USE Bitcoin.

To begin with those opposed to the change is only 40%, screw them. They'll change their minds in a week.

Sounds horrible... maybe more regulation will fix this?

/sarcasm

You would need a hard fork to replace coins in a scenario like that. You would have to define that those coins cannot be spent by the original keys and that a different private key can now move them.

I don't see that happening, the coins would be gone.

To me its a feature; stupid people loosing coins means fewer stupid people deciding what the economy should do! In reality nothing REAL is lost - we would still have the same amount of cars, oranges and houses as before the event.

Exactly right, its pretty stupid.

It's widely agreed that Bitcoin's value is utility and speculation based.

Don't believe any news about Greece. That theater could continue forever - until the EU bankrupts itself constantly bailing out a corrupt and inefficient government/banking system.

When money can be printed how do you run out? You DON'T you make headlines and politics, but at the end of the day you - the elite - get your house and your dinner for free.

It doesn't end until people say stop and choose a medium that cannot be faked - like Bitcoin.

(Gold also cannot be faked, but using it is just as cumbersome and expensive as our current structure of propping up the elites - at least the elite get something out of fiat)


In the near future Bitcoin will start to swallow up all this fiat, the more the fiat price lowers the faster it will go. Bitcoin is like a financial black hole, it is yet small - but just wait.
At first people will go to Bitcoin because of the price increases, later they will come because it is stable and fiat is collapsing.

Gavins proposal automatically scales 40% per year after the 20mb raise, then stops after 20 years - last time I read up on it.

After 20 years this puts us at ~16.000 mb or 32.000 TX/second. That's more than the VISA network and I think it will last a long time.

I also support Gavin and OP.

Right now you can buy more than 4 Bitcoins for less than 1000$. Pretty sure most people could afford that.

4 Bitcoins means that if Bitcoin took over the world you could live in a country with the 1-5 million richest people in the entire world out of 7 billion people - you would be like a Qatar prince.

Even if you're just a Joe Smo last adopter Bitcoin will let you save easily for your pension* and the economy will be healthier** with more and better jobs*** and less consumerism.


* A purely deflationary currency like Bitcoin will increase each time the economy grows as coins will be spread more thinly among more wealth. The human real-value economy/population have both grown with about 3%/yr historically. Thus simply saving 200.000$ in Bitcoin over your life time will net you 500$ per month in interest. Spending another 500$ of those savings will give you 1000->750$ per month for a 16.5 year period. If you don't retire until you really have to you should do okay with that and the left over 100.000$ I didn't include in the 16.5 years.

** The strong money nature of Bitcoin will lead to people investing in things that really make sense and buying less crap. This will favor smart businesses that make things to last and the planets environment.

*** Removing the constant economic oppression duo of fiat inflation and government war taxes persons and business will be much better off. Governments will be forced to be more efficient and provide services people want - at a reasonable price. Otherwise people will just hide their wealth with Bitcoin. You wont have to be in a constant rat race to maintain a consumerist and militaristic machine slowly falling apart under its own weight anymore - this can ONLY lead to more wealth.

Bitcoin is not just the first app for blockchain technology - that is a banker lie. Even if blockchain tech decentralized the internet, stocks/companies AND government Bitcoin would still be at least the second most important "app".
Money affects everything we do in life, the effect of making money a more efficient/fair system should not be underestimated - this is not about making a few more internet millionaires, this is much more important.

DER should be removed it makes no sense for Bitcoin since Bitcoin has already defined the lengths and encodings of everything in its protocol.

Once you realize what DER actually is and what it does in the block its ridiculous.

https://github.com/conformal/btcd

I don't know if it works and is done yet, but here you go... hahaha.


In truth though Bitcoin is an agreement between humans and as such it can never die. Hash algorithms and signing algorithms can be switched and bugs can be fixed. Consensus splits can be resolved - ALL of those have already happened before.
(Original payment method was supposed to be IP based, 2010 had a script bug letting everyone spend anything and as noted 2013 had a major fork event)

Gavin's scalability roadmap breaks the Bitcoin protocol, but because people support it and because they believe it is aligned with the concept of "Bitcoin" it will happen eventually.

However the system remains stable because you need 90+% majority for such things to work and only simple changes aligned with the human vision can attain that. It's extremely interesting and beautiful in a way.

You guys should read Asimovs Foundation book series.

Microsoft takes Bitcoin and increasingly many others.
Bitcoin core has been modularized and improved code wise.
We have multiple implementations of Bitcoin core (like a true protocol, we had only BTC core back in 2013 fall/during that price hype)
Bitcoin is getting easier and easier to use - while staying safe.
Hardware wallets and multisig.
Gavin has a good road map for scalability and is widely supported in his efforts by the community.
Multiple strong exchanges.
Dark wallets coming/here.
Un-closeable P2P markets coming/here.

If traders think that Bitcoin was worth 1000$ each in 2013 and <300$ now I dare say they are demented.

Well rationally there is no way the present Bitcoin can win over a higher limit fork:

Step 1:
A. Gavin creates a higher limit BTC fork.
B. Anyone else does it.

Step 2:
Present network can never grow more than it is now, because we are already hitting the limits.

Step 3:
New system takes over by nature of being the biggest - which it cannot avoid becoming because it scales!

Well Satoshi had to make the first coins somehow.

I think he messed up and made the period too long, I think something like 80-90% should have been released by now and then the rest slowly over 10 years.

Still its not that bad. we are at ~10% inflation now then January 1 2018 its less than 4.5% then early 2022 less than 1.8%. So stable value in 3 years compared to fiat and deflation compared to fiat starting in 7 years.
In 20 years BTC inflation is pretty much flat and a yearly deflation of ~3% in value can be expected on top of whatever adoption gives. The 3% percent is based on the natural growth rate of human economic systems, with a stable currency all that growth increases total currency value.

Also we are rewarding technical people building data centers and Asic manufacturers. Sure its kinda wasted right now, but perhaps the technology and skills built in the process is not useless.
Compare to who fiat rewards inflation to:
Banker borrows newly printed money at 0.5-0% interest in national bank, lends it to government as bonds at 5-7% - sits back and enjoys his free cocaine and hookers.

I have kids, so I usually work at the library in weekends or in the middle of the night. Many things could explain Satoshis posting times - especially since we KNOW he changed time zones of his files/emails.

However I think you're on a good path. If one were to collect clues like that you could assign probabilities to each clue/location and narrow your search more and more.

If you, like you mention, cross reference special holidays with postings you might get a clue to a single country.

You could also do text analysis for special phrases, sentences or sayings that might be of local nature. I you get really lucky there might be a certain misspelled word or very unique sentence that you could search for and find other avatars posting in the same style of language.

Has anyone for instance compared the wring style of Satoshi and Gavin Andreesen or other early contributors? Being anonymous is time consuming so its not unlikely that he might have merged to a real avartar while just using "Satoshi" for the dangerous stuff.

Have others here considered that the reasoin Satoshi disappeared after Gavins CIA meeting was either:
A: They told him: Dude we know its you chill.
B: Gavin is Satoshi and realized the CIA were kinda cool/not dangerous and stopped his Satoshi activity.
C: CIA knew and threatened him to become an insider.
(D: CIA used Gavin to capture/kill Satoshi - I don't see this as plausible AT ALL.)

I know the common explanation is that Satoshi stopped all contact with Gavin after the CIA meeting, but why? He was already staying anonymous and KNEW someone like the CIA might try to read every email/post he made, so whats the difference?
Even if he felt betrayed by Gavin, why not continue talking to others?
If he felt the Bitcoin project didn't need him anymore, why at that precise time?

Well I think I calculated that to sustain BTC price at 300$ you need ~0.6 billion dollars going into the Bitcoin system/year due to the mining of new coins.

At the prices we are at now its not enough to have something something going on in some country or some other speculation going on. Speculation and tech geek money has now been invested and is running thin.

To move further you need entire nations/companies going full Bitcoin - a massive shift.

Even if the ruble went to 0, it wouldn't necessarily mean that all Russians went Bitcoin or even most - most would likely buy land, stuff, food, gold and dollars above all.


Bitcoins world domination will come, but you really have to appreciate the scales, timeframes and consequences we dealing with now.