I have two investments; 1) non-retirement mostly in a private wallet although I do have 1 physical coin, 2) retirement (Roth IRA) in GBTC.

So, my private investment is ready for what comes.  What happens to the physical coin depends on the details when we get there.  My retirement investment in GBTC will depend on how Grayscale handles it (if I don't jump to COIN (if it becomes a reality)).

Suppose I think Core and BU won't compromise (thickheads).  I want to spread my investment out across both.  Too early?

Oh, ok.  Good luck with that.  Trying to force the government or really the central banks, e.g. the Fed, into certain monetary policies like trying make their fiat currencies approach Nash's ideal is ok with me.  Not sure how that will go but please go right ahead and try.

How close (approaching asymptotically or otherwise) must a currency be to ideal to be called ideal?  Once it is deemed ideal then what?  If it ever moves again then it wasn't actually ideal, was it?

I know that.  I'm yanking the poor guy's leg.  It isn't nice of me to do so but I failed to get a rise out of him so it's ok.

Bitcoin cannot be an ideal currency.  Neither can any other currency.  So?  Who needs ideal?  If anyone one is left standing their ground on they believe any currency or Bitcoin can be ideal then who are we to disturb their thoughts?

While folks gravitate toward something there's profits to be made.  I just want movement.  If some standard basket of goods and services is ever pegged at a certain amount of Bitcoin forever (unlikely in the extreme) then so be it; I will find movement elsewhere.

Believe in Bitcoin like a religious belief all you want; it's ok with me.  I too believe in something; I just don't feel the need to believe that Bitcoin needs to approach any sort of ideal currency.  That Bitcoin is better in some aspects than fiat is just fine with me.  I am pretty sure government fiat currencies are better than Bitcoin in plenty of situations.  For me, Bitcoin does not have to be the one and only currency (stable or otherwise).  In fact, I feel very confident that there will always be many currencies over time.  If anything there are going to be more and more currencies.  So, inspired, I might just run off and create a new currency (oh, wait, I already did that decades ago) -- it was great until my wife cornered the market and cause a crises.

Yes, there's a very small chance the exchange rate could drop to nothing.  In my humble opinion there's a much greater chance that it could rise considerably in the not too distant future.  Are you hungry or have other basic needs at this moment and no other way of fulfilling them?  If so then convert your Bitcoin into that need.

And yet I have and will continue to speculate on the exchange rate of Bitcoin.

Basically I couldn't care less about Bitcoin being an ideal currency or not.

You essentially want to sell Bitcoin right now but you don't have any to sell.  Your thought is you will buy them in the future when they will supposedly be less expensive to close the position and make a profit.  If they are more expensive then you lose; you still have to buy them to close the position.

Suppose I want to buy Bitcoin right now; I could just buy them on the open market.  If instead I want to try to exploit your desire, we could make a deal.  I will lend you some of my Bitcoin for you to sell now.  Later you will repurchase Bitcoin to return to me.  Naturally I am going to require collateral to secure the loan.  Also, I will require interest be paid during the term of the loan.  What are you going to offer me as collateral?  What term?  What rate of interest shall we agree to?  Btw, if the exchange rate actually goes higher then along the way I will expect additional collateral be provided.  Still want to sell short?

@traincarswreck:  So, you're saying, Bitcoin could be/will be Nashian ideal money soon.  Based on this I should increase my speculation.

=== spoiler below ===

I just love yanking people's chains.

I deliberately created the no-fee transaction http://blockr.io/tx/info/74ccfd796cf2cb404a2245f699fd0e5cdf2a3a6b8a7b9cf1169ff2f87c124557 from my Armory wallet in order to see how long it would take to be confirmed into the blockchain.  https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ indicates something like 23-Inf blocks but the number is some sort of best case scenario.  I think maybe some/most/all miners aren't bothering to include any no-fee transactions in the reserved section of blocks anymore.  I asked the 21.co guys and they said they might try to improve that portion of their fee reporting page.  I'm going to leave the transaction alone a while longer to see if it goes through as long as blockr.io still sees it and doesn't drop it.

I don't think so but will my Armory wallet eventually timeout or something automatically or will I have to take deliberate steps to rectify the situation?

Sorry, TLDR.  But, the topic is somewhat interesting to me.

For me, Bitcoin is a cool new thing that I can make money on by speculating.  I've made by initial bets.  My problem is timing my withdrawals.  I've made enough already that I will let some remainder ride it into the future no matter which way it goes; moon or bust.

Ideal money?  Who cares?  Who ever said anything about "ideal" for Bitcoin?  Tell 'em to stop it.  Bitcoin just needs to be fun/cool/new.  If it ever approaches the possibility of becoming the global reserve currency then I suppose we can talk about it then.

Protocol for helping settle debates?  Who cares?  Debates are fun to watch.  I try to contribute my perspective but it will go which way it does anyway.  I think the SegWit guys got good stuff *but* bad public relations; they might fail to gain consensus.  I think the BU guys' approach has some sense to it but won't reach consensus either.  If both sides would admit they can't win separately but have a chance together then maybe consensus can be gained while improving public relations.  Otherwise the two sides ought to step away and make their own separate things.

Is http://bravenewcoin.com/assets/Uploads/TransactionsAsProofOfStake10.pdf relevant?

Well, my network lives behind a NAT router so I'd have that challenge to overcome.

Suppose I did; would it make a difference?  Does someone count up the full nodes as an indicator of preference?  Oh, is that the point of https://bitnodes.21.co/dashboard/#user-agents?  Do folks actually care about full nodes?

I think maybe I need a developer to merge the two code paths together and then a big effort to popularize it.

How much does running a full node without mining matter in this situation?  If it does matter at all then can I run both Core and BU at the same time?  Wouldn't the 8333 port be the point of conflict?

How do I assert my preference that both SegWit and unlimited be adopted together?

I want to embrace both SegWit *and* unlimited block size.  Is that possible?  How would I go about doing it?

Inspired I created https://21.co/davidrabahy/.

I treat Bitcoin as an investment.  My wife spends our US dollars.  I personally buy almost nothing.

It is clear that the investment community will be obliged to diversify.  Bitcoin can go a long way on 1MB blocks and big (relatively) transaction fees; it appears SegWit is not gaining the support it needs to go through but who knows it may still make it; without SegWit can Lightning be made to work?  Which other altcoin is going to become the darling of scalability?  Or perhaps there will be many.  Or is there indeed some fatal flaw that always draws any of them into centralization?

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ indicates 27,120 satoshis ought to be enough for a median-sized transaction.  You indicate you used 154,538 satoshis which ought to be plenty.  One wonders if maybe your transaction is larger than the median.  What is the transaction ID?

Hmm, my outgoing is the default value of 8.  I changed total connections from 8 to 60, allowing for 52 incoming.  I would gladly reduce the outgoing below 8 if that is better.  I'd be really happy to force my outgoings to know/trusted entities but I kinda thought that would be counter to the whole idea of being trustless.

I certainly do not want to contribute to any weakening of Bitcoin.

Someone has got to enable incoming or who will the non-full node users connect to?  I configured by phone-based wallet to use just my full node.  It would be really nice if I could reserve a connection for just it but I usually don't have any trouble connecting pretty quickly.