Here's your problem.  You concern yourself with one side of an equation while dismissing the other side.

The reward of monetary deflation is neatly countered by the risk of coin loss.  This is a truer stability, the stability of the average purchasing power of a position in Bitcoin.


"Bitcoin hoarder greedily increases holding as others lose keys.  Loses key."

Very nice site!

May I ask why you've opted to plot all the charts on a linear scale?  Is it just that this is the default used by the charting extension you've employed?  Wouldn't a logarithmic scale be more appropriate in view of:

• The general preference by most FX traders and charting programs for the logarithmic scale.
• The extreme volatility of Bitcoin relative to the biggest fiat currencies.

A quick glance at some long-term Mt.Gox logarithmic and linear charts highlights the absurdity of conveying Bitcoin price data on the linear scale.

Take your pick:

• Counter-party risk.
• Capital Gains Tax.
• I had no access to a suitably secure computer at the time.
  

It was still at 5 BTC at the time of this Slashdot story (2010-07-11).

I can't remember clearly but didn't someone once accept a 10 BTC block subsidy instead of the usual 50 BTC as a test?

Do you have any examples of such blocks?  I can't seem to find any with a quick web search.  If not, don't worry; if I care enough I'll write a script.

My own PhD thesis was only about 60 pages long.  In mathematics and computer science it's the content that counts, not the length (unless you have a terrible supervisor or examiner).

I believe that the content of the whitepaper is easily worthy of a PhD.  However, it's not a thesis, it's a whitepaper.  For a PhD thesis I expect Satoshi would be required to expand on most of the points made.  Accompanied by some working code (bitcoin v0.1 alpha) and perhaps some data from a short simulation, I see no reason to dismiss the work.

The blockchain itself is just data and I wouldn't readily apply the verb "hack" to it.

Certainly the Bitcoin network could be hacked.  Some of the proposed mining attacks would be hacks.  One might consider exploiting a hard fork to be a hack (to my knowledge, we've had 2 accidental hard-forks to date; we could easily have more in the future).

However, it doesn't stop there.  Everything involving a computer that's even remotely clever is considered a "hack" these days.

Would exploiting repeated random numbers to take peoples money be considered a hack?
Would the block-header prayers be considered a hack?

We can say that it must be extraordinarily difficult to meaningfully hack the network.  The likelihood of a devastating hack is becoming more remote with time.

Ah, this takes me back.

I never really got involved with Mt.Gox but the other shots here are familiar.  I received my very first bitcoins from the faucet.  You didn't need to give an e-mail address, just solve a captcha.

My favourite has to be the old bitcoin.org trade page, particularly in comparison to the current version.

I'd imagine we'd each have our own planet.

Bitcoin-critical layperson: "Bitcoin will keep dropping in value until it hits 0."
Bitcoin-critical economist: "Bitcoin will keep rising in value until it hits 0."

They sure are an imaginative bunch.

Why is it that every thread here on the topic of inflation launches into a full-scale flame-war within 10 posts!?

I don't care which definitions of "inflation" are accepted elsewhere, it's crystal clear that on this forum the term is truly ambiguous.
I don't care which camp you're in, if you assert that the term has a particular meaning here, you are wrong!
I don't care what your intentions are, if you use the term here in knowledge of this ambiguity, you are a troll!

If you wish to discuss an increase in the supply of money, please use "monetary inflation".
If you wish to discuss a general increase in prices, please use "price inflation".
If you find someone using the term "inflation" ambiguously on this forum, please point them here.

If you care more about the definition war than the corresponding economics, please bitch here and leave the other threads alone.

Thank you Hal.  Good fortune to you and your family.

Yes.  This fits well with the way people already abbreviate common units with SI-prefixes such as "40 meg" for 40 MB or "15 mill" for 15 ml (millilitres).  Additionally, I like how focusing on the SI-prefix highlights the divisibility by drawing a subconcious parallel with physical dimensions.  I'll certainly not adopt either of the obvious, overused, and suggestively discrete terms: "bit" and "coin".

I have a fondness for both "em" and "fin" and could be won over to either but do prefer "mill" at present.  Indeed, mBTC (read as "mill") has been my preferred way of communicating non-whole numbers of bitcoins for over 2 years (although recently, due to the high value, have taken to using uBTC (read as "mike") for non-whole numbers of mBTC).

Why not secretly set aside some BTC for your family.  Later, if they are interested but feel like they missed the boat you can reveal the coins and sell them to your family members at the price you paid originally.  This will give them the illusion of being early adopters which could help sustain their interest.

This is not ideal as, on these secret coins, you must be willing to take the risk of a crash without the reward of a rally.  However, if you are not happy about this then you probably shouldn't be pushing your family into investing.

So how would you buy a Subway sandwich OP (or supporters)?

If your answer is fiat then may I ask: why are you holding fiat?

The problem of fees for micro-payments only comes up when you want to send/receive many of them (when even Bitcoin's lowish fees become a burden).

If everyone you are dealing with is sending/receiving very few micro-payments (maybe you own and run some form of online game) then just have them pay the fees.

If many of the people you are dealing with are also sending/receiving many micro-payments (maybe payments for bandwidth on a darknet or for a torrent; something organised but decentralised) then you could use probabilistic payments to reduce your fees down to the cost of sending/receiving a few packets of data to/from a peer.  Probabilistic payments have the drawback of variance but this will be drowned out by the volume of payments you expect to make.

Why?

Setting the technical and ethical issues aside, what you are proposing is tantamount to a completely unproductive industry which is forceably funded by bitcoin holders through monetary inflation.

Could you at least hint at how you've arrived at such an unintuitive axiom?

I guess one man's bug is another man's feature.

who can sleep easy when they know that they've lent $30 million to a bank?

Maybe many people but not everybody.  Some would like to see the experiment largely succeed and for Bitcoin to become a widespread, useful tool.  For them, bitcoins are a form of cash.