Well if we ignore transaction fees (and they are very small). 

50 BTC per block * 6 blocks per hour * 24 hours per day * 365 days = ~2.63M BTC @ ~$9 ea = ~$24 mil annually.

Any evidence that Satoshi or any of the early developers are anarchists?
Any evidence that all the current developers are anarchists?
Any evidence that a majority of current users are anarchists?

Probably not.    How much development of the Bitcoin protocol have you done?

Last time I check MtGox and other exchanges aren't black markets.  The fact that Bitcoins (and dollars) can be used for illegal purposes doesn't negate the fact that they have value in legit markets. 

I get what you are saying I just happen to disagree with you.  At $0.02 per tx and VISA sized network we are talking about $2.5B in revenue for miners.  More than enough to support the costs of the network.  CC fees are high not because of tx volume they are high because there is a cartel of players who artificially keep the fees high.  There is free market because of artificial barriers to entry.  In Bitcoin mining no such artificial barriers exist.  If fees are too high more miners will join, and if fees are too low miners will leave.


They will.   Currently fees are so low and block subsidy so high it distorts the risk vs reward dynamic.  


That is false.  You don't need an unpruned blockchain in order to mine.  There is no security risk from using a pruned blockchain.  Pruned transactions are "dead ends" they will never (not in a year not in a trillion years) ever be involved in a future transactions.  The merkle tree structure allows trust-less verification of pruned blocks.

Property is property

You steal $1,000 from me I am going to call the Police.
You steal 1 gold bar from me I am going to call the Police.
You steal confidential documents from me I am going to call the Police.
You steal username/password to an online game from me and sell the account I am going to call the Police.
You steal some Bitcoins from me I am going to call the Police.

The idea that the Police only investigate thefts of dollars is just stupid.  

Would you apply your failed logic to any other property on the planet?
"Sorry sir that man stole your CAR.  See cars (and trucks) aren't currency issued by the US government there is nothing we can do.  Why did you call us?  You didn't by any chance have some loose change in the car.  If so then we could open a Police report.  Not for the car but for the coins in the car that were stolen."

I agree.  I would even be willing to pay the lender a fee (say 0.5%) to handle it this way.

One thing that is needed is a public (hashed for privacy) manifest of who is owed what.  Would suck to have funds disbursed only to find out there are mistakes with some creditors not paid and others paid the wrong amount.

TheBitMan should take the amount owed each person plus a SHA-256 hash of their bitcoin repayment address and post it in a list right in the thread.  He can give the unhashed version of the list to the lender(s) and they can issue payments with confidence.

Example:

This allows each creditor and easy way to verify the amount they are owed and the repayment address is accurate before any funds are moved.  Each creditor knows the repayment address they gave to TheBitMan and thus can verify the hash while still keeping the data private.  Private in public just like Bitcoin.  Less chance of a screw up that way.  

TheBitMan this is something you can do now.  While you asked all the creditors to submit info we haven't received anything back indicating the info submitted is correct.

If you need a simple SHA-256 calculator here is one:
http://www.xorbin.com/tools/sha256-hash-calculator

If you really think that then Bitcoin is worthless.  If some user on some forum can cause it to fail then why would you want any money/resources/time/energy wrapped up in it.  Essentially it failed before it started if it is that easily destroyed.  Honestly not much lost if Bitcoin can be destroyed that way.

I mean it would be like saying if something isn't done about 4chan it will destroy the internet. 

Oh it does.  It also involves tricking someone to register the IPO under their personal information and finding methods to quickly convert Bitcoins to cash.    He also is looking for someone to pay the 8.5 BTC IPO fee.  Likely going to be the IPO of the year.

I never dismissed the problem.  I said THAT A SOLUTION EXISTS.  The word solution by definition indicates a problem did (as in past tense) exist.  However there are multiple solutions to the problem.  If the merchant doesn't know, understand, or trust the solution(s) then the fix it to inform/educate/advocate.  Pretending there is no solution exists simply because the merchant isn't informed is well stupid and not very productive.

After two clarifications if you still can't understand that well I just have to assume you don't want to understand that.  I won't be responding further not because you disagree but simply because it likely is pointless.

I think this may be coloring your view.  If you feel BTC has gone nowhere fast you should uninstall it and not look back (maybe save some coins in a paper wallet so you won't be kicking yourself in 2030).  The adoption timeframe for mainstream users is measured in years (if not decades).  Bitcoin isn't just PayPal 2.0 it is radically different.  Not just on the technological level but at the cultural and societal level too.  It puts responsibility back on the user, it has an independent currency, it has no central planner.  Those are hard concepts to grasp, trust, and understand.    Much like the internet took a couple decades to become "mainstream ready" Bitcoin will take a long time too.  I am happy with Bitcoin growth rate (in users, transaction volume, services, and maturity of codebase).  If you really feel that BTC is "going nowhere fast" then honestly there is no realistic future scenario that isn't going to disappoint you.

He is requesting a loan denominated in USD.  If he borrows $3,400 USD he intends to repay $3,400 USD plus interest.

Today $3,400 in USD is 382 BTC but if BTC rises before maturity he will be repaying MORE USD but LESS BTC.  mcorlett is exactly right.  A USD denominated load (any USD loan) is essentially a short BTC posistion.  It also could be used by an investor as a hedge if they feel they are long too much BTC but don't want to sell assets (GBLSE stock for example).   If you think BTC will be lower at maturity you get the interest plus can convert back to BTC at a better exchange rate.  On the other hand if you believe BTC will rise by more than the interest rate you would be taking a loss.  Really depends on what the investor is looking to accomplish.

Ok before I give up this is even worse.

First any authentication should require encryption but blockchain.info is a bad example for an exchange.  Blockchain.info doesn't have access to user funds thus everything can be done client side.  That isn't possible with traditional client server relationship in a "normal exchange".

If you hash the password at the client side then the server is only given the hashed password.  What happens when the password list is compromised?  Yup no brute force needed the attacker can simply impersonate any user by providing their hash (found in the password list).

Authentication should be encrypted (SSL) but hashing should be on server.  markm was talking about the use of public private key cryptography which is a completely different security model.

You can't simply combine different ideas together (traditional exchange, client side wallet, public/private key cryptography) like a bunch of buzz words and thing you are more secure.

Wonderful.  As if Bitcoinica nonsense wasn't annoyingly difficult to avoid it will now be spamming the ads too.

This is insufficient.  MD5 salted can be brute forced trivially easy.  Without per record salt of sufficient strength even modern algorithms are at risk.   Even with sufficient salt fast algorithms like SHA-256 leave passwords as long as 8 char (plus all known leaked, and common passwords) vulnerable to attack.



You likely don't want to include a required list of functions but you could provide a list of functions which meet the requirements.

Single round:
SHA-256/512, RIPEMD-160/192, WHIRLPOOL, & Tiger

Multi round (recommended):
BCRYPT, PBKDF2, SCRYPT

Since Tangible Cryptography got 2 PM already ...

No this doesn't mean that Tangible Cryptography is accepting MP.  This was just me making a personal deal (anything company related w/ use company forum account).  I needed some PayPal funds and figured this would be an easy way to get them.

Impressive but the CPU load is still >12W.   The CPU is contributing to the idle wattage.     Maybe 30W-40W total?

What are the rest of system specs.  I am curious for guestimating the "rest of system" load.

Oh sorry I was testing my round reduction attack on SHA-256.  Allows me to hash in 16 rounds instead of 80. 

I didn't say you were a scammer but your actions certainly increase the risk hence the -1.  You never disclosed this was purchased third hand or involved any third party online exchanges of MPs (dubious an totally unverifiable claim).   So not only do you know the PIN code but so does the person you got it from and if they got it from an online exchange (care to share the link? ) then so does the person they got it from.

So even if you were legit the other two prior parties could dispute the MP resulting in a locked/frozen account or stolen funds.

You didn't think that was relevant to include this fact?

So have most scammers.  

Which does nothing if the MP is disputes days or weeks later unless you plan to allow the coins to be escrowed for months.

Two points:

1) How can other miners verify a block is valid if the transactions of the block are encrypted such that only the receiver can identify their transaction?


Ok.  How?  Simply stating it as so doesn't really provide anything useful.  I could do that "BIP 9999 proposes that double spends be eliminated.  Miners can verify that no doublespends exist in a block by Zero knowledge proofs".  Doesn't really mean much.

2) What is to prevent a miner (or simply an listening node) from recording the raw (unshuffled) transactions to break the anonymity?

Maybe these are stupid questions but your post provides no details.  Nobody is expecting a complete whitepaper but you provide nothing and thus there really isn't much to discuss even reading the post I had to make a lot of (likely incorrect) guesses and assumptions.

The rebutal was stupid (and self defeating, FreeMoney the coins are only worth something if people want them) but THERE IS an easy solution.

bit-pay.  Very easy.  A merchant can signup in about a day, have no currency risk, integrate with online shopping carts, even accept coins from a mobile phone.  If a merchant can figure out a merchant account (CC) they can figure out bit-pay.

Even without bitpay the currency risk is being massively exaggerated.  How hard is it to send all your purchase coins to an exchange and hit the sell button a couple times a day?  Honestly if a merchant gets only a few bitcoin orders this might be easier/cheaper than bitpay.  Send coins to exchange and hit sell.  The intra-hour volatility isn't that high and volatility goes both ways.    The idea a merchant would sell tea @ $32 USD:BTC and not be able to figure out how to hit the sell button on an exchange for 4 months while price fell to $2 USD:BTC is kinda silly.  Like I said if 1% of a merchants sales are Bitcoin and on average they are exposed to 3% intra-hour volatility we are talking about a rounding error in the cashflow of even the smallest business.

Solutions:
small-business with little bitcoin casfhlow --> manually sell coins or use bit-pay
small-business with significant bitcoin cashflow --> use bitpay or develop in-house hedging
enterprise operation with little bitcoin cashflow --> use bitpay or develop in-house hedging
enterprise operation with significant bitcoin cashflow --> develop in-house hedging

The merchant was uninformed, the OP didn't have the information to inform him but now he does.  Short sightedness on the part of  some bitcoin users doesn't change the fact that trivially easy solutions exist.  There is no unresolved problem, simply uninformed merchants.

Pro traveler tip: A quarter million dollars in stolen deposits tend to make it easier.