Good, then you should have seen the answers to all of your questions there as they are the basic ones most people ask about first.

Though, that would likely be better discussed in a thread that was not about an island on land.

Your responses sound like you think that nobody has thought of everything you are talking about already. It would be like someone hearing about Bitcoin and saying "What about double spends? You need to think about people's private keys getting stolen. Nobody accepts them so they're useless. It's a ponzi scheme.".

The seasteading concept has been around for almost a decade. They have forums just like this where people have addressed these questions. They have Peter Thiel donating several million dollars towards research, they have patented one of their initial concepts, they are moving from the research phase to the testing phase by using a cruise ship to test business models. They are taking baby steps, most likely starting by working with a government under their flag within their EEZ and in more hospitable waters.

Pirates, social structure, materials that can last in salt water, structures that can handle 100+ foot waves (rogue waves), EEZ, different temperatures, weather patterns currents throughout the world. Several prototypes of different concepts including submersibles and concrete submarines have been attempted.

Seasteading is not a new concept.

http://www.seasteading.org if you want answers to your questions. Their FAQ addresses almost every question you posed: http://www.seasteading.org/about/faq/

How low do oil rigs submerge during storms?


http://seasteading.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Engineering-Development-Plan_GLP_2012-08-08-alt-3.pdf

At the bottom is the 2012 to 2017 plan which explores energy sources, structures, breakwater structures, modularity/scalability, materials, mooring systems, dynamic positioning systems, and station keeping.

There are several business plans out there including an offshore medical treatment center which would garner about $29 million per year on a ~$100 million investment. They are also looking at fish farm/aquaculture, algae production and processing, offshore tech center, offshore data haven.

Social engineering they have begun interviewing potential seasteaders to get a good idea of the requirements (I personally spoke to one of their reps for about 45 minutes over the phone).

When everyone uses Bitcoin as their currency, we all win.

Oh wait...banks lose.

And big corporations.

And governments.

Hey my prediction of \__/  from August 2011 to August 2012 was fairly accurate. Even saying it would start to pick up after the change from 50 per block to 25 which was the end of November.



I have no idea where it will be a year from now. My prediction was that it would be over $100 by the end of the year. I did not expect it to happen this fast.

Satoshi sent me this:

Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as
trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for
most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.
Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot
avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the
minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions,
and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for nonreversible
services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must
be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need.
A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties
can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments
over a communications channel without a trusted party.
What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust,
allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted
third party. Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers
from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers. In
this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed
timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions. The
system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any
cooperating group of attacker nodes.


He sent this as his key:
http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I believe that there are a few reasons for that. For one, most Bitcoin users are a bit more forgiving of innovative and yet raw websites coming out. They can look past the lack of ergonomics and joe six pack simplicity and are willing to jump through some hoops to use your service (look at how people exchange government currency for bitcoins).

Secondly, Bitcoin is sort of highlighting the fact that patents and copyrights are not exactly necessary as most new services within Bitcoin have become the de-facto company for that service. Look at MtGox and the amount of problems they are having. But because they were first and are trusted, they get the traffic. BitPay actually has competitors. There are other services that do what BitPay does, but because they were first, they are considered the main company for merchants accepting bitcoins. Look at SatoshiDice. I have not been there since they first opened, but it was just a web page with tables of numbers.

Getting out the door first yields you rewards.

See this thread about illegal content on the blockchain:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=11381.0

Also, I have added the following porn to the blockchain:

80085

People who want Bitcoin to be anonymous can make it anonymous for themselves.

Same as with using cash for things you do not want people to know about instead of traceable purchases.

This was a project created at the hackathon.

Prototype stage at this point.

Some interesting predictions.

Ya, the last time I did a thread about how stable it was things went nuts. That was over a year ago though.

You all may want to borrow on margin just in case.

As long as it jumps from $120 to $160 and back again over and over...that would be exciting...

And people would start taking out some more margin loans.

Crash or rocket to the moon already!

Entertain me speculators!

Blitz: shortened title

I believe it is implied that the employer would pay bitcoins based upon the current rate of exchange to government currency.

I was being facetious, see the large study on waves done by the Seasteading Institute below that.

My design was using ferrocement spheres built at a low enough cost that you could have thousands of them interconnected which could distribute the impact of the waves. As enough are built it becomes a sort of floating island that can keep expanding. Similar to the guy who made an island out of plastic bottles but more long term and at a higher volume.

It would certainly save the hassle of converting my paychecks every two weeks (along with the wait for transfer to dwolla).

I do not really watch the ticker all day, I check on it when I come into work and have a page open that shows a price but up or down is no big deal to me. It was a wild ride in the $2-$8 (imagine swings from $100 to $400 and back) range during the Bitcoinica manipulator days.

Now I am just focussed upon getting a Bitcoin business going and moving from a life where I used government currency to bitcoins.

I have considered this as well. Think of it as a club where rich guys all gather in a smoke filled back room.

You all agree to do something, you all do it then show proof that you did it.

Those that do not do it are no longer get to join those rich guys in the smoke filled back room to find out when the next move is.

And the key to being part of it is to make money. As long as there is long term incentive to keep making that money then there is less incentive to try to screw over the group.

I make some decent money by loaning out bitcoins.

More of this theory stuff of people assuming things that in reality actually happen.