Almost exactly the same as BTC in my eyeball calculation at this moment in terms of it's drop of from directly recent highs. 0.989 vs 0.983 (cur/high).

I disagree for a number of reasons (and agree to a certain extent as well to be fair.)

a) Bitcoin as a solution is dis-similar to pretty much all other modern solutions.  It is not inflationary on a theoretical level and thus does not require that an economy grows exponentially in order for the economy to perpetuate itself.  So, a lot of the standard economic theories about capital do not necessarily apply in the same way.

b) In addition to continued technical development, the main thing which will assist Bitcoin (or more generally p2p crypto-accounting solutions) is that it is seen as a reliable and useful utility.  People getting constantly ripped of in the vastly underdeveloped and (imo) malformed and downright ugly economy which currently exists is not at all helpful.

c) As I alluded to, Bitcoin is currently a solution in search of a problem at this point and in my locale since the USD, credit, and Paypal work admirably for a lot of us (my not being in debt.)  I feel it more important to develop a robust and scalable solution, not necessarily the 'biggest at any cost' at this point in time, and I think that doing so has the best chance of serving humanity well in the end.  If 'the end' never comes, that's fine with me since we've got it pretty damn good as things stand (again, in my locale.)

d) When the chips were down and I feared for the future of the solution, I spent a fair amount of USD mopping up some of the excess supply.  Long before the trough I had called $1.80/BTC as a dangerous level.  The primary driver for this action was probably not purely altruistic, but that was something of a factor.  So as far as I'm concerned I took a big chance and if I want to rest on my laurels (and my BTC) rather than hand it over to other people I have no shame in doing just that.  Besides, limiting supply (by hoarding) is probably the biggest factor in increasing the fiat/BTC ratio (for whatever good that is.)

Now I will agree the the 'mildly parasitic' comment, but the host is the developers of the solution...not the hoards of scam artists and computer criminals who want to separate me from my wealth which is how I could characterize the the economic activity at this juncture.

I and relatively few other people spoke up with concerns about the Bitcoin Foundation before it was created and during the request-for-comments phase.  None-the-less, I will probably be a direct contributor when I've satisfied myself that the concerns are being addressed.  I believe that this will have infinately more positive effect on the solution than jacking off to a web cam or pissing my net worth away on a gambling site which is designed to make someone else money.

I appreciate your consideration of such things and it seems to me like something worth expending significant effort towards.  I'm not confident that I can predict what the results of such efforts might be (if the solutions work) but it's always good to have options in my opinion.

Ha!  I know!  Bitcoin needs a 'fed' to unload the toxic assets of favored buddy's failing businesses onto.

I remember Atlas's rather disgusting gay porn, and that Bitcoinporn's wares were much more to my liking.  I guess my straight status prejudices me to some extent in this regard though.

[Note to less long-time users:  Atlas put up some site for one of his countless earth-shattering ideas and the SomethingAwful goons got access somehow and defaced it with gay porn.  That's the way I remember it at least.  Thinking back, I think that one of them bought the domain I guess.  One way or another it was pretty funny.]

Ah, so you are an FPGA guy then   I do hope that at least some ASIC vendors turn out to be legit and their shit works because there really are some cool FPGA gadgets that I would like to have (for things other than mining Bitcoin) and the aforementioned eventuality could depress the price of them.  We'll see.

You drunk the cool-aid and paid the price.  So sad.


I don't.  PM's, property, and Bitcoin all appeal to me because they lack counter-party risk.

About the only thing I do with BTC is donate them to things I think are worthwhile.  I believe that to be more efficient at furthering the projects in our world that I believe have value.  As long as our 'official' currency solutions are for all intents and purposes supperior for the things I need a currency for, I'll probably be using that.  Part of my Bitcoin speculation is because I don't know that 'official' solutions will continue to perform to my satisfaction.

That's a chance I take with this speculation.  I continue to feel that the most likely outcome is total loss.  The outside chance that Bitcoin (rev-1 or a close enough derivative (e.g., uses forked blockchain)) will 'go'.  If it does it will probably go ballistic and well exceed what I would term a 'retirement event.'

Disagree.  In order to hoard you need to obtain them in the first place.  Mine, buy, or trade something of value.

Next, anyone who hoards is still going to wish to (or need to) adjust their position from time to time.

Sufficient number of people hoarding will dry up supply changing the price-point (upward.)

I have a fair amount of Bitcoin.  Are you saying that for the good of the solution I should blow them all tonight on some stupid gambling site or getting people to diddle themselves while I watch on a web-cam?  Or that I should trust them to the tender mercies of some named something like 'pirate' or 'nefarious'?  Sorry...I'll rely on other suckers to do those honors.  I'll tuck my BTC into bed and wake them up when I have a compelling reason to do so.

Hoarding is a lot easier and safer, and I've got no complaints about how it's working out.

If you've got something of value to trade for BTC, please go to town on your project.  If you just think you are owed a living on the basis of having some BTC to deploy, I personally have little sympathy for ya.  If you've relinquished control of Bitcoin to someone else in this community and they didn't give it back, well, cry me a river.  Eventually people will figure out how dumb that is.  I hope.

I'll stick with what was previously your gold

[I don't want to spoil the joke, but of course we both know that I, and I think all other PM bugs here, are also speculating in Bitcoin and will not be terribly heartbroken if we happen to make a killing on it.]

I wonder if he will live up to his name.  I'm not sure that anyone would, back in the dawn of Bitcoin time, choose 'nefarious' as a moniker unless the concept was floating around in his mind at some level.  MNW had the good sense to change his bitcointalk.org (formerly part of bitcoin.org) when he decided to try to play Mr. Legitimate.

Watching.

I guess I am gloating, but oh well.  GLBSE never had any appeal to me from any end of the spectrum and I've never paid much attention to it.  Although I considered GLBSE to be an attack target on Bitcoin, I had nothing much against it other than that.  It was sort of a nursery for sprouting entries on the scam accusations board here, and some of them are fun to read.

Probably belongs in speculation, but I know that from my perspective fear of legal attacks against services led me to do something approaching panic buying when I got into things.  It'll be interesting to see if something as big as GLBSE being bowled over by the long arm of the law will induce such buying.

Kind of a nice idea.  I don't want to piss all over anyone's cheerios, but there are several problems I see right off hand:

1) I suspect it would massively break to the TOS on almost any consumer grade connectivity to re-sell it.

2) Probably among the very first handful of users on a freshly born service would be someone doing something naughty.  I've read of the cops kicking in the doors of people for not setting a password on their wi-fi.  The chief difference between some careless and clueless user like this and someone selling network connectivity and not being able to produce a 'customer list' would probably be a stay in jail.

Ya, it's odd to me that so many people to whom the Bitcoin solution might appeal are prone to be as careless/naive as they seem to be.  One explanation is, perhaps, that we don't really notice the people who are not so, and thus it just seems like more of a notable percentage of the community than it actually is.

Sweet!  Thanks for the tip.  Now that annoying bozo who makes 1000's of pointless 1-line posts to freeload on advertising will annoy me no more.  I forgot who that was, but naturally the guy was a blazing Libertarian and there seem to tendency for them to freeload at every opportunity.  Oh ya, ~imsaguy I think.

The best analogy I've heard is that one can write as many checks as one likes as long as one has confidence that the recipient won't cash them.  Offering to disrupt someone's energy supply in the case of China, or allow their kingdoms to be undone in the case of the Saudis, is a pretty powerful incentive to induce them to keep piling up treasuries even if interest does not keep pace with inflation and it is kind of obvious that they will never be repaid.  The effect is the same as the US getting a discount on oil (among other things) and we could use it since the military machine (which makes things possible in the first place) is a big consumer.

I believe that there is some level of accuracy to the scenario I've layed out above.  It's been breaking down a bit, but QE can fill in the gaps.  I see things as tenuous and any geo-political miscalculations could go very bad very fast.  OTOH, if well managed things could go on in roughly the current form for decades.

I've thought for many years that the whole Iran thing has basically zero to do with nukes.  That issue is simply there as a rational to bomb at will, and is needed to pressure China.  The trouble with 'doing' Iran is that once it is done the pressure is gone.  We need replacements to serve this purpose before telling Israel to light the fuse, and we probably don't want China's only option to be all-out war as they have a lot of boots.  The pressure exists not in that we 'take' the oil, but rather that China does not end up with it due to disruptions.  It might be that the only practical way forward would be to actually take the oil this time so we can more efficiently direct supplies (vs. just bombing things to rubble which was desirable in Iraq in Gulf-I and Gulf-II in order to manipulate global supply and preserve future supplies.)

Simple assertions of fact are the most effective way to communicate with those who have underdeveloped minds (by virtue of age and other issues...)  That is a likely factor in explaining why they are so popular in certain branches of the political thought.  It drives us progressives up the wall, but what can ya do?

For what it's worth, I studied this paper a decade ago now and it had a profound (and highly beneficial) impact on my investment strategies since that time.  Does it have a basis in truth?  Dunno.  To me the arguments seem to have a high degree of power in explaining some events which otherwise seem quite baffling.

  http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html

Being right about something in Bitcoin-land being a scam is somewhat less than miraculous.  Your performance seem to be somewhat on par with getting heads three times in a row on a coin flip.  None-the-less, good work (seriously) if what you say is accurate, and I don't track things that closely to verify.  You called the BFL think some time ago as evidenced by this thread so if you turn out correct it will be notable in my mind.

I'm not sure I see the trajectory of Bitcoin being much different.  That is to say, at scale the transaction costs will likely be so high that most people will use 'bank-like' entities, and there is little reason that I can see why they won't tend toward fractional reserve methods.  I don't think many people will care that much as long as the 'banks' which do so are offering them cheaper transactions and/or more bells and whistles.