You saw how easy it was to run the Chinese out of Libya literally by the ship full.  'Joe Kony' could pop up anywhere in Africa and both the left and right wings of our population would be foaming at the bit to send in the Marines.

We almost completely control the land routes for fossil fuels transport out of the parts of the Middle East that we allow it to be drawn from with the notable exception Iran, but that hole is primed and ready to go...and in the mean time, it's funny that it's so hard to find a nation who has not been, by our incredible grace, granted an exemption to do business with the Persians which demonstrates our control of their resources anyway.

I suspect is the biggest lever we have over China at this point is the threat of an actual invasion of the oil producing parts of Iran (Khuzestan.)  I heard a little news clip the other day that they blew the dust off some old cold war war-plans which happened to take this area in the process of halting the Rooskies...and since we have no more modern plans we would probably just have to go with those old outdated ones.

China will be our bitches until they decide to finally put up a fight.  If/when that day comes, I am supposing that they will eventually come out on top since they have the boots to put on the ground...if any of us are lucky enough to survive the event that is.

Eureka!  Cypherdoc is a Chinese and succumbed to one of the many U.S.'s ploys to convince them that it is not something worth owning.  That must be it.  If not, maybe he was just collateral damage in some disinformation campaign.

Really?  Where are you looking?  I would expect to see BTC into the hundreds or thousands of USD per when that so much as starts to happen frankly.

I see more advantages than disadvantages to having multiple crypto-currencies.  Chief among the advantages would have to do with scaling, but it would bring a level of competition and evolution which tends to be beneficial to end-users.  If most of them shared Bitcoin's 'low viscosity', end-users should enjoy reasonably priced and effective exchanges between them.


Cute


Doesn't seem that you've been at this very long based on your posting record.  If so, I'll write it off to the 'fresh set of eyes seeing things more clearly' principle.

It will probably take a long time before a 'better' system takes over as long as the recognized primary dev team remains composed of people who are several cuts above the mid-tier user base in terms of their motivations and engineering effectiveness.  I conjecture that Bitcoin will _be capable of_ evolving to overcome most of the problems that could crop up although it will lose some of the features that were enjoyed in it's early existence.

Nothing real earth-shattering there.  Makes sense, but so what?  Even if 'mild' deflation is the greatest thing since sliced bread (for some folks including myself) that does not mean that that is what we'll see.

I expect that 'mild' will not be a word which is useful for characterizing many aspects of our economy given the machinations required to keep our highly leveraged systems stable as we approach end-game.  I believe we are reaching that point and most of my bets are based on this belief.

I believe that since 2008, we actually had at least periods of quite significant deflation.  Gold performed perfectly sufficiently to keep me smiling.  If the effects of heavy deflation during the next crisis cannot be masked, it will probably be terminal for most fiat regimes which means I'll be happy to hold Gold (and some Bitcoin for good measure.)  About the worst thing for PM's (and Bitcoin) would probably be mild controlled long-duration deflation with stable confidence in USD and other fiat.  In that situation, I would expect a _mild_ loss of opportunity by holding gold, but I think there is a pretty strong likelihood that that is _not_ the way things will play out.

BTW, why would your ever present fear/expectation of deflation in any of it's forms have a vastly different impact on the value of gold vs. on the value of BTC?  I think you've posited the answer is that the world will flock to Bitcoin as it's monetary solution.  I still don't see that as anywhere nearly as likely as that the world would move back to PM's in such a scenario (which would almost certainly be accompanied by massive social and technological shifts as well.)  But you are as free as I to position yourself for the future as you see fit.  At least as long as it is reasonably practical to exchange fiat for either PM's or BTC, and that may not be the case forever.

Or choose the existing 'Satoshi' block chain as the basis for a variety of projects which might make use of such a creation.  Someone fortunate enough to control small chunks of it could find themselves in a position to 'sell' the same real estate multiple times.  They also might not of course.

I would not rule it out (nor would I count on it or even consider very probable even.)  If people want something badly enough and it is in short supply the price can get very high, and there are plausible scenarios which could make secret keys in the block chain be in very high demand.  My rough estimate of 'parity' is 1BTC/Kg gold.

Yup....any minute now...

In related news, I wonder how our somethingawful friends are getting on?  I don't reckon they'll be showing up here a year after their assertions that Bitcoin was on deaths door and that everyone who was involved was an ignorant loon.  The latter may well be true, but that only goes to show that an ignorant loon can be up $1000's/day with a little patience...and there is a chance that we've not seen anything yet.

Although most of the SA guys were pretty lame I actually do miss 'fatlas' who was pretty clever and funny most of the time.  If I were not so lazy I would go find out if they are accepting Bitcoin as payment for membership yet.  It was pretty funny that people were chumped into paying $100's per year for a forum then coming here to call Bitcoin folks retards.

I think:

1) That in a typical trading platform, 'leverage' (and 'margin') is achieved in a much more straightforward manner.

2) That in a typical trading platform, not only is it common for the operator to protect himself/herself against loss by using forced liquidation, it is part and parcel to a successful and profitable design.

2-comment)  Bitcoinica had absurd fees in part to (attempt to) achieve #2 given the fierce volatility which appears in the Bitcoin economy from time to time.

FWIW, I personally am fine with any trading platorm/scheme which anyone comes up with.  In a non-regulated market (of which Bitcoin is a prime example...and happily so) there is room for significant price manipulation.  But I feel that over the long haul, the markets will find their natural place and I happen to be in it for the long haul.  In the interim period, a person who is reasonably adept at analysis, has some observation skills, and knows what they want can capitalize greatly on things.

I don't buy the assertion that manipulated value fluctuation detract significantly from Bitcoin's usability as an exchange currency.  It just opens possibilities for people to invent platforms which mitigate the impacts.

I am not sure that I would agree with that.  Many people may have a desire to have a negative balance of BTC which is perfectly legitimate.  In that case, borrowing from your own stash is not possible.

At this point I _want_ to own N BTC.  I can short by borrowing (from myself) and selling to the point where I have fewer than N and plan to buy them back when the price falls.  If it doesn't fall, I lose...if I my N target remains valid and I buy in to achieve it.

I believe that 'margin' commonly implies 'leverage' (using fewer notional value of one asset to control a higher value of another) but I am not certain of that.

Back to Blitz's original; who is 'we'?  You could probably find someone to loan you some BTC if the price is right.  If I were to do so, I would want pretty solid protection up to about $100/BTC (where I plan to sell a certain fraction of my holdings anyway) and I don't have any automation set up (to buy in in an emergency) so I'l probably want, say, $10,000 to loan you 100 BTC.  Kind of negative leverage if you will.  I would be surprised if you jumped on the deal...and disappointed since in reality I have no interest in dealing with all the hassles.

I agree with that.  A small percentage of people would be able to play and win the cat/mouse game.  But that does not mean that such a project would not be worth attempting.  Even a partial success would be extremely useful in managing many aspects of how a general society operates and keeping control of them.  I suggest that Mubarak would be happily in power today had he better management of how people communicated and organized, and probably all he would have needed was actionable information on who communicated with who when with an 80% coverage.  I doubt that this lesson was wasted an many leaderships.  Or that they had not already anticipated/observed this principle.

OK, I'll put aside the impracticality.  Who gives a god-damn if "yogi's random hash server" is blocked or not?  Yogi and a handful of friends who 99.999% of people couldn't give two shits about even if they could understand the inherent value.  Good luck trying to sway the general population about the importance of your random hashes...as if a consensus there mattered anyway.

Yes.  Would you risk everyone's well being for such a minor inconvenience...or do you have more nefarious reasons for being so obstinate?  Hmmm...  Do you want to voluntarily show up at Gitmo for some waterboard fun or would you like a drone strike on your ass?

My two-second solution:

The user can buy some more software that encapsulates legitimate binary data in a wrapper which contains the necessary header information to understand the format and evaluate the contents.

Mostly just terrorists would be trying to send binary data, and my tax dollars can go into subsidizing software engineering to assist vendors of such things as security cams so they can get with the program (without causing to much of a nuisance to 99% of the user-base.)

And if data is questionable, it can just be blocked.  You cannot be to safe when so many lives are at stake you know.

I suggest that it would be at least plausible.  Here's how I would engineer the solution:

Either inflate or create a crisis involving the internet and encryption.  For best results, involve some kiddie-porn loving Muslim terrorists who run a white slave ring and are about to impose Sharia law in Alabama.

Next, for the protection of all civilized people, pass some legislation stating that only certified vendors are allowed to use encryption.  Of course they could sell you modified versions of your favorite software or plugins for said or whatever so with a little effort even Grandma could still do her banking or whatever.  Naturally 'certification' requires that a usable key is available to our protectors in the government.

Now have all providers at suitable points mandated to run gear which would simply block any encrypted traffic which was not accessible.  That is, not generated by software provided by certified vendors.  These details are so technical that almost nobody should care or need to bother understanding them.  Of course there will be various annoyances and teething problems and what-not, but since it is for the protection of all good freedom-loving people, that should be acceptable.

Anyone who has a problem with such a solution is probably doing something bad and is a threat to society.  They may just be some leftist hippie type who value privacy on some weird philosophical grounds, but they'll just need to suck it up and get in tune with the 2000's and learn what it means to deal with the terrorism which is all around us everywhere we look.

Sure.  Verizon can start paying me, as a citizen, the rate I want for the right-of-ways where there infrastructure lays.  And they can start paying me for the intellectual property rights to the technology which originated from a DARPA project (read, my tax dollars.)  Then they can act as shitty and totalitarian as they like with 'their' infrastructure.
 
Interestingly it was not that long ago that the CEO of Verizon (I think it was) actually got prosecuted by the justice department for supposed financial reasons.  The funny thing about it is that he was about the only one over the last decade.  Some suppose that it may have had something to do with Verizon having the audacity to ask for subpoena before allowing our intelligence services troll in the oceans of their customer's data.  AT&T and the rest had no compunction about doing so, and were subsequently granted retro-active blanket immunity for their crimes (presumably if they agreed to commit such crimes on demand going forward.)  I figure that Verizon would fall into place...if not jump out in front.

I agree, but it remains the case that the number of USD required to obtain x amount of physical is highly influenced by and not far off of the paper price.  I consider it a great gift from the paper folks and a great incentive to take advantage of the situation while it exists since it could fail at any time.  In fact it has briefly failed already on some PM markets like silver in recent years, but the rips have managed to be patched up.  I don't anticipate this happy situation surviving for to much longer...but I've been wrong about timings in the past so I allow for the possibility of the situation persisting for longer than I would expect.

I started out with no wallet (except my temporary working wallet) having more than 20 BTC.  As the price fell (and hence my accumulation rate and magnitude increased), I switched this to 100 BTC each.  I keep all of my wallets universally accessible, but the ability to turn them from encrypted blobs to workable entities is a real bitch.  Even for me it would require days of preparation and travel to get at most of them.  Since most of my BTC are long duration speculative bets this situation is fine for my use-case.