Heh.  Nope.  Engineer.  No interest in economics until maybe 10 years ago when I started to have money to figure out what to do with (though thinking back a long long time ago, I guess I did take an interest in econ 101 and got the top grade...mostly because I had not studied and thought I was behind so I put some dedicated focus on it for a few days.  But it was a fairly shitty university anyway without much competition at that level.)

As for the 'deflation' complaint, the whole idea revolves around ratios so absolute values are not even a concern.  The 'deflation' is utilized to facilitate a predictable (and long) lifespan is all.  A lot of the material (both presented and not yet presented) is fairly orthogonal.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

This is the biggest reason why I've no love lost for TA in mainstream markets.  Some people seem to be able to use it as an effective tool, but mostly on conjunction with solid fundamental analysis.

I would give more credence to TA in an out-of-band market like Bitcoin, but at the end of the day, I'm simply not a trader.  Having some clue about what the markets will do is only mildly of use to me in the relatively rare instances when I wish to buy or sell.  Even then, I find cost averaging to be more appropriate for me and I'm happy with the strategy.

It appears to me that genuine asks are filling in relatively quickly and in good volume over the last week or more.  I suspect that you are right and this is more than simple 'posturing.'

Chodpaba's take would be of interest here.  He seems to be pretty proficient in this sector of analysis.

Boy...not really.  My suggestion (which I made earlier) is to try to leverage Bitcoin's success in development of an architecture which really focuses on scalabity (while retaining the 'p2p' nature as at least I classify it.)  The key would be that a common vision is shared between the solutions and there is general cooperation.

This could take the form of simple sharding of a very Bitcoin-like protocol in which the shards are manageable at an entry-level and value is transferred between shards in more of a 'backbone network'.  An individual could still do a lot of transactions as today by choosing their shards carefully, particularly if their interaction was with vendors who were 'in' a lot of shards.

A solution which I have put some thought into is to have an extremely stripped-down and lightened up varient of Bitcoin with some extensions which could realistically be expected to live in perpetuity and would serve as a trusted 'reserve currency' upon which shards of various form are built.  I started to describe some of my earlier 'thought experiments' as http://bakcoin.org if anyone is interested.  The advantage of such a solution is that it could perhaps avoid the need for a 'backbone network' at all.  Maybe.

This is a good point, and I respect that you have made it.  It is actually related to a part of my comment that you snipped out where I called attention to the very different nature of Bitcoin vs. others in terms of 'centralized control'.

Anyone who cares to do something other than wave the pom-poms may notice that I have a great deal of respect for and hopes for Bitcoin even in the 'worst' of circumstances and am certainly not immune to recognizing the strong points which it has.

I thought so too...which is why it is surprising that anyone would fail the recognize the rhetorical nature of the question.  Unless they had not really followed the thread and comprehended some of the conceptual and time-frame features of it.   The nature of your other comments indicate that this is what we have here.


Unfortunatly that, and vastly more, is quite easy to do.  And is the basis for a lot of my concerns...


And my point is that I am not very convinced that that will always be the case.  It could be, but I would consider Bitcoin a failure if so.  On it's present trajectory at least.

I stayed away from that thread (and pathetically, making PM purchases) when you posted it for a reason.  I cannot speak for those who did not anticipate a possible correction at that time.

Even now I cannot say that we don't have further to go with the correction, but I personally feel that we are likely pretty close to the end of it.

I am quite certain that this is not the peak of the bull market in PM's insofar as people wanting to be sitting on physical is not nearly to the point that we'll see.  How, exactly, the further increase in 'value' will be expressed I am less sure of because I anticipate the strong possibility of entering uncharted waters...or at least waters where the charts have been severely damaged by the revenges of time.

To paraphrase our dear leader (in US-land and by extension in a lot of the rest of the world...):

  "I'm not interested in playing the game better; I'm interested in changing the rules of the game."

A big difference is that when Obama said it he was utterly and completely full of shit as history has shown.  But anyway, it looks to me like Satoshi also had similar instincts, and also that they were just a little bit to alien conceptually for a lot of folk.  Oh well.

When I log on to my Wells-Fargo account to transfer funds, is my computer a 'peer' to Wells's machines?

Until recently I did all my work on a machine which contained an up-to-date block chain and which I owned and controlled fully.  At that time I considered my presence in relationship to other participants in the economy as one of a 'peer', and I interacted with other participants directly (the '2' part) though I did rely on global network infrastructure which I pay a third party to provide.

_This_ is the archietecture which was described in most of the documentation related to Bitcoin, at least at the time I studied it significant.  As importantly, _this_ is one the aspect of Bitcoin which appealed to me the most about the solution.

Um...and BTC?

And again, 'smelling a trap' at that time was about as impressive as 'smelling a turd' at a sewage treatment facility.

I'm thinking that the US will prop up the EU even more blatantly than they already have, at least until near the election.  Probably be more transparent about it as well.  This would have the combine and much desired effect of keeping the status quo limping along rather than imploding during the election cycle, and also dropping the USDX.

As a related side note...

At some point it will really not be very truthful to refer to Bitcoin as a 'p2p' solution.  It is on a trajectory which makes Bitcoin not much more 'peer to peer' than Visa, PayPal, etc (assuming they have some amount of clustering and redundancy.)

Of course even with the realization of Bitcoin as a 'necessary infrastructure backbone' architecture there will still be (hopefully) a lack of centralized control that we see in other solutions and that is a very good thing.  But it will be decidedly non-P2P so it might be worth thinking about how to shift various text and 'sales pitches' as the time approaches.  Or get beat up about false advertising, and legitimately so.

I was going to point to that.  While that body of work probably didn't plant certain seeds of doubt in my mind, it certainly did help to germinate them.

Most 'Bitcoin is fine' arguments are winnable on this forum with two words: "Moore's Law."  I feel that there is some nuance to be contemplated.  Two of the more important ones:

 - Just because new technology is developed does not mean that it is necessarily universally available at low cost or without significant hurdles.

 - Bitcoin growth rates could easily dwarf technology developments even though both may be exponential.  (And if they don't, it means that Bitcoin remains a fringe toy for us geeks in my opinion.)

Nor to late to swap out that BTC, for that matter.

For my part, I got my ratios how I wanted them back in the $2-$3/BTC range and have had zero inclination to change it one way or another.

I'm drawing ever closer to having that the wad of USD fall from the sky, and still hoping for a buying opportunity in PMs since that is where I'll store the value.  I'd probably do some BTC as well, but it's such a risky hassle to transfer between USD and BTC these days, and one has to hand over so much private info to flaky exchange services that it's just not worth it.  I expect that going forward I'll do mainly large face-to-face transactions if/when I can set them up (and, of course, have a desire to do so.)

I have a pretty significant difference of opinion here.  I'm sure it sounds paranoid, but I think that there is a more than slight chance that Bitcoin could be attacked by the infrastructure providers.

Before writing this possibility off completely paranoid ravings, remember back to the time when AT&T had no compunction about installing Narus's in spite of it being about as diametrically opposed to our 'principles' as one could get.  Yes, it seems like no big deal now, but that only shows how quickly things drift.  IIRC, the only telecom who resisted was Verizon and it's CEO became the target of interest to the US justice department (making it one of the very few cases that our justice department has taken an interest in any white-collar individual for about 15 years now.)  And, of course, all of the telecoms got blanket immunity for any past wrongdoing, and probably future wrongdoing as well.

Philosophically, I contend that Bitcoin is not much more than an interesting toy if it is not needed to replace other failing monetary solutions.  And if it is, it will be under significant attack and will be again not very useful unless it can withstand the attack.  I will bet money (by dumping BTC) that a 'a smaller number of heavyweight "backbone" nodes' will be much more susceptible to the kinds of attack which will pose a genuine threat.

So, what to do?  Honestly I have concluded that the answer is 'nothing much different'.

Taking some lessons from biology, one can try to kill a starfish by chopping it into 1000 pieces.  The net effect is you end up with 1000 starfish.  Even more impressive to me, one can smash a sponge through a strainer in an attempt to destroy it but it re-forms itself into a similar sponge on the other side.

While highly non-specific, I believe that things like the above mentioned 'outside the box' concepts and constructions are the kinds of models to look at in designing a robust and durable p2p crypto-currency solution.  Certainly Bitcoin has some novel, clever, and powerful concepts to protect it against attack, but it also has some 'tried and true' architectures who's weaknesses I stress about since, as they say, 'a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.'  I think that it is not in the cards to rectify certain of these as a natural evolution of Bitcoin.

I suggest that the prime movers behind Bitcoin development, who I believe share the vision that crypto-currencies are a an empowering and positive thing for humanity, continue on the present course of making the solution as good as they can make it.  If/when a similar solution which has as a goal to address some of of the things which I've mentioned as concerns pops up, I do hope that there will be constructive symbiosis that will serve to strengthen everyone's hand.

Some companies (like one's I've worked for in the past) will be straight-up with their customers and explain why it is impossible to meet a perceived obligation no matter who's fault it is.  Customers tend not to be overjoyed but can usually understand and accept the reality.

Other companies (such as Dwolla) seem to find it a more rational solution to effectively steal back the money from their customers and doctor up whatever paperwork needs doctoring.

I'd personally be delighted to see Dwolla suffer because of their business choices, but I hope they do live long enough to lose the lawsuit that Tradehill has opened against them and cough up some investor dough before going under.

Dwolla has (according to Tradehill) cost me personally my preferred method transferring value between USD and BTC.

I like to make friends wherever I go

The key word being 'a' luxury car.

I have hopes that you'll be able to be turning MiG's over for Bitcoin next year.  I'm neither betting my life's saving on it nor am I ruling it out.

Better think that one through a bit more.  The US holds a vast quantity of so-called 'German' gold.  Gotta protect if from those bad bad Russians, ya know.

As I suspected, you have no earthly clue about the dangers that I was alluding to.  Oh well.