it is not clear how trustworthy these forecasts are, I think you need to wait for feedback

I'm still using a 32 bit version because my RAM sucks.

20-25%?! Wow, i'm pretty sure that your calcuation are wrong. In my opinion it would be a 10-15% less. But not twenty or more.

Well, with bitcoin you won't have to fill any paperwork, since once they are stolen, they are stolen forever and you can't do much about it. At least with credit cards you can have limits and most credit cards have pretty sophisticated fraud-detection systems that limit the damage.

Jon's brand of humor is to trivialize big events so that people understand their true significance. For example, he might trivialize a vote to wage war to illustrate the true magnitude of the decision. I'd say that the simple fact that he's talking about it is increasing awareness and could be interepreted as a good sign.

There have been some supreme court rulings and some amendments on this. I'm not terribly up to date. A pretty good reading of some insights can be found here:
https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/testimony-legislative-counsel-gregory-nojeim-know-your-customer-banking-regul

I quote:
The Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435 (1976) that individuals do not have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" under the Fourth Amendment in financial records pertaining to them but maintained by a bank in the normal course of business.
As a consequence the right to financial privacy act was created: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Financial_Privacy_Act
But that was amended later, including by the patriot act. It's a pretty complex legal issue with lots of back n forth. As it stands though, there simply isn't a big debate about the constitutional backing of monitoring people or even citizens. There is huge political consensus between republicans and democrats of the value of things like the patriot act, KYC/AML, the patriot act and generally any anti-terrorist act, many of the things the democrats chided republicans for during the Bush years have essentially been copied and extended to the extent that Cheney was praising him for it, and KYC/AML is probably the least controversial part of that package. Most people simply don't care because they don't think they'll ever be affected. (e.g. I'll never launder money in my life, what do I care?). But philosophically and politically this is a very dangerous way of thinking even though it makes a lot of sense intuitively.

It's one of the most disappointing things of the past decade in my opinion, because Obama ran for a big part on his ability to showcase constitutional infringements by his predecessor. After all, he taught constitutional law at an ivy league plus university, after having been educated to do so at an ivy league university. If you look at past interviews he has a very strong constitutional understanding, but has sadly completely waved it away. The most ironic one being: http://floppingaces.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/verbatim_obama-copy.jpg which is something he said while running for president in response to Bush's policies, obviously repeating the exact same mistake shortly after.

Glenn Greenwald did a nice presentation on this at Brown some time ago you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikCUHh3Ge_k
You could contact the EFF to see if they have any info on this. Again I'm not terribly up to date.

This. All of these things are part of the body of law, in particular the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 and the various extensions and acts (like the patriot act) that build on it, to take the US as an example.

Whether that is constitutional or not is a good question. You say that citizens are innocent until proven guilty. In fact, it's not citizens, I think it's very important to note that most constitutional rights (except very few, like voting rights) apply to 'any person', not 'any citizen', and the supreme court has in the past always used this interpretation.

But as for the substance of a person people innocent until proven guilty, so what? Just because a person hasn't been proven guilty yet, does not say anything about the legal or constitutional right to prevent monitoring. i.e. it's completely okay for the police to set up a speed sensor on a highway and monitor if someone is breaking the speed limit, right? Just because that person isn't proven guilty, and is thereby innocent, does not say anything about the right to not be monitored.
There are civil liberties like the right to be safe from unreasonable search and seizure. But that generally applies to things like ones house being entered and searched, or a person being frisked. That is sometimes called upon. I don't really think it holds up, too well, because it doesn't make any mention of things like financial records originally.

because 7/11 isn't taking any steps to actually accept Biitcoin. They accept payments from Pademobile wallet users, who just so happen to be able to fund their accounts via coin base. Not a single rank and file employee will have even the first clue about Bitcoin itself...

Inflation is still a tax on the poor as the rise of income is not based on the rate of inflation year over year but more on the whim of your employer and whether he/she decides to give you a raise which doesn't happen every year. Inflation does.

"yet... the police seized all computers and the physical bitcoins that the Deendant possessed."

So... even though it's not illegal to use electricity, they confiscated his computers, etc.?
Also, what's a physical Bitcoin? Possibly paper wallets? Why would they seize safes or paper if no marijuana was being grown in the house?

Except there is no way they are paying anywhere near $1K/TH. Think about it this way: two ANTMINER S3s do almost a TH and are a little bit over half a BTC each - long story short retail would be around $500/TH and you can BET with the connections these guys probably get it for half of that cost or less!

Think of it this way: You are buying hardware direct from the factories that make these things extremely cheap. ANTMINER S1s early on sold for over $4K each, and dropped to a couple hundred bucks just recently. The "cost" to actually make the units is less than that latter number...

Nah.. unlikely they hold any, as they're not in the business of speculating. Plus it's somewhat involved to hold bitcoin as well still. Especially for a big company such as that.
I think they just like it and want more people to use it. It would be great for them.

Very interesting I know something like this but not as far as bitcoin.lol great post

While this sounds simple. What do you think would the abusive husband do?
This is a common issue in the developing world. Just destroying the paper is not a solution as the husband will want to know for whom she voted.

"Force majeure" is a general term that encompasses a lot of different circumstances. I've never seen a policy exclude risks due to "force majeure" without defining precisely what those risks are. And in my experience, risks like war, riots, and civil unrest are usually excluded, while risks like flooding, fire, and other natural disasters are usually, but not always, covered.
I would not characterize kidnap, ransom, and extortion as force majeure.

And the whole transaction malleability issue - that might make a good insurance coverage case! (Which would be good for people like me, bad for everyone else.)

Mainstream press is now using http://ciaproject.org/projects/ for their source on CIA black ops? LMFAO!

Did anyone else catch the erik voorhees vs the troll (whentimeisshort) exchange in the comment section.
C'mon that dude has to be a paid shill, he copied and pasted the same 4 comments throughout the section. No one is that hung up and negative about something that doesn't affect them

The most critical in my opinion: Address the 1 MB blocksize limit to allow Bitcoin to scale.