I didn't say it was "about" symmetry. I said you maximize the efficiency of the numbers at the midpoint. We already have the endpoints established with accepted names. The fact that it's symmetrical just makes it easier to understand and convey to others. You can simply memorize "The Rule of Ten Thousand," and you can convert all this stuff in your head. It's simpler and more intuitive.

This desire to turn Satoshis into pennies for the sixth spot seems very arbitrary to me. You end up creating very large numbers for Bits, whereas by using the fourth place you always keep numbers at 10,000 or less. That makes it easier to work with over a longer period of time.

Bits should be designated as the FOURTH decimal place since it's the midpoint between Bitcoins and Satoshis.

The sixth place lacks symmetry vis-a-vis the already accepted and undisputed designations of Bitcoin and Satoshi. Why would you go so far into the decimal places to split the range like this when you have a midpoint staring you in the face?

When you have a major denomination at the midpoint, then you maximize the efficiency of the numbers. You'll never have to deal with a number greater than 10,000 when you are to the right of the decimal. A Bit would be 10,000 Satoshis, and a Bitcoin would be 10,000 Bits.

Isn't this more intuitive and natural?

Oh, come on. You think that approaching air pollution cases from the standpoint of property rights is "dangerous"? How so? What other basis would there be to sue? You can't rightfully sue anyone because you don't like them or don't like what they do. You have to show cause. You have to show that they are somehow impinging on your rights. Those rights all pretty much reduce (in the legal sense at least) to property rights. That's why libertarianism is so simple to understand. You "own" yourself and your justly acquired property, and no one therefore has the right to initiate force against you to deprive you of your property or harm your person. Everyone has the same rights, and there are no favored elite persons or classes who have "more" rights than others, and no underclasses that have fewer rights.

Of course people won't all agree over disputes. That's why we need systems to resolve disputes in the first place.

I'm not talking about common law. Libertarianism is based on self-ownership, property rights, and the non-aggression principle. The values that have given rise to common law may or may not intersect with these values.

What do you mean by "because it's not black and white" that courts could not reach consistent fair decisions for all? Is anything ever "black and white" as long as two parties are disputing something? The whole reason they are in a dispute is because it's not black and white to both of them. And every case has multiple elements, and therefore may not be black and white to observers or the lawyers or the judges or the juries either. That's why we try each case on the merits of that particular case. Principles may seem to be solidly black and white, but how they get applied to a particular case can differ, and people can easily have different opinions or biases on the matter. But does the state ever reach consistent fair decisions for all simply by issuing edicts? You seem to be saying that state edicts are more fair to people than a court process where two parties make a case before a neutral third party. That would seem rather easy to prove false, don't you think? I mean, state regulation is more likely to be based on power, money, and influence than it is on property rights and a fair hearing, right?

You say that state regulation is "simpler." What does that mean exactly? Does that statement have any ethical context? It seems to dispense with ethics altogether - and that seems a whole lot more "dangerous" than having parties able to bring their disputes before trusted neutral third parties. State regulation is simply an edict by people claiming to have a monopoly rule over a territory. Why does that outrageous and insupportable claim just get swept under the rug whenever conversations like this spring up? What standing does the state have when two parties are disputing over how their actions affect one another?

If you and I are merely subjects of the state and must accept whatever "solution" they have set for us ahead of time, then that seems to be a much bigger problem than air pollution, don't you think? And btw, air pollution has continued to be an issue even though the world is filled with massive modern states that have gigantic budgets and produce volumes of laws and edicts continually. The idea that people have of the state and how it works or is supposed to work doesn't ever seem to match the reality. We don't ever see the state making things "simpler" or solving problems. They seem to make things much more complicated than they need to be while they exacerbate problems and create new ones.

IIRC, Rothbard simply applied the homesteading principle (an easy to understand aspect of property rights) in air pollution cases, and it seems quite logical. I don't see any huge difficulty in trying such cases at all. In fact, I don't know how you would dispute the principles involved. Look into it if you're interested.

Oh brother. Anarchy doesn't mean lawlessness. Statism, however, is the perfect example of lawlessness where the mob rule you cite and thug justice is actually institutionalized.

And libertarianism is anarchism, BTW. You might want to do some research on the subject.

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How can state regulation ever be considered necessary? A state regulation is nothing but an edict issued by men with guns who threaten to initiate violence against provably innocent people for provably innocent acts. Think about that for a minute. Try to cite an example of state regulation being enforced which is not an initiation of violence against an otherwise innocent person. Regulation is not like a law against murder or a law against theft where the violation of person or property is addressed. It is an attempt to criminalize various aspects of otherwise peaceful, voluntary, non-aggressive human intercourse (i.e., freedom). It is done in the name "preventing crime," and that is why the concept is so Orwellian. It totally perverts the concept of law. It actually manages to criminalize freedom while simultaneously legitimizing organized crime (the armies of state thugs who punish innocent people for various non-crimes).

Air pollution is a simple matter of enforcing property rights. Read Rothbard on the subject. And I'm pretty sure that if you investigate the matter, you'll find that the rules for air traffic were developed by the pioneers of the industry long before government got involved. The state is always a latecomer to these things, and usually steps in so that politicians can grandstand and gain more power for themselves and their cronies. There is plenty that has been written about market solutions to perceived public goods problems like air quality, air traffic control, the radio spectrum, etc. If you apply the homesteading principle properly, then it's fairly easy to work out the property rights of those involved in a dispute.

Sorry, but that doesn't even make any sense. If MtGox "probably violated numerous [state] regulations" then how does that "disprove entirely the anarchist notion that there should be none [state regulations]"? When did Japan step in to stop Gox from violating regulations, running their company into the ground, and causing huge customer losses? People can and do violate any regulations they want just like they can and do violate any law they want. They can also be wildly incompetent and/or negligent if they want. State regulation isn't magic, state law isn't magic, and state prosecution isn't magic. And what kind of compensation to victims would it be if the state goes the whole nine yards and eventually ends up putting Karpeles in a cage for a few years? What's so great about that if all your money is still gone?

Now that Gox has filed for bankruptcy, the laws of Japan will most likely act to protect Karpeles from any personal liability for losses. They'd have to make a criminal case against him. So what? If the money's gone then the money's gone whether or not there were regulations and whether or not they prosecute and whether or not Karpeles ever has to go to jail or pay a fine.

Anarchists are not against regulation, only monopolistic state regulation which violates the non-aggression principle. This is very easy to understand if you pay attention to the argument. It's first of all a question of ethics. No one has the right to initiate force against an innocent person. In the case of state regulation, you have a monopoly of force attempting to criminalize certain aspects of trade based on the entirely delusional notion that the state is our protector and that it is able to magically anticipate and stop crimes before they happen by punishing innocent people who have in fact not committed any crime. It's so completely ridiculous that it's self-refuting.

The problem is that state regulation, apart from all the actual harm it does to business, also harms people psychologically. It produces a delusional mindset of dependency and complacency. It prevents people from acting in their own best interests and creating the kind of society everybody says they want. Instead of actually taking steps to build that society, all they do is whine and complain and then beg for state intervention to make them feel better about their whining and complaining. "Something must be done!" And that always means a new tax, a new fee, a new restriction on business, a few new hundred pages thrown onto the law books for lawyers and bureaucrats to get excited about.

When we are dependent on the state like this, we never get to grow up. We never get to see what the market can produce. The solution to shady, poorly run exchanges is to get rid of all the current stack of ridiculous laws and regulations which keep people from starting exchanges in the first place out of fear of random persecution and possible prosecution by "regulators." You get rid of all that strangling crap and you simply allow people to be free. Let them trade. A free market will absolutely produce the best solution because you will have wide open competition, and it won't be about who has the most money to hire the most lawyers. You shouldn't have to do business with a shady corporation in a foreign land. You should be able to have exchanges anywhere and everywhere. Let the cream rise to the top. Let the poorly run ones fail. If people need to lose some money before they figure out how to apply common sense to their own money management, then so be it.

What many people don't understand about markets is that failure acts as a stimulant. Money and market share tends to move from weak hands to strong ones. Those with a better business plan stand to gain enormously by designing their business to meet customer demands for such things as safety and transparency. But markets need some time to fully develop, and entrepreneurs need the freedom to act and come up with viable solutions without being squashed by monopolistic vultures before they even have a chance.





 

Because trading is not a crime, and this so-called "regulation" criminalizes trade.  If you and I agree to exchange bitcoin for dollars, that is not a crime. There is no victim. We have a right to voluntarily exchange our property.

If, on the other hand, you steal my bitcoins or my dollars (or otherwise obtain them fraudulently), then that is a crime - an actual crime with a real flesh-and-blood victim and actual provable damages. There are LAWS against crimes like THEFT and FRAUD. There have been since...forever. Those laws are essentially just. It would be nice if they were properly enforced.

Please note that the existence of laws against theft and fraud do not magically stop people from committing such crimes. Likewise please note that criminalizing trade through "regulation" does not magically stop people from committing crimes either, but it does introduce something new into the picture - the punishment of provably innocent parties, and the intentional distortion of markets by government and corporate forces bent on power and control.

If we want to see some measure of justice, we should advocate that laws against theft and fraud be properly enforced, not that innocent people be punished for non-crimes or that certain groups be given control over markets other than the people who voluntarily participate in them.
 

Forcibly stripping human beings of their right to trade freely does not sound like prudence to me.

Can you enlighten us on why you think voluntary exchange is a crime?

Oh, they control us for our safety and protection? The nicest thing I can say about that sentiment is that it's utterly delusional. In the real world, governments are corrupt to the core and the financial system is one gigantic fraud regardless of how it's "regulated." Regulation is, in fact, one of the primary tools of tyranny and is typically used to create barriers to entry in order to preserve the existing power structure. Why do you think the Fed can create 85 billion dollars a month and hand them out to their buddies in secret without being bothered by anyone? Is that to protect you and make you safe?

You're whining about actual crimes committed in the bitcoin world? Well, there are already laws (not "regulations") against fraud and stealing. Do you see the state tracking down actual criminals who defrauded people of bitcoin? No. You see them arresting innocent people on fake charges of "money laundering," which is a completely made-up non-crime with NO VICTIM. If there is an actual victim to crime involving bitcoin, they don't do anything because they don't gain control over markets that way. It's just an expense. It doesn't grow the power base.

This idea that the state is your buddy and that it loves you and protects you is beyond childish. And let me clue you in on something, free people don't need a license to buy and sell. Buying and selling is not a crime.

What "illegal things" were offered by the undercover lawn enforcement orificer to the bitcoin seller? It was just an exchange of bitcoin for dollars. It's clearly just another case of flat out persecution. The only criminals here are the costumed thugs who kidnapped these men at gunpoint and locked them in cages for absolutely no justifiable reason. Those men harmed no one. There is no victim here. There is no loss and no injury and no fraud. Therefore, there is no crime.

Absolutely. So-called "money laundering" is not a real crime. There is no victim. It's just an attempt by the state to punish SOMEONE for the alleged crimes of the "guilty" who "violated" some other state edict which also probably does not have a real victim. It creates out of thin air a so-called conspiracy between provably innocent people and faceless nameless supposed criminals somewhere down the line of murky trade connections where an actual crime against person or property may or may not have occurred.

This is a perfect example of lawn enforcement creating a "crime" where none exists just to bully and intimidate people and create some sort of ridiculous justification for their existence. This is obviously not a real crime because there is no one to bring charges who can legitimately claim an injury or loss from this transaction. It's just a voluntary exchange of value. Period.

It's telling how they introduce the prospect of credit card fraud to make all of this seem like the seller willingly engaged in a conspiracy to defraud an actual person. The "money laundering" charge hangs on absolutely nothing but an edict from the state which takes away our right to freely engage in trade, so they always have to come up with some supposed real crime to insinuate into the mix even though no such crime has actually occurred. This makes the innocent seller, whose only interest is in selling bitcoins for dollars, an "accomplice" to non-existent crime against a non-existent person! The state makes it sound as if the orificer's lie establishes a real victim and a real crime. They also seem to insinuate that we are all personally responsible for the possible actions of people we trade with where there is absolutely no other connection to us, our actions, or our intentions. This is just guilt by association. It's a trick used every day in smearing and attacking people verbally. They use it in state propaganda, and now it has become entrenched in state law. The state has almost completely taken over every aspect of trade. If everything you do with your property and money is not fully controlled right now, then it is tracked and traced and noted and filed to the extent currently possible, and ready to be called up at any time to be used against you for any reason at any time. This is the real crime here - the state creating a situation where the innocent are made out of be guilty, where it's a "crime" to engage in voluntary exchange without the state's permission and without fully submitting to their demand to control your life.

It's one thing to comment on how to avoid becoming a victim of the state's absurd aggressions and their vague entrapping edicts and "regulations," but don't for one minute think you can justify the state's actions in any of these cases, or say that "these people had it coming". This and other cases such as the Bitinstant guy, the seizing of Mt. Gox's accounts in the US, and many others, are all completely bogus and have no merit whatsoever. They are clearly cases of state persecution. Anyone who doesn't make this clear in their comments is only contributing to the power of the police state.

They want us all thinking we're all guilty and that we deserve punishment. We all need to fight against this incessant and insanely creepy propaganda in our comments. Don't give these people any more power than they already have. We need to tear down their arguments and justifications for all the violence they commit, not mindlessly support it by blaming the people who get caught in their web.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that people will always support the government view that its systems are just fine and that alternatives like Bitcoin are the villains? You tell me. You say you're from Greece. Do Greeks think the government monetary and financial system is just fine?

How far can it go? We can only guess. The demand for this kind of currency is potentially huge and the supply of the standard Bitcoin unit is relatively small, so barring any insurmountable interventions by colluding governments or unforeseen bugs in the system, it seems to be on pace to take significant market share from fiat currencies and therefore rise in price indefinitely until it reaches the saturation point. The argument that its utility is the same regardless of the price and that this will keep the price down doesn't take into account the liquidity (in BTC) needed to provide that utility to a large number of people across the world on demand. As long as most holders are not selling, new buyers will have to outbid each other for the newly-created units coming from mining in order to gain that utility. Adoption and use of the currency must keep pace with the price increases in order to sustain them long term. It has to be used in commerce in an ever-increasing way, otherwise the price will be driven by mere speculation (which is not a demand for utility but profit).

I think it will be here in 4 years. It's very hard to kill.

What are the dangers? The shutting down of exchanges and/or merchant services is probably the main danger from governments. They are able to act swiftly and decisively on any part of the ecosystem exposed to them. So exchanges, merchant services, and other Bitcoin related businesses are at risk directly if they are out in the open and the government decides it wants to crack heads, but as long as this is not a worldwide coordinated effort, it will be limited in effect. Bitcoin should be highly resilient to bureaucratic attack due to is design.

That doesn't make any sense at all. You don't have to use "intrinsic value" to explain money or the regression theorem.

Governments can - at any time - stop inflating their debt-based currencies and stop spending more than they take in. They have the upper hand in that any policy changes they make will ripple through the market on a large scale much faster than any alternative currency can impact the market or have such a large scale effect.

Part of the promise of Bitcoin is that it will eventually force governments to reform their own systems simply by presenting a better alternative to people. In order to compete and retain some semblance of power, governments will have to address the market conditions and become serious about reform, if only for the sake of self-preservation. If things were really looking like all fiat was going to go over the cliff of hyperinflation due to wealth pouring into alternatives, then they would have no choice but to engage in serious reform. Any such reform will help to stabilize national currencies and make them attractive enough to stem the tide of the nightmare scenario described by the OP. People will have time to adjust.

The threat of the use of force on a grand scale by governments is largely a paper tiger. It is only useful for them to use force at the margins, otherwise it becomes counter-productive to the survival of the regime itself. Any regime that goes all out with a show of force on a large part of the population at one time is setting itself up for failure because once you go that route you lose all propaganda value and even the masses are not fooled by your claims of legitimacy. You become ripe for overthrow.

The future currency game, I think, will be more like a chess game than an actual war. There will be ground gained and lost on both sides. If you consider that politics is a marketplace of ideas, and you understand that markets tend toward equilibrium, you can predict that forces on both sides will tend to balance over time. By balance I mean that both sides are always pushing back, and that tends to create short-term stability and predictability. It doesn't mean a 50/50 balance. It just means that the tension between them produces a balance one can quantify presently and predict in the short term. Once that state has lasted for a while, a new picture emerges of who's ahead and who's behind, but both are still pushing against each other. Then the opposing forces adjust their policies accordingly. It's a mistake to extrapolate present trends out indefinitely. Things tend to only go haywire in isolated spots, not in the big picture. So you might get a crazy dictator or an insane political system for brief periods of time in limited areas, but the political market is so wide that these aberrations typically do not propagate throughout the whole world.

The nightmare scenario is of course a tyrannical world-government which is not afraid of displaying an extreme show of force as a matter of policy because it loses its inhibition and thinks it has captured the queen in the grand chessboard of world politics, but it's difficult to see anything like that lasting long term. Ultimately, all these systems rest on the support of the people. They either actively support or acquiesce. But if you push too far, even those who would otherwise acquiesce are forced by the harsh circumstances to take a stand. The only reason for people to compromise with tyranny is if they see self-preservation in it. Once it becomes clear that the survival and comfort of a certain portion of the population is not predictably certain, then you can get an explosive push-back, and that's when revolutions take place.

The Austrian school holds that all economic value is subjective. Since economic value is subjective, i.e., in the mind of the subject, all we need to know to do objective economic analysis is that someone values something. The way human beings express that they value something is that they seek to acquire it, either through some type of original appropriation or through exchange. So properly observing human action is what gives us an objective view of what people subjectively value.  That's all we need.

Note that this approach to economic value is merely methodologically subjective. It is not an attempt to philosophically deny objective value, rather it is simply seeking to explain human action as it pertains to the field of economics.

Economics is a narrow discipline while exploring the notion of value in general is a wider philosophical endeavor. Not understanding this is what leads people into endlessly arguing the semantics of every conceivable notion of value. We do not need to go there. The use of the term "intrinsic value" leads us away from the narrow field of economics because it strongly implies a philosophical worldview where objects are constitutionally endowed with value in themselves apart from the human subject who values them. While this may be appropriate in another context, it doesn't help us within the discipline of economics.

That many people, including Peter Schiff, will use this term at times to refer to market or exchange value should be viewed merely as the use of a colloquialism. It simply fails as a technical term to describe economic value because people routinely misunderstand and misapply it when it's taken that way, and so go far afield of the narrow purpose of economic inquiry. You only need to search this forum for "intrinsic value" to see how useless and distracting the term can be. Language is supposed to help us clarify thought. So if a term produces more heat than light in a given context, then it's not working for us and we should abandon it.

Thank you. I'm not an academic, but I have followed the Austrian school generally through articles and lectures put out by the Mises Institute and such. As a long-time libertarian I have always been interested in money and alternative currencies. Bitcoin has provided an exciting challenge to those who think intently about economics and money, so I've had to wrestle with every pro and con argument that's out there relating to cryptocurrency.

This is a pet peeve of mine. The term "intrinsic value" should not be used at all as it sets people to arguing all over again about stuff that's already been settled and explained to death a thousand times.

People use it in a colloquial sense, like Peter Schiff does, for market value. But if market value is meant, then market value should be used. But when people use "intrinsic value," then suddenly you get all these arguments that go off in every direction talking about why we value everything from warm breezes to pizzas to music to hammers. It's really annoying because it's completely unnecessary. The Austrian understanding that economic value is subjective does away with the necessity to delve into the metaphysical implications of every kind of "value" one can imagine and discuss.

Peter Schiff is none of those things. He's one of the few commentators who actually understands economics and could explain the banking crisis when it happened. In fact, he predicted it.

That's not really correct. Austrians hold that economic value is subjective. The regression theorem is simply an inference about the emergence of money from barter. It's saying that a medium of exchange must have been valued for itself by the market prior to being adopted for use as a money. From the point of view of monetary theorists, it was necessary to break the perceived infinite regression of saying that something always had value as a medium of exchange. Obviously you have to close the loop somewhere, so this is just a logical inference which keeps you out of the circular logic of saying that something always had medium-of-exchange value when discussing the emergence of money.

Peter unfortunately does use the term "intrinsic value," but he's not an academic. What he means is market value apart from its use as a medium of exchange. What people in the hard money crowd find it hard to grasp is that human beings can quite easily ascribe value to something that was initially valueless (no market price) like the tokens produced by the Bitcoin software on Day 1 of its launch. No bickering about monetary theory can contradict what we actually observe in the marketplace. We see clearly that people started valuing Bitcoin for itself due to its perceived utility or novelty or whatever. It's irrelevant what the reason to value it was in the minds of the participants. The relevant point is that they then form the market for Bitcoin, and it's off to the races. Bitcoin is being used as a medium of exchange now, and so it obviously had to have had a value to people (if not a price) before it started being traded for pizzas and such. That's the point of the theorem. It's expressing the idea that this is a logical necessity. But the regression theorem should not be used as a predictor. It just says that if something becomes a medium of exchange then it was valued for itself immediately prior to that. People tried to use it as a predictor when it came to Bitcoin and got confused.

So one persistent error is in thinking that if something did not always have a market price (like the original BTC tokens), then it was never really valued for itself in the marketplace, and therefore can't become a money (due to the regression theorem). This is obviously a misunderstanding of the theorem, but it's hard to catch when you've focused on the virtues of hard money for so long. We never think of gold and silver as being valueless at one time because most pat explanations of the emergence of money start with precious metals being valued commodities already. But originally they did not have prices at all - just like Bitcoin. They were newly discovered curiosities at one point too. So this failure to go back to the beginning of the story of precious metals led to confusion when people analyzed Bitcoin as being merely valueless tokens with "no intrinsic value." Add to that the fact that Bitcoin was engineered on a computer and you get an understandable resistance in people who have been immersed in classical monetary theory.

No. You missed the point of the poll. The point is to do away with naming each decimal place by naming just the 4th since it is the midpoint of the range. We already have Bitcoin for the whole unit and Satoshi for the 8th place. So we can move forward with just three names that will help people to more easily deal with the smaller units.

We'll express values as 50 bits, rather than the bewildering .00500000 bitcoins. This could be used as the new standard unit for everyday transactions. This one name is all we'd need for a very long time since it covers a range of 10,000 units. The benefit of such a naming scheme is that we'd almost always be dealing in whole numbers. Whole numbers are more visually appealing and there's much less of a chance of missing a decimal place and sending a costly erroneous payment.

At the current exchange rate, you can buy 10 bits for $1. So the BIT price would be displayed as $.10 rather than a BTC price of $1000. Many people see this as a refreshing step forward in terms of simplicity and marketability. If the exchanges adopted this scheme, many think that the $.10 price would make it much easier for people to buy in as, again, they'd be dealing in whole numbers of the named midpoint subunit rather than fractions of the main unit.

We are stuck dealing with the smaller units, so why not make it as simple as possible by just naming the 4th place so we can quote prices and payments in convenient whole numbers?