A gram of gold is 0.035274 oz. A gram is the minimum unit commonly traded. The minimum bitcoin transaction is 0.0000543 BTC and should have a name as well. This minimum unit is most commonly used for creating contracts.

[contract creator]

There are many ways to secure a non-negotiable contract:

1. Trusted keys from a central source like Verisign
2. Captcha
3. Puzzle solving
4. Hashing a challenge message (aka Hashcash)
5. 2fa

Or any combination of the above. What makes Ethereum as a (non-currency) contract creator more fair by using a currency that is mined by centralized corporate miners? Eth seems superfluous.

Legal tender laws have always been the orb of power since Rome. They order us to "render unto Caesar" and trust God when in fact we are putting faith in a symbol. Thinking of the blockchain as a vault of coins makes it a target for power mongers. It needs no such name. It needs no graven image. It is only a blockchain. A secret handshake called key signing is all you need to send it's message of value. Let's remove the orb and not mention it's name in public.

I propose Bitcoin not be used to satisfy debt. There are many ways to use the blockchain other than a means to satisfy debt. In fact, it works much better as a commodity for barter. The practice of price lists has diminished our individual power to negotiate and has made us weaker as a society. Price lists should be replaced by electronically created prices quotes. Vendors need to take more responsibility for valuing their service and products. This way, people will stop thinking in terms of fiat money and instead in terms of whatever they prefer to use as a measure of value, like gold.

The same goes for Bitcoin exchanges. They should stop listing in terms of fiat money and use commodities instead. It is our responsibility to stop using the corrupt banking system. The internet gives us the power to take back individual liberty and choose how we trade. Cryptocurrencies give us the power of privacy in our business dealings to protect that liberty.

There are many online games that use in-game monies to support the trade of virtual goods and accounts. Their EULAs tend to enforce a policy that this in-game money does not convert to RL currency because they could be exposed to "money laundering" accusations. Here's the thing: they are GLOBAL games, and as such are already violating international laws by allowing users to behave in ways that may be offending these laws. For instance, some countries have morality or anti-defamation laws that are easily violated by users. That exposes the games themselves to accusations. Some games have had to resort to requiring identification and background checks before allowing players. Money Laundering and morality (not ethics) laws are antithetical to the marketplace of ideas of a global village. There is no evidence that the infinitesimally small MMORPG market can have any significant influence whatsoever on any global criminal statistic. In fact, these communities are player driven and quite good at self-policing such behaviors.

If games are global, they deserve to be open to the global marketplace of ideas which includes their economy. It's up to the individual nations to police the behavior of its citizens, not the responsibility of the rest of the world. The games themselves can control their economics as they see fit, but they cannot afford to police the world, nor should they.

If games do not open up their economies to outside game trading, then solutions will be found to bypass their game economics completely. Proof-of-burn can be used in any game that uses APIs to verify the wealth of a character account. This type of side-chain can be used to generate outside-game tokens that can then be exchanged for fiat money and recycled back into the game. It would require these APIs be recorded and verified by a blockchain before the company deletes the data, which would take several blocks at the very least because the data is hashed. Businesses would charge a small fee for the exchange services. Industries have already grown around game communications to bypass morality laws. Teamspeak and many other game assistance apps are widely available to encourage free speech. Free gaming economics is next.

Bitcoin follows this pattern pretty well.

http://www.geek.com/science/earths-mysterious-second-moon-and-its-odd-orbit-1616995/

It's time to disambiguate the term "Blockchain" and recognize the usage and meaning of the term. In a general sense it is a link connecting the historical timeline of cryptographic hashes. These hashes form blocks which are intended to contain transaction verifications of token exchanges. I will reference three two types of "Blockchains" and their moral relationship.

workchain--------stakechain

Workchains are based on Proof-of-Work for transaction verification purposes. In science, work is expressed in terms of expenditure of energy to achieve something measurable. It doesn't matter what the work is, only that it achieves something predictable based upon a given amount of energy. Given that the laws of physics are universal, participation can be accomplished without permission nearly anywhere with equivalent effect.

Stakechains are based on Proof-of Stake for transaction verification purposes. Stake is a sociological term for ownership of a percentage of a finite resource. Such ownership is usually mitigated by laws governing ownership and the power it bestows over time. Without such laws, ownership aggregates into power based on the necessity of that resource to the general population. Participation in this system requires asking the permission of stakeholders to give up some of their percentage.

Blockchains can exist anywhere on the spectrum. They may be entirely based on PoW from the distribution phase throughout its indefinite lifecycle. They may be distributed entirely by a central point and administered in any way that central authority wishes. They may scheme to find a balance in the spectrum that mitigates the permission requirement for participation with varying degrees of success.

From a moral perspective, excluding populations from an economy is apartheid. While Proof-of-Work systems can be entirely open and pseudonymous where anyone can jump in at anytime to participate in the blockchain security, Proof-of-Stake can be co-opted by agents of authority to deny access to the system for any undesirable populations. To get around this moral hazard, most Proof-of-Stake systems use Proof-of-Work systems to make their system available, at least while it pleases the stakeholders or it destroys the PoW system, whichever comes first. At that point, the PoS system no longer has a moral excuse for their aggregation of power. At that point, the only recourse is to use political power to mitigate the PoS system and restore equal access to the financial system. This is an undesirable consequence that would best be avoided by simply limiting stakechain technology to political authorities in the first place.

If Satoshi had used an S-curve allowing a slow release at first instead of large dumps of Bitcoins, would it have seemed more fair to those that shout "EARLY ADOPTERS ARE ELITISTS!" and only now would 50 BTC blocks be offered?

If larger amounts are transmitted and they want to use payment channels, but the other party doesn't have enough to credit in another channel because they already have large channels open, then how will they find channels capable of linking them? It seems like a 6 Degrees of Cheryl's Birthday problem.

Bitcoin offers new ways to manage money. One new way is to offer services of securing transactions without ever actually touching money. Bitcoin's multisignature allows people that are not entirely comfortable with securing their own wallets the ability to designate a third party to authenticate a transaction without that party having direct access to the funds themselves. This way the signatory representative acts more as a Notary Public than a bank. They would be completely optional and can in no way hinder any transactions due to any actions or inactions. They would have no financial responsibility to their clients other than offering a service of convenience and added security. The responsibility for securing a full set of signatures would still be with the wallet holder. Only a partial set of signatures would be given to the Signatory.

This is similar to how Bitcoin escrow services work except the wallet holder has all the keys, but keeps some of them secured in other locations.

I'm exploring the notion of Bitcoin as a tool for smart contracts as they apply to online games. So far all online gaming is done through central servers. The rules for poker are clear and should be easy enough to program into a decentralized contract. The roles of the dealer would need to be enforced as well as the players so all players share equal stake and a dealer that quit would be penalized. Confederacy would need to be eliminated through randomization and anonymization. Thoughts?

Artificial intelligence and the fridge
http://on.ft.com/1zSz2tw

In science fiction, this scenario — called “singularity” or “transcendence” — usually leads to robot versus human war and a contest for world domination.
But what if, rather than a physical battle, it was an economic one, with robots siphoning off our money or destroying the global economy with out-of-control algorithmic trading programmes? Perhaps it will not make for a great movie, but it seems the more likely outcome.

With Bitcoin, it's hard to see the downside. DACs (decentralize autonomous companies) are inevitable. This article is another vestige of irrational fear about money.

Parallel computers are often used to analyze complex systems in supercomputers. It seems that blockchain analysis has similar complexity that would benefit from supercomputers. They could be used to track outputs for metacoins and optimize wallets to minimize transaction size. If SHA256 ASIC coprocessors were added to a conventional parallel computer, it could be optimized for blockchain analysis.

Can we get images to post as re-sizable thumbnails? Images are fun, but they should be optional.

Dear Whalebears,

You have given so much. You have donated many cheap bitcoins to us poor Hodlers. I just wanted to start a thread to show my appreciation for you! In spite of having lost bitcoins due to scams, thefts, and bad security practices, you have helped us replace our losses, and for that you deserve our deepest thanks! On behalf of my fellow Hodlers, I hope we give you a warm feeling inside and I also hope that they join me in showing their appreciation as well!

In the spirit of hodling, I raise a glass to you fine Sirs!

HODL!

Let's make 2016 the year Bitcoin becomes 100% hacker proof. How do we do it?

This would be super cool to give people a choice. Then they could save the babies, puppies, and rainbows!

A lot of grid is wasted during off peak times. Energy is stored or sold in inefficient manners. Instead, they should use any excess energy in mining bitcoins to sell. Rather than raising electric rates, they can increase their customer base. Their price discovery will be the electricity/btc pair. They can choose which will be most profitable. Storage can then be bought by customers for their needs based on rates. This just seems more efficient than being forced to sell to only one market.

If you include a multisig transaction in your block, can you have the block reward go to that address?

But please don't bore me with long explanations. Your PoS coin should be so good it practically sells itself.

It's too quiet in development space. All we hear about anymore is altcoins and payment protocol layers. There's a few small hardware projects that have been slowly improving. I'm concerned that hardware development has nearly stopped, but find myself doubting that possibility. Somebody somewhere is working on something big in complete secrecy.

I wonder at the value in such a policy in this new spirit of openness. Other have expressed suspicion at hushed motives by core developers in private efforts. While some secrecy is important during startup phases, full disclosure of development should be SOP. After all, all bitcoin holders are also investors in all Bitcoin projects.

I can understand if a large enterprise doesn't want to associate its image with a politically charged topic, but we're beyond that now. Bitcoin is ready for some serious R&D for protocol hardware. I can only hope NDAs are why it's so quiet lately.