I was wondering that since due to the nature of bitcoin microtransactions aren't really ideal on the network... and since most tipping might involve microtransactions wouldn't it make sense to have a site where you could load your bitcoin into an account and then tip from there. The site itself would be non profit and it would use the feature of bitcoin where you can include a bunch of outputs (tips) in just a single transaction.... and so it could do one of these transactions periodically .. maybe once an hour or every 4 hours or once a day... and basically making the ability to micro tip anyone bitcoins possible?
this could really come in handy for instance for things like bloggers or journalists that want a tiny tip for people who like their articles

Any one else notice that when trading fees on gox are reduced some incredible volatility tends to happen? I think for the next month it's going to be a scary ride for bitcoin and wealth will be sucked out of the ecosystem to the point where the price inevitably drops to the 300's. A bubble of the magnitude that we just experienced doesn't just get corrected in a few days I think.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around decentralized exchanges. But I thought I would give a shot at trying to understand them by explaining why I think they could be powerful.

The way I understand decentralized exchanges is that they use "soft connections" and regular exchanges use "hard connections" . For instance... to get money on a typical exchange you need to have a bank linked to that exchange. And you need to then send money to that bank physically. You could wire it from another bank or use a third party payment processor which still goes through the bank. That's a "hard connection"


A soft connection is more flexible. You don't need to send money directly to an exchange for it to appear there. For instance....... say you have an exchange called Gringo. Gringo "trusts" this gas station over in some city 1000 miles away. They trust them with a certain amount in monetary value. When someone goes into that gas station... it acts as a decentralized exchange because the customer could simply hand 100 dollars over to an employee inside and then the gas station could send a communication to the exchange that the money is there. Instantly that person could have money on the exchange and ready to buy bitcoin even though none was actually sent because there is a soft connection between the gas station and the exchange. This is a powerful idea because it means that if banks started colluding and cutting off money supplies to exchanges you could circumvent it.

So how then does the money actually get to the exchange?  Well that's where things get interesting. You could do it the old fashioned way and take it by donkey. You could just take whatever amount of money you accrue in a weekly period and send it through the mail each week. You could do something similar to banks and hire an armored truck to do it. But there is another more clever way that Ripple uses. Essentially what happens is more and more people join the network and instead of having to send money to the exchange........ debts and credits are analyzed across the network and they are then balanced out.

For instance suppose someone sends a bitcoin to the exchange and it happens to be the bitcoin that was bought with the money from the customer at the gas station. Where does he get his money? Well if he is also part of the network.... if he is in debt to say.... his tailor.... and his tailor was in debt to the gas station because they have a mechanic that fixed his car... then instead of having to actually move this money at all the debts and credits could be offset and the effect would "ripple" through the network, balancing out debts and credits in whatever optimal ways are possible. The person selling the bitcoin would get his debt to his tailor erased... the tailors debt to the mechanic would be erased and the gas station would turn the money over to the mechanic.

i installed the latest version of armory and also bitcoinqt on my 13.10 ubuntu. I looked and found that bitcoinqt was installed in /usr/bin

when i go to the settings for armory and tell it to look in that directory it still says it cannot find the software

Greed is a powerful force and it's an important aspect in the bootstrapping of bitcoin as a currency. Without the early adopter incentive there might not have been as many early adopters. It gets the ball rolling. And the ball is definitely rolling.

Just curious how possible it is for chinese exchanges to get around not being able to fund with dollars by using ripple

Just curious.... isn't the fact that the trading fee was 0 essentially mean  that btc chinas volumes importance is unknown? As another question how come Bobby lee hasn't said anything or made any statements?

It seems to me that if the rumors are true china basically just wants more control over the money going into and out of bitcoin exchanges so they can keep track of things.

"I don't see how this would be such bad news. China is banning only 3rd party payment processors from bitcoin exchanges.
The situation is exacly the same as for trading gold and silver in China. Here is a quote from Chinese gold and silver regulation law "All gold and silver purchases shall be transacted through the People's Bank of China. No unit or individual shall purchase gold and silver unless authorised or entrusted to do so by the People's Bank of China."
So by banning 3rd party payment processors all the bitcoin exchange traffic is going through Chinese banks which are under the control of People's Bank of China. Chinese regulators are essentially treating bitcoin trading same as gold and silver."

For a while now I have believed that bitcoin would wildly succeed... but even in that success the banks would still have their place because loans are popular and nobody would want loans in bitcoin. But doesn't colored coins change that? Lending industries could spring up on top of bitcoin and how they would work is exactly like how people predict colored coins would replace the stock market..... people would essentially lend colored coins to someone and in this way the problem of deflation is avoided. 

Isn't it possible for mike caldwell to mint bitcoins exactly as he did before but instead of payment for them in the amount of the coin plus his service fee.... to just be the service fee and then the customer can load their own private key with their coins? This means that he would not even be moving money around. all he would be doing is accepting some bitcoin for the service.

Customer wants a cassacius coin
Mike makes the coin like he does now with a hologram and everything
Mike charges .05 bitcoins or something for the coin
mike sends the coin to the customer
the customer loads their own bitcoin on to the key using a public key of the private key
the public key would be somewhere on the outside of the coin and it's amount would be easily verifiable
the coin is still tradable to someone else since the private key was never exposed still under the hologram seal

does it mean people are finally moving to better exchanges? Or......... there is just no buying pressure

Nothing has value in and of itself. Before man walked the earth... fruit hanging from trees didn't have a value, because no one was there to give it a value. We give things a value based on different circumstances. When someone says that gold is better because it has intrinsic value.... this intrinsic value they are talking about is simply the fact that it can be used for things other than money. But are those things it's used for worth the cost of gold currently? When gold broke over $1800 was the intrinsic value also 1800? Of course not. All the intrinsic value adds is a pretend price floor. All it means is that gold is less likely to be worth nothing because it can be used for things other than a store of value. I say less likely because there are no guarantees. Even gold could be worth nothing in certain circumstances. Imagine if a group of people were trapped in a cave with a limited amount of water. What do you think would be worth more a bottle of water or an ounce of gold?  When you realize that all the intrinsic value of gold does is add a psychological effect to the money and not much more you see that it's somewhat pointless. It means that although you might lose 9/10ths of your value you probably won't lose all 10/10ths. Big deal. Having that psychological effect is a slight advantage in golds favor... but bitcoin has it's own advantages that are better than just mere psychological advantages because they happen to be real and concrete. A limited supply. A predictable amount created in the future. A very transparent and open source protocol for anyone to see the inner workings of. The list goes on.  I don't necessarily dislike gold... I think at one time it had a great usefulness. When money was tied to gold that limited the creators of money to how much they could print. That was pretty invaluable. But it's also ancient history.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1sizg7/gold_vs_bitcoin_and_intrinsic_value/

If you see bitcoin as a global currency it's obvious that it's incapable of handling many transactions per second if it is really used much. Payment networks built on top of bitcoin would be the answer right?
what about ripple though... essentially ripple is already a payment network that is sort of "built on top of bitcoin" in that bitcoin could be used with it. Will it be ripple? or something else.

Just curious... I just found out about the site called fiatleak. It looks like tons of volume is going on in china but maybe I am not seeing things right. Is this how it normally looks in china? Is it normal?

if you hold bitcoins and then think the price may go down so you sell them and then buy back in at a lower price are you then supposed to report that to the IRS?

One of the most ridiculous arguments I have seen against bitcoin stems around the deflationary spiral myth. The idea is that when something rises in value... people hold it and so they stop spending and as that happens the situation escalates because of even more hoarding.

Here is why it's not a very intelligent argument. Ask the person asking it if they have invested in bitcoin? Surely if something only rises in value then you would be stupid not to have invested in it already. If they haven't invested in it then they would be throwing an opportunity away. But wait.............. the real reason they haven't invested in it is because they don't believe it will keep rising.

Wait what? If your argument is that something is bad because it only rises in value how could you possibly simultaneously think that it's bad to get in because it will lower in value? How can you think two completely opposite things?

The truth is that if something only rose in value... it's chart would look like a straight line. Bitcoin doesn't have such a chart.
The truth is that the hoarding problem is proven wrong every day...... right in your face.  When a trade happens on an exchange , on one end somenone is buying bitcoins and on the other end someone is selling bitcoins for currency. Selling your bitcoins for currency is the same thing as "spending" . You are simply spending your bitcoins and trading them for something else of value. There are only 2 reasons why you sell your bitcoins..... You want to buy something, or you think the price is going to go lower. Both of those reasons are incentives to spend. When the price rises on exchanges you don't see trading come to a halt... or stop.  Even during the last few weeks with a huge increase in popularity you don't see trading come to a stop. So even at times when bitcoin is at it's most extreme, temporary deflation........... spending doesn't stop (trading would start approaching a complete halt if the "spiral" part of the deflationary spiral problem was true).

Now that I have taken care of the "spiral" part of the argument.... I'll address the deflation part.  Even at times of bitcoins most extreme deflation... people still spend. But could it be argued that during those times.... less people are willing to spend their bitcoins? Of course it could be argued that because that is the whole reason the price rises drastically in the first place. Is it a problem, however?

Consider this...... if a merchant accepts dollars and bitcoins... then they could not be negatively effected by a sudden rapid deflationary period in bitcoin. When the price of bitcoin rises... that increased amount of dollars that are spent for them are given to someone new. Those dollars aren't consumed. They are still floating around in the economy , waiting to be spent and are no more or less likely to be spent than before they were traded. A merchant allowing payment in bitcoins is adding to their potential earnings so it is a win -win for them regardless of possible periodic deflationary periods.

Could it be argued then.......... that a bitcoin-only merchant would be negatively affected by one of the rapid deflationary periods? Before you answer that question though you must ask another...... why would a merchant only accept bitcoin? And the answer is......... because bitcoins allow that merchant to do something or operate in a way that they could not in dollars........ or it's because of the benefits bitcoin provides in payment and fraud superiority....  so if that bitcoin merchant is hurt in some temporary rapid deflation... you couldn't really say bitcoin is bad as a currency because the reason they exist as a bitcoin only merchant in the first place is because of other advantages gained from using bitcoin in the first place.

I keep hearing about how bitcoin will destroy banks and lead us into a new age. I like bitcoin as much as any avid bitcoin fan could........ but I think most people don't understand the situation fully.
Bitcoin's success would eat into certain profits that banks have.... for instance wire transfers as an example. But the bread and butter of banks profit isn't from some petty fees (even though they add to billions). It's from loans.

For instance with the dollar...... every dollar in circulation (electronic or cash version) has been created because it was loaned into existence. Therefore every dollar is also earning some bank interest. They create it from nothing.... lend it out with interest attached... and reap the rewards. No one has a better gig than that. The president doesn't have a better gig than that. God himself doesn't have a better gig than that. A slave owner from centuries ago didn't even have it that good. And bitcoin doesn't affect that. No one in their right mind is going to ever say hmmm...... should I get a loan in dollars (which is an inflationary currency ) at this low interest rate.... OR should I get a loan in bitcoin (deflationary) at this high interest rate ? No sane person is going to want a loan in bitcoins. Even if there was some fancy bitcoin bank giving them out.

And people love getting loans. They love living beyond their means on credit. Loans won't go away. And of course ...... the dollar won't die. Even if bitcoin is wildly successful.... the fact of the matter is the government taxes us. It forces us to pay taxes. Therefore we have no choice but to pay them and since the dollar is accepted in the payment of taxes then it will always have some value.
None of this is a problem for bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't need to kill banks to be successful. In fact........ of all the people in a position to profit wildly from bitcoin it is banks themselves.... because if one bank was to integrate an exchange and offer deposits and the exchange in the same place that would be pretty nifty.

Anyone have an idea? I want to give my sister a bitcoin for graduation. Should I keep a backup copy for her?

Gambling is run by mobsters... regardless of whether or not they are employed by the government. Does anyone think that this is simply a case of some anti competitiveness in the gambling area?

just wondering?