This press release came out a few days ago and has slowly propagated itself through out the internet including here on dinbits.com. It states some very interesting things that seem believable, although a little on the "too good to be true" side.

http://news.dinbits.com/2015/10/the-next-big-thing-is-next-big-bitcoin.html

One could create a donation-based basic income for everyone.

One sets up a fund. Basically a wallet. People donate to that wallet and one creates one wallet for each person in the world and distribute the btc evenly to all those wallets and it is possible for every single human to claim one by giving their fingerprint which is then stored cryptographically (so that one can see that the fingerprints are different but not how they look like) publicly and decentralized so that the same fingerprint cannot claim a wallet twice. With 7bn people 70btc would be enough to give every human one satoshi. The fund can be created before one develops the technology and slowly accumulate.

And just increasing the amount of people using Bitcoin will increase the value Bitcoin has. If you don't want the money or don't want to give your fingerprint don't claim the wallet. Under inflation, giving people money becomes more expensive, under a deflationary regime giving people money becomes cheap, because some day that satoshi is going to be worth a dollar.

In Bitcoin-terms it would be like a faucet but where you don't have to do anything for it to accumulate.

I'm not talking about the short-term, not the medium-term, but the long-term.

What are best arguments that Bitcoin won't last?

So far I'm convinced by the pro-arguments decimating the con-arguments. But what if there are some damning arguments out there?

Please try to present them, and please present the prerequisites for why those arguments could be valid.

And just posting "there are no negative arguments against Bitcoin" or "up up up" is not going to further the discussion.

We need good con-arguments and attempts at destroying them, if possible.

http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-libertarian-paradise-would-be-hell-on-earth-2013-12

So the Bitcoin experience gives us a glimpse of Libertarian paradise: What life would be like with as little government interference as possible, in a market free of burdensome laws and taxes.

Unfortunately, that experience looks like a total nightmare. It's characterized by radical instability, chaos, the rise of a boss-class of criminals who assassinate people they don't like, and a mass handover of wealth to a minority even smaller than the 1% that currently lauds it in the United States.

If Bitcoin was a country — Bitcoinistan? — it would be like Somalia.

Kjære godtfolk,

jeg og tre andre folk er interessert i å arrangere en Bitcoin meetup i Norge på gården vi bor på som befinner seg ca. to timer fra Oslo og som enkelt kan nåes med buss eller bil. Alle fire er vi skikkelig stilige folk og vi kan garantere at det blir bra  

Det vi håper på er å lage et arrangement som er hovedsakelig sosialt, men hvis folk er interessert kan vi gjerne ha noe fagstoff også - likevel vil poenget med treffet være å møte folk, knytte vennskap, kontakter og viktigere enn alt annet ha det veldig gøy.

Vi vil servere ubegrensede mengder med flere sorter av vårt utmerkede hjemmebryggede øl og vår utsøkte hjemmelagede mat, samt tilby med overnatting siden vi har god plass til dette. Vi må naturligvis ta oss litt betalt for bryet da vi er i en oppstartfase og ikke har råd til å spandere i ubegrensede mengder og vi ser for oss det som vil tilsvare 1000 kroner i Bitcoin ved ankomst til gården som prislapp for mat+drikke+overnatting per person (mao en helt grei pris for alt dette). Samtidig kan vi love at vi kommer til å sende alle Bitcoins vi får inn tilbake minst ett steg videre i Bitcoin-økonomien og ikke veksle de direkte inn i kroner.

Slik vi ser det er Bitcoin instrumentelt i å skape positiv endring i samfunnet.

Er det noen som er interesserte i dette, har spørsmål eller har eventuelle innspill (vi er åpne for alle forslag)? Det er ikke snakk om å ofre mer enn halvparten av en helg og en 1000-lapp og så får vi til et knallarrangement som kan sette liv i Bitcoin-bevegelsen i Norge (PS. Satser også på å fikse litt dekning for arrangementet i lokalavisa).

Edit: PPS. Vi kommer til å hente inn så mange vi klarer fra vår vennekrets som er interesserte men ennå ikke overtalte om Bitcoin til å bli med på treffet og håper dere som vurderer å komme kan gjøre det samme.

Amid a price decline for Bitcoin, the currency is growing quickly in many markets. Especially in markets that have been counted as obvious markets for Bitcoin. I have calculated the growth rate for the last month in the largest 40 countries measured in Bitcoin-qt downloads according to Sourceforge.

The first number is the percentage growth the last 30 days, then the name of the country and finally the ranking in all-time qt-downloads 30 days ago on June 4th:

5.07%   World         0
12.06%   Lithuania         41
10.22%   Argentina         19
9.32%   Switzerland      20
8.90%   Mexico         29
8.54%   Portugal         28
8.45%   Brazil         16
8.37%   Hungary         36
7.57%   India         18
7.49%   Japan         38
6.54%   Hong Kong      39
6.28%   China         2
6.23%   France         11
6.17%   Singapore      40
5.99%   Bulgaria         31
5.75%   Romania         21
5.56%   Norway         25
5.45%   South Africa      34
5.34%   Italy                 14
5.30%   United Kingdom   4
5.26%   Australia         7
5.22%   Ukraine         12
5.03%   Ireland         33
5.01%   Belarus         37
4.80%   Slovakia         35
4.65%   Spain         13
4.52%   Czech Republic   26
4.45%   Russia         5
4.23%   United States      1
4.19%   Belgium         23
4.16%   Greece         32
4.13%   Canada         6
4.12%   Netherlands      9
3.96%   Sweden         15
3.79%   New Zealand      30
3.72%   Denmark         24
3.71%   Poland         8
3.38%   Germany         3
3.02%   Israel         27
3.02%   Austria         22
2.55%   Finland         17

So basically it seems that many of the markets what weren't so big before are growing a lot now. Also interesting is the fact that a lot of countries one would consider a big potential for Bitcoin like South American countries (due to inflation), East-Asian city states (due to good English-knowledge and lassiez-faire mentality), India (due to English/computer literacy and inflation) and Japan (due to high internet literacy and Mt Gox being situated there).

In other words, even though a lot of familiar markets are waning in interest atm, others are gaining and thus I predict that the Bitcoin price will rise in the future

Tiny edit: clarity/grammar

I was on Wikipedia checking something out for the n^th time that day (like most days) and I notice their plea for donations. I'm thinking: "Hmmm I'm kinda broke, I want to support them but I need to eat. Then I think...hey what about these Bitcoin I have lying around. I'll just give them some of that!"

But no. That is impossible!

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en#Why_does_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_not_currently_accept_Bitcoin.3F

The Wikimedia Foundation, as a donor-driven organization, has a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money. This has been interpreted to mean that we do not accept "artificial" currencies – that is, those not backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government. We do, however, strive to provide as many methods of donating as possible and continue to monitor Bitcoin with interest and may revisit this position should circumstances change.

Fine. I'm not going to argue whether or not the safest way to be responsible and prudent for the Wikimedia foundation is using Bitcoin or USD. But accepting payment in Bitcoin that is immediatly converted into USD exposes them to no risk other than that which they are already taking by holding fiat.

People would be donating Bitcoin, but Wikimedia would be recieving USD. Basically it would be the same thing as accepting PayPal as a middleman converting creditcard IOUs into dollars in Wikimedias bank account - which they are already doing!

Does anyone know how we can explain succintly to Wikimedia that they don't have to assume the Bitcoin "risk" (or safety) by letting people pay with them?

[world's highest concentration of physical brick and mortar businesses accepting Bitcoin]

With a scenic old town, a sprawling economy (apparently the second richest city in Eastern Europe), and around 500k inhabitants Bratislava is the city with the world's highest concentration of physical brick and mortar businesses accepting Bitcoin. I'm not 100% sure of the veracity of this, but www.coinmap.org shouldn't be too bad of an indicator.

According to the website there are 13 physical businesses accepting Bitcoin in the Bratislava city centre including several restaurants, bars, cafés and music scenes. A stone's throw away from Vienna, Bratislava is easy to get to, both by rail and air. In fact, it should be a perfect place for a wealthy Bitcoiner to spend a long weekend, thus increasing the BTC economy there and help increasing the Bitcoin cluster seemingly already established there.

I recently read the Forbes article series Living on Bitcoin for a week where San Franciscan and journalist Kashmir Hill tries to live only on Bitcoin for a whole week. The article series is great fun to read and extremely fascinating. This brings me to realise the importance of brick and mortar Bitcoin businesses. Because you can actually see them, touch them, enter them and speak to real people there it helps bring Bitcoin from some far away abstract concept and into the real world.

I think brick and mortar businesses accepting Bitcoin is an important hurdle, if not the most important hurdle on the way to mass adoption of Bitcoin. It is simply the required step for ordinary people to understand Bitcoin in the same way they understand fiat money - the way they use it every day.

So I'm posing the following questions:

Have you ever checked out Bitcoin businesses in Bratislava?
What do you think of Kashmir Hills article series? Is it a good way to introduce people to Bitcoin?
What do you think is the importance of physical brick and mortar businesses accepting Bitcoin in terms of mass adoption?

The "new" reality of Bitcoin seems to be frequent down-time at all exchanges and that one has to expect them to close down completely at all times.

Not that this is new, it just seems to be happening very quickly and more frequently than before.

We still don't have any exchanges seeking anything close to a transparent business model.

All of the exchanges are dubious as in they could be run away with the btc, get closed down by governments or be engaging in serious market manipulation at any time, if they are not already in the process of doing so. Bitfloor is closed, Bitcoin-24 is closed, Mt.Lag's Polish bank account is frozen along with Bitcoin-24's.

At the same time, enough people have come to realize the potential of Bitcoin and it's irrefutable logic. For the last few days the balance between a creaking infrastructure and an astronomical future valuation seems to be $120-$130 - about halfway between the peak and the old long term price.

I think Mt.Lag should go public with a very large portion (eg 75%+) of their shares on a reputable stock exchange. This would prove valuable transparency and make it extremely difficult for anyone to simply run away with the BTC. Also I imagine it would be a solid move away from a magic the gathering exchange towards a real high-powered currency exchange.

If either Mt.Lag or another company does this it would be easy to monitor them, it would be easy to transfer new skills, new CEOs, , CFOs, CTOs or any staff as needed - not to mention something like a $20m+ of capital in one swift go. Bitcoin has already proven it could easily reach $2bn (of which $20m is only 1%) in total value...with good infrastructure there is little stopping it from going way beyond. But we need a solid company with plenty of money that is run as transparently as possible to be ensure the main hurdle - exchanging between fiat ant BTC.

If not Mt.Lag then some other exchange, but it has to be a publicly listed company with a diverse ownership submitting to all the rigors of law and the regulations of major stock exchanges. Also being able to raise capital through issuing stock is the only way to be ahead of market demand for BTC exchange. Only relying on transaction fees means that one will always need more volume to get more money, but more volume will cause down-time and exacerbate the process.

Interest is surging for BTC.

We are now in the cyclical weekend dip of interest, but what will happen next week? Will we pass "dollar"

In the last day or two, many services have been down or super slow at least once: like Gox, bitstamp, bitfloor, btc-e, bitcoin-24, bitcoincharts, clarkmoody, bitconity, bitcointalk etc etc.

It is the sounds of a creaking infrastructure. When these type of services start failing all of a sudden simply because too many people are checking in at the same time, then clearly it is impossible to justify a high valuation of BTC.

Until we have an order of magnitude better infrastructure, there is no room for BTC to rise in price to the astronomical levels we know it is worth. So this thing can head in two directions: (1) server capacity is rapidly scaled, lag becomes a thing of the past and we go for a new never ending parabolic bull run, or (2) the infrastructure keeps creaking along at a snail's pace for the foreseeable future and we see a prolonged depressed price with fluctuations cause of lag panic.

I'm not going to specify what price is a high price or what price is a depressed price, but I think you understand the logic behind my statement.

Personally, I'm hoping for scenario (2). The reason is that I will be able to buy more cheap coins , we will be able to shake of more weak hands and that it will scare away institutional investors for long enough for smart but not very rich people that haven't gotten in yet to be able to get a small share of the pie and have a share of the pie in the future, maybe even be able to wield some influence in a new world order where the old establishment is marginalised.

I'm wondering how old BTC-supporters are.

As far as I understand, one of the great aspects of BTC is how it is able to shift wealth from the old to the young hence allowing radical change to happen, but is this really true?

Those of us who manage to hold on to at least one or a few BTC could be the (at least in financial terms) establishment of the future.

I want to find out the age distribution of this possible future establishment.