Only if you arrive dressed as a giant leather wallet.

Don't confuse central banks with banks as a service. A "proper" bank just means a safe place to store money - nothing wrong with that. A central bank, on the other hand, has the power to print and manipulate currency, control interest rates (the price of money), and often regulate other banks. Central banks are terrible, and only exist with government protection. In a free and open market, you'd never have a "central bank" but you'd likely have many banks all competing for customers and it's everyone's voluntary decision if they wish to partake of those services.

I'm going!

It's a display error, not a trading error, I just chatted with one of the operators.

I promise there will be many bubbles as the world tries to determine the value of this technology. Each will bring wild assumptions and it will be difficult for everyone, including me, to try to keep a level head during the volatility.

The best strategy is to figure out what YOU think Bitcoins are worth, and then buy and sell accordingly. Don't worry about the price moves over days/weeks/months. Have a time horizon of one year at least.

Nagle is looking only at half the equation- for the supermarket to acquire that many coins from that many buyers, those buyers must first buy the coins. Any company earning so much that it can crash the market with sales is simultaneously earning so much that demand for coins will rise in roughly similar proportion. Sprinkle in smart traders, bots, and arbitrage, and you'd see the volatility caused by a large company dwindle.

Further, by the time such a store was accepting coins, the market volume and depth would be far higher almost necessarily. This is Non-Issue #51851

Hi Slush,

Yeah, the boilerplate is too long currently and we plan to shorten it a bit as we progress. It is a bit long right now as we're using it partly to educate people about the tweets as they see them. When the userbase grows, we'll be able to shorten it.

As you say, users should only tweet those messages that their followers won't mind. Any user who spams his followers will not be able to spam them for long... because they'll leave.

+100  Thank you elggawf! I don't know why it's so hard for people to understand that crucial point! Bitcoin's prime strength is that it is decentralized by default, but naturally (and thankfully) businesses will be created around which Bitcoin coagulates. This does not diminish the decentralized nature of Bitcoin, because there is never a point where one MUST surrender control to a centralized entity. This distinction is crucial.

Long-term, there will absolutely be Bitcoin banks with user accounts. Every Bitcoin user gets to set his own risk/convenience threshold and act accordingly.

Didn't forward to Keiser.... he found it himself I guess.

Max Keiser posted my uploaded video on his site... woot! Now I feel bad the sound quality was so poor.

http://maxkeiser.com/2011/11/28/bitcoin-on-freedom-watch-with-judge-napolitano-nov-27-2011/

Bitcoin is r/politics, though some may not realize it yet.

"Good" is relative here. Compared to major US news media, I consider CNBC and Fox Business to be pretty decent. Al Jazeera English is by far the best TV news source I've ever come across, but it's not available many places in the US.

+1  they're quite different. Fox Business is a pretty good channel, much more like CNBC than like Fox News

Video link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=W3s6R23vmRY

LOL that's my Halloween 2009 costume in Dubai. I like it cause it's a very serious photo, with a very silly outfit. Shows the duality of existence.

LOL man it's on my freakin' Tivo but I can't find mentions or youtube clips yet. I feel like I was hallucinating, but it was real. The whole show tonight was on monetary policy - the fed, gold standards, etc. This was like a special sunday edition or something. Played at 8pm EST, Bitcoin was 3rd segment.

Just saw Freedomwatch with Andrew Napolitano... five min segment on Bitcoin with Jerry Brito of George Mason University's Mercatus Center. This is national prime time television on Fox Business Network.

Super great discussion. They showed the WeUseCoins video, and had screenshots of Tradehill. Brito knew what he was talking about and presented it very well. Trying to find a youtube clip or link... will update post shortly.

EDIT: I recorded it from my Tivo and here it is:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=W3s6R23vmRY

Every increase in BTC price means that the marginal profit of mining goes up. Thus, new entrants and marginal miners at the sidelines will enter. Hashrate then goes up, difficulty increases, and cost of mining thus catches up to price. When price falls, miners drop out, difficulty falls, and cost of mining falls back in line with price.

You are correct that a large number of miners may be completely insensitive to price fluctuations (free electricity)... so I suppose I should caveat my statement. There is a floor price under which if the price falls further the mining difficulty won't go down. In reality, you'd see an asymptotic relationship with the mining difficulty always approaching a floor level.


With the above edit I think it's a true statement

The cost of mining will always follow price. If the price shoots up, the cost of mining shoots up, and vice versa. But the inverse is not true, the price does not follow the cost of mining. When the reward cuts in half in 2013, the price will remain unaffected other than perhaps some short-term fluctuation. This is because when the reward falls in half, those miners who are least profitable will drop out, lowering the cost of production.

Again, mining cost always follows price, but not the other way around.

LOL that is such a great statement. If someone makes a t-shirt with that on it, and finds Von Nipples' home address, I'll pay to have the shirt made (using bitcoin) and will get it sent to his house as a gift. Such prescience and insight demands compensation.