LOL OP what the hell are you talking about?

This is a vast improvement, both aesthetically (although I guess that's always subjective) and functionally (not subjective).

I heart it very much.

Gavin and Dev team, thank you!!!!

0.5 is excellent. THIS is the client the world needed. Love the payment notifications in Windows, the lock/connections/status icons, and the splash screen with progress indicator. Really great work. Sincere thanks.

The new interface can have my babies.

If you're a resident of Earth, you are on this list. Land of the free.

There is no reason to "avoid all ewallet services."  Instawallet has been amazing, reliable, and innovative. BTCinch.com is also really good, and I know the guys who run it personally - they will not be scamming anyone. Flexcoin has also been around quite a while without problems.

With ewallets, people just need to be careful and understand that they're trusting a 3rd party. For small amounts, the ease of ewallets generally outweighs the security concerns. For large amounts, ewallets are probably not prudent.

Such a silly and trite concern.

To the extent that those "evil early adopters" have tons of coins and can "crash the market at any moment", they are but able to do that once. And if one does it, it hurts the others, so this "evil group" actually has little power or incentive to collude and zero ability to "control" anything in the long term. They can, at worst, cause a huge one-time price crash and this would be a blessing for anyone trying to acquire the coins.

Your concern boils down to deep-seeded antagonism over the fact that some people figured this thing out before you, and the great irony is that people a year from now will have that same antagonism toward you - if you are smart enough to buy at the prices today.

The Manipulator will become another part of the fun mythos of Bitcoin, along with Satoshi and the 10,000 btc pizza.

I imagine some day when we hold a Bitcoin Barron's Ball, some of us may arrive as The Manipulator, some as Satoshi, and at least one person will dress up as the Pizza.

That is a great point.

I'm a strong advocate of gold and silver used as money and wealth preservation, and I see Bitcoin having very nice synergies with the precious metals. They are complimentary asset classes, and it's a good sign to see die-hard gold bugs thinking openly about Bitcoin.

The inherent properties of precious metals make them excellent money, and the same is true for Bitcoin.

You're the only one who said there has been "nothing like BTC's gain in history ever."  Please don't make up stuff and attribute it to me.

Lots of assets endure speculative bubbles, what's your point? There will be many more speculative bubbles in the btc price, I assure you.

Jonathan I appreciate the discussion... but, I'm a bit confused by what you mean here. I am not paying miners $2.50 per transaction. The only people "paying" to operate this network are the miners, and they are paying the electric company. They decide on a case by case basis if that cost is worth it. But you and I, as participants in the network, are not paying these miners $2.50 per transaction in any way/shape/form. Please explain what you mean.



Am I a "libertard" because I think people shouldn't use force on each other when no crime has been committed? And you say such people "have not demonstrated sanity at any point that you can recall."  Now you are resorting to both name-calling and hyperbole and that is not a good indicator that you know what you're talking about.

I've seen very foolish and very wise people discuss things on this forum, from both libertarian and statist perspectives. Saying that a certain group "hasn't demonstrated sanity at any point" is so clearly incorrect that it makes me wonder why you are trying to sabotage your own arguments?



Are you talking about the USD? It's lost over 96% of its value since 1913. 

Be careful when you claim that something is not a store of value, categorically. It all depends on your time horizon. Over the past year, Bitcoin has not only been a store of value, but it's been one the best investments in the entire world. Over the past few months, it's been a terrible investment. Over the past 24 hrs, it's also been excellent as an investment.

So what is a better store of value? The USD which falls continually in value, or the BTC which - to this point from it's beginning - has outperformed any other asset class in the world. Certainly, the USD is far less volatile than BTC, but that is more a question of market depth and adoption. Please give the BTC a few decades at least to reach an adoption level where you could accurately gauge relative volatility between it and fiat currencies.

Stating categorically that BTC is and will never be a good store of value is hubris at best and economically foolish/flat out wrong at worst.



Proper valuation of an asset is comprised of many parts, but simply looking at the "current spot of the moment economy" is an insufficient basis on which to price it. The net present value component of future use is very important, and a market price far higher than today may be quite warranted depending on the future outlook.

Thankfully, free markets enable shorting of over-valued assets, and I'm glad you are contributing your price estimations via that mechanism. The BTC market is healthier for it.

I do appreciate the discussion Jonathan, you have some good things to say.

LOL that was an awesome sentence. I think you express things just perfectly slush and your English is better than most Americans, thanks for the compliment =)

Because here in America we have god-given, inalienable, worth-dying-for, super 100% important and always protected "freedom of speech"... unless that speech offends someone. Hypocrisy #581291 of American society.

Interesting post OP... a couple points:

It does NOT cost $2.82 to send a transaction. You are confusing fixed costs of running the network with variable costs of sending the transactions.

The variable cost of a transaction is well close to zero - and if transactions doubled tomorrow the cost of mining computation resources would remain roughly flat.

Also, you have still not made the case why a lower Bitcoin price is "better for commerce," and calling the people who disagree with your assessment a bunch of starry-eyed libertards is not furthering your argument.

Also, "store of value" and "method of exchange" are in no way mutually exclusive concepts. A good money is both things, and one might argue that both features reinforce and depend upon each other.  Don't assume that just because something is "volatile" that it is not a store of value.

Regarding price, Bitcoins are probably over-valued in relation purely to the current bitcoin economy. However, they are almost certainly under-valued if you consider the net present value of their future use. There's nothing wrong with speculators in both directions trying to price Bitcoins somewhere in between its narrow current use and broad potential future use.

Yeah was really great interview... Roger was on for like over an hour!  Tons of callers on the topic, I think it was a hit. Honestly it's the perfect demographic.

"esports" - a massive new industry that has sprouted up over the last couple years in the US and Europe is starting to take notice of Bitcoin.

SC2BTC.com  and Dead.Gaming are hosting the first of many Starcraft 2 tournaments with Bitcoin prize pools.

This one started at 8pm CET and is streaming now here:
http://www.twitch.tv/deadgaming

Some pretty good players I think (edit: 3 "Grandmasters" top 200 in Europe).  Here's the updating ladder:  http://challonge.com/sc2btc_196203

One reason Bitcoin will catch on here is that payments for these types of tournaments have taken sometimes months to process and pay out. Bitcoin is ideal for this market.

Gavin is the biggest subsidy to everyone =)

Bitcoin is, itself, a subsidy to businesses that are smart enough to use it. Bitcoin enables higher profit margins.

This is why it will be adopted over time, and will overcome the network effect.

So by placing a massive buy wall, he's risking the chance that others will dump tons of coins on him (which he allegedly doesn't want) in order to sell a few coins marginally higher than he otherwise could?

And such a strategy has been occurring since the high in the $30's?

And yet even with such a high profile and public discussion of this strategy on the Bitcoin trading forum there is still nobody that is able to predict and counter these moves?

Doesn't really pass the straight-face test.

No prize =) but you had a good response. I agree with it partly...

But, when you say that volatility has everything to do with speculative bubbles, that is not correct. Speculative bubbles are typically the result of volatile markets, not the cause of them. Speculation works both ways, and speculators tend to reduce volatility because it enables future pricing estimates to become known in the present.

As evidence that volatility doesn't "have everything to do with speculative bubbles," consider a Bitcoin world with 1,000 participants and a certain equilibrium at a price of perhaps $0.10 per coin.  No speculation going on. No speculative bubbles. Now... suddenly an outsider decides he likes Bitcoins and buys in big time (not for speculation on future prices, but simply because he likes them). If the price of coins is low, it would be very difficult for this new entrant not to spike the price and increase volatility. In this scenario, simple increase in demand has increased volatility, and the same would happen if someone "cashed out."

A lower priced coin means that $X entering or leaving has a larger effect than it otherwise would with a higher priced coin, if other factors, like velocity, are held constant (and velocity may indeed hold constant - it doesn't necessarily increase or decrease with a price change).

Further, I do agree that a $1=1btc price "feels" right for people and makes people comfortable. But supply and demand care little for comforts and feelings. While prices clearly tend toward familiar numbers, and 1 to 1 is the most even of all, it's only a very weak psychological influence which must contend with strong fundamental influences.

I'll suggest to you that a 1 to 1 ratio is actually a pretty silly value for Bitcoin to the dollar. If there would be 210,000,000,000,000 btc to be printed over the years, would you still say 1 to 1 makes sense? What if only 100 were ever going to be mined?  1 to 1 is still the "right" price?  It's totally arbitrary to suggest that all of the supply and demand dynamics of all the market participants would aggregate together to result in a price of 1 to 1 with the USD. If it did, it would amazingly mean that Satoshi had predicted the long term supply/demand balance and decided to create exactly the right amount of currency long term to result in a  1 to 1 with the USD. He was smart, but not that smart

I see an economic fallacy brewing here (not just in that quote but in the forums generally)... there seems to be a notion that a lower price equals a less volatile price, and thus a lower price means Bitcoin is more easily used in commerce.  This is a fallacy and in fact quite the opposite is true.

The lower the price of Bitcoin, the more easily it will swing when $X come in search of it, or when $X attempt to exit it. Consider if the price fell to $0.01/btc.  By myself, with $10,000, I could buy almost 1/7th of the entire supply of Bitcoin. Of course, acquiring 1/7th of the supply would shoot the price up quite a bit. My $10,000 would seriously hamper all y'all's commerce.

Consider the alternative case, if Bitcoins were trading at $1,000 each. My $10,000 purchase then only buys me ten coins and will make no dent in the market price. Even $100,000 could move in and out of the market without much trouble.

The point is this: you can make the argument that btc isn't worth $2 each and should be lower, fine. But you cannot make the argument that it ought to be lower so that it can more easily be used in commerce due to volatility issues. Volatility, when short and medium term noise is removed, will be inversely proportional to the Bitcoin price in percentage terms.

And again, a $1,000/btc price is exactly as easy to use in commerce as a $1/btc price due to the full divisibility of these things. If you're not using Bitcoins in commerce now, it will not be any "easier" if the price is halved... it will in fact be more problematic and more volatile. And buying one $1 coin is no more difficult than buying two $0.50 coins, or half a $2 coin. Don't let notation distract you!

Anyone disagree?

Awesome Roger, can't wait to hear it!

Roger forgets to mention that not only is it on 100 radio stations around the US, but it's also a very popular Podcast, routinely ranking high in the charts. This also means any of you who want to hear Roger's interview tomorrow can download the Podcast via iTunes (just search for Free Talk Live)