^ Wences talk is an absolute must-watch. Can't believe I hadn't seen it 'till now. He's spot on about everything: history and purpose of money, properties of money, money as memory, gold's role until now, bitcoin replacing gold, perspective on reserve currencies, opinion that bitcoin is a store of value first, and that it's fundamental promise is as ideal money (not all the other bells and whistles that are so popular lately). And ya gotta watch through the end of the (brief) comment period to see where he aptly dismisses alt-coins. I've obviously been aware of Wences' resume since the first Xapo funding* was announced, but I now realize he's even more of an asset to bitcoin than I'd originally realized. Anyways, thanks for the link cypher. *sidenote: Xapo is the best-funded bitcoin company to date (~$40m total, IIRC), in case anyone didn't realize. From the sounds of his talk, there's a chance he lurks this thread. Some of us predate him. Its funny that. XBT-card.com has more code in the bag + patents approved (not pending), but not the funding. They should partner, or something. |
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Student loans the fastest growing debt. They are getting them younger. The education can't be taken away, but you also can't pass it on to your heirs. It is as ephemeral as it is inalienable. |
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Looking at the chart above the total consumer debt is about 12 trillion. A thought that comes to mind is the total QE balance comparable in size?
If it's remotely comparable in size then it looks as if the banks got a free card to collect interest on money they created and use that money to inflate asset prices and then have us the taxpayer guarantees the loans with QE.
Add capital gains to the mix, and the inflated prices cycle back money to the treasury. Its the best racket in the game. Its almost like cheating, being the bank.  |
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Necro. Just b/c following. Sorry  I prefer to use the "watch" function for this to add it to the watchlist. |
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Government has an interest in people owning property. It fosters docility, because they are bound to geography they can always take it and you can't take it with you if you leave. It is the safest asset for them for you to invest in.
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Should it stay or should it go? It is little more than thinly disguised corporate welfare.
It should go. Its just another market distorting corporate subsidy at taxpayer expense. If it were to go wouldn't it put American companies (and the US economy) at a competitive disadvantage? Hint: the answer is yes because most other industrialized countries have similar subsidies. The result of shutting the ex-im bank would be that the US economy would grow less then it otherwise would and jobs would be relocated overseas that would otherwise be competitive in the US. Just because other countries tax their people in order to sell things to us at under-market prices, we should that favor in return? Is the goal is to move manufacturing into this country in those industries so that we can get the secrets of foreign production techniques? Is there a special interest for subsidizing a particular industry at the expense of all the others for strategic reasons? If we don't do this then our companies will be at an international disadvantage. if they are at a disadvantage like this then they would need to employ less people, which would shrink the tax base. if the tax base is less then in order to collect the same tax revenue overall tax rates will need to rise. Doing it also puts "our" companies at an international disadvantage. It marries them to the state, making them dependent on subsidy so fatter and lazier than needed. That it does so by killing off other companies that would have survived but for the marginal tax to support the favored few (minus the losses by running it through the bureaucracy) is a bit of economic self destruction. Doing this sort of thing does accomplish something, it creates the new industry of government begging for the folks that lobby for these handouts. GDP measures that as a plus, but it oughtn't. It produces nothing. What the ex-im bank does is reduce counter-party risk for American companies. If for example a foreign company wanted to buy $100 million dollars worth of light-bulbs from GE, then GE could use the ex-im bank to guarantee this payment while they are producing these light-bulbs. If GE's customer were to default then GE would still get paid and the light-bulbs would be given to the ex-im bank to sell or otherwise dispose of. In this situation, without the ex-im bank, GE would either need to take on more credit risk, produce a better light-bulb, charge less then the competition, or a combination of the three to be on a level playing field then it's competitors. If they did not then they would be at a disadvantage and would likely receive much fewer sales as a foreign company could buy the light-bulbs of a similar quality at a similar price on better terms from someone else. There is no way to use efficiency to solve this issue. This hits it on the nail. All the export-import really does is guarantee sales for US companies to foreign firms. If the foreign firm were to fail and/or be unable to pay then the export-import bank would essentially buy the goods from the US company and attempt to sell them itself. This prevents potential oversupply of goods which is a major cause of recessions. How is it preventing oversupply? It is just a re-seller of that supply, if it consumes nothing productively, it is just an intermediary middleman centralizing foreign counterparty risk at the expense of the national treasury? It merely adds waste to the economic system in which it operates. |
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The house you rent out = investment
The house you live in = consumption
If standard of living is a function of what one consumes, adam "gets it" already.
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I think you took my "harm" statement way too personally. Again, apologies for that.
"unintended consequences" might have been closer to your meaning? These are difficult to avoid. One thing is certain, the only way to do nothing wrong is to do nothing. so the effort should be appreciated. LTC is/was the backstop for BTC, just in case, and may have fixed some of the early problems. It provided the test bed for some new ideas and showed the way for other experimentation. It will always have a place in my heart for that, even if someday not in my wallet. We gain little from fighting each other, especially when there are so many outside our little world that would do that for us. |
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Ebola is about 100 times less mutable than influenza.
This has implications for bioterrorism (if you have an antivirus, its not so likely to mutate around it).
The weaponization of ebola remains my concern in this. I'm more concerned about stupid humans.
The sickness is a dire tragedy, but even so, I am not one to seek governmental assistance for its resolution and prefer a less organized response.
Nature tends to balance itself out, but unbalanced humans are so very dangerous, with immense potential for deleterious effect.
"Those from whom seek help, you also empower." - NewLiberty
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It appears that my post on the Cryptonote forum about the perceived merits of various cryptonote coins was deleted. (It was in a thread asking if the devs would ever delete the keys for the 80% pre-mine). I am glad I use a different password for every website. IIRC, Quasarcoin is one of the forks I actually liked. I did not like monero because for some unfathomable reason, they decided 60 second blocks were a good idea  Edit: I was thinking of doing my own investigations via another route: the release dates of the dependencies. Read my posts up thread. Nobody thought 60 second blocks were a good idea. TFT ignored everyone and launched bitMonero with it anyway. 10 minutes may be too long, 1 minute may be too short. But both of those are based on circumstances of today. In 10 years, 1 minute may seem too long too. This is a significant challenge with may factors that weigh in different directions. 1) Susceptibility to manipulation with variance in hash rates. 2) transaction volume handling 3) speed of transaction closure 4) size of block chain 5) number of transactions per block capacity 6) usefullness in point-of-sale transactions and quite a few other factors. Devising a future-proof algorithm that balances all the factors is elusive. Satoshi didn't wait for it, and bless him for that. In the end it always comes down to a guess, and pretty much no one is guessing LONGER than 10 minutes, so going an order of magnitude shorter, with a reasonable stab at an algorithm that takes into account a bunch of these factors to greater and lesser degrees is a valuable thing for our little experiment in alternative currency fabrication. |
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Just having the equipment is a major issue, using it is another big one. Wearing a full SCBA suit is hot and using one in that environment would be untenable for long periods of time. Keeping hydrated is an issue, and failing to do so seriously impacts competence in most every way.
The high risk times then are when it comes on and off and maintaining a clean room to do that... and then cleaning the equipment.
It doesn't take just the medical staff, but also trained support that can do that sort of cleaning safely. This is process intensive work, and following clinical procedure in the field is very different than doing it in a lab.
When people are dieing and afraid, and not completely in control of their bodies, they can also act very unpredictably.
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Anyone else excited for Syscoin release today? Only few hours away. I had the chance of previewing the code and its def one to watch for!
Anything in particular of interest beyond there being a chance of it being open source? |
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Most technologies rise and fall, with a few left over to pick up the pieces. Very few technologies, less than 1% actual carry on being used. I would argue that the Internet is an exception to the rule, and that CryptoCurrency will be the same.
And the best cryptocurrency is obviously XMR. It's devs created an ultragreat technology! Maybe not created, more tending to, enhancing and advancing? |
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I will give it a read later OP, but basically you just said EVERY COIN IS SHIT OTHER THAN MONERO and pointed the middle finger to everyone but Monero. I was going to take you seriously until you said that, I'll still give this a read later but jesus christ man. I want to like Monero but you lot are some arrogant fucks. Damn
+1 Looks like children in a kindergarten  I like monero, and cryptonote technology. The fighting brings them all down, including monero. I'm not generally a fan of alt coins at all, they are experiments generally. This technology is maybe something more, time will tell. Raising questions is fine, but the vitriol is not so good for anyone. When 99.9% of the world is against you and the 0.1% is fighting with each other, the winners are the 99.9% I look forward to hearing some answers for the questions raised. For folks who are pretty good at creating privacy through technical design, these seem like clumbsy fumbling unbecoming of a cryptographer with the date manipulations, and backstory fabrication. Seems to be a different group, creator vs marketer. |
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Yes, those that stay are heroes or saints. Mother Teresa would be proud of them.
I don't judge people for not being a hero. Heroes are not so common, that is why they are heroes.
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Never realised how thinly traded this is.
You could move bitfinex and bitstamp up by $50 each with $2 million!!
Perhaps most exchanges are not on exchanges. |
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In the end those who argued against FDR and Wilson will be proven right. My fear is no one alive will notice or care. Bitcoin is our escape from this.
Andrew Dickson White was one of the most informed and reasoned, http://president.cornell.edu/history_bio_white.cfmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Dickson_WhiteIf you haven't read through " Fiat Money Inflation in France" which was presented 1892, and then again in 1912 it rings as true now as it did then. It doesn't stop there. "Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." Could be Bitcoin? |
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After that interview I was certain that cryptonote was a scam.
Yup. I remember arguing with you in defense of bytecoin. I just couldn't believe these people would attempt such an elaborate scheme with technology that was so promising. It makes me wonder if they really were the original cryptonote developers, or if they stole the tech from someone else and rebranded it as cryptonote. It will be interesting to hear the explanation for the weird dates. Popcorn for everyone! I suspect the innovators and the shillers are not the same. The shilling seems amateurish. The design is actually quite nice. It gives them all a bad name, including Monero, which is tragic because there is a strong pull for a more private version of bitcoin for use in applications where the competition knowing the transactions are happening is problematic. If you are doing business in a region where the banks are all owned by your competition, it is difficult to fund your business without them knowing your every move. CryptoNote provides this potential, and am hopeful for the maturing of Monero (at least) to provide this function. Any of them would do, but it seems to have the best promise given the circumstances. |
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It takes chutzpah.
The Fed says that the Gold standard doesn't work because it can be ended by the politicians at the behest of the Fed.
They can be expected to try to use the same reasoning with bitcoin... but only if they first make it the bitcoin standard? Somehow I think that simply asking for it all by force of law probably won't work again the same way Roosevelt took the gold.
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