If an entity controlled most of the land and demanded rents higher than the value of their land, people might just teleport (break down and re-replicate) their buildings to somewhere with lower rents. The oppressive entity would starve itself - a sustained effort would prove very expensive, especially once foreign powers see the opportunity to attack. IMHO the whole matter = energy thing makes emergent monopolies of force less likely and would probably be smaller too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom

I'd also like to point out that in economics, land refers to the location, not the topsoil. You wouldn't trade a handful of dirt; you would perhaps trade shares of a corporation which rents out surface area and spends some of the proceeds to defend it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_(economics)

While mind uploading is not yet possible, human time and labor will remain scarce too. Just because one has a replicator doesn't mean he wants to operate it himself. Perhaps a day of labor might earn you a year of relaxation!

Could it be a problem?
No, scarcity IS the problem.

What would I use as a store of value?
Artificially scarce goods, land, and computers.

Could Bitcoin be our Latinum?
Possibly, but I'd think of it more like the Federation Credit since most people wouldn't need much.

I think what you describe would be a practically post-scarcity society. In such a place, the main source of value would be goods with artificial scarcity, like Second Life items and Bitcoin. If the cost of energy is significant, then it would be a good source of value too, so people would trade in joules stored somehow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity

Land would also retain its value, since the total mass of the Earth (and hopefully density!) would remain unchanged. Land owners could rent the area as smart property to facilitate rapid land-backed transactions. You can just break an improvement down into energy to move easily, so switching costs would be close to nil.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Smart_Property

My guess is that by the time this happens, people might become "uploads", having scanned their brains and emulated them on computers. In this case, computing power would be the greatest asset.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading

If this is sci-fi enough, I'm 13K6ukroqbAcajtNezR4G8w94DyX96kVMK

It's the best of both worlds - you CAN make them anonymous, but you can also prove that an address has been paid.

These are the exact same people.


I think you're being a little hyperbolic when you say every BTC transaction. I too suspect that it's mostly currency speculation right now, but we can never tell for sure what it's all being used for.

Mysterious development: You don't need to trust Satoshi, you can check the code and compile it yourself. Or if you lack those skills, you can find a trusted party to do it for you.
You can exchange with anyone. If for some reason you trust me, I will sell you Bitcoins.
Bitcoins are not anonymous. If you're worried a vendor will deny payment, get them to sign their receiving address so you can post a block explorer link proving you paid.

lol I'm glad you take this as seriously as I do

Matthew, since this is what you do for a living, please post your supervisor's phone number.

If only pure chance games were illegal, would people just add some teensy unimportant skill element to otherwise pure chance games?

Here's a fun article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality

I assumed most of you would employ similar strategies to my own.

"Mr and Mrs Goldstein! Hello, my name is Matthew, I'm with the South Korean police and I've been reading your son's posts on the internet. DID YOU KNOW your son is unstable and makes all these UNTRUE claims about unrecognized imaginary internet money?

No, I haven't formally opened up a case, I've just been reading these forums on my own time...

Well YES, I am a grown man. Wh...

Now you hold it right there. I MAJORED in child psychology! I can diagnose your kid with...

Hello? Hello? DAMMIT I WILL CALL INTERPOL ON THESE ABUSIVE PARENTS!"

I think that would be a fun read! You should post the log here if you do it.

Ok, so let's reverse what was done previously and move it back. It's not a cryptocurrency. It's a Paypal-like online payment system.

IMHO the best bet is to just move it from "alternate cryptocurrencies" to "off-topic". I don't think we should ban/scamtag suspected socks unless an admin confirms identical IPs, like checkuser on Wikipedia. I just don't want to see some epic conflict that the media would portray as infighting.

Why bother? SolidCoin is fatally flawed and it will die on its own. Let's just focus our energy on providing useful services and software for Bitcoin.

Wars are for governments.

There are other CPU cryptocurrencies, they could be mining those for now. The only reason this doesn't happen with Bitcoin is because it's got so much inertia already. Eventually merged mining will solve this, so I wouldn't panic... But don't trust anyone's speculation on this forum. 

If you're worried about honeypots, you can reduce your risk by using multiple anonymity services in series. If at least one works as advertised, you should be OK.

It's not THAT clever... Some day the market cap will be so high, and laundering so effortless, that scum like this will even use Bitcoin when kidnapping human beings. I'm sure I'm not the first one to realize this.

I realize Bitcoin has the potential to bring much more good to the world, but early on this was hard for me to accept.

Just so I'm less confused, are you talking about "is" or "ought"?

I am including sales taxes, such as the federal sales tax proposed by Cain. I didn't mean to imply that anyone would sell the bike, just that it would be a means of increasing future wealth.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49883.msg594593#msg594593

That's an appeal to popularity, it doesn't resolve ethical problems. Not to say it proves you wrong, but it doesn't prove you right.