Yeah but if I read right it would have FDIC insurance right? If that is the case that is nothing like Gox. At least your money has some insurance on it and that is something that is sorely lacking in the cryptoworld. That is something big fish like.

Ah, Fonzie's bogus URL trick.  Not as common as your 'false-strawman' on the other thread though.  The new cbeast is plumbing the depths for sure.

Good morning class.  Yesterday we derived the chances of a thread spanning more than 10 pages and not containing a false-strawman assertion.   In today's class we will talk about the ethics of retaining a 'Donator' tag when buying an old forum personna.

If you legitimately did screw up the URL and are trying to indicate that "fairly carefully" and "fairly" are the same thing (then go on to give a dissertation about 'fairness') that's pretty weak sauce.

If you legitimately did screw up the URL and are trying to indicate that "fairly carefully" and "fairly" are the same thing (then go on to give a dissertation about 'fairness') that's pretty weak sauce.

he needs to learn about the subjective theory of value if he thinks that the euro derives ultimate value from ECB "policy" is a hard fact, (besides euro volatility is about to be tested in the extreme) ... that's just pure Keynesian hopium talk (i.e BS). Some kind of behavioural economics psycho-babble.

Monetary economics was a stuffy dead old topic studied by a handful of people until bitcoin came along (3 years ago). Now we get the 'experts' spouting made up nonsense to defend their broken paradigm. And I'm pretty sure that statistically bitcoin volatility is still decreasing as the user base grows.

Cat's out of the bag. Time to get long.

Bitcoin is a toxic brand that is unmarketable pretty much everywhere).

But Bitcoin still has a very important role: a central pivot point into emerging developments (such as Ripple, Stellar, NXT,...)

Without Bitcoin surviving for at least another year, they will find their job very, very difficult. But as time goes on and deals are done with banks and governments, the Bitcoin pivot will become less and less important.

It's in everyone's interest to keep the old steam engine serviceable for another while yet!!!

Bitcoin can't be money with a capped transaction rate.

Gold only maintains purchasing power due to being subsidized by central banks - there's no such thing as intrinsic value for a currency.

If those transaction rate limits are hit and the situation isn't fixed, then Bitcoin will disappear.

Who's quote is that?  It's not mine.  If it's your own invention then you are basically forgot to pull the shades before playing with yourself and I've little interest in being involved in the endeavor.

And if they attack you because you are anonymous?  That doesn't actually seem like it should be a hugely challenging technical problem if there was sufficient pressure to do it (such as the forfeiture ones mining gear for example.)

If "forget about anonymity" then can you tell me what it is about Bitcoin that makes it particularly worth supporting or using.

My answer would be 'counter-party risk protection' but to say the truth there would be so little else that I would pretty much be forced to move on to more promising pastures (which also provided counter-party risk protection as a minimum.)

In a nutshell I like proof-of-work fine, but like anything it needs to be implemented fairly carefully to optimize it's usefulness.

but like anything it needs to be implemented fairly

One example would be as I mentioned earlier:  How much mining gear is sitting in someone's home-office relative to how much in liquid cooled racks in a datacenter.

I'd also really like to know about jurisdictional distribution of both mining and transfer nodes.  I think there are some maps, but such things are fairly easy to fake (and usually fairly dubious even when they are not faked.)

A more ideal system would make some of this stuff more known with higher reliability for operational reasons while preserving as much anonymity as possible.  But as I've said before, Bitcoin is what we've got and it's not likely or even possible that it will change in such ways.

I'm chronically worried about people's behavior being influenced by legal and regulatory issues.  In spite of the tough talk, it's hard not to notice that when the rubber meets the road most people in the community (and out) capitulate immediately and do what the fuck they are told.  I almost certainly would.  The propensity is directly proportional to what one has to lose.

Also, as I've mentioned a bunch lately, I see the solution on a collision course with the big data companies if it is to survive at all.

Thus, I would like to have a much better idea qualitatively about the nature of those running mining gear, transfer nodes, etc.  This will allow me to better predict what might happen when and take appropriate actions.

Several points:

 - With any significant fluctuation in value we should expect a fair percentage of mining to be below net zero.

 - I would not rule out a 'major financial loss' being acceptable to some who could be threatened by competition from a successful Bitcoin.

 - Being able to accurately predict the future (say, because you are going to implement an attack and it will probably be successful in achieving a result) could offer ways to realize a significant reward which would offset some costs.

 - How much sense it makes to power-down vs. to participate in an attack depends a great deal on whether you have gear which might be useful in the future or is likely to be at the end of it's useful life.  This depends on, among other things, the technological landscape, the likely future of Bitcoin, and the jurisdictional issues on one's locale.

All that said, you well could be right.  Your gross v. net observations are good ones.  I would not bet that my concerns are terribly valid.  This is theoretical hand-waving mostly, and I always like to play devil's advocate.

---

I would point out that a system collapse is not the only kind of attack and probably not the most likely one.  I would consider tainting to be very much an attack and probably terminal for the system.  Certainly it would be terminal for my interest in it (though my coins and transactions are clean so I would just register and liquidate at the first whiff of trouble here...and it is the thing I watch for most closely.)  Here is something I could easily see happening:

 - govt works with a partner to do some sort of licence and registration service.

 - partner runs infrastructure to efficiently communicate {color}-listed transactions, authorize clean block formations, or whatever implementation works.  (I've wondered aloud whether the new Inverse Bloom Filter Lookup Tables could help here.)

 - govt makes regulations that all miners must comply at the risk of confiscation of gear and/or other mild punishments.  Or perhaps just a tax break.

 - govt coordinates with other governments to follow more or less the same pattern and use the same tech partner(s).  The only business model I could see for 'Coin Validation' (who seems to be at least playing dead) was this.

Really the biggest argument I see against something like that would be that A) Bitcoin in it's present form is really pretty useful as a honeypot, and B) attacks of this nature would just provoke development of a more hardened system.

The same weakness in terms of minimal profits I outlined above exists here, however, and just as much of a factor.  It would be more easy for a miner to capitulate (rather than shut down) because a fair fraction of the population (and even plenty of Bitcoiners perhaps!) would see it as a good thing.  Gotta do something about all those evil terrorists, druggies, pedos, etc you know.

What variables would you like to know to make you cofortable?

Certainly I'd want fewer unknowns and more knows before I was very comfortable with huge fraction of my net worth riding on Bitcoin.

There are actually two distinct constructs at play here, they are not equivalent. Consider:

Me.

You.