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"Commander we are approaching Earth." Ensign Xyzlebeek chirped in a language much more beautiful than the one in which this is written.
"Stop there," Commander James Dean responded with a casual wave at the Universal Coordinate currently occupied by a structure known to it's inhabitants as The Rock, "and take is easy on the Inertials, this civilization is quite fragile."
"Aye aye" obeyed the newly commissioned ensign in his native tongue which coincidentally also sounded just like that.
The Granpodlian Consequator gently touched down in the tight space between Rockefeller Plaza and a generously endowed mannequin staring at the Commander's currently primary parasite, or what could in some parts of the Universe be called a spouse.
After what seemed like an eternity of "We are your friends" and "Take me to Your Leader" nonsense, Commander Dean zipped up his impervious-to-anything space suit leather jacket and met the sitting POTUS who was actually standing and looking upward a bit. Granpodlians are taller than humans and wider than they are tall.
"How much you want... for this island?" Dean spoke like a badly overdubbed film.
"You want to buy Manhattan?" The POTUS asked incredulously?
"Yeah, will you take these?" A door opened and many basketball sized diamonds, rubies, and sapphires were presented along with thousands of carefully sealed Plutonium rods.
Ensign Xyzlebeek exited the craft and positioned himself behind his Commander. He leaned over to Commander Dean and whispered, not that it mattered to any non-Granpodlian speaking human.
"You think they'll go for that junk rather than a few dozen Decentralized Space Credits?"
Commander Dean smiled and ignored the naive ensign. He presented a contract in the form of a Congressional Bill consisting of thousands of pages of microfiche sized print and encrusted with a gold seal that looked very expensive and official. The POTUS made a quick call to his Cabinet and had the bill rushed through Congress and the Senate allowing the sale of Manhattan for a treasure that would financially secure the USA for surely generations to come. The bill passed nearly unanimously with only a few outspoken detractors wildly ranting things like "it's not about the economy anymore, stupid!"
Commander Dean is an honorable Granpodlian. He made an honest deal, but he lacked patience.
"You have one Earth hour to leave my island." His smile turned into a darkly crooked smirk. "Or you will be discombobulated."
"But we can't possibly evacuate Manhattan in an hour" cried the POTUS.
Commander Dean sniffed and straightened up out of his normal nonchalant slouch. He turned his gaze from side to side to view his acquisition.
"Well, I could let you buy it back, cheap even, if you feel cheated," Dean hesitated and appeared thoughtful. "for one Decentalized Space Credit."
"But we don't have any Decentralized Space Credits."
"Pity, but all civilized planets use Decentralized Space Credits." Dean looked thoughtful again. "Tell you what, I'll let you earn that Decentralized Space Credit by working for me, deal?"
"Looks like we have no choice." The POTUS once again called for an emergency bill handed to him by Dean to be passed with one or two crazy dissenters ranting things like "I told you so" and other ridiculous nonsense.
"Your nation should be able to pay off this debt in a few hundred of your years. Of course, none of you will be allowed to leave your country or even communicate with the rest of your world until you have fulfilled your obligations, all of course subject to the regulations of space colonialism. I will personally select your working stock and sell the rest of your population to my cousin for his new interstellar restaurant chain."
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It is sad that Americans fall into containable fractions and know very little about the world. But we can place most of the blame on the Americans themselves. It is equally sad that Chinese know much about the world but have a narrow world view. But we can place the blame on the State.
What narrow worldview do the people in China hold? |
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And so, in addition to trusting you specifically that you don't keep any records of the private keys that you've loaded onto your coins (intentionally or not), [snip]
Perhaps include the motto "In Casascius We Trust"  |
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The whole mappers vs. packers epistemology is about how skillfully we are able to model our world. The scientific method vs. our patter-seeking animal instincts. Packers have evolved to survive in the natural world, but the inevitable outcome of all evolution is extinction. If we don't become mappers (positivists), then we will be replaced by species that will better adapt to the environment we create.
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Bitcoin is uncrackable until all disease is curable.
My thought behind this is that if a computer can brute force crack bitcoin, then it will also be able to fold all possible protein combinations. Excuse my innumeracy as poetic license.
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What is the problem with bot trading?
In a word, algorithms. http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html"Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control." |
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Well said. You are right about taking chances. Nowadays most people go to the casino or buy lottery tickets on a fools errand. It's better to go with what you believe you understand to be the right thing to do. Even if you fail, you know you did the right thing. Anyone who is crazy enough to think he can change the world, is actually someone who can change the world. - Steve Jobs
I 100% agree with you on the fact that Bitcoin wasn't built to be tiptoeing around the politically correctness to sustain itself. The P2P decentralized aspect took care of the issue and gave the power to keep bitcoin running to the people that use it.
It was indeed created to to challenge the current status quo and this failing financial system that is starting to collapse around us. It's wasn't bitcoin's fault that people are too afraid to say it like it is and avoid the issue out of fear. What is written in the genesis block isn't just some random musing, but a direct confirmation of what you are suggesting imo.
People fear being involved deeply in something that have a chance to fail. Why? Because losers don't take chances. And most of the world is made up of losers.
People also fear the unknown. The future of bitcoin is full of unknowns such as upcoming laws, not being backed by anything tangible, and etc, and many won't admit that they are too fearful to take a chance.
Winners don't care about what others tell them because they know deep inside their heart that they are right. It's this inextinguishable thirst for change that brings about inventions like Bitcoin to come along in the first place.
As another human being who also strive to challenge the status quo of today, I applaud you for standing up firmly on your beliefs and hope noone can ever discourage you to do otherwise. I am positively sure that thoughts you shared on your video weren't too far from what the creator of bitcoin had in mind before creating it in the first place.
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Or maybe for those of us that are not high speed bot traders could get one free trade every now and again? Meh, I just dislike bot trading.
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Money is a reification of the need for future commodities. Animals don't need money, they just go get what they want/need. Humans can get by without money just fine if they live like animals. Money has helped us become civilized, but fiat money succumbs to human foibles. Bitcoin is money on a whole new level. It is still a reification, but just doesn't have the "official" look of an authoritarian regalia.
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Bitcoin is like electric cars. Most people think they are a great idea, but nobody will buy one because they don't want to get stuck somewhere. Here's the thing, bitcoin is open source software that can evolve into a Mr Fusion Powered DeLorean in the next few months. Maybe we just need a bitcoin hybrid for awhile, but really greed will make it happen. It can and probably will go viral. Wait for it.. wait for it..
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This isn't a mining bot, is it? Looks fun!
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The botnets seemed to have come to the conclusion that it is better to join the bitcoin network rather than sabotage it. What would be the point of an attack even if it could be briefly successful before being discovered and blocked?
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If BTC does rally again, how fast *can* it rise? There has never been anything like bitcoin before. Jumping to $30 for a day was interesting, but climbing from $0.008 to $5-10 in a year was more interesting. Can it climb 4 more decimal places in the next year?
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I'll be wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and birkies this weekend and tip a drink for those early days of micro-computers.
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If a few hundred Smeagols hold the bulk of the money supply and a few thousand others the rest, and they expect millions of people to come and buy it from them, that's not a currency, that's pump and dump. Isn't that what it's like with Fiat money anyway? I could see a situation evolving where 'block chain zero' becomes something of a 'gold standard' or 'backing store' for as many other currencies as one can dream up. People with 'block chain zero' coin could support or withdraw their support from these forked currencies as they choose. And people who use currency can also choose which currency they choose to use. In this way both the holders and the users of a currency would have a voice in the management of the currency and a general baseline fairness might develop. This is all highly theoretical and highly nebulous (and highly unlikely). But this is the 'Bitcoin revolution ideas' thread after all. I am all for forked currencies. If some central authority produces a custom chip that produces proprietary blocks they wish to issue as a fiat currency, that's just fine. If they offer a version that runs on standard bitcoin mining systems, all the better. But you are correct, Satoshi's bitcoin will always be the gold standard. |
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I like how you are imagining the future of bitcoin. You are proposing a positive future, which is a good thing. Just a thought: bitcoin has unique qualities never before used. Events that highlight these strengths will define the future of bitcoin.
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If a few hundred Smeagols hold the bulk of the money supply and a few thousand others the rest, and they expect millions of people to come and buy it from them, that's not a currency, that's pump and dump. Isn't that what it's like with Fiat money anyway? "Pump and Dump" is simply an observed pattern. It is not a scientific theory nor even a valid hypothesis. It's what economists, astrologers, and shamans use to promote superstitious behavior. Addressing the fact that "Smeagols" hold the bulk of the bitcoins is simply a fact that it is what they value. Whether millions of people later start to value bitcoin has nothing to do with any intentional "Pump and Dump" behavior, it is merely a matter of opinion. |
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Is anyone talking about passing out info about bitcoin? That's about as anti-Fed as you can get.
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Some niches that USD covers badly are savings due to devaluation, Fabulous plan sir, the pensioners should invest all their wealth in shady internet money. Your strawman, not mine. and anonymous funding...particularly of organizations which are out of favor by the powers that be. Bingo ! Yes, that's a role that bitcoins can fulfil nicely. It can be a good currency for online criminals. Good for e-shopping in markets where there's low penetration of credit cards. Good for inventory with high chargeback rates. Good for narcotics also. Good for opting out on taxes - and that's not even immoral in most of Europe, it's survival.
Those who don't like to be associated with some of those actions shouldn't mess with cryptocurrency.
The point is rather a tired one, but these things are actually better served by hard currency. $5/BTC is amazingly low in my opinion give the currency base, the population of earth, the troubles with most of our currencies, the apparent robustness of the Bitcoin solution Here we go with the self-righteous pump and dump scam. Sure, every person in the world deserves a few satoshis of his own, but not before they make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. I am a Bitcoin aristocrat. I had the foresight to invest in the currency of the future, so I own a sizeable portion of the known world. I'll pick Hawaii, thank you.
I actually am a little bit 'self-righteous' here. Because the network is supported by the participants (or plebes), I believe that they will ultimately hold the trump card and thus be able to enforce a measure of fairness on the capital holders (if the system or something like it goes.) I'd be interested to find out if my thought patterns would remain the same if someday I'm a capital holder in such a system. And I consider it to be a very low order probability that this will ever occur. IOW, I expect to lose any money I put into Bitcoin if I've not given it away first. The bitcoin network is currently a 36 million dollar venture supported by "smeagols" and "plebes" on a global scale. Sure, there was a bubble created by some curious capitalists, but their interest faded. Who cares? When we start adding, the "dreamers" and "rebels" and other proletariat, this global currency can grow quite substantially. The capitalists can stick with their nice safe blue chip investments and be safe in believing that empires never fall. |
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The bitcoin network is a 36 (currently) million dollar enterprise.
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