lol french fried felon. That is some classic shit. One of the funniest George Carlin pieces I've seen. Especially relevant to this thread. Nice share.

In reality any currency is a group of people exchanging the units of that currency between themselves. If the marbles were really rare and they all agreed to use them as a common medium of exchange, the marbles would become a currency. The main difference between any two currencies is the size of the group of people who utilize the currencies. At what point does it go from just being a "group of friends" to a legitimate widely used currency? It would be very easy to argue that bitcoin is certainly a "legitimate" currency in that sense, because it's used by hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions of people, from all around the world. It's a global currency used to facilitate international exchange... if that doesn't qualify as a currency then I don't know what does. Oh right it has to be Government backed.

These are some smooth beats dude. Nice work. I'm so sick of those cheesy parody songs.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean, but the CUC was there before, during and after Bitcoin was added.

What a load of shit. The Cuba "CUC" doesn't appear to have an ISO code either, yet it remains on the list! Hmmm....

EDIT: and this is why even if Wikipedia start accepting BTC donations I still wont donate to them, because they are so god damn bias against bitcoin. First with the ponzi scheme thing and now this crap. Screw them and their little dog. They don't deserve our support.

Ok so if I'm understanding this correctly, it is essentially the inverse or what ever you want to call it, I'm not a math genius as I said... except that it is plotted as a percentage of change in discrete yearly steps?

Well that was my first guess, but then I thought the blue line was plotting the increase in the money supply or "monetary base" (same thing right?) and so then I figured they should just be the inverse of each other? 

Forgive my ignorance here, but I'm not sure I understand this graph. I'm not a math genius or economics genius, but I thought inflation was a rise in prices due to an increase in the money supply, which is obviously not what we see graphed here. How is inflation defined in this graph?

Well then add a reference to Mt. Gox. It definitely should be at the top of the list though. Although in terms of how large the Bitcoin economy is, many other currencies are much larger and have a much larger number of units in circulation. Of course you might say bitcoin has is divisible down to many small units, but you must keep in mind that the important thing is the value of those units proportionate to the number in circulation.

"The decision not to prosecute HSBC was a decision of the Justice Department and was influenced by ... $1.9B, Breuer didn't say."

Let me make this perfectly clear...

The most important property of any currency is scarcity. If it isn't scarce than it can't be a currency, like the grains of sand on a beach, they cannot be used as a currency because it's too easy to acquire them.

Bitcoin is purposely designed to be very difficult to create by requiring a lot of energy to create them, and that gives them scarcity. What we don't like is the fact that banks can lend out money they don't have.

Because in doing so, they effectively create new money from nothing, and it's extremely easy for them to do that. With just a few keystrokes they can create new money and expand the money supply.

Bitcoins are created through real work, so they are in no way "imaginary" in the same sense as bank credit is imaginary. Bank credit is basically like sand on a beach, with the help of the Fed they can create as much bank credit as they want.

However, it's carefully guarded sand. The stockpiles of untapped sand are only accessible to the banks, not to you or me. Want some more sand? Go to the bank, they have unlimited amounts.

You seem to be skipping over the most important part of FRB. Those loans are usually redeposited into a bank and used as the basis for a new loan. This process repeats over and over again, until the amount in each account at the bank(s) is much higher than the amount of reserves held. And since the money in those accounts is typically traded as if it were the original reserves (not only as bank transfers but as note withdrawals), the money supply is essentially expanded.

I should have read your post first before replying, because this is actually a reasonable question. As you should be well aware, even with a finite currency, the interest on loans can be paid by debtors who do work and make money from that work. It's a constant circulation of money between hands which allows that to happen. Of course, if we have too many loans at the same time, it could be a problem. But the flaw in your premise here, is that it's unlikely that too many people will issue loans at the same time. And even if they did, the worste case scenario would be that some, but not all of those people, would default on their loans. This exact same "problem" will occur with any finite currency, and that's exactly why they keep printing new government money, to make sure there's enough in circulation to service the ever growing debts. So it's like never-ending a spiral of insanity in my opinion, but by having a finite currency you have naturally built in limits on how much debt can exist.

Let me put this rather simply...

The entire concept of bitcoin would be undermined by allowing credit creation to happen. If you want to get a loan of some BTC you can sign a contract with someone and get given some REAL bitcoins. That's what a loan is supposed to be. If the creditor is just giving you imaginary credit (like bank credit), then the lender didn't really have anything to lend you in the first place, and they are creating new money out of nothing.

As already mentioned, it's pointless to use bitcoin promissory notes within a fractional reserve system because 1) it's already easy to store and transport BTC and 2) there is no central authority which can guarantee the authenticity of those notes. Of course it is technically possible if some central institution decided to do it, but I highly doubt it would happen because it's too risky for both the institution and note holders.

So in conclusion, bitcoin is not meant to be a currency where the total money supply can be easily expanded by the creation of new imaginary credit. We already have an entire banking system which works like that, and clearly benefits the banks in unfair ways while screwing the rest of us over and undermining the integrity of the economy. We prefer to trade actual bitcoins, not imaginary credit based on a fraction of real bitcoins.

Well I can see how that argument might have some philosophical validity. But in the real world of laws and regulations, information can certainly be legally considered property. And that's all that matters.

Why can't information be property?

Great video suggestions so far. I haven't seen a lot of these.

BTW is it just me or does YouTube now look like a total pile of shit?

What idiot suggested the video title should go under the video... 

Cool stuff. This is very handy. Thanks.

Just look at the results of the poll so far. Why are we even debating whether people want this or not. It's clear most people want it. Hell, there have been several times where I could have used it for multiple different reasons. And a lot of those times I wouldn't need the sweep function either, I just wanted to import my private keys in a simple easy way. Is that so much to ask for christ sakes. If we are letting stupid people be the guide of bitcoins future, the future is looking dull.

My suggestion solves all the problems. It lets people know the risk of not sweeping the funds, and gives them the option of sweeping the funds, but also allows them to import the key without sweeping the funds. It's important to have both options available because they both server their own purpose and are useful under different circumstances. This isn't rocket science.