You forgot the dynamic where certain Bitcoin only fanboys were saying "Litecoin is doing to die blah blah blah" when Litecoin was $0.005 each in 2012.

Good time to buy altcoins then.

What could lead to such a long wait?

speculation forum, where the crypto-wealthy hang out to discuss how to evade extortion.

That's the kind of thing that I am thinking too, regarding the most feasible preventative measure... somehow to make yourself incapable of complying... but still to be able to have access to the funds in the event that you need them.. without having to trust others... A problem with multi-sig would be if you have to trust others or the others could gang up on you and take control over your coins.

I am NOT poo-pooing the idea of taking preventative measures.  In fact, I applaud the taking of various preventative measures, yet when push comes to shove, we may be in a situation in which you gotta produce something b/c your hostage taker knows too much.. and it may even be related to someone who knows you well leaking information about you (which is a likely scenario.. an ex-wife.. or a nephew or some other ptiot confident)

Regardless of what we may like to believe, all the evidence suggests that most people see Bitcoin as merely a convenient way to move money around, not a manifesto or constitution.

any proposed change is deluged with people coming up with any possible reason to object, without any kind of cost/benefit analysis being done.

I believe Bitcoin Releases Version 0.3 (July 2010) was the first such Slashdot story.  I can't speak for Jeff but this is when I first started playing with Bitcoin.

Does anybody know if Satoshi had any idea what price bitcoins may get to once all coins are mined and it is being used by a large percentage of people, or was he not really interested in that side of things?

> Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash
> system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending.
> It's completely decentralized with no server or central authority.
>
> See bitcoin.org for screenshots.
>
> Download link:
> http://downloads.sourceforge.net/bitcoin/bitcoin-0.1.0.rar


Congratulations to Satoshi on this first alpha release.  I am looking
forward to trying it out.

> Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins.  It'll be distributed
> to network nodes when they make blocks, with the amount cut in half
> every 4 years.
>
> first 4 years: 10,500,000 coins
> next 4 years: 5,250,000 coins
> next 4 years: 2,625,000 coins
> next 4 years: 1,312,500 coins
> etc...

It's interesting that the system can be configured to only allow a
certain maximum number of coins ever to be generated. I guess the
idea is that the amount of work needed to generate a new coin will
become more difficult as time goes on.

One immediate problem with any new currency is how to value it. Even
ignoring the practical problem that virtually no one will accept it
at first, there is still a difficulty in coming up with a reasonable
argument in favor of a particular non-zero value for the coins.

As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and
becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world.  Then the
total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all
the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household
wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With
20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.

So the possibility of generating coins today with a few cents of compute
time may be quite a good bet, with a payoff of something like 100 million
to 1! Even if the odds of Bitcoin succeeding to this degree are slim,
are they really 100 million to one against? Something to think about...

Hal

Short, are we?

how badly can fuck ups in the scripting language (new OP codes) screw up functionality in the main protocol?

look at Adam Back and Austin Hill. Adam invented the concept of POW yet he admittedly didn't get Bitcoin and never got in. now he's trying to use his influence to make up for it with sidechains which by all initial indications requires a change to the main protocol. they claim it doesn't but I'll bet there's at least some ugly hack required that allows it to function. we'll see.

anyone who has a stake in Bitcoin has to be suspicious of anyone who has a low to no stake wanting to change the protocol especially when they're operating a for profit company with core devs (gmax and Luke) who aren't drawing a paycheck yet from Bitcoin.

everyone's getting into the act:

http://www.techspot.com/news/57162-busted-microsoft-hired-agency-paying-bloggers-to-write-pro-ie-posts.html

...or am I just getting trolled here? (not kidding).