Agreed, volatility becomes a far more expensive prospect when one BTC = 1,000 USD 

Neither socialist nor libertarian, Bitcoin honest be 

Now, if only bitmarket.eu finally got their Paxum option running, like they said they would

It breaks your heart, doesn't it. Such abysmal failure at life resulting in anger, despair, and the self-delusion that somehow posting his ramblings here gives his life a shade of meaning.

So sad.

I was going along similar lines here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=14163.0

Just a thought, but anyone willing to do this because of the anonymity of it might not be too inclined to send you a message about it. Might be better if you just post the details and let the pervs among us figure out how to go about it 

A good start to dealing with your anger issues would be to acknowledge that you are wrong (defxor is clearly able to do simple math and understands economies of scale) and say "I'm sorry". 

Ah, see, this is where you lost me. I've not found too many forum members with a better grasp of mathematics than defxor. If you stuck around, instead of predictably coming into the forums when there's a dip in price and equally predictably leaving it when the price rises, you'd know that too.

Well, I for one intend to do what I feel like doing. But perhaps it might be educational for you to understand that what I was comparing was two ideas, both of them controversial in some way or another, both engendering strong passions in both adherents and detractors, which nevertheless have resulted in two radically different outcomes when it comes to the TED conferences. In that sense, they are eminently comparable.

Yes, Evoorhees, perhaps you could start another TED conversation and not announce it on here, just to give it a chance to survive. On the other hand, you have to figure that when Sam Harris gives his TED talk, there's going to be hundreds of religious fanatics trying to derail it as well, yet somehow fail to do so.

Actually, the curve of new coin production is asymptotic. It will be constantly reaching closer to zero, without ever actually getting there. There could be a coin produced 245 years from now. It will never reach 21 million.

For practical purposes, the supply will be halved every four years. Right now it's marginally inflationary with respect to the growth rate of the BTC economy. If everything stays exactly where it is today, it will become more inflationary in the next few months, then suddenly drop to being marginally deflationary in early 2013. This is predictable and built into the code.

Elggawf either doesn't know, or chooses not to know 

Fantastic! Exposure to academic circles and discussion on all issues regarding Bitcoin can only be a good thing. Keep us posted.

There seems to be a fair bit of disagreement on this point. The record is for the transactions themselves. Pairing those to any specific identity, while conceivable, may prove to be extremely difficult if someone has taken the steps to avoid detection.

Pretty much the same as cold hard cash, really.

Or Ms. Nakamoto  

No, the total number of coins issued remains the same. The difficulty adjusts to compensate, depending on the number of miners.

Man... Let me try one last time, for this I will borrow from Douglas Adams. He wasn't talking about investing, but I think the analogy will hold.

Imagine a little puddle of water wakes up one morning, looks around and thinks: Wow, I must be a really special puddle, because look, someone has gone to the trouble of making a hole in the ground into which I fit perfectly!

It is incontrovertible that the puddle fits perfectly in the hole, but there's nothing special about it. If there wasn't a hole, there wouldn't be a puddle to make the claim.

Now, you may think your special powers of analysis are what separate you from those who don't understand. But that is exactly what everyone thinks. And as has been demonstrated with the dartboard experiments, out of any given population, there will be some who will outperform, some will underperform, the curve is fairly well established here.

Take heart, though. If the variables were knowable, the whole market idea thingie would have collapsed decades ago... because someone would have written the book and... oh well, head and wall all over again.

The fact that there might be other currencies in no way implies that Bitcoin is inflationary. Those other currencies are, well, OTHER CURRENCIES. In fact, it is quite possible that in the future there will be other cryptocurrencies working in tandem with Bitcoin, which will be naturally inflationary, and will balance out the "deflationary spiral" fears (which are unfounded, but may have some effect anyway).

They'll still be other currencies, though.

And nobody is suggesting Bitcoin is divine, incidentally, that's just a troll line you tend to drop here and there hoping it will stick.

Agreed, any commodity with a finite existence is, in essence, deflationary. Gold has always been deflationary. More gold gets mined every day, but because we all understand it to be a finite resource, it's deflationary in nature.

With a currency it might be a slightly different analysis, as a currency exists within the bounds of its economy. Seen that way, Bitcoin is inflationary right now, all things being equal will become inflationary neutral in early 2013, and will then turn deflationary in 2017.

There are millions of books on god, on how to beat the odds at the casino, on astrology and on any number of things for which there is no evidence.

Once again, what defxor is saying is that all those thousands of dollars you make EVERY WEEK are precisely in line with what would be expected out of a universe of traders all trying to make money.

Wall, meet head... head, meet wall.

Yup, supply will drop by half in a little over a year, then by half again four years later. The 24 years came from the same part of his body that supplies the gas he's full of.