Nice video.

I did get the distinct impression that he was advocating privatized currency ecosystems, but they all fall flat when it comes to their centralized nature. If a given company actually had some way to make a government feel threatened, that their scrip was better than the state, you can be sure a few phone calls later the program would be wound down and they'd concede defeat if the government demanded it.

This also raises the interesting possibility that greedy corporations could become the ultimate smokescreen, where bitcoin continues to flourish, but since most lawmakers barely grasp the internet in general, the corporate monetary systems would be under fire because of their public and central nature - and draw heat off the REAL competitor, which of course is BTC.

Go ahead amazon, etc... make your systems, we need the 'chaff' to provide us some cover for a bit before we're invincible.

Bitcoin is a "poison pill" to the regulatory and conventional banking system. What most miss, is that by 'complying', Bitcoin has gained an entry vector to its host so it may replicate and become even stronger. The end game is Bitcoin wins, and the host dwindles or vanishes completely.

So I guess Erik Voorhees "IPO" and subsequent dump-o-matic plan put him in the eyes of the SEC eh?

Hope he doesn't have any plans for being in the USA anytime soon.

Next, dogbert will open a site called "DiceBert" to lure unsuspecting rubes into giving up their BertCoins.

Perfect.

Actually, it is good for bitcoin - because it shows how a decentralized trading pit can overcome most restrictions placed on the legacy banking system links.

Sure, banks make things convenient if you're forced to use their system, but it isn't the only way.

This must be what it felt like for the inventor of television, when he first saw his wonderful device being used to sell people things they didn't need.

A peculiar dreadful feeling.

I'm sure our 10 dollar slide in BTC prices have *nothing* to do with E.V.'s dump-o-matic plan.

Or there's another sucker born every minute, take your pick.

I'm sure its just a *coincidence* that E.V.'s dump-o-matic plan and our subsequent 10 dollar slide (more to come, I'm sure) happened so close to each other.

I cringe every time someone thinks Bitcoin's collective hashing power is "wasted".

It just means you don't understand what it does - secures the network, and verifies transactions. There is no percentage "overhead" to capture, just like your automobile doesn't fix potholes in the street while at a stoplight, hashing isn't just shifting bits around for the hell of it.

Please, learn more before spewing out that old trope of "wasting" cycles.

First guess is a shell company to indemnify EV from encroaching issues running a large gambling operation. But of course, there's no way to prove or disprove it without revealing the identity. Secrecy is a one-way street, isn't it?

The sky isn't falling - price is.

Keep convincing yourself that this action is coincidence, rationalization is a powerful thing.

We'll see how much in agreement you both are when we're trading lower. The irresponsible nature of this whole undertaking is simply mind-boggling.

Cross posted reply to Erik "Business As Usual - What, are you mad?" Voorhees:

Well, thank you Erik for showing once and for all you're just a profit-chaser - you don't care about bitcoin, well, only enough to get your money out of it.

As I understand it - and please, feel free to add your crocodile tears here - you're going to DUMP a shitload of BTC on the market in general, to "shareholders" that will no doubt seek to "cash out" in droves. In a short time period, no less.

"I know some of you will be upset"

Yes, I am upset - first for your wholesale abuse of the blockchain, and now, for not only continuing your abomination but now trampling all over the BTC market in your urge to scratch that profit itch.

Will someone please hire Erik so he stops this pattern of wholesale dickery? What the hell is the next business enterprise, monetizing desperate immigrants? I can only sit and wonder, since I don't have the obvious lack of social acuity you display in your business schemes.

Just 'effing unbelievable....looks like we got "DICED" again.

Well, thank you Erik for showing once and for all you're just a profit-chaser - you don't care about bitcoin, well, only enough to get your money out of it.

As I understand it - and please, feel free to add your crocodile tears here - you're going to DUMP a shitload of BTC on the market in general, to "shareholders" that will no doubt seek to "cash out" in droves. In a short time period, no less.

"I know some of you will be upset"

Yes, I am upset - first for your wholesale abuse of the blockchain, and now, for not only continuing your abomination but now trampling all over the BTC market in your urge to scratch that profit itch.

Will someone please hire Erik so he stops this pattern of wholesale dickery? What the hell is the next business enterprise, monetizing desperate immigrants? I can only sit and wonder, since I don't have the obvious lack of social acuity you display in your business schemes.

Just 'effing unbelievable....looks like we got "DICED" again.

I'm really getting tired of self-promotional "news" posts.

Can we have a "advertising news" forum? That's where this belongs.

I had been meaning to say something, but got distracted by other responsibilities. Why not start threads on the forum, why does it have to be here? Can't your blog gain readership without pumping it out here? Hell, why don't I just start my own blog, submit my "news" here every day -- and see how you guys like it?

I just thought you'd have the social acuity to figure out the goals of this particular forum.

Take it easy on Kiba - I don't mind him reminding people how to actually pay attention and format their post headings. I haven't submitted here much, but the first thing I did was read the guidelines -- why does everyone else skip that? Too self-important? Too lazy?

We understand you have a blog - what I don't get is the continual self-promotion.

I felt this fit in with the "Economics" forum, but feel free to move as needed.

Charles Stross is one of my favorite science fiction authors, from the never-lets-go-of-the-gas-pedal stories like "Accelerando", to the more humorous like the "The Atrocity Archives" - I can never get enough of this kind of writing.

The economic factor comes from the way this universe is structured. Aside from the radical idea that "fragile" humans are extinct, every person now is born into a debt they must work out of. (Not of sovereign slavery as such, but for the cost of the technology that they consist of.)  Entire structures exist that are used to service colossal sums over extreme time periods.

Starships require decades of work to raise capital and establish the debt framework and interest-repayment structure that will fund a colony seeking to establish a new home far away.

Large banks are connected by multi-light-year beams of gigawatt lasers to nearby systems. And as a nod to "bitcoin" there are cryptographic signing methods, and bitcoin is mentioned as a nod to a system that provides infrastructure to entire civilizations.

The story is entertaining, his writing is spot-on, and I felt the mention of bitcoin was more than just a reference to "money encoded as bits", and more to the system that is being built and expanded upon now.

Mr. Stross is a former programmer, after all - he'd be able to understand how crypto-currencies work.

There's more to it all - especially when he goes into the definitions of fast, medium and slow money and the underlying uses, but I don't want to give it all away.

Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Neptunes-Brood-Charles-Stross/dp/0425256774

Read a sample:
http://www.orbitbooks.net/excerpt/neptunes-brood/

Granted we don't have the depth of traditional exchanges, but it isn't like we're operating a cash-for-commodity market like Milk or Butter, that trades once a week to set prices. He's probably making the mistake of thinking we start small and stay small.

I disagree.