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I doubt Bitpay is preventing Wordpress from doing anything. Maybe they'd like to see a few bitcoins come in before they invest more.

Regardless, Wordpress acceptance of bitcoin dwarfs their potential contribution to network health.

The bottom part of this, maybe with a big C around the B, and maybe that B is the Bitcoin symbol. End with the (). Very simple, but captures the C aspect. Don't beat anyone over the head with too many concepts in one logo.

Great event. Great turnout. Good work, guys.

I'm looking forward to listening to the FreeTalkLive archive.

Excellente! I was just lamenting how there's no big bitcoin shindig in nyc this year, when I literally fumbled into this thread on my smartphone.

We'll need to create a new bitcoin drink or shot.

I've never used them, but you meant fastcash4bitcoins.com, right?

The mere act of writing this has forced you to better-understand bitcoin. You're now in a better position to spread the word.

You may be right, but maybe we can first work out the kinks with voluntary mixing. Each successful baby step makes the next one easier.

So, should peer mix requests be in-band, or out-of-band (on a different port)? How realistic is it that the core devs would accept a pull request that extends the protocol for the purposes of mixing?

I'm thinking it would be cleaner with a simple mod to allow an rpc-request of the peer list, and use a separate, simple protocol for mixing.

There's lots in store.

This ^, ease for Grandma, the swarm client for bandwidth concerns, ultimate blockchain compression for disk/cpu concerns, Casascius' super-simple mixing for anonymity concerns, initially slow, inexorable climb in value, then snowballing  adoption as the Euro and dollar diminish. Eventually, Mike Hearn's blockchain-based bonds, or what have you. It's a bright, bright future.

We're incredibly lucky to be here to witness these early days. We're surrounded by bright people with diverse talents. There is room for growth in so many dimensions.

And let's not forget that we're about to pass through the First Great Halving. One day you can tell your Grand kids how you remember when a bitcoin block was rewarded with 50,000,000 microbits, and you were there the day it dropped to 25,000,000.

Lots in store. Enjoy the ride.

Valid question.

What is seen:
Coins are stolen, and there's a statistical method to trace subsequent spends to the culprit.

What is not seen:
Thousands (millions?) of people will be coerced into paying capital gains on coins that appreciate in value. Those taxes will go to fund all manner of government programs. Governments will profit from the appreciation of traceable coins. The coercion has teeth because of traceability.

This means something, coming from you.

The best part of this proposal is the sheer simplicity. That alone makes it 10x as likely to get into the official client as any other mixing proposal - in my mind.

Simple ubiquitous mixing gets it out of the alleyways, and into the light of day - where no-one need fear participating.

Reducing the denominations to M^n is a great idea too. I would almost suggest initially reducing denominations to M^1 alone - to simplify the initial protocol. Maybe that's going too far, and you'd find fewer participants. Or maybe it's good because it means participants would find partners that would otherwise have been holding-out for M^2, M^3, or M^4. Maybe it would be a good first step to shake things out. I've got in mind Gavin's recent Gist about lessons learned from BIP 16 (https://gist.github.com/2355445), and how he wants to apply them in BIP 34 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92558.0). Specifically: "Think about laying a solid foundation, and then rolling out changes in stages. Baby steps instead of change-it-all-at-once."


And maybe a checkbox to "support" the anonymity of others - by merely relaying these solicitations and transactions. There might be those who find mixing risky - especially while it's new. Those same people, though, might be more than happy to relay the required messages.


And then OP goes and replies to a valid concern:


I love it. As Austonst puts it:

If fairly common (if not ubiquitous), it sounds like these mixes could start to render "traditional" blockchain analysis obsolete. The heritage of coins that have never participated in such mixing might start to become less clear.


And another thing - the simplicity of this proposal widens the pool of developers willing and able to implement it.

Kudos, Casascius.

Overlaying morality on top of bitcoin doesn't make it more resilient to attack.

When government-run water supplies run low, fines and invective are used to punish and embarrass those who might water their lawns or wash their cars. A free market solution is to simply raise the price of water - incentivising conservation. It sounds like that's what the miners have done (de-prioritizing SD txs). Berating SD doesn't seem to have accomplished anything.

Satoshi Dice has helped make it clear how easy it is to bloat the blockchain. If that slows adoption today, that's fine. Slow and steady growth is better than the boom and bust of publicity and exposed-flaw.

Lastly, it sounds like they're filling a market need. Apparently lots of people are "rolling the dice" because they want to. This is what P2P transactions are supposed to be about. No one should be able to stop anyone from sending bitcoin to anyone. This scenario was possible ever since the genesis block. If we've got a "tragedy of the commons" in the blockchain, then we've got to solve it in the model of P2P - not by name-calling.

I think it's a great idea. I hope others follow suit.

Kudos, Charlie. I think the best thing you did was to appear sane and friendly. Most of us would have been nervous in that situation.


Know your audience. Know yourself. Cypherdoc is very knowledgeable, and correct, and I have a tendency to approach political, bitcoin, and economics discussions in this way too, but this was a fairly light segment. There wasn't much time to get deep or super-passionate on any point without risking alienating the thousands of viewers who were probably hearing about bitcoin for the very first time.

Similarly, there's no point in raising the ire of David Birch when he's actually doing service for bitcoin in this interview. He gave it some credibility. We don't need to convince him. We don't need to convince anyone. We just need to present the facts. Bitcoin is building up a track record. It's not yet for everyone. It's rough around the edges. Right now it's only useful for those who can understand it. If you don't understand it, it's hard to reason about. Right now most people don't even know there's a fundamental problem with fiat money. Hell, they don't even know what fiat means. They've lived their whole lives with this thing, and they've never had to think hard about it's fundamental nature. Well that's all going to change - but we don't need to cram it down their throats. Soon enough governments will be busy cramming fiat down their throats. Let's be the saviors - not the wackos.

If you're having a conversation with one or two people, you have a chance to gauge their interest, intelligence, and disposition. You can tailor your arguments and anecdotes to suit their moods. If your on TV, it's a whole different ballgame. I'm not saying it can't be done. It's just not for everyone.

As more people hear, more will be interested. We'll grow the ranks, and find not only valuable ambassadors, but resonant phrases. We might be fond of using terms like "decentralized ledger" (I certainly am), or "cryptocurrency", but in time we'll learn that lay people can't actually hear those terms. Someone will hit on a new, dumbed-down, term that just makes sense to most people. They'll hit on a concept that's currently being presented too logically or in too much detail - and crystalize it for millions.

Bitcoin needs time to work its way into our culture. People need to hear the sad stories about dollars and drachmas, and the good stories about bitcoins and "lucky schmucks". There will be much gloom in the medium term. Bitcoin will be one of the bright points. At some point even the most stalwart critics will relent and purchase bitcoin - the evidence will be just too overwhelming. Herd mentality will kick in.

In the mean time, let's pick our fights.

Great job, Charlie.

2nd and 3rd entries:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ellet+wallet


That's good enough for a start. Imagine if/once it actually ships.

Where's September?

Did a post disappear from here? Was it too off-topic?

+1