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Since this is a hypothetical...
It would depend on when I had acquired those bitcoins (back when CPUs did the mining and 25k btc was only $25?) and what fraction of my net worth it represented. And possibly on when they were stolen.
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"Of the people, by the people, for the people..."
Don't be skeered of your own reflection :-)
US govnt hasn't been "of the people" at least since the US civil war. |
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1. Most important to understand is that a perfectly natural system for distributing a cryptocurrency in a fair, envy-less way exists. There is no need for a cryptocurrency to have an artificial limit. There will be inflation, yes. The second coin will cause 100% inflation, the 3rd coin 50%, the 4th coin 33%, etc. If inflation kicks in, mining will become less attractive and will be supported by mainly transaction fees (that are not newly created coins and don't drive up inflation further).
Let's bottom-line this, and get to the root of your beef. Say someone sets up a digital currency. Say they cap it at 100 million units, guaranteed in decentralized, open-source code. What's the "best" way to initially distribute the currency? Don't point me to a link, I want you to tell me yourself, in brief. Under those conditions I cannot think of any fair initial distribution scheme, and believe me, I tried. Any path I choose led to either an initial-adopter advantage or something based upon some 'web of trust'. Please tell me if you now a fair way. So it's not like 2% each year (like the official figure here in the Eurozone) and it's not that the 'profit' of this inflation goes to the state. OR...
Is it just that you hate the idea of there being no inflation, and believe any non-inflatable currency, anywhere in the world, used by any group, should never, ever, ever exist, and everyone should seek out and destroy all such currencies no matter what?
And I've tried so hard because at first I would at all cost try to avoid inflation. But I finally came to the conclusion that the inflation is not bad at all. Certainly not when it can be expected to grow percentually less and less as time goes by. So then you admit that you just don't want inflation-proof currencies to exist? Wow. At this point, why are you even still here? There are people who want an inflation-proof currency. If you want inflation so badly (because it's "fair", or for whatever reason you deem important), then why not just copy and alter the bitcoin source code, go create an inflationary digital currency, and leave those of us who don't want a stinking inflating currency alone, because we're not going to switch. Geez. |
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Yes, it is definitely still going on. Orders place right now will take about a month before they ship due to the substantial backlog. We appreciate your patience while we get production up to speed. We will release new versions and smaller denominations at that time also.
I'm definitely interested in BitBills too. Since I'd rather not wait a month on an order, I'll swing by the site again once I get an update (via your email list, or possibly on the forum) that things are back at full speed. I'll personally be focusing on 1 and possibly 5 whole bitcoin cards, and smaller denominations down to 0.1btc. Side note: Any chance you might start producing "undenominated" BitBills too? Ones that come with no coins sent to the address, which the owner loads himself (as much as he wants, as often as he wants)? Might even be labelled a "Savings BitBill" or "User-Loaded BitBill" or something so as not to be confused with pre-loaded BitBills. I'd personally buy a few of those as well.  |
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But you can't destroy gold, you can hide it, melt it, make stuff out of it but gold is delete key proof. If some old lady didn't backup her hard drive and looses 5 bitcoins in a crash she's screwed. So lets say bitcoin went super huge and millions of people are accepting it world wide. But every day, some where in the world, an old ladies hard drive crashes, a students hard drive got 1 too many bad sectors, someones computer got hacked and there harddrive was formated and in the process, 100 bitcoins are destroyed every day around the world due to pure stupidity. That would mean every year the bitcoin economy shrinks by 36,600 coins. With no way to "reprint" those coins back into the economy, eventually the remaining bitcoins would get hyper inflated and die due to not enough money to go around.
If there is no way to reprint dead bitcoins then it just can't be done. But is there a smart way around it so stupid people don't hurt the bitcoin economy yet prevent inflation past the 21M? I know there are bitbanks, bitbucks, escrows and insurance (coming soon) but all of those are for smart people, not little old ladies who use the recycle bin to store there important documents.
You do realize that using your own math scenario, it would take 287 YEARS to lose half of the total number of bitcoins right? Even taking into account the fact that USD is not a limited resource, do you know how much difference there is between a USD today and 200 years ago? (which is only 2/3 of the time we're talking about). And that is ignoring the idea that we'd be seeing lots of backup/encryption services for peoples wallets (you can infinitely replicate your wallet if you wish) if the service did take off. Seriously. Bitcoin loss just isn't that big a concern. I'd be far more worried about an early adopter who's sitting on 100k bitcoins suddenly having a heart attack, and having relatives inherit his files but being unable to tell what they are because all the copies of his wallet were stored in TrueCrypt files.... Even then, I wouldn't exactly lose sleep over the possibility. |
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No to both of those questions.
Do not say bitcoin is dead. Bitcoin is _Real_. When you hold a bitcoin in your hand you hold a peace of history.
Errr, I'm pretty sure no one's going to get to hold a bitcoin in their hand  Bitbills. Close enough. |
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1. Most important to understand is that a perfectly natural system for distributing a cryptocurrency in a fair, envy-less way exists. There is no need for a cryptocurrency to have an artificial limit. There will be inflation, yes. The second coin will cause 100% inflation, the 3rd coin 50%, the 4th coin 33%, etc. If inflation kicks in, mining will become less attractive and will be supported by mainly transaction fees (that are not newly created coins and don't drive up inflation further).
Let's bottom-line this, and get to the root of your beef. Say someone sets up a digital currency. Say they cap it at 100 million units, guaranteed in decentralized, open-source code. What's the "best" way to initially distribute the currency? Don't point me to a link, I want you to tell me yourself, in brief. OR... Is it just that you hate the idea of there being no inflation, and believe any non-inflatable currency, anywhere in the world, used by any group, should never, ever, ever exist, and everyone should seek out and destroy all such currencies no matter what? (I swear... has everyone in western society drank the Keynesian kool-aid?) |
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Ya know releasing updates for clients isnt hard at all, and since Bitcoin is centralized to bitcoin.org, its even easier.
Please. Any whiff of a change like that to a new client, and I'm not downloading it. I haven't even upgraded to 0.3.22, and won't until I see a need too. So yeah, good luck with the whole "arbitrarily change the rules" thing. Not what I signed up for. |
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I would distribute them to a network of hundreds of cash/bitcoin exchangers scattered across the U.S. and Canada, and advertise their existence.
Mexico and other continents... you'd be on your own (at least at first.)
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Would the situation the op proposes not result in the devaluation of BTC relative to the current value at that point? How does one convince 50% of the users to adopt a policy which devalues their holdings?
Also difficult is getting them to do so all at once. If they don't, their early generated blocks will invalidate, as they won't be able to maintain the longest block chain.
And that's the real issue... who plans on being first to make some attempt at forking the chain? Who wants to spend time and energy risking that the new blocks they generate may, eventually, perhaps, be recognized by enough other clients to matter? Even if you tried to organize a situation where thousands of agreeable miners have all promised to come online with the modified software at the same time, how does each of them know the others won't bail at the last minute? And if they have doubts, what's to stop them from bailing at the last minute? |
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when i see that graph, i turn it upside down in my head and change the title to "USD Value"
if gold were useless, we may as well trade pictures of UFO's.
Then you're admitting that it has absolutely nothing to do with the demand for jewelry. As already stated, gold is intrinsically worth only a fraction of a fraction of what its current value is. It's all speculation. People are pulled to it not because it has any real intrinsic worth, but because of it's magical appeal as the "real" currency. This comes from its history of being wanted and used as currency, which has now falsely lead the ignorant masses to believe that it has high intrinsic value. In a true SHTF scenario, gold will be worthless - you cannot eat it, drink it, hunt with it, or defend yourself with it. Sorry, you're wrong. Zimbabwe - Bread for Gold |
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Gold is pretty much worthless as a commodity. Gold is the most irrational commodity that humans trade. It has no use other than it's shiny and it's perception of value. Only a true idiot would believe gold has any meaning or value. It is a business though and a very profitable one. Where profit exists, money will follow.
This is just flat-out false. Gold's chemical, electrical, and even some of its physical properties make it such that its rarity is the only thing keeping humans from using it in a variety of ways on a daily basis. If gold were as common as dirt, it would be coating our flatware; inside our electronics (much more so than now!); adorning our books, paintings and clothing; inside our bodies (teeth, metal plates and rods, etc.); within most places of manufacture; and would just generally be the second most-used metal next to iron. Gold's intrinsic value is why it became desirous enough to start being used as money in the first place. To be honest gold really is only valued for its shininess and density. Gold has, and always will be out of reach to industries for its massive cost. Silver is a much better conductor, although it has oxidizing properties so they use gold where they cannot use solder mask ie. Connecting chips such as RAM / CPU's. However the amount of gold used for these processes is only about 5-6% of the mined supply. That leaves about 70-80% for jewlery, and the rest being investments. Clearly nearly 90-95% of it's value comes from its "Shininess", and a weak dollar/ hedge against inflation. Gold is valued for it's numerous useful properties. If it was an ugly brown color and had no jewelry market use to speak of, that would just free up more of it for its other uses. Its price might be lower (so if by value you refer specifically to price you might be right) but it would still be a highly, highly valued commodity. Can we at least agree that if gold were abundant, it would be used pretty much everywhere, far beyond cosmetic situations? |
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I fit that profile and still can't post.
Until that's resolved, could I get whitelisted? I think my prior posts speak for themselves.
I think it may take up to four hours for the board to update your member group. (Otherwise, maybe I have to do it manually with a cron job or something.) Thanks.  |
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You are not very original, this has been discused and answered forever.
And then you will have two currencies. The old system and the new system. The new system is more inflationary and people wont trust it and it will die. I actually think that the miners will see this and wont even go for the change in the first place.
I would love you to make a compatible fork of bitcoin... That makes the coins I own TWICE as valuable as I can spend them on both block-chains!
The idea might have been stated before, if you drop me a link I'll even say sorry. But please do understand, I'm not speaking of a situation of two co-existent currencies. I'm speaking of the current block-chain being taken over. You missed his point. Even if what you're proposing was possible, and it somehow made bitcoins more valuable, you would still be making the early adopters, those sitting on hundreds of thousands (millions?) of bitcoins that much richer. And that's a bad thing, right? |
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I think my prior posts speak for themselves.
Ironically, 'I agree'.  |
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Thanks to some code provided by Disposition, there is now a mix of post count and "time online" requirements. You must have spent 8 hours online and posted 5 posts. This should be easier to do.
I fit that profile and still can't post. Until that's resolved, could I get whitelisted? I think my prior posts speak for themselves. This post is a test, on the off-chance that the above post count was a typo, and that it's really supposed to be "25 posts." With this, my 25th post, here's hoping.... |
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Thanks to some code provided by Disposition, there is now a mix of post count and "time online" requirements. You must have spent 8 hours online and posted 5 posts. This should be easier to do.
I fit that profile and still can't post. Until that's resolved, could I get whitelisted? I think my prior posts speak for themselves. |
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THERE IS NO WAY THIS WILL LAST SO HAVE FUN BUT KNOW THAT THE GOVERNMENT WILL CRUSH THIS.
Like they crushed torrents and filesharing? Like they crushed Wikileaks? You might just find that good ideas are a bit more resilient than you thought. |
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This actually sounds like a good idea, provided those groups have ready access to hardware and expertise to set it up.
They could even sell (or auction!) the bitcoins locally, with the buyers knowing it goes to support the cause.
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Haven't heard a thing since my response. Don't really expect to though. Thanks for the craigslist support. I'm not sure how many folks locally will go there to buy, but it was where I first saw someone selling bitcoins (although he never actually sold me any, prompting me to try to add more bitcoins to the market for everyone else.) |
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