If a random number generator is 'biased' then this random number generator is flawed. This is why it's better to not describe it as random number generator! Miner/asic 'optimisations' are optimizations if they help miners mine faster and cheaper, not mine less! This is the whole point of having PoW, right?

240$ worth of goods tomorrow will be much less than 240$ worth of goods today. All central banks have quite successfully taken care of this to be unstoppable.

Not all of them and not 100% of the bitcoins they get. You should read bitpay's report for 2014.

I've put dollars into bitcoin but I don't expect to get back dollars. I expect to get back goods and services.

"My assumption is bitcoin has at least one more bubble in it even if it fails as an alternative private currency."

Private currency, huh? That says it all.

Why are people so ferociously attacked every time they say there are some unusual patterns in mining? Do we try to hide something disturbing? In my view valiron has a valid point. This deserves getting a closer look.

I can't figure out what's the difference between Ledger and HW-1 Wallet, except the price? Is Frederic Martin part of Ledger team?

My point is there is no need to craft complex 'conceivable' methods to attack bitcoin. What attacker needs to focus on is breaking a single PGP key (was it 2048 bit or less?). This is why it is important not to sit and wait until this key is broken but move on and make bitcoin truly independent of its creator's will.

If you insist on RSA vs ECC argument, then same message might be signed with the key Satoshi used to sign network genesis block.

Well here is one. A message "Bitcoin was created by a special team authorized by US government" published and signed with Satoshi's PGP key. Although some altcoins will flourish that will be the end of bitcoin.

Satoshi (aka DARPA) designed bitcoin by the end of 2008 to substitute gold because by that time US financial system was teetering on the brink of total collapse with no gold in store. This is not necessarily a bad thing. But it's time for the lizard to sacrifice the tail and break free!

Well, how is that different from saying "Roll your own currency = recipe for total disaster"?

An algo designed by Bitcoin Engineering Task Force specifically for bitcoin. Then and only then bitcoin has a chance to be safe. Bitcoin should not use hashing algo because it is recommended by NIST or NSA or whatever. On the contrary, other organizations should use whatever bitcoin network uses because if it is broken bitcoin will act as honey-pot and will inevitably expose the weakness!

Security that is good for banks simply isn't good enough for bitcoin. Bitcoin businesses that advertise their services to be of "banking grade" security are very funny. The "very secure" microcontrollers used in the credit cards simply shouldn't be used for bitcoin hardware wallets if they don't qualify for open source hardware!

If you sell part of your coins at $500 then you'll sell the rest at $1000 or $1200. Then at $1500 or $2000 you'll hate bitcoin. I've seen this happening in the past with lots of bitcoin fans at lower price levels.

You'd better read what I said instead of deducing my assumptions.

What I said is that the state seizes to exist if there is no government at all! The government of Poland didn't go out of the capital to the eastern part of the country. They were evacuated to London. You can't expect a foreign neighboring country to remain neutral. Of course the Red army will move in to create a buffer zone if the Polish government deserted from their duties.

When Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938 some regions of this country in the same time were occupied by Polish troops. Poland invaded and annexed Zaolzie territory part of Southern Slovakia. Why would you expect one year later in a similar situation the Soviets to act differently?

How will option sellers hedge/guarantee their open positions?

Actually this is a myth created by US propaganda. USSR didn't attack Poland because there was no Polish state anymore when they entered this territory. Polish army was defeated by the Germans and government of Poland was already evacuated in London when the Red army entered Poland!

Inaba, you owe me 8.3725 bitcoins. You're going to pay them back to me in one way or another!

Not necessarily. You can already sell bitcoins without even having a single satoshi. To do that you can use margin deposits and leverage - 1:2, 1:5 or 1:10. In other words you can place $10K in one such exchange and sell bitcoins worth $100K without having a single satoshi. If you meet somebody on the street that tries to sell you something they don't have undoubtedly you'll call them crooks and swindlers, but in the nowadays "regulated" financial world such crooks and swindlers are blessed as "liquidity providers"...

Another way of doing the same is by using the newly (hastily) licensed bitcoin swap exchanges like TerraExchange. You swap your dollars for bitcoins for a certain period at predetermined exchange rates. But why would you want to have bitcoins for 6 or 12 months instead of dollars? The only reason is to sell them hoping to buy them back with a profit when time comes to pay them back. But make no mistake, the final result of such swaps (profit or loss) is always cleared in $.

This is nothing new. Such price suppression schemes are applied to gold, silver, oil for a long long time. What happens if price doesn't want to go lower? You simply increase the leverage or margin collateral! That is why the leverage in the derivatives portfolio of big banks is currently at record levels! What happens if increasing leverage and margin collateral still doesn't work and you make a loss? Well, Fed or ECB or BOE or whatever central bank print additional money only for you at zero interest rate or even at negative (ECB). They are the too-big-to-fail guys and their cronies. For them bitcoin price is just a joke to play with...

This is not necessary. Leave it to market!

Forget about regulating something you've no control of. You don't have the bitcoin printing press! Bitcoin is not fiat money. It can't be printed at will of any government. If exchanges are regulated and even then they lose customers' bitcoins how will you compensate their customers? You can't "print" more bitcoins just like you can't "print" more gold or silver.