It's interesting to consider that such behaviour is not necessarily a conscious decision but one that just follows from their pursuit of growth economies and fiat. Money is a means to control wealth, and one of the forms of wealth is exploiting people - paying them less that they are due for their efforts. If you can't control money, you can't exploit people??... it's all good.

'Regulation', only in so far as they are able to control it and bend it to their will. So, mitigating any risk they perceived it posed or having a controlling stake. The worry might be if Bitcoins are bought with debt.. that would make fiat more vulnerable than ever.

I've suggested before that perhaps the future is governments issuing their own premined coins - or at least coins they control the mining of.. but that doesn't nothing to solve debt crisis that they are responsible for - who wants smelly coins. The concept of nation state is predicated on control of money and resources. Defense of arbitrary boundaries is a silly business; but then I doubt we'll see any rapid change from governments wanting to control local currencies - if that ever changed, it would come in fits and starts.

You're kidding.. that's what they do! Their understanding of the world is control and exploit.. their motivation; method; and the interests they represent, count for half the reason we have a financial crisis.

I like the bit where they talk of how the IMF and nation states might want to buy Bitcoins

Micro Manager

The first two of Mjbmonetarymetals' post look great. The later ones I wonder look to cluttered to work at a distance. The first is the best I've seen to date.

Reward?.. If a winner emerges, then perhaps we can all send them a small thank you.

Jumping to stereotypes.. seems rather apt considering the lack of imagination coming from traditional economics atm.

Yes, both boards look to have an equal chance.

See litecoin discussions for example on the cryptocointalk is 0 replies to all topics.. http://cryptocointalk.com/forum/16-litecoin-discussions/

That said, I prefer the way they have the subforums laid out as a list, though that could be refined, having a list of major and minor might work better. Major being the olde school BTC; LTC; PPC; NMC; DVC.
Minor could be the type of list that altcoinforum has atm. Too many copycoins, I say!

Could we not just sack the SEC and save on taxes?

That is rather the line that the bully would take. Do what I say not as I do.

If the Banks and Governments would only do what is in the interests of the People, then there wouldn't be an issue.

What we see is a consequence of those in Government thinking they are above the law and that they can act without consequence.

I don't need to try it.

The blockchain that the clients download, is a history of all transactions.. that's why there's a worry about the size of that. The paper wallet doesn't hold an amount, it allows you access to the account - that is, it allows you to action change in that account, which is the same. You then think that you own something called a Bitcoin.. but your don't own some-thing, you own an idea - that idea has value and that idea is money in your account. Money is an idea, a confidence that tomorrow you can spend what you have today... it's simply a medium that people agree on exchanging.. and that then communicate wealth. Wealth matters; money does not.

To check your account you can put the public address into https://blockchain.info/
Do not ever post your private key to an online website!

Some third party sites will store the private key for you; you will have a public address and a more traditional password - Andriod blockchain.info app does that - but that's not as secure because you are trusting that 3rd party.. blockchain.info is probably ok but still not as secure as d.i.y.

It's interesting to understand how SHA-256 and other similar functions work. Creating ambiguity through XOR functions means you get the same answer reducing the private key but in reverse you don't know where to look because the information has been lost. One grain of sand from all the sand on all the beaches.

What I don't know anything of is what quantum computers do that's different beyond fuzzy logic. I can't immediately see a way that the answer would magically appear even then. I'm also not sure why the military recommends a move to SHA-3 - and I've yet to find an ABC description of that function but it would be interesting to see the difference.


Edit: ignore this above.. keys are more about ECDSA

Good answer above from blockchain.info but if you want to do it yourself, then you simply need to understand that your wallet is the privatekey.

Whether you choose to have that privatekey online with a 3rd party; in your computer; on your phone; on paper; or in your brain; or even in your brain as something that can be translated back into the privatekey, that is all it is. The public key is then trivial to derive from the private key. The balance then is simply the sum of all transactions.

So if you're running a client in Linux you can dump the private key and do whatever you want with it. So long as it's meaningful to you - make art if you want.

When you want it you import it, you simply need that string that is the private key.

Probably that's very similar for other operating systems interaction with their clients too.
Other daemon calls listed in the --help and at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Original_Bitcoin_client/API_calls_list


The only complex factor here is that getting the privatekey from the publickey is orders of magnitude more difficult.

Plonk JackRabiit

Dude - stop being a douche.

#facepalm 

Well I've yet to see anyone describe Ripple as more than half an idea, based on the theory that *if* everyone held XRP, *then* it would be useful. It seems to be a suggestion of communication and information exchange through water that you don't have.

Also that's offtopic from the more interesting OP about Government's interaction with Bitcoin. Ripple as a topic seems to leak into too many threads.. that's it's other problem is too much empty hype. If something works, it doesn't need hype - it grows by word of mouth. Bitcoin works; it will succeed, whether Government helps or not.

Ripple sounds like a wet fart.. I don't think anyone is fooled.

Each time Governments fudge up an economy; or topslices a county's wealth; each time they impose themselves on their populations, they only encourage people to look to alternatives.

Each time Governments try to fight cryptocurrencies, they help to encourage people to think about what money is relative to wealth.

The worse-best action Governments could take, is buying up Bitcoins with a mind to scare the market later but that would only make their position worse. Those who did sell their coins would very likely only then come back later and buy more coins, having taken some profit from that investment. Probably those Governments that are limited by legal frameworks, might not be able to waste taxpayers money buying into the market they don't like. Perhaps then in frustration - or in inspiration, they might create their own cryptocurrencies and compete.

The Governments have themselves in a quicksand of their own making - having shat on us for so long they are lacking a sound foundation; their lack of imaginative ways out, is only matched by creative solutions from alternatives like Bitcoin.

Some problems are too big for Governments to solve and the crises we face will likely only be resolved by society widely; it seems rather less likely the crises will ever be solved by that which caused them in the first place.

Big Government; Big Fail.


btw - I thought btc-e was Bulgarian ~ bulgarian trading exchange.

Probably off topic but I wonder what happens to transactions that are regarded by the network as an invalid spend - whether double or just a glitch that hasn't checked there is money available.

That is, how do you know the source is valid?.. perhaps you'll never receive that money, if the previous wasn't confirmed for a reason.