A 'democratic vote' doesn't have much weight in creating successful hard forks.   

Even if the majority of casual users update their client to Bitcoin900M, what use is it to them if the major merchants don't accept coins from that branch?

It's only the 'economic majority' that has this kind of weight.

But why should major merchants and stakeholders support a protocol change that devalues their savings?

Keep your bitcoins on a 2-of-2 multisig address. Keep one key on the smartphone and the other with a loved one in your home country.  As soon as you clear customs, notify your loved one to release the coins to another 1-signature address on your phone.

Should it ever come down to a legal defense, you can argue that the bitcoins are not 'imported' unless both your and your loved one cross the border together.

Tying bitcoins to another person and not simply another device is key.  Most judges are not tech-savvy and don't grasp concepts like cryptography and digital signatures.  However, they do grasp the concept of multiple persons having to sign an ownership transfer. 

Make it easy for the judge to understand this, and the prosecution will have a hard time.

'Coins' don't really exist.  Only transactions and private keys exist.

Metaphorically, you could say that coins are held simultaneously in the wallet AND the blockchain.

Bei mir hat es einmal einen Monat gedauert.  Das passiert normalerweise, wenn zu viele Kunden gleichzeitig von mtgox via Banküberweisung abheben.  Die sind einfach überfordert.

Keine Angst, das Geld ist nicht weg. Außer Mtgox geht in den nächsten Wochen pleite, was ich für unwahrscheinlich halte.

Java itself isn't a huge problem, as long as you only use Java applications that you trust. The problem is the Java browser plugin. Just disable it.

I do all my web browsing, pdf&word file opening, etc. from inside a Virtualbox virtual machine.  I recommend the same for all hot wallet users.

Why do banks get blamed for things like "drug money laundering"?

When gangsters use Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans for human trafficking, it's not like Mercedes gets blamed for aiding gangsters.  Unless they knowingly sell a van for this purpose.

The UK government is already doing this:

In the UK you will go to jail for astronomical noise.

Perhaps they meant to say painting.

For one, merchants could hedge against the sudden sharp price drops that we have seen in the last months.  As soon as a lot of merchants are doing this, it would also dampen the sharp price increases, since a fraction of speculators who expect bitcoin to rise would bet against the hedgers instead of buying bitcoin.

+1

The number of users needs to stabilize first before we can have stable prices.

Also, we don't have a well functioning derivatives market for bitcoin. Once that is the case, adoption as a medium of exchange will explode.

Either Western Union embraces cryptocurrencies or it goes bankrupt in 5-10 years.

Western Union is roughly in the same position now as Blockbuster was in 10 years ago. The fact that Blockbuster failed to embrace the Internet early on, even though the warning signs were crystal clear, was their downfall. Western Union, take heed.

That advantage is largely illusory. Transaction times are not faster. Only Confirmation time is faster.

However, it's not the number of confirmations that matters for double spending protection. It's the cumulative difficulty of confirmations.

If you decrease the time between confirmations by a factor of 4, you need 4 times as many confirmations for the same double spending security.

The only situation where Litecoin offers a speed advantage is a high trust scenario where merchants only require 1 confirmation  for minimal security, and where the security provided by 1 confirmation greatly exceeds the security they require, but at the same time 0 confirmations is not secure enough.

Such situations are rare.


As for the slow confirmation times of zero fee transactions, Litecoin would suffer from the same problem if it had similar volumes to Bitcoin.



Doesn't bother me. I think that people like Satoshi, Gavin, and Mike Hearn deserve every penny of their wealth.

Litecoiners are profiting from their work.


I agree, but this is both an advantage and disadvantage.  

Too centralized, and mining can be corrupted by monopolies.  Too democratic, and mining can be corrupted by social engineering.  I'm not sure whether Bitcoin, Litecoin, or ppcoin strikes the right balance.

pffff, young kids these days...

 I will reply with a few quotes from David J.C. MacKay’s book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air:

Am besten hier fragen:

http://dot-bit.org/forum/

Sie werden nicht zentral ausgegeben. Alle XRP die jemals existieren werden, wurden durch schon durch das Protokoll ausgegeben – mehrheitlich an Opencoin.
 
Aber nicht einmal Opencoin ist in der Lage, neue XRP zu schaffen.
 
Die Tatsache, dass die große Mehrheit der XRP einer einzigen Firma gehört, bedeutet natürlich, dass diese Firma den Kurs sehr leicht zum Einstürzen bringen kann.  

Als Investment würde ich es deshalb auch nicht empfehlen.

Ich verkaufe dir gerne 300 XRP um 0,015 BTC.  20,000 XRP/BTC entspricht dem aktuellen Kurs bei Bitstamp.

Wenn du mit diesem Angebot einverstanden bist, schicke bitte 0,015 BTC an meine Forums-Adresse:
1E8ydXZKFLG6zHdcZoRjRT4m4AYgYYjyAi

I bet that when Ripple becomes successful, Krugman will just come up with some other excuse about why it's bad, since he won't be able to use the "wasted energy" excuse.  

zB hier im Forum oder bei bitcoin-otc.com