Ever since 1973, none of the worlds currencies are backed by anything other than a consensus.
The consensus is about the capacity of the currency-issuing State to tax the economy under its rule.
When the State debt is increasing and the tax rate reaches the peak of the Laffer curve, the consensus starts to become shaky.

So why on earth would you want BTCs to be backed by SOMETHING other than the consensus of the miners ?

+1
Les autres cryptodevises ressemblent beaucoup à iwannamakemyowncoin

When did that happen last ?

@2112

Relax: before you invoke "criminal" law, ask yourself why you are doing so.
You'll live a happier life if you live with no fears.
Read about the 4 knights of infocalypse: you are riding one of them.

Securities require issuers to exist as such.
Bitcoin is just a shared, public database and that's annoying for all the paid supporters of the current banking systems.
Bitcoin value is derived only from a consensus not from a promise.
The fact that fiat money value, ever since 1973, is also based on a consensus AND a promise does not imply anything about bitcoin.

@kripz
WTF, your gif, what movie was THAT ??

There is no problem with democracy, there is one with uncontrolled exercise of power.
At least democracy offers some opportunities to set controls in place.
The problem gets real difficult when democracies let a small group of people control wealth and money flows: its called Wall street and the City.

Bitcoin is all about taking back the monetary power from this two evils.
Meanwhile I will go back to reading Tocqueville and John Rawls.

Bitcoiners clearly fit in this category: except bitcoins remove the many drawbacks of the gold standard (most notably, central bank issuance and deflationary spiral).
Bitcoin by no means influence interest rates.
You can't prevent lenders from charging interest.
At least, with bitcoin you pull one of their argument out of the way, namely inflation of the monetary base.
The rate of demurrage in freicoin cannot be disconnected from macroeconomics indicators over time: without a governing body to maintain that rate, you run a serious risk that the demurrage rate will drift out of sync with the economy in real terms.
So if the demurrage rate is cast in concrete and cannot be adjusted, who in their right mind would adopt such a monetary system ?

Since you stated in this thread that there were flaws in the design of bitcoin (what flaw ? I am not sure; personnally I have not found any: when I discovered bitcoin, I just thought it was a beautiful construction of the human mind. Just like the first time I visited the Louvre I thought it was a beautiful building) , I feel compelled to state very forcefully that there is a fundamental flaw in the design of freicoin: it's called demurrage.
Demurrage implies setting a rate.
To determine that rate, you need to build a consensus before the word go.
Worse than that, you need a governing body to harbour the interminable discussion that would need to happen to simply formulate a consensus.
This kind of govenring boby is called a central bank, is it not ?

Suggestion: type in directly the 8 caracters of the coin address and block explorer will do (BE works starting from 6 caracters if the address has been exposed to the network, for instance when loading the coin).
Chances of a collision on 7 caracters (1 is given): 1/58⁷ , not very high 

+1
When denialism is applied to climate change it is ignoring the simple fact that bad things like global warming may result from multiple causes.

Libertarian fundamentalists are saying something like ohh they are lots of car accidents that happen in that curve because people are speeding but we will not let you enforce the speed limit until you straighten that road.

I am not following the volatility argument: if my transaction is settled (confirmed) after one hour, as a buyer, I can buy back the same amount of coins I just sent for payment for the same amount in dollars.
The seller also can sell the coins to get the same amount of dollars, presumably on the same forex.
So we traded in bitcoins instead of using a bank card scheme.
How much volatility is there over one hour ?

From Utah to Paris, France: shipped on 9/21, arrived this morning 9/28.
Not so bad for sneaker mail over the atlantic.

Anyway, the coins look great: thumbs up to Mike !

About the relationship between inflation and monetary velocity:
When 1 $ is “printed”, assuming a velocity of  2, the GDP can increase by 2 $ without any effect on prices (leaving out of the discussion the effect of international trade balance for simplicity).
If the GDP growth is less than that (say 1 $), then we have either money going in slower motion (velocity has decreased to 1)  OR prices going down (divided by 2 = deflation).
If the GDP growth is stronger (say 4$), then it may be attributable to inflation (prices multiplied by 2) or to higher monetary velocity or to both effects combined.

In short, there is NO direct relationship between monetary velocity and inflation (dP) but a rather complex one between 4 variables:
V= PT/M
dV = TdP/M + PdT/M –PTdM/M2

I take it that you consider a resource shortage as a negative determinant of dT (T: amount of transactions in real terms, not monetary terms).

bitcoin-central.net est en français et il a une banque en zone euro (pour un virement SEPA gratuit) 

Printing money generates inflation: inflation is hurting primarily those who cannot invest.
Those who earn enough to save and invest can hedge against the effect of inflation for instance by buying a real estate property.
In short, taxes are a way to limit the gap between the rich and the poor.
The gap can be further limited if income taxes are progressive, not flat rate.

Demurrage (negative interest rate) or interest rates belong to the same family of what I would call "threadmill knobs": they allow government, banks, corporations, whoever is setting the rate, to put people on the threadmill and set the speed without them having a say.

With demurrage, you can have them run backwards

The flawed assumption is that without interest rates people would have no incentive to invest ..
As if people needed interest rates to be creative, productive and to think about their kids and the future in general.

I'm available for consulting and due diligence under the normal commercial terms as a disinterested person.

You are out trolling all the trolls in this forum: you want to be consulting for the financial "institutions" it is so obvious from your "signature"
disinterested... aha aha aha

Today all bitcoins have been mined at a steady rate of 50 BTC per block.
If none have been spent to date and all are spent today we would have the maximum of BTCDD (i.e minimum monetary velocity).
The percentage of DD for each bitcoin amount would be today's block number (N) minus the block number of the block generating it which we average by halving today's block number (because we have a linear growth rate), divided by N.
Hence the maximum percentage is currently 50%.
When the reward is halved next year from 50 to 25 BTC, then there will be fewer "young" bitcoins: the weighted average will get tilted towards the first bitcoins generated, increasing the maximum BTCDD percentage to 66% at the end of the next period (2016).

Paypal n'est pas accepté en général pour acheter des bitcoins car l'acheteur peut obtenir un remboursement après les avoir reçus: il y a un risque de fraude pour le vendeur.
Le transfert SEPA est gratuit et reste le moyen le plus sûr.
Je peux recommander bitcoin-central.net comme forex.