No, every time I make a .04 donation to bitcoinporn.tumblr it reads 200 coins moving because I'm that rich and that's my change.

Bitcoin watch should take that stat down because it doesn't mean anything other than "Maybe there was more movement today or maybe someone with a 10k address made 200 payments"

Also 6.8m is not 10% it's about all of them.

I can vouch for the integrity of the operators. And having played an hour or two the software seems good and stable.

We will post the code soon.

I don't plan to change the algorithm called firstbits at all even though there are no other implementations that I know of.

It's a neat idea (decentralized transferable aliases), but I like the purity and intuitiveness of firstbits. It would be strange to call something "firstbits" if 1mike7 returned 1jkaF92... I think you should work on your idea, but maybe find another way to encode aliases in the chain. It seems like it would be ideal to be able to pick any conforming alias and associate it with your address via some transaction. Then the rule would be the first to make a valid claiming tx gets the requested alias.

A (probably bad) example would be send 11 satoshis to an address then send any amount within 100 blocks and that amount is your alias. You could convert the number to whatever base is all lowercase or lowercase and numbers or whatever. If anyone ever tried to make the same claim it would just be ignored, only the first would count.

To be clear, I am in favor of other people making other systems, just not calling them firstbits. Anything calling itself firstbits should use our exact algorithm and opening the code will help people do that.

"Mercenary miners" are totally fine imo. They are selling us coins and security. Really there isn't anyone anywhere selling something better 

There is no reason at all that the people with hardware and tech skills need or should be the same ones who provide the value to coins by desiring and holding them in the face of high offers.

Interesting ideas hannesnaude. I worry about some people implementing the change and some people using the 'pure' system. Calling it something else would help avoid confusion. It's also possible to make a system use something other than the beginning of an address. The end of address is obvious, but other things would work. A (probably bad) example would be to use the block number plus number of the transaction (listed by id, or alphabetically?) so Satoshi's addresses in the gen block that has a firstbits of "1" would have a BlockRankNumber of 1-1 and the second address in the most recent block would be 137009-2. This would probably lead to people packing blocks with even numbers 140000-1 might be a coveted spot, lol. Sorry, this is off your point, just wanted to say that there is room for a lot of different shortening methods. Flavors of firstbits are fine, but confusion would be really bad for the original and for spin offs.

At any given time there is a set of people with a desire to buy at certain prices. A seller generally tries to find the highest price and satisfies it with a sale, now that is desired and the highest desired price is a little lower. Make sense? It's pretty easy to see inside of one market, but the forces exist beyond any one meeting place of buyers and sellers.

I'd be interested in seeing the results of a [Bitcoin] / [liquid gov money] poll. Mine is >1.

Would you actually invest resources in Bitcoin after that kind of precedent? Any system where that is possible is not going to hold any value.

The "paper rich" issue isn't any different for "late adopters" either. In aggregate they cannot all cash out to the some other currency at the current rate either. All exchange rates are a reflection of marginal value comparisons.

The people who are hurt by not being able to sell lots of coins at the same price as a few coins are the people who have a lot so the incentives are right for individuals acting in their own self interest to distribute coins more evenly over time.  

We don't all need to switch at once. Sites just need to be clear. I already play poker for bitcents and it's no problem. It any place where it could cause confusion, like the withdraw section it lists the amount in BTC too. A dragon's tale has been displaying bit mills for over 6 months.

Saying normal people will never understand and use fractions is .98 BS. A cent is a fraction of a dollar and people use those just fine. People follow recipes that need 1/8 cup of sugar just fine. Some people (not even that many) break down at the word "fraction", but they use them nonetheless.

No one is entitled to space on bitcoinwatch or any other page. I don't want to see 8 or 10 or 20 digit orders and I appreciate bitcoincharts shielding my innocent eyes from the obscenity.

P.S. if anyone is interested I'm buying coins. 800BTC for .04 cents. Please relay this offer on any relevant websites.

Bitcoins in a wallet sent directly are cash. If you don't trust someone to hold a suitcase full of cash don't give them an equivalent amount of your coins to control. If you need them to simply initiate reversible transactions use a system that can do that on top of your cash.

It won't be hard at all for major business deals to get okayed by 6 or 20 people if necessary. A normal sized business will probably pick some amount of operating cash to allow each agent to use directly and another amount for which any transfers will be incomplete without the owner/manager signing off on at the end of the day or whenever.

Also "smooth out" is not the same as "hold exactly still". Things in the real world change and prices reflect that. The better and more quickly they reflect that the better plans we can all make.

In terms of Bitcoin price, if Bitcoin is ultimately going to be the main money in the world then signaling this as quickly as possible lets people rationally start building the infrastructure that will be needed. If it is going to fail and be worthless knowing that in advance would save lots of effort and resources. Whoever can tell us the truth (or be most accurate) will get paid, people who mislead with wrong predictions pay that bill in money lost from trading.

New dollars coming in dilute the value. This is why Bitcoin is capped at a known amount and no one has a special place, unlike the dollar and it's lords.

I don't know exactly, but he hasn't resorted to starting threads in Bitcoin Discussion about other posters like you.

I was actually just intending the little one to be near where they ask for bitcoin donations. The big one might be good if there was a whole page devoted to bitcoin or an article or something. By all means redesign and remix. And I still can't find contact info, am I blind?

I don't get it. If people agree to pay a certain way then paying a different unacceptable way doesn't count. They can negotiate to get the PP back and I wouldn't play hardball, but why would you accept it as the agreed payment when it is not?

I said "if and only if". If you gotta nit, nit better.

That's right. The answer is to use the current power method instead of the persistent shares. The very first pool did this, but that didn't win out for psychological reasons. People hate not getting paid because they disconnected for a minute, but it doesn't really matter since it evens out so fast. Serious profit maximizing miners will move to current power pools as soon as this effect starts to show.

My best math teacher said that if you ever wrote "obviously..." or "clearly..." you could just as easily write the supporting statement. Do that. Your argument will have this form: A thing is a currency if and only if it satisfies these requirements.... Bitcoin does not satisfy this particular requirement... therefore it is not a currency.

Setting up early only matters for an exact tie. Makes much more sense to undercut by .00001 than to make sure to get your order in days early.