Miners are compensated with a combination of block subsidy PLUS transaction fees.

When the network is young the transaction volume (and thus fees) are low and the subsidy is high.  As the network ages the subsidy declines and transaction fees will take the place.

Not true.  The network compensates to increased hashing power by raising difficulty and keeping block interval at roughly 10 minutes.  If you want faster confirmations you can pay a small fee and go to front of the line.

I like the term millionthaire.  That will be the day that having 21 "whole" Bitcoins (one millionth of the BTC money supply) will be considered impressive.

MtGox doesn't credit accounts until it has 6 confirms.  It would be nice if they showed unconfirmed tx as "pending" but they don't.  It should appear shortly after the 6th confirm.

That's a good expression for the value of nothing.

It is an idea we (Tangible Cryptography not MtGox) have been discussing at owners meetings.  Of course taking physical delivery would be an option also.

Something like this https://www.bullionvault.com/ but obviously on a smaller scale, with the gold reserve held by a trust in a private vault with periodic audits.

Actually it would be beyond awesome if bullionvault simply added BTC as a market. The commodity side is the hard part and they already have all that in place. 

I don't think he means an exchange rate of $1,000,000 USD per BTC but rather if someone personal holdings were worth $1M.  Like if you had $1M worth of gold would you sell the gold?

I didn't say worthless just worth ... LESS.  Worst case scenario US coins have a decent amount of commodity value.  If all fiat currencies simultaneously because absolutely worthless (not just devalued), I am sure MtGox would put up a BTC/GLD market (or maybe a BTC/H20 one).

There really is no reason to "cash out".  If you want to pay for something (goods, services, paying off debt) and you can't using BTC then selling enough BTC to pay for it indirectly is an option.

I have had my eye on a boat for a while. I doubt many boat dealers will be taking Bitcoins anytime soon.  If the exchange rate went up enough I would gladly sell some of my coins to buy the boat I wanted.   To cash out just to hold cash?  I wouldn't do that at $1M, $100M $1B, $1T.  Why?  To hold paper which becomes worth less and less every year.

I would prefer to buy assets directly (BTC -> asset) but if I can't indirectly works too (BTC -> USD -> asset).

Aren't credit cards too slow to be considered instaneous?  Merchant isn't sent funds for 48 hours and funds can be taken back up to 180 days.
Both BTC and CC provide notification of a transaction within a few seconds.  BTC are confirmed in ~1 hour, CC are confirmed in 2 to 180 days.  Trying to execute a double spend in person in an environment where one can't guarantee execution time (like grocery store checkout line) is incredibly difficult.  Stolen credit cards can easily be bought online for far less trouble.

Still Bitcoin is a low level protocol.  It is highly likely that as long as Bitcoin continues to grow higher level services will be built on top of them including off blockchain transactions which can be guaranteed within seconds. 

LOLZ.  Funniest (unintentional) comment of the day.  PCs might be dying but when your ipad connects to a web app where do you think it is connecting to ... A DATACENTER.
Datacenter square footing is growing at 10% to 20% a year and shows no signs of slowing.  The datacenters being built now are unimaginably large compared to just years ago.  


Which would be a good reason to put that in a high security locked cage at a top teir, bonded and insured data center right?  $250K in computing equipment in class A building or $250K in computing equipment running in my garage... hmm that is a hard one (and this is coming from the guy who at one time DID have $20K of GPU rigs running in his garage).



To the OP the Avalon ASIC could be easily moved to a 3U (maybe 4U) server case and rack mounted.  Strange Avalon team didn't offer this as an option from day 1.  My guess is they are in a rush to just get some product out the door.  Honestly what makes ASICs special is the ASICs.  If Avalon sold just the modules I would buy those and rack mount them myself.

companies like BitPay make hedging easy.  A company can choose to get paid daily in USD for the BTC sales they close.  Likewise a company could choose to get 98% in USD and hold the other 2% to cover potential BTC payments and benefit from the potential rise, created by more users and more merchants, and thus directly benefit from their own choice to accept BTC in a low risk way.

Sell some and if it goes higher sell more?

My guess is on this unamed marketplace you needed a certain about of USD.  The BTC are now worth more than that USD value.  As an example lets say you need $500 and the BTC is now worth $800.  You could sell $500 worth of BTC as a hedge, then let the remaining BTC ride.  If they go up significantly more you could sell another $250 worth and let the rest ride.

This.  OP is essentially selling $17 for $10.  Either OP is generous and foolish or OP believes the trade is a good one.  $0 for $10 is a very good trade for one party ...

Why couldn't it be changed.  One could simply use a different payout address = new coinbase tx = new tx hash = new merkle tree = new merkle root hash = new blockheader.

Of course it is even easier than that.  Since the coinbase has no input it has space for an "extra nonce".  Some pools even put messages in that space.  It can contain a arbitrary value allowing the creation of an infinite amount of block headers in any given time period, even by a single solo miner (assuming sufficient computing power).

In hindsight it probably would have been cleaner to just make the nonce field 64 bits.  One would think alt-coins would have improved on that but since they are all pump and dump copies they did not.

The reward tx (where miners are paid) in the block has a extra nonce field.  It can contain any random arbitrary value.  One doesn't need to manipulate the timestamp.  Just generate a new merkle tree.  The max hash rate is infinite.

The decimal place will NEVER (not today, not next year, not 20,000 years from  now) ever be moved.  To do so would require a 100% consensus of all users active and inactive.  Not just all miners but all exchanges, all merchants, all speculators, all bitcoin holders.  Litterally everyone on the planet in unison agreeding to the change.  Baring a complete consensus the network would fork and both forks would be valid and incompatible, both called Bitcoin.  The result would be complete and utter chaos and massive destruction of value.  It isn't going to happen.

For all intents and purposes the money supply of BTC is locked at 21M BTC.  The good thing is it is highly divisible right now having 2.1 quadrillion discrete units (more than US money supply) but 1 BTC will always be ~1/21,000,000 of available money supply.

If BTC-e doesn't trade from the top of the stack then it shouldn't even be called an exchange.  I mean seriously I can put an order on MtGox (or bitfloor, or bitstamp, etc) right now to sell x BTC @ $1.00 USD and I will get the best bid.  Now granted if x is very  large I will burn through the stack and drop the price but no trading engine anywhere for any reason should execute at less than the best price available.

A limit order of X @ $Y doens't mean trade X @ $Y.  It means trade UP TO X at a price NO WORSE THAN $Y.

milliBitcoin when spoken.  When typed I usually used mBTC.

I am liking the "millicoins" in thread though.

That is 100% false and no matter how many times you say it, it doesn't get any truer.

A SQL Server license is 100% NOT required to use .NET.  Period.  One can optionally license SQL Server and no license is required at all to develop on the .Net Framework.  Many .Net applications use MySQL as a datastore.  To use SQL Server requires a license.  To use SQL Server and not use .Net still requires a license.  Not sure how many times people have to say it before you get it.

.Net Framework =/=  SQL Server

Your ignorance is showing.