Well if blocks could be generated instantly then they would be worthless.  Generating blocks is suppose to be tough.  It is a proof of work.  It requires the entire bitcoin global hashing power working on the same problem (quadrillions upon quadrillions of attemps) to find a solution.

The purpose of the block isn't just to timestamp the transaction.  It is to prevent a duplicate of the coins being spent (a double spend).  Since "good" miners will reject double spends it provides security in that if a tx is included in a block a replacement can't be accepted by the network unless some bad miners conspire to attack the network.

It doesn't have to be 10 minutes.  It could be 5 min or 30 min or 500 min.  10 was chosen to optimize two competing goals.  a) mimimize the frequency where two miners solve blocks at roughly the same time (and thus one block must become orphaned) and b) the speed of confirmations.

Everything can be reversed.
Cash can be reversed.
Bankwires can be reversed.
Bitcoins tx can be reversed.

Stop thinking in black or white; irreversible vs reversible, safe vs unsafe.

Start thinking about HOW HARD IS THIS TRANSACTION TO REVERSE.  MoneyPaks are relatively hard to reverse but it can be done especially when the person accepting is naive or sloppy.

Some locations allow you to buy a MP with a debit card. 

That is pure nonsense.  Either a) you are clueless about how transaction signing works or b) willing to blatantly lie to see your agenda carried out.

Which is it?

Marketing.  If the FRC team said:



How many takers do you think they would have?  None right.  Thus their hoard would be nothing ($0 * x = $0.00).  By giving miners a token amount they burn up electricity, time, resources and it makes the currency seem more real.  The funny thing is the miners are in direct competition for the scraps while the bulk of the coin supply is just handed to the "foundation" (= some buys).   Even CoinHunter wasn't that ambitious.  He got tore to shreads for having a x% tax going to his personal wallet (which he also tried to give a lofty name "the coin protection fund").  The marketing gives the perception of value.  Suddenly that 80% hoard is worth (as long as they can find suckers to unload them) a lot more.  

Very clever marketing.   Essentially it is solidcoin garbage all over again except this time they have the marketing down.

My point is that any such "headroom" would be unecessary and even using that headroom wouldn't be any more precise than simply making the protocol as precise as 64bit allows to begin with.

64bit allows 2^64 values.  So the minimium unit that can be represented is 1(2^64) of the "whole" (in this case 21M BTC).   You can't be more precise using 64bit integer.  So the idea that it would be better to make the protocol less precise in order to have headroom to allow greater precision up to (but not greater than the max 64bit allows is kinda silly .... if the protocol used the full range it would already be as precise as 64bit allows.   There would be no headroom but no headroom is possible regardless (without larger bit range).

64bit allows precision down to 11th digit (due to the 21M base units).   It doesn't matter how precise the protocol is you can't be more precise using 64bit integers off protocol.

So
1 satoshi = 1E-4  -> on protocol precision 4 digits -> off protocol precision 11 digits
1 satoshi = 1E-5  -> on protocol precision 5 digits -> off protocol precision 11 digits
1 satoshi = 1E-6  -> on protocol precision 6 digits -> off protocol precision 11 digits
1 satoshi = 1E-7  -> on protocol precision 7 digits -> off protocol precision 11 digits
1 satoshi = 1E-8  -> on protocol precision 8 digits -> off protocol precision 11 digits
1 satoshi = 1E-9  -> on protocol precision 9 digits -> off protocol precision 11 digits
1 satoshi = 1E-10  -> on protocol precision 10 digits -> off protocol precision 11 digits
1 satoshi = 1E-11  -> on protocol precision 11 digits -> off protocol precision 11 digits

Your saying yeah 1E-6 is great because we have 5 more digits of headroom off protocol.  I am saying 1E-11 is great because the protocol is as precise as possible (for 64bit).  We don't lose any precision because we don't have headroom.  We are still just as precise off protocol.

Yes.

It was already used in implementing P2SH. Miners could also indicate support by putting a "flag" in the coinbase field.  The block date wasn't set until the new version had 80%+ support from miners.  Even then the block date was put months in advance to give everyone a chance to upgrade.

Um the headroom would already exist if the bits were already used.

i.e.

use 64bits now = ~18,400 quadrillion units
vs
use 51 bits now = 2.1 quadrillion units expandable to ~18,400 quadrilion units if things take off.  


No it isn't.  The largest round unit would be 18,000 quadrillion.  Using 12 digits for precision that would make 1 satoshi = 1 nBTC (1E-12), total coinsupply = 18,000,000 BTC.

As far as losing precision?  On a 12 digit fixed precision format?   If the entire global money supply was represented by the 18M/12digit BTC (~$100T USD circa 2012) then 1 BTC = ~$5.6M.  Min precision would be ~1/2000th of 1 US cent.


Still it is nothing to lose sleep over just seem ineligent given how well thought out the rest of the protocol was.

The funny thing is that he feels it should be made out of platinum.  I assume he doesn't mean a 26,829 ton coin made out of pure platinum so it won't be backed by the precious metal.  I guess he thinks making it out of platinum would give it more respect than making it out of tin.  I say make it out of salt.

Also what is even more sad is he doesn't realize the FED isn't into the business of giving away money.  They will LOAN the government all the money they want but it will be a loan and thus count towards the debt limit.  The idea you need a coin is kinda silly.  The fed could instantly increase their balance sheet by 1T and then loan that to the treasury.  Maybe it could be a Title Loan secured by Airforce One.   Making it a coin instead of an electronic funds transfer doesn't change anything. 

If the FED mints/prints/digitally adds zeros it isn't the treasury money it is the FEDs money (a private cartel of corporations who convinced the US government to give up their sovereign right to issue currency and make their private corporate script the legal tender).

Yes*(See edit)  The rules of the network are what make the network.  If multibit didn't have the rules it would have no way of validating blocks and transactions.  It would have no way of knowing the coins someone sent you were valid or not.  Each nodes validates everything it receives from another node.  So if your node receives a tx from me (maybe not even a tx to you) it will validate the tx before relaying it.  If your client receives a block it will first validate every tx in the block, then validate the merkle tree and calculate the merkle tree root, then validate the block header and finally recompute the hash and ensure it meets the difficulty requirements.  Only when the node is sure that the block is valid does it relay it.  And despite your node validating a block every node it relays it to will treat it as untrusted until it validates every aspect all over again.

Bitcoin = (the set of rules created and enforced by consensus)

If you think about it in a decentralized network that is the only method possible.  Each node* builds the entire blockchain from scratch not trusting anything it gets from anyone else before validating it.  Thus there are thousands of identical independently verified copies of the same blockchain.

You could easily modify your node to allow a 50,000 BTC block subsidy.  It would only require changing one line.  Your node could hash a block and it would be promptly rejected by every other node on the network as incompatible.

On edit:
* Note I used the term "node" a lot. There are lite clients, eWallets, etc which don't have a complete copy of the blockchain and thus rely on a third party.   Multibit is a lite client which relies on a server to do the validation of the blockchain.  All "full nodes" (including the multibit server) implicitly distrust anything (tx, blocks, etc) they receive from other nodes.

The address IS the hash of the script.  Your client won't see funds sent to that address as "yours".  The funds are sent to the script.  You seem to think that P2SH works like take a normal address and bolt a script on to it.  No you take a script and then calculate the hash of the script and the address from that.   The reference client wouldn't see funds sent to a P2SH address as yours any more than it sees funds sent to any standard address that is lacks the private key for as "yours".

The scenario you and your friend are debating is simply impossible.  No protection is needed in the client because it can't happen.  The reference client understands addresses which are the hash of public keys that it has private keys for.   If funds are sent to an address that your client has the private key for then they are "your" coins and nobody can change that and the balance is incremented.  If coins are sent anywhere else your client doesn't even see that as funds sent to "your" address.

If the fork was modified to include a "flag" in the coinbase field ([FAIR]) then it would be possible to see what % of the recent blocks have the flag.

There is no such thing as "the part" of the network when it comes to decentralized networks.  Every single node on the network runs a complete copy of the Bitcoin protocol.  So in theory if you changed 100% of nodes, both online and offline, including all source code copies, and archived versions and did this simulataneously while somehow ensuring no copies with the current rules exist anywhere (not even in anyone's mind) then yes you could change it.

If you don't acheive that then the network will fork. You will have your new incompatible fork and the current Bitcoin will still exist.  Maybe your new fork will even become more popular than Bitcoin but Bitcoin will always exist.

In the US race is a protected class, "Bitcoiner" is not.

The banks actions are likely legal.  They don't guarantee they will open an account for all people at all times.  It would be like asking if getting denied for a loan is legal.  
It sucks but aside from paying a lot for lawyer for a case you are almost certain to lose your only option is to try another bank.

BTW: the law has nothing to do with common sense.  Nothing.  Common sense says what the bank did was stupid and arrogant.  That doesn't make it against the law though.  If being stupid and arrogant was against the law banks would have been deemed illegal a long time ago.

Not the date but the block height.  The subsidy is right shifted (binary halving) every 210,000 blocks.  If the network is on target that is roughly 4 years but it can vary slightly based on changes in hashing power and the general randomness of finding a block. 

Increase the difficulty 20x current and rerun your calculations, then calculate it assuming 20x current plus doubling difficulty every 6 months and see how long it will take to pay it off.

There are anti-spam rules but the rules are somewhat complex so I left them out of the basic economics.  The anti-spam rules really aren't intended to benefit miners, they are more to protect the network from denial of service attack (generating terabytes upon terabytes of transactions by sending tiny amounts back and forth between addresses).

The complete mandatory fee rules are here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

The simple version is
"one bitcoin day".  If the input for your tx (the output doesn't matter) is one bitcoin day old it can avoid the anti-spam rule.  So if you receive 1 BTC you could spend it without fee in 1 day.  If you received 10 BTC you could sepnd it in ~2.4 hours without a fee.  If you received 0.1 BTC you could spend it in 10 days without a fee.  If your coins are too young you can either pay the mandatory fee, send it anyways using a hacked client (and hope someone includes it in a block) or wait until the coins are older.

In order to solo mine you must be running a bitcoin wallet. The bitcoin software will construct a new block and insert a special transaction called the "coinbase" which takes the subsidy + all fees and transfers that value to an address your wallet designates.

For example in this block
http://blockchain.info/block-index/331991/00000000000004f3b0ce8abf320ff150f8298e72fe81e05d91e690fca5c1202d

you will notice the first transaction is creating 25 BTC + the transaction fees for the block and sending it to the address controlled by the miner (either an individual or the pool shared wallet)
http://blockchain.info/address/1NEU779yvLaFk39k4Q3QdLjwpWTdWCbzqL

The subsidy is the newly created coins.  All 21M coins that will be created will come from one of the initial 9,630,000 blocks where they are minted into existence as a subsidy to miners.  Miner total compensation = block subsidy/reward (initially 50, now 25 declining to 12.5 BTC in ~4 years) + transaction fees.   Over time the share of miner compensation that comes from the subsidy will decline and the share from fees will increase.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply

You can voluntarily pay a tx fee now or otherwise be at "risk" of a miner not including your tx in the next block.  It is freedom on both sides.  You are free to not include a fee, or choose the amount of the fee to include and likewise miners are free to choose which tx to include in a block.  A miner can (and some do) refuse your tx if it has no or insufficient fee.  Now most miners are rational and know that while the subsidy exists it makes sense to create value for the overall network and thus will include free or low paying transactions but many limit how many free transaction they include in each block.

Over time the subsidy will decline and tx fees will rise.  The goal is for the network to be supported completely be fees eventually.   One way to look at it is that the subsidy is a form of indirect fee.  It is additional coins added to the "coin supply" and thus they devalue the existing coins.  1% more coins (making all your coins worth 1% less) has the the same economic effect as paying 1% in fees for the year.

Yeah that would have been worse.   I guess I would have had some explaining to my partners on why the company was the proud owner of $1,200 in pet food.