Taxes are inherently a product of the fiat money system.  Don't ever pay taxes on Bitcoin transactions.

If you look closely, this is already happening.  Prices on BTC-E (Russian exchange) are consistently lower than elsewhere.  There are likely more miners, making use of obsolete mining equipment for supplemental heat, in colder areas.

In the next few months, there will be incentive for mining to shift to the southern hemisphere.  (We could use an exchange in Australia or South America to take advantage of this.)

But one thing about this concept, is that it is still constrained by fiat currencies.  In order to take advantage of these arbitrage opportunities, to bring cheap Bitcoins produced in colder areas to the market, we must have easy access to either a common, global exchange or another currency that can be easily transferred and used to purchase them.

It would seem so.

Please keep in mind that nothing anyone involved in Bitcoin does from here on out is truly private.  People are watching.  They don't have to be rocket scientists to recognize the promise of Bitcoin.  And they aren't all idiots who can be blinded to the consequences by sterilized talking heads.  Honesty and openness is the best policy.

Every time the price of Bitcoin runs up in a short amount of time, and then falls precipitously, it is telling us something about the Bitcoin economy.

The run up tells us that outside interest, and investment in Bitcoin, is growing.  That's a good thing.  You should all be congratulated for it.

But the popping of the bubble tells us something as well.  It tells us that the willingness of the Bitcoin economy to welcome new participants is not high enough.  It tells us that there are too many barriers to entry.  It tells us that, at a certain point, at a certain price, once they have watched the value of Bitcoin increase five or six-fold, instead of waiting in line at Mt. Gox, new participants will find a different way to buy in.  They will mine.  Or they might just give up.

Neither is optimal.  Both are pretty bad, actually.  And we should be thinking about what we can do to fix this.

Turning away new entrants because they can't manage to buy their first few Bitcoins, and get frustrated with the state of the links between Bitcoin and other currencies, does obvious damage to the Bitcoin economy.

But encouraging new users to mine, instead, could be much worse.  The state of mining is pretty terrible right now.  ASICs are in short supply.  There are only a few providers, and they all have their own problems.  Pools are being consolidated.  Meanwhile, the price of Bitcoin supports an army of miners using obsolete hardware.  Difficulty is higher than necessary to protect the network, considering just these GPU miners.  But it is not high enough to make them obsolete.

Just remember, every investment in mining is an investment that is taken from the real Bitcoin economy.  And right now it is mostly going to one company that, as far as I can tell, still isn't even shipping anything.  This situation has the potential to become a public relations disaster for Bitcoin.  We must, somehow, get to the point that we can openly encourage new participants to trade real goods and services, and encourage existing participants to spend some of their Bitcoins to buy them, rather than simply mining, and hoarding.

Water, Redbull.

Kunstler is basically the guy I think of who is so close to getting it, but for some reason just doesn't.  I think this is because everything he says is New York-centric, he can't step out of that mindset, and New York is going to eat it, hard, from economic collapse.


Let's put it this way:  Civilizations with firearms won't regress to the state of having no electricity.


Ugh.

Ironically, Bitcoin has only one major exchange because regulations promoted by a bunch of New York bankers prevent a US based competitor from arising, for now.  Bitcoin would benefit from collapse.

Jesus, this is ridiculous.  I can barely even read it.  It's like a bunch of five-year-olds fighting over who gets to be the prettiest princess.  Ironically, if any of them should be kept far away from the media, it's Jeff Garzik.  He's the only one of those mentioned who repeatedly says stupid things to the press, and generally looks like a hobo while doing so.

I have been as skeptical about Matonis and Ver as anyone, probably moreso, but no one can deny that they are doing an effective job of representing Bitcoin in the media.  Hell, even Matthew, who is a complete idiot otherwise, would make a decent media spokesperson.  It's not a skillset that tends to coincide with software development.  It requires a quick wit, wide understanding of the topic at hand, and most importantly an alpha personality.

And, Luke-Jr, buddy... lol.  At least try to remember that you wouldn't even be on the dev team if it were a popularity contest, and keep the statist obstructionism to a minimum.

I wish people wouldn't associate Bitcoin with "scarcity."  Bitcoins are limited.  But this has nothing to do with actual, physical scarcity.  A limited currency actually promotes abundance.

Inflation is caused by central banks printing money.  This does cause instability, but it isn't caused by automation.

Perhaps businesses can be built on top of Bitcoin in order to accomplish this, but they will have to charge fees closer to what existing money transmitters charge in order to hedge against fluctuations.

Honestly I'm not really sure where to begin to explain to you why your naive idea of maintaining value doesn't work in the real world.  In order for you to send money to your mother in some other country via Bitcoins, someone there has to want the Bitcoins as much as the people do where you are sending from.  If there is any discrepancy, there will be a difference in value that cannot just be magically wished away.

9/11 was WTC.  3/11 was Fukushima.  Perhaps 4/11 is this.

Who are you and what are you talking about?

I've been saying this for a while.  It's going to be very difficult, unfortunately, because most of the early adopters do not seem to agree.  They see Bitcoin as a speculative investment, think that the current transaction costs (over $5 including subsidies) are reasonable, think that Bitcoin should compete with money transmitters, and that courting government regulation is a super good idea and the way forward.

They're wrong.

Actually lemon juice concentrate was one thing I considered.

I want to know why there is this assumption that it is Bitcoin which is the "environmental disaster" for simply making economic use of completely legal fossil fuels.

If you want to assign moral agency, look to the ones actually causing the environmental destruction and the governments that actively promote it.  Bitcoin runs just fine on renewables.

Not true.

It occurs to me that Adam Smith subscribed to labor value theory.  And, based on his ridiculous ideas about unemployment, so does Paul Krugman.  I can see why they both hate Bitcoin.

++

See, this doesn't really hold water for me.  Even if he doesn't care about personal wealth, he can give them away.  He could purchase some goods with Bitcoins and have them sent to a local charity.

If he doesn't care about his Bitcoins, but still has control over them, then distributing them, one way or another, during either of the last two run-ups would have had a hugely beneficial effect on the Bitcoin economy.

I don't want to turn this into "Satoshi should spend his Bitcoins."  Perhaps he shouldn't.  I'm just saying there are only a few scenarios that really make sense, and they all have consequences.

I'm sure it will be whichever ones make the most money for the Mossad insurance agents perpetrating these attacks.

Financial terrorists.