Jeff...all your points are good ones.  I see Bitcoin as a great foundation.

It's important to add that the FDIC is what makes this really possible.  People would discount a bank deposit to a much greater degree than they do today were it not for the existence of the FDIC.  Washington Mutual was a reputable institution...until it wasn't.

Yes, I see it now.  I believe it's a correct analysis (and not what I had previously thought).

Is it?  Note, there is no time component being discussed here.  It is simply saying that 6 confirmations is equivalent to 60 confirmations (given equivalent overall hash rate).  It doesn't matter if the 6 or 60 blocks take 10 hours or 10 seconds to arrive.

Man I love reading threads like that...so many people still don't get it.

Please do not send people cash in the mail (no matter how much you might trust them).  There's also the risk of it being stolen in transit.  There are much better alternatives (wire transfer & cash deposits to an exchange, BitInstant or others).  I hope it works out just fine for you, but there is no reason to go about it that way.

I like this term "cementing."  And I like how you frame it in comparison with having no blockchain at all.  I debate whether it's a good idea or not...if it is, then it should be a part of the protocol and not just something cooked into the source code.  One positive side effect of cementing is that it would force a would be attacker to reveal their blocks before cementing occurs.  I wonder if there is a way that could be accomplished without using cementing (because you'd really want to force an attacker to reveal themselves as soon as possible).

It's great to see this topic given such formal treatment.  Very nice!

Regarding this myth:  "The probability of success depends on the number of confirmations and not on the amount of time waited. An alternative network with a shorter time between blocks can thus obtain more security with a given amount of wait time."

If you have two networks, A & B and both have the same hash rate, but one has a 1 minute block interval while the other has a 10 minute interval, is it not the case that for a given percentage of the network hashing power, an attacker would have an equivalent chance of executing a successful double spend on a time frame of say 1 hour or greater?  Blocks are a reflection of the amount of work that has been done to find them...I don't think people argue that waiting a certain amount of time buys you any more security (you could wait an hour, and if there still isn't a confirmation block, you're no more safe than waiting only 1 second).  However, I think what most people argue is that on two networks, with an equivalent amount of hashing power, 6 blocks emitted from one that calibrates to produce 1 block every 10 minutes is equivalent (in terms of security) to 60 blocks emitted from the network that produces one block every minute.  I think they may be correct, but I need to study your paper more closely (I do agree with the first part of your assertion though, which is that the probability of success does indeed depend on the number of confirmations).  

Yes, I'm also a co-owner in the new company.  My interest in participating was to see the publication of the magazine continue.  As far as I can tell, everything was executed properly (but clearly Vladimir disagrees).

I think it's easy to get wrapped around the axle trying to categorize Bitcoin.  The debate tends to be more about linguistics that any real contemplation about what it is.  I think of Bitcoin as a ledger in the cloud (all forms of money are a ledger system).  Bitcoin, and all forms of money (including gold), are just information (in the context of a social protocol).  Regarding property, you have to separate the concept of property from the method of determining ownership of that property.  When you own bitcoins (determined by the possession of private keys), you own a slice of the ledger in the cloud.  So, in that sense, it is very similar to property.  The method Bitcoin uses to recognize the transfer of ownership could also be used for many other forms of property (and almost certainly will be in the future).

You guys are spending too much time fretting about this stuff.  To the extent Vladimir feels he's been wronged, he should absolutely seek recompense.  Lawyers, arbitrators and courts exist for that purpose and lawsuits, while costly and best avoided if possible, are a normal part of business.  Disagreements happen all the time.  You guys (Vladimir and Matthew included) have done a great job in bootstrapping Bitcoin magazine into existence.  I wonder if you all really grasp how valuable that experience will be to you in the future. 

I'm looking forward to the next issue and I'm sure those no longer involved with the magazine will go on to do other cool stuff with Bitcoin.

The end result of a successful attack on Bitcoin will be a newer and better Bitcoin2.  Bitcoin itself is merely the latest of many iterations on the concept of virtual currency, each of which being an improvement (in one form or another) on earlier iterations.  It would be pretty pointless (even detrimental) to attack Bitcoin on the belief that it will somehow hinder progress.  Competition would be more effective, but I suspect no competitor will be successful if it regresses in terms of features as compared with Bitcoin (including and especially Bitcoin's privacy features).

We actually evaluated setting up WordPress with a completely separate set of servers and software (including their own cluster of bitcoin nodes).  It's just a bit premature for it.

That is not at all our business model.  Strengthening the Bitcoin network in every way possible is in everyone's interest, including ours.

In that other thread...Jeff commented that Bitcoin could not withstand a targeted cyber attack.  I expected him to talk about polluting the block chain or a DOS involving lots of spammy transactions.  But instead he seemed to imply we just need more full nodes and miners.  On the miner side, I assume that Bitcoin probably already has sufficient power, but perhaps it needs more diversity (something I expect cheap and easy to setup ASICs will help with).  In terms of full nodes, I would think a few thousand nodes would be sufficient to thwart a large scale DDOS attack (most DDOS attacks are successful because they target a very small set of servers...if you have to start targeting thousands, I think they would be much less effective).  However, if we want to encourage more people to run full nodes, here's an idea. 

Make a full node that is designed to serve multiple web based wallets (with keys never stored on the server except in encrypted form, etc).  Web based wallets are convenient but unsafe, even the ones that never expose keys to the server (the service provider could always change the Javascript code at any time).  For this reason, I'm reluctant to recommend such services to my friends and family.  I'm also reluctant to recommend they run a full node.  I personally want the convenience of a web based wallet, but I also want to run a full node.  I want to run the full node on a server I control that's only indirectly connected to the broad Bitcoin network through a grid of other full nodes.  I want to connect with a web browser to that node for my day to day wallet usage.  And, I want this to be the wallet I recommend to friends and family (that way I don't have to ask that they place trust in someone else that they, nor I, might not know that well).

I think this model would be preferable to having just a few large web based wallets that everyone uses.  It would strengthen the network because many of us would operate such nodes for the benefit of our circles of family and friends and it would reduce the dependence on the few web based wallets that currently exist.

This seems like a bug.

When I first happened across the liberty dollar (long before Bitcoin...early 2000s, maybe even late 90s), I recall thinking his tactics were a somewhat deceptive.  He would advocate things like trying to use liberty dollars in a restaurant to pay a bill without first informing the waiter what it actually was.  That and the imagery on the coins that made them look official (and the use of $ and "Trust in God") turned me off.  Not to mention that the silver coins were priced way above the spot price (almost double if I recall).

All of this could have been just due to a lack of good judgement on his part, but I can certainly see the case against him.  But the government's press release after the conviction was pretty chilling...it went way beyond the matter of counterfeiting and fraud.

Censoring people leads to 5 page long threads discussing the very topic you wanted people to be silent about.

Sure they could...it would be a bold move and it's a stretch to think they would do something like that, but it could work.  And it's not just them.  The US gov't could probably pay off a good part of the national debt with a similar strategy (imagine what would happen to the price if they announced that they we're going to treat Bitcoin as a public utility and help protect the integrity of the system).  There are probably a few European countries that could improve their fiscal situation with such a move too.

What is stopping you from giving more details?  I'm really curious how you've created a decentralized currency to compete with Bitcoin without the use of mining.  The use of proof of work to achieve distributed synchronization is an amazing innovation...I believe it will be adapted to many other contexts where distributed synchronization is required (database vendors are you listening???).  It's hard to imagine an alternative that doesn't quickly degenerate and become either centralized or balkanized.