We should make the Pope a bitcointalk account with the scammer tag

maybe they'll switch to using BTC ...

Where can one learn the background knowledge behind the things discussed in this thread?

I wish I knew what was going on.

over the next few months?

That site looks awful.  It looks like a cybersquatting placeholder.  Are there any plans by the site owner to update the visuals?  How many people actually use ODP?

And who would you then lend it to? Whom other than the ordinary working guy who is today paying half of his net income in various forms of interest? And now gets his loans from the very same former USD billionaire for 0%.


Yes, this is naturally when living from hand to mouth. And then a yearly FRC demurrage of 5% would not even be noticed.

Last I checked namecoins give about 3% extra income.

Namecoins and transaction fees are much more important now after the reward halving.

Stopped reading here:

« In fact, the unfair economic advantages of simply being wealthy are diminished with Freicoin. In the current system of money, including the U.S. Dollar, Euro, and other national currencies, money is and always has been used to store value–money seen from the point of view of the holders, the wealthy. Freicoin emphasizes instead the view to that of the producer, the proletariat, the 99%: money as a means of buying the goods and services necessary to sustain life, and the capital required to create improved living conditions. »

It's clearly a currency designed for communists or communist-friendly people.  Not sure they even try to hide it.   They should call it "redcoin".

Well, communists have the right to exist so I guess it would be a good thing if they had their own money.  But as far as I'm concerned, I don't want any part of this.

No argument.  But again, that is purely the merchant's view.

Consumers, at least here in the US, have been trained by well known consumer advocates such as Consumer Reports, Clark Howard, NACA members and the local news "consumer beat" that credit card purchases, in particular, have a level of consumer insurance built into them.  Every 5-10 years, a new layer of consumer protection regulations are added or updated as well.

The hurdles at the consumer level are twofold, assuming a future world where bitcoins see 1000x consumer and merchant acceptance (hey, 1000x is easily realistic in a few short years, given how small we are right now):

1) Education.  "Use an escrow transaction" is a foreign language, an alien concept to Aunt Tillie.  It is not realistic for average consumer use, unless the software tools and legal system both evolve significantly from where they are today.

2) Rational economic actor choices.  The current credit card system provides significant economic and legal protections to the consumer, while hiding the costs by making the merchants bury merchant fees inside the item price.  Buying an item sans merchant fees is not likely sufficient economic incentive to abandon the legal protections currently available, for average consumers.

Now, please, don't misunderstand.  What BitPay is doing is great -- I retweeted and promoted the video.  And it is a necessary step in bitcoin's evolution.

In an optimistic forecast, one could see bitcoin taking over the majority of hard-cash-like transfers.  I imagine merchants would prefer bitcoin over having to deduce whether or not a $20 bill is counterfeit, even using the latest ink tests and scanners one sees deployed at Wal-Mart, Target, payday loan and pawn shop locations.

But the huge amount of built-in consumer protections -- and associated consumer advocacy at all levels -- is an unquestionable hurdle.

It seems more realistic that bitcoin credit cards will arise, as an optional, supplemental layer on top of the base currency:  credit cards, with standard protections consumers expect, denominated purely in bitcoins.  Much like credit cards are an optional, supplemental layer atop the US Dollar right now.

That would at least be a familiar system to current consumers.

What countries can I use Venmo in?

Venmo can only be used in the U.S.

You are conflating money-as-store-of-value and money-as-medium-of-exchange. Which is understandable as nearly every monetary system in existence makes the same mistake.

With Freicoin we are purposefully making a system that people will not want to use as a store-of-value. If you're sitting on a pile of freicoins wondering what to do with it, the answer is simple: invest it in something else. That something else could even be bitcoins, which complement Freicoin as an excellent store-of-value (but terrible medium-of-exchange if you're anything other than an Austrian-school economist).

...

 - http://www.facebook.com/MtGox/posts/404075009676912

Too bad there isn't a payment network that is 24/7, and doesn't rely on humans.

Oh wait, ...

Just teasing you, I need to open a vertex account somehow. All you Canadians start mining in the winter and selling coins cheap!