After a small delay, the transaction was successful.  Things worked out according to plan, he even threw in a little extra.

I'm interested in the 125$

EDIT:  Actually, I could use the whole pack.  Send me a pm.

@Stephen - Thanks, but that's not what I'm looking for.  I want to convert it to an address, not to wallet import format.

Thanks, searching for ripemd led me here.  Which brings me to...

...here.  That seems to be the case based on the wiki.

@deepceleron- Thanks, I'll follow through on that when I have time.

Privacy is the main thing.  If you only have one address, anyone who knows that address knows your entire BTC balance and transaction history.

Thanks.  I tried reverse engineering bitaddress.org, but their structure was a little too confusing for me.  I'll take a crack at that site.

EDIT: Actually, it looks like the same code.  Oh well, I'll keep trying.  I think I see the relevant section anyway.

Most of the work I've found has been through this site.  Try posting your resume in the "Service" forum.

I'm hoping to write a small script to generate bitcoin addresses according to a deterministic algorithm and a password provided by the user.  This will serve as my "offline storage".

I know that I can generate a private key by using sha256 on anything.  My question is, how do I convert this key into an address?

I'm hoping it's a fairly simple formula.  If you could describe it in pseudocode, javascript, or bash, I would appreciate it.

Someone else on this forum pointed out that there wouldn't be a problem if sellers showed the same confidence in bitcoin and adjusted their prices accordingly.

Deflation doesn't continue forever as long as you don't try to fight it.  There is an equilibrium that the value will tend towards.

You should look into Georgism.

I keep a number of addresses in "watch only" mode on blockchain.info.  Today I tried importing one of my addresses so I could spend some coins.  When I tried to import one of my addresses with a brainwallet, I got a similar message.  When I used bitaddress to get the private key, I got this message.

Note: I got another error when I try importing another "watch only" address.

Good point.  Perhaps I should have said "spontaneous change in consumption behavior."  The idea that a large number of people will be seized by the urge to hold liquid assets rather than spend or invest them.

People who have invested with the expectation that they'd be able to make some money?  You can say that the problem is that they made a bad investment, bit what if consumer preference is inherently unpredictable?  How do you maintain the capital needed to meet that preference if it isn't consistent?  (Just playing devil's advocate here.)

People do hold on to things though, even if according to your principle they shouldn't.

I must admit I'm not as well read on Austrian theory as I'd like to be.  I only understand the philosophical difference on a very basic level.  I will keep your suggestions in mind as I work my way down my reading list, thanks.

Isn't that only the case if the money's lent out?

@shawshankinmate37927- Your basic point seems to be that prices can adjust to a point where markets reach equilibrium.  I believed that for a long time, but I have doubts now.  It's been pointed out to me that in the real world, prices don't change that easily.  It's not just the government that controls them, either.  Individuals are resistant to reductions in their income as well.  It is rational for them to be.

For instance, if I'm an employee, it would be an unwise decision to agree to let my boss lower my salary at will.  There are costs involved in changing jobs if he lowers it below the worth of my labor, so that would allow him to consistently underpay me.  It makes far more sense to lock a certain salary in contractually, even though this means some of the workers need to be laid off when the money available to pay them goes down.


Thanks, guys.  What you're saying makes sense, but so far I haven't experienced that "Aha! That's why it can't happen." moment.

Well, if it's frequently debated, then I'll not get us bogged down in it, but I wouldn't expect them to try to bribe their constituents, rather to misinform and deceive them.

Thanks.

I understand the differences in philosophy between the two schools, and I understand that they each have their narrative for why recessions happen.

The problem I have is the two narratives do not seem mutually exclusive.  I don't see why the possibility of a malinvestment fueled misalignment of sectors rules out the possibility of a demand shortage brought on by an irrational change in consumption behavior, or vice-versa.  How do we know which one we're facing at any given time?

What "alternatives" do you mean?  Alternate currencies?  Does that really help if the shift in spending is from productive enterprise in general to stores of value in general?

As I said, we can leave the anarchism for other threads.  I'm just not sure why you see direct democracy as a leap in the right direction.  If you claim that the biggest problem with the current government is that it isn't populist enough, I'm going to have to disagree with you there.

So how do we tell the difference between a demand crisis and an Austrian-style malinvestment crisis?

If you're trying to say that a demand crisis is not a problem, that's not very convincing.  The decision to change the mainstream currency is pretty much out of the hands of the market, and even without legal barriers it would impose huge costs on businesses.  Letting consumption fall to its minimum level would be a huge step backward in material progress and imply a great deal of human suffering.

Where does the objection to the interventions proposed by monetarists or Keynesians come in if there's no fundamental disagreement about the possibility of a demand crisis?

This isn't really the direction I intended to go.  I was talking about the way votes are counted, the winner-take-all approach that keeps us locked in a two party system.  Alternative systems have been proposed that allow voters to vote for more than one candidate, so they can simultaneously vote for the third party of their choice while simultaneously hedging against their less-preferred major party.

But, if that's what you guys want to talk about go ahead.  One problem I see (and this is also a problem with bitcoin) is that the average person isn't very savvy when it comes to computer security.  If a private key is the only means of authentication used in the system, then a considerable number of people will have theirs stolen.  You would need some degree of centralization in order to assign the keys, and to provide multiple forms of authentication.  However, the advantage of using a crypto-solution is that the blockchain would provide a public record of votes, for more transparency.

I'm not really sure that direct democracy is really that preferable to the current system.  What's the advantage?  Normal people are just as selfish and short-sighted as elected officials.  I guess you could say it would stop politicians from passing bad policies to enrich themselves, but plenty of bad policies get passed for populist reasons.  Special interests would still be able to lobby just by targeting the population directly.

I tried asking this on another site, but I didn't get a real answer, so I thought I'd try here.

Many of the posters he seem to adhere to the Austrian School of economics.  I'm aware that ABCT provides an alternate explanation for why recessions happen.  However, I haven't come across any reason in Austrian theory why the Keynesian narrative can't also happen.

Say's Law shows that over-supply of one good is balanced out by under-supply of another good.  This does not, however, mean that over-supply doesn't happen, or that it doesn't cause problems when it does.

I suppose the question comes down to:
1.  Can a shortage of a good occur because a large group of people irrationally decide to stop trading away that good?
2.  Can that good be money?

If not, to either of those questions, why not?

I know some people here are against democracy altogether, but we can leave that talk for other threads.

The plurality/first-past-the-post voting system used in the US and many other countries is frankly terrible at representing the actual wishes of the voters.  It forces people to vote tactically, leading to two-party deadlock, and ensures

Of the alternatives that have been proposed, I used to support instant run-off voting, but someone on this forum convinced me that approval voting is better simply because of its simplicity.  That said, almost anything would be better than what we have.

Just for the heck of it, I created a petition on whitehouse.gov.  I'm not optimistic about getting the 100,000 signatures in time, but I figured why not try.  If we could at least get the 150 needed to make it publicly searchable, that would be a start.  Changing the voting system is pretty much the only chance we have of getting any "non-traditional" candidates in power.

That's the question, though.  If they wanted to transfer an amount of money greater than the market cap, would they be able to?

I didn't watch the whole video, but I've heard similar arguments before.

Here's what I don't understand (and I apologize if it's answered in the video): Why now?

We've have "unsound" money for decades.  Why now and not years ago?  Or, if the collapse is inevitable, why now and not later?  This can't be the first "stress test" our monetary system has had.