I have their e-mail saved from when it was published ... it's wl-supporters@sunshinepress.org

Try it It should work ...

No, you are misunderstanding me ... I'm not saying they would "jump the ship" and start using other cryptocurency ... that would not be a bad thing at all anyway.

I mean they could corrupt the block chain because they have the hashing power to do so. Overpowering the hashing power of honest hashers gives them the ability to tamper with block chain, doesn't it? So I'm not sure were exactly are you suggesting I could be mistaken. You could break bitcoin right now if you could get enough people to cooperate and overpower the computing power of honest nodes. The problem with that is that you are not going to convince enough people to do that, why would they do it? There is no incentive ... "let's break things" just doesn't cut it. But if you have other cryptocurrency at competition with bitcoin (or some other) and people invested in it, they have the incentive to protect it and act in tandem as a group against perceived threat aka weaker cryptocurrency.

Is it clearer what I mean? It's the same as someone belligerent having more computing power than all of the bitcoin nodes together and used it to disrupt it. Except nobody has the incentive and means to do it ... more powerful competing cryptocurrency has both. If they decide to use it, they can break weaker currencies (provided they manage to convince its user-base that it is a good idea)

There are all kinds of problems with it ... but it is a possibility and it is feasible. So I think hard to do but certainly not impossible ... if many people's investment is at stake they just might try to do it. If they would succeed is the million dollar question ... I guess we'll have to just wait and see.

See the post above ... if you have cryptocurrency used by 100,000 people and another one is gaining popularity fast with 5,000 members, the 100,000 can easily knock it down if they see it as a threat and can coordinate. All it takes is a simple modification of the client they're using (so it computes hashes for the other blockchain) and enough people adopting it ... which is much easier to do if those people believe the new currency is a threat to their dominance (and therefore their money).

I know. But once you have enough people with enough hashing power they can just one day decide to switch to use that power to overtake another similar system as a group. Like if there was a different bitcoin-like currency right now with 100x less hashing power, you could just modify the client to compute hashes for that system 1/100 of the time it is running and you can absorb it if bitcoin users would adopt it. Easy way to knock out competition if you for example see that it is gaining popularity and could surpass ours

Of course that requires enough people willing to do that ... but once they are united under one economy with common interest (and common threats of competing currencies) it's much easier to do that than if you tried to get enough people to overtake bitcoin right now for instance.

I'm not saying they would collide "by accident" lol but by conscious action of enough people from different competing crypto-currency

The possible problem with this is that if parallel currencies are created on the same principles as bitcoin then the currency with the most hashing power can easily overtake the currency with lower one if they collectively decide to do so. So the big one can "eat up" all of the smaller currencies.

I don't know if people would be capable or willing to cooperate to such an end but it is a possibility.

I'm sorry that I'm seen as a troll ... that was not my intention, sorry about that. I feel quite strongly about some things so I probably became too passionate.

I'll stay away from this thread don't worry I do not think there is any point in beating this topic ad nauseum.

I would just say that you have some good points (although I would distinguish between "real" value and speculative one which are mixed up together but are important to separate I think - no every "value" is a good value, some is just a bubble, I wouldn't think that is a good thing)

Nothing is black and white but I believe the bitcoin economy will stabilize when services of substance are introduced and speculation will not be a problem. The reason it is a problem in our real economy is because we allow banks to create money out of thin air which gives speculators cheap credit to manipulate markets with. This is not possible in bitcoin economy and ultimately real economy overwhelms the speculative one. At least I hope so ... speculation is bad only if it's excessive. I think this is the case right now with bitcoin ... but it is probably just temporary until real economy is introduced which is always much harder to do than speculation so speculative portion sets in first.

Good luck

Done, sorry ... I was in a hurry and I've written gibberish It should be better now ...

Great post, thank you.

You're absolutely right that you need dominant position, concerted action or cheap credit to be successful at manipulation. In the case of bitcoin, cheap credit is eliminated which is a major factor in real world economy as you can not create bitcoins from thin air like banks are doing with dollars and other currencies.

As far as dominant position goes I do not think this is that easy to achieve without the cheap credit. Even when some people probably do have significant holdings of bitcoins I do not think they could manipulate the market to such a degree even if they wanted to (but they may contribute a great deal).

So what seems to be happening is spontaneous concerted action of multiple independent people triggered by the same impulse and that is desire to make some profit from the apparent  rising value of bitcoin. The problem is that the rising value may be just a reflection of higher demand caused by these people wanting to speculate. That means that the real value of bitcoins without the speculative factor is unknown. What introduces a problem is that this speculative portion of value is only virtual, it goes away the moment there is a dip in a value and people start selling like crazy all at once crashing the value to significantly lower one. In this process a lot of people are going to loose their money to the ones who had better information and sold first (most often just few insiders).

That's why I'm saying that this kind of speculation is extremely bad for the market, it makes it unstable and distorts it causing all kinds of great problems (even serious ones like starvation). It is always going to be happening on some level but as long as it is overwhelmed by real markets it's not a big problem as its effects are very small.

BUT if people accept it as legitimate way to make money (as seems to be happening on this forum) and a good portion of the economy participants start to "make money from money" it can snowball to such an extent that is destroys the economy as we can see on our real one.

The only way to stop that is to realize that you produce nothing by doing it, you can never produce value and if you make money you take it from someone else who got screwed - this may be another speculator or regular producing trader ... therefore it is bad thing to do and we should make honest profit from producing goods and services that people actually desire and which help them in their life. The solution in my view is to make sure that the real economy is dominant over the speculative one, always striving to make the speculative one as small as possible. It can not be eliminated, but it can be made insignificant by educating ourselves and others that it is harmful and stay away from it.

So next time you see someone offering you good "investment fund" kick him in the nuts for trying to destroy the economy

I'm not saying anybody is going to die LOL I was saying bitcoin is going to die as a result of massive lost of confidence when the bubble bursts.

I'm also not saying the offers are not legit, I'm saying there is no demand for bitcoin ... just look how shallow the market is, you would sell few thousand bitcoins at most and then the price starts to plummet. If anybody holds near 100,000 bitcoins I would say that most of them can not be sold and are therefore worthless ... but that's a tip, it may be 100,000 or 200,000 ... who knows. But the price is definitively inflated, don't you think? It is hard to say how much but it's clear from the fact that there is hardly $1,000,000 worth of assets in bitcoin economy heh

that's true ... there is a lot of things to eat, I just wouldn't call food most of it

And it is not far away, as I said there are 41 million people on foodstamps in the US! That's supposed to be "the wealthiest nation"? (or one of the wealthiest). Do not assume it does not affect you ... because when it does, you are going to have bigger problems than chatting about it on the Internet - that may be why starving people (yes also in the US and elsewhere) are kind of under-represented on the net?

Millions of people found themselves on the street because of mortgage scam, is that also far away? Several trillions dollars were stolen from the economy by FED printing and "borrowing" money, it that far away? Are all those bankruptcies, closing industries, record unemployment far away? I do not think so ... it is far more possible that you've been living in a bubble not noticing or caring about these things ... maybe you'll start to care only after you're on the street. But then ... then it will be late and other people on the Internet will be saying that you do not exist and that they do not care how you ended up that way.

It is bollocks only if there are going to be goods and services available that people desire for bitcoins.

What is happening now is just a bubble and a result of speculation just as I have said in the other thread, if this is not changed it is going to burst, make bitcoin almost worthless, make a bunch of people angry and bitcoin will eventually die.

This is not good situation, we need to encourage/create *useful and valuable* services, these are going to be the backing of bitcoin then ... and no, casino games, ponzi schemes and buying bitcoin for the sake of making profit is not useful nor valuable

Those who hold large amounts of bitcoins would do well investing in such services as that's going to make their coins much more valuable and actually sellable because right now if they tried to sell, they would find very quickly that they simply can't and most of the coins are just worthless and the price on mt. gox meaningless.

How to not understand something that could save you life of trouble:

1. focus on everything else BUT the arguments

I'm very hungry person, if I can't get something to eat it's like torture! I wouldn't wish something like to onto my worst enemy! And those starving people are not even my enemies ...

Anyway, is there any point to these questions?

Are you saying I shouldn't care? Well maybe I really don't, it's actually probably self-interest because I see what caused their starvation and I see the same thing coming everywhere else in the world ... to be honest, I do not want to join them in their starvation nor do I want to work in sweatshop. The only way to save myself from that is to remove the root cause which made starve also them - the religious economic theories.

It is the only way for you also, do *you* want to starve and work in sweatshop? It already is coming to the US, 22% real unemployment (not gov cooked numbers 10% which is high enough by itself), 41 million Americans are on the foodstamps, 1.5 million lives in poverty and this is accelerating ... it is on the way to become a third world country. But this is happening all over the world ... so where is all the wealth going? Are you going to guess it? I've been talking about it for quite some time

We are all going to be "poor Africans" you see on the TV soon if we do not realize root causes of this. Of which some I've been describing here.

Is this supposed to be a joke? I do not know what to think about this ... do you others here identify with such thinking? Is this who you are? I'm trying to identify the species I'm talking to because it doesn't appear to be human ...

I do not think it is "morally superior" to care about exploited or starved to death people, do you? The problem is many people just ignore it, they do not think about it because it is too painful and overwhelming to think about. They think, what am I going to do about it? So then they also do not think about the causes of it. There are very specific causes for that suffering and it's not because they are lazy, stupid or wouldn't have resources. They are being held back by other forces ... but that is just the most extreme example where the kind of economic thinking leads. It affects everybody, the current crisis is also just a symptom of this kind of thinking ... we've been listening to the kind of fairytales recited in this thread for at least a decade, it's like broken record and it has nothing to do with reality. The only ones advocating these theories are those at the top because they give them power and a tool to exploit other people. The simple truth is that speculation is harmful and serves no purpose, you can make up all kinds of abstract complex "reasons" detached from reality of why not admit it but in the end it's just excuses. It does nobody any good when someone is just shuffling numbers up and down, left and right just to make profit. It's just so obvious to realize with simple common sense. But some are trying to confuse it with some fairytales that are so tangled up that they ultimately do not even make sense.

Like speculators "smooth out" prices, what does that even mean and even if it was true why would it be a good thing? We are just expected to accept all this assertions without basis. If the market price of some commodity it supposed to go down because of lower demand, then it should go down - otherwise the price is not reflection of a true market, smoothing out, swinging it, or whatever else done by speculation is bad, very bad ... it introduces "fog" so that it's impossible to say what the real price is ... we do not need high price, we do not need low price or smoothed out price, we need *real* price. The only ones who can see trough the fog are the speculators themselves as they are closer (insiders), they use this advantage of course to make money - taking it from everybody else. They are parasites. The bigger/denser the fog, the more people are confused and misinformed, the more money they make ... so they ultimately make a huge mess out of the economy. I'm not making this up people, turn on the TV! What do you see? How do you think that happened? Someone waving a magic wand? Think, think!

I would encourage everybody reciting these theories to actually independently think about it. Something is not true just because Friedman or Mises says it. Someone here was quoting Mises as if it automatically mean he is right. There was nothing in that quote except unsubstantiated assertions. These theories can not survive the confrontation with reality ... simply said, they are wrong. They are completely idealizing things, it's not reality. It's virtual fantasy world and a belief in it serves only those at the top of the ponzi scheme pyramid which they inevitably create.

Our worldwide economy is a giant ponzi scheme right now and it is already collapsing with its base loosing everything, if we do not realize this, we are all going to work in sweatshops soon. Then you can sing the theories of Mises and celebrate the speculators as you work 16 hours a day for 2$. As somebody said, you are going to be thankful for those 2$ for 16 hours of work because otherwise you would be dead so there is really nothing to complain about, is there?

yeah, what's wrong with that statement? It's true, isn't it?

However criminal doesn't necessarily mean wrong as has been pointed out that many outlandish things were criminal in the past that are not considered wrong now. The same goes for current laws ... most of them are lobbied for by the corporations trying to destroy their competition, get rid of regulations or give them certain advantages.

There is a difference between illegal and wrong, illegal (criminal) is whatever gov says is illegal ... wrong is what you morally consider wrong regardless of it's legality. I hope it's clear now ...

If you wouldn't be so prejudiced against me you would understand that i mean it in the same exact way as you do and therefore that was the gov says it criminal is irrelevant. They can make something criminal whenever they choose to, they can make it illegal to piss ... that doesn't mean it's wrong. I thought it's extremely clear from the context of my post ... apparently not if the prejudice is strong enough.

I also said that sweatshops are illegal (criminal) in some countries, in others not ... so it's clear that I can not mean it how you interpreted it from that too. You're trying too hard to disagree with me at all cost ... maybe you could stop that and I would make much more sense to you

@creighto you are self-contradicting yourself and are generally very confused about what you're talking about. If I was actually paying you for your services I would ask for my money back

You are confusing two things ... the fact that you're free to do something/anything and the fact how are you going to be judged when you do and how is it going to affect you.

Sure, you're free to walk trough the street cursing at everybody, it's not illegal ... but do not expect people to invite you to a party then. It's the equivalent as people (well, one person) not wanting to do business with me because they disagree with me.

But this is EXACTLY what I was doing from the very start, i was not saying ban ponzi schemes (as if it would be even possible with bitcoin, duh), I was saying recognize ponzi scheme, look here is one, stay away from it if you do not wish to loose all your money.

But I got attacked for pointing out these ponzi schemes, like speculative investment to make money from money ... by people saying that they have a right to make ponzi schemes (it's freedom to make scams). But you see, here is the confusion ... of course people have the right to make ponzi schemes, but bitcoin community should reject them on the informed basis that they're harmful to the economy and bitcoin and point that out when they see one to protect bitcoin economy. Do you understand the difference?

Why are people endorsing these scams? It's like I would be discouraging someone from cursing at everybody on the street and others would condemn me for it because he is free to do it, it's not criminal. It's crazy and confused logic ... that it's not illegal or you're free to do it doesn't mean it's right. the freedom we have entails a freedom to make a moral judgment of someone's actions and voice disagreement. That's exactly what I'm doing ...

Why are people making apologists for ponzi schemes then on the basis that people are free to make them ... I've never said they are not! I said it is immoral, harmful and should be opposed just like slavery is. I've never said they are not free to make them! Again, i said it's worrying that the bitcoin community is accepting them as "legitimate" use of the bitcoin system, that's the problem I see! nobody seems to realize the catastrophe if this is allowed to overtake on a large scale ... and i wanted to point that out

If there wouldn't be for sweatshops they would have real prosperous economy, owning nice houses and cars not worrying that they might starve to death tomorrow if the CEO of Nike chooses so. They do not have such economy because the corporations came there, set up their sweatshops, destroyed their competition by enormous power they have (thanks to exploiting other people in other countries), bribed politicians to pass "regulations" and "free trade" agreements making sure that no honest business can ever compete.

Your reasoning is EXTREMELY cruel and cynical. Go work for a sweatshop yourself if it's so wonderful, please do ... with the prospect of your children dying if you do not fulfill everything you're told, when your employer has the power *to kill you* for not obeying his wishes. that sure is a dream life. In that situation losing your work means a death sentence ... and the owners know it, that's why these CEOs are more like third world dictators spreading misery and death by colonizing more and more countries for their operations. But this is ok apparently according to you, this is the kind of people i said a despise ... scumbags! Willing to justify modern slavery by economic theory, sick! Just sick! It is no different than slavery other than a whipping to death was replaced by starving to death (by firing them) ... hard to say which is worse.