Yeah, there's a few reasons BIP 47 didn't take off. Clever idea, but not really useful enough given the trade offs.

---

Couldn't this (a static payment identifier for face to face businesses) be done using a Lightning network node name? I think so. Much more appropriate for this use case in other ways too.

They don't actually. There's no real evidence, you'd be unwise to believe either side (what is the "it" that came from the Porton Down research centre? No-one knows, do they? That's because there is no evidence).

All we know is that various people are very publicly frothing at the mouth and being taken to hospital, then 2 contradictory news stories gets written by 2 politically aligned groups of news outlets. What's wrong with saying that both are lying? It's possible, and in my view, much more sensible.

The British authorities would have to be incredibly stupid to think that trying the same trick twice would do anything other than cause even greater numbers of (smarter) British people to distrust them. They're just not that stupid, this is a deliberate move to divide British people, and probably to set the stage for some other stunt they have planned. And the Russian government are all too happy to play along.


You might know this one Jet Cash: "We are all mere actors, and all the world's a stage"

Right, but you were talking about destruction of sovereignty. Central banks are a major keeper of state sovereignty. Where did I claim otherwise? That was my argument!

The underlying assumption is that the state and elected government are the same. They're not.

 

I didn't address any of what you're saying here. I mentioned that the central banks play a big role in letting private capital leave a country, but that's not got much to do with what you're saying

Well, it's potentially more complex than even that.


If you were a 12 year old housebreaker, would you go unarmed? Or even if you're just a physically small adult? This is why I'm against modern strict gun legislation, a regular person cannot defend themselves against any attacker if the attacker has a gun and the victim does not.

Guns are not the ultimate answer to the problem, addressing the causes of criminality is (and that's so so much harder). But should the general depravity that drives criminal behaviour not improve, and there is little sign of that, then calling the police is not going to work either. Vulnerable people without the means to employ their own security must be able to defend themselves in these circumstances, and so the law is a disgrace in this instance.

And of course, the police apply an entirely different standard to themselves; instead of arresting police officers for murder whenever they kill on duty as a matter of procedure, it's always assumed that the police officer did the right thing as a matter of course. Which is illustrative of how corrupt this modern policing system is: police officers are presumed innocent, and everyone else is presumed guilty. Unless they're powerful.

---

Local people should be paying a local officer who they trust to police their neighbourhood. People often reply "but that would lead to complete corruption", but at least the police would be corrupt in the way that the people who pay them wanted.

Tell that to someone who had an abortion and can't stop feeling extreme guilt about it for the rest of their life (which isn't necessarily everyone who does, but certainly some).

Morality is about the way we feel about defined actions. Here's a moral absolute for you: it's not really acceptable to say to someone "Hey, technically, there's nothing to be upset about, it was only a bunch of cells".


There are too many people today arguing that there's only one way of looking at this problem or that problem. We can have a lot less conflict if we accept that other people's very antithetical perspectives are valid, .

Hedge fund managers are all too aware that people listen when they talk. Don't you think it's possible that the contempt is both contrived & deliberate? Why would someone with alot of PR consultants say something that provocative otherwise? These people are no different to politcians, press coverage is a deal-making process, if this guy accidentally slipped in emotionally charged language, the PR people would do everything they could to have it removed (notice the "managing more than $30 billion in assets since 20 years" part?)

Lol, Bitmain must be struggling to find ways to make use of all it's money, this is a good problem This is a good indicator that their period of domination will end soon; arriving in Silicon Valley is just a massive heads up to the rest of Silicon Valley that Bitmain is doing good business, and that's in a very open market that can be easily disrupted. Bitmain probably think they might be able to make use of the US tech ecosystem to get even further ahead, but that's a 2 way street. Nice move Jihan

So being "life" isn't important? That's not what you said before.


Like I said, this is all semantic arguments really. But an abortion isn't. Either you do it, or you don't. And either the baby grows or it doesn't.

It's all about perspective really; a pregnant mother having a scan looks at a 16 or 20 week old fetus and sees her baby, and thinks and refers to it that way. A mother aborting a fetus perhaps prefers to think of the fetus as just cells.

So if it's all about perspective, then can people not choose how they think about this issue? Or must everyone think exactly the same thing you do? You will have problems achieving the latter.

It doesn't. But better is still better. Really all it does is improve the cost dynamics of existing privacy techniques, making them more attractive.

Yep, and that's why I essentially said "not all murders are ethically the same"


Simple example: vegetarians say "meat is murder". Everyone has their own moral boundaries, neither you, I, or a book can decide that.



So you're saying it's just semantics (incidentally, what makes you think you have any kind of authority do define a valid debate?).

So, if these human cells aren't alive, abortion isn't necessary. Unfortunately, it's a biological fact that fetal cells are, both individually and together, alive. And that's why an abortion happens at all; to stop the child from coming to term.

@guybrush

What you're forgetting is that the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies distort the market for healthcare a great deal. Without those distortions (patents, licensing and so on), the prices would find a more natural range.

Historical facts are against you; up until the early 20th century, cheaper medical insurance in more lightly regulated western medical industry was still available, and widely subscribed. Not everyone did though. Notice how that's different from a socialised system, only those that chose to be insured bore any costs, and rich or poor, if you didn't want the safety net, you could save the money and spend it on what you wanted instead. The medical industry was essentially turned into a price-fixing cartel, with government help, and now the insurance system is pretty corrupt.


Your assertion that I can choose piecemeal what I do and don't pay for now is incorrect. If I earn an income without paying tax, my life and my possessions are physically threatened, and likely stolen by the state. You advocate this Guybrush, you help them to do it with your lack of action. I don't want to pay money for social costs that gets used in a way I don't agree with, and everyone who agrees to pay is only making the problem worse.

Maybe you haven't taken part in enough elections yet, but you might eventually realise that there's only a very small number of people you can influence in elections, and so your vote does not matter. Where you spend your money though, that's a vote that really counts. One system works, the other doesn't.

If governments couldn't spend future taxes on the military in the present, war would be very different. If you advocate the government representative democracy system, that's essentially what you're standing up for; overwhelming military power and state power, where might is right and the citizen is really just a modern serf.

Democracy literally means "rule by the masses", but only the state has any power in this system, so it's not democracy. Bitcoin is designed to give some of that power back to people, but it sounds like you don't want power for either yourself or anyone else. You should sell, Bitcoin is not compatible with your ideals. Why own Bitcoin if you'll do anything someone says with your BTC if someone powerful threatens you?

There's 2 distinct part of this issue to me

Ethical: abortion is murder

It's alive, and you made a decision to kill it. That's murder, whether it's a dinosaur, a lab rat, a bacteria colony or a human fetus.

Murder is not always bad. I think that's what causes the problems in the abortion debate, alot of polarisation about murder always being wrong. But I don't think it's unfair to say that murder should always be avoided if possible.


Practical: abortion always has and always will exist

You can't stop people murdering human fetuses in utero. It's impossible to manage, and counter-productive to punish. No-one will ever agree universally on the ethics, it's impossible to achieve that.


So, it's best not to interfere, all that does is encourage the idea that interfering in each other's lives is "correct", when the truth is that we all have different ideas about right and wrong anyway.

No-one can force you to be something you're not. And I agree (and reiterate): at least you're honest (about yourself at least)

Headline sounds misleading, the on-chain capacity increases are supposed to average at 20-30%. There's no point in over-selling the scalability improvements, better to emphasise the privacy and fungibility improvements. The latter are absolute, whereas the scaling improvements are only relative (and modest).

Who exist as a result of incentive and rational self-interest in a relatively free market. If you could start a chip manufacturer for Bitcoin ASICs, you'd do it. There are no doubt people pondering that question right now, and they're unlikely to have the same sort of imagination or willfulness that you have

Well, if you can still maintain self-respect with that attitude, then you're definitely choosing honestly. Will anyone else respect you? How valuable will that respect be?

Insurance



What's stopping you investigating the crime in these cricumstances? And what makes you think such an investigation would be out of most people's ability to pay?



You can spread the cost out with insurance policies, that's why insurance policies exist



What you actually mean is: opinions or different way of paying for your life aren't allowed under government systems, i.e. what you advocate. If we lived the way I've suggested, all ranges of possibility would be permitted, if you wanted to join some multi-levelled co-op where everyone pays into a giant investment fund that handles every part of your whole life (which is your apparent preference), then you could choose that.

As things stand, if I don't want to pay for your lifestyle choices or your misfortunes, then a huge amount of pressure is put on me to do so (and you have less incentive to be smarter or luckier). And far worse than that, if the government itself wants to spend money on it's employees or friends, or on ways to disguise that such things even happened, an equally huge amount of pressure is put on me to pay for that too. You claimed not to like paying for wars of aggression, neither do I. I have a solution, you do not.

So, why should everyone do it the way you think is good?

+1



Are you (by any chance) going to leave Bitcointalk, then come back, then say you're leaving again, then come back again ad infinitum?

Backup your armory .wallet files before you do anything else

I agree. But physical power has it's limits, both logistically and politically. And decentralised networks are the kind of bottom-up technological organisation that can defeat those who would use force against you.

If you don't find that convincing, what are you doing here? Don't you understand that Bitcoin threatens the status quo in the most fundamental way? Banks will likely lobby to turn the internet into something much less permissive than it is even today (the case for doing so mounts up in the media every day). Either you're in Bitcoin for selfish reasons, or you want to use it to get true democracy. The former get out while they can, the latter will fight.