What do you think about adding an attribute in bitcoin URIs that would allow the recipient to specify how much s/he wants to pay as transaction fee to miners?

If you observe most successful means of payment (credit cards, paypal etc), transaction fees are always embedded in the price of stuff we buy. They are never visible to the costumer. That's much more appealing than letting the costumer know that s/he's paying a fee - even worse if it's up to the costumer to decide how much to leave as fee. They simply don't want to care about it, they care about the final price. Plus, in the case of bitcoin particularly, it's normally the receiver who's more interested in having the transaction confirmed faster.

I know that merchants may always add a second transaction whose inputs will be linked to the output of the feeless transaction, but that generates more data to be included in the chain - and consequently the merchant might have to spend slightly more in fees.

It would be nice if merchants could simply add a parameter in the bitcoin URI specifying the amount they want to send as fee. Then, the costumer's client would recognize it, construct a transaction that would contain the correct outputs and the fee requested, but, when asking confirmation to the user, would show the total amount (merchant output + fee). The costumer would just see how much s/he's spending, without having to care how much goes to the merchant and how much go to miners. Actually, they wouldn't even need to know what the heck is a "bitcoin miner" and why should they be sending money to these miners.

What do you think?

Inflation protection. Currently Bitcoin inflates rapidly, but the rate will dramatically reduce in some years, since it follows an asymptotic curve. Government currencies inflate exponentially.
But yeah, that's more a "store of value" usage, not "means of transaction".
I understand that, as means of transaction, Bitcoin does not fit perfectly to every use cases, although it's great for some of them. And the reason it doesn't fit well to some use cases is mainly because conversion is still a hassle. Maybe one day it will be easier and cheaper to convert from and to legacy money. And with more business accepting bitcoins as payments, maybe one day it will be easier to earn your revenues in bitcoins as well, making conversions less necessary.

In a free society, you should not be free to choose how to spend other people's resources.

But anyway, I don't deny that people tend to seek places where they can better externalize the costs of their actions. All I'm arguing is that (1) it is unethical and (2) economically sub-optimal.
Once I saw something about young French citizens (men and women) who would live abroad during their youth, in places where they'd pay less taxes, collect more money, and then, when they were feeling like starting a family, come back to France where they'd get many benefits for having their children there. In other words, when they are fully productive, they search the place where they get to retain more the results of their labor. Then they come back and eventually some even become a burden to society. You don't need to be a genius to figure out that's not really a good deal to the French economy...


That's likely true.
But honestly I tend to agree with Patri Friedman when he says that we spend a lot of effort on "preaching", and if instead we'd spend more effort on "acting" we'd get better results.

Même si tu y arrives, les charge-back ne sont pas ton seul problème. Paypal fermera ton compte dès qu'ils prennent connaissance de ce que tu fais avec. Ils considèrent une violation de leur termes de service la vente et achat des bitcoins.

+1

Again you show you don't understand what you criticize. Th market can't "enforce" anything.


That's your opinion, your value. Some think quite the opposite.


Nope, it's not.


Quite on the contrary, the tragedy happens when people don't pay the costs of their decisions. State-sponsored kids are a tragedy, as those who decide to have kids don't pay all the costs of their decision.
Actually, the very concept of "family" has everything to do with internalizing costs. You should read this excellent text, On the origin of private property and family.


This doesn't even make sense. A contract is voluntary, if you feel the contract puts you in a disadvantaged position, simply don't sign it.


Of course every individual appreciates when they may externalize the costs of their decisions to others, if that's what you mean. But that's unethical and economically sub-optimal (society progress better and faster when those who make a decision are those who fully pay for its costs and fully enjoy its benefits).


Besides stupidity, the main reason for such state actions is the fact that most of these states created long ago a coercive and massive ponzy scheme called "social security", which depends on a constantly growing input of young workers to pay for those retired. Such monstrosity would never exist in a free market.


If you support states which force people to pay "allowances" and other benefits to those who have children, then you definetly want to force people to do something.

+1
It's not that hard to understand. They actually have an advantage, a choice men don't have.


Nor women! Nobody would have to contract them, since nobody would have to be a mother.


Here you make it clear why having a kid is a "disadvantage" under your values.


Try to understand something before criticizing it. Visibly you don't really get how market incentives work.
Market incentives will push people to satisfy others with their actions, in order to have themselves satisfied. Market will "incentivize procreation" as long as people believe such procreation satisfy them.

Relax, the human race will not voluntarily extinguish itself, despite some environmentalists outcries.


In a free society, contracts could be made to give that guarantee, if that makes people feel better. These contract could foresee things like pensions, sharing of rights/responsibilities, conditions under which one of the parents would lose his parental rights etc. All this can be foresee in an enforceable contract. But it must be contractual (i.e., voluntary). Nobody should be forced to be a parent.

Such image shows quite well how "mainstream economics" is everything but scientific.

Quoting for posterity.
Such rationale might explain many things that happen around here.

That's the point, it's not that difficult to find someone's public address. It's not the fact that it's physically displayed in the card the problem, since as you say, the CC number is also there. It's the fact that only one funding address exist. Even people to whom I'd never show my CC could eventually discover my funding address.

Why not also provide a page where you can dynamically generate a new address to fund your card, every time you want to do so?

PS: I'm supposing there will only be one funding address per card. Perhaps that's not the case. One of the points of my original post was to confirm that.

Technically, the barriers should be as low as that, assuming your idea and website are good enough. But no! Thanks to unaffordable licenses and kilometric, ambiguous and incomprehensible regulations that no human being can possibly follow strictly, yeah, your barriers of entry get really high.

In other words, don't start a business like this without first being a millionaire, or having one to back you up. (it won't stop on "hiring a lawyer")

Luno, are you sure you're talking about the same thing?
I know there's lots of gold in the oceans, but is it in the form of this gas OP's article talks about?

Anyways, even if it isn't, with all the advances in genetic engineering, it might not take that long for people to be able to fabricate bacteria capable of extracting gold from the oceans.

The card will be associated to a single, static address?
If someone finds out my card address, s/he will be able to know how much I've put and will put in the card?

I hope you implement a way of generating disposable addresses to fund the card. The static printed address might be practical in some situations, but its use should be avoided - you should also explain why to your clients.

Despite that, congratulations for your development! You're already a valuable resource to this community, and it gets better by the day.

Keep in mind that, in the long run, "normal" people will not have the infrastructure necessary to run a full node. AFAIK, P2Pool requires you to run a full node. Centralized pools do not have such requirement.

Nothing stops a centralized pool to be part of P2Pool, though. That could be used as a way of saying "look, I follow P2Pool rules, so I can never cheat, not even if I happen to have >50%". But even in such context, the centralized pool would definitely need to make money somehow to pay for the infrastructure demanded by a full node, plus its profits.

P2Pool loses 5% of its blocks?
That seems really high. Do you know why?

What's the average lost of other pools? Where do you get these statistics from?

Thanks.

It means that the block has no children blocks. (seriously, in bitcoin terminology, orphan == childless.. brilliant, isn't? )

Inflation != price rise.
But nevertheless, the point is not fully correct since there's nothing stopping people from doing fractional reserves or other forms of inflation that do not depend on an increase of the monetary base.


Even if bitcoin provided perfect financial privacy, that alone is not enough to allow you to evade taxes at will. Remember that long ago people did have financial privacy, but that didn't stop states from taxing them. Property taxes and at some extent VAT are difficult to evade, even if you don't use banks at all.
And in what concerns income taxes, many states simply ignore the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" by forcing you to justify your means of living, and punishing you as a tax evader if you're not capable of doing so.


Why calling them scammers?

It's true that they should change their words. Not only because they are not accurate, but because it's not safe for yourself to say wide in the open "we can help you evade taxes!". But why this accusation out of nothing?

I don't really need to, as the amount I hold in his coins is something I can afford to lose.

I wouldn't advice holding huge amounts in physical wallets created and funded by a third-party. If you really want a physical wallet of some kind with a large amount, just create your own paper-wallet.

How?

If you keep the requirement of coins being spendable by anyone in physical possession of them (just like cash), how can you use multi-sig to avoid having to trust the issuer?