Wow!  What on earth spurred that?

Litecoin might be a lot more stable in the future, and offer more of a stable payment system.  You could exchange Bitcoin into Litecoin and vice versa; cash out to Litecoin when you wanna make a purchase, and when you receive Litecoin, put it back into Bitcoin for savings, or keep some around for more spending.  Also, there's this beta software called Ripple which acts as a middle-man for debt-based trading.  I don't think Bitcoin is doomed all together; it may be tough as a reliable payment service, but it is phenomenal as a store of value.  Kinda like gold and silver, where gold may be more volatile than silver, so you'd rather keep your savings in gold and spend with silver.

This is the story of your enslavement.

A fun little video to spread around if you ever get the chance

Many transactions can be sent without a fee.  But some can't (it's a complex explanation why), and act as incentive to miners to include them in their blocks.  You don't have to include a fee, but if you don't, there's a possibility your transaction will sit in limbo for a lot longer than you'd like.  I believe the larger the transaction, the more you have to pay in a fee, but I'm not entirely sure; it's more so how complex the transaction is, how many Kb is being sent to complete it.

Where the hell is my SS?  I haven't seen a dime.

Did he the whole video?

Who do we appoint to operate said blacklists?  And how do we enforce them?  If nobody cared about setting their clients up to reject flagged coins, it wouldn't matter.  It would have to be enforced by law for it to catch on, as the vast minority which chooses a couple of flags will find it very troubling when Jack wants to send Sally some coins but Sally can't accept his money when it's tainted by a flag passed down by 20 people who don't care for flagged coins.  So Sally would either have to turn her flags off temporarily to trade with her good friend Jack, or tell Jack off.

Now lets say blacklist operators are privately owned (which they cannot be, for nobody will pay for this service, so they will have to be subsidized)  Privately owned blacklist operator owner Sandy agrees that if you slip her a small fee, she'll scrub your coins off (by deleting their flags)  Now you have clean coins, ready to make a drug purchase all over again.  Uh oh!  Time to invoke a law: coin scrubbing is now illegal.  The blacklist operators continue to decline as their non-businesses conduct non-business, and the general public continues to pay for them to perform a service of figuring out which coins need flags and why.  By the time any court can figure out what theft has officially happened (or any crime involving the coin, really) the coins could be passed down several, several times, either to mules, or actual people.  So the guy holding the tainted coin attempts to pass it down, but the next guy has all his flags checked, not because he gives two bits about crime, but because he doesn't want someone else's tainted coin that is now completely worthless.  Ensue a downward spiral of money being rendered useless and people finding it harder and harder to conduct business as they realize they're holding onto hot money.

Now let's assume half of a society has their flags on, and are not accepting tainted coin.  This creates a subculture, the same one we've always had, which is perfectly a-okay in trading their tainted coin for criminal goods.  We can now call these coins blackcoins: the coins which are blacklisted.  It's like black market credit, at that point.  Unless people are forced to refuse flagged coins, they won't, or won't always.  You still have a system for people to commit criminal acts, and as long as a large portion of the population is okay with using the blacklisted coins as tender, they will continue to be used.  At least until Sandy lowers her prices.

A system such as this will go against everything Bitcoin is designed for: privacy, and freedom.  Privacy and freedom mean, however you feel about crime, that it is private, and free.  It cannot be used as a tool to fight crime and remain completely functional.  Assigning a system such as this to Bitcoin would be the same effect as banning guns; the coin isn't committing any crimes, and should not be held suspect.  If Sally wants to buy headphones from Jack, she shouldn't have to worry if her money was suspected of being used to hire a hitman several years prior.  Doll over a few years, and all 21 million eventually become tainted--do they reset the flags?  And if they do, why bother with the system?  It's an inconvenience, and will hinder trade in the hopes of moral correctness.

About the only good thing I can say about him.  He's a great guy, but he's got this weird disconnect.

Fucking economics



How does it work?

I mean, they push the shipping date back and back and back.  There are plenty of threads on here where people are PO'd about it   I don't bother with mining myself, so I don't know too much about it.

Right, the very first people with ASICs are going to have a massive advantage.  However, if every miner used ASICs, it'd be a very level playing field and the rate of returns would even out.  If it becomes unprofitable, they'll stop mining, and might go to altcoins--litecoin is a popular alternative to mine right now.  But by the time every miner has an ASIC, there will probably be even more advanced ASICs on the market; technology always goes this way.  So once ASICs are very popular, the ASIC-2 (or whatever it'll be named) will probably come around.

I believe Avalon is currently shipping ASICs, but beside BFL and Avalon, I'm not sure if there's any others.

I'm pretty sure they wouldn't accept my valid SSN so I had to give them a photo copy of my picture ID as well.  No idea why they didn't like my SSN, they just didn't.

No, they'll keep prying until you give them some info that can, beyond a reasonable doubt, link you to the account.

This   The majority of money in this world are mere numbers in a system.

"Very doubtful."

http://www.ask8ball.net/

This thread is infested with bots.

Do you mean BFL?  They have a pretty bad track record of putting off shipping their ASICs.  The ASIC technology itself, however, is designed to completely outperform any other hashing device, allowing more profits to be made.

I'm going to assume I exist.

Deal with it!

The issue with law, it can be interpreted any which ways you want it to be.  If the Supreme Court, as a joke, wanted to make Bitcoin into a religion, they could interpret it as such and legally recognize it as one.

Of course, this may be absurd, but considering the love and worship of the dollar...

A tree cannot be charged for murder if it falls on a person, as it did not intent to do so, for it cannot think--however, if the tree fell because someone rigged it to fall, it can be a murder weapon.  We need to ban trees large enough to kill people. 

Therefor, only people with idle hands can kill people.  But hands can't be idle if they're busy working   We need to put a ban on thoughts.

And the following is a series of silliness:

Medicine kills people.  We need to abolish medicine.

Lack of oxygen kills people.  We need a ban on lack of oxygen.

People die in hospitals.  Coincidence?  I think not.  We need to banish people from hospitals, and people dying in hospitals will drop to 0.

Gravity kills people.  We need to live in space.

Hot temperatures kill people.  We need to ban Mexico.

Cold temperatures kill people.  We need to abolish Canada.

Not eating kills people.  But that cuts into profits so we'll leave this one alone.

Getting hit by motor vehicles kill people.  This one also cuts into profits, so this one stays.

Butter knives in the eye kill people.  We need to ban butter knives from getting into eyes.

Jumping up and down too long and overexerting yourself kills people.  We need to ban exercise.

Diving and then flying kills people.  We need to banish the ocean and the sky.

Pollution kills people.  Good luck banning this one!  Ha ha ha!

Excessive amounts of fluoride kill people.  See above.

Having pianos falling on you kills people.  We need to abolish black and white films.

A lack of pirates creates a hotter planet and that kills people.  We need to abolish lack of pirates.

Being heartbroken metaphorically kills people.  We need to abolish teen romance.

And last but not least, living kills people.  We need a ban on pregnancy.

Only English right now, but I've been studying Chinese a little bit...  I don't know why, but I find it an interesting language.