Shouldn't he be rotting in jail right now.

Good point.  The silk road coins auction will likely be a better indication of real demand, especially by larger, more established players... it depends on how close to spot those coins are sold.

For the non-technical person, think of it this way:  The Bitcoin protocol is analogous to the English system of measurement.  Do we have a better system of measurement?  Of course.  The metric system is better because it is based on a factor of 10.  However, the English system is still predominantly used in many countries because it would require an enormous amount of effort for society to change to the metric system.  We would have to change mile marker signs on roads, change the the tools that we use to measure length and quantities, change the game of baseball, basketball, football.  These changes would not be worth undertaking when the English system is "good enough."

Protocols are similar to systems of measurement.  IPv6 is better than IPv4 but we still use IPv4 because in order to change solely to IPv6 we would have to change existing routers, switches, servers, NICs, OS, ect.  IPv6 has been in existence for 15 years but has yet to be used as the primary Internet Protocol. 

Bitcoin is a wealth transfer protocol.  For society to switch to another protocol as the primary currency and payments system, mining operations would have to be changed, exchanges and wallet services would have to switch to the new protocol, hardware wallets such as the trezor would have to be redone, ect.  While bitcoin is still young, the possibility exists that a better currency could take its place, but I believe we are near the point of no return and society will choose not to change existing infrastructure because a coin is slightly better.  Myspace and Facebook are just applications on the internet that users can switch back and forth between willy nilly without any repercussions or changes in infrastructure.


And this:

Short answer:  no

The government is not going to give up all that revenue by tainting coins.  Besides, they couldn't do it directly.  They would just have to follow UTXOs, which would be much easier said than done if privacy protocols are used such as coinjoin.  Tainting is out of their control.

Bottom line:  how many people have been the victim of a double spend?  I am not sure a case of a successful double spend exists post march 2013 fork.  BTC is still better than fiat.

The question should be:  is bitcoin decentralized enough?  The fact is when a new block is mined, that miner or pool has  limited control over what transactions get included in that block and subsequent blocks they mine.  Once another miner or pool mines another block, then the previous miner no longer has that limited control.  Also, once a block is mined, it is up to the rest of the network to agree to that broadcast block as the longest chain.  If other nodes on the network find a major problem with a block, then they will likely not accept that as the longest chain.  According to this site:  https://getaddr.bitnodes.io, bitcoin has 7859 nodes in 99 countries.  Nearly all have to agree on the longest chain.  I would call that decentralized enough. 

tldr; Each new block mined is subject to limited attack by the miner who mined it and subsequent blocks that same miner is able to mine.  However, with 7859 nodes in 99 countries, most of whom have to agree on the longest chain, bitcoin is decentralized enough.

The value of my money goes up or remains constant over time = scarcity is bad... that argument makes no sense to me.

I think you, like many, overestimate the ability of the NSA and underestimate the resiliency of the bitcoin network as far as a 51% attack goes.  Miners would leave compromised pools as soon as they detected a problem, probably before the 51% threshold had even been reached.  The attack you describe would be a long shot at best with minimal success, if any.

Like I said before, the NSA would have better luck and inflict much more pain if successful by trying to crack ECDSA, and they probably are trying to crack ECDSA.  The fact that they haven't cracked it yet speaks to its resiliency.

The March 2013 fork was much scarier and the core devs and miners had the prob fixed in an hour.

If you really want something to worry about, worry about ECDSA being broken.  If someone could crack public addresses within a reasonable amount of time AND without forewarning, then things might get interesting.  Of course this scenario is next to impossible also. Anyone able to crack ECDSA would have to make a decision of whether to steal some bitcoins or set off some nuclear warheads first.

Basically, someone with 51% can reverse a few transactions and prevent some people from spending money.  If you see greater than 51%, its best not to send or recieve any bitcoin at the time.  If your coins are buried more than six blocks deep, you should be fine.

Frankly, I would have to see one single entity control more than 51% of the hashrate for a lenghty period of time AND people complaining about their transactions being reversed or not getting included in a block for me to panic.  I realize the possibility for a major problem is always there, but of course you could have just as bad or worse problems at any given time with fiat.

Good.  Matt has flipped back bearish.  Time for a rally.

It sounds like more of a hybrid solution, but if you have to access external data (which adds elements of centralization anyway) then this is probably the best way to do it.  My question is how are oracles chosen?  Are they chosen dynamically, by a group of peers, or are they chosen in a more centralized way?  How oracles are chosen would probably make a big difference.

Edit:  looks like they can be chosen by users.

For some reason I always understand this stuff much better after listening to Andreas.  For example his explanation of orphan blocks using the Canada/Australia illustration.

Dammit Matt.  I was looking forward to riding this trend up.  Now that you have turned bullish, I have to put my worry cap back on.

Yes its his bank that should decide what he does with his own money.  I look forward to the day when these institutions are completely bypassed.

I'm glad to see some of these tools and services start to be monetized.  It still undercuts fees charged in the legacy financial system and funding is necessary for further development and support.  It will produce a stronger system in the long run.

Arb bots are most likely keeping the exchange rates in line.

I guess its time to sell everything now.

Ha Ha.  Peter Schiff and other gold bugs came to mind.  They seem to understand the economics of sound money.  Its the keynesians who are totally clueless.

The same can be said for economists who dismiss BTC.  They fail to understand the technology behind it.