Lizard People get the day off today.

Why do you need to keep them?  The only reason a fork could return is if someone thought it was the best chain and kept working on it.  This means they would have all of this information, which should be retrievable.    You need to catch up anyway if you disconnect from the network and return in an hour, this seems like it would be the same case.  You keep track of what you think is the best chain, if someone gives you evidence of a better one, you replace what you know with what they give you.

It seems like it's something that is not likely to be a huge deal and you can only be spite exploited by it.  Say your funding transaction gets modified for some reason and that changes its hash- it's not like the server can spend it all.  It just makes your refund transaction invalid.  So the money is stuck in a joint account until a new refund is created.  The server could just laugh at you and you'd be out the money, but it doesn't seem like they get any real benefit out of it.  They could hold it hostage in a malicious case, where they refuse to sign a new transaction unless you give them half or something similar, but that would wreck their reputation and likely you would prefer to have smaller transactions to the server anyway, and if it fills up, send another one.

Malleability of transactions seems annoying to me and prevents a lot of pure trust-less applications from being rock solid. 

The poker application did sound interesting.  However, I'm not sure it's practical to do this - any time the table composition changes, you need to have some kind of new funding transaction and finalize a refund to that player.  The shared wallet would change due to different public keys, meaning you pretty much need to start from scratch every few minutes whenever someone leaves or joins (which can happen often in cash games).  I suppose you could have a system where a central server that runs the game just sets up separate channels for each player.  Whenever that person makes a bet, money is removed from the refund.  You'd also likely have a "bank" that has another input (refund transaction takes an input from the player and one from the house, and the one from the house would have to equal the amount money each player has on the table up to what the player has).  Whenever a player wins a hand, he gets money put into his account, and whenever he bets, it gets removed.  Transactions are updated, and timestamped, and when he leaves the table, the transaction is finalized.  This requires a significant amount of money for the server to put up, which seems suboptimal, but at least better than the alternative of having to keep submitting a transaction any time someone joins or leaves a table.  I'm not sure this solves a problem better than having a site that just holds money for you.  Then again, with hacking issues of some sites and seizure issues, this might be safer.

How do you avoid transaction malleability?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_Malleability

Does this not mean that even if you have a signed refund transaction, it is possible for the funding transaction to be changed, such that the refund transaction is now invalid?

Or is this just not a concern?

Forgive me because I'm still pretty new in raw transactions and how they work, so I'm a bit lost with that explanation.  I'll try to re-explain it in my own words and if I make a mistake, let me know.

First a transaction is created that requires both the grandfathers and grandsons private keys to spend.  Once that transaction is broadcast, then the grandfather signs a new transaction that has a time lock on it of the grandsons 18th birthday.  This transaction isn't broadcast.  The grandfather hands the transaction to his grandson, who can sign it on his 18th birthday and he is guaranteed that the grandfather hasn't spent the money yet, since he never signed the money away.  Once his birthday hits, he signs it, and proves he now owns the coins, and they are his, and he can get the transaction into the blockchain.

Is this correct?

Personally, I am more interested in the other case (I'm not sure if both have to be combined) for it to work - the death condition.  But it sounds like something similar could happen.  A new tx is created that requires 2 people to spend out of.  The transaction would require a 3rd party to sign the transaction for it to be accepted at that time.  In particular, I'm interested in an escrow-like use case, where the address of the output changes based on an external state (oracle).  One transaction to set up the multisig, then another transaction to allow either to cash in once the oracle decides it can be cashed in?

I had this same question.  If the transaction is never broadcast, then surely he can spend his coins, then the transaction is invalid when the grandson tries to cash it in.  If he broadcasts it right away, then it must somehow be revoked or modified for the death claim to work.  Is this understanding correct?  But that would still create a small window where the old tx is modified and the new contract added, leaving a chance for a spend in that time.  My understanding of txs is still very rudimentary, so I feel like I must be missing an important piece of this.

If he mines them and holds them, he is effectively buying then since there are costs to acquiring and he is passing up the opportunity to sell them.

Can you buy something useful cheaper (or more useful) by using Bitcoins (if the value is dropping)?  If no, then you are doing it wrong.

This only works if you can find someone to sell them to at a higher price, or buy something useful with them.

The irrational people are the ones who expected this to hit $1000.  They didn't realize that it was just a few rational people riding it up, and were rational enough to get out once the new money stopped coming in.

The better question is how many would still be there if the price dropped to $5.

But the buyers will lower their prices to compensate for the fees, so who wins?

I like a different philosophy.

I consider Bitcoins a high risk/high reward type of investment.  Every so often, I'll adjust my investments.  I don't want to have a huge percentage of my portfolio in such investments.  So if Bitcoin goes up a bunch, sell some to keep my risk level low and get some profits.  The more I make, the more I can afford to keep in risky investments, so I don't sell as much each time.

I think that an apple looks delicious.  I buy it from a vendor.  He benefits.  Turns out the apple is rotten.  The vendor did not know it.  I do not benefit.

333 back, but you need to account for depreciation of your assets.  33% on an investment that depreciates 100% the first year is not a good investment.  On one that depreciates 5%, it's quite good.

This is a speculative market that is thinly traded.  Things tend to bounce around a lot.  This is common with a lot of speculative assets that don't have much liquidity.

Not only is Bitcoin being priced based on how much people want to use it today, but on how much people might want to use it in the future.  No one knows the future, and the past is quite short, so a lot of people are betting in lots of different ways.  If you think Bitcoin becomes in 10 years huge 1% of the time, a moderate failure 95%, and a complete failure 4%, it still might make sense to buy them at $15 each.  Some people have shorter terms they want to look at, and even then it has to be based on what people will think in the future.  There is lots of uncertainty.  There are lots of people who didn't even know what a Bitcoin was a year ago.  There are also lots of amateurs who have never invested in anything before, but now find themselves in possession of something that could be worth as much as a house.  They don't know what they are doing and will screw up a lot too.

Then there is the criminal element with scams, thieves, and other attacks on the network.  All of those play a big factor.

So the price is fluctuating.  Eventually, information will give us a price that accounts for all of such things.  As new information comes out, that price may change, but there are enough incentives in place that will eventually keep it from changing too drastically too fast unless something catastrophic happens.  I wish I could tell you what that price would be, if so, I could be rich.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bank_of_the_United_States

If there's one person to go back in time to murder, it wouldn't be Hitler or Pol Pot, it would be Hamilton.

I didn't see any links given.  I don't plan on reading anything long.  It should be simple enough to explain or give a short summary.

You use a lot of loaded terms-

Why do I care if someone is making a lot of small trades making a small amount of money?
Why do I care if someone makes false bids?  If the bid would be honored if someone gets their order in before it's canceled, it's not a false bid.

"Manipulating the price" - such a loaded term.  Again, don't care.  Someone foolish enough to be manipulated because someone puts bids in or buys and sells at different prices deserves any losses.  Moving money from idiots to non-idiots is good for society.

I'm not going to waste time researching something unless I have a good reason to.  Try to give it to me.  I'm willing to listen.  Why should I care someone is making lots of trades?

Until then- "Oh noes, someone be making profits by providing me liquidity!"

I refuse to take the word of someone who has the traitor Alexander Hamilton as their avatar.

I lose .00005%.  Oh no, how horrible.  I'll much rather pay a 1% tax instead to keep these bastards from taking my .000005%.

Sounds to me that someone is getting utility, otherwise they wouldn't be engaging in trade.

Add in the risk of the sites being hacked/going down, your trades not executing immediately and someone else swooping in before you and you only execute half your trade, etc...  For a few cents profit.

People make money "off" people without their knowledge all the time.  Why is that wrong?  For example, my mortgage was sold to another company.  Someone else is making money off of me! Oh noes!  The benefit is liquidity.  No one is forcing people to sell at these prices, no one is given special access to make bids or asks.

Do you favor banning poker since some people might be better than others and "take money" from them?