Same here, luckily I have a foreign girlfriend that gets me cheap tobacco. They should introduce "Smoking Contributions" - basically giving people back £1 in their pension, per packet of cigarettes that they smoked in their life, after retirement. I mean tax is 77% on cigarettes here, that still leaves like over £5 tax to go to the government  

EDIT: I don't mean 77% on top of the price, I mean 77% of the price is tax, so £10 worth of cigarettes should only cost £2.30. I think if Britain ever legalises weed, we'd be paying £20 or £30 quid a gram hahaa.

So I got a letter today explaining about new government pension schemes - basically you give 1% of your annual salary which is matched by 1% from your employer giving a total of 2% "banked".

In October 2017, this will increase to 3% of your salary and 2% from your employer; in October 2018 it increases to 5% and 3% respectively. You can opt-out of this scheme however.

Now after looking at historical prices and inflation, especially at the "Mars bar Index" (one of my favourite indices hehe), I have come to the conclusion that pensions seem like a rip-off.

Currently the price of Mars bars seem to be doubling every 10-20 years. If inflation carries on as it is, which is undoubtedly being accelerated by QE, I'd make an educated guess that prices as a general rule will soon be typically doubling in under 10 years, halving purchasing power. To be conservative, let's double the time-frame and say that prices will double every 20 years.

If I have to work until retirement age (currently about another 40 years) then, (if this 20 year rule is correct) this effectively loses me 75% of the purchasing power of my pension (50% after 20yrs, another 50% of that in the next 20 years).

When considering my employer's contributions, to make the maths easier, lets stick to the 5%:3% pension ratio that will occur during most of my working life. Then, my 25% remaining purchasing power is increased by 60% from my employer (5/3), resulting in 40% total purchasing power - less than half of the value that I paid in... Now pay rises should cover that, but they seem to be few and far between in private companies these days, and even the pay rises in the public sector do not cover the increases in the cost of living. UK inflation is recorded at about 2.5%, while the prices of food and energy are closer to 10%/year.

This seems like a scam - so if (I bloody hope not) I do have to work for the next 40 years, It makes more sense to opt out of the pension scheme and to invest these small percentages into something that will increase in value, or at least stay the same. Personally I have a small amount of bitcoins (~30) so I would probably choose to invest in silver as a hedge against BTC, as it seems like a good deal atm. Only thing is 20% tax in the UK, and also subject to Capital Gains Tax. Gold UK legal tender is VAT and CGT free, but I think the price is more heavily manipulated, and I believe the industrial value of gold is a lot lower than it's current price, whereas the value of silver is a lot closer.

Any thoughts, or anyone want to fix my maths (which is probably wrong) 

This is a good example for the people that don't believe a deflationary currency would work - I've had similar thoughts over the last few weeks (thinking about the cool stuff I could buy if I cashed out some coin) but because I don't really need anything right now I chose to sit on my BTC and wait until I do need something. Consumerism in a deflationary environment is bit alien, but there's no inherent problem with it.

If the price properly goes to the moon then I probably would cash out some and buy a nice ride, but it's gonna need to go a lot higher before that happens...

Then we'd have to live with dirty fiat cash until things got sorted out. You know, IOUs 

Great article, food for thought. It used to be a lot easier to buy/sell BTC in the UK than it is now, I can understand how hard it would be to set up a viable BTC-based business. Pretty cool that the author got a reply from Vince Cable though!

Well that's the scary thing, I haven't seen much public outcry, and most people who I talk to about the spying revelations don't really understand the implications. They don't understand the scale or indiscriminate nature of the spying, mainly because most newspapers are going for the "well we need to spy to protect you from the terrorists" angle.

When you think that the 2 biggest selling newspapers (the Sun and the Daily Mail, both corrupt as hell) are strongly taking this stance, and they both  outsell The Guardian (the paper that printed Snowden's statements) by about 10 to 1, it really worries me.

I agree with most of this, however I think that there is a difference between being skeptical about Bitcoin, and totally ignoring the valid advantages of the system/calling the whole thing a joke without scrutinising it properly.

There are many intelligent articles written in other publications (eg this one in the Telegraph, a conservative leaning UK broadsheet newspaper http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/liamhalligan/10438565/Dont-laugh-Bitcoin-is-making-a-serious-point.html), which examine both sides of the argument.

Sources like BI and ZDnet tend to just rubbish Bitcoin without acknowledging the possible benefits, that's why I think they are biased, and it may be in their interest for the experiment to fail.

Yeah, both the rise of Bitcoin, and the recent NSA revelations have really driven home to me how corrupt and biased most media outlets are, especially in the UK where I live. For instance, the most popular tabloid newspapers (along with the Prime Minister) are now accusing Snowden and the Guardian newspaper of breaching national security, absolute nonsense... (sorry going off topic here...)

Yeah RT's stance is very refreshing, also Max Keiser's shows are very entertaining, don't agree with everything he says but he sure is fun to watch!

Haha yeah, I thought about genuine ignorance, but surely these journalists do at least a small amount of research before writing similar articles day after day... but "willful ignorance", hadn't thought of that!

I'm sure people have noticed that certain media outlets, e.g. Business Insider, ZDNet etc, seem to have an invariably negative and childish attitude towards Bitcoin. It's interesting that some journos like Ken Hess/Joe Weisenthal don't even address the arguments in favour of the Bitcoin system, and normally resort to condescending retorts (normally comparing BTC to Pogs and pet rocks...)

Also most of their articles revolve around them saying BTC has no "intrinsic value" so it is worthless, while ignoring the fact that no fiat currencies have intrinsic value either.

I think it stinks of manipulation... I reckon they're trying to keep the price down while they retrieve millions of dollars from stocks to buy coin with, and then will change their stance, basically an epic pump-and-dump 

Seriously though, I guess these media corporations have an interest in keeping the value of the dollar high? In what other ways could these companies benefit from bad-mouthing Bitcoin???

Yeah, I also saw the article in print and did a double-take! It's worth noting that not only is the Telegraph a pretty serious paper, but it's political stance has historically been Conservative, unlike many of the more liberal UK papers that are covering Bitcoin (eg the Independent/the Guardian).

Great to see such an intelligent article in the mainstream UK press!

Nice UK one here, if only I had a car and £400 to spend...

http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/buy.html?plate=BU11%20BTC&price=399

The printed magazine hasn't been distributed yet, when it has maybe they'll sort the site out and make it clearer what it actually does...?

So this great big ad is the first thing you see when you open this magazine. This mag is published by Newsdesk Media on behalf of the G20 Research Group, so I don't think it's the official publication given out at G20 summits etc, but it is pretty prestigious. I heard from afoaf that the printing had to be delayed as Mr Putin himself didn't approve his photograph - it had to be changed at the last minute!

Here's a digital version of the mag, it has links to the full magazine or just the contents:

http://g20.newsdeskmedia.com/Index.aspx

Here's a PDF of just the contents with the ad on the 2nd and 3rd pages:

http://g20.newsdeskmedia.com/Images/Upload/g20/PDFs/Cover-and-contents.pdf

I thought it was cool to see something so bold about Bitcoin in such an academic and finance-based publication, it shows that more professionals could be finding out about Bitcoin through targeted and respected media.

Funny thing is, I still can't quite work out what the Bitcoins.com site is for... It says it's owned by "Tibanne Co. Ltd.", who also own Gox if I'm not mistaken. According to the site, not all services are ready yet - it also says "Bitcoin Exchange" next to the Google search result... Maybe this will be the new front-end site to their upgraded Midas trading engine, and they've used another subsidiary company name? Maybe someone here knows something about this?

Anyway, thought it was worth posting 

Haha, my favourite so far:

I just watched this and I think it answered a lot of questions I had about how and why this crisis actually happened. It is maybe a bit biased but does seem to concentrate mostly on the facts with sources etc, and is a well put together documentary. Very entertaining watching the big bankers squirm after being asked difficult (yet totally legit) questions.

A lot of people are associating the government regulation talked about in this film (or the lack of which caused the crisis) with the government regulation that Bitcoin may soon be subject to.

Now I think they are two totally different forms of regulation. The film explains how the lack of government regulation allowed mortgage lenders to sell loans to investment banks, who then sold them on to investors in the form of highly leveraged derivatives. So the investment banks were basically selling money they didn't own to investors.

What's more, the investment banks were paying ratings agencies to evaluate the derivatives as AAA investments, making it look like they were sound investments when in fact there was little chance that many of the loans would be repaid.

Then when the boards of these investment banks realized that there was a huge bubble forming, many sold their stocks in their own companies, knowing full well that shit was about to hit the fan, and profiting even more as a result.

So it basically came down to massive fraud on an industrial scale, which the deregulation allowed to happen, making a very small amount of people at the top very rich.

This sort of regulation is totally different from what is happening with Bitcoin right now. For a start, this type of regulation is not needed in the Bitcoin economy as fractional reserve banking is basically pointless with Bitcoin - people can't lend out more than they have as people will always want actual Bitcoin, not IOUs. I think people are mistaking this type of deregulation (which makes corporate fraud much easier) than the regulation Bitcoin is subject to, namely: Reducing anonymity with legitimate business transactions to stop money laundering, and generally making sure people don't get Bitcoin stolen and that it is taxed appropriately.

Now I'm not saying that I agree with any sort of Bitcoin regulation (tbh I'm not sure about this, Bitcoin seems good the way it is, however some regulation might encourage more investment and Bitcoin-related businesses to flourish).

I'm just saying that they are two totally different beasts - if the rich investment banks had been properly regulated during the early 2000's this crisis would not have occurred - such a problem is irrelevant with Bitcoin as such a crisis cannot occur, by it's nature banks can't loan out more Bitcoin than they own.

Am I right?

Note the quotation marks. I didn't give a time reference (Bitcoin will probably not be worth anything in 20-200 years), but mid term Bitcoin will never go to zero barring a catastrophic flaw in the protocol, or if TOR, SHA256 and PGP are all compromised in the near future. I reckon the chances of this are a million to one at least, with the a weakness in the protocol being by far the more likely option.

Still, I think that >$30 coins are highly improbable.

Cheers, that's what I figured tbh. Especially since the seller made no mention of increasing his BTC price after the recent ~30% drop in USD value.
Although he has triple digit 100% positive feedback, who's to know how many neg feedbacks were disregarded in the past if the disputes all went in his favour?

Still, some more advice would be appreciated, especially if someone has successfully resolved a dispute of this fashion...

Surely there is an "absolute" bottom that cannot be breached, due to Bitcoin's inherent value as a pseudonymous payment system, i.e. to buy black market goods on SR etc. and through private sales/for money laundering.

Although I didn't expect this recent slide from ~$100 to ~$70, I can't see how it would be possible for the USD value to drop below roughly $30 for any extended period of time, and that's a conservative estimate, more like $40-$50 I reckon.

I also think there will be huge buying pressure if the value does drop to these levels, I mean not much has inherently changed in the system apart from the ASICs, which aren't actually increasing the speed of coin production/inflation. There is also a lot more legal/legit bitcoin accepting merchants than there were when SR went viral and BTC was worth $5-$10.

Barring a huge snafu event (flaw in the protocol/51% attack) I just don't see how single digits are possible. Am I missing something?

I am interested in buying an item from an ebay seller, who says in description that he also accepts X amount of bitcoin. If I send the bitcoin (instead of just paying with fiat via PayPal), what's stopping him saying I didn't pay and not sending the item?

If I take screenshots of every step of the BTC transaction, will this hold up if a pay dispute occurs? Is there any way of doing this without getting scammed?

Also I assume the receiving address he sent me via ebay PM is new, as it does not show up after a search in blockchain. He is asking for me to send a small amount, then to send the full amount once he confirms the smaller amount has been received.

Any thoughts?