If Bitcoin ever did go completely mainstream...

[Foxpup]

The number of Bitcoins generated per block starts at 50 and is halved every 210,000 blocks (about four years).

I heard another "halving" will start in December.

It's not another halving, or a special one, it's just the first (regular) halving. Block number 210,000 is expected to be mined sometime in December of this year (which is just under four years after the Bitcoin network became operational).

[mobile4ever]

The number of Bitcoins generated per block starts at 50 and is halved every 210,000 blocks (about four years).

I heard another "halving" will start in December.

It's not another halving, or a special one, it's just the first (regular) halving. Block number 210,000 is expected to be mined sometime in December of this year (which is just under four years after the Bitcoin network became operational).

Thanks for the correction.

[franky1]

ok so i put some numbers together..
based on the american national minimum wage, working 40 hours gives an income of $290 a week.
so i see this as a fair minimum weekly income.
i have used this to calculate using the FIAT commodity prices to show what the price would be if it equated to 'labor time'.



so imagine you quit your real life job, and your only income was from bitcoin mining. you would still want to know that the percentage of time you put in eachweek in your old job, still roughly gets you the same products and lifestyle you get purely on bitcoin.

for example GOLD works out as just over 6 weeks worth of income for a guy on minimum wage to buy a troy ounce, and silver works out as just 4.64 hours (roughly) to buy a troy ounce.

now the next step is to figure out the 'international' average income of bitcoins. but for now whether you own a rig-farm or just a couple GPU's, ask yourself this question.

how many coins do you get rewarded in a week. divide that number by 100. then multiply it by the numbers in the column %weekly income. so you can work out how many bitcoins it would cost in a non FIAT world to get these commodities. im still working on a website so you just put in your weekly bitcoin reward and it converts it into commodity prices.

so lets make it simple, u solo mine and u only solve 2 blocks a week giving you 100BTC.

well it would cost you just over 11 BTC for a silver ounce and 606 BTC for a gold ounce.

[Wekkel]

Governments (while they continue to exist) are extremely unlikely to ever give up control of their fiat currencies (or of course their taxes).

When giving this some good thought, government may seem to control fiat currency (issue, taxes etc), but it is not in charge of the most important element: trust. In fact, when approached differently, fiat is controlled by the people and the people alone. If trust ever leaves fiat, it is game over for fiat, regardless of the 'control' of government.

Of course, the same applies to Bitcoin.

[franky1]

sorry for a stereotype i might next say, but in countries like russia. vodka has a value to use as trade between individuals, it has done for years. if you wanted your car fixed, you could go to a garage and give the mechanic a bottle of vodka to cover his labor and it would work.

that being said russian government still have not lost control of their FIAT holding, even when vodka is deemed more valuable and useful then fiat.

i do not think fiat will disappear, just that a new government will be voted in with new laws and new promises, they may even reprint a new banknote worded differently. but the government will not just give up.

the thing to think about is trying to fight government to drop their control of FIAT is flawed and futile. its basically their intellectual property licenced for public use. we do not own FIAT we are just allowed to use it.

what we can do though is highlight that FIAT is not the only choice. many people do not know better and think that FIAT is the only way to trade for goods and services. so instead of trying to fight control of FIAT from our armchair army. we need to make bitcoin as consumer friendly, reliable and robust far beyond what FIAT is. So that it can compete WITH fiat, and not against.

we need to get to a point where if employers wanted to pay their staff in satoshi's, they can. but the struggle is not government power that is to blame, its real world opinions of what bitcoin is used for that needs to change. that is the true first hurdle.

the government blame is at the 3rd or 4th hurdle. so lets not let the government be an excuse to not get bitcoin some positive notoriety.

we want a professional currency that stand up against FIAT and exceeds it in every way imaginable. so help get bitcoin to have a more positive image, for merchants and consumers. dont worry about government control just yet.

and if you are going to go on any news reports or make some real world press highlighting bitcoin. DO NOT use max keisers PR guy.. Max Keiser is currently losing his reputation with his sheep noises sounding like a loonytoon on a international news station. that is not what we want.

that being said, i personally hold the opinion that anonymous illecit traders out number the legitimate traders so getting bitcoins bad press swept under the rug is a big first hurdle. instead im considering litecoin as viable option. so far it is clean and has no bad press.