Silverfuturist on bitcoin.

[relative]

Believe me, if people could magically create bitcoins by downloading or hacking together an alternate client,

they can, if others agree to that, as I've mentioned. also known as forking the blockchain (or creating a new one).
still, out of thin air.

[libertyzeal]

Believe me, if people could magically create bitcoins by downloading or hacking together an alternate client,

they can, if others agree to that, as I've mentioned. also known as forking the blockchain (or creating a new one).

still, out of thin air.

forking the block chain would be an enormously expensive and foolhardy venture, and creating a new block chain would give you something that's not really a bitcoin, because it's essentially a new, less secure currency.

either case would be the equivalent of scrawling the word 'money' on a piece of toilet paper and calling it a bitcoin, people won't accept it.

[relative]

Believe me, if people could magically create bitcoins by downloading or hacking together an alternate client,

they can, if others agree to that, as I've mentioned. also known as forking the blockchain (or creating a new one).

still, out of thin air.

forking the block chain would be an enormously expensive and foolhardy venture, and creating a new block chain would give you something that's not really a bitcoin, because it's essentially a new, less secure currency.

agreed. not the point though.

[libertyzeal]

Believe me, if people could magically create bitcoins by downloading or hacking together an alternate client,

they can, if others agree to that, as I've mentioned. also known as forking the blockchain (or creating a new one).

still, out of thin air.

forking the block chain would be an enormously expensive and foolhardy venture, and creating a new block chain would give you something that's not really a bitcoin, because it's essentially a new, less secure currency.

agreed. not the point though.

To me, that is the point, you keep saying "out of thin air" but there's a clear difference, one you can trust and value and the other you can't, or at least not as much.. the block chain backs the currency

[John Tobey]

I didnt watch the video, but bitcoin has parts of a ponzi scheme, namely the graph of money creation.

why the rate of money creation would be the biggest at the beginning, when it was obvious there would be no demand, is beyond me. money creation should have started slowly, then picked up when wider adoption was expected for a couple of years and then decline.
when other monetary systems were started they didnt distribute 10 mil each to 100 people.
the money supply was increased when the currency got more widely used (for example: more countries were added to the eurozone).

now I understand you can't manage this in the same way with bitcoin because there is no central authority, but the graph should have been shaped differently.

Yes.  The block chain concept is brilliant, the code is very good, but the BTC "monetary policy" leaves much to be desired.  This is not a criticism of Satoshi, whose brilliant work leaves us a foundation to build upon.

My hope is to make it easy for anyone with an economic theory (not just C++ programmers) to start a block chain with a new policy, get it mined at high difficulty (leveraging the Bitcoin network), and promote the new currency.  To this end, I am developing Another Block Explorer with a focus on multiple currencies.  I would hope someone (perhaps I) creates an open-source exchange for Bitcoin-like currencies, a client with multi-currency support (including genesis block creation and pluggable block acceptance rules), a set of configurable policy modules, and a "currency designer" application.

Over the ages, kings and banks have tried many monetary policies with varying success.  I believe the path to a better one lies through experiment and a wealth of options.

[niemivh]

So many phrases involve "out of thin air" with economics.