Bitcoin: The Digital Kill Switch

[AnonyMint]

Ultra-high valuations of single BTC ignore the fact that the very large Bitcoin-denominated economy needed to sustain such a price could exist only by reducing the size of USD-denominated economies. Such evaluations don't take into account deprecation of the USD in response to lower demand for traditional currencies.

Thanks for making the point, but I think the high valuations are based on the same quantity of goods & services still being transacted in the economy and Bitcoin taking a larger share of that economy. So those high valuations reflect the relative rise in purchasing power.

However this (extreme valuation result) points to another flaw in Bitcoin, which is that only 21 million coins will ever be mined. Thus Bitcoin would crash the global economy (if it gained dominant share) as I explained already:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160612.msg2881311#msg2881311
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160612.msg2892394#msg2892394

A fixed alternative to Bitcoin needs to have a persistent 5% per annum debasement in order to maximize economic growth and fairly balance the return of Bitcoin savers vs. business investors:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160612.msg2895021#msg2895021

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[AnonyMint]

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/bitcoin-money-just-terrible-205752180.html

It is increasingly clear that purchasing and selling Bitcoins as a commodity will likely attract capital gains or income tax for the speculator. Transactions where Bitcoins are used to “purchase” goods or services will likely be taxed as barter transactions – essentially a trade of a digital commodity for a physical one.

But here’s where it gets ugly.

If a Bitcoin does not qualify as a regulated financial instrument, then it is likely a digital commodity indistinguishable for tax purposes from an ebook or piece of downloaded software – attracting a sales tax in most jurisdictions.

Note that this is a tax applied to the purchase of the Bitcoins themselves. Similarly to a European paying 12% VAT when purchasing Bitcoins, the online purchase is treated as a taxable barter transaction, and the merchant who wishes to dispose of the Bitcoins must charge sales tax upon disposal. Such treatment of Bitcoin as a digital good rather than a financial instrument could trigger an implosion of any mainstream use as commercial basis for adoption would be annihilated overnight.

In short, the superficial value proposition to merchants appears compelling, but it must be tempered with reality. Local retailers may be able to ignore these issues, but large merchants cannot.

The author above is entirely correct in that either Bitcoin becomes regulated so the authorities treat it as money, else they discourage it by taxing it as a good (as they do precious metals).

The only way around this is anonymity for all Bitcoin users, as I wrote about before as follows. And note economies do move underground when the government taxes above the Laffer limit as they are now.

It won't be difficult to buy Bitcoins, but the government will know who owns which Bitcoins, due to the need to provide ID at the exchange and Europe will soon require this too as the USA and Canada already do. Later the government can "clawback" (as was done in the MF Global case to those who withdrew before the fiasco!) all those who moved money out of bank accounts and confiscate Bitcoins, including pressuring every person downchain to reveal who they spent to.

• Distribution of dead coins: Why the complexity of distributing them? Just destroy them. Oh yeah, Bitcoin ceases creating new coins after 2033 thus destroyed coins don't get replaced, which is another weakness because mining is the only way to get true anonymity.
• Forced mixing of coins with Zerocoin: Even with true anonymity, Zerocoin on first glance appeared to be useful because some people may give up anonymity on some purchases and so don't want to link back to their other anonymous coins. But the whole Zerocoin thing against the government falls apart because if your identity is known on either side, the authorities can compel you to reveal the links forward or backward. The only anonymity is true anonymity! Zerocoin is useless against the government. Zerocoin might have other utility against traffic analysis by the private sector which doesn't have this power to compel, and for this applicability there is no problem if the people who use Zerocoin are not mixed with people who don't need to use it.

Note I think Zerocoin would still be useful to break block chain analysis, even if one has perfect anonymity.

[AnonyMint]

I should keep an eye out for the possibility that Europe could bounce until 2014.675. I need to search for facts that can tell me how long this bounce is likely to last. I don't want to be too early again, as I was on China last July 2012.

As I've been expecting, looks like we will get that a deadcat bounce in capital fleeing Europe and developing markets into the USA, which may put a temporarily top on the USA equities. Safe haven bond yields in Europe are increasing (exodus from safe havens) and US Treasury yields are declining (from recent dramatic rise) which is a combination of capital coming out of USA equities taking a breather, capital coming out of safe haven European bonds, and lower PPI placing doubt on Fed's Sept. taper.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/markets-usa-bonds-idUSL2N0GF0OJ20130814

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-13/germany-s-bonds-fall-for-second-day-before-zew-sentiment-report.html

China and Europe are both posting deadcat bounces from their declines.

Europe's bounce is all confidences increases and more debt caused by a strong Euro, very low interest rates in the safe haven countries (my Belgium friend says he can borrow 5000 Euros any time and pay 230 per month), and increased government spending.

http://www.tradingfloor.com/posts/french-gdp-soundly-beats-expectations-572561113

http://www.tradingfloor.com/posts/euro-area-businesses-upbeat-economy-59627692

A chart shows it is just one of those bounces in a persistent decline since 2009:

http://www.tradingfloor.com/posts/french-production-contracts-sharply-gdp-should-rise-anyway-1352928205

And the big picture is still weak:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/aug/14/eurozone-recession-germany-france-crisis

But the most important datum is what likely caused strong Euro, how about $1.7 trillion dollars being converted to Euros by the USA Fed!

http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/tag/french-debt-174-of-gdp/

€4 trillion hole in the EU banking system

US Fed ships €1.3 trillion of prop-up money into eurozone

French debt is 174% of gdp

in July this year alone the US Fed deposited some €1.3 trillion in unspecified "European banks".

So the Fed is blowing another bubble in the Euro and Europe, which provides a temporary deadcat bounce, but what happens when this €1.3 trillion flees a renewed crashing Europe back to chase yield in the USA markets (either directly or via leverage as it allows Europeans to continue to borrow and access their deposits longer).

Aug. 7 was clearly the turning point where Europe has committed to crash and burn (with the help of the Fed pushing European confidence falsely up to increase debt levels on what is already an insanely insolvent Europe), and first we get a deadcat bounce through the September elections at least.

They likely did this to help get Merkel through the September elections in Germany.

So we should get that deadcat dip in the US equities now, until the above manipulation by the Fed works its way through the system.

Then rockets up on US equities and further collapse for and exodus of capital from Europe and developing markets. The fundamentals all over the world are that debt is increasing but marginal-utility-of-debt has gone negative globally, thus confidence bounces are volatilty noise and the trend is spiraling the toilet bowl, with the US dollar at the center of the vortex sucking everything until it collapses on itself.

Then and only then, will gold make new highs:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/08/14/gold-outlook/

Remember on Exter's Inverted Pyramid, that US federal reserve notes are at the bottom just above gold. Patience goldbugs, patience...

[Dioptriy]

what are you talking about, dont you  talk about bitcoin biger then it is.
bitcoin is still is an infant
everything is yet to come

[AnonyMint]

everything is yet to come

You got that part correct...

Remember it was Kissinger who said there would be “blue hats” on USA soil.

The constitution is dead. Why do you think I am working on a better Bitcoin! There is only one way to beat the dying of the global empire and that is to starve the dying socialism of capital (taxes). Gold coins won't be a solution, because they can't move globally and electronically (without a centralized party which can be attacked by govt), thus monetary velocity would collapse.

See the UN Dept for Disarmament Affairs document from Aug 5, 2013:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/08/14/un-office-for-disarmament-affairs-including-americans/

Re: Armstrong fooled by "UN" document?

And you trust the Tamba Bay Times mainstream media?

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/aug/12/un-coming-take-your-guns/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/aug/12/chain-email/united-nations-document-shared-social-media-says-c/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/staff/louis-jacobson/

Of course they denied the NSA was doing what Edward Snowden has now proven they are doing.

Armstrong has said he never publishes something as fact without good sources.

How does the Tamba Bay Times get to consult with the UN assistant to secretary?

[AnonyMint]

Litecoin's Scrypt is sufficient because it "make the random lookup the largest time component of the calculation".

Changing the proof of work to be asic hostile should be a non-starter, it's doomed to failure by it's very design. Nobody can design any digital process that cannot be accelerated by application specific processes. If you fix the proof of work process then someone is able to design an fpga or asic to follow that process.

Hmmm...(I had been thinking about this point already)

However perhaps we can shift the balance in favor of rewarding large quantity of RAM, so general purpose computers are on a more level playing field. If we can shift the time component to the performance of RAM and away from the CPU, then perhaps we defeat ASICs economically.

I just don't know yet if it is possible to make the random lookup the largest time component of the calculation. I will study more.

May want to stay within the CPUs local cache since it is highest-speed, or a combination of local cache and large RAM bound. Need to look at details of the economics.

Scrypt does what I wrote in bold above:

http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrypt

Litecoin's use of Scrypt is currently more efficient on GPUs, but I propose a fix. Details at the following links:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64239.msg2944298#msg2944298
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45849.msg2940005#msg2940005
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=273197.msg2949778#msg2949778

[klee]

Watching!

[AnonyMint]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=255171.msg2960802#msg2960802

PoW = Proof-of-Work

[klee]

A question I had in mind since yesterday without reading the blog in depth - about the hard disk mining thing, what about memristors? How can they affect it??

[klee]

PeerCash: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=215936.0

Interesting blockchain handling...

[klee]

Long term any cryptocoin will need P2P exchange features INTEGRATED, something like Ripple but without it's known issues (centralization, distribution of wealth, eponymity etc).

There is a lot of talk in the forum but what I discovered lately seems very promising to me:
http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/p2ptradex-back-from-the-future/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91843.0

He is the same guy behind this:
http://certimix.com/products/

Cheers

EDIT: http://qixcoin.com/

[AnonyMint]

A question I had in mind since yesterday without reading the blog in depth - about the hard disk mining thing, what about memristors? How can they affect it??

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160612.msg2575106#msg2575106
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160612.msg2448160#msg2448160

[AnonyMint]

PeerCash: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=215936.0

Interesting blockchain handling...

Thanks for making me aware of that.

Their ideas for shrinking the blockchain are very similar to what I (independently) proposed upthread.

Also their instant transaction confirmations ("0-confirmation transactions") is similar to what I (independently) proposed upthread.

So yes all of that will be implemented in my altcoin.

I appreciate that they link to a stable Java Bitcoin implementation. That will be a useful starting point for me.

[AnonyMint]

Long term any cryptocoin will need P2P exchange features INTEGRATED, something like Ripple but without it's known issues (centralization, distribution of wealth, eponymity etc).

There is a lot of talk in the forum but what I discovered lately seems very promising to me:
http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/p2ptradex-back-from-the-future/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91843.0

He is the same guy behind this:
http://certimix.com/products/

Cheers

EDIT: http://qixcoin.com/

Good idea. Sergio appears to be quite talented.

[AnonyMint]

I am referring to item #6 is the following document:

http://silverstockreport.com/2013/6-myths-inflation.html

The following is unarguable. I will refer any more of the above genre of nonsense to the following proof.

A Gold-only Economy:

1. Miner adds 2oz per year.
2. Investor invests his 100oz per year.
3. Workers are paid 1oz per year by investor.

The workers buy their production with their salaries as funded by the investor. The miner can also buy this production. So the maximum return on investment for the investor is 102oz per year, i.e. 2% per year. This is if the investment doesn't fail, so the risk is the investor will get 0oz back.

This economy can never grow, because no investor is going to take that loss (downside) risk for that tiny amount of upside return.

A rebuttal point is that some investors can lose and some investors can gain, thus providing for the winning investors to earn more return than the money supply increases.

But the problem is that capital will over time move to those who are consistently able to increase production. Thus over time the rich can no longer get more than 2% return. So what do they do? They turn to lending at a guaranteed interest rate provided by a public backstop, because it is the only way they can deploy their capital safely (because even if they are successful 90% of the time, it doesn't offset only a 2% upside).

On top of that, the workers (consumers) will not turn over their money as fast, i.e. they will sit on it, if the production is increasing faster than the money supply is growing, because they are gaining value for the risk-free action of sitting on money.

Thus the 2% upside potential is reduced to a negative potential on the upside. Loss-loss proposition for investors. So they become usurers, no other choice.

Understand that inflation is necessary to bleed money from the risk-adverse workers to those who know how to manage risks-- the successful investors. Even the Bible says money will grow wings and fly away. It must be this way.

Also it was never the case that the money supply in the USA was only metal. There always existed loans and fractional reserves.

[smolen]

Thus over time the rich can no longer get more than 2% return. So what do they do? They turn to lending at a guaranteed interest rate provided by a public backstop, because it is the only way they can deploy their capital safely (because even if they are successful 90% of the time, it doesn't offset only a 2% upside).

Properly implemented inheritance tax will either cure such risk averse human beings or put hoarded capital into new flow after their death.

[AnonyMint]

Thus over time the rich can no longer get more than 2% return. So what do they do? They turn to lending at a guaranteed interest rate provided by a public backstop, because it is the only way they can deploy their capital safely (because even if they are successful 90% of the time, it doesn't offset only a 2% upside).

Properly implemented inheritance tax will either cure such risk averse human beings or put hoarded capital into new flow after their death.

Incorrect.

1. A tax will always be gamed by vested interests, c.f. Some Iron Laws of Political Economics.

2. Capital sitting in a hole for a lifetime before being dishoarded is orders-of-magnitude too slow.

Debasing decentralized digital money removes the ability for any vested interests to capture and manipulate the debasement. And it is continuous, not waiting for a death event.

[AnonyMint]

To successfully play the inheritance tax the riches should employ layers of legal structures like trusts over holdings over corporations and so on. Using simpler structures increases the risk of government attack, the heirs should be properly distanced from the capital while remaining the beneficiaries. Usage of too long legal chains is dangerous because of raiders attacks, there will be too many doors where they can put the foot in. So properly created (and maintained, and renewed, and disposed) structures are expensive and while the government gets nothing at the due time,

Easier is put your money in a perfectly anonymous decentralized digital currency, then transfer it to your heirs anonymously.

One might tell the government they bought gold bars and buried them, but they were stolen.

Disclaimer: I am not giving financial nor tax advice, consult your own professional advisor.

Edit: I'm sorry, may be I missed where you stated it - what kind of debasement do you mean? "One point" inflation, proportional decentralized inflation, demmurage or something else?

Creating new coins forever:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279340
http://blog.mpettis.com/2013/08/the-urbanization-fallacy/#comment-644

[AnonyMint]

Best to click the following link to read the following discussion in context:

http://blog.mpettis.com/2013/08/the-urbanization-fallacy/#comment-689

I am 48, so technically I am not still in the youth (mirror don’t tell me that!), but we X-gen were dominated by the boomers so we have to extend our range to the next generation to make our biggest impact.

Note that the two leading journalists publishing the Snowden revelations are Glenn Greenwald age 46 and Laura Poitras age 48.

The leaker Snowden was age 29, who believes everything might work out okay if the people become aware of what is going on. His naivety got him stuck in Russia, because he didn't plan for the near-term reality that the political transformation he wants will require years or a decade or more. There is an interim reality which we X-gen look at realistically.

In the link I provided upthread [in the thread at the link at the top of this] about traits of us X-gen, we are untrusting and see through BS to the truth behind the curtain. We don't believe in "don't worry, everything will work out okay", because it didn't for us until we strived to make it so. Thus, our idealism is measured in results.

Timing is important. Gold will go higher than $2300, but first it will come back down again to $1050 or below (after this Fall 2013 deadcat bounce). Because capital is flowing out of the rest of the world into the dollar, and a stronger dollar and booming USA equities meaning a rush out of gold temporary. Until the dollar gets too strong, the US Treasuries interest rates too high (choking off the USA economy), exports to rest of world cratering, and the ingress capital flow stops or reverses, then the world collapses and then gold rockets as the only remaining safe haven. Yet don't forget we have the decentralized digital currencies coming as another outlet for capital yet this is probably too small to absorb $40 trillion (but we will see, I'll be content if I gain 0.0001% = $40 million of that for my programming efforts).

Many of those students will easily be able to pay off that debt if they get the kind of jobs that provide them higher incomes.

You and your astute STEM fields student body are not the problem.

My point is that a significant percent (probably the majority or nearly so) are pursuing liberal arts not STEM degrees, the aggregate statistics show they are accumulating significant per capita debts, they are able to support themselves (tuition, boarding, food stamps perhaps) with this funding (would otherwise be unemployed given the bad economy), thus the economy will implode faster once they can't borrow more, and they will have no choice but to throw their political support to socialism (along with the boomers) to tax higher than the Laffer limit. Remember debt is always future taxation, even if you write it down the misallocation cost was already incurred. Just think about the effects of getting the wrong kind of degree, of not being young any more, of having kids already, etc..

On top of that, I want to reiterate my point from my prior comment, that as we write down the capital stock, the remaining capital is going to be scarce and so interest rates will skyrocket. Thus the (strictly undischargeable in bankruptcy) student loan debts will grow, not shrink. It is your non-linearity point about interest rates and debt rising beyond 100% of GDP (an individual's annual income). Thus this will become a 15% discretionary income garnishment tax (paid to the bankers or the government is the same now, same entity) for 25 years by law.

The new proposals are for all new federal student loans to be indexed to Treasuries plus 1 or 2%, and Obama's version has no cap on the interest rate!

Even homebuyers are locking in 5/1 ARMs because the spread between fixed rate mortgages increased by a percentage point this summer. Crazy.

The above is the reason I want to crash the system as soon as possible with a new decentralized digital currency (that can scale to Visa-scale, Bitcoin's current blockchain design can't). The sooner we can stop the youth from destroying themselves with debt, the better for the future.

[AnonyMint]

The above is the reason I want to crash the system as soon as possible with a new decentralized digital currency (that can scale to Visa-scale, Bitcoin's current blockchain design can't). The sooner we can stop the youth from destroying themselves with debt, the better for the future.

Ok but what is your plan to redistribute money equally.
Your decentralized digital currency won't solve this problem.
If it succeed it will only allow the rich to escape tax.

It will also allow the poor and middle class to escape tax (and debt collection), and they pay most of the tax.

The solution is not to tax the rich more (impossible), but to tax everyone less, and shrink the parasites who rely on taxation.

Money should not be distributed equally, that is socialism. Rather it should be distributed to those who generate the most profitable returns.

Once you remove the ability to control the system by controlling the printing of money, then those who are now making money by gambling with other people's money (keeping the profits and charging the losses to the public) will go bankrupt.