No coins generated in 708 hours, normal?

[kiba]

Bottomline is that I don't believe that someone who was able to generate the equivalent of hundreds, if not thousands of bitcoins (the equivalent of much $$$), is on the same footing as someone today and that undermines the democracy behind the beautiful underlying technology.

It's not a democracy, but an agreement!

I believe that a split network will continue to operate independently of one another.

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[BitLex]

how the exclusivity benefits the market at all

there's no such thing as exclusivity,
anyone, yes, you too, is able to buy some decent hardware and start mining immediately.
i myself just ordered a new gfx-cad today only for the good of the bitcoin-network (and maybe, if i'm lucky, some coins for myself).

if anyone who created a new bitcoin account was given 100 bitcoins

and how would you tell, if that person has an "account" and got his 100btc already, or not?
there's no way you can tell, how many bitcoin-clients i installed, should i get 100 for each instance?


and those "early adopters" took a high risk by investing (energy,time and money) early,
when they'v been able to generate the equivalent of hundreds, if not thousands of bitcoins, those coins had almost no value at all.

take your risk now (it's still high) and invest (in coins, or hardware+energy), or don't, but don't blame those who did and will do.

[MoonShadow]

Of course it doesn't have to be - but wouldn't a truly democratic currency require it to be fair?

No, it doesn't.  Monetary policy doesn't have to have an ideology.  Is it fair that you were born naked?

Why mimic the core issue with capitalism when denouncing so many of the corrupt residues of it?

I don't think that you are going to like it here.

Obviously I believe THEY Should be thankful that they were able to convert those resources into something that essentially adds value to this currency.

I'm certain that most are very thankful.

To me, ease of obtaining (or at least some path other than losing a large % of my "unconverted money" aka "real money" in order to obtain) is crucial here.

What is "real" money?  Have you ever held real money in your hand?  I would wager that you have not.

I think it would be a massive breakthrough if any reputable and legal credit card / currency conversion processor was effected by the bitcoin. I believe the next breakthrough in popularity will be any place that allows someone to buy into the system with their perceived "real money" effortlessly. Getting around a smaller fee by using this system and accruing a larger fee to convert currencies is undermining it to the ignorant/vaguely interested public (myself included!)

Then don't get involved, if it doesn't favor you.  It favors some, which is why it trades.

[cacba]

Frost, the reason gold is valued is not because it is useful but because others value it. The reason gold can take this role is because it is rare.

Currencies like the US dollar were valued because they were backed by gold. However after the gold standard was abandoned, the US dollar was still valuable because others valued it. The rarity of the US dollar is managed by a central source, the government.

Bitcoin is trying to provide an electronic decentralized version of the US dollar. Its rarity maintained by the increasing difficulty of creating a bitcoin.

The people who helped create the currency (the early adopters) were able to print money like the government. It may benefit them enormously but rarely are things equal (the world isnt fair, get over it).

The issue for you is that bitcoins may never be valued by other at all. Right now using bitcoins is like walking into a town that uses monopoly money and tries to convince you to convert at an exchange rate of $10 US for $50 Monopoly. In this analogy the early adopters would have warehouses of monopoly money, just hoping it catches on.

Update: Currently there are 5 million bitcoins, with an exchange rate of $0.25. Clearly there is hording, artificially raising the price of a bitcoin. Classic pump and dump.

[FreeMoney]

Update: Currently there are 5 million bitcoins, with an exchange rate of $0.25. Clearly there is hording, artificially raising the price of a bitcoin. Classic pump and dump.

Might we get a definition of hoarding? And some examples of currencies that aren't hoarded and/or are a classic pump and dump? I'd like to understand where you are coming from.

[caveden]

Of course it doesn't have to be - but wouldn't a truly democratic currency require it to be fair?

Fairness and democracy have nothing to do with one another.
It's fair if you are rewarded proportionally to what you contribute. The more hashing power you add to the chain, the more you contribute, and the more you are rewarded. This is fair.

Why mimic the core issue with capitalism when denouncing so many of the corrupt residues of it?

What are you talking about? There's no "core issue" with capitalism being denounced here. There's a core with issue with governments (money monopoly, central banking..), which bitcoins are designed to bypass.

AKA why the hell is there this romanticizing of the unfair plundering of natural resource by generally greed-driven and corrupt individuals?

Oh boy, we're dealing with a watermelon here...

Why should I be thankful? I am still not grasping how the exclusivity benefits the market at all, and the deterrence here is someone was able to "mine relatively free coins at a fraction of my current cost and time spent mining" can use bitcoin as a currency in and of itself, where I don't have the convenience of "convert some % of electricity/computer/programming efforts" into coins.

It's not free, and you do have the convenience, just buy GPUs and install the proper software.

I think it would be a massive breakthrough if any reputable and legal credit card / currency conversion processor was effected by the bitcoin. I believe the next breakthrough in popularity will be any place that allows someone to buy into the system with their perceived "real money" effortlessly. Getting around a smaller fee by using this system and accruing a larger fee to convert currencies is undermining it to the ignorant/vaguely interested public (myself included!)

There are many people trying to establish such services, it's just not easy, due to credit card charge backs.
There is one service where you can buy bitcoins with an US credit card. They perform several checks on your identity before allowing you to buy.

[slush]

If I want to acquire 1g of gold, there are several ways I could go about this.

Excellent! I lived for few months with Bitcoin without single bitcoin mined. Agree that mining is just part of whole idea, exactly like in real-world gold. I don't know why people are angry when somebody invest large amount of $$$ and start mining itself. Everybody can do that!

And I'm doing that because I'm geek and it is fun for me, not because of whole financial reward (by the way, my investments will be back maybe after half an year, which is my personal risk and mining reward so-so cover it). But if you are not interested in programming and hacking, simply buy bitcoins on market. It is faster and cheaper (because you don't take any risk of investment).

[kiba]

In the first response you seem to validate money monopoly of early adopters because of some sort of "grand risk / effort" which is always laid bare on the soulful sleeves of those fortunate enough to luck into that position, but in the second response you state the governance of such monopolies are the core issue.

Do you believe capitalism can exist without regulation? I don't, and I see the government and management of the money as a natural outgrowth, aka, the laws behind posting "beware of scammer" blog lists.

The core understanding of libertarianism is that the government is a monopoly by force, and of force. It is the initiation of aggression that is the issue here.

One could of course have a natural monopoly in a free market, but this isn't the same as hiring people with guns to enforce position in the market against all future and current competitors.

With governments, they do not provide the rule of laws, but unpredictability.

Here, we have a protocol that enforce a kind of rule of law. Violence on the internet is almost impossible by the virtue of actors being distributed far away, and the protocol provide a ruleset that is very clear in how it operate and completely predictable in its outcome. (21 million bitcoin, irreversible transactions, and so on)

That is not simply possible with a democratic legislative process that care about everything in your life and wish to dictate rules on things that they don't know anything about, or their mind is tied to the fickle emotions of democracy.

[kiba]

Seems very simple and clear to me.

I don't see why there's a need for the mining operation in order for the decentralization p2p concept to work. you can still remove (some of) the (perhaps corrupt) 3rd parties and lower costs via this system.

To extend your metaphor, the way "monopoly money" was printed was if you used the special monopoly money printer, and there were various rules to that output that a few in that town began. They want me to exchange $10 for $50 or I could borrow their machine except now millions of others are using it and we all split it every time we turn the crank once.

This is complete utter nonsense if the system works as designed. Satoshi designed it that way. There's also no currying of favors here, at least as far as I know.

Also, block generators serve an important purpose in the bitcoin economy, such as securing the integrity and as well processing transactions. They need incentives to do it.

[FreeMoney]

Frott, people who find out about bitcoin and start earning them 6 months from now are going to be early adopters from a wide perspective. If you think there is no risk being taken by amassing coins then you should be glad at this opportunity.

[kiba]

Frott seem to think the success of bitcoin is inevitable or something.

[FreeMoney]

Frott seem to think the success of bitcoin is inevitable or something.

Yes, but curiously the guaranteed riches do not seem to excite him.

[MoonShadow]

Of course it doesn't have to be - but wouldn't a truly democratic currency require it to be fair?

No, it doesn't.  Monetary policy doesn't have to have an ideology.  Is it fair that you were born naked?

It is as long as everyone else is born naked.

Everyone starts off within the Bitcoin economy with the same amount, also.

Zero.

Then you get into the grey areas of if those who gave birth can afford to clothe me and fairness, morality, etc.

Those aren't grey areas.  They're called "life".

To me, ease of obtaining (or at least some path other than losing a large % of my "unconverted money" aka "real money" in order to obtain) is crucial here.

What is "real" money?  Have you ever held real money in your hand?  I would wager that you have not.

I see this sematic differentiation often  brought up but never fully resolved on the forums. Simply put, real money would be that which has value in my reality.

That is a definition that is entirely subjective, and relative to the observer.  It's entirely useless in any civic context.

It's also false by any accepted definition.

I think it would be a massive breakthrough if any reputable and legal credit card / currency conversion processor was effected by the bitcoin. I believe the next breakthrough in popularity will be any place that allows someone to buy into the system with their perceived "real money" effortlessly. Getting around a smaller fee by using this system and accruing a larger fee to convert currencies is undermining it to the ignorant/vaguely interested public (myself included!)

Then don't get involved, if it doesn't favor you.  It favors some, which is why it trades.

My statement is that it obviously doesn't favor anyone getting involved now,

That's not even true, much less obvious.  It may be true for you, but it probably isn't. You can't possibly know if it's true for anyone else, much less everyone else.