Frustration at the Digital Money Forum

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

The masses wont use bitcoin till famous people mention it.

WINNING !!!

Actually, it's enough that one large investor or veeeeeeeeery famous person starts using it.

What is happening now is that everybody who is watching bitcoin is waiting for the first big fish to take the risk. If the big, "alpha-male" fish takes the bait, the herd will follow. After that it will be a massive, unstoppable snowball effect (and bitcoin may rise 10-fold or 100-fold in few days after they announce that they jump on BTC bandwagon).

If a 'big fish' like you describe were to jump into bitcoin, such as Warren Buffet (unlikely), they would be wise to not announce that fact until well after they have accumulated as much as they intended to.  Considering that much of the reason that such 'little fish' follow 'big fish' is that they are perceived to be wise in matters of money, I would be shocked to find out that any such 'big fish' openly advocating for Bitcoin before they were well entrenched.

You are correct, however even without announcing the rumours would spread like wildfire.
So the effect would be essentially almost the same, except delayed by few days.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Heck, the hashing rate of the network is doubling 27 days for the past 15 months.

Don't under-estimate the propensity of geeks to throw hardware, sweat and reputation at wild and woolly ideas and 1 in a 10,000 bets ... it happens in college bars every weekend night.

Bitcoin is a bit like going to a Swiss private bank and being attended by a punk sporting facial tattoos and a ripped anarchy t-shirt.

+1, classic.

This quote needs to go into a cartoon or similar ... a "not your grand-daddy's money" kind of meme (quite powerful seeing as grand-daddy's money has failed)

[eMansipater]

Heck, the hashing rate of the network is doubling 27 days for the past 15 months.

Don't under-estimate the propensity of geeks to throw hardware, sweat and reputation at wild and woolly ideas and 1 in a 10,000 bets ... it happens in college bars every weekend night.

lol--good one!

[slush]

Really no offense meant in this, but the way your
pool is run, I could have guessed as much

hehe, can you explain it a bit, please?

[BeeCee1]

I don't pretend to know what is going on in markm's head, however, it did get me thinking about something that may or may not be related to his post.

Imagine you had several companies working on massively multiplayer games that wanted to have the in-game currency convertible between them but they don't fully trust each other not to create lots of extra in-game money.  They could use bit coin but then they have to spend their own money buying enough bitcoins to get this going.  Or, they could start a new block chain, maybe with new rules like the first block generates 5 million coins which gets divided among the companies, subsequent blocks generate just a few coins.  If these games become popular, they could start allowing out-of-game transactions and leverage their version of bitcoin into a real online currency, to the detriment of holders of coin in the current block chain.

You could also see a case where banks decide bitcoin is a good reserve currency, but instead of using the current block chain they start their own, again, providing initial capital (and an advantage) to the banks by having early blocks generate large numbers of coins (this is possible because the number of coins generated per block is just an agreement enforced by code, they control the code and the block chain so they make whatever rules they want).  They may even allow payment processors to join and generate blocks (after paying a yearly fee of course).  Again, this leaves holders of current block chain coins out of the loop.

[MoonShadow]

You could also see a case where banks decide bitcoin is a good reserve currency, but instead of using the current block chain they start their own, again, providing initial capital (and an advantage) to the banks by having early blocks generate large numbers of coins (this is possible because the number of coins generated per block is just an agreement enforced by code, they control the code and the block chain so they make whatever rules they want). 

You're thinking, but there is no economic reason for any financial institution (bank or otherwise) to choose bitcoin as a reserve currency and then start another blockchain, for any blockchain requires a great deal of system overhead.  A bank might choose Bitcoin as the backing for a digital or physical currency of their own design and administration, but it would not likely be another blockchain.  If there is a central trusted party (the bank) there are other ways to handle the double-spend problem better than a parallel blockchain.

[Timo Y]

For me Myers-Briggs is a personality description system with 4 bits of precision.  Not a heck of a lot but it's more useful than, say, geek/nongeek which has 1 bit.  If horoscopes let you pick which one you were, then they would be similarly useful

+1


I use Myers-Briggs not because it measures an objective truth, but simply because so many other people use it and it's a compact way of getting information across.  The 4 dimensions in Myers-Briggs are somewhat arbitrary, but they can be proxies for fundamental personal traits.  eg. "ENFP" gives me a better idea of what a person is like than just "Artsy".

[molecular]

Also, I have to wonder how many non-technical people just will not be able to accept that bitcoin could work at all.  If you don't understand the cryptography then you have to take it on faith that the system could work as designed.  It's easy for them to brand bitcoin advocates as kooks (see "Time Cube").

Unfortunately its still not proofed if it works (NP=P) . So even the technical people cant be really sure

Good point. But (at least at this stage), if P prooves to be equal to NP, we got other troubles on our hands.

[molecular]

I like to imagine that we're in a beginning of a exponential take-off.

Me too.

Heck, the hashing rate of the network is doubling 27 days for the past 15 months.

Hehe, I don't want to see exponential growth on that variable so much. I rather want to see it on mtgox and the amount of stuff being offered for bitcoin.

We don't need miners, we need users/dealers/consumers... the miners will inevitably follow.

[kiba]

We don't need miners, we need users/dealers/consumers... the miners will inevitably follow.

If there are more miners, than there are more consumers/users/dealers.

[molecular]

Heck, the hashing rate of the network is doubling 27 days for the past 15 months.

Don't under-estimate the propensity of geeks to throw hardware, sweat and reputation at wild and woolly ideas and 1 in a 10,000 bets ... it happens in college bars every weekend night.

Bitcoin is a bit like going to a Swiss private bank and being attended by a punk sporting facial tattoos and a ripped anarchy t-shirt.

+1, classic.

This quote needs to go into a cartoon or similar ... a "not your grand-daddy's money" kind of meme (quite powerful seeing as grand-daddy's money has failed)

Not directly related, but I actually thought about giving a group of punks on the street a large amount of bitcoin somehow (like give them a private key and the word "bitcoin" on a piece of paper and the words: "this is a lot of money") and then watch what happens... maybe document it somehow. This crowd should really love bitcoin, because when they say "fuck capitalism", they dont necessarily mean money per se. Wonder how long it would take until they have a big party going payed for by bitcoins.

[iya]

Also, I have to wonder how many non-technical people just will not be able to accept that bitcoin could work at all.  If you don't understand the cryptography then you have to take it on faith that the system could work as designed.  It's easy for them to brand bitcoin advocates as kooks (see "Time Cube").

Unfortunately its still not proofed if it works (NP=P) . So even the technical people cant be really sure

Good point. But (at least at this stage), if P prooves to be equal to NP, we got other troubles on our hands.

Huh? The consensus seems to be that it would be a great boon. Some physicists go as far and say if P=NP, we would be gods. NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality.
If P≠NP is a fact of nature, it means, among other things, that quantum computation will not scale.

[wb3]

N=NP is a philosophical problem that dives into the observer's perspective and experience.  Take the ChessMaster vs the Novice.  From the ChessMasters perspective, he can see the checkmate without having to calculate every move. The Novice will have to calculate almost every-move to see the checkmate or the escape. Add a third observer that doesn't know how to play chess, and it becomes very complex.

So you have:

ChessMaster: N=NP
Novice: N≠NP and/or N=NP
Ignorant: N≠NP

Basically, depending on perspective N=NP and/or N≠NP.

[iya]

ChessMaster: N=NP

Really? I'd rather say he uses heuristics to solve the problem much faster than brute force, but still with exponential complexity.
The heuristics can have polynomial complexity, but they do not solve the problem 100% accurate.

[wb3]

Like the College Dorm Room Scenario  of 400 students applicants, 100 rooms, 2 per room based on dean's pairing rules.

Then it depends on the starting order of the 400 students, as in Chess it depends on the starting order. The ChessMaster's can use heuristics because of the setup of the board (the initial starting position) and the rules.

The starting position and rules determines the best possible moves to make to place the students in their rooms based on the rules that the Dean provides. The verification of the proper placements is easy compared to the possible possibilities. The route taken becomes irrelevant as to the outcome. The efficiency in routes is determined by the experience of the problem solver.

So as to apply it to the Dorm scenario,

A party planner: N=NP (He doesn't need to run through every combination)
A novice: N=NP and/or N≠NP (He may need to check the efficiency and the Rules)
Ignorant: N≠NP (because he doesn't know the rules, he is doomed to fail)

Although the Dorm Scenario is much easier than the CheckMate, You can start from the end and work backwards, where in CheckMate, returning to the starting position from the CheckMate position is more complex (almost infinitely).

I think the initial problem predisposes a possible result. If based on the rules and the result is in question, will it be possible to achieve the outcome. If the result is in question, you are force to run through all possibilities. If however you know there is a result, it is easier for you to accomplish as to where someone that doesn't know.

If there is an Infinite amount of possibilities, there is a result. If there is a finite amount of possibilities, the result is in question.

I like to compare this to the Hash system, there are an ∞ amount of collisions based on any hash. I know there is an achievable result, to reverse the hash. If the Hash was completely random, it would be useless and there could be no achievable result, but leave open the question as to is there a result.

Simply, I can prove Hashes have collisions without showing the path to those collisions. Once the path is learned, the hash is useless.

[BeeCee1]

You could also see a case where banks decide bitcoin is a good reserve currency, but instead of using the current block chain they start their own, again, providing initial capital (and an advantage) to the banks by having early blocks generate large numbers of coins (this is possible because the number of coins generated per block is just an agreement enforced by code, they control the code and the block chain so they make whatever rules they want). 

You're thinking, but there is no economic reason for any financial institution (bank or otherwise) to choose bitcoin as a reserve currency and then start another blockchain, for any blockchain requires a great deal of system overhead.  A bank might choose Bitcoin as the backing for a digital or physical currency of their own design and administration, but it would not likely be another blockchain.  If there is a central trusted party (the bank) there are other ways to handle the double-spend problem better than a parallel blockchain.

A bank might not, but a system of banks might.  In the latter case there may not be a trusted third party,  would Wells Fargo trust Wachovia to be in sole control of the money supply?  Extending it to the super-national level would Greece trust Portugal to control the money supply?

I don't really expect banks to suddenly switch over to bitcoin, but you do sometimes read "wouldn't it be great if Amazon, Ebay, and Walmart took bitcoin?"  Well, it would be, but they are so much larger than the current bitcoin economy that they could easily just start their own block chain.