Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[sidhujag]

A consequence of the "adoption" that so many of us want, is that Bitcoin must permeate through big institutions such as universities and branches of government.  Indeed this presents the risk of unfavourable changes to Bitcoin, but it's also the force that creates the social permission necessary for widespread adoption.  Furthermore, I think the "co-opt and control" concerns expressed here and on Reddit are largely misplaced.  From the people I've met, whether it's an analyst at the SF Fed, a MIT professor, or an executive at RBC, the feeling I get from them is one of genuine interest and curiosity. Bitcoin is simply a new useful tool and so, they want to understand it and potentially use it.  Exactly how it will be used in this post-bitcoin-adoption world is undefined.  It's up to us to try and shape it…

Eventually, we may find ourselves deep within the belly of the beast…and at that point I think Bitcoin will have already succeeded.

Grnuine interest cause they dont understand it yet... Which is good.. By the time they do understand it it will be too late to try to manipulate.

[1714213262]

1714213262

[rocks]

A consequence of the "adoption" that so many of us want, is that Bitcoin must permeate through big institutions such as universities and branches of government.  Indeed this presents the risk of unfavourable changes to Bitcoin, but it's also the force that creates the social permission necessary for widespread adoption.  

Fully agree that for large scale adoption, Bitcoin must also be embedded with and work with existing institutions and government. In the end this must happen from tax code compliance to legal frameworks.

The outstanding question though is who will change for who? Will society/government change to match bitcoin? Or will bitcoin be changed to match our current society/government?

Furthermore, I think the "co-opt and control" concerns expressed here and on Reddit are largely misplaced.  From the people I've met, whether it's an analyst at the SF Fed, a MIT professor, or an executive at RBC, the feeling I get from them is one of genuine interest and curiosity. Bitcoin is simply a new useful tool and so, they want to understand it and potentially use it.  Exactly how it will be used in this post-bitcoin-adoption world is undefined.  It's up to us to try and shape it…

Eventually, we may find ourselves deep within the belly of the beast…and at that point I think Bitcoin will have already succeeded.

That is great to hear, but the reality is the people you listed do not determine or shape policy in the end. Policy is determined by regulatory bodies (mostly) and by legislative bodies (somewhat). Take New York for example, Lawsky is none of the above and he is putting New York down a path that makes Bitcoin unworkable there. Other states are taking opposite and positive approaches. At some point it will go federal and it is not known if they will go with the NYDFS's view or something less draconian.

That fact that we can not say for sure who will change for who, is itself cause for concern.

IMHO the best method to make Bitcoin secure, is to make it very difficult for governments to force change into. The more this is true the more they have to change for bitcoin and not the other way around.

Having mining be as distributed as possible is one method to help secure Bitcoin, i.e. if >50% of mining is outside the US it is hard for the FED to force change. Having more mining be P2Pool based instead of centralized pools is even better. Another method is to have as many people use bitcoin through their own wallets with the P2P directly. If everyone uses coinbase wallets, it is easy for the feds to force changes in bitcoin usage, but if everyone uses their own wallets it becomes harder to make enough people switch if they don't see a reason to.

[brg444]

http://reut.rs/1EwgLtD

First Bitcoin exchange to file for a banking license.

I wondered who'd be first. Expecting Coinbase & Circle to follow.

[Peter R]

The outstanding question though is who will change for who? Will society/government change to match bitcoin? Or will bitcoin be changed to match our current society/government?

Yes.  And it's an interesting question to ponder.

That is great to hear, but the reality is the people you listed do not determine or shape policy in the end. Policy is determined by regulatory bodies (mostly) and by legislative bodies (somewhat).

I didn't mean to imply that they did.  Just that most people involved with Bitcoin--whether it's a high school student, a Fed researcher, or a MIT professor--are involved because they are genuinely interested in it.

I think it's also true that institutional acceptance adds a certain inertia or momentum that makes it more difficult for policy makers to disrupt.  For this reason, I see attention paid to Bitcoin by academia as important in making Bitcoin "hard to change" as the efforts you mentioned to further decentralize mining or promote the use of wallets that do not rely on counter parties.

[rocks]

The outstanding question though is who will change for who? Will society/government change to match bitcoin? Or will bitcoin be changed to match our current society/government?

Yes.  And it's an interesting question to ponder.

That is great to hear, but the reality is the people you listed do not determine or shape policy in the end. Policy is determined by regulatory bodies (mostly) and by legislative bodies (somewhat).

I didn't mean to imply that they did.  Just that most people involved with Bitcoin--whether it's a high school student, a Fed researcher, or a MIT professor--are involved because they are genuinely interested in it.

I think it's also true that institutional acceptance adds a certain inertia or momentum that makes it more difficult for policy makers to disrupt.  For this reason, I see attention paid to Bitcoin by academia as important in making Bitcoin "hard to change" as the efforts you mentioned to further decentralize mining or promote the use of wallets that do not rely on counter parties.

Good point on institutional acceptance. Anything that adds inertia to bitcoin as it exists today is beneficial to the project.

[marcus_of_augustus]

MIT can't resist it ... like catnip.

[justusranvier]

I hope everybody is getting familiar with the informal economy now, before access to the informal economy becomes a matter of survival:

http://www.thefallingdarkness.com/2015/04/22/the-cashless-society-is-going-to-backfire-for-the-establishment/

They should also consider what will happen if every single transaction causes you to lose money. If just having money means losing money. This will make it profitable for the black market reach into every facet of the economy. Think prohibition, but applied to buying groceries and paying your rent. Everything that can be done informally, will be. This will in time, pave the way for an economy that is separate from the one we currently operate in. It will create a viable alternative to the system we’ve been forced to endure.

Perhaps, this is difficult for us imagine because we’ve never experienced it. But in most cases the black market always finds a way, because the black market goes by another name: the free market. And the free market can’t be stifled in the long run. It will always produce an alternative to any law or regulation.

Money has become intrinsically connected to everything we want, need, and do, so by removing cash and creative negative interest rates, they’re placing a tax on every day life. And if the black market does what the black market does best, it will create an underground alternative to everything we want and need. And I mean everything.

The same situation occurred in the final days of the Soviet Union. Their dysfunctional system produced one of the most virulent and extensive black markets in history, and one could find just about any product or service there. There’s no reason why it can’t happen here. If they succeed in eliminating cash, their system will fade while the black market thrives. They’re too stupid and hubristic to realize that they’re fueling alternatives to their vision of the world, and sealing their own doom.

[rocks]

I hope everybody is getting familiar with the informal economy now, before access to the informal economy becomes a matter of survival:

http://www.thefallingdarkness.com/2015/04/22/the-cashless-society-is-going-to-backfire-for-the-establishment/

They should also consider what will happen if every single transaction causes you to lose money. If just having money means losing money. This will make it profitable for the black market reach into every facet of the economy. Think prohibition, but applied to buying groceries and paying your rent. Everything that can be done informally, will be. This will in time, pave the way for an economy that is separate from the one we currently operate in. It will create a viable alternative to the system we’ve been forced to endure.

Perhaps, this is difficult for us imagine because we’ve never experienced it. But in most cases the black market always finds a way, because the black market goes by another name: the free market. And the free market can’t be stifled in the long run. It will always produce an alternative to any law or regulation.

Money has become intrinsically connected to everything we want, need, and do, so by removing cash and creative negative interest rates, they’re placing a tax on every day life. And if the black market does what the black market does best, it will create an underground alternative to everything we want and need. And I mean everything.

The same situation occurred in the final days of the Soviet Union. Their dysfunctional system produced one of the most virulent and extensive black markets in history, and one could find just about any product or service there. There’s no reason why it can’t happen here. If they succeed in eliminating cash, their system will fade while the black market thrives. They’re too stupid and hubristic to realize that they’re fueling alternatives to their vision of the world, and sealing their own doom.

For some reason people only seem to pay attention to the numerator and ignore the denominator, as in: my wealth = my dollars owned / total dollars in existence .

This is how the FED has gotten away with inflationary theft for so long. Yes people are losing money because the denominator is increasing (monetary base expansion) but they think they are doing well because their numerator is increasing as well (# of dollars they own). Never mind the fact that if the monetary base expands faster rate than your holdings that you are in fact losing money. Most people don't see this.

But negative rates reduce the numerator, it is what people see. They will not like seeing the numbers in their accounts go down. Not at all. It will cause people to look for alternatives.

The FED seems to be getting more serious about this as they run out of alternatives, but I think it shows they don't understand human behavior well enough. People will first escape to cash (which has the negative effect of causing bank runs and draining the banks of reserves), then if they ban cash people will try to escape the dollar entirely.

Enter black market economy and bitcoin as the intermediary.

[cypherdoc]

I hope everybody is getting familiar with the informal economy now, before access to the informal economy becomes a matter of survival:

http://www.thefallingdarkness.com/2015/04/22/the-cashless-society-is-going-to-backfire-for-the-establishment/

They should also consider what will happen if every single transaction causes you to lose money. If just having money means losing money. This will make it profitable for the black market reach into every facet of the economy. Think prohibition, but applied to buying groceries and paying your rent. Everything that can be done informally, will be. This will in time, pave the way for an economy that is separate from the one we currently operate in. It will create a viable alternative to the system we’ve been forced to endure.

Perhaps, this is difficult for us imagine because we’ve never experienced it. But in most cases the black market always finds a way, because the black market goes by another name: the free market. And the free market can’t be stifled in the long run. It will always produce an alternative to any law or regulation.

Money has become intrinsically connected to everything we want, need, and do, so by removing cash and creative negative interest rates, they’re placing a tax on every day life. And if the black market does what the black market does best, it will create an underground alternative to everything we want and need. And I mean everything.

The same situation occurred in the final days of the Soviet Union. Their dysfunctional system produced one of the most virulent and extensive black markets in history, and one could find just about any product or service there. There’s no reason why it can’t happen here. If they succeed in eliminating cash, their system will fade while the black market thrives. They’re too stupid and hubristic to realize that they’re fueling alternatives to their vision of the world, and sealing their own doom.

i don't think they can afford to let it get this bad.

[lunarboy]

Isle of Man getting some good press

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32394170

[cypherdoc]

More cockroaches jumping onboard:

Bair and Bradley, along with ItBit CEO Charles Cascarilla, Liberty City Ventures founding partner Emil Woods and former Financial Accounting Standards Board director Robert Herz, are said to be listed as organizers on the state banking license application.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-exchange-itbit-seeks-bank-license-with-ex-fdic-chairs-support/?utm_content=buffer7e21b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[cypherdoc]

Voila!

To summarize autoprune: this adds a -prune=N option to bitcoind, which if set to N>0 will enable autoprune. When autopruning is enabled, block and undo files will be deleted to try to keep total space used by those files to below the prune target (N, in MB) specified by the user, subject to some constraints:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5863

[Ivanhoe]

http://reut.rs/1EwgLtD

First Bitcoin exchange to file for a banking license.

I wondered who'd be first. Expecting Coinbase & Circle to follow.

Not the first one to file for it. A Dutch company beat them with that, they however didn't got it. So they still can be the first who get it though.

[cypherdoc]

Very interesting:

https://medium.com/@abarisser/high-frequency-trading-on-the-coinbase-exchange-f804c80f507b

[cypherdoc]

goin' UP!

[Bagatell]

goin' UP!

2.5 billion well spent 

[cypherdoc]

[cypherdoc]

this bounce looks about done:

[ssmc2]

I like the cut of Mr. Moy's jib-

http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/Ed-Moy/bitcoin-IRA-investment-LLC/2015/04/24/id/640516/#

[cypherdoc]

Fred Wilson: Silicon Valley stands to be 'next Wall Street' because of bitcoin
http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2015/04/24/fred-wilson-silicon-valley-next-wall-street.html