Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

  You can't escape the benefits of division of labor. 

You CAN when the cost of the labor approaches 0.  in the future: Buy commodity miner, hook up to thermostat, power, and internet.  Done.

or better yet:  Buy commodity miner, hook up to thermostat, solar panels, and internet.  Done.

or even better yet:  Buy commodity miner, hook up to thermostat, dormitory plug, and internet.  Done.

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[cypherdoc]

PoW = economics of scale and division of labor guarantee eventual centralization.

Not necessarily: a byproduct of mining is heat. It's hard to get rid of the heat in large centralized operations. In small operations less so, it may even be useful in some cases.

At some point mining cost will mostly be energy, not hardware. I've recently encountered a weird situation regarding solar electricity production (pretty decentralized in germany, where I live): in certain cases the array produces excess electricity which can neither be used locally nor fed into the grid for profit (due to stupid laws and regulations). Usually what is done in such cases is the electricity is just injected for free to the grid... what a waste economically, right? Well, if you have some cheap asics (so cheap that you can just have them laying around idle if not needed) you can make good use of the excess electricity.

What you are describing is a mis-pricing of investment/expenses.  Just because a regular home miner severely undervalues his time invested in maintaining the equipment or the heat generated, those factors aren't immune to the economics of scale.  Eventually the huge hot ASIC box gets thrown out because it barely breaks even while for the industrial miner a huge hot ASIC box is just a small expense line in one of 1000s running in a huge warehouse.  Also there is no excess electricity.  Either it is subsidized somehow ie someone else is footing the bill or again the cost is simply mis-priced by the miner and eventually that cost will come to the forefront and the small time miner will be pushed out by larger commercial players.  You can't escape the benefits of division of labor.  

then why do junior mining companies or even smaller operations ever bother to mine gold when they're going up against the likes of Newmont and Barrick?

i think it's b/c the price is still high enough and the potential for future appreciation drives these smaller entities.  you could say the same for Bitcoin.

Very true but we aren't comparing junior miners and large miners.  This is more of a comparison of panning for gold vs barrick.

actually, panning/digging for gold is still popular and common (mostly in Africa) all over the world.  and i'd argue their overhead is cheaper, aka, only dependent on labor, not power.

[User705]

...

actually, panning/digging for gold is still popular and common (mostly in Africa).  and i'd argue their overhead is cheaper, aka, only dependent on labor, not power.

Muscle Power.   

[cypherdoc]

...

actually, panning/digging for gold is still popular and common (mostly in Africa).  and i'd argue their overhead is cheaper, aka, only dependent on labor, not power.

Muscle Power.   

Muscle Power.   = Antminers  

[molecular]

i'm pleased to say that on 7/4 at a party, i was able to send demo BTC to the iPhone of a CEO of a biotech company.  

i'd never browsed the iPhone app store before but simply searching "Bitcoin" brought up loads of stuff including a few wallets.  he was thoroughly impressed and had actually approached me about Bitcoin since he knew i was involved back when the price was around $80. he now gets it and will be entering the space i'm sure. 

i've been waiting to be able to do this for the longest time and it is a powerful way to demonstrate the utility of Bitcoin to anyone with a smartphone now.

I remember someone telling a story that happened at a golf club or something (was it Antonopulous?). Not sure if true, but it goes like this: he sent a large chunk of coins (thousands worth a million $ or so) to the next guys phone and then around the table and back to him. Apparently it made quite an impression on the attendees to hold a million worth of Bitcoin on their gadgets for a short period of time. It's a slight bit risky and takes some balls to do this, but it sure gets people to think.

[molecular]

PoW = economics of scale and division of labor guarantee eventual centralization.

Not necessarily: a byproduct of mining is heat. It's hard to get rid of the heat in large centralized operations. In small operations less so, it may even be useful in some cases.

At some point mining cost will mostly be energy, not hardware. I've recently encountered a weird situation regarding solar electricity production (pretty decentralized in germany, where I live): in certain cases the array produces excess electricity which can neither be used locally nor fed into the grid for profit (due to stupid laws and regulations). Usually what is done in such cases is the electricity is just injected for free to the grid... what a waste economically, right? Well, if you have some cheap asics (so cheap that you can just have them laying around idle if not needed) you can make good use of the excess electricity.

What you are describing is a mis-pricing of investment/expenses.  Just because a regular home miner severely undervalues his time invested in maintaining the equipment or the heat generated, those factors aren't immune to the economics of scale.  Eventually the huge hot ASIC box gets thrown out because it barely breaks even while for the industrial miner a huge hot ASIC box is just a small expense line in one of 1000s running in a huge warehouse.  Also there is no excess electricity.  Either it is subsidized somehow ie someone else is footing the bill or again the cost is simply mis-priced by the miner and eventually that cost will come to the forefront and the small time miner will be pushed out by larger commercial players.  You can't escape the benefits of division of labor.  

I don't quite get why you say "there is no excess electricity". Another example (apart from the one I brought up) is excess electricity generated by wind that cannot be delivered for various reasons, mainly lack of demand at the time and/or lack of power line capacity. Electricity cannot be stored very efficiently, so production has to basically match demand minus dissipation.

I'm just arguing that maybe crypto mining can fill the lack of demand once mining hardware is cheap enough to be able to switch it off at times when energy is too expensive. It would provide sort of a guaranteed base demand for electricity that can be decentralized as needed as long as there's a network connection. I used to laugh at this idea, but I changed my mind and now think it's a possible outcome with commoditized cheap asics.

[cypherdoc]

i'm pleased to say that on 7/4 at a party, i was able to send demo BTC to the iPhone of a CEO of a I biotech company.  

i'd never browsed the iPhone app store before but simply searching "Bitcoin" brought up loads of stuff including a few wallets.  he was thoroughly impressed and had actually approached me about Bitcoin since he knew i was involved back when the price was around $80. he now gets it and will be entering the space i'm sure. 

i've been waiting to be able to do this for the longest time and it is a powerful way to demonstrate the utility of Bitcoin to anyone with a smartphone now.

I remember someone telling a story that happened at a golf club or something (was it Antonopulous?). Not sure if true, but it goes like this: he sent a large chunk of coins (thousands worth a million $ or so) to the next guys phone and then around the table and back to him. Apparently it made quite an impression on the attendees to hold a million worth of Bitcoin on their gadgets for a short period of time. It's a slight bit risky and takes some balls to do this, but it sure gets people to think.

That was Wences Casares and the amount was $250K.

He sent it around a table of around 8  or so of his venture capital friends, including Marc Andreesen, at some club down in Argentina, I think.

That was an impressive demonstration.

[Melbustus]

i'm pleased to say that on 7/4 at a party, i was able to send demo BTC to the iPhone of a CEO of a I biotech company.  

i'd never browsed the iPhone app store before but simply searching "Bitcoin" brought up loads of stuff including a few wallets.  he was thoroughly impressed and had actually approached me about Bitcoin since he knew i was involved back when the price was around $80. he now gets it and will be entering the space i'm sure. 

i've been waiting to be able to do this for the longest time and it is a powerful way to demonstrate the utility of Bitcoin to anyone with a smartphone now.

I remember someone telling a story that happened at a golf club or something (was it Antonopulous?). Not sure if true, but it goes like this: he sent a large chunk of coins (thousands worth a million $ or so) to the next guys phone and then around the table and back to him. Apparently it made quite an impression on the attendees to hold a million worth of Bitcoin on their gadgets for a short period of time. It's a slight bit risky and takes some balls to do this, but it sure gets people to think.

That was Wences Casares and the amount was $250K.

He sent it around a table of around 8  or so of his venture capital friends, including Marc Andreesen, at some club down in Argentina, I think.

That was an impressive demonstration.

Heh... And he probably didn't even make sure the other guys had backed up their private keys prior to executing the transactions, either.

[cypherdoc]

i'm pleased to say that on 7/4 at a party, i was able to send demo BTC to the iPhone of a CEO of a I biotech company.  

i'd never browsed the iPhone app store before but simply searching "Bitcoin" brought up loads of stuff including a few wallets.  he was thoroughly impressed and had actually approached me about Bitcoin since he knew i was involved back when the price was around $80. he now gets it and will be entering the space i'm sure. 

i've been waiting to be able to do this for the longest time and it is a powerful way to demonstrate the utility of Bitcoin to anyone with a smartphone now.

I remember someone telling a story that happened at a golf club or something (was it Antonopulous?). Not sure if true, but it goes like this: he sent a large chunk of coins (thousands worth a million $ or so) to the next guys phone and then around the table and back to him. Apparently it made quite an impression on the attendees to hold a million worth of Bitcoin on their gadgets for a short period of time. It's a slight bit risky and takes some balls to do this, but it sure gets people to think.

That was Wences Casares and the amount was $250K.

He sent it around a table of around 8  or so of his venture capital friends, including Marc Andreesen, at some club down in Argentina, I think.

That was an impressive demonstration.

Heh... And he probably didn't even make sure the other guys had backed up their private keys prior to executing the transactions, either.

the real cool project is that annual Bitcoin criss crossing the globe demo.

[cypherdoc]

decent article by Krawisz:

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/bitcoins-rugged-individualism/

[justusranvier]

decent article by Krawisz:

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/bitcoins-rugged-individualism/

Even better article by Rochard:

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/speculative-attack/

He doesn't use the term in this article, but what he describes is the greatest carry trade in history.

[Peter R]

decent article by Krawisz:

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/bitcoins-rugged-individualism/

Even better article by Rochard:

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/speculative-attack/

He doesn't use the term in this article, but what he describes is the greatest carry trade in history.

Here's an interesting thought experiment:

Imagine that everybody has visibility of all of their money on a smartphone app.  For simplicity, consider that only dollars and bitcoins exist.  The app has two features:

1.  It displays the market value of each user's money, expressed in whatever currency is currently "dominant," along with the exchange rate between the two currencies.  

2.  There is a slider bar that allows each user to dynamically adjust their personal exposure to anywhere between 0% bitcoins and 100% bitcoins:
                
    0% BTC / 100% USD   <-----|||SLIDERBAR|||----------------------------------->   100% BTC / 0% USD

Assume there is no fee for trading and no slippage.  If it was this easy for everyone, what would people do?  

Bitcoin adoption is all about slowly coaxing the world to move that imaginary slider bar a little further to the right!
  

[cypherdoc]

"M-COMMERCE GURU: ACCEPT BITCOIN NOW OR GET LEFT BEHIND"

http://cryptocrimson.com/2014/07/m-commerce-guru-accept-bitcoin-now-get-left-behind/

[cypherdoc]

Brock Pierce is a traitor:

http://rdd.me/8dzhpxaq

[cypherdoc]

The seven data points are:

Developer interest on GitHub
Merchant adoption
Wikipedia views
Hashrate <-- this one's interesting. I've always said HR was important
Google searches
User adoption as measured by wallets
Transaction volume.

http://rdd.me/o2foy8hs

[Adrian-x]

Brock Pierce should be shot:

http://rdd.me/8dzhpxaq

Is he that guy that sits on that foundation who has the sole mandate to promote Bitcoin?

This altcoin of his illustrates a lack of understanding on how Bitcoin works moreover it looks like a conflict of interests considering the foundations goal.

[Melbustus]

Brock Pierce should be shot:

http://rdd.me/8dzhpxaq

Is he that guy that sits on that foundation who has the sole mandate to promote Bitcoin?

This altcoin of his illustrates a lack of understanding on how Bitcoin works moreover it looks like a conflict of interests considering the foundations goal.

Yeah, it's all around terrible. I assume this was really why Andreas bailed on the Foundation today.

[molecular]

decent article by Krawisz:

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/bitcoins-rugged-individualism/

Even better article by Rochard:

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/speculative-attack/

He doesn't use the term in this article, but what he describes is the greatest carry trade in history.

Here's an interesting thought experiment:

Imagine that everybody has visibility of all of their money on a smartphone app.  For simplicity, consider that only dollars and bitcoins exist.  The app has two features:

1.  It displays the market value of each user's money, expressed in whatever currency is currently "dominant," along with the exchange rate between the two currencies.  

2.  There is a slider bar that allows each user to dynamically adjust their personal exposure to anywhere between 0% bitcoins and 100% bitcoins:
                
    0% BTC / 100% USD   <-----|||SLIDERBAR|||----------------------------------->   100% BTC / 0% USD

Assume there is no fee for trading and no slippage.  If it was this easy for everyone, what would people do?  

Bitcoin adoption is all about slowly coaxing the world to move that imaginary slider bar a little further to the right!
  

(emphasis mine)

Imaginary?

You might have discovered bitcoins killer app right there.

[Dragonkiller]

Massive gold spike

[cypherdoc]

Yeah, no kidding.