Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

i foresee the Trezor replacing the offline wallet and its pc and being more secure since the offline wallets can be susceptible to a USB malware attack.  as far as i know, there is no way to get privkeys off a Trezor so in that sense it is safer

I think this is a dangerous assumption to make.

Trezor has a larger attack surface than an offline laptop, since you have to plug it in directly to a potential hostile machine every time you use it.

You can reduce your attack surface with an offline laptop by using CD-R media instead of USB drives, or maybe by using the audio cable transfer method.

Trezor & Offline Armory multisig FTW

yeah, this would be.

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[marcus_of_augustus]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/ex-plunge-protection-team-whistleblower-governments-control-markets-there-no-price-d

Bitcoin discussed as modern version of desire to escape fiat currencies (21min in)

[molecular]

"It's the Blockchain, not Bitcoin that's the real killer app." Debunked
http://www.joecoin.com/2015/02/crypto-20-and-other-misconceptions.html

The piece contains a pretty cool description of Bitcoin:

Private keys that represent some sort of token are an obvious solution, and when we combine them with two cups of economic scarcity, a Merkle tree root, a spoonful of clever bootstrapping, and a dash of HashCash, we end up with, you guessed it, Bitcoin!

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

The lack of understanding continues right up to the eve of Ethereum's planned release. No comprehension of the ledger, still thinking in terms of "tokens" and "blockchain tech is the important thing, not the money."

[hdbuck]

The lack of understanding continues right up to the eve of Ethereum's planned release. No comprehension of the ledger, still thinking in terms of "tokens" and "blockchain tech is the important thing, not the money."

well he has to sell his own 'tokens'.. not that +20 millions $ has 'funded' his ethereum ting.. XD

[tabnloz]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/ex-plunge-protection-team-whistleblower-governments-control-markets-there-no-price-d

Bitcoin discussed as modern version of desire to escape fiat currencies (21min in)

pretty interesting few minutes with Schall probing about golds role in a new international currency system and malmgren basically saying that bitcoin is now pushing to be the 'outside of fiat / outside of government store of value' that gold once was.

"the public is leaning towards bitcoin as a modern version of holding old fashioned gold"

[cypherdoc]

Gold threatening to fall below 1200 again; and quite possibly, for good.

[uki]

here also very good read, the blog of the current Greek finance minister and his view on Bitcoin:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-dangerous-fantasy-of-apolitical-money/

Very interesting, especially in terms of the discussion we had here about the new supply of gold coming from asteroids, is Section 2 on Bitcoin as an emulation of a precious metal (gold).

Just a food for thought: similarly to being able to mine the gold from the asteroids, what if, one day the limitation of 21 million total supply of Bitcoin is lifted up to some bigger number in a hard fork?

[cypherdoc]

I like Konrad Graf:

http://pricesandmarkets.org/volume-3-issue-3-winter-2015/commodity-scarcity-and-monetary-value-theory-in-light-of-bitcoin/

[bitbibit]

After 1000s of Years Enjoying Gold Standard now Welcome to the Bitcoin Standard

http://blog.btcxindia.com/after-1000s-of-years-enjoying-gold-standard-now-welcome-to-the-bitcoin-standard/

Great chat going on reddit about btcxindia blog... check out http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2wvjs6/after_1000s_of_years_enjoying_gold_standard_now/

[jaredboice]

here also very good read, the blog of the current Greek finance minister and his view on Bitcoin:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-dangerous-fantasy-of-apolitical-money/

Very interesting, especially in terms of the discussion we had here about the new supply of gold coming from asteroids, is Section 2 on Bitcoin as an emulation of a precious metal (gold).

Just a food for thought: similarly to being able to mine the gold from the asteroids, what if, one day the limitation of 21 million total supply of Bitcoin is lifted up to some bigger number in a hard fork?

How many people with Bitcoin holdings are going to say, "Hey, they just hard forked.  The new implementation just devalued all our bitcoins by adding 21 Million more Bitcoins to the supply, let's go over to that implementation... instead of this one where our Bitcoins are worth more."

Said nobody ever.

In reality, there's no need ever to add more Bitcoins. It would make far more sense to add more decimal places to better facilitate micro payments as more and more economic energy piles into Bitcoin

[Erdogan]

The net tightens:  Derogative article on hawala

http://www.newsweek.com/underground-european-hawala-network-financing-middle-eastern-terror-groups-307984

"Hawala: The Ancient Banking Practice Used to Finance Terror Groups"

"An ancient and sophisticated anonymous banking practice is facilitating the payment of jihadists’ salaries in Iraq and Syria via a European network to avoid detection by authorities, according to Spanish intelligence officials.

Known as hawala, the system is being used as a conduit for the financing of fighters aligned to terror groups such as ISIS and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front through a network of 250 to 300 shops - such as butchers, supermarkets and phone call centres - run by mostly Pakistani brokers across Spain."

The bitcoin relevance:

"The practice, which has been referred to as the ‘working man’s Bitcoin’ and the ‘terrorist’s ATM’, has survived the emergence of online banking, with $400bn (£258.9bn) exchanging hands every year, Dr Roger Ballard, hawala expert and director of the University of Manchester’s Centre for Applied South Asian Studies (CASAS), estimates."

[rpietila]

Rothschild-led banking has never financed war and terror...

[uki]

here also very good read, the blog of the current Greek finance minister and his view on Bitcoin:
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-dangerous-fantasy-of-apolitical-money/

Very interesting, especially in terms of the discussion we had here about the new supply of gold coming from asteroids, is Section 2 on Bitcoin as an emulation of a precious metal (gold).

Just a food for thought: similarly to being able to mine the gold from the asteroids, what if, one day the limitation of 21 million total supply of Bitcoin is lifted up to some bigger number in a hard fork?

How many people with Bitcoin holdings are going to say, "Hey, they just hard forked.  The new implementation just devalued all our bitcoins by adding 21 Million more Bitcoins to the supply, let's go over to that implementation... instead of this one where our Bitcoins are worth more."

Said nobody ever.

In reality, there's no need ever to add more Bitcoins. It would make far more sense to add more decimal places to better facilitate micro payments as more and more economic energy piles into Bitcoin

One of the reasons to increase the total number of coins is to remove the long-term deflation pressure. That is one of the issues possibly affecting Bitcoin that is pointed out by Varoufakis in the reading I provided in my earlier post.

[NotLambchop]

Rothschild-led banking has never financed war and terror...

[thezerg]

The lack of understanding continues right up to the eve of Ethereum's planned release. No comprehension of the ledger, still thinking in terms of "tokens" and "blockchain tech is the important thing, not the money."

He's simultaneously totally wrong and completely right.  

How he's right:
The concept of a database with per record access protection is incredibly useful.  For example, you'll be able to actually receive electronic financial statements or other legal documents and not worry that they will be retroactively changed without your knowledge, because your private key is needed to change them.  You could even imagine a bank that cannot change your USD balance without your OK...

For many of these databases tokens are unnecessary.  The cost of maintaining the database is simply part of ongoing operations just like databases today.  Ethereum is overly complex for this task.  Bitcoin is overly complex.  You could throw out all the mining logic, most of the scripting, etc because the DB does not need to be decentralized.

How he's wrong:
The killer app for a "database with per record access protection" is money because money is memory.  So Bitcoin.

[cypherdoc]

The lack of understanding continues right up to the eve of Ethereum's planned release. No comprehension of the ledger, still thinking in terms of "tokens" and "blockchain tech is the important thing, not the money."

He's simultaneously totally wrong and completely right.  

How he's right:
The concept of a database with per record access protection is incredibly useful.  For example, you'll be able to actually receive electronic financial statements or other legal documents and not worry that they will be retroactively changed without your knowledge, because your private key is needed to change them.  You could even imagine a bank that cannot change your USD balance without your OK...

For many of these databases tokens are unnecessary.  The cost of maintaining the database is simply part of ongoing operations just like databases today.  Ethereum is overly complex for this task.  Bitcoin is overly complex.  You could throw out all the mining logic, most of the scripting, etc because the DB does not need to be decentralized.

How he's wrong:
The killer app for a "database with per record access protection" is money because money is memory.  So Bitcoin.

how is that helpful to society when you, the acct holder, can change/alter them?

[hdbuck]

you guys probably been all around that but since vitalik is desperately gesticulating to pitch his zombiechain..

fair article there:

Given the crucial requirement to preserve decentralization, the problem Satoshi had to solve while designing Bitcoin was how to incentivize network participants to expend resources transmitting, validating, and storing transactions. The first step in solving that is the simple acknowledgement that it must provide them something of economic value in return.

The next part was figuring what of economic value could be used. Maybe Satoshi considered sending each new block's miner a hand-written thank you note with a picture of a cat. But probably not. Maybe he could have offered them something that's universally marketable, like a fixed amount of gold bullion. And since this scheme was going to live on the internet, he would have naturally made it a digital IOU for gold, perhaps held in trust in a vault.

http://www.joecoin.com/2015/02/crypto-20-and-other-misconceptions.html

[rocks]

The lack of understanding continues right up to the eve of Ethereum's planned release. No comprehension of the ledger, still thinking in terms of "tokens" and "blockchain tech is the important thing, not the money."

I think part of the reason this view exists is most people do not properly understand scarcity or what scarcity truly means, largely because western society has not experienced scarcity for several generations. If you do not understand scarcity it is easy to brush off the value of BTC and focus on the Blockchain because it is scarcity that gives BTC value.

Since the FED was created there has been no scarcity for money and this coincided with both an energy and a technology boom which resulted in an abundance of energy, materials, steel, plastics, goods, etc. We have lived in an age of utter abundance for generations. With that has come a cavalier attitude toward money and basic goods, most people assume these things will always be there. (Yes we have inequality and people who lack access to both food and money, but because of the central bank printer governments can fund a large safety net, no one really worries that they will starve because food stamps and disability will kick in).

Few today really understand how scarce goods behave, because there are very few truly scarce goods today. Land is another example of a scarce good, but I'm not sure what else is today.

Bitcoin however is the perfect example of a scarce good. The last bubble started at the same time as ASIC mining took off, which meant that for a while most mined coins were held and not sold. The result was a price spike that no one could stop. That is increasing demand against a scarce good.

[smooth]

The lack of understanding continues right up to the eve of Ethereum's planned release. No comprehension of the ledger, still thinking in terms of "tokens" and "blockchain tech is the important thing, not the money."

I think part of the reason this view exists is most people do not properly understand scarcity or what scarcity truly means, largely because western society has not experienced scarcity for several generations. If you don't understand scarcity it is easy to brush off the value of BTC and focus on the Blockchain.

Since the FED was created there has been no scarcity for money and this coincided with both an energy and a technology boom which resulted in an abundance of energy, materials, steel, plastics, goods, etc. We have lived in an age of utter abundance for generations. With that has come a cavalier attitude toward money and basic goods. (Yes we have inequality and people lacking access to both food and money, but because of the central bank printer governments can fund a large safety net, no one really worries that they will starve because food stamps and disability will kick in).

Few today really understand how scarce goods behave, because there are very few truly scarce goods today. Land is another example of a scarce good, but I'm not sure what else.

Bitcoin however is the perfect example of a scarce good. The last bubble started at the same time as ASIC mining took off, which meant that for a while most mined coins were held and not sold. The result was a price spike that no one could stop. That is increasing demand against a scarce good.

That may be part of the reason people don't understand the value of strong hard money. However, it is different from the reason they don't understand why a blockchain without an integrated currency (not subcurencies, tokens, or assets) doesn't work, as Joe Coin explained well enough. That's just ignorance coupled with for example in Vitalik's case bit of wanting to do something different and pray it pays off because its supposedly unfair that it is too late (his words, paraphrasing) to be an early adopter of Bitcoin. That's a rather sad misconception because if Bitcoin works buying at 1000 USD (much less 200 USD) still means a 1 000x return or more.