Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[sidhujag]

You think so? Someone may want to use bitUSD because they work with USD and all partnerships are set up with USD... but get all of the benefits of transfering tokens across the blockchain with low fees and low latency etc etc... to me it seems opposite... it is geared towards bringing in the real economy as it stands today. This goes with nuBits/XCP/NXT whoever solves the problem first to reach the network effect.

Those aren't what I was talking about.

I mean the ability for a company to raise funds by selling equity as bearer shares is one that only companies in the informal economy will benefit from.

That doesn't mean everybody who invents some kind of token-based financial instrument is doing something worthwhile. Most of the "assets" being traded on those platforms right now are worthless.

Ofcourse, if they weren't worthless we wouldn't even be talking about validity in the first place.

[1713511033]

1713511033

[smooth]

I mean the ability for a company to raise funds by selling equity as bearer shares is one that only companies in the informal economy will benefit from.

Isn't this a near tautology? A company issuing bearer shares is very likely not compliant with securities laws and has therefore entered the informal economy if it wasn't there already.

The more interesting question is whether this will cause the informal economy to expand, or the definition to shift.

[solex]

I mean the ability for a company to raise funds by selling equity as bearer shares is one that only companies in the informal economy will benefit from.

Isn't this a near tautology? A company issuing bearer shares is very likely not compliant with securities laws and has therefore entered the informal economy if it wasn't there already.

The more interesting question is whether this will cause the informal economy to expand, or the definition to shift.

Economies used to be mostly informal (free), before recent decades when computer technology has enabled governments to implement ever greater surveillance and micro-management of the financial sector, turning Orwell's 1984 from a warning into a road-map. Paper share certificates were similar to cash. Corporate share registers were intended to ensure that that people's holdings were secure, not provide a vector for state spying/control/censorship(AML) into people's financial affairs.

The definition of "informal" economy needs to shift back to the "free" economy it used to be.

[solex]

How Japanese Hyperinflation Starts (In 1 Chart)

That new bitcoin exchange in Japan may be an example of perfect market timing.

[dEBRUYNE]

http://www.bnr.nl/nieuws/beurs/370560-1410/elf-banken-zakken-voor-stresstest-ecb

(Eleven banks fail ECB's stress test)

Unfortunately I can't find an english article yet.

EDIT: Found it: http://www.businessinsider.com/report-11-banks-are-about-to-fail-europes-biggest-ever-stress-tests-2014-10

[cypherdoc]

silver may be making a premature break for it:

[cypherdoc]

GDX & GDXJ have been hinting.  it feels too soon...

[cypherdoc]

just over the first resistance line on the intermed term:

[cypherdoc]

https://twitter.com/cypherdoc2/status/524924892077379586

[cypherdoc]

buying bitcoin...

time is running out.

[cypherdoc]

going thru the paper now but this seems to be a problematic assumption:

"the core observation is that “Bitcoin” the blockchain is conceptually independent from “bitcoin” the asset: if we had technology
to support the movement of assets between blockchains, new systems could be developed which
users could adopt by simply reusing the existing bitcoin currency"

http://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf

[justusranvier]

going thru the paper now but this seems to be a problematic assumption:

"the core observation is that “Bitcoin” the blockchain is conceptually independent from “bitcoin” the asset: if we had technology
to support the movement of assets between blockchains, new systems could be developed which
users could adopt by simply reusing the existing bitcoin currency"

http://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf

Also:

"Centralization risk" is never defined, nor is the mechanism via which it occurs is is explained.

(already know that answer to that one - it's Peter Todd's repackaging the natural monopoly fallacy)

"No safe upgrade path" is a software engineering deficiency, not an inherent feature of the problem space.

Moving transactions off the "main" blockchain deprives it of the tx fee revenue the parent blockchain requires to pay for hashing.

[cypherdoc]

http://www.blockstream.com/

would be interested in hearing what Gavin thinks of sidechains specifically:

https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/524975947356061697

[Adrian-x]

http://www.blockstream.com/

would be interested in hearing what Gavin thinks of sidechains specifically:

https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/524975947356061697

I guess given your and justusranvier points and the fact Gavin wants to lift the block size limit, he would be in the opposing sidechains camp.
having a limit in size to the blocks in the bitcoin blockchain, would legitimize the need for sidechains.

so I see a political standoff approaching, soon, where those secretly invested in sidechains seek to limit block size.   

[cypherdoc]

Peter Todd:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2k01du/peter_todd_on_twitter_the_sidechains_paper_is/

[Melbustus]

http://www.blockstream.com/

would be interested in hearing what Gavin thinks of sidechains specifically:

https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/524975947356061697

I guess given your and justusranvier points and the fact Gavin wants to lift the block size limit, he would be in the opposing sidechains camp.
having a limit in size to the blocks in the bitcoin blockchain, would legitimize the need for sidechains.

so I see a political standoff approaching, soon, where those secretly invested in sidechains seek to limit block size.   

Gavin doesn't want to completely remove the blocksize limit; he just wants to increase it in accordance with Moore's Law (roughly). So, space will still be scarce.

[justusranvier]

http://www.blockstream.com/

would be interested in hearing what Gavin thinks of sidechains specifically:

https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/524975947356061697

I guess given your and justusranvier points and the fact Gavin wants to lift the block size limit, he would be in the opposing sidechains camp.
having a limit in size to the blocks in the bitcoin blockchain, would legitimize the need for sidechains.

so I see a political standoff approaching, soon, where those secretly invested in sidechains seek to limit block size.   

Gavin doesn't want to completely remove the blocksize limit; he just wants to increase it in accordance with Moore's Law (roughly). So, space will still be scarce.

The political standoff has been going on since at least 2012, since the altcoiners insisted that it would be too dangerous for Bitcoin to remove the block size limit, while simultaneous courting investors by claiming that Bitcoin can't scale.

The situation isn't helped in any way by people using terms of art they clearly don't understand, like "scarce."

"Scarce" is a binary term. A resource is either scarce, or non-scarce. Space in a block is scarce regardless of whether or not the size of a block is limited by production quotas.

In economics, "scarce" just means "not infinite".

Until it's possible to transmit an infinite amount of data with zero time delay without consuming any energy or using hardware, space in a Bitcoin block will be scarce, even if the average block size is 1 TB.

[tvbcof]

http://www.blockstream.com/

would be interested in hearing what Gavin thinks of sidechains specifically:

https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/524975947356061697

I guess given your and justusranvier points and the fact Gavin wants to lift the block size limit, he would be in the opposing sidechains camp.
having a limit in size to the blocks in the bitcoin blockchain, would legitimize the need for sidechains.

so I see a political standoff approaching, soon, where those secretly invested in sidechains seek to limit block size.   

The proposed transaction rate increase that Gavin seems to favor is both useless for fostering a 'one currency solution' for all economic activity because of the extremely modest increase, and ensures that Bitcoin will eventually mutate beyond recognition due to the exponential nature.  It makes little sense to me, but I like it anyway because it's predictable and would seem to align with my operations out over the course of my lifetime (as a late-40's aged dude.)

Or does it foster predictability?  One of my hypothesis is that this action is just a way to get people used to hard forks and thinking of them as no real big deal.  Most of the userbase (by body-count) at this point won't have much of a clue about what a 'fork' means anyway.  Just a software upgrade at most, and for those using many of the client solutions it won't even require that.  Being able to fork at will (or on demand of the authorities) makes it possible for pretty much anything to happen going forward.  Hell, it might even be possible to re-issue 'lost' (aka, unregistered) coins, or even bump up the 21x10^6 limit if need be.

[cypherdoc]

The situation isn't helped in any way by people using terms of art they clearly don't understand, like "scarce."

i hate that term with a passion. it validates Bitcoin skeptics impression that there aren't enough bitcoins.  Voorhees uses that term very loosely.  that's why you'll hear me use the descriptor "fixed supply" all the time when i describe Bitcoin.

it turns out that there is plenty of gold to go around in the world when it was more useful as a reserve money.  as a matter of fact, if you include gold derivative trading on the Comex or LBMA, the dollar value of all gold trading is greater than most currencies.

fixed supply is what is most important when talking about a store of value.

[hdbuck]

http://www.blockstream.com/

would be interested in hearing what Gavin thinks of sidechains specifically:

https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/524975947356061697

I guess given your and justusranvier points and the fact Gavin wants to lift the block size limit, he would be in the opposing sidechains camp.
having a limit in size to the blocks in the bitcoin blockchain, would legitimize the need for sidechains.

so I see a political standoff approaching, soon, where those secretly invested in sidechains seek to limit block size.  

The proposed transaction rate increase that Gavin seems to favor is both useless for fostering a 'one currency solution' for all economic activity because of the extremely modest increase, and ensures that Bitcoin will eventually mutate beyond recognition due to the exponential nature.  It makes little sense to me, but I like it anyway because it's predictable and would seem to align with my operations out over the course of my lifetime (as a late-40's aged dude.)

Or does it foster predictability?  One of my hypothesis is that this action is just a way to get people used to hard forks and thinking of them as no real big deal.  Most of the userbase (by body-count) at this point won't have much of a clue about what a 'fork' means anyway.  Just a software upgrade at most, and for those using many of the client solutions it won't even require that.  Being able to fork at will (or on demand of the authorities) makes it possible for pretty much anything to happen going forward.  Hell, it might even be possible to re-issue 'lost' (aka, unregistered) coins, or even bump up the 21x10^6 limit if need be.

isnt there supposed to be a consensus amongst the network before any fork to be effective?