Is Bitcoin good enough; there aren't critically important improvements needed?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

This poll is to help me test this conclusion I formed:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877398.msg9710552#msg9710552


Improvements needed:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877398.msg9695533#msg9695533

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877398.msg9704552#msg9704552


Additional logic:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877398.msg9703042#msg9703042

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877398.msg9703376#msg9703376

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877398.msg9704835#msg9704835

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877398.msg9705960#msg9705960

Edit: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=877398.msg9716154#msg9716154

Edit#2: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=880088.msg9725612#msg9725612 (why cash != Bitcoin)


Apologies for creating another thread. I wanted to get some feedback with voting and I forgot to put a poll on the linked thread.

Please vote honestly. Don't try to make me happy with your vote choice, but please don't vote 'no' out of dislike for me also. We need an objective poll please.

Anyone who has been my supporter, please do not vote. I want to see what the Bitcoin community thinks.

[rz20]

Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.

So that means no urgency correct? So the improvements are not critical correct?

Because I don't see those improvements coming in Bitcoin any time soon. I think the only way they would come is if an altcoin became popular and Bitcoin was forced to make the changes.

I understand many Bitcoin holders hate the concept of altcoin because they think it dilutes the money supply. This is nonsense, as I explained in the first link in the OP.

Any way, I want your opinions and thanks for sharing your opinion.

I suspect you will confirm my conclusion and vote predominately "no".

[DannyHamilton]

So that means no urgency correct?

Correct.

So the improvements are not critical correct?

The specific improvements that you've laid out?  No, not critical.

Because I don't see those improvements coming in Bitcoin any time soon.

You are correct in that assumption.

I think the only way they would come is if an altcoin became popular and Bitcoin was forced to make the changes.

Which is a very unlikely occurrence.

I understand many Bitcoin holders hate the concept of altcoin because they think it dilutes the money supply.

Perhaps some.  I have no such feelings on the matter.  I dislike most altcoins because 99.99% of them are nothing more than someone regretting that they didn't get in on bitcoin early and are now trying to get rich quick by creating a copy with some very minor tweaks.  I'm fully in favor of people creating any altcoin they like, and fully support everyone's right to throw their money towards any scam (or legitimate revolutionary concept) they like.

This is nonsense, as I explained in the first link in the OP.

Seems a bit like a strawman argument to me.  Perhaps "some" people are against altcoins for the reasons you describe, but their feelings on the topic dont really matter, do they?

Any way, I want your opinions and thanks for sharing your opinion.

You're welcome.

[jbreher]

I voted no. You have yet to convince me of the assertion that lack of complete anonymity necessarily means that mining will be co-opted by 'the government', leading to inevitable blacklisting.

A large part of my resistance to your idea is the notion of 'jumping to' some new, yet-to-be-defined protocol. Bitcoin not only has stood the test of several years of attack, but it also holds the overwhelming majority of actual cryptocurrency wealth of all cryptocurrency enthusiasts. This necessarily imparts significant inertia to any change. In practical marketing terms, you may need to find some bridge to this new system from Bitcoin, which preserves this value.

Using the concept of having the genesis block of such a currency embodying a point-in-time snapshot of the current state of the Bitcoin blockchain[1] might get me and others past this hurdle. While the Bitcoin protocol has some abstract value, the blockchain itself encodes concrete value.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=563972.0

As a 'wild hair' idea, perhaps some day we may be able to define some sort of meta-coin, whereby the details of the protocol are plastic (yet deterministic), while the blockchain itself remains inviolate. If we were able to do such, TPTB co-opting any group of miners would not endanger the users' value, as the network could drop that protocol, and transfer to another. We would need some sort of meta-protocol which manages the details of the hard fork.

Sure, even if this were to be possible (which may be a stretch), it would be a tremendous disincentive to incumbent miners, as their investment in dedicated single-algorithm transaction validation machines (read that as ASICs) would tank. OTOH, another dimension of your problem statement was the consolidation of mining which was brought on by ASICs, so this may be a net positive.

Now all we need to do is schedule the invention part of the solution

Incidentally, I welcome your new persona/attitude. You 'sound' healthier, if that makes any sense.

[cyberpinoy]

Personally, I think Bitcoin developers are concentrated to heavily on the protocol itslef at this stage of the game. A simple rule of life is if it ain't broke dont fix it.

I personally believe we need more to bitcoin, with all the coins they have as a development team now, its time they allow just 1 or 2 people to address the protocol and look for new updates, its time they move on to the demand of the coin. They like the ability to sit on thier ass and wait for somene who has a wallet full of coins to spend those coins and create a stronger demand for their project, yet don't feel the need to do so their selves. they want companies to adapt, adopt and use their coin but give no incentive a corporation wants or likes in order to make this adaptation.

Why the developers and the strong lovers of bitcoin feel a wait around with my hand out game is something that works in the 21st century is beyond me. 200 years ago that could work, but today with our technology, if you wait around something better will surely pass you buy. With everyone and their grandma's grandma coming trying to improve the protocol no one is actually concentrating on what is important, a way to increase a coins value. the demand. No matter who it is, what coin they have, and how strong their vision is everyone is one tracked on a protocol that is not problematic right now.

You want adaptation, you want adoption, you want a secure investment, create a way for that to happen. Give your investors a demand that satisfies their need and want for bitcoins.

[Beliathon]

Is Bitcoin good enough?




It doesn't matter, the game is already over. Bitcoin won, every other crypto lost.




Why? Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

[Ektra]

Is Bitcoin good enough?




It doesn't matter, the game is already over. Bitcoin won, every other crypto lost.




Why? Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

Needless to say, this argument can be easily made against bitcoin in favour of existing fiat money institutions. And yet we still believe that a superior technology can rise and overcome, no?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I am surprised by both the vote and the comments. If that is true that 25% of the community (3 of 12 'yes' votes as of writing this post) is still seriously interested in such improvements (and if those are not the supporters I had already had), that is already enough to motivate me or someone else to attempt to implement such improvements. The sample size is a bit small to trust, and I don't know what the 'yes' voters are thinking, expectations, and caveats.

And then even amongst those who voted 'no', a few of the comments appear to be you voted no because you don't believe starting over again can realistically work.

The way to overcome Bitcoin's existing inertia is to create demand for the coin that is much greater than the 1 or 2 million users Bitcoin has now.

I am coding an Android application right now and my competition has 10 million downloads, and I tried the app and it sucks. Btw, figure they are converting 2 - 5% of downloads to sales, so that is $2 - $5 million per year in revenue. You see why it is difficult to be motivated to code a serious altcoin?

I had 1 million users of Cool Page back in 2001 when the internet was 1/10 the population it is now.

The major threat now for anyone who wants to compete with Bitcoin is that for example Paypal will be starting to push Bitcoin out to its millions of users.

But the problem so far remains for Bitcoin, that there isn't a compelling "must have" use for it as a currency where another currency can't be used instead. So if anyone finds a way to make a compelling use case for a crypto-currency and if that use case can't be accommodated by Bitcoin due to some technological reason (e.g. Bitcoin transactions being too slow), then Bitcoin can be defeated in terms of market size.

I think I have identified such a use case in my recent writings which are linked in the OP, but it is up to you to figure it out. I am not going to spell it out. Because what if I decide to make such an altcoin, I don't want to tell everyone my secret too soon. By thinking deeply about what I wrote, it is probably possible to figure out what use case I had in mind.

Note that use case does not target you, bitcointalk.org. It doesn't target investors. It wouldn't even be necessary to announce here, much better at Reddit.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

P.S. I see a lot of delusion in the Bitcoin user demographics (see also the first link in the OP). I think this is important to note because how can a deluded user base create a useful currency? There is far too much useless ideology crap and not enough actual, "hey this made my life easier and better" technology discussion.

If you actually talk about the technology of Bitcoin, it sucks. It is way too slow, frustating, technobabble (what I need to download a client, then I need to what?), what I need to convert fiat to Bitcoin then the receipient needs to convert back to fiat again losing a lot of money on exchange volatility, etc.. The off chain service providers will introduce non-mining users to the coin, thus no hope of not converting from fiat to get Bitcoin in large scale.

This is a reason why I think Bitcoin is (at least partially) an ideological façade (delusion).

[DannyHamilton]

P.S. I see a lot of delusion in the Bitcoin user demographics (see also the first link in the OP). I think this is important to note because how can a deluded user base create a useful currency? There is far too much useless ideology crap and not enough actual, "hey this made my life easier and better" technology discussion.

If you actually talk about the technology of Bitcoin, it sucks. It is way too slow, frustating, technobabble (what I need to download a client, then I need to what?), what I need to convert fiat to Bitcoin then the receipient needs to convert back to fiat again losing a lot of money on exchange volatility, etc..

This is a reason why I think Bitcoin is (at least partially) an ideological façade (delusion).

Of course, the same could be said about the internet in the beginning.  It was also too slow, frustrating, filled with technobabble. What? I need to download and install a browser? Then I need to what? What? I need to find a URL, enter it into an address box, hope the user running the web server created a page with information that I want, waste time clicking links to find additional information, etc...

Perhaps the internet was just (at least partially) an ideological façade (delusion)?

How did  a deluded user base create a useful world wide web when there was far too much useless ideology crap and not enough actual "hey, this made my life easier and better" technology discussion?

On the other hand, those involved in the beginning of the internet focused on the protocols (HTTP, FTP, TCP/IP, etc) and made sure that they were robust and reliable.  That way when the market was finally ready to begin building products and services on top of those protocols, they could depend on them to work properly.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Danny that is not an unreasonable argument, but note the sentence I added to my post just after you quoted it.

The web browser became installed by default, which is analogous to the users in masse will join Bitcoin via off chain service providers such as Paypal. But the problem is they will never mine.

Whereas, you see those billion people on Facebook all creating effectively via their profile page their own website.

You can't get around the fiat conversion tsuris any other way except through mining, transacting, or paying wages in Bitcoin. Have you considered how slow the latter will scale. And Bitcoin is not purchased for transactions, rather for speculation. The Paypal accounts in Bitcoin will skyrocket on the next bubble run for Bitcoin, not because of needing to use it as a currency.

Bitcoin has a structural asymmetry.

[DannyHamilton]

In the beginning I expect fiat conversion to be the main source of acquiring bitcoins.  Some people will provide products and services and exchange them directly for bitcoins, but that will remain a niche market.  Eventually, I expect the process of procuring bitcoins to shift to wages paid with bitcoins.  It will be slow at first (there are already some companies that are offering employees the option of having some of their wages paid in bitcoins), but it will snowball and accelerate over time. Perhaps I'm wrong and the transition to bitcoin wages will take a century, but in my opinion it is more likely to occur in a matter of another decade or two.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Incidentally, I welcome your new persona/attitude. You 'sound' healthier, if that makes any sense.

If this is true (I am not sure), perhaps it is because of:

1.	Starting some new treatments (AHCC, EGCG, L-Lysine, CoQ10, co-enzyme B Healthy VitB complex, carrots, bitter melon to lower blood sugar, no or minimal carbohydrates in any form including sugars from fruits, Vitamin D3 via whole body skin exposure to sun daily and must shower before as D3 is formed at follicles, washes off, requires 24 hours to absorb) for my peripheral neuropathy (likely caused by 2006 HPV infection) which also (in additional to nerve problems at the feet, hands, etc) manifests as headaches and abdominal pain (tumor?) fucking malaise. By "malaise", I mean imagine someone stole 50 of your IQ points. Can't think with that groggy head, chronic fatigue syndrome, welcome to zombie, vegetable-state.
2.	Really wanting to prove to myself I can still code and not talk without a purpose of action. Challenging myself everyday to work on my discipline (gritting my teeth to push myself to exercise to deal with this malaise that seems to cause me to be only capable of talking). "Those who can't build, talk". Grrr. It is humiliating for me to see I have become a wind pipe. Is this what old age will be for me! Hell no I hope not.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Danny, and my theory is that is precisely why Bitcoin is scaling at the rate it is.

[QuestionAuthority]

Danny that is not an unreasonable argument, but note the sentence I added to my post just after you quoted it.

The web browser became installed by default, which is analogous to the users in masse will join Bitcoin via off chain service providers such as Paypal. But the problem is they will never mine.

Whereas, you see those billion people on Facebook all creating effectively via their profile page their own website.

You can't get around the fiat conversion tsuris any other way except through mining, transacting, or paying wages in Bitcoin. Have you considered how slow the latter will scale. And Bitcoin is not purchased for transactions, rather for speculation. The Paypal accounts in Bitcoin will skyrocket on the next bubble run for Bitcoin, not because of needing to use it as a currency.

Bitcoin has a structural asymmetry.

Yes, the Internet thing is an unreasonable argument. In fact, it's a total bullshit argument that I've seen thrown around a lot lately and I'm wondering what total goof started it. The Internet gave us something we didn't have before - big honkin buttloads of free porn. I still remember the BBS sites we used to download porn, music, videos and all kinds of shit for free. Much of it you couldn't even get at a store for a million bucks. Explain to me exactly what Bitcoin does that's as desirable as free porn and can't be done at all by another payment system? PS: Don't give me that typical bullshit of, "nanny nanny boo boo I can send a million dollars for free to Tibet in the middle of the night in 6 seconds and Western Union can't." When you get the million dollars in 6 seconds it will take you five fucken days minimum to convert it to fiat to use and cost you 2-5% to do it.

The Internet is a bad fucking example. Bitcoin ain't the Internet. Stop using it!

[Foxpup]

Explain to me exactly what Bitcoin does that's as desirable as free porn and can't be done at all by another payment system?

It keeps your non-free porn off your credit card statement and away from your wife's prying eyes?

[QuestionAuthority]

Explain to me exactly what Bitcoin does that's as desirable as free porn and can't be done at all by another payment system?

It keeps your non-free porn off your credit card statement and away from your wife's prying eyes?

You buy porn? I feel sorry for you brother. We gotta have a talk.  

BTW: cash does that too. 

[turvarya]

Danny that is not an unreasonable argument, but note the sentence I added to my post just after you quoted it.

The web browser became installed by default, which is analogous to the users in masse will join Bitcoin via off chain service providers such as Paypal. But the problem is they will never mine.

Whereas, you see those billion people on Facebook all creating effectively via their profile page their own website.

You can't get around the fiat conversion tsuris any other way except through mining, transacting, or paying wages in Bitcoin. Have you considered how slow the latter will scale. And Bitcoin is not purchased for transactions, rather for speculation. The Paypal accounts in Bitcoin will skyrocket on the next bubble run for Bitcoin, not because of needing to use it as a currency.

Bitcoin has a structural asymmetry.

Yes, the Internet thing is an unreasonable argument. In fact, it's a total bullshit argument that I've seen thrown around a lot lately and I'm wondering what total goof started it. The Internet gave us something we didn't have before - big honkin buttloads of free porn. I still remember the BBS sites we used to download porn, music, videos and all kinds of shit for free. Much of it you couldn't even get at a store for a million bucks. Explain to me exactly what Bitcoin does that's as desirable as free porn and can't be done at all by another payment system? PS: Don't give me that typical bullshit of, "nanny nanny boo boo I can send a million dollars for free to Tibet in the middle of the night in 6 seconds and Western Union can't." When you get the million dollars in 6 seconds it will take you five fucken days minimum to convert it to fiat to use and cost you 2-5% to do it.

The Internet is a bad fucking example. Bitcoin ain't the Internet. Stop using it!

You seem ignorant to the fact, that there are a lot of people who can't even use banks or other payment-systems.
You also don't realize, that we don't want to convert back to fiat. We want merchants around the world to accept Bitcoin. I don't want to buy bitcoins with fiat, send bitcoins and the other person sells the bitcoin for fiat. Just because that is the way, it is now, doesn't mean it won't change in the future.
The internet didn't have porn, when it was invented. It developed. The internet today is also not the same as 5 years ago.
Your estimate about 5 days to convert and 2-5% fees is also just way of, of what it takes me, to convert bitcoin.

[numismatist]

You seem ignorant to the fact, that there are a lot of people who can't even use banks or other payment-systems.
You also don't realize, that we don't want to convert back to fiat. We want merchants around the world to accept Bitcoin. I don't want to buy bitcoins with fiat, send bitcoins and the other person sells the bitcoin for fiat. Just because that is the way, it is now, doesn't mean it won't change in the future.
The internet didn't have porn, when it was invented. It developed. The internet today is also not the same as 5 years ago.
Your estimate about 5 days to convert and 2-5% fees is also just way of, of what it takes me, to convert bitcoin.

This! Maybe it is easier to get a bank account than you state, but let's see this as an experiment for another currency. There are lots of them, and a 100% technical implementation was long overdue. Cannot only trade clams found on a beach, that was fashionable ages ago.

[benjamindees]

I like the idea of a high latency improvement over Tor.  The internet is ripe for major improvement in privacy.  Paying per packet, or as close to it as feasible, sounds like a dream solution (if it is in fact workable).

I don't like the idea of hiding mining pools.  There will always be sectors of the economy that are prone to centralization.  The solution to managing them is radical transparency, not hiding.  In general, please don't fret over some tendency towards centralization.  We don't have to build a perfect system.  We just need to get close enough, and the rest will be provided.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

benjamindees,

I proposed only hiding their IP address (so the authorities can't threaten them with regulation), not hiding their reputation (hidden services have a persistent name). Nothing would change in my proposal in terms of the current state of pool distribution.

Pay-per-packet was a key insight. But there are technical details on how to accomplish that which I keep secret for the time being. Also I keep the "everyone can mine out of the box" algorithm secret for the time being.

Any one or group seriously considering and capable of implementing this, you should talk to me. I have already done a lot of the design and some coding work (on the order of 2000 LOC) on those key aspects in the prior paragraph. I shelved my files while I started to work on an Android app (coded in the Scala language which has been interesting, 2000 LOC thus far also).

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

People love to pontificate without fact checking.

You seem ignorant to the fact, that there are a lot of people who can't even use banks or other payment-systems.

And they can't use Bitcoin either, because it has no use case and they can't mine it.

I am talking to the filipinos about it. My neighbor's brother is developing social media apps (Lifebit) and hobnobs with the local government officials and tourism head. My neighbor said he thought about building a mining farm, but really didn't have enough capital to risk, and he says he just doesn't see what he would use Bitcoin for. He and his wife (they have one son) work virtually from home for American companies, his wife doing CSR for swimwear company in Florida and he does foreclosed real estate listings management. They are paid via odesk.com deposit directly to their local bank account (Google "freelance work online"). Any one who has a legitimate need for a local bank account, can get one. My gosh one visit to the bank here and standing in line for an hour for a teller tells me that rapid expansion in the banked is occurring.

Those unwashed who don't have a bank account, don't really need one as they pay for everything by cash.

I am sorry to inform you that any near-term (before 2024 at least) move to a new currency will be driven by westerners, Chinese, and Japanese. We are still guiding the world (at least until China takes over as the new financial center of the world by 2032). The developing world is ... well developing meaning they are learning from and leveraging us.

Note only because home mining in northern cold climates makes the electricity cost free as the waste heat displaces costs to heat the home (an economic advantage over an ASIC farm).

You also don't realize, that we don't want to convert back to fiat. We want merchants around the world to accept Bitcoin.

But the merchants have no (non-ideological, delusional crap) incentive to follow your desire. The volatility of Bitcoin is extreme compared to their national currency unit-of-account. Unit-of-account is a critical property of money as a currency, less so as a store-of-value which is why you see Bitcoin as a speculation investment predominantly. Merchants are not investors, they have to mitigate anything which impacts the reliability of their (in many industries very thin, thus fragile) profit margin.

I don't want to buy bitcoins with fiat, send bitcoins and the other person sells the bitcoin for fiat. Just because that is the way, it is now, doesn't mean it won't change in the future.

Ah the "change comes from mysterious magic wands" illogic.

Serious software developers don't waste their finite coding years chasing rainbows.

The internet didn't have porn, when it was invented. It developed. The internet today is also not the same as 5 years ago.

More hyperbole that doesn't address the point that the internet has a laundry list of radically improved human benefits use cases. Bitcoin doesn't. Bitcoin was invented 6 years ago. Bitcoin reached critical mass in 2013 when every person in the world heard of it on mass media. I would say the internet reached critical mass by 1997 or 1998 when Yahoo become a phenomenon. By then there was porn and many other compelling use cases.

Your estimate about 5 days to convert and 2-5% fees is also just way of, of what it takes me, to convert bitcoin.

Try moving $1 million through the banking system. He wasn't referring to converting your $3000 transaction.

[Flashman]

But the merchants have no (non-ideological) incentive to follow your desire.

False. The CEO of Overstock.com is pretty pissed at how the conventional financial system scammed him in the past. There are also a lot of merchants pissed off about CC transaction fees and chargebacks.

You are constructing a false reality here, saying imaginary future bitcoin is susceptible to imaginary problems which only you has the imaginary solution for. Could make a good cyberpunk novel.

At this point you sound like someone telling Henry Ford he shouldn't build the Model T, because it would never be capable of cruising the interstates at 80mph, and that there's no place to put the GPS.

What you are conveniently forgetting is that the internet existed for a long time before the 90s, it was the introduction of the WWW and the first webbrowser in 1991, making it easy to use, that spurred public adoption.  We possibly have not found our "Netscape" yet.

Anyway, you'd like to paint imaginary future bitcoin as retard bitcoin, like Henry Ford still trying to sell model Ts in 1960.

Well bitcoin is a bit past the model T stage, we've got a closed cabin, electric start and closed in fenders. Traction control, ABS and airbags will come along as we need them.

[turvarya]

People love to pontificate without fact checking.

You seem ignorant to the fact, that there are a lot of people who can't even use banks or other payment-systems.

And they can't use Bitcoin either, because it has no use case and they can't mine it.

I am talking to the filipinos about it. My neighbor's brother is developing social media apps (Lifebit) and hobnobs with the local government officials and tourism head. My neighbor said he thought about building a mining farm, but really didn't have enough capital to risk, and he says he just doesn't see what he would use Bitcoin for. He and his wife (they have one son) work virtually from home for American companies, his wife doing CSR for swimwear company in Florida and he does foreclosed real estate listings management. They are paid via odesk.com deposit directly to their local bank account (Google "freelance work online"). Any one who has a legitimate need for a local bank account, can get one. My gosh one visit to the bank here and standing in line for an hour for a teller tells me that rapid expansion in the banked is occurring.

Those unwashed who don't have a bank account, don't really need one as they pay for everything by cash.

I am sorry to inform you that any near-term (before 2024 at least) move to a new currency will be driven by westerners, Chinese, and Japanese. We are still guiding the world (at least until China takes over as the new financial center of the world by 2032). The developing world is ... well developing meaning they are learning from and leveraging us.

Note only because home mining in northern cold climates makes the electricity cost free as the waste heat displaces costs to heat the home (an economic advantage over an ASIC farm).

You also don't realize, that we don't want to convert back to fiat. We want merchants around the world to accept Bitcoin.

But the merchants have no (non-ideological, delusional crap) incentive to follow your desire. The volatility of Bitcoin is extreme compared to their national currency unit-of-account. Unit-of-account is a critical property of money as a currency, less so as a store-of-value which is why you see Bitcoin as a speculation investment predominantly. Merchants are not investors, they have to mitigate anything which impacts the reliability of their (in many industries very thin, thus fragile) profit margin.

I don't want to buy bitcoins with fiat, send bitcoins and the other person sells the bitcoin for fiat. Just because that is the way, it is now, doesn't mean it won't change in the future.

Ah the "change comes from mysterious magic wands" illogic.

Serious software developers don't waste their finite coding years chasing rainbows.

The internet didn't have porn, when it was invented. It developed. The internet today is also not the same as 5 years ago.

More hyperbole that doesn't address the point that the internet has a laundry list of radically improved human benefits use cases. Bitcoin doesn't. Bitcoin was invented 6 years ago. Bitcoin reached critical mass in 2013 when every person in the world heard of it on mass media. I would say the internet reached critical mass by 1997 or 1998 when Yahoo become a phenomenon. By then there was porn and many other compelling use cases.

Your estimate about 5 days to convert and 2-5% fees is also just way of, of what it takes me, to convert bitcoin.

Try moving $1 million through the banking system. He wasn't referring to converting your $3000 transaction.

and again, you just show a lot if ignorance. People who don't have bank accounts pay in cash?

I think that people who don't use bank systems earlier like afrika.

In Africa, those who does not use bank are mostly illiterate people. Unless u can educate them, they wont be able to use bitcoin.

Just curious, when was the last time you traveled in Africa?

Most young people I have met in Africa, are literate, own several phones including a smart phone. They are already sending money over the phones with MPesa.

My youngest wife lives in Africa and she is paid via MPesa, she sends money to her parents with MPesa, she pays her electric bill with MPesa.

Where did you learn about Africa...from old national geographic magazines?

There are more "currencies" around the world(mostly third world countries) which work in similar ways.


Merchants have the desire to accept bitcoins, since it gets them more customer. A pretty simple incentive.
I know a bar in Vienna, which accepts bitcoins and the owner doesn't really know anything about bitcoin.

Serious software developers to things that are much stupider/more impracticable than developing software for bitcoins. Do you even know Serious Software Developers? I am one(working in Software Development for 6 years) and I know a lot of them.

btw. I am not cbeast. I just have one account here and no desire to make another one.

[illodin]

Using the concept of having the genesis block of such a currency embodying a point-in-time snapshot of the current state of the Bitcoin blockchain[1] might get me and others past this hurdle. While the Bitcoin protocol has some abstract value, the blockchain itself encodes concrete value.

Yes, a lot of resistance stems from early bitcoiners getting lucky once and not wanting to lose their head start vs new comers. Many of them probably wouldn't care as long as their market share remained the same and it didn't require extra effort such as researching new technologies and what's available. It's hard to step out from one's comfort zone.

I didn't vote btw, because I don't know what you mean by jumping from Bitcoin - is it an all or nothing proposition?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

and again, you just show a lot if ignorance. People who don't have bank accounts pay in cash?

Hahaha, The pot calling the kettle black.

When did you visit a 3rd world country and see that people pay each other for goods and services with cash. They don't need an ATM to get some.

I think that people who don't use bank systems earlier like afrika.

In Africa, those who does not use bank are mostly illiterate people. Unless u can educate them, they wont be able to use bitcoin.

Just curious, when was the last time you traveled in Africa?

Most young people I have met in Africa, are literate, own several phones including a smart phone. They are already sending money over the phones with MPesa.

And thus are educated enough to have a bank account.

It doesn't make much sense to compare dysfunctional regions of the world to functional ones. How much impact can a dysfunctional economy have relatively speaking?

Africa is different from Asia in that the governments in some cases (e.g. Ethiopia) have restricted access and don't want to promote their countries as open for call centers and freelance online work, i.e. they actively control and restrict the internet. So in this case, yes the people may have difficulty getting a bank account, but this is not the norm for the societies which are prospering and growing at their potential such as the Philippines and much of the rest of the developing world.

My youngest wife lives in Africa and she is paid via MPesa, she sends money to her parents with MPesa, she pays her electric bill with MPesa.

How is polygamy working? I ask not to criticize but to ask if it works?

There are more "currencies" around the world (mostly third world countries) which work in similar ways.

MPesa and Hong Kong's Octopus are not decentralized currencies. They are akin to Paypal or the Philippines' GlobeCash or SmartMoney for Globe and Smart network cell phones.

Merchants have the desire to accept bitcoins, since it gets them more customer. A pretty simple incentive.
I know a bar in Vienna, which accepts bitcoins and the owner doesn't really know anything about bitcoin.

Not much. It is more a novelty. It might work in some yuppie, techie environs as a gimmick, but this isn't a trend that can scale every where.

Serious software developers to things that are much stupider/more impracticable than developing software for bitcoins.

That is why they never attain 1 million users in 2001 as I did. Which is 10 million users in today's internet.

Do you even know Serious Software Developers? I am one(working in Software Development for 6 years) and I know a lot of them.

Myself since 1980, or 1978 if you count when I starting reading books on how to program. So I think I can claim more experience than you.

btw. I am not cbeast. I just have one account here and no desire to make another one.

That was obvious because you are in Europe and he is here in the Philippines where I am. And cbeast, no I never met Art Bell.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

But the merchants have no (non-ideological) incentive to follow your desire.

False. The CEO of Overstock.com is pretty pissed at how the conventional financial system scammed him in the past. There are also a lot of merchants pissed off about CC transaction fees and chargebacks.

I was similarly pissed off when I had my own merchant account for my CoolPage.com sales. Nevertheless I had a lot of sales that went through that merchant account successfully.

But he is just making ideological rants, probably for the publicity for his business and to gain the sympathy of the Bitcoin crowd hoping they will treat their wives to Bitcoin expenditures on his site.

The main reason for accepting Bitcoin is it brings awareness of your obscure business, e.g. I discovered namecheap.com because they accept Bitcoin. That works only up to the point that you are the first of say 5 or so in your business category to accept Bitcoin. After that, it doesn't scale any more, because the effect is diluted.

The fact is that this is not a sufficient incentive for most merchants because:

1.	Bitcoin represents only roughly 0.1% (1 in 1000) of the people who have a debit or credit card.
2.	Bitcoin costs much more per transaction in customer support due to the long delays which cause errors, such as double payments, lost payments, etc.. I personally experienced this numerous times using Localbitcoins with Bitpay. It is a fucking horrendously crappy system. I wouldn't dare ask my mother or grandmother to use it. I would be extremely embarrassed to put my name on it as core developer, as I pride myself in high-quality work (must be my German ancestry because I am pedantic about the details when I am not too rushed). And don't tell me it is not the fault of the protocol core developers, they need to take responsibility for the useability of the technology (Edit: see mea culpa downthread).
3.	Customers don't like to pay by Bitcoin when they feel they need the protection of being able to issue a chargeback via their credit card company. Until Bitcoin has some "plug and play" escrow mechanism that is ubiquitously available, then it can't address a big segment of the online sales market (and it certainly can't scale in retail due to the 10 -  30 minute confirmation delay, yeah I know the evil of off chain services providing fast transactions). And once it does have this mechanism available, then it will no longer have the same advantage to merchants that you are claiming. I do understand the virtue that I did some somewhat anonymous transactions with Bitcoin, so it was worth the hassle, but that doesn't scale (how many people are going to jump through those hoops). Note there is another insight here. Micropayments for immediately delivered goods such as pay-per-packet are an ideal fit to the advantage of non-repudiable transactions. Do you see where I am going with this? Who is ignorant here?

You are constructing a false reality here, saying imaginary future bitcoin is susceptible to imaginary problems which only you has the imaginary solution for. Could make a good cyberpunk novel.

Blahblahblah. That is what you all said in 2013 when I was saying Tor was not anonymous. Now it is proven to be not anonymous with recent research claiming 81% of the users can be identified and the recent seizure of 100s of hidden servers. Any more excuses?

Why are humans so unable to project non-linear change? Because it is perhaps the greatest shortcoming of the human race.

...In short, you've been in the Philippines during the credit bubble. Everyone is feeling richer. Were you here during the Asian Crisis bust as I was?

Isn't amazing how people get fooled by credit booms and extrapolate that to the future...

At this point you sound like someone telling Henry Ford he shouldn't build the Model T, because it would never be capable of cruising the interstates at 80mph, and that there's no place to put the GPS.

That is not an analogy. KYC exists every where already.

What you are conveniently forgetting is that the internet existed for a long time before the 90s, it was the introduction of the WWW and the first webbrowser in 1991, making it easy to use, that spurred public adoption.  We possibly have not found our "Netscape" yet.

Excuses. Critical mass is obtained when most people have heard of a new technology, which was 1997 or 1998 for Yahoo and the internet (which is when I launched Art-O-Matic and CoolPage). At that point, you know the potential the adoption curve. And we reached that in 2013 for Bitcoin (which is when I entered the Bitcoin space). It was plastered on every major news site the entire year. No wonder it went to $1000.

Anyway, you'd like to paint imaginary future bitcoin as retard bitcoin, like Henry Ford still trying to sell model Ts in 1960.

It is only imaginary to those who couldn't for example see in 2013 (and were making the similar accusations as you are now against me) why Tor was not anonymous, but I could.

The internet didn't have porn, when it was invented. It developed. The internet today is also not the same as 5 years ago.

More hyperbole that doesn't address the point that the internet has a laundry list of radically improved human benefits use cases. Bitcoin doesn't. Bitcoin was invented 6 years ago. Bitcoin reached critical mass in 2013 when every person in the world heard of it on mass media. I would say the internet reached critical mass by 1997 or 1998 when Yahoo become a phenomenon. By then there was porn and many other compelling use cases.

[Beliathon]

Is Bitcoin good enough?




It doesn't matter, the game is already over. Bitcoin won, every other crypto lost.




Why? Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

Needless to say, this argument can be easily made against bitcoin in favour of existing fiat money institutions. And yet we still believe that a superior technology can rise and overcome, no?

No, that argument cannot be made against bitcoin in favour of existing money institutions because central banking is tremendously inefficient when compared to cryptocurrency.

Efficiency trumps all, even network effect. Altcoins will never be meaningfully more efficient than Bitcoin, because they are built on the same technological foundation.

[Flashman]

Critical mass is obtained when most people have heard of a new technology, which was 1997 or 1998 for Yahoo and the internet

Sorry, you don't get to invent your own facts.

Worries that internet was overhyped in 1994. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/10/business/business-technology-doubts-raised-on-number-of-internet-users.html

Meaning, a lot of people had HEARD of it by then, they just didn't know what was in it for them, and how actually to get on it, until the AOL disks started dropping in the mailbox practically weekly.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Critical mass is obtained when most people have heard of a new technology, which was 1997 or 1998 for Yahoo and the internet

Sorry, you don't get to invent your own facts.

Worries that internet was overhyped in 1994. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/10/business/business-technology-doubts-raised-on-number-of-internet-users.html

Meaning, a lot of people had HEARD of it by then, they just didn't know what was in it for them, and how actually to get on it, until the AOL disks started dropping in the mailbox practically weekly.

That is right you don't get to invent facts. Porn was on the internet in the early 1990s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_pornography#Usenet_Groups

Usenet was already a killer application that couldn't be done in any other way.

Didn't you read DannyHamilton confirmation upthread that none of the innovations I suggested will be coming to Bitcoin any time soon.

[cryptogeeknext]

I voted no (means Bitcoin is perfect as it is)

The government in general is not a problem, it is an obscure financial system currently in place that allows corruption on a large scale to go on unnoticed by the general public.

Keeping blockchain open and transparent will make government more accountable and democratic.

[jyakulis]

Why does this forum constantly devolve into threads of people saying bitcoin is not the solution to the problems of the world. You know what? You come up with a solution then. Find the people to go with it and do it. If bitcoin sucks so bad why are you people so obsessed with it? It's just annoying. Not saying we should ban dissenting voices but what is the motivation of these people? If you hate why are you here. If you think it sucks why are you here?

I come on here for news about the community and future development. Not for every thread I open to either be 1) satoshi should do this 2) is this satoshi 3) bitcoin sucks here's a better system 4) bitcoin failed us

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

If you think it sucks why are you here?

This thread is a marketing survey so that before some developer wastes a lot of time implementing, he is already sure there is a market for his effort.

I do think there are some virtues to Bitcoin. For example, if someone does create the killer altcoin, then all those Paypal accounts can get Bitcoin, then trade on a decentralized exchange for that altcoin. Bitcoin has a purpose and probably not only that one. I think of Bitcoin as the reserve currency of crypto. In that capacity, there is nothing wrong with its design. Slower transactions makes it technically less risky. Transparent blockchain makes it amenable to government, Paypal, etc..

Apologies I forget to reiterate the virtues of Bitcoin. Normal myopia of a (high strung, hyper-competitive) developer who is focused on making his own baby (especially when in the mode of defending against criticism). Mea culpa.

[jyakulis]

If you think it sucks why are you here?

This thread is a marketing survey so that before some developer wastes a lot of time implementing, he is already sure there is a market for his effort.

I do think there are some virtues to Bitcoin. For example, if someone does create the killer altcoin, then all those Paypal accounts can get Bitcoin, then trade on a decentralized exchange for that altcoin. Bitcoin has a purpose and probably not only that one. I think of Bitcoin as the reserve currency of crypto.

OK, but applications for bitcoin are largely rolled out to other cryptocurrencies. At least eventually. I think it's unwise to put all your eggs in one basket so to speak as well. But to say that development in bitcoin is a waste is naive at best. These ideas will flow to other cryptocurrencies. And additionally, some of the add ons to other alt coins (dogecoin) in particular that I currently really like have flowed back into bitcoin (tipping features).

[Flashman]

Didn't you read DannyHamilton confirm upthread that none of the innovations I suggested will be coming to Bitcoin any time soon.

And I don't need augmented reality tech to do everyday shit like put the garbage out, what's your point? It may be years before I get a laser guided GPS locatable garbage can, with sights on a headsup display, OMG tech is failing us. We've hit peak tech because eveyone has heard of laser guided stuff and GPS and headsup displays, but I can't get it on my garbage can, it's all downhill from here, sell Intel, sell Apple.  

Of course it's not going in there any time soon if it's not needed any time soon.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

jyakulis, again mea culpa. You are correct.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Of course it's not going in there any time soon if it's not needed any time soon.

Exactly. If.

Have you ever considered that those advances which you speak ("Model T" versus LamborghiniToyota Prius) may come from altcoins with Bitcoin as the reserve currency at the center of the crypto-currency universe?

Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf didn't create the entire web. There were millions of innovators.

As an analogy in the gold mining world or even for Facebook, the smaller mines or startups make the innovations, then they are acquired, e.g. WhatsApp. The humongous returns on investment are made on the earlier stage riskier investments.

Uh oh, I feel gold rush fever may be returning soon again to cryptoland, once we bottom and start the next leg up. I'm sure many of you share the same sentiment.

[Flashman]

Have you ever considered that those advances which you speak ("Model T" versus Lamborghini) may come from altcoins with Bitcoin as the reserve currency at the center of the crypto-currency universe?

Partially my point was, that when the Model T was rolled out, Henry didn't know if 25 years down the line, he'd need to be making cars with high speed freeway tires on, or large mud bogging tires because there was no road investment.

The blockchain is bad enough, last thing we need is a 50 Gigabyte bitcoin core monstrosity programmed to deal with all possible futures.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Agreed, spaghetti rigor mortis can set in if too many (failed and cross-conflicting) experiments are made on the production system.

One of the principles of hackerdom is to scrap-and-rebuild every so often. We can't be doing that in the production system. The production system can only justify incorporating successful experiments that have demonstrably (i.e. proven) unavoidable and critical significance.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

The government in general is not a problem, it is an obscure financial system currently in place that allows corruption on a large scale to go on unnoticed by the general public.

Keeping blockchain open and transparent will make government more accountable and democratic.

I've seen this advocated as a positive for Bitcoin many times. So my rebuttal is not targeted at you personally, but at the concept which you've ostensibly learned from others.

This assumes crypto-currency will be the only currency or the public can force all government transactions on to the block chain, which I assert is irrational and delusional to the extreme.

If ever you had only one way to transact, we'd be slaves in a 666 system (don't tell me that with decentralization we'd be free of the Law of Collective Political Economics, impossible...don't abuse yourself with notions of eliminating nature and achieving perfect nirvana).

We can't even force the government to reveal all information about the NSA, so we surely can't force them to be open when they have other options for transacting, kickbacks, and other ways of gaming the system.

Also we already know about the government transactions in sufficient detail to know about the corruption, but we still can't vote them out of office. We the People lack the power in democracy is because of the Law of Collective Political Economics.

The way crypto-currency will reform government is "voting by feet". When people have a way to walk away from the government edicts, e.g. confiscate and redistribute (ahem tax and spend), the government becomes impotent or at least the people have a finer grained veto on socialism because each person can make his or her financial weight counted in terms of what they agree to and not.

In other words, tax should never be mandatory and should always be by consent of the governed[1].

And this is why anonymity is so important so we can force the government to accept that we are each individually sovereign and must be respected as such, as opposed the current situation where we are owned by our government and enslaved as such. This is not black and white demarcation line, but a slider of comparative power. We individuals always need to be improving our decentralization technology.

Collective sovereignty is an oxymoron, because of the Law of Collective Political Economics.

If you can appreciate the above point and my point about why the collectivized majority is always wrong, then you will understand how I define an anarchist. It doesn't mean chaos, it means maximizing mutual respect and degrees-of-freedom.

[1]

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/10/03/obama-holder-destroy-the-constitution/ The belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose.  The belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed, and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding.  And those ideas eventually inspired a band of colonialists across an ocean, and they wrote them into the founding documents that still guide America today, including the simple truth that all men — and women — are created equal. But those ideals have also been tested — here in Europe and around the world.  Those ideals have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power.  This alternative vision argues that ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs, that order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign. http://armstrongeconomics.com/library/books/considerations-on-representative-government-mill/ Whatever is the strongest power in society will obtain the governing authority; and a change in the political constitution can not be durable unless preceded or accompanied by an altered distribution of power in society itself. A nation, therefore, can not choose its form of government. The mere details, and practical organization, it may choose; but the essence of the whole, the seat of the supreme power, is determined for it by social circumstances.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I didn't vote btw, because I don't know what you mean by jumping from Bitcoin - is it an all or nothing proposition?

No. Not exclusively. Just whether you would jump with any significant portion of your interest, effort, and money, i.e. more than an insignificant smidgen. Assume any quality of implementation required by you.

[Come-In-Behind]

"IMO, best to not state anything at all after you've done it once. If they refuse to adapt, when shit really hits the fan, then they'll learn."  

Though I can see both sides of the equation. Bitcoin's trying to gain mainstream adoption, implementing things you've proposed might hinder that and bring in more regulation.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Altcoins will never be meaningfully more efficient than Bitcoin, because they are built on the same technological foundation.

I know you are referring to efficiency of capital not being misallocated, i.e. the efficiency gained from decentralization.

Therefor I assert if Bitcoin falls to government regulation as I allege will likely happen, it is no longer as efficient as the decentralization ideal.

Thus I assert a regulation resistant altcoin can in reality end up more efficient than Bitcoin in terms of decentralized allocation of capital and resources in an economy.

If you were referring to other measures of efficiency, such as transaction speed. An altcoin could possibly improve upon Bitcoin.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Though I can see both sides of the equation. Bitcoin's trying to gain mainstream adoption, implementing things you've proposed might hinder that and bring in more regulation.

Exactly there is a valid duality to consider. I did a mea culpa on that.

I would phrase that not as "bring in more regulation" (government will attempt to avoid regulating something they can't although they fail to recognize in many cases, because it draws attention to their impotence), but rather that Bitcoin can gain more mainstream adoption in at least one sense, i.e. through government compliant providers such as Paypal.

I don't know if I agree if Bitcoin can get more adoption overall versus a hypothetical altcoin. The most decentralized coin will win that race of scaling. Bitcoin has a lead and it is compatible with the government approved world.

Experimentation can potentially answer that question.

[jbreher]

Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf didn't create the entire web.

Yet we did not throw out the mechanisms they gave us, and replace them with something altogether different. TCP/IP and HTTP still underpin nearly all internet traffic.

It was the layers built later atop these protocols that made the web the rich compelling experience we enjoy today.

One might argue that the base protocols might be improved apon (spoof resistant email, anyone?) However, they seem to have been good enough.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

jbreher,

Unfortunately CoinJoin is jammable otherwise we could get on chain anonymity without a fork of Bitcoin's protocol. Btw, I (AnonyMint) was the first person to point out to gmaxell (in the CoinJoin thread) that his ideas to prevent jamming were not sound and that no ideas could possibly be. DarkCoin reiterated this by trading jammability for giving up the identities to the masternodes (which can be Sybil attacked). DarkWallet has not solved the jammability and will thus fail.

Also I don't know how you can pay-per-packet in real-time (i.e. 0 delay) for the Tor redesign I proposed with a 10 minute block confirmation delay. Well actually I do know how (one of my secrets) but 10 minutes is still too extreme (I can't yet describe problems but I anticipate complications the longer the delay). 1 minute may be fine.

Also let's not forget UDP and FTP came before adoption of TCP/IP and HTTP respectively.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol#Differences_from_HTTP

HTTP essentially fixes the bugs in FTP that made it inconvenient to use for many small ephemeral transfers as are typical in web pages.

[cryptogeeknext]

The government in general is not a problem, it is an obscure financial system currently in place that allows corruption on a large scale to go on unnoticed by the general public.

Keeping blockchain open and transparent will make government more accountable and democratic.

I've seen this advocated as a positive for Bitcoin many times. So my rebuttal is not targeted at you personally, but at the concept which you've ostensibly learned from others.

This assumes crypto-currency will be the only currency or the public can force all government transactions on to the block chain, which I assert is irrational and delusional to the extreme.

If ever you had only one way to transact, we'd be slaves in a 666 system (don't tell me that with decentralization we'd be free of the Law of Collective Political Economics, impossible...don't abuse yourself with notions of eliminating nature and achieving perfect nirvana).

We can't even force the government to reveal all information about the NSA, so we surely can't force them to be open when they have other options for transacting.

Also we already know about the government transactions in sufficient detail to know about the corruption, but we still can't vote them out of office. We the People lack the power in democracy is because of the Law of Collective Political Economics.

The way crypto-currency will reform government is "voting by feet". When people have a way to walk away from the government edicts, e.g. confiscate and redistribute (ahem tax and spend), the government becomes impotent or at least the people have a finer grained veto on socialism because each person can make his or her financial weight counted in terms of what they agree to and not.
...

Crypto-currency might not be the only way to transact for now, but the network effects will eventually make it one of the primary systems on the planet. Unlike unsustainable fiat's debt-spirals, current major PoW coins are all gain-spirals. It means that incentives are there for the replacement process to continue unhindered.

Requirements for transparency and accountability can be gradually put in place while governments are slowly evolving and adapting to the new way of doing things. Governments are not some alien rogue entities that were enforced on people from outside, but rather it is people themselves who created governments to make society civilized and keep things in order.

We need an outstanding example of an open transparent money system (which Bitcoin is first installment of) to compete with closed obscure and entrenched ones currently in place. There might be some demand for fully anonymous crypto, but I believe it will constitute a small niche. Remember what kind of outrage an opaque voting system caused in the recent Bitcoin Foundation elections? It's a shame, especially when blockchain technology allows for full accountability and transparency.

Open is the way forward.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

The government in general is not a problem, it is an obscure financial system currently in place that allows corruption on a large scale to go on unnoticed by the general public.

Keeping blockchain open and transparent will make government more accountable and democratic.

I've seen this advocated as a positive for Bitcoin many times. So my rebuttal is not targeted at you personally, but at the concept which you've ostensibly learned from others.

This assumes crypto-currency will be the only currency or the public can force all government transactions on to the block chain, which I assert is irrational and delusional to the extreme.

If ever you had only one way to transact, we'd be slaves in a 666 system (don't tell me that with decentralization we'd be free of the Law of Collective Political Economics, impossible...don't abuse yourself with notions of eliminating nature and achieving perfect nirvana).

We can't even force the government to reveal all information about the NSA, so we surely can't force them to be open when they have other options for transacting.

Also we already know about the government transactions in sufficient detail to know about the corruption, but we still can't vote them out of office. We the People lack the power in democracy is because of the Law of Collective Political Economics.

The way crypto-currency will reform government is "voting by feet". When people have a way to walk away from the government edicts, e.g. confiscate and redistribute (ahem tax and spend), the government becomes impotent or at least the people have a finer grained veto on socialism because each person can make his or her financial weight counted in terms of what they agree to and not.
...

Crypto-currency might not be the only way to transact for now, but the network effects will eventually make it one of the primary systems on the planet. Unlike unsustainable fiat's debt-spirals, current major PoW coins are all gain-spirals. It means that incentives are there for the replacement process to continue unhindered.

Requirements for transparency and accountability can be gradually put in place while governments are slowly evolving and adapting to the new way of doing things. Governments are not some alien rogue entities that were enforced on people from outside, but rather it is people themselves who created governments to make society civilized and keep things in order.

We need an outstanding example of an open transparent money system (which Bitcoin is first installment of) to compete with closed obscure and entrenched ones currently in place. There might be some demand for fully anonymous crypto, but I believe it will constitute a small niche. Remember what kind of outrage an opaque voting system caused in the recent Bitcoin Foundation elections? It's a shame, especially when blockchain technology allows for full accountability and transparency.

Open is the way forward.

I don't disagree, but it seems to me you missed at least one of my salient points. A paradigm is not open if it is the only way allowed. Such a goal is self-enslavement. Thus for sure there will exist anonymous block chains. So just forget being able to enforce that all corruption is 100% transparent always. There will never be a solution for that. And there shouldn't be because taking action against it, is centralizing. Politics is centralizing. Voting is centralizing. These all require a collective outcome.

Voting with our feet is decentralizing, because each person can act independently and gets his or her result instantly. As you vote by withholding your funding for the corruption (because you are anonymous you can), you contributed to minimizing it. Instantly. Decentrally.

When you agree with the efficiency of the government and see a necessary project, you agree to fund it. In order words, we privatize the government. They have to perform well. Similar to crowdfunding.

The solution to government corruption is eliminating (privatizing) government. Socialists hate this because they don't trust humanity. They think someone needs to force people to be caring and helpful. In reality, socialists create megadeath because they create the environment (government) for corruption and at the end game peak totalitarianism.

Socialism (and any other form of forced collectivism) is incongruent with openness and decentralization. I have no idea why a European or Obama socialist would support Bitcoin. They would need to be very confused (unless they are just fighting against anonymity improvements and thus want Bitcoin to be regulated).

Thank you for prompting me and giving me the insight of how to clarify my point. We learn from each other, by sharing.

[QuestionAuthority]

Danny that is not an unreasonable argument, but note the sentence I added to my post just after you quoted it.

The web browser became installed by default, which is analogous to the users in masse will join Bitcoin via off chain service providers such as Paypal. But the problem is they will never mine.

Whereas, you see those billion people on Facebook all creating effectively via their profile page their own website.

You can't get around the fiat conversion tsuris any other way except through mining, transacting, or paying wages in Bitcoin. Have you considered how slow the latter will scale. And Bitcoin is not purchased for transactions, rather for speculation. The Paypal accounts in Bitcoin will skyrocket on the next bubble run for Bitcoin, not because of needing to use it as a currency.

Bitcoin has a structural asymmetry.

Yes, the Internet thing is an unreasonable argument. In fact, it's a total bullshit argument that I've seen thrown around a lot lately and I'm wondering what total goof started it. The Internet gave us something we didn't have before - big honkin buttloads of free porn. I still remember the BBS sites we used to download porn, music, videos and all kinds of shit for free. Much of it you couldn't even get at a store for a million bucks. Explain to me exactly what Bitcoin does that's as desirable as free porn and can't be done at all by another payment system? PS: Don't give me that typical bullshit of, "nanny nanny boo boo I can send a million dollars for free to Tibet in the middle of the night in 6 seconds and Western Union can't." When you get the million dollars in 6 seconds it will take you five fucken days minimum to convert it to fiat to use and cost you 2-5% to do it.

The Internet is a bad fucking example. Bitcoin ain't the Internet. Stop using it!

You seem ignorant to the fact, that there are a lot of people who can't even use banks or other payment-systems.
You also don't realize, that we don't want to convert back to fiat. We want merchants around the world to accept Bitcoin. I don't want to buy bitcoins with fiat, send bitcoins and the other person sells the bitcoin for fiat. Just because that is the way, it is now, doesn't mean it won't change in the future.
The internet didn't have porn, when it was invented. It developed. The internet today is also not the same as 5 years ago.
Your estimate about 5 days to convert and 2-5% fees is also just way of, of what it takes me, to convert bitcoin.

I guess all that porn I downloaded from Usenet and BBS sites in the very early 80's wasn't real. I still remember when Rusty & Eddy's was busted for copyright infringement for having Playboy scans. You're obviously like 12 or something. I lived through it and porn was one of the biggest best sellers on the web before there was a web. I'll leave you with a little blast from the past.



1970s Porn goddess Terri Hall

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Maybe so but it's still worth remembering that there is no secure blockchain without the value inherent in the token "bitcoin"
They are inseparable

Yes, I don't understand why people can say the currency function has a less bright future than the blockchain when all the security of the blockchain actually depends on the value of the currency, because it triggers the motivation to mine and secure the network.

Also note that OpenBazaar is putting all their long-term persistent data on the Bitcoin blockchain. All these various block chain apps can't make their own block chain, because they wouldn't have sufficient hashrate to protect from 51% attacks. It is much more likely that only one or just a few block chains will win and all these apps win run on them.

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/darkmarket

OpenBazaar is a cool idea, but so far the design is such that your store only stays up if you computer is always online. I think they need to put all the store items on a block chain. But I don't think they can do that using the Bitcoin block chain.

Yet another reason Bitcoin's block chain is not sufficient to do everything we need to do.

[cryptogeeknext]

...
I don't disagree, but it seems to me you missed at least one of my salient points. A paradigm is not open if it is the only way allowed. Such a goal is self-enslavement. Thus for sure there will exist anonymous block chains. So just forget being able to enforce that all corruption is 100% transparent always. There will never be a solution for that. And there shouldn't be because taking action against it, is centralizing. Politics is centralizing. Voting is centralizing. These all require a collective outcome.

Voting with our feet is decentralizing, because each person can act independently and gets his or her result instantly. As you vote by withholding your funding for the corruption (because you are anonymous you can), you contributed to minimizing it. Instantly. Decentrally.

When you agree with the efficiency of the government and see a necessary project, you agree to fund it. In order words, we privatize the government. They have to perform well. Similar to crowdfunding.

Thank you for prompting me and giving me the insight of how to clarify my point. We learn from each other, by sharing.

If requirement is such, that taxes (obligatory or voluntary) are collected on an open blockchain, then existence of other payment methods will not jeopardize the transparency of government's spending, as the exit points to any anonymized system will be clearly seen.

I agree that open and closed systems should compete with each other, so that neither is abused. If there is too much taxes and they are wasted on things people don't need, then population will slowly move into a shadow economy. However the opposite is also true, if the shadow way of doing things doesn't bring much comfort and stability to society, people will be willing to fund a good government with their taxes to keep things in order.

Current governments will be faced with a choice at some point: wether to keep accumulating debt in fiat or start adopting crypto, in which case a fierce competition for control over the crypto will make sure that people's opinions on how to proceed forward will need to be taken into account. Government would need to present a service that people will be willing to support.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

...
I don't disagree, but it seems to me you missed at least one of my salient points. A paradigm is not open if it is the only way allowed. Such a goal is self-enslavement. Thus for sure there will exist anonymous block chains. So just forget being able to enforce that all corruption is 100% transparent always. There will never be a solution for that. And there shouldn't be because taking action against it, is centralizing. Politics is centralizing. Voting is centralizing. These all require a collective outcome.

Voting with our feet is decentralizing, because each person can act independently and gets his or her result instantly. As you vote by withholding your funding for the corruption (because you are anonymous you can), you contributed to minimizing it. Instantly. Decentrally.

When you agree with the efficiency of the government and see a necessary project, you agree to fund it. In order words, we privatize the government. They have to perform well. Similar to crowdfunding.

Thank you for prompting me and giving me the insight of how to clarify my point. We learn from each other, by sharing.

If requirement is such, that taxes (obligatory or voluntary) are collected on an open blockchain, then existence of other payment methods will not jeopardize the transparency of government's spending, as the exit points to any anonymized system will be clearly seen.

I agree that open and closed systems should compete with each other, so that neither is abused. If there is too much taxes and they are wasted on things people don't need, then population will slowly move into a shadow economy. However the opposite is also true, if the shadow way of doing things doesn't bring much comfort and stability to society, people will be willing to fund a good government with their taxes to keep things in order.

Current governments will be faced with a choice at some point: wether to keep accumulating debt in fiat or start adopting crypto, in which case a fierce competition for control over the crypto will make sure that people's opinions on how to proceed forward will need to be taken into account. Government would need to present a service that people will be willing to support.

Government provides the service of promising more than it can collect in taxes. And the people always love it. Again this is an IRON LAW of Political Economics. This can never change because it is human nature. Everybody loves something for nothing. And politicians are expert at telling them it is plausible. Since Mesopotamia humans have been falling for it. And they will be falling for it for eternity.

The only escape is anonymity where the socialism can't extract its horrible nature from you.

Putting every transaction on the block chain does nothing to stop the government from borrowing money. It does nothing to stop kickbacks from government transactions. Are you going to prevent every contractor's employee from using an anonymous coin?

http://armstrongeconomics.com/library-research/encyclopedia-of-ethical-failure/

Abuse of Position

If I Help You Land This Multimillion Dollar Contract, Will You Give Me a Job?

A former government human resource director was sentenced to two years of probation for violating conflicts of interest laws, 18 U.S.C. § 208, and lying on his financial disclosure report.

You see if you require the government always conduct on transparent block chain, it becomes an enslavement for everyone, otherwise you can't stop the leakage and ways of gaming the system.

The supply of Bitcoin will never be limited to 21 million coins unless you can find a way to outlaw finance and debt. But the people love debt and that is something that will never change. Usury was illegal and it coincided with a Dark Age. It was when the restriction of usury was removed that the Enlightenment and the economy began moving again. Because most people don't function on savings. Money is always power-law distributed, because most of humanity lives for today.

Statists always think they can create a nirvana. They are so delusional.

Edit: However I agree with you that there is one valid function of government. To resolve conflicts. If there is no authority with bigger guns, men fight to resolve who has the bigger gun. So here is where you vote with your feet. You withdraw your consent to that authority when it is being abused by employing your anonymity (withdraw funding by non-reporting of taxable activities), e.g. the USA military resource is being abused.

Disclaimer: I am not advocating any illegal activities. I am not a professor adviser. Please consult your own.

[cryptogeeknext]

...
Government provides the service of promising more than it can collect in taxes. And the people always love it. Again this is an IRON LAW of Political Economics. This can never change because it is human nature. Everybody loves something for nothing. And politicians are expert at telling them it is plausible. Since Mesopotamia humans have been falling for it. And they will be falling for it for eternity.

The only escape is anonymity where the socialism can't extract its horrible nature from you.

Putting every transaction on the block chain does nothing to stop the government from borrowing money. It does nothing to stop kickbacks from government transactions. Are you going to prevent every contractor's employee from using an anonymous coin?

You see it becomes an enslavement for everyone, otherwise you can't stop the leakage and ways of gaming the system.

The supply of Bitcoin will never be limited to 21 million coins unless you can find a way to outlaw finance and debt. But the people love debt and that is something that will never change. Usury was illegal and it coincided with a Dark Age. It was when the restriction of usury was removed that the Enlightenment and the economy began moving again. Because most people don't function on savings. Money is always power-law distributed, because most of humanity lives for today.

Statists always think they can create a nirvana. They are so delusional.

Edit: However I agree with you that there is one valid function of government. To resolve conflicts. If there is no authority with bigger guns, men fight to resolve who has the bigger gun. So here is where you vote with your feet. You withdraw your consent to that authority with anonymity when it is being abused, e.g. the USA military resource is being abused.

If we look at a good half of Ukraine, we will see that a lot of people there wish they had a stable government. Things aren't pretty when they are out of balance.

Anyways, we haven't had an open system like Bitcoin before. Who knows, maybe it will turn things for the better. Maybe people will learn, maybe people will care. Let's give it a chance to play out the way it was created - open and free. In the mean time we can experiment with all the other stuff we can think of.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

If we look at a good half of Ukraine, we will see that a lot of people there wish they had a stable government. Things aren't pretty when they are out of balance.

Part of the problem there is you have two powerful governments (USA and Russia) fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. So the Ukrainian people don't have enough military power to protect and enforce their collective will.

These powers are preventing Ukraine to split by language and culture and needs to probably be two countries.

So this is an example of the problem of a groups' collective military being too small. One long-range, idealistic solution is if the USA and Russia also adopt the "vote with your feet" and they reduce the size of their militaries to put a stop to this abuse of Ukraine. But the Russian people support Putin with 80% approval rating. But they support him because they are ignorantly trapped in top-down oligarch economy and haven't tasted decentralization. They were manipulated by the powers-that-be that funded the Bolshevik revolution (to bring communism to Russia) and then after the fall of USSR the powers-that-be awarded all the collectivized (from communism) national resources to a few well connected oligarches.

So the process of freedom from decentralization is going to have to first break down a lot of inertia.

Anyways, we haven't had an open system like Bitcoin before. Who knows, maybe it will turn things for the better. Maybe people will learn, maybe people will care. Let's give it a chance to play out the way it was created - open and free. In the mean time we can experiment with all the other stuff we can think of.

I agree with you that decentralization technology must improve matters, because empowering the individual always does improve prosperity because decentralization has more degrees-of-freedom, i.e. is more efficient.

I don't think we will have decentralization without anonymity, because otherwise the government can regulate what it can find (all the details of how this entirely plausible is covered in the links from the OP of this thread). That is why I remain diligent in my stance on this forum.

[cryptogeeknext]

Anyways, we haven't had an open system like Bitcoin before. Who knows, maybe it will turn things for the better. Maybe people will learn, maybe people will care. Let's give it a chance to play out the way it was created - open and free. In the mean time we can experiment with all the other stuff we can think of.

I agree with you that decentralization technology must improve matters, because empowering the individual always does improve prosperity.

I don't think we will have decentralization without anonymity. That is why I remain diligent in my stance on this forum.

It's an interesting topic and I'm only developing my opinion on it.

Anonymity feels somewhat darkish and shadowy. If everything and everyone is anonymous, it is quite scary.
Historically societies converged towards having a government instead of anarchy and anonymity. Maybe because government outlines a clear vision, a goal and a way to achieve it. It is a public service, and it needs to be open about everything including finances and spending.

When people are open and transparent about their intentions it brings comfort and direction in life. People can only achieve great things if they work together. Building complex machines, space-shuttles, submarines would not be possible in a totally anonymous society where everyone is hiding in a shadow looking only to satisfy self-interest.

I would compare anonymous society to a dust-cloud in outer space, where it remains cold and dark. Only when the dust in the cloud starts to coalesce, it forms clusters of gravity, which eventually give birth to stars. It is the stars that give light, heat and produce a whole ton of useful stuff.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

cryptogeeknext,

If anonymity requires us to give up collaboration and interaction, then we've failed to implement it properly.

For example, just because the government can't identify a transaction to tax it, doesn't mean the parties to the transaction can't know each other.

All prosperity is created in the private sector. They can still collaborate with anonymous transactions. This will be even more so as we move to the Knowledge Age economy, where for example you don't need to know the identity of the person you are collaborating with on some digital work project (programming, 3D printer designs, marketing, etc). One day those complex physical machines you mentioned will be designed collaboratively via online interaction and anyone can print any part on a 3D printer. You want a space shuttle, okay download the designs and print the parts and assemble it.

The government doesn't create any prosperity, it only takes some from one group and redistributes it to another group, and sells debt bonds to finance any short fall.

Transparency of government doesn't solve the problem that collectives consume more than they produce, because government is forced to promise what voters want to hear regardless of available resources. The government that promises less, gets voted out to replaced by the government that promises more.

Surely Europeans love all their benefits (e.g. 35 hour work weeks, 1 month paid vacations, free health care, free schooling, free natal for mothers, guaranteed retirements, inducements to stop working by age 50 or so, etc). And their governments are bankrupt because of it and will soon implode economically with great hardship on the people.

A gorgeous super intelligent female:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8EA_1YHztE (Brave the New World)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp6C4g23uYo (so you can learn about Russia)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f5gqROO2Zc (wow)

[cryptogeeknext]

Unun,

I mostly agree with what you said.
I'm not saying that current model, where governments borrow from banks and have to pay back with interest thus getting themselves deeper and deeper into the debt blackhole, is sustainable. It is not, it needs to change.

I think historically governments represent pieces of land occupied by different cultures. It is quite different from companies and businesses that can have offices and producing facilities in many different places. People in various companies have managers and receive tasks, they usually have no say in what the company is doing and the direction it is going with. Governments, on the other hand, don't task people with anything, they only tax the gain, keep things in order and make sure that companies don't fight each other for pieces of land that they need.

So, while anonymous transactions might be normal and workable for businesses, it conflicts with the idea of having a government. I know we have bad examples of governments and the word itself starts to have a negative connotation. But I'm not so sure that a world where companies and businesses are the top players is the place we want to live in.

Governments need to be stable and self-sustainable, businesses are volatile and profit-driven.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

cryptogeeknext,

Brave the New World. You are the company, don't enslave your potential in your fear. The antithesis of risk and profit, is insured poverty and failure. You are most likely European and have been indoctrinated by the culture and school system to believe you can't prosper without the government (or unlikely very young and a recent product of Obama education system). You will soon (couple more years to go) learn that all governments are bad (it takes a while for the accumulated damage to manifest in ways you can recognize from inside the system). Governments can only interfere with the free market. The free market is optimization, because simulated annealing is nature's only known optimization method for dynamic systems where no limits on diversity are known a priori.

Without failure, there can not exist success. Without white, black can not exist. Uniform distributions have no change, thus don't exist (aren't alive). Diversity is beautiful.

Sorry to be so closed minded on this. I know you are trying to be amicable and open discussion oriented. You are intelligent and articulate. It is what you've been taught that has influenced your understanding.


Edit: the fact that many people think that government is necessary is precisely why we need anonymity, so that another person's ideas can't force me to adhere to their chosen failure mode. I will be sovereign if I can make your government impotent against me. You will then have no right to force me to be included in your preferred tax and spend master plan. I will have the power to disagree, instead of being your slave.


I will say these opinions as loud as possible, and if encourages more downvotes, much better. We need to know realistically if there is any sanity out there.


There is no limit to the damage government can do if they are not limited by technologies such as anonymity. We always had anonymity. It was here-fore known as "cash". You take away that feature of society with non-anonymous electronic money, and the government will be unchecked in power and they will murder every single person on earth.


Edit#2: the government tasks you with paying your taxes. The multi-national corporations capture the government via regulatory capture. You are squeezed. With anonymity, they can't control you with their forced slave labor tax. You then have time to work for yourself, you innovate faster than the slow moving dinosaur corporations, driving them to extinction.  Nothing in the universe is sustainable and constant. The fundamental matter of our universe is change. If you expect that, you will always chose insured failure over risky chances for success.

[franky1]

3 pages in on this topic and more pages on the other topic and the OP still has not got the point.

his anonymity worries are not bitcoin protocols problem. they are human decisions locally at those humans own computers. maybe some people want to be highly anonymous, maybe they dont.

bitcoin is not suppose to be a monetary system where people need to download 3 different programs, and lease a different building every 2 months to avoid arrest if regulations make it a offense to mine. bitcoin has no jurisdiction and it is a free market. all bitcoin needs to care about is the most simplest way to secure the bitcoin ledger. ...

human identification should be the purpose of humans to protect and be fully aware that what they transmit by mouth, on paper or on the internet, can be used against them..

there are atleast a couple dozen ways for people to become anonymous. but thats a human choice. and should be left to human freedoms to choose, and not to bloat bitcoin protocol in such a way it can reduce bitcoins base purpose, reduce the security of the ledger(bugs due to bloated code) or increase the resistance to access of bitcoins by having bloated software people need to download/configure.

in short: OP if you dont like bitcoins.. go play with darkcoins, and if EVERYONE wanted it, everyone would be using darkcoins and thus darkcoin would be the new leader.(or some other altcoin that is bloated with supposed 'anonymity' protections)

as for the decentralization stuff. i hope by now you have realized that decentralization has not been broken, and i can atleast see that you have edited the title of the other topic, so you are atleast moving slowly to see this.

now lets move onto centralization
it is a human preference to want to be centralized in regards to pools. bitcoin has not forced it... people have due to greed!.
bitcoins decentralization bases still exists and if people choose to they can EASILY decentralize their mining farm warehouses to help increase the physical security of their human body from being arrested, if regulations made mining an arrestable offense.

but thats all about human decision, human laws, and human jurisdictions, which are not applicable to the bitcoin protocol.

all bitcoin should be doing is concentrating on securing the ledger.... end of..
what people choose to do with those funds, what identifiable information people choose to give away is their choice. and no matter what extra code could be injected into any altcoin protocol to attempt to hide identity. anonymity can still collapse by people chatting to much about their real world lives. thus it makes it a fools errend,

bitcoin has never asked for people birth certificate registration numbers, never asked for social security numbers, never asked for an IP address that is registered to you the person, never asked for email or home addresses. thus any identifiable information gleamed from the blockchain, is because of humans lack of protecting themselves.

take bank notes for instance. people consider them anonymous because there is no electronic trail, it never asks for identification just to use. but because of human decision, many people will still get funds seized. again its not the fault of the bank note. but the human.

so in practice as long as a currency does what it is suppose to do(fungeability/secure value), then it does not matter what governments try to do. its upto the people to choose their own preferences on how they use it. and that's something no protocol in the world can dictate.

[jonald_fyookball]

good points Franky, but to be fair to the OP, that is what the poll is asking:
would you switch to another coin?  I voted no.

[franky1]

good points Franky, but to be fair to the OP, that is what the poll is asking:
would you switch to another coin?  I voted no.

i voted no too

[cryptogeeknext]

Unun,

Absolute freedom exists only in the way you choose to relate to things, but not in the realm of things themselves. You will always find a constraint if you want to, and you can always choose to not be happy about it, or on the contrary, choose to see how it can benefit you.

The way current governments seem evil is because they are not the top players, the banks are. What you're suggesting is a completely totalitarian utopia, because without governments big businesses will be taking their place. Big businesses will have private armies, they will own a lot of land, they will acquire media companies.

But as I mentioned in my previous post, all businesses are totalitarian in nature, people get orders from above, they get thrown out if they disobey. Competition will make sure that small companies join together to form bigger and bigger businesses to survive, until the market saturates and all the land and resources are privatized.
 
Small individual entrepreneurs will have no chance of staying afloat, and will have no freedom whatsoever. They will either be bought out to bow under the same chain of command or thrown out of their land because some private armies will come knocking their door.

If that's what anonymous transactions is going to bring, I would rather stay away.
It was nice talking to you, I have some stuff to attend, so I'm signing out for now.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

good points Franky, but to be fair to the OP, that is what the poll is asking:
would you switch to another coin?  I voted no.

i voted no too

Good riddence. You continue to post off topic nonsense. For example (and there are many more), without on chain anonymity it is impossible to have robust untraceability and unlinkability no matter what anonymity techniques you do off chain. That you don't understand this, shows you are not technically qualified to blabber (which we already proved in the thread linked from the OP), but yet you do foam at the mouth any way with lies such as "you changed the title thus you are moving closer to my position". Liar. I changed the title because I realized it was possible to achieve the same level of pool centralization we have now within the proposed anonymity paradigm. Typical ignorant politician, all you know how to do is lie and fool the constituents. You lack technical ability.

franky1 I wouldn't want an idiot like you any where near me. I am thus grateful you voted 'no'. Do I need to say it more clearly? You are a Dunning-Kruger blabber mouth dolt who lies and debates disingenuously.

The reason the dark coins have failed (if they have) is because they suck. I don't write software that sucks. We can start with the fact that they don't solve any use case (neither does Bitcoin but it did solve the delusion use case and was first). They don't make transactions faster. They have block chain bloat (Monero) or they are subject to Sybil attack on master nodes (DarkCoin).

I (as AnonyMint) have long ago stated that from a marketing perspective anonymity alone was not a sufficient use case for a crypto-currency.

What you haven't realized is that I proposed a use case that could skyrocket the demand for an anonymous coin. And it is good you failed to realize this. Carry on ignoramus. Nothing for you here.

[jonald_fyookball]

good points Franky, but to be fair to the OP, that is what the poll is asking:
would you switch to another coin?  I voted no.

i voted no too

Good riddence. You continue to post off topic nonsense. Without on chain anonymity it is impossible to have untraceability and unlinkability no matter what anonymity techniques you do off chain. That you don't understand this, shows you are not technically qualified to blabber (which we already proved in the thread linked from the OP), but yet you do foam at the mouth any way with lies such as "you changed the title thus you are moving closer to my position". Liar. I changed the title because I realized it was possible to achieve the same level of pool centralization we have now within the proposed anonymity paradigm. Typical ignorant politician, all you know how to do is lie and fool the constituents. You lack technical ability.

lmao.  i never said anything about changing the title.
dont even know what youre talking about.

i was actually somewhat defending your freedom of
expression from Franky's critcism, but all you can see is
conflict/negativity/attack...so...yeah.

Don't see what your ad hominem attacks against me
have to do with anything. 

Don't really know if your intentions are FUD or to improve
cryptocurrency, but you seem live in a world where everything is "win/lose"
whereas I prefer to see things mostly as "win/win" whenever
possible. 

Have a nice evening.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

lmao.  i never said anything about changing the title.
dont even know what youre talking about.

My prior post wasn't directed at you. You've been quite reasonable.

[jonald_fyookball]

oops lol ok

[franky1]

good points Franky, but to be fair to the OP, that is what the poll is asking:
would you switch to another coin?  I voted no.

i voted no too

Good riddence. You continue to post off topic nonsense. Without on chain anonymity it is impossible to have untraceability and unlinkability no matter what anonymity techniques you do off chain. That you don't understand this, shows you are not technically qualified to blabber (which we already proved in the thread linked from the OP), but yet you do foam at the mouth any way with lies such as "you changed the title thus you are moving closer to my position". Liar. I changed the title because I realized it was possible to achieve the same level of pool centralization we have now within the proposed anonymity paradigm. Typical ignorant politician, all you know how to do is lie and fool the constituents. You lack technical ability.

franky1 I wouldn't want an idiot like you any where near me. I am thus grateful you voted 'no'.

my words were " so you are atleast moving slowly to see this." not 'closer to my position' so thats you lying by editing my own words to suit you.
but you do admit you changed your mind, thus atleast moving slowly to see this...

secondly..
where in the blockchain does it contain your home address, or anyones home address,
where in the blockchain does it contain your real name, or anyones real name,
bla bla bla
.. answer, no where.
bitcoin is pseudonymous in the sense that it never asks for personal identifiable information

the weakest point is not the ledger, its the human. even with dark coin and other practices of altcoins. if someone was to reveal their donation address, there are ways and methods to link it together.

for instance.
if you put funds into one address, mix it around through dark coin. deposit it into coinjoin, then move it to an exchange, swap it with litecoin, move the litecoin to another exchange and swap it back again.. YOU CAN STILL GET TRACED! if the government deemed you worthy of wasting their time on.

thus bitcoin cannot and should not concentrate on anonymizing data if humans cannot even protect themselves. its a fools errend.

bitcoin just needs to protect the ledger.. that is it.. again no matter what code you can ever think of adding to the bitcoin protocol to mask any believed traceability. those that truly want to find you and your funds, WILL find a way. as such with paper wallets or cascasius coins, which are off-chain(no logs), no protocol(passed hand-to-hand), no traceability, etc.. deemed as the perfect anonymous way to use bitcoins.. yet how many people have bank notes, gold coins and other physical assets seized.

yet,

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

What you're suggesting is a completely totalitarian utopia, because without governments big businesses will be taking their place. Big businesses will have private armies, they will own a lot of land, they will acquire media companies.

But as I mentioned in my previous post, all businesses are totalitarian in nature, people get orders from above, they get thrown out if they disobey. Competition will make sure that small companies join together to form bigger and bigger businesses to survive, until the market saturates and all the land and resources are privatized.
 
Small individual entrepreneurs will have no chance of staying afloat, and will have no freedom whatsoever. They will either be bought out to bow under the same chain of command or thrown out of their land because some private armies will come knocking their door.

Totally false and opposite of reality.

You don't understand the Knowledge Age.

Your mind is still suck in the worthless dinosaur paradigm of the resource scarcity Industrial Age.

[jonald_fyookball]

even if Bitcoin could become totally anonymous, not even sure that's a good strategy.
OP seems concerened about governments etc... total anonymity would much more
confrontational than the partial anonymity...I say, let the regulators regulate
the exchanges with KYC,AML, etc... while Bitcoin grows toward adoption.
Maybe some disagree...but if we cannot even agree on the strategy,
obviously we cannot agree on tactics.  

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

franky1,

Given your reply it is clear you don't even know the technical meaning of the terms untraceability and unlinkability. Try reading the Cryptonote whitepaper and educating yourself before you blabber more nonsense.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

jonald_fyookball,

Not confronting the government has never stopped them from extracting every ounce of power, tribute, and servitude they can get.

Partial anonymity is an oxymoron.

There has always been a war between the individual and the State. Before we had cash which was anonymous. Next if don't have anonymity because cash is replaced with non-anonymous Bitcoin, the human race is fucked.

I understand you may have a different opinion. That is why this is a poll, not a sermon.

[franky1]

cash(bank notes) are not anonymous. they are just peices of paper that never ask for human identifiable information.
neither does bitcoin......

and i have now read the cryptocoin jargon and i can already see 5 ways to trace people.

again no matter what you try to do with the protocol, it wont make it unlinkable/untraceable in regards to a governments efforts to seize your funds or your freedoms.

no matter if you swap coins between 2 different altcoins or 200, whether each altcoin promotes itself as having extra features or not. i guarantee you that there are atleast 5 ways the government can find you.

bank notes cant even protect you, and that have no traceability/linkability requirement of human identity...

cant you see the bigger picture of the reality we live in.. only humans can be the deciding factor of how,if or when thy get traced. no code, no software tool, no computer based thing will ever be 100%.

again only humans can be the deciding factor of how close to 100% you can get

[Flashman]

again only humans can be the deciding factor of how close to 100% you can get

Bin Laden scored about 99.99 out of 100.

To do that, he was offline.

[jonald_fyookball]

jonald_fyookball,

Not confronting the government has never stopped them from extracting every ounce of power, tribute, and servitude they can get.
 

Yes, and "how much they can get" varies widely across space and time.  USA is not North Korea.
Governments are made of individuals.  Étienne de La Boétie's discourse still applies.

[segvec]

No thanks, I will stay with bitcoin and will never switch up ever.
BTC is where it all started...I am here for the long-haul.

[jbreher]

Unfortunately CoinJoin is jammable otherwise we could get on chain anonymity without a fork of Bitcoin's protocol.

I've not yet had a need for externally assisted anonymity. Perhaps someday I will.

Also let's not forget UDP and FTP came before adoption of TCP/IP and HTTP respectively.

I think that merely serves to strengthen my point. These relatively ancient protocols are still in widespread use,  no?

[jbreher]

Governments, on the other hand, don't task people with anything, they only tax the gain,

Ha
Hahaha
Hahahahahahahahahahhahahah

Perhaps it is so endemic that you don't even recognize it as such. Tax is one thing, what about the time you expend in filling out the interminable forms? That's not a task? Ever stand in line to get your drivers license renewed? Military conscription? ACA for any of you Americans? E-Verify? Shovel your walk within 24 hours of snowfall? Cut your weeds or answer to the council? Provide an authority approved mailbox, and don't use it for any other purpose? Send your kids to an authority approved school or be hauled in? Blow into this tube? Clear the sediment runoff out of this creek that runs across your land? Replace your toilets with low flow models? No transacting without the appropriate licenses?

Are you freaking kidding me?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

cash(bank notes) are not anonymous.

Incorrect. There is no centralized ledger of serial numbers that tracks each exchange of cash notes.

they are just peices of paper that never ask for human identifiable information.

Correct.

neither does bitcoin......

That doesn't make Bitcoin equivalent to cash in terms of anonymity, because in Bitcoin the proof-of-ownership is not the decentralized possession of a physical evidence as it is cash, but rather being able to cryptographically sign a key which is digitally verified against a centralized public ledger (albeit decentralized consensus, there is only one, mulitiply-referenced instance of the ledger, thus centralized) which is fully traceable and linkable.

You mentioned the physical exchange of Bitcoin private keys implying these are equivalent to cash, but you failed to realize that you have no protection against a double-spend in that case because the transfer hasn't been recorded on the centralized ledger and thus the entity formerly in possession can transmit a cryptographic spend before the new entity who is possession does! Whereas cash doesn't have a double-spend threat (other than counterfeiting which affects the entire society proportionally, not disproportionately you individually), because the proof-of-ownership is being in possession of the decentralized physical note.

This is why Bitcoin can not be decentralized without anonymity.

You can blabber mouth until you are blue in the face, but you can't change that fucking reality with the drooling.

It is one of the hallmarks of Dunning-Kruger wannabes that they see some common trait between two phenomena and then proclaim the two phenomena are equivalent. As if analogy makes them smart. Sorry. No it makes it obvious they are stupid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.

Yeah I assumed everyone could understand the difference between decentralized cash and a centralized ledger. Now I realize I had to explain it.

and i have now read the cryptocoin jargon and i can already see 5 ways to trace people.

It is Cryptonote, not cryptocoin. You have no mathematical nor logical clue about what you blabber about. You can carry on with your erroneous UNtechnical, n00b assumptions.

We experts need to ignore people like you who are unwilling to learn.

[turvarya]

cryptogeeknext,

If anonymity requires us to give up collaboration and interaction, then we've failed to implement it properly.

For example, just because the government can't identify a transaction to tax it, doesn't mean the parties to the transaction can't know each other.

All prosperity is created in the private sector. They can still collaborate with anonymous transactions. This will be even more so as we move to the Knowledge Age economy, where for example you don't need to know the identity of the person you are collaborating with on some digital work project (programming, 3D printer designs, marketing, etc). One day those complex physical machines you mentioned will be designed collaboratively via online interaction and anyone can print any part on a 3D printer. You want a space shuttle, okay download the designs and print the parts and assemble it.

The government doesn't create any prosperity, it only takes some from one group and redistributes it to another group, and sells debt bonds to finance any short fall.

Transparency of government doesn't solve the problem that collectives consume more than they produce, because government is forced to promise what voters want to hear regardless of available resources. The government that promises less, gets voted out to replaced by the government that promises more.

Surely Europeans love all their benefits (e.g. 35 hour work weeks, 1 month paid vacations, free health care, free schooling, free natal for mothers, guaranteed retirements, inducements to stop working by age 50 or so, etc). And their governments are bankrupt because of it and will soon implode economically with great hardship on the people.

A gorgeous super intelligent female:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8EA_1YHztE (Brave the New World)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp6C4g23uYo (so you can learn about Russia)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f5gqROO2Zc (wow)

Are you one of the people who think, that France is Europe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#Around_the_world
That is not counting overtime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age

Can't you even check wikipedia before making a statement?
That is data, that is easy to find. Your blabber about the future, but can't even see the present.

And I already stated that the USA which hasn't a welfare system is in huge debt in your other thread, so it can't be because of the welfare system, can it?
But I am sure, you are telling me, that is all communist Obamas fault.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

jonald_fyookball,

Not confronting the government has never stopped them from extracting every ounce of power, tribute, and servitude they can get.
 

Yes, and "how much they can get" varies widely across space and time.  USA is not North Korea.
Governments are made of individuals.  Étienne de La Boétie's discourse still applies.

The white Caucasian Germany today is not (yet!) Nazi Germany of the 1940s. The white Asian China today is not (yet!) Mao's 57 million executed killing fields that it was. The brown Asian Cambodia today is not (yet!) Pol Pot's genocide that it was. The white Caucasian British never considered black Africans to be humans in the Boer Wars atrocities. The white Caucasian Americans have caused the genocide of at least a million innocents in the Middle East.

The list goes on and on...

Westerners are smug in their 80 years of uninterrupted peace domestically (propped up by central banks which never let the debt default and contract), but this is coming to an end and before 2020 they will be reunited with the horror of government (as the insane level of debt comes imploding down into economic destitution).

[cbeast]

There is always someplace nice in the world to live. Go there. 

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Are you one of the people who think, that France is Europe?

The Euro tied you all together in a horrific conundrum as I explained to you before, thus yes one can make the claim that France is Europe, but any way I don't need to make that claim in order to refute you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#Around_the_world
That is not counting overtime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age

That work week data is hilariously inaccurate and sanguinely non-informational. Not very many serious career Americans nor Japanese work only 40 hours per week and are often not paid hourly so there is no "overtime".

http://wdsm710.com/news/articles/2014/may/08/end-of-oil-boom-threatens-norways-welfare-model/

"It's a bit discouraging that the sick leave in Norway is twice the level of other plants," Havdal said. "That is to me an indication that something is not as it should be."

With per capita GDP around $100,000, the Norwegian lifestyle has become such that the work week averages less than 33 hours, one of the lowest in the world, and while unemployment is low, there is large underemployment, made possible by benefits.

The retirement age data you provided is also nonsense. Consider the following detailed information.

Even this listing of benefits by country is incomplete, because for example I have a friend from Belgium and he explained to me how he was paid by the government starting from age 50 to not work and the government discourages him from working as a painter, because he has to be registered with the government for each job and location he wants to work. Otherwise it is called "black work" and he can be fined or jailed. The government has an incentive payment program to reward the people to spy on each other and report "black work".

Can't you even check wikipedia before making a statement?

Can you even learn to do fact checking before you make feeble posts?

You are young and inexperienced. That should be accompanied with humbleness and a desire to learn from people who are older and have more experience and knowledge than you do.

Please don't waste more of my scarce time with more idiotic posts.

And I already stated that the USA which hasn't a welfare system is in huge debt in your other thread, so it can't be because of the welfare system, can it?

The USA doesn't have long-term unemployment payments, Medicare, Social Security, Obamacare, HUD assisted housing, 57 million on food stamps, since Obama $1 trillion annual budget deficits every year, etc.  

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

There is always someplace nice in the world to live. Go there.  

Not when anonymous decentralized cash is gone and all we have remaining is non-anonymous centralized block chain that tracks every thing we do.


I can't understand why any rational human would say it is not okay for us to experiment with anonymity?? Why would the detractors be against us trying to improve and provide other technologies which you can optionally use if you want to??

Are detractors that afraid of their Bitcoin investment that they can't tolerate freedom to innovate??

[turvarya]

Are you one of the people who think, that France is Europe?

The Euro tied you all together in a horrific conundrum as I explained to you before, thus yes one can make the claim that France is Europe, but any way I don't need to make that claim in order to refute you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#Around_the_world
That is not counting overtime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age

That work week data is hilariously inaccurate and sanguinely non-informational. Not very many Americans nor Japanese work only 40 hours per week.

The retirement data you provided is also nonsense. Consider the following detailed information.

Even this listing of benefits by country is incomplete, because for example I have a friend from Belgium and he explained to me how he was paid by the government starting from age 50 to not work and the government discourages him from working as a painter, because he has to be registered with the government for each job and location he wants to work. Otherwise it is called "black work" and he can be fined or jailed. The government has an incentive payment program to reward the people to spy on each other and report "black work".

Can't you even check wikipedia before making a statement?

Can you even learn to do fact checking before you make feeble posts?

You are young and inexperienced. That should be accompanied with humbleness and a desire to learn from people who are older and have more experience and knowledge than you do.

Please don't waste more of my scarce time with more idiotic posts.

And I already stated that the USA which hasn't a welfare system is in huge debt in your other thread, so it can't be because of the welfare system, can it?

The USA doesn't have long-term unemployment payments, Medicare, Social Security, Obamacare, HUD assisted housing, 57 million on food stamps, $1 trillion annual budget deficits every year since Obama, etc.  

I wrote, that it is not counting overtime and therefor is of course inaccurate. It is the minimum working hours.

And please don't tell me some fairy tales about how a friend told you about a friend yada yada, and call it life experience. I heard so many of such stories, which just lacked important details. There are so many stories in Austria which are circulation for years even thought they have been disproved since the beginning.
You took your retirement at 50 from that story? And you really thought someone would take that serious?

USA welfare system is a joke. Are you really telling me, it is the reason for the big US-debt?

Here have a graph, about how well you have done under Bush:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration#mediaviewer/File:Deficits_vs._Debt_Increases_-_2008.png

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I wrote, that it is not counting overtime and therefor is of course inaccurate. It is the minimum working hours.

And it is lying with for example the case of Belgium where people are paid to not work and discouraged from working. And it omits data on Norway, because Wikipedia doesn't want to admit it is only 33 hours. Wikipedia is often a disinformation vehicle of the powers-that-be when it comes to social issues.

And please don't tell me some fairy tales about how a friend told you about a friend yada yada,

You will not be able to refute it, because it is a fact. Belgium operates the way I have stated. There are ways to be paid for not working starting about age 50 (I know I saw the government documents and checks my friend receives) and the "black work" is very much prevented. Why don't you actually do some research so you can know what is going on in the world.

In the USA, we have long-term unemployment assistance and corrupt disability claims which achieve a similar but not as thorough result.

USA welfare system is a joke. Are you really telling me, it is the reason for the big US-debt?

$128 trillion in unfunded social welfare liabilities:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/01/17/you-think-the-deficit-is-bad-federal-unfunded-liabilities-exceed-127-trillion/

I know you Europeans think the only problem in the USA is that we are in debt because of our military. You all think we waste our deficits on the military and we don't have a glorious social welfare program as you do. Fact is Obama has been doing a good job of emulating your megadeath-directed system, as he has reduced (inflation adjusted) military budgets (which means we can't defend your ass against Russia) and still managed to run $1 trillion annual deficits with for example 57 million Americans on food stamps.

You try to argue that your social welfare systems are not bankrupting you, hahahaha. DELUSIONAL.

STFU you fool.

[turvarya]

I wrote, that it is not counting overtime and therefor is of course inaccurate. It is the minimum working hours.

And it is lying with for example the case of Belgium where people are paid to not work and discouraged from working. And it omits data on Norway, because Wikipedia doesn't want to admit it is only 33 hours. Wikipedia is often a disinformation vehicle of the powers-that-be when it comes to social issues.

And please don't tell me some fairy tales about how a friend told you about a friend yada yada,

You will not be able to refute it, because it is a fact. Belgium operates the way I have stated. There are ways to be paid for not working starting about age 50 (I know I saw the government documents and checks my friend receives) and the "black work" is very much prevented. Why don't you actually do some research so you can know what is going on in the world.

USA welfare system is a joke. Are you really telling me, it is the reason for the big US-debt?

$128 trillion in unfunded social welfare liabilities:

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/01/17/you-think-the-deficit-is-bad-federal-unfunded-liabilities-exceed-127-trillion/

I know you Europeans think the only problem in the USA is that we are in debt because of our military. You all think we waste our deficits on the military and we don't have a glorious social welfare program as you do. Fact is Obama has been doing a good job of emulating your megadeath-directed system, as he has reduced military budgets (which means we can't defend your ass against Russia) and still managed to run $1 trillion annual deficits with for example 57 million Americans on food stamps.

You try to argue that your social welfare systems are not bankrupting you, hahahaha. DELUSIONAL.

STFU you fool.

Oh, the "powers-that-be" you always like to talk about, you mean Illuminati?

It is so nice, that everything you say is just fact but you don't provide any evidence.
Show me some evidence that people in Europa are working 35 hours a week on average. Show me some evidence that people in Europe retire with 50 on average?
You saw some documents from a friend is all the evidence you got? Oh, the "powers-that-be" must really be powerful, if they can prevent you from providing some more convenient evidence.

You can't even see, that the whole US-government was fucked up, long before Obama. How brainwashed can a person be?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I kindly request that the same detractors please stop posting for a while so we can hear from some others. You've had your opportunity to make your points. You don't get to continue ad nausea. If you don't comply, I will close the thread, because I don't want to waste all my time here in this thread arguing with the same 3 guys. This thread is a marketing survey and I need to hear from as many people as possible.

This is obnoxious, tiring, and wasteful.

If you need to rebutt, please try to make it two or three sentences, then I will let you have the last word on our debate.

Oh, the "powers-that-be" you always like to talk about, you mean Illuminati?

It is so nice, that everything you say is just fact but you don't provide any evidence.

Compare the true story:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=365141.msg9666280#msg9666280

To the Wikipedia version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Martin_A._Armstrong&oldid=630836560

Show me some evidence that people in Europa are working 35 hours a week on average. Show me some evidence that people in Europe retire with 50 on average?

The fact is that Europe's debts exceed its income by a horrific margin. So Europeans aren't working enough and are taking too many benefits.

Arguing over pedantic semantics about data won't change that undeniable fact.

You can't even see, that the whole US-government was fucked up, long before Obama. How brainwashed can a person be?

I never claimed the USA wasn't fucked up before Obama. Socialism has been growing in the USA since at least FDR's New Deal in the 1930s.

Europe is also royally fucked up too by socialism. I know you think it is all the hydra of the US military killing machine that is the main problem in the world today. Europeans have been indoctrinated to believe that and ignore their own horrific bankruptcy.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Unfortunately CoinJoin is jammable otherwise we could get on chain anonymity without a fork of Bitcoin's protocol.

I've not yet had a need for externally assisted anonymity. Perhaps someday I will.

The governments haven't really started confiscating yet but they are planning to[1][2].

Also let's not forget UDP and FTP came before adoption of TCP/IP and HTTP respectively.

I think that merely serves to strengthen my point. These relatively ancient protocols are still in widespread use,  no?

My mea culpa upthread was to acknowledge that Bitcoin has virtues and will continue.

I am not positing a total annihilation of Bitcoin by an anonymous protocol coin. Rather in this poll I am asking if there is any interest in such experimentation.

They would not want to move very fast on regulation, because they want all of you to remain deluded for as long as possible, and so will act only when it is time to take all your wealth (when the shit hits the fan global collapse ensues[1]).

[1]	http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/12/01/the-government-know-sovereign-debt-defaults-are-coming/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/12/01/changing-bankruptcy-laws-for-banks/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/12/02/can-money-just-be-devalued-creating-deflation-as-a-solution/

[2]

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/01/25/electric-money-will-eliminate-bank-runs/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/12/04/electronic-money-taxes/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2012/06/27/reality-check/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/03/17/the-downside-of-electronic-money-what-is-left/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/11/17/negative-interest-rates-eliminating-cash-the-summers-solution/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/14/the-secret-agenda/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/01/24/electronic-money-coming-everywhere-sooner-than-you-think/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/06/18/g8-going-to-hunt-down-all-capital/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/02/07/g20-to-cordinate-to-hunt-down-taxes-worldwide/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/09/07/g20-agrees-on-worldwide-access-to-all-information-on-the-wealth-of-the-citizens-for-global-taxation/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/11/16/g20-to-change-status-of-bank-accounts-investments/ http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/11/16/the-truth-about-g20-banking-directive/

[turvarya]

I kindly request that the same detractors please stop posting for a while so we can hear from some others. You've had your opportunity to make your points. You don't get to continue ad nausea. If you don't comply, I will close the thread, because I don't want to waste all my time here in this thread arguing with the same 3 guys. This thread is a marketing survey and I need to hear from as many people as possible.

This is obnoxious, tiring, and wasteful.

If you need to rebutt, please try to make it two or three sentences, then I will let you have the last word on our debate.

Oh, the "powers-that-be" you always like to talk about, you mean Illuminati?

It is so nice, that everything you say is just fact but you don't provide any evidence.

Compare the true story:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=365141.msg9666280#msg9666280

To the Wikipedia version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Martin_A._Armstrong&oldid=630836560

Show me some evidence that people in Europa are working 35 hours a week on average. Show me some evidence that people in Europe retire with 50 on average?

The fact is that Europe's debts exceed its income by a horrific margin. So Europeans aren't working enough and are taking too many benefits.

Arguing over pedantic semantics about data won't change that undeniable fact.

You can't even see, that the whole US-government was fucked up, long before Obama. How brainwashed can a person be?

I never claimed the USA wasn't fucked up before Obama. Socialism has been growing in the USA since at least FDR's New Deal in the 1930s.

Europe is also royally fucked up too by socialism. I know you think it is all the hydra of the US military killing machine that is the main problem in the world today. Europeans have been indoctrinated to believe that and ignore their own horrific bankruptcy.

I don't really want to defend Wikipedia, it has enough flaws. But when you say, Wikipedia is wrong in a specific case, you should at least provide some source. I really hate how people always say, that some information somewhere is wrong, but their only source is a fairy tale.

The problem with governments is, that they spend more than they earn. I think most people would agree with that, but blaming it on socialism is just wrong. In Austria we have to pay some billions for a bank that got bankrupt, because some politicians made some shady deals with it. That is the most recent event, that really hurts our national debts. That example has nothing to do, with socialism, not the slightest.
The subprime mortgage crisis which hit most countries in the world pretty hard, had nothing to do with socialism.
The tax cuts George W. Bush made which increased the US-debt significantly had nothing to do with socialism.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I will reply one more time. You are really naive and uninformed.

Note Austria may be one of the more conservative and better countries in Europe.

That example has nothing to do, with socialism, not the slightest.
The subprime mortgage crisis which hit most countries in the world pretty hard, had nothing to do with socialism.
The tax cuts George W. Bush made which increased the US-debt significantly had nothing to do with socialism.

Oh little grasshopper, I can never teach you to understand political economics. You will always rather choose to believe they are unrelated events, because you love social welfare. That link explains that promising the constituents benefits is intimately connected to regulatory capture of the government. Until you understand that, you will remain ignorant of how the world operates. You choose not to view the model of political economics systemically and instead want to cordone off events as uncorrelated, because you are irrational and love social welfare.

Btw, the guy who wrote that is Eric S. Raymond, the progenitor of the term "open source" in his famous The Art of Unix and The Cathedral and the Bazaar books. His IQ is self-reported to be in the 150 - 170 range. Read his blog for a while and you will conclude he is that smart.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

Philippines which has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The USA in the 1800s and early 1900s being the fastest growing and most personal freedom economy in the world at that time (before it became laden with government spending on welfare starting with FDR's New Deal).



In fact, government spending as a percent of GDP is roughly inversely correlated with GDP growth rate over long enough timescales.

TADA.  

[cbeast]

There is always someplace nice in the world to live. Go there.  

Not when anonymous decentralized cash is gone and all we have remaining is non-anonymous centralized block chain that tracks every thing we do.


I can't understand why any rational human would say it is not okay for us to experiment with anonymity?? Why would the detractors be against us trying to improve and provide other technologies which you can optionally use if you want to??

Are detractors that afraid of their Bitcoin investment that they can't tolerate freedom to innovate??

So? You think they will implant our brains with zombie chips and turn us into automatons? I was against anonymity at first, but I reversed my position in light of the surveillance technologies. Anonymous money will be the only privacy we'll have left. Cameras are the technology to fear, not money.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Any reader who can't comprehend the following, thus does not understand how democracy really operates.

esr on 2009-05-27 at 19:21:38 said:

>How depressing. This makes it sound as though this is an unsolvable, inherent aspect of democracy.

Yeah, well, welcome to reason 43b why I’m an anarchist.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=984

Some Iron Laws of Political Economics
Posted on 2009-05-27 by Eric Raymond

Mancur Olson, in his book The Logic Of Collective Action, highlighted the central problem of politics in a democracy. The benefits of political market-rigging can be concentrated to benefit particular special interest groups, while the costs (in higher taxes, slower economic growth, and many other second-order effects) are diffused through the entire population.

The result is a scramble in which individual interest groups perpetually seek to corner more and more rent from the system, while the incremental costs of this behavior rise slowly enough that it is difficult to sustain broad political opposition to the overall system of political privilege and rent-seeking.

When you add to Olson’s model the fact that the professional political class is itself a special interest group which collects concentrated benefits from encouraging rent-seeking behavior in others, it becomes clear why, as Olson pointed out, “good government” is a public good subject to exactly the same underproduction problems as other public goods. Furthermore, as democracies evolve, government activity that might produce “good government” tends to be crowded out by coalitions of rent-seekers and their tribunes.

This general model has consequences. Here are some of them:

There is no form of market failure, however egregious, which is not eventually made worse by the political interventions intended to fix it.

Political demand for income transfers, entitlements and subsidies always rises faster than the economy can generate increased wealth to supply them from.

Although some taxes genuinely begin by being levied for the benefit of the taxed, all taxes end up being levied for the benefit of the political class.

The equilibrium state of a regulatory agency is to have been captured by the entities it is supposed to regulate.

The probability that the actual effects of a political agency or program will bear any relationship to the intentions under which it was designed falls exponentially with the amount of time since it was founded.

The only important class distinction in any advanced democracy is between those who are net producers of tax revenues and those who are net consumers of them.

Corruption is not the exceptional condition of politics, it is the normal one.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I need to take a break from posting in this thread.

I haven't gotten any work done since we started these debates  few days ago.

The poll indicates 25 - 30% of the readers are interested in an anonymity improvement.

Thus I already accomplished what I needed to do in order to hopefully motivate that outcome.

Feel free to post away in this thread. I might come back after some days and provide any summary response I think would be useful. Otherwise take all my prior posts to be a statement of my position on all future rebuttals.

[turvarya]

I now get your fundamental error in thinking:
You think every government spending is welfare.

I know the concept which is described by Eric S Raymond. Believe it or not, but I actually studied some Economics(not the major part of my studies).

Looking at the USA in the early 1900s and comparing it to today and all you can see in the history in between is that the USA got to much socialistic, is really the kind of ignorance, which makes your argument so implausible. Seriously, how many wars have you fought in the mean time? How many laws have you passed that had nothing to do with socialism are even the opposite?
I don't know much about the Philippines(I was there 3 years ago for some days but it didn't seem much developed to me), maybe I will look into it, later.

[bitllionaire]

it is clear that some improvementes are needed, but you can't change a billion dollars netword without taking the appropiate time to make sure the changes and evaluate the risks

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I am back because I happen to read this from the guy who created libbitcoin, Electrum, etc:

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/17005/bitcoin-technology-worth-nothing-interview-dark-wallet-front-man-amir-taaki/

turvarya,

You still don't comprehend what Eric S Raymond wrote, because you are still trying to assert that certain rent-seekers (e.g. the military industrial complex) are excluded from the model of regulatory capture that Eric S Raymond laid out. He wrote that the costs of the capture accrue on society too slowly for the constituents to recognize and rise up against politically. He also failed to mention that the constituents have many competing political wants and thus are easily divided-and-conquered (gay marriage, social welfare debates, level of military spending, etc) by the politicians in cahoots with the rent-seekers. So the family of military soldiers wants more military spending, community with a military base economy wants more military spending, old person wants more pensions, the younger person more education subsidies, the pregnant person more free maternal subsidies, feminists want more subsidies for women, etc.. You all fighting over finite resources that have been collectivized (ahem stolen a.k.a. expropriated) via tax collection. The only way to make you all happy is promise you all more than exists and borrow via debt. So then you think the regulatory capture of the government by banks is not caused by democracy! Amazing myopia you have. And so what happens when the bubble pops and the promises are broken? WAR. GENOCIDE. MEGADEATH. It is coming.

Read Amir. You are just a slave to the system (a.k.a. "the man").

P.S. you don't have the IQ to find a fault in my thought process. I am thinking on an unifying abstraction level while you are fiddling with what you think are uncorrelated cases or categories. Seriously man, the audacity you have. You don't recognize your intellectual limitations.

[Shrikez]

Anonymint...I like reading you, you have provided me with a lot of insight and new ideas and every time you're back from a hiatus I'm happy there will be interesting stuff to read.

No need to be such a snobby cunt to people though, don't you think? This is no way to capture an audience, a feat you're obviously interested in else you wouldn't post.

Back to lurking.

[jonald_fyookball]

P.S. you don't have the IQ to find a fault in my thought process. I am thinking on an unifying abstraction level while you are fiddling with what you think are uncorrelated cases or categories. Seriously man, the audacity you have. You don't recognize your intellectual limitations.

sorry but I just had to LOL at this....  I don't often get to see
this kind of overt intellectual pomposity: "I AM the smartest guy in the room."

 

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I now get your fundamental error in thinking:

Who is the snobby cunt? The Dunning-Kruger idiot who asserts that I have a fundamental error in my thinking.

P.S. you don't have the IQ to find a fault in my thought process. I am thinking on an unifying abstraction level while you are fiddling with what you think are uncorrelated cases or categories. Seriously man, the audacity you have. You don't recognize your intellectual limitations.

sorry but I just had to LOL at this....  I don't often get to see
this kind of overt intellectual pomposity: "I AM the smartest guy in the room."

 

Most very intelligent people simply don't talk to the Dunning-Kruger idiots and don't try to interface with them, because it is so tiring and frustrating.

Do you see that core developer gmaxell almost never posts in this n00bs sub-forums. He is not going to waste his time talking to people who can't comprehend and require him to explain the same damn thing 100 different ways.

So if I am gone again, you know why.

[turvarya]

I am back because I happen to read this from the guy who created libbitcoin, Electrum, etc:

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/17005/bitcoin-technology-worth-nothing-interview-dark-wallet-front-man-amir-taaki/

turvarya,

You still don't comprehend what Eric S Raymond wrote, because you are still trying to assert that certain rent-seekers (e.g. the military industrial complex) are excluded from the model of regulatory capture that Eric S Raymond laid out. He wrote that the costs of the capture accrue on society too slowly for the constituents to recognize and rise up against politically. He also failed to mention that the constituents have many competing political wants and thus are easily divided-and-conquered (gay marriage, social welfare debates, level of military spending, etc) by the politicians in cahoots with the rent-seekers. So the family of military soldiers wants more military spending, community with a military base economy wants more military spending, old person wants more pensions, the younger person more education subsidies, the pregnant person more free maternal subsidies, feminists want more subsidies for women, etc.. You all fighting over finite resources that have been collectivized (ahem stolen a.k.a. expropriated) via tax collection. The only way to make you all happy is promise you all more than exists and borrow via debt. So then you think the regulatory capture of the government by banks is not caused by democracy! Amazing myopia you have. And so what happens when the bubble pops and the promises are broken? WAR. GENOCIDE. MEGADEATH. It is coming.

Read Amir. You are just a slave to the system (a.k.a. "the man").

P.S. you don't have the IQ to find a fault in my thought process. I am thinking on an unifying abstraction level while you are fiddling with what you think are uncorrelated cases or categories. Seriously man, the audacity you have. You don't recognize your intellectual limitations.

Don't tell anybody how high your IQ is, when most people just see you for the delusional idiot you are.

I never said Eric S Raymond is wrong. I said you are.

So then you think the regulatory capture of the government by banks is not caused by democracy

I didn't even mention democracy. I mentioned things, that were not caused by socialism. Are you really too stupid to distinguish between democracy and socialism?
In Austria we learn that pretty early in school. Seems like the US-education system failed you again.

[jonald_fyookball]

I now get your fundamental error in thinking:

Who is the snobby cunt? The Dunning-Kruger idiot who asserts that I a fundamental error in my thinking.

P.S. you don't have the IQ to find a fault in my thought process. I am thinking on an unifying abstraction level while you are fiddling with what you think are uncorrelated cases or categories. Seriously man, the audacity you have. You don't recognize your intellectual limitations.

sorry but I just had to LOL at this....  I don't often get to see
this kind of overt intellectual pomposity: "I AM the smartest guy in the room."

 

Most very intelligent people simply don't talk to the Dunning-Kruger idiots and don't try to interface with them, because it is so tiring and frustrating.

Do you see that core developer gmaxell almost never posts in this n00bs sub-forums. He is not going to waste his time talking to people who can't comprehend and require him to explain the same damn thing 100 different ways.

So if I am gone again, you know why.

yeah....true....now don't bite my head off, but what's also interesting is Gmaxwell doesn't respond to you either anymore.  Seems few "serious" people do.  Why do you suppose that is?  

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Are you really too stupid to distinguish between democracy and socialism?

You are too stupid to understand the model Eric (and myself and anarchists have) explained is that democracy and socialism (and any form of State collectivism) are the same phenomenon.

P.S. Readers this is an example why you never argue with an idiot. They are too stupid to know when they are wrong, and is accompanied by a banal sense of high pride:

• "we Europeans are superior because we are pacifists"
• "we Europeans are more sophisticated and educated"
• "we Europeans have a social model that is more just"
• "Americans are unsophisticated, war hungry gorilla brutes, without a fully developed social, justice, and educational system"

I know damn well their attitude because I have encountered some such banal Europeans here in the Philippines. I have also met a few very intelligent Europeans via this forum, and they are very astute. One of them even informed me how to get instant residency in any country if I want to renounce my USA citizenship on the spot.

yeah....true....now don't bite my head off, but what's also interesting is Gmaxwell doesn't respond to you either anymore.  Seems few "serious" people do.  Why do you suppose that is?  

Let's not stir up more pointless conflict where we don't need to.

I am quite comfortable with the projects I have to work on and their potential outcomes. I don't need the approval of anyone. I just need to ascertain the market dynamics which is why I created a poll.

[allthingsluxury]

Of course, there is always room for improvement and I believe bitcoin is going to only grow that much more in the future. It is here for the long term.

[cryptogeeknext]

Governments, on the other hand, don't task people with anything, they only tax the gain,

Ha
Hahaha
Hahahahahahahahahahhahahah

Perhaps it is so endemic that you don't even recognize it as such. Tax is one thing, what about the time you expend in filling out the interminable forms? That's not a task? Ever stand in line to get your drivers license renewed? Military conscription? ACA for any of you Americans? E-Verify? Shovel your walk within 24 hours of snowfall? Cut your weeds or answer to the council? Provide an authority approved mailbox, and don't use it for any other purpose? Send your kids to an authority approved school or be hauled in? Blow into this tube? Clear the sediment runoff out of this creek that runs across your land? Replace your toilets with low flow models? No transacting without the appropriate licenses?

Are you freaking kidding me?

Not all governments are the same.
What I meant in the quote above is "on daily basis".
Sure, you need to do things time to time to keep things in order.

If you look up my dust-cloud comparison a few posts above, you will understand that two forces play against each other within a star. One is a gravitational confinement field (government) that keeps the star from falling apart, another is a termo-nuclear reaction (businesses) that generates energy and useful by products. If one or the other is too strong the star will either collapse in on itself or explode into outer space.

We need both governments and businesses to turn our societies into nice and stable shining stars. Both parts of the equation need to have clear intentions, be transparent and accountable for their actions. Having an open public ledger seems to be the easiest way to achieve this.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

jbreher, don't even bother trying to debate with this younger generation of Europeans. They've been fully brained washed by the indoctrination over there. Watch Europe crash and burn. My popcorn is ready (but my anonymous coin not yet).

[LiteCoinGuy]

Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.

correct. end of discussion.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

jonald_fyookball,

Gmaxwell still talks to me presciently.

Ugh. Cryptocurrency. or at least Bitcoin at a minimum—  is _NOT_ about "democratic consensus" cue the trope about democracy is wolves voting to have the sheep for supper. Democratic consensus is a terrible way to handle things, but sometimes its the best available of all possible terrible ways to handle things, but that doesn't make it good. Ideally people could operate on a purely consensual basis and never be coerced just because someone amassed superior numbers.  "Democracy" is particularly intolerable, however, when voting power isn't tied to people-with-shared-interests but is instead tied to spending (as it must be in a POW blockchain consensus).

Our two young Europeans are now up against more than one man with a respected level of intellect.

Btw, I wasn't searching for that with Google. I was reading about the possibility of using SNARKs for block chain contracts and was surprised to read that from gmaxwell.

Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.

correct. end of discussion.

Correct you don't, but you didn't prove that nobody needs another alt-coin. I see 25 - 30% say they are at least to some degree interested to see these improvements. And I've confirmed from my supporters, they did not vote in the poll.

[Beliathon]

Altcoins will never be meaningfully more efficient than Bitcoin, because they are built on the same technological foundation.

I know you are referring to efficiency of capital not being misallocated, i.e. the efficiency gained from decentralization.

Therefor I assert if Bitcoin falls to government regulation as I allege will likely happen, it is no longer as efficient as the decentralization ideal.

Why do you believe Bitcoin would "fall" to government regulation (what?), when torrent technology has already proved government regulation impotent against a decentralized target?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Why do you believe Bitcoin would "fall" to government regulation (what?), when torrent technology has already proved government regulation impotent against a decentralized target?

You have a category error (i.e. the analogy doesn't apply). Refer to the linked posts in the OP for the detailed explanation. It appears to be a common mistake. Some guy compared BTC to marijuana growing and another guy to piratebay. Upthread franky1 erroneously compared BTC to cash. And now you to bittorrent. When you can identify a centralized (i.e. single instance albeit multiply-referenced) ledger (albeit decentralized consensus) in any of those, let me know.

Computer science requires understanding of very obscure, pendantic details.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.

correct. end of discussion.

One of the challenges of implementing the improvements referenced in the OP, and also a feature to provide serious competition to Bitcoin, is to offer instant transactions that can't be double-spent. When I say instant, I mean you send the transaction to the other party and what you have sent is already an absolute assurance, no need to verify against the block chain.

Perhaps most people think this can't be done with a decentralized consensus block chain. I think otherwise. Any ideas?

Note I think this idea could be incorporated into Bitcoin, and maybe not even require a hard fork. I would need to study Bitcoin's scripting capabilities in more detail to determine for sure. But Bitcoin (and Monero, Litecoin) will retain a disadvantage in scaling that afaics will not be easy for it (them) to fix.

Several weeks ago I stated (in the Monero BCX fiasco thread) I had solved the selfish mining attack and had written down the math. Recently I decided to share that insight.

[cryptogeeknext]

jbreher, don't even bother trying to debate with this younger generation of Europeans. They've been fully brained washed by the indoctrination over there. Watch Europe crash and burn. My popcorn is ready (but my anonymous coin not yet).

It's nice to be perceived young (to some degree I still am), thanks!

I understand your frustration with the government, but the truth is simple - bigger stars need stronger confinement field, they often shine the brightest though.

Anonymity might be a good way out for those feeling that the confinement field is about to crunch under its own weight, though a new type of fuel (Bitcoin) might give it a chance to rebalance and reevaluate the course it is headed.

[QuestionAuthority]

Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.

correct. end of discussion.

One of the challenges of implementing the improvements referenced in the OP, and also a feature to provide serious competition to Bitcoin, is to offer instant transactions that can't be double-spent. When I say instant, I mean you send the transaction to the other party and what you have sent is already an absolute assurance, no need to verify against the block chain.

Perhaps most people think this can't be done with a decentralized consensus block chain. I think otherwise. Any ideas?

Note I think this idea could be incorporated into Bitcoin, and maybe not even require a hard fork. I would need to study Bitcoin's scripting capabilities in more detail to determine for sure. But Bitcoin (and Monero, Litecoin) will retain a disadvantage in scaling that afaics will not be easy for it (them) to fix.

Several weeks ago I stated (in the Monero BCX fiasco thread) I had solved the selfish mining attack and had written down the math. Recently I decided to share that insight.

It's confusing to me that everyone hates any crypto other than Bitcoin. The claim is that those are just pump & dump for profit but isn't that what many people are pushing Bitcoin for too? Early Bitcoin adopters are looking for the big payday when the value skyrockets. Somehow that's more honorable with Bitcoin?

[Flashman]

Somehow that's more honorable with Bitcoin?

Exactly, it's the difference between a duel and a street brawl

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Why do you believe Bitcoin would "fall" to government regulation (what?), when torrent technology has already proved government regulation impotent against a decentralized target?

You have a category error (i.e. the analogy doesn't apply). Refer to the linked posts in the OP for the detailed explanation. It appears to be a common mistake. Some guy compared BTC to marijuana growing and another guy to piratebay. Upthread franky1 erroneously compared BTC to cash. And now you to bittorrent. When you can identify a centralized (i.e. single instance albeit multiply-referenced) ledger (albeit decentralized consensus) in any of those, let me know.

Computer science requires understanding of very obscure, pendantic details.

I see gmaxwell keeps making my points presciently (the bolded statements are equivalent):

it's really much more than just a money system.  There's people on the forums making all sorts of suggestions: "Lets make a Distributed Wikipedia!".

That one amuses me, one of  biggest reason for my interest and eventual involvement in Bitcoin is that almost a decade ago some people argued that the Wikimedia Foundation shouldn't be formed because Wikipedia should just be decentralized, not only claiming it was possible but that it could be trivially implemented. I wrote one of my trademark rants on the physical impossibility of true decenteralized consensus, as consensus is a necessary component of replicating the functionality of a singular resource as opposed to a grab-bag of assorted repositories. Bitcoin challenged that view but didn't change was was possible— my views weren't overtly wrong, Bitcoin just works under different assumptions which I hadn't considered at the time... primarily the ability to use hashcash and in-system compensation to create an incentive alignment and to force participants to make exclusive choices.  It's far from clear, and— in fact, now seems unlikely— that these different assumptions are anywhere near as strong as they are for other applications as they are for Bitcoin, and the verdict is even still out on if Bitcoin's properties are even good enough for Bitcoin in the long run.

A lot of the things I've heard that crowd talk about don't make a lot of sense to me... e.g. implementing a freestanding rent extractor which does nothing you couldn't just do locally— which is a pretty common event because in that execution environment the agent can't keep any secrets from the public. It's the sort of argument that sounds good until someone not seeped in the excitement steps up and says "The Russians used a pencil.". Some of it would require the network to perform IO which you can't safely do in a consensus environment (except via trusted parties— and in which case you could just have them compute for you too, and thus keep your program private), and even the things which aren't impossible run into the pointlessness problems that some of the verifiable computing stuff does: e.g. you can ask something else to compute for you, but with millionfold overhead and a loss of privacy that makes it pretty pointless to do in almost any conceivable circumstance.

[jonald_fyookball]

Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.

correct. end of discussion.

One of the challenges of implementing the improvements referenced in the OP, and also a feature to provide serious competition to Bitcoin, is to offer instant transactions that can't be double-spent. When I say instant, I mean you send the transaction to the other party and what you have sent is already an absolute assurance, no need to verify against the block chain.

Perhaps most people think this can't be done with a decentralized consensus block chain. I think otherwise. Any ideas?

Note I think this idea could be incorporated into Bitcoin, and maybe not even require a hard fork. I would need to study Bitcoin's scripting capabilities in more detail to determine for sure. But Bitcoin (and Monero, Litecoin) will retain a disadvantage in scaling that afaics will not be easy for it (them) to fix.

Several weeks ago I stated (in the Monero BCX fiasco thread) I had solved the selfish mining attack and had written down the math. Recently I decided to share that insight.

It's confusing to me that everyone hates any crypto other than Bitcoin. The claim is that those are just pump & dump for profit but isn't that what many people are pushing Bitcoin for too? Early Bitcoin adopters are looking for the big payday when the value skyrockets. Somehow that's more honorable with Bitcoin?

Its not a question of honor, at least for me.

Anyone can vote with their pocketbook.  I vote for Bitcoin.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I understand your frustration with the government, but the truth is simple - bigger stars need stronger confinement field, they often shine the brightest though.

Anonymity might be a good way out for those feeling that the confinement field is about to crunch under its own weight, though a new type of fuel (Bitcoin) might give it a chance to rebalance and reevaluate the course it is headed.

I don't have frustration with the government. I will win or die. I am frustrated with readers who don't read and study.

As I said, you still haven't studied the Knowledge Age links I provided upthread, so that is why you are still far in left field and making statements about dinosaurs.

The large monoliths are going away. Poof be gone!

Anonymity is how we make it so, by enabling the knowledge workers to take over and not be extorted by the govt+corps.

The only question is do you get crushed while they try to fight their decline. Without anonymity you will be stomped.

It is time to decide which side of the fence you want to be on, with the dinasours (the old world model of State+Corporations+Democracy+Resource Scarcity) or the fledgling Knowledge Age (knowledge is capital, it can't be financed, it can't be sold, it is inherently individual and decentralized). Read the "Economic Devastation" thread. Read the essays I wrote which are linked at the top of that thread. Read the "Dark Enlightment" thread.

I don't have time to explain it all over again. I have written it all several times over on these forums. You have the option to read the links I provided and bring yourself up-to-speed, otherwise we are just talking past each other.

It's nice to be perceived young (to some degree I still am), thanks!

Compliment intended.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Anyone can vote with their pocketbook.  I vote for Bitcoin.

Every person is entitled to watch their pocketbook rise or decline in relative value. I fully acknowledge you must decide based on your knowledge. I try to impart knowledge (as well learn from others) but I can't force it down anyone's throat.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

My idea on how to do the programmable block chain.

Hope it is not too late to get some feedback on my thoughts.

My take away from the upthread is consistent with my own analysis—centralization of pools is probably positively correlated with required computation (above some threshold).

The Ethereum applications seem important and reasonably decentralized.

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper#applications

So pray tell me why it isn't superior to have merge-mined chains for new contract types (as we think of them) and optimize those chains rather than a generalized VM on one block chain?

Advantages are:

• Centralization is granular per contract type.
• Mining participation is optional, thus chains can compete instead of the swallowing the universe entropy(state) = O(∞)
• Failure modes are more contained.
• Incremental development and optimization.
• Market-based instead of top-down metrics (e.g. Ethereum's gas fees) as chains compete to reward miners.

Etc.

Maybe we need to make the process of starting and publicizing a merge-mined chain easier? Do we need an app store of merged-mined chains?

P.S. Apologies in advance if one post can evaporate a $36 million market cap.

Edit: even if you did want a generalized VM for those contracts which don't have enough economy-of-scale to be their own merge-mined chain, you could make that chain merged-mined. You could make variants and let the market decide which one is the winner. Perhaps Ethereum should do this, if they are not satisfied with the Bitcoin mining structure.

[turvarya]

Are you really too stupid to distinguish between democracy and socialism?

You are too stupid to understand the model Eric (and myself and anarchists have) explained is that democracy and socialism (and any form of State collectivism) are the same phenomenon.

I am really amazed by all the flaws in your logic.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

Philippines which has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The USA in the 1800s and early 1900s being the fastest growing and most personal freedom economy in the world at that time (before it became laden with government spending on welfare starting with FDR's New Deal).

Both Philippines  and USA  in the 1800s and early 1900s are/were democracies.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Are you really too stupid to distinguish between democracy and socialism?

You are too stupid to understand the model Eric (and myself and anarchists have) explained is that democracy and socialism (and any form of State collectivism) are the same phenomenon.

I am really amazed by all the flaws in your logic.

Of course because all those flaws are inside your head.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

Philippines which has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The USA in the 1800s and early 1900s being the fastest growing and most personal freedom economy in the world at that time (before it became laden with government spending on welfare starting with FDR's New Deal).

Both Philippines  and USA  in the 1800s and early 1900s are/were democracies.

Your reading comprehension is so poor you didn't realize I was referring to large government expressed as share of GDP as I mentioned.

Both the Philippines now (or before Aquino administration, which instituted government subsidized national health insurance crap) and the USA before FDR's New Deal, had very low government as a share of GDP.

The citizens had to practice self-responsibility. What an amazing concept. Duh.

[turvarya]

Are you really too stupid to distinguish between democracy and socialism?

You are too stupid to understand the model Eric (and myself and anarchists have) explained is that democracy and socialism (and any form of State collectivism) are the same phenomenon.

I am really amazed by all the flaws in your logic.

Of course because all those flaws are inside your head.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

Philippines which has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The USA in the 1800s and early 1900s being the fastest growing and most personal freedom economy in the world at that time (before it became laden with government spending on welfare starting with FDR's New Deal).

Both Philippines  and USA  in the 1800s and early 1900s are/were democracies.

Your reading comprehension is so poor you didn't realize I was referring to large government expressed as share of GDP as I mentioned.

Both the Philippines now (or before Aquino administration, which instituted government subsidized national health insurance crap) and the USA before FDR's New Deal, had very low government as a share of GDP.

The citizens had to practice self-responsibility. What an amazing concept. Duh.

And they are/were still democracies and a democracy is by your logic socialism and socialism is having a bloated GDP.
Weren't that the arguments you used?

[QuestionAuthority]

Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.

correct. end of discussion.

One of the challenges of implementing the improvements referenced in the OP, and also a feature to provide serious competition to Bitcoin, is to offer instant transactions that can't be double-spent. When I say instant, I mean you send the transaction to the other party and what you have sent is already an absolute assurance, no need to verify against the block chain.

Perhaps most people think this can't be done with a decentralized consensus block chain. I think otherwise. Any ideas?

Note I think this idea could be incorporated into Bitcoin, and maybe not even require a hard fork. I would need to study Bitcoin's scripting capabilities in more detail to determine for sure. But Bitcoin (and Monero, Litecoin) will retain a disadvantage in scaling that afaics will not be easy for it (them) to fix.

Several weeks ago I stated (in the Monero BCX fiasco thread) I had solved the selfish mining attack and had written down the math. Recently I decided to share that insight.

It's confusing to me that everyone hates any crypto other than Bitcoin. The claim is that those are just pump & dump for profit but isn't that what many people are pushing Bitcoin for too? Early Bitcoin adopters are looking for the big payday when the value skyrockets. Somehow that's more honorable with Bitcoin?

Its not a question of honor, at least for me.

Anyone can vote with their pocketbook.  I vote for Bitcoin.

I understand consumer choice. It's not that you can make a free choice that bothers me it's the bashing other crypto when Bitcoiners are doing the same thing. I trust coblee (Charlie Lee) more than some of the Bitcoin devs. He's proven to be more respectable. Bitcoin has some sort of cachet because it was the first when it really wasn't even the first, DigiCash was.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Are you really too stupid to distinguish between democracy and socialism?

You are too stupid to understand the model Eric (and myself and anarchists have) explained is that democracy and socialism (and any form of State collectivism) are the same phenomenon.

I am really amazed by all the flaws in your logic.

Of course because all those flaws are inside your head.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

Philippines which has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The USA in the 1800s and early 1900s being the fastest growing and most personal freedom economy in the world at that time (before it became laden with government spending on welfare starting with FDR's New Deal).

Both Philippines  and USA  in the 1800s and early 1900s are/were democracies.

Your reading comprehension is so poor you didn't realize I was referring to large government expressed as share of GDP as I mentioned.

Both the Philippines now (or before Aquino administration, which instituted government subsidized national health insurance crap) and the USA before FDR's New Deal, had very low government as a share of GDP.

The citizens had to practice self-responsibility. What an amazing concept. Duh.

And they are/were still democracies and a democracy is by your logic socialism and socialism is having a bloated GDP.
Weren't that the arguments you used?

No the filipinos were never stupid enough to have the delusion to think collectivism was good for them individually. They rather always followed an Ayn Rand self interested (me first) policy. They always cheated the system, instead of letting the system to cheat them. They learned well from hundreds of years of Spanish occupation how to game the system that was oppressing them. Besides they've never entirely let go of their tribalism. I visit communities where every one is a relative. It is only recently with the yuppie ones who've been indoctrinated by the West who have started to believe in this "nation building" (and that corruption is bad) bullshit so now the size of the government is starting to grow as their tax collection efforts are improving. Constituent level corruption is good (i.e. bribing the customs and tax officials to look the other way). It is the only way you keep the government power impotent and render it entirely ineffective. Argentina (and Italians) apparently know this. The Italians are the closest (other than Iceland) to kicking out the banksters and EU. And Catalonia, Spain seems to also realize the truth.

Also I guess you aren't aware that once upon a time Americans were mostly farmers and very self-sufficient types and they were very isolationist and didn't pay any attention to the federal government. The States and local community had most of the power. Just go review the recent Bundy Ranch issue and you can see he is arguing for Clark County taking jurisdictional priority over the federal government as that is the way it was when his parents received the land grant and that is what our Constitution says. But unfortunately after FDR's New Deal (and the Dust Bowl) America became city dwellers who are not self-sufficient and fell into the lie of democracy and a government that takes care of them. Importing many blacks as slaves probably also worsened it, although I am not a racist, certain statistics don't lie.

Wasn't it you upthread who was claiming Americans don't study history. You are the The Pot that calls the Kettle Black.

Are you going to pay me $300 an hour for writing all this shit? I don't have time to be your teacher. You do realize you are forcing me against my will to expend so much effort on this. That is a very disrespectful. I am not doing that to you.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I understand consumer choice. It's not that you can make a free choice that bothers me it's the bashing other crypto when Bitcoiners are doing the same thing. I trust coblee (Charlie Lee) more than some of the Bitcoin devs. He's proven to be more respectable. Bitcoin has some sort of cachet because it was the first when it really wasn't even the first, DigiCash was.

They don't like the insinuation that there is any flaw in Bitcoin, or at least any flaw that can't be rectified as need be. Any one who makes such a insinuation will cause the franky1 types who don't really know the technology to come out of the woodwork with illogical guns blazing. The experts will remain quiet when they know they can't win the argument, but will become very cold to that person and ignore them forever after, except when they see an opportunity to try to make a fool of that person on some technical discussion.

This is insecurity. They feel we are diminishing their chances for success, because they think we put incorrect ideas in the minds of other adopters. They are afraid of any negative wave of publicity that might develop.

In their defense I will say they deal with a lot of incorrect bullshit hurled at Bitcoin. Some of the experts are probably just tired of dealing with the same mistakes over and over again ad nausea. So I can kind of understand their feelings. I think this is just the nature of this sort of situation and we can't really blame the people involved.

I don't know coblee well in discussion. I have seen his photo and know he created LTC. Seems he might be a quiet type? That is probably the best policy. I could learn from him. Accomplish more, talk less. Especially don't get into debates with n00bs.

Edit: I think also the developers see they have given a lot of effort, perhaps even largely unpaid and the see altcoin developers mostly trying to get rich quick, so they view them as most likely not sincere, realistic, and also not likely to succeed (they think it is mostly just scams, because they know how much effort it takes to produce Bitcoin).

[jonald_fyookball]

Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.

correct. end of discussion.

One of the challenges of implementing the improvements referenced in the OP, and also a feature to provide serious competition to Bitcoin, is to offer instant transactions that can't be double-spent. When I say instant, I mean you send the transaction to the other party and what you have sent is already an absolute assurance, no need to verify against the block chain.

Perhaps most people think this can't be done with a decentralized consensus block chain. I think otherwise. Any ideas?

Note I think this idea could be incorporated into Bitcoin, and maybe not even require a hard fork. I would need to study Bitcoin's scripting capabilities in more detail to determine for sure. But Bitcoin (and Monero, Litecoin) will retain a disadvantage in scaling that afaics will not be easy for it (them) to fix.

Several weeks ago I stated (in the Monero BCX fiasco thread) I had solved the selfish mining attack and had written down the math. Recently I decided to share that insight.

It's confusing to me that everyone hates any crypto other than Bitcoin. The claim is that those are just pump & dump for profit but isn't that what many people are pushing Bitcoin for too? Early Bitcoin adopters are looking for the big payday when the value skyrockets. Somehow that's more honorable with Bitcoin?

Its not a question of honor, at least for me.

Anyone can vote with their pocketbook.  I vote for Bitcoin.

I understand consumer choice. It's not that you can make a free choice that bothers me it's the bashing other crypto when Bitcoiners are doing the same thing. I trust coblee (Charlie Lee) more than some of the Bitcoin devs. He's proven to be more respectable. Bitcoin has some sort of cachet because it was the first when it really wasn't even the first, DigiCash was.

There's some egotism going on to be sure.  But also there's some trying to warn noobs of getting scammed.  The general thought is that Bitcoin is "here to stay" and alts aren't necessary.

[QuestionAuthority]

Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.

correct. end of discussion.

One of the challenges of implementing the improvements referenced in the OP, and also a feature to provide serious competition to Bitcoin, is to offer instant transactions that can't be double-spent. When I say instant, I mean you send the transaction to the other party and what you have sent is already an absolute assurance, no need to verify against the block chain.

Perhaps most people think this can't be done with a decentralized consensus block chain. I think otherwise. Any ideas?

Note I think this idea could be incorporated into Bitcoin, and maybe not even require a hard fork. I would need to study Bitcoin's scripting capabilities in more detail to determine for sure. But Bitcoin (and Monero, Litecoin) will retain a disadvantage in scaling that afaics will not be easy for it (them) to fix.

Several weeks ago I stated (in the Monero BCX fiasco thread) I had solved the selfish mining attack and had written down the math. Recently I decided to share that insight.

It's confusing to me that everyone hates any crypto other than Bitcoin. The claim is that those are just pump & dump for profit but isn't that what many people are pushing Bitcoin for too? Early Bitcoin adopters are looking for the big payday when the value skyrockets. Somehow that's more honorable with Bitcoin?

Its not a question of honor, at least for me.

Anyone can vote with their pocketbook.  I vote for Bitcoin.

I understand consumer choice. It's not that you can make a free choice that bothers me it's the bashing other crypto when Bitcoiners are doing the same thing. I trust coblee (Charlie Lee) more than some of the Bitcoin devs. He's proven to be more respectable. Bitcoin has some sort of cachet because it was the first when it really wasn't even the first, DigiCash was.

There's some egotism going on to be sure.  But also there's some trying to warn noobs of getting scammed.  The general thought is that Bitcoin is "here to stay" and alts aren't necessary.

That's true, some egos are bigger than others. The arguments that the other alts aren't necessary is simply a marketing ploy from a competitor. Visa isn't necessary because there's MasterCard and vice versa. MasterCard and Visa do not issue credit cards.  They make money by processing transactions between a point of purchase and a bank. They have nothing to do with rewards programs, interest rates, late fees or customer service issues. They are payment networks that connect merchant payment terminals with a bank’s credit card department. They compete for business. Competition is healthy and helps systems improve and stay honest. Monopoly is a bad thing. I guess the reason these people don't see it is that nerds shouldn't be in charge of financial systems because they don't understand anything non-technical about the way the world works. It's sad really, all of the blind cultist loyalty just makes Bitcoiners look like a bunch of kooks.

[turvarya]

I actually really started feeling bad for how far I pushed UnunoctiumTesticles(or what ever his name is).
I obviously hit a nerve. I have never seen someone reacting that emotional to my comments. I don't know, how exactly I did it. In real life I would have ended that long ago, but the Internet is just to much fun and lets you forget, that there is a person on the other side. I met people like the OP in real life, people with real issues, you shouldn't push to far or you could do some real damage.
So, I hope you will get professional help sometimes.
One thing you could learn by your self is just closing the fucking browser. If you think your time is so precious and you see a discussion like that as so much waste, just close the browser, just leave it be for a while. It is not that hard, if you really think about it.

Good luck.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I actually really started feeling bad for how far I pushed UnunoctiumTesticles(or what ever his name is).
I obviously hit a nerve. I have never seen someone reacting that emotional to my comments. I don't know, how exactly I did it. In real life I would have ended that long ago, but the Internet is just to much fun and lets you forget, that there is a person on the other side. I met people like the OP in real life, people with real issues, you shouldn't push to far or you could do some real damage.
So, I hope you will get professional help sometimes.
One thing you could learn by your self is just closing the fucking browser. If you think your time is so precious and you see a discussion like that as so much waste, just close the browser, just leave it be for a while. It is not that hard, if you really think about it.

Good luck.

The reason I reacted that way to you is because you started your interaction with me (in the thread linked from the OP) with the attitude that you felt I was a cocky loud mouth and you were going to teach me a lesson or try to call me out as being an idiot. And you are still disrespecting me by insinuating that I need psychiatric help. I could sue you in court and possibly even bring criminal charges against you for making such slander. Real people are actually committed against their free will to psychiatric institutions and for you to insinuate I need such help is a threat to my personal freedom.

I never had anything against you personally. I was writing about Bitcoin. You personalized it and continue to.

Rather I am here to debate ideas about Bitcoin and political economics.

You assume I am incorrect before you even begin, and this is what traps you every time. Because I am not incorrect. These things I have thought about and researched for years. You assume you are debating with a neophyte. It is just incredulous that you don't respect or even recognize the experience of the person you are debating with.

If you were approaching this discussion from an emotionally stable stance of mutual respect and inquiry, then we could have a cordial discussion.

[franky1]

7 pages and the OP has not learned a thing, and simply ends up calling others that oppose his narrow minded and limited scoped process.. idiots..

UnunoctiumTesticles: please be aware that many of us have rad your comments a multitude of times, put your idea's into scenario's and feasabily knit-picked whether they will do anyong on a micro-global or macro-global bases.. we have looked into the snowball effects of possible changes, and also an realistic long term benefit or damage of such changes, the result being.. most of what you say is based on human decision, not code..

i think you needs to take a few days off and think about things on a global scale and beyond the small context you are headbutting your head against. as its not healthy for you.

now it seems that you wants to get someone in court for slander. so lets correct you
1. slander is a spoken word with human breath.. libel is a written word..
2. unless your birth certificate says 'UnunoctiumTesticles'  then all people are doing is insulting a random name with no human reputation.

have a nice day

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

7 pages and the OP has not learned a thing, and calls others that oppose his narrow minded and limited scoped process.

You have been so thoroughly revealed upthread to be a complete ignoramous, I don't understand how you don't feel any shame?

This is why it is impossible to argue with an idiot. They can never recognize when their ideas have been thoroughly vetted and defeated.

The best way to teach you a lesson is in the crypto-currency market place. Keep you eye out for an implementation of the ideas in the OP. Your whining is motivating me.

Have you and turvarya ever considered how childish it is to guns blazing trying to embarrass someone who writes about flaws in Bitcoin? Also you both seem to have no respect for the immense level of research I have done and also my nearly 3 decades of experience as a computer programmer, marketer with two software programs which attained million users in my career.

What have you two guys accomplished in your careers? Judging from your childish behavior and your illogical ideas, you probably have not accomplished the large scale projects that I have. I can see the inexperience.

[franky1]

7 pages and the OP has not learned a thing, and calls others that oppose his narrow minded and limited scoped process.

You have been so thoroughly revealed upthread to be a complete ignoramous, I don't understand how you don't feel any shame?

This is why it is impossible to argue with an idiot. They can never recognize when their ideas have been thoroughly vetted and defeated.

bank notes are not anonymous, i can think of 5 ways to trace bank notes. it is you that does not understand this and thus you are the one ignoring the reality of life,.

realise that nearly every single person that has replied to you, has said your idea's are flawed.. accept it as criticism and either change the idea. realise the flaw, and move onto better things that will be useful for the community.

arguing constantly with people that dont praise you, is not really helpful to the community or your real human self. so take a step back, relax, think long and hard about what your trying to say and then think about it in a truly practical way using proper scenario's which will actually benefit the community.

one day you may get the fame which you are obviously seeking. but i am afraid it is not going to happen in regards to the points you are endlessly trying to bash out over the last many pages. bitcoin does not have a flaw with what you are saying. bitcoin does exactly what it is suppose to do, the same as what bank notes do, the same as credit cards.

the sid issues you bring up have nothing to do with bitcoin protocols but to do with human interactions. no protocol change in the world will EVER truly solve it. the only solution is in the physical realm of reality.. meaning human choice and decisions in regards to how much info they give away.

bitcoin cannot hide warehouses full of rigs. neither can any altcoin. a warehouse is a physical brick, not code.
bitcoin cannot hide your name and address.. because they are printed on your birth certificate and drivers licence.

bitcoin NEVER asks for this information, and as such if someone was able to trace your real name and location of your warehouse of mining rigs. it has nothing to do with bitcoin, but more to do with the information you have allowed onto the internet.

as for my experience
single handedly, over $10million has passed through my hands with my work in the retail sector
single handedly i have helped 300 businesses start up
single handedly i have got an uncountable amount of people jobs, careers and experience

then moving into bitcoin i have got to the point that i am living solely on bitcoin. i get paid in bitcoin, life savings in bitcoin, pay my bills, luxuries and and everything else in bitcoin.
i have helped people set up businesses that accept bitcoin, helped inspire others where their flaws are so they can concentrate on their strengths, to increase their chances of succeeding in life.
i have multiple projects that do multiple things in the bitcoin ecosphere.

so please take this as positive criticism, you can argue for 50000000000 more pages on your same topic, the end result is a worn out keyboard and nothing more.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

bank notes are not anonymous, i can think of 5 ways to trace bank notes.

There is no way to trace the pesos I am using tonight to buy dinner for cash which I received yesterday as change from the lunch I bought, which they received from another customer for the lunch he bought.

Sure the governments are starting to track the serial numbers on cash via ATMs, but this was not the norm of cash for most of its history. That is only a recent phenomenon and it is not entirely effective for the authorities most of the time. People don't need to jump through hoops to be anonymous, just use cash normally. That is why the powers-that-be want to get rid of cash.

Whereas Bitcoin is nearly always traceable and linkable. The only exceptions are for those who employ an unregistered internet connection (e.g. WiFi or 3G dongle or botnet) and who never impart their identity to the merchant in a way that can be correlated and do not leak their identity in some accidental side-channel. There is also the possibility of using a CoinJoin-like mixing but these are jammable (or the master server knows your identity) and they can be Sybil attacked.

So the chances of being anonymous in Bitcoin are closer to 0.1% and the chances of being anonymous with cash are closer to 99.9%.

You were the fool who didn't recognize the crucial distinction that cash has no central ledger for each transaction.

it is you that does not understand this and thus you are the one ignoring the reality of life,.

WTF

Readers do you see how frustrating it is to argue with an obstinate fool? Does he really believe that?

realise that nearly every single person that has replied to you, has said your idea's are flawed..

Can you not see the poll says 30% agree the features could be needed?

accept it as criticism and either change the idea. realise the flaw, and move onto better things that will be useful for the community.

I see a market for 30% of Bitcoin's community. I also see a huge untapped market in the dark networks arena. I also see that Bitcoin will never have instant transactions and the first coin to provide it is going to cause some massive marketing problems for Bitcoin.

Are you ready to be taught a lesson spankypants?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

as for my experience
single handedly, over $10million has passed through my hands with my work in the retail sector

So that explains everything. You are a technical dunce, and I am a computer scientist.

You obviously don't understand nor respect the field of computer science.

In your perspective, everything that matters is about people and community.

I will teach you a lesson about respecting the power of technology soon. Stay tuned.

I am locking the topic, but the poll remains unlocked. At the time of locking, there were 17 'yes' votes and 35 'no' votes.

I don't want to waste more time here. We've talked enough. Thanks.