Quote from: RoadTrain on August 14, 2015, 07:02:55 PM

Quote from: LiteCoinGuy on August 14, 2015, 03:45:53 PM

"but...but....it is.....the name - it is different! i dont like it! and even they must be able to run a node!":

Do you ever take anything seriously? Because it's not your Litecoin, it's 15 times larger -- some $3.9 billion market cap is at stake. Joking doesn't make your argument more valid.

Sorry RoadTrain, LCG is actually right on this one. I did say anyone with a $300 laptop and 1Mb upstream should be able to access, verify, and amplify the Blockchain.

It is to all users benefit and adversaries' detriment full (ie non-leech, contributing) Bitcoin nodes be maintained in far flung places like Côte d'Ivoire.

The people who grow my chocolate have a special place in my heart. Whether completely unbanked or merely underserved by financial services, residents of the Dix-Huit Montagnes region participate in System D to an extent unimaginable to most drive-though-ATM using westerners.

Given that Bitcoin (and Monero) are the natural currencies of System D, the depicted villagers have more to gain from Bitcoin's 'be your own bank' functions than just about everyone (besides edge cases) in the first world.

As petro-fiat collapse proceeds, there will come a point when Bitcoin is a convenient distraction and scapegoat for politicians to blame. When it's Bitcoin's turn to be declared the latest threat to NATO security, we'll need every single node outside of The Empire we can possibly get.

It's not out of altruism we preserve full (ie non-leech, contributing) participation for the proverbial African village. It literally takes those villages to keep Bitcoin diverse, diffuse, defensible, and resilient.

The village in question exists in a war-torn area where a great deal of the population has been displaced, and many immigrants arrive to work in agriculture. It's not hard to make a long list of things they could do with a full node.

-receive remittances from emigrants (Bob got a job in America, mowing the grass around drive-through ATMs)
-send support to refugees (Sally made it to France, she needs 1000 Euro to start a crepe stand)
-buy agricultural supplies (fertilizers and pesticides are expensive, but Joe's Chemicals gives a discount if you pay in BTC)
-sell goods (some foodie in Denmark will pay Alice 10 times wholesale for her organic heritage criollo cacao and trendy pickled cassava)

The fun-loving folks (festooned in colorful traditional ceremonial garb) in LCG's picture look like they could collectively come up with $300 for a laptop and find an internet cafe. They certainly don't deserve to be excluded by high barriers to entry from full (ie non-leech, contributing) participation in the network. They definitely don't deserve damnation to an existence of SPV and trusting third parties like Paypal, M-Pesa, or (God forbid) Hearn's Circle.

EDIT:

from Why Bitcoin Could Be More Important Than the Internet for 5 Billion People

Quote

In order to make his point on the importance of Bitcoin for at least five billion people around the world, Casares first discussed the problems associated with using cash on a daily basis. While many people in the developed world take credit cards and debit cards for granted, there are billions of people around the world who are forced out of the digital economy and stuck moving physical cash whenever they need to make a transaction:

If you are one of the five billion people who live on cash theres a little over a billion people who have credit cards and debit cards, most of the world does not have that. So, theyve seen this revolution go by them. They cannot benefit in any way, and they have to rely on cash. Cash is expensive to keep at home, its expensive to transport, its risky, all payments [require] that you move there physically usually by public transportation that is slow, increasing the risk of it being stolen. Its ridiculous, but its very expensive to be poor. And its very expensive to live on cash.