Quote from: tvbcof on May 11, 2013, 06:45:22 PM

Quote from: miscreanity on May 11, 2013, 03:57:44 PM

Quote from: chodpaba on May 10, 2013, 09:25:27 PM

That won't help you at a border crossing.

Quote from: tvbcof on May 10, 2013, 10:08:32 PM

Neither will having been tagged as an individual who had had an interest in Bitcoin. Just sayin'

Safety in numbers

Fuckin' TED talks. Almost universally fascinating. I have no idea how this talk bore any relationship to this conversation, but it was new to me and very interesting. I'm usually skeptical of such amazing results. This guy's thinking is 'orthagonal' but actually should not be. Ecosystems are so amazingly complex and tens or hundreds of millions of years of evolution are such a good tuning fork that it would make sense to look to pre-history to find solutions which work.

The part that's relevant was when Savory mentioned large herds forming as a deterrent against predators. Probably not the best video to illustrate a point, but it was too good to pass up.

Quote from: chodpaba on May 12, 2013, 07:38:09 PM

It is not a store of value. It is not money. What you transact for itthat is the money.

Bitcoin is anti-money. Not a generalized unit of value, but a reciept, which proves that a specific transaction occurred.

Gold is still the moneythe USD is still the money in Bitcoinia. Bitcoin's value is due exclusively to its ability to be liquid, it is an essence of liquidity in a level in the hierarchy of abstraction blow generalized units of value.

Bitcoin can be exchanged for many things, including other forms of money. Bitcoin's value is what each user's purpose is. One user may make use of the means of exchange purpose while another uses Bitcoin as a store of value. Businesses that have zero transactions done in Bitcoin are using the system tangentially as a means to generate publicity. Does that make Bitcoin a form of social currency?

There is no exclusive either-or, but a relative share based on overall market size and maturity - the greater the liquidity and more widespread its presence, the more the system will be able to provide a store of value. There only has to be sufficient liquidity at the margin, the active percentage of the whole. Beyond that, other factors come into play.

Quote from: chodpaba on May 13, 2013, 12:27:43 AM

Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on May 12, 2013, 11:51:39 PM

Not all bitcoin transactions are receipts of previous transactions though. You seem to be glossing over the significance of coinbase transactions when bitcoins are created into 'existence' by mining ... what receipt do these transactions represent?

You are talking about conventional receipts. In triple-entry bookkeeping the receipt takes on a special meaning, you have debits, credits, and receipts. The public ledger that is Bitcoin is just such a triple entry ledger. It issues receipts.

Yes, a conventional receipt is a record of a transaction, being validated independently and unilaterally. In Bitcoin, the receipts are the transactions; inseparable and validated collectively. A triple-entry system by itself is an incremental improvement - as a distributed system, the advance is amplified and becomes more than a record.

Would you define a skyscraper merely as a form of shelter? At a certain scale, properties that were not possible previously manifest - Bitcoin is not simply a method of transferring wealth. Right now, the dominant purpose is as a means of exchange, but its attributes suggest an eventual status of numeraire.