Quote from: evoorhees on July 07, 2011, 07:09:34 PM

1) There is nothing wrong with speculators (so long as they aren't defrauding anyone) - they are merely individuals who try to predict future value, by putting their own money on the line. An efficient market is made by their actions, as they bring pricing signals forward in time. It's as important in Bitcoin as it is in the oil markets. But people HATE speculators! Roll Eyes

I have no problem with speculators, but they will kill / have already killed Bitcoin as a currency. Obviously, if there's money to be made, people are going to try to make it, so the trick is to set up the system so that speculation can't make it so unstable as to be unattractive to new adopters. I have no idea how to do this, but whoever designs the next cryptocurrency had better be thinking about it.

Quote

2) The dollar IS just paper, man. It's an important philosophical, economic, and moral issue. Expressing antagonism toward a monetary system which is inflated at whim at the expense of those who are coerced into holding it is a very reasonable position to take, IMO.

Oh dear, I suspect you might be one of the nutter-butters I was referring to. Here, write this down: The USD isn't going anywhere. It's not 1895, you don't need to trade your greenbacks for shiny metal anymore. Controlled inflation is a good thing, not a bad thing.

It's puzzling to me that so many people involved with a cutting-edge electronic currency project are so economically primitive.

Quote

3) Regarding mining, exponentially increasing difficulty is anything but foolish. You forget that one of the primary reasons for the number crunching (which you call wasteful) is to make it difficult for any computer or network of computers to manipulate the protocol. The longer Bitcoin operates, the more secure the blockchain becomes due to this dynamic. Not foolish.

It's completely foolish. The actual horsepower needed to validate transactions is a tiny fraction of the horsepower currently being used to mine new blocks. As for manipulation, the peer to peer transaction network would be far more secure if it were composed of a vast number of individuals with modest computing resources vs. a relatively small pool of dedicated mining clusters. The choice of an exponential algorithm was arbitrary and is a huge barrier to scalability, since it requires massive hyperdeflation to scale up. Which is a terrible expansion model for an electronic currency you expect anyone to voluntarily use.

Quote

At the core of your skepticism is, I think, a disapproval toward anyone who is able to obtain wealth without "hard work." Some miners will indeed make a killing from their early discovery of Bitcoin, and that doesn't sit well with you. You think it's "unfair." The irony, of course, is that in the same breath you defend fiat paper currencies which have for centuries enabled the politically connected to obtain incredible wealth through the process of inflation. Yet, it is not wealthy bankers profiting from the printing presses for whom you seem to have disdain - but rather a small group of tech-enthusiasts who first discovered what may become a revolutionary technology, and risked their own time and capital to invest in it.

I couldn't care less about who made how much money on Bitcoins, I'm just giving my perspective as a casual miner who is dubious of the long-term viability of this project based on the underlying mechanics and current market conditions. It wouldn't bother me to be proven wrong.