Quote from: jtimon on August 10, 2011, 01:01:07 PM

Quote from: doldgigger on August 10, 2011, 12:41:33 PM

In the future, you may want to read the OP carefully in order to avoid disqualifying yourself like you did in this case. To quote the OP on stablecoin: "From then on, we keep track of how much USD has inflated/deflated using something like CPI or the Billion Price Index or even a combination of indices". Have a look at the wording: The idea is to introduce a single point of failure, either through CPI or Billion Price Index. "Or even" multiple points of failure through a combination of indices. But a stable, decentralized system is completely out of the question. Basically, stability is completely sacrificed, but ironically it is put into the name...

I know how stablecoin would work. The source of conflict may be our definition of "single point of failure".
To simplify, let's use goldcoin. Miners would report the price in goldcoins of gold (getting information from various exchanges and probably averaging them).
You may think that gold and goldcoin exchanges are the points of failure in this case, but it can be discussed.

The points of failure remain, no matter what verbal contortions are put in this thread, in other threads, or anywhere else in order to disguise them.

Quote from: jtimon on August 10, 2011, 01:01:07 PM

As I see it, instead of a CPI index miners would report spot prices from various exchanges and then the price index would be calculated from those spot prices.
I don't think that you can target the price of any commodity or that you can have a totally stable coin just through changing the money supply, but it could be more stable.

You cannot have a totally stable coin, period.

The value of any currency is still dependent on how well the economy works. When the economy suffers, you can't do as much with your money, no matter how it is called.

But you can limit the effects, which is what bitcoin does: Other than a bad economy, it can't be hurt much. However, most ideas to "improve" bitcoin which came up lately just introduce more potential weaknesses: external currencies which may be wrecked through currency wars or simply by incompetent politicians, external commodities which may lose in value, external data sources to gather the value of the currencies or commodities, which may be manipulated, may fail etc. Essentially, you are making a mere toy from an experiment that may succeed (bitcoin).

If you really want to remove points of failure, you may want to make every node an exchange. But then, there is no point in weird coin supply strategies including artificial stagnation through transaction fees. Just make the exchange 1:1, and you have a distributed currency or commodity transfer network, which might be very useful. Should it manage to fly, I might even want to use it. But in terms of long-term stability, I still think it would not be able to compete with bitcoin.

Quote from: jtimon on August 10, 2011, 01:01:07 PM

Don't know what the OP is, but if you mean this thread, yes I've read it.
Maybe you didn't understand me because some of us have been discussing some topics of this thread in other threads.

The points of failure remain. You may have found a couple of people who don't mind in the other threads you mention, but it won't change the fact that those who care will still see the flaws even if you plainly neglect them.