Quote from: Siegfried on April 11, 2014, 02:12:09 AM

Quote from: AnonyMint on April 10, 2014, 02:29:23 PM

Quote from: Siegfried on April 10, 2014, 10:54:01 AM

Quote from: AnonyMint on April 10, 2014, 09:14:07 AM

[snip]

Notice in Bitcoin the new coin production schedule is designed such that rate of increase is declining and the total supply is designed to never exceed 21 million BTC coins. However, IMO that is myopic because the mining is already centralized and if the government takes over, there is no limit to what they might do with the protocol. I argued that more upthread or in the past, where I said once the masses dominate the coin userbase, they really don't care as long as they get their debt and Walmart goodies.

Bitcoin mining is global. If somehow the government took over the major miners in the United States and forced them to change the protocol, wouldn't that just create a forked coin which people could choose not to use and instead keep using the real Bitcoin which is still mined throughout the rest of world and by smaller miners in the United States? For your scenario to play out, a total government takeover of the Internet (far more severe than the Great Firewall) and well as blanket observation and control of all commerce would be required. Even if it were technically possible for this regime to carry out this kind of extreme totalitarianism, I do not think it has the political capital and economic resources to do it. Nor do I think they are stupid enough to try. Power will adapt to Bitcoin, not destroy it.

Circle CEO apparently disagrees and says the G20 will cooperate. I have also provided citations upthread about G20 declarations on their plans to cooperate.

Two or three pools control > 50% of the hash rate. That isn't the entire internet. That is only three businesses that have to be raided.

The masses won't care. Who is going to support your fork? You won't even have a majority of mining hash rate.

As for individual miners switching to another pool upon that event, note one miner in East Washington had already 6 - 7% of the total Bitcoin network hash rate and is aiming to reach 10%. ASICs concentrate mining power and this will continue to get worse.

The one that is modified by government mandate to issue additional coins and have white/blacklists would be the fork, even if it has more hashing power, not the original Bitcoin protocol. Why do you think everyone would adopt the government-mutilated fork? People can still use Litecoin and Dogecoin even though they have less hashing power. In those cases, they are the clones; in the case you describe, the government version, even with more hashing power, would be the massively inferior imitator.

Because the masses don't care. They shop at websites, not via a downloadable Bitcoin client. The Amazons, Walmarts, etc.. will follow the government's regulation to send transactions only through regulated pools. The smaller retailers follow because they dependent on the larger ones and/or fearful of government enforcement, and the larger ones follow because they are the multinationals who benefit from their symbiotic control over the government.

I had made this point in great detail at the Transactions Withholding Attack. It is not surprising to me that the Bitcoin diehards refused to accept my point.

You are free to think I am wrong, and even try to succinctly refute my point here. But let's please not repeat ad nauseum that entire debate again in this thread. I don't have time and it will muck up this thread with too much extraneous tangential discussion. That thread is still open to debate it further there. I would prefer to keep this thread more high-level in scope so that it is digestible.

I think the following point about 'dependency' applies to my point about the masses above.

Quote from: pungopete468 on April 11, 2014, 12:48:28 AM

I hope that as a society we can break away from the dependency before the system collapses on top of us. The risk of dependency is just too great under this form of financial system. I hope we can change it before it mutates...

Note the system is going to collapse, and that can be either a rejuvenation or a hell hole. I was talking to my mother and said "didn't you say my grandfather walked around with a basket of potatoes on his head during the Great Depression?". She retorted, "no, he formed a trucking company and put people to work". It was FDR's New Deal that paid people to walk on the crops and use spoons to dig canals, that retarded the rebound.

You can see France's Hollande and Obama creating the same sort of big government, big brother non-solutions that FDR and Hitler did. You will see that Hitler had himself filmed with the youth by his side, and Obama tries to portray himself as a defender of the youth. But in fact these tyrants destroyed the youth. There is 60% youth unemployment in some countries in Europe. Armstrong says 50% of the youth want to leave France to find opportunity. The student loan problem in the USA is huge and going to put the youth in debt slavery for life, so we need to forgive ~~all~~some that debt.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/01/22/why-do-politicians-always-surround-themselves-with-children/

Note some claim Hitler thought he was fighting the international bankers for the betterment of the Aryan racial supremacy (perhaps that was an element of his megalomaniac delusion which allowed him to justify his other actions ... is it no wonder he became a reclusive, drug addict).

http://www.rense.com/general50/itle.htm
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/6720

Some refute that.

http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/hitlers-finances-and-the-myth-of-nazi-anti-usury-activism/
http://mises.org/daily/5765
http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth08.htm

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What were those economic policies? He suspended the gold standard, embarked on huge public-works programs like autobahns, protected industry from foreign competition, expanded credit, instituted jobs programs, bullied the private sector on prices and production decisions, vastly expanded the military, enforced capital controls, instituted family planning, penalized smoking, brought about national healthcare and unemployment insurance, imposed education standards, and eventually ran huge deficits. The Nazi interventionist program was essential to the regime's rejection of the market economy and its embrace of socialism in one country.

Armstrong has a blog post today which portrays the changing role of police, as I am sure all of us are very aware of in the USA at least.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/04/10/economist-asks-police-or-soldiers/