Quote from: MatthewLM on May 07, 2012, 05:07:32 PM

Has this been posted? What do people think? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj2s6vzErqY

Exactly spot-on. Maloney has been saying for a decade what took me a few years to discover mostly on my own. I wish I'd happened across his work in 1999.

Quote from: MarketNeutral on May 07, 2012, 04:21:53 PM

But gold is not really an investment in the traditional sense. It's a ~~traditional~~ monetary asset.

FTFY

The whole post was well put.

Quote from: tvbcof on May 07, 2012, 06:36:37 PM

Quote from: MarketNeutral on May 07, 2012, 04:21:53 PM

There's no reason gold and bitcoins need to be mutually exclusive. They can function together quite well, I think.

This is a point that I've been trying to make forever.

I feel that Gold is a good 'reserve' but there are difficulties in 'exchange'. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is great on the 'exchange' side of the spectrum, but I (seemingly alone) do not consider it a good 'reserve' currency. Marry the two (or at least get them being regular fuck-buddies) and one has a very robust solution which would be relatively cumbersome for attackers to meddle with.

Yes!

Quote from: cypherdoc on May 07, 2012, 06:41:51 PM

why do u think it wouldn't fx well as a reserve currency? nightly settlements btwn nations could occur in an instant unlike gold and no centralized warehouses for bullion would be needed.

Why settle for nightly?

Quote from: cypherdoc on May 07, 2012, 07:06:10 PM

Quote from: MarketNeutral on May 07, 2012, 07:00:01 PM

Gold is the ultimate store of value and has been since the dawn of civilization. That's not going to change any time soon.

this is true but times change.

Yes, and here's a major reason why, although it won't happen immediately: Off-Planet Economics

Quote from: tvbcof on May 07, 2012, 07:07:24 PM

Several reasons:

1) I do not consider Bitcoin to be reliable under what most people consider 'success'. I do not trust that the infrastructure needed to support the solution under heavy usage worldwide will be maintainable under coordinated attack.

2) A beauty (in my opinion) of Bitcoin is that it operates at the pleasure of the user base....but user bases can be fickle.

This is where I think merged mining could be more important than some consider. The hashing capacity of an attack on the Bitcoin network may also provide the power necessary to maintain alternate blockchains, so unless there is sufficient power to overwhelm multiple blockchains at once, it would be possible for assets in one chain to move to another that is not under attack; lateral movement, like Whack-A-Mole.

Quote from: cypherdoc on May 07, 2012, 08:17:02 PM

you gotta learn to think big. what if gov'ts decide it's in their best interests to adopt Bitcoin?

Transition from an existing power base is almost never a choice, but a forced occurrence.