I think I now realize what the OP is talking about. This doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin. His problem is he sent Litecoin to a Litecoin address - it just happened to be the wrong address.

His question makes it sound like he sent his Litecoin to the Bitcoin blockchain.

This doesn't make sense.

Are you telling me I could send 1 Litecoin to my Bitcoin address and receive 1 Bitcoin?

A person could make a lot of money that way.

After paying salaries, bonuses, shareholders and perks, a company doesn't just put away tons of money in the company bank account. They make sure they spend the profits.

As for finding an investor to bail them out, who is going to loan them big money when they just lost the next 5 years profit and they don't even know how it happened?

The equilibrium point between people turning off miners because of loss and people turning on miners because of profit is always going hover around zero profit.

Its best use case is money laundering. It is worth more for that than anything else.

You can't have it both ways. Bitcoin was explicitly invented as a way to exchange tokens of value outside of any regulatory system. Either a money system is outside of the government or its inside of the government. If you have all the functions of government private property rights and justice system involved then there is no need for a decentralized blockchain. It would be a waste of time. You can go one way or the other way, but you can't have both.

No, that is the very problem. IF we want the government to use its force to plan new bridges, put ethanol in gasoline, cleanup from hurricanes, THEN we open ourselves up to people fighting over who gets this government contract, and who gets that regulation that keeps out other competitors.

We should have a perfectly even playing field where nobody gets a favored position from the help of government force over another. Where if people want something they are going to have to get it by voluntary cooperation between themselves - without interference from government force. This even playing field is made from the government using its power of force exclusively for protecting rights, that is, protecting individual property.

The problem is that people think the job of the government is to "help" people. If people are bribing politicians it is because the politician is able to use the force of the government to give some kind of subsidy to the briber.

The solution is to realize that it is not the purpose of the government to help. The purpose is only to protect private property. This is the rule of law in the capitalist system. The solution would be for the government to be completely out of the business of helping, subsidizing or improving one thing over another.

And enforcing the rule of law is not "helping" because it is not giving advantage to one person over another. There is only the protection of everyone's property.

Wait a minute.
The original question was if the network outside the US was cut off would the blockchain inside the US be forked.

And all the posts have been of the opinion that as long as someone has a 300 baud modem connection to the outside world everything would be fine.

If the government was able to cut off only 80% of bandwidth from outside that means the miners in the US would be mostly communicating to the network within the US. They would be getting blockchain information mostly among themselves. Wouldn't that fork the blockchain?

Isn't that what a 51% attack is all about?

Does this make any sense?

Here is what might actually happen:

A) Water costs $5
B) Peter values water at $4
C) Peter doesn't buy water 
D) Price of water stays the same

jtimon is thinking that if there is less demand for something the price goes down. This doesn't really happen. The price never goes down lower than the cost of labor needed to make it. If it is valued less than that it just doesn't get made. But the price stays the same.

All things being equal, the price of the item (the number on the price tag) is always going to be around the cost of the labor.

I think Etlase is dividing "labor" into two separate types: "past labor" and "future labor."

If I am selling you a house I tell you I want $200,000 for it because it cost me $200,000 in labor to build. But you say, "forget it, I can get one built now for $100,000 in labor." The "value" and "cost" and "price" of the house now is the current or future labor, not the labor in the past that it took to make it.

So he is saying there are two labor theories of value: the "past labor theory of value" (apparently from Marx) and the "future labor theory of value" which maybe basically the same as the marginal theory of value.

I think the price of Bitcoin is headed for parity. And when I say parity, I don't mean with the USD, I mean parity with all the other alternative crypto-currencies.

I saw the video.
I searched the transcript for anything like the word "individual" and there is nothing. Doesn't this philosophy recognize such a thing as the individual?

About this technocracy:

What about individuality?

This machine world is going to be run an Elite of engineers. What happens if my views don't coincide with these Planners?

On Windows shortcuts - right click - properties, there is a choice of Run: Minimized.

Doesn't that work?

The "Project Development" and "Alternative clients" sections of this forum are loaded with people that could handle this. You should post there when you are able.

I am a developer and also interested in new Bitcoin client software.

It is going to take a while for me to wrap my head around the details of Bitcoin.

I believe there are two important ingredients for future success:

1. Improved clients.
2. Bitcoin banks.

Any more details about your plans?

Comments:

I suppose some new service for Bitcoins could increase it's popularity, but I'm not so sure about the ideas presented here.

The main value of Bitcoin is always going to have to be its usefulness as a store of value and a medium of exchange. Otherwise the other services built on top won't have any value.

=== Publishing ===
Probably putting other things in the blockchain would lower the value of Bitcoin instead of increase it. You could have other kinds of blockchains specially made for those purposes.

=== Marked coins ===
I don't think that would work. "My BTC address is XYZ. Any BTC which was has passed thru this address is equivalent to a transferrable IOU for one ounce of gold from me." What happens after the coin is transferred to other people down the line? Those people are not going to honor your commitments.

=== Voting ===
Voting has to be anonymous. If you gave out bitcoins to every voter so they could send them to the ballot account of the candidate of their choice, somebody in theory would know who they gave the original voting coins to and know which account they ended up in. There is no such thing as a "mixer" for Bitcoin addresses if there is a record of every connection in the blockchain.

=== Goods and services which are ONLY buyable with BTC, for set prices ===
Well, if oil was only buyable for bitcoins, yes that would make bitcoins worth something. But there is no way you can do this without government interference - which we don't want.
"if the price of BTC in dollars fell, the game maker would NOT drop the in-game price of items". Then you are forcing him to go broke - which will harm more than help Bitcoin.

=== pseudo-BTC that uses computational power in service of some problem ===
What would be the advantage to this for the customer rather than just buying the computing power on the market?

Inrerested in Bitcoins. It sounds like they are the wave of the future. Looking forward to helping out with their adoption.