This is not a closed system, bitcoin is exchanged for other currency.  The bitcoin cap wouldn't be 1 billon with just the miner, you also have people that bought those coin for cash and the value of what they did to get that cash in the first place.


No matter the type of currency prices are set with many different input. You cannot end speculation, you can just switch it to different place. People will take into account the anticipated change in the value of the currency to make their investment choise.

Lets say I have 100k$ to invest I can do plenty of thing :

- Buy a state bond and get fixed rate
- Buy real estate (leveraged or not)
- Buy stock
- Buy gold
- Buy a shotgun, a shitload of canned good and a bucker in my backyard
- Buy currency
...

The return on each of these will be influenced by the ancipated rate of inflation/deflation and will be taken into account when I make my choice.


Also another thing is you assume is that people should not be rewarded for Hording/Saving/DelayingConsuption. I think this is where you are wrong. Time preference is taken into account in the valuation of any invesment. For most people stuff now is more valuable than stuff later. You delay consomption because :

-You want to make sure you can still consume later when your personnal ability to produce will not be as high
-You get a reveward for delaying consumption (interest, wich in a free market get ajusted to take into account the inflation/deflation rate)

How would you account individual productivity ?

Not all doctors are created equal, same is true for every proffession.

In IT you have differences of 100* more between individual workers with given technology... you basicly end up with on currency per person.

Also, all my hours are not equally productive...  Do you want a monday morning hour or a wednesday afternoon ?

I can think of MANY occupation that are not considered fun for anyone. How many people would continue working if they had no financial needs ?

Actually with those condition, I'm supprised that anyone has a value above zero.

There are definatly some people that I don't care if they die (so worth zero for me). There are even a few people that I would probably be glad if they where dead, ask me on a bad day and I would probably donate a few $ if it meant their death   (Not that I would actually follow through with that idea).

I also think that we are heading for overpopulation that will hurt everyone quality of life. I would gladly donate to provide free birth control to people that can't aford it and cash incentive for people to get sterillized.

On the other hand there are some life wich I value above my own and I would give everything I have, including my life to save them.

Most importantly, no matter how I value a life, I think it would be wrong to force other people to give anything to save it.... I'm not saying I would alway have the integrity to act morally.  

Imagine a situation where I have the choice to let my son die or kill 10 strangers.... I kill the 10 strangers even if it's morally wrong.




 

Your comparison is wrong.


The first gold found was easier to find than any gold you can find now. The firsts people to arrived in the Klondike had an easier time to find gold than I would have now.

The first bitcoin mined is worth exactly the same as one bitcoin mined today. It's just harder to find.

The limited supply of bitcoin is the primary reason that people are interested in it as a currency. Take that away and you are back in the same playing field as world of warcraft gold.

Why work if it's for free ?

It's not like free energy will mean free food will magically apear on your table.

Oui, indirectement.  La différence avec l'inflation généré par le gouvernement est qu'il n'y a pas d'entité centrale qui décide quoi faire avec des ressources qui sont saisi à d'autre personne.

Dans tout système il il a une phase d'inflation quand la monaie est créé ou découverte. La phase d'inflation peut être temporaire (or / bitcoin) ou permanante (papier monaie). La cible, selon moi, est que cette inflation soit le moins immorale possible.

A première vue, il semble y avoir deux idée qui sont fondamentalement en désacord.

D'un coté tu veux garantir le caractère anomyne de chacun et d'un autre coté tu veux t'assurer que chacun resoit son allocation sans possibilité de fraude, ce qui nécessite d'avoir un contrôle sur l'identité.

Ca te prendrai un moyen d'identifié les individu de manière unique sans révèller leur identité.


Dans la mesure ou tu trouve une solution a ce problème, une variante sur le système actuelle des bitcoin pourrait être d'intégré la distribution dans le processus de mining.

Au lieu de donner 50 bitcoin à celui qui solutionne le block, tu pourrais en redistribué une partie de manière uniforme à toute les addresse. Les "transaction fee" pourrait être également en partie redistribué. La poll qui solutionne le block recevrait quand même les profits pour son travail, mais il serait plus petit que si la "taxe" n'était pas la.

Sur le plan philosophique ca me semble être une "taxe" plus correcte dans le mesure elle est directement intégré dans le système... personne n'est obligé de miner, c'est plutôt le processus de minage qui distribut l'argent en partie vers les mineur et en partie vers l'ensemble de la population.

I'd explain my kid my perception of the situation...

School is not made to learn stuff, it's to get a diploma to give you access to better job in the future.

It's important to know the truth, but don't lose track of your objectives. Learn to play the game and get good grade. When you have your diploma in hand, then fell free to tell your teacher what a moron he really is.

I'm more a Peter Keating than a Howard Roark

Color coding is probably a disaster waiting to happen...


How long before someone recode a client to display the wrong color on purpose to con people out of their cash.

Well it's a question of thrust. Even if the source code is open, I don't have time to check it.

I trust Microsoft not to put trojan, they are under much more sructiny and have much more to lose than a guy in his basement producing open source software.

Plus on Windows 7 with the UAC activated it's probably harder to have some stuff installed without you knowing that on a Linux box.

Also, it's fun to annoy Linux geeks by using Windows  

I would not invest tons of money because right now it's still pretty risky and I'm not a gambler.


I would invest a few hundred $ if it would be easier to actually purchase coin. Anything more complicated than :

Step 1 - insert credit card number and bitcoin adress
Step 2 - get the coin

is too complicated. 

For me it's also a way to evaluate the chance of bitcoin catching on... as long as getting coin is hard, I don't think they have much chance of going mainstream and so it's not a wise investment.

The few bitcent I get from minning are my only "investment". I don't plan on cashing them out.

We could do a bitcoin Bangneki

You don't pay for the sex, you pay to make sure the relationship ends right after the sex 

I was not thinking of drawing cash and sending it.

I was thinking more along the line of using the card over the internet to make a cash withdraw at the site selling the coin.... if that's possible.

The process would look something like this.

- Go to a site, enter your Visa/MC number
- The site makes a cash advance on your card
- With the cash in hand (and no refund possible), they transfer bitcoin to your adresse

As a customer you would have to pay interest because it's charged as a cash advance but it's much more user friendly than having to register an account at an exchange.

I'm not sure if it's possible to do a cash advance remotly, but if it is then I think that for the average joe, it would be much more convenient than MTGox or Tradehill.

Just currious,

If someone withdraw money from an ATM with a credit card. Can there be a charge back ?

If so, who end up losing the cash... visa or the back ?

If there is no charge back possible, then maybe we have way to actually pay for bitcoin directy with a credit card.... you would have to pay interest since it's a cash advance but still would be more user friendly than the current way of doing thing.

In both cases it's their choice.

- Don't learn to fish and starve.

- Stay on the island and die.

People have a right to end their life if they chose too.  It's a no brainer imho.

Well having a fixed limit and having no central authority are probably two of the most important aspect of bitcoin.

At first I was worried that if a big player like amazon made a move backing their currency with their inventory, they could basicly position themselves as top dog in a new currency... but following that logic, the economy around airmiles and canadian tire money http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_tire_money is already bigger than bitcoin but no one would seriously think of usethem as everyday currency.

I agree, Specially since the advice is usually doesn't even take into account wheter the machine is an old XP or a fully patch and protected Windows 7.

The thing is for many small business, they have one machine and it's a Windows box. Setting up multiple box is fun and all but not necessarly cost effective if the business is just looking to grab a few extra clients by accepting bitcoin.

Exactly, the gain of using bitcoin is not worth the hassle of switching cash to bitcoin and then bitcoin to cash (except maybe for drugs  ).

The current price is based on the speculation that real economy will pick up and has little to do with how rare a coin is.  Let's say I invent Thanakcoin, there are just like bitcoin, there will only be 10 of them in the world... they are super hard to mine. How much would they trade for.... zero ! no one expect Thanakcoins to be worth something in the future.

No matter how hard it is to get a bitcoin, if people don't expect a real economy to pickup in the long run, the price will not climb with the difficulty.