can't wait to start investing in some valorem coins

how much per valorem coin?

So far, no chain split detected. I also see that the BCC nodes are far behind regular nodes. If at one point BCC will finally mine another node, but this will be super old, does it mean that other nodes will just reject it?

I love the idea behind Ethereum. I am not sure it justifies the current market rate and adoption. I feel the drive is caused by ICOs and I strongly feel that all the ICOs launched so far are not worth investing, at least in term of true value. I understand people can still make good money by shorting ICOs, but I have not found any great implementation of the Ethereum network so far.

If you were Satoshi Nakamoto, would you:

• reveal yourself?
• if so, how would you do this?
• what would you think of Bitcoin today?
• what would you think of altcoins today?

...aaaaand the unconfirmed transactions are currently more than 200,000 

https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Very interesting discussion. I am new to Ripple and I am trying to understand whether it would make sense to invest in some XRP. I am not here for quick bucks, I am here as a big fan of blockchains.

I invest confidently in BTC because I believe in the technology. The more the technology becomes popular, the more BTC will be worth. This is because you need BTC to use the blockchain and the BTC protocol does not allow issuance of BTC beyond the planned maximum cap.

I am interested in Ripple because I read it is a very efficient blockchain system and because many banks are adopting it. The problem is, if I understand correctly, that increase in popularity of Ripple does not mean increase of value of XRP because (i) banks do not use XPR for their Ripple transactions (not clear what they use...maybe their own coins?) and (ii) because Ripple is a private company and the Ripple blockchain is controlled by this company, thus they could issue more coins if they want to do so (even if this would create inflation and decrease the value of the coins they already hold).

Is this correct?

If the total money in circulation is about $75 trillions

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-total-amount-of-money-in-the-world?srid=Vkiw

and assuming that Bitcoin gets 50% of this, it would mean that we have Bitcoin's market cap at $37.5 trillions. By using some proportions, it means that 1 BTC would be equal to $2,343,750.

I just know that I sent 0.3 BTC from one address to another and the transaction is still unconfirmed after almost 10 hours. WTF! And yes, I paid fees.

58638fb148a624e9f21d15b2c045e0eb2773a76a76cbe8de0274beb991165102

It is interesting to see how some of these discussions become fairly similar to religion-based discussions:

"He left us the world, and now it's our turn to make it better"

"What if he would come back, what would he say to us"

 

Is there anything we can do to fight this monopoly? My understanding is that changing the structure of the Bitcoin network needs a hard fork, and a hard fork needs hashing power. Or we are just fu**ed? Is this the biggest flaw in Nakamoto's vision?

I am thinking about Bitcoin becoming an internet protocol that could be used for other purposes, e.g. colored coins, proof of existence and other apps that would work over the Bitcoin/Blockchain layer. In order to work, these apps need Bitcoins as their "fuel", even the smallest transaction. But if 1 BTC = $10,000, then even the smallest transaction will be too expensive to incentivize the creation of apps. This is when there could be consensus on mining more Bitcoins to decrease its value and give more "fuel" for apps.

Bitcoin has way more branding power than Satoshis. If Bitcoin increases its value, we will reach a point where adoption will be blocked by the general perception that Bitcoin is too expensive.

Also, but correct me if I am wrong, Bitcoins are comparable to shares of a company. The whole Bitcoin network is controlled by the total number of Bitcoins. If you don't have Bitcoins and need to transact in Bitcoin, you need to buy some and become "shareholder", even if this is for the fraction of time you need to complete the transaction. Expanding the number of Bitcoins would mean open the network to new users and avoid having a centralized control.

Most of the people keeping bitcoins as investment think that the value will go high, the more users use bitcoins. This is a demand/offer reasoning and it's based on the fact that the current protocol allows only X bitcoins to be mined.

How likely it would be that a future hard-fork removes this limit or just increases the number of bitcoins in circulation? This would destroy the value of bitcoins already mined.

Payment received, but it is lower than last week.

12/07 - +0.02523721 (this was the last regular payment)
12/14 - +0.00138787
12/21 - +0.00037871
12/27 - +0.00028374
01/04 - +0.00033959
01/11 - +0.00030713
01/18 - +0.00013730
01/24 - +0.00013980
01/31 - +0.00006816
02/08 - +0.00013465
02/15 - +0.00011486
02/21 - +0.00009676
02/28 - +0.00037572
03/07 - +0.00030801

PCMining user here. How does the guy keep on paying us? Did he left an automatic system that keeps on sending money every week? if not, is he still manually sending money to people even if somehow everyone believes that it's a scam?

I always supported PBMining but unfortunately I now think this was a ponzi and here is why I think this: it is too big of a coincidence that PBMining collapsed after a series of very low difficulty increase and a difficulty decrease. When the difficulty was up, people were not able to recoup their investment because of this and PBMining just gave you back, week after week, part of your investment. You would have lost money but you would have been "happy" because this was the difficulty's fault. The profit he was making was needed to pay the clients who, through referral link, got more GHS than what they paid.

Ehm, I am talking about normal people, not drug dealers. If I buy something with my credit card and the seller does not deliver, I can dispute the charge, have my money back and the credit card company has all the data about the seller and they can go against him. With Bitcoins, I pay someone and if he does not deliver, I can't dispute the transaction, I am not going to get my money back and I don't even know who the seller is because the protocol is anonymous.

Edit: what I am trying to say here is that unfortunately the bitcoin protocol makes it super easy to scam people. The more scams happen, the more people are damaged, the more other people will stay away from our beloved protocol.

Unfortunately PBMining is the perfect example of why Bitcoin will never become mainstream. The anonymity of transfers and addresses' ownership has become  a tool in the hands of scammers, instead of a system to protect privacy.

As long as bitcoin payments and addresses are anonymous, scams will happen and normal people will keep the distance from Bitcoin.

I just received a payment for 0.0013 when my usual weekly payment was 0.025.