The cost of mining in Bitcoin has been artificially inflated from a combination of proof of work, halving and the reward for mining itself.  Adjust some of these to remove the hash rate arms race to make financial gain, and mining to secure the blockchain is inexpensive.

(Fixed)

This is odd, i sent a transaction some Bitcoin from BTCe to my wallet with a new address and a day later i still dont see the bitcoins in my wallet.  Where are they?  Have i been daft:

Went to "request" created a new address gave it a label, no Amount value set.  
Copied new address, entered into BTCe transaction.
monitored Blockchain.info, shows bitcoin transfered and confirmed.
Nothing at my end changed, wallet vlaue is the same as before.


EDIT...  just found the relevant Help section on the website, trying the "reset blockchain".  Heart in mouth as wallet went to 0... really should inform people about that...

EDIT2... so watching the log i'm still some 40000 blocks behind.  I suppose only opening wallet occasionally leads to it being out of sync, even though its not a full node.  

EDIT3.  We've caught up, and there it is.  hopefully this will be of some use to some one - MultiBit still needs to keep upto date and doesn't sync automatically it seems.  

Surely spending unconfirmed transaction breaks the whole purpose of Bitcoin, to remove trust by replacing it with absolute certain confirmation of the transaction.

Nice in theory, but there's massive lag in the system from the investments made in hardware.  It might have worked out if people just switched on and off a few commodity hardware based systems, but when people started investing $10k+ in GPU farms and even more so with ASIC, the dynamics changed.  Miners cant afford to sell at the market rate if its substantially below their projected cost base, so they horde until the price rises. 

However, once that hardware is bought, the miner is compelled to keep it running even at a small loss to hope to cover the  higher capital costs already sunk.  So option 1 of the OP is unlikely.  The high cost of mining does tend to underpin a price.

I find this notion that people are aquiring Bitcoins in the market to then spend at a normal retail establishment to be quite odd.  Its daft to purchase something only to use it to purchase something else, where that interim step is unnecessary.  I'm sure there some cases, some for the novelty or to see how it works, or edge case financial situations.  But it doesn't make much sense to risk the loses in exchange or the transaction costs to do so regularly.  I expect the vast majority of Bitcoin sales through regular retailers are from self-mined stockpiles.

Yes, it does give Bitcoin more purpose and credibility, its one less reason to deny Bitcoin's use.  Not necessarily its value.  Here's the deeper economic point: its depleting its value, as you valued the purchased item more than you did the Bitcoin.  With normal currency this isn't an issue as the vendor values the currency.  However here they don't, and promptly offload immediately.  This is not a good thing long term, its a constant selling pressure on the currency.

I cant verify a payment against an out of date, offline blockchain.  How do i know it hasn't been spent since the last entry i have recorded?  Someone can roll around the country infront of the USB drive spending the same bitcoin address  over and over.

People talk about the current confirmation cycle being too slow for widespread adoption.  Offline blockchain is antithesis of bitcoin.

What use is the blockchain on a USB if it takes days or weeks to receive it?  I can only verify a payment if i have an upto date version. If i cant verify a payment, i cant trust it...

It already happens.  Most ISPs will give certain traffic priority over others, throttle it to create premium un-throttled services, or just manage bandwidth capacity.  Its called traffic shaping, and its executed without legislation, just commercial decisions.  

An interesting question that for me highlights how there's too much emphasis on retail acceptance of Bitcoin.  Which doesn't matter much.  Taking bitcoin payments isn't any different to any other currency, the retailer is just offering payment through a third party provider.  When i go to a US or European site they offer the same for my £.  They dont want my £, they will have the payment processed and given in their local currency.

Really, there's not much advancement of Bitcoin until it is wanted as the currency, until it is used for direct payment of goods and services.  Until Nestle takes payment of Bitcoin for a delivery of a shipment of chocolate or baby milk; until BP takes payment of Bitcoin for a shipment of lubricants.  And then holding them and using them to pay their payments to their supply chain that use Bitcoins.

Online retailers accepting bitcoins are just exploiting a self-publicising niche market.  It generates some headline and gets a few $'00,000 through the tills that might have gone elsewhere or more likely not spent.  Theres not real economic growth as those BTC just go straight back into the currency exchange market.

Well, since Bitcoin doesn't currently encrypt, it is extremely vulnerable to being blocked at ISP level.  Even encrypted you could block traffic to known Bitcoin nodes, or probably recognise a signature of the Bitcoin network to block.  This would require national legislation to act, and its not very likely, but it is a threat that seems too easily dismissed.

   If thats your point of view, then I don't really think you understand what "ethics" are.  Certainly you've missed that different people hold different ethical views and value assign them different values and priorities.  You apparently hold child labour in far off lands paramount, another might find employment of local population has greater importance. 

The question you pose isn't simple "yes/no", though most would answer "no" to exploitation there are other factors.  Someone might prefer that there isn't child labour in a far off land, but wants to cloth their child or earn a wage, which trumps their objection to sweatshops.

Also, a libertarian view on the "free market is right" is from the point of view of economics.  Not ethics. This illustrates perfectly my point that they should be separated. 

Is it ethical to deny people employment opportunities to maintain protectionist trade relations?  Is it ethical to exploit the consumer by only allowing them to buy local produce, at greater expense.  

Or should we separate ethics and economics and address them individually?

This would be a very good idea.  Especially to recognise Bitocin is in fact fiat itself.  Most wont like that, but its true, in that its not commodity based currency and its value is backed by regulation, albeit the protocol rather than government mandate.  Its a constant source of amusement that people rile against fiat when they are being pro bitcoin, apparently not realising the meaning of fiat.

By calling out "gov currency" its clearer to people what you mean and the separation from Bitcoin is technically more correct.

Or indeed running it.  How do I in the UK get in or out of this coin, presumably i have to pay fees.  Like i would with my bank to hold $.  I'm really not seeing the point of this, unless they make their fees less than the established money transfer businesses.

It may be a shorter list of those that aren't.  Certainly most countries are involved in some protectionism and subsidies to some industry or another.  The entire defense industry is one massive form of subsidy.  Agriculture is largely subsidised in developed nations and in many developing nations.  Individual industries or companies can enjoy subsidy by way of targeted tax breaks, or outright cash incentives.

Back to the original question: Do we gain more by sending jobs to other countries where the labour is cheaper?  

Its a very interesting question that often polarises people along ideological lines.  From a pure economics point of view protectionism is bad, and letting cheap labour take the jobs is better for the wider economy as a whole as prices are kept down while profits kept up.  win all round.  But from a social-economic point of view, where peoples livelihoods are considered of course its not so black and white with winners and losers.  

The idealist would hold that people can skill up and take better, less manual jobs, and we have more leisure time.  The realist will note that leisure time costs money (what can you do for free these days? not alot), there aren't enough "better" service/office jobs to go round, some people dont have the skills and if we are honest aren't going to no matter how good you try to educate (face it people have different abilities and aptitudes).  So some people will be left behind.  Protectionism is ultimately an attempt to redress this imbalance, but its is contrary to all society really wants (all the benefits of free trade), so it gets hidden from view with politicians, and most economist, pretending it isn't going on.

 

...And we see a piece of written enactment, a statute, not common law by definition.  You tried.  You need to understand "common law" doesn't mean what you think it means, and it is based on people creating it, it just isn't/wasn't formally written.  What you should learn is the concept "natural law" is not the same as common law.

No it isn't, its based on law tradition defined in courts as a matter of tradition or interpretation of statute law.  You don't even understand the basics and have already contradicted yourself in previous posts.  You need to refresh your free-man-on-the-land scripts Come back when you have so I can taunt you some more.

oh, and back to thread subject, daft idea agree with the poster that Bitcoin should keep to currency, its not a fix for all issues in the world.

I'm well aware of how trading accounts work, and loans in general.  Thats why i find i it odd anyone thinks this is a killer app for Bitcoin. 

Someone is going to have to explain where the interest is coming from?  Loans you say?  Why would I loan Bitcoins when due to the very deflationary nature advocated i'm likely to have to pay back more value than I borrowed?  Accepting borrowing for margin trading (great... just what bitcoin needs, short selling), what would i possibly need a Bitcoin loan for that couldnt be served by a conventional loan?  Therefore how is this a killer app?