There was an article on Bitcoin in c't, a bi-weekly German computer magazine (sold curculation about 350K) today. At 6 A4 pages it was a rather in-depth article, and I did not notice any factual errors.

Philipp

It seems like there are people using bitcoin volatility for fraud on bitmarket.eu.

For those unfamiliar with bitmarket.eu: It's an escrowed bitcoin exchange: When two parties agree on a trade the bitcoins are held in escrow by bitmarket.eu, until the former owner releases them (typically once the agreed-upon amount of flegacy currency has been transferred).

I've been trading bitcoins there. However quite often, the other party failed to "pay" (transfer legacy currency) - in all the cases of non-payment this was after the BTC/EUR rate dropped.

Thus escrowed trading offers risk-free profit to fraudsters: Buy some bitcoins on bitmarket.eu, wait for a few days, pay if the BTC/EUR rate has gone up, don't pay if it has gone down.

This seems like a significant probem to me. E.g. out of the 9 transactions I did on the 10th of last month (BTC prices did fall the next day) I only received payment for 5. For the other 4 transactions I never received the EUR.

Philipp

Sorry for the confusion. It seems it's not a blanket ban on Tor, just that some IPs of Tor exit nodes are banned.

Philipp

He can't login; he's effectively been banned form this forum: He only logged in using Tor, and logins via Tor are no longer allowed.

Philipp

AFAIK this (growing plants, not the exact experiment) has been done on MIR before.

Trading has started, I have entered orders. Price is currently at 16.99.

Philipp

Well, to me it isn't that clear. Let's say the government (defined as the first government to ban Bitcoin) bans bitcoin. Such a ban probably would take the form of not allowing exchanging that country's fiat currency for bitcoin. It is likely to come under the guise of consumer protection and accompagnied by denouncing of bitcoin as a pyramid scheme, money landering system or whatever.
Let's assume that other governments follow. Sure they can't ban some geeks from exchanging some €, $ or whatever bills for bitcoins in unviersity hallways, they can't stop currency trades via Silkroad or BlackMarket. But they can shut down the major exchanges like MtGox or TradeHill and the OTC markets like bitmarket.eu and destroy any alternative coming up.
The bitcoin system will still be operating, but it would just be some niche thing. It won't gain mainstream adoption.

Yes, the governments have failed against P2P filesharing. But that was not only a new thread, they were also unprepared for any attack on IP in general (and governments had to be convinced first to fight P2P at all).

With bitcoin the situation is a bit different: Governments are used to defending their currencies. The defenses are in place just waiting to become active, they are tried and well-trained. There's efficeint international cooperation of lw enforcement in such areas, and they're not afraid to put political pressure on countries for being too lax when in comes to money laundering or tax evasion.

The war machine is there, and at least somewhat ready. I'm sure some governments will decide to put it in motion against bitcoins some day. I hope it is too late by then.

Philipp

The titel is "If bitcoin succeeds....so what?". In that case holding a bitcoin sure beats the possibility of nothing in the future.

Philipp

This.

Unfortunately there is the prejudice that floating-point calculations is what matters, thus many compute clusters for scientific purposes went with Nvidia. Probably due to the physics people being the first to jump on the GPGPU bandwagon and AFAIK floating-ppint is what most of them want.

Philipp

IMO if bitcoin succeeds bitcoin adaption will grow very fast. Once bitcoin becomes something acceptable to the general public there will be a breakthrough. When people see bitcoin gainign value versus fiat currencies, and there's no trust problems holding them back, they will sell fiat currencies. Which will accelerate the inflation of fiat currencies, which will provide a stronger incentive to keep your saving in bitcoins instead of fiat currencies, in turn accelerate fiat currency inflation. This is a positive feedback loop. Self-reinforcing. Self-accelerating. I wouldn't give the fiat currencies more than a few days once it starts.

Philipp

Not a hyperinflation of Bitcoins, a Hyperinflation of all remaining fiat currencies. When bitcoin succeeds people will want to buy them, resulting in lots of dollars being put onto the market, thus the value of the dollar will fall.

Philipp

Is there a prototype implementation?

For which usage scenarios would the light client be an improvement? For which ones would it be a necessity?

Anything on how it would work.

Philipp

As others have pointed out, it happens in certain situations. Even worse, governmnets are willing rely on currencies issued by other governments in those cases: Not only do they not hold the pwoer over the currency as with bitcoin, there's even someone else holding that power.

Here's a few examples:
Montenegro and Kosovo used the German Mark and now use the Euro.
Many small states use the Euro.
Lichtenstein uses the Swiss Franc.
East Timor and Ecuador use the USD.

With the exception of really tiny states this usually happens in times of turmoil, civil war and major economic crisis. We could use that knowledge to make Bitcoin more widespread and to create a suitable global environment for further acceptance of Bitcoin.

Philipp

I suppose the MtGox withdrawal limit prevented her from getting the coins out of MtGox, so she did instead mess with the Bitcoin community for fun.

No. It's not like Bitcoin transactions will be rolled back (that would be virtually impossible). It's just transactions within and among MtGox accounts being rolled back.

Bitcoin is still unregulated as it always was.

Or some early adopteri wanting to counter all the whining about early adopters getting rich once Bitcoin takes off.

Someone laundering the Bitcoins from Allinvain?

Well, I have money in MtGox, and all I get is "Another trade is still in progress, please retry in a few seconds" when I triy to buy Bitcoins. Haven't been able to buy a signle Bitcoin on MtGox today so far.

There are other senators pushing other issues the think they can get politiccal profit from. Only some of these pet issues will amke it into legislation; we, the Bitcoin community, notice these two senators, since their issue is Bitcoin. All politicions are pushing for or against some issue. I do not see why Bitcoin should be among the few issues that make it into legislation. Then I don't know that much about your democracy.
I have seen the call for internet censorship to fight CP in Germany, it became a big political issue, made it into yellow press and legislation, and nevertheless in the end it failed, with the law now revoced. Bitcoin might be in for a similar treatment, but it might take a few years.

Philipp

Hyperinflation.
Everyone will want to get rid of their remaining fiat currency as quickly as possible. Many people will end up with bags of dollar bills and nothing to eat.
Maybe the governments will step in and offer to buy fiat currency at a fixed rate (and subsequently destroy the bills and coins) using tax Bitcoins, so fiat currency holders won't end up starving.
The transition period will feel like after a world war. After a few years the wounds will have healed, power and welth will have shifted to new owners, just like a few years after the world wars.

Philipp