so if Bitcoin is soooo revolutionary, why isn't it mainstream? and why isn't the government taking action?

please allow me to answer my own questions and would you please comment on my analysis...:


1) its new, trust takes time, diffusion takes time, slowly but steadily climbing towards critical mass

2) its not obvious and technically complicated, requires trusted individuals to explain and spread understanding

3) its new, first of its kind?, no history or any reference, requires entrepreneurial individuals to test and discover for themselves the validity of such system

4) government IS monitoring, but scale of project is deemed minuscule, non-threatening, and allows project to 'work itself out'


uh ... what else? please add your thoughts.

where is this 'bitcoin system' stored?

in every individual's computer?  ( p2p network..)

what if there's a malicious version of this system and a large population is using this malicious version of the bitcoin system, would't that damage the system?



ok so lets say there's a fail safe that all individual computer routinely checks with the 'original system', then what if that 'original was tampered with' ?

thanks i think i understand now

but what manages all those addresses!? what program...payment manager

so if this 'manager' were to pay an address 100 btc, it would transfer funds from say 250 different address to that 1 address? and this entire transaction would be all under yet a new and unique address?

... good arguments, but how you think governments came to be in the first place? we the people, from a lawless state, an economy where everyone can do w.e. the heck they want, from this we decided that it was better to have some form of government for its many benefits including individual protection. of course the trade off being freedom for security. ultimately the goal is to strike the perfect balance somewhere between freedom and security and personally i think this whole bitcoin movement is a reaction to much recent events of government having waaaaaaaaaay too much power, and i think it's cool. i hope bitcoin does endure the test of time and will somehow be incorporated into society at large to form a more balance economic for everyone.

ok so bitcoin removes the middle man right?

but then who or what ensures and enforces that both parties are being honest?, isn't that the job OF a middle man to ensure security?

i encountered this problem right away when i decided to purchase some bitcoin...

if i send cash first, the's no guarantee i'll get bitcoins in return.

if i trade it in person, then at least there's a person i can beat up >.>


i mean, isn't this the very basis of government, as this 'public' third party figure, because people ultimately are unable to trust each other.

although i don't have the computing capacity

if every transaction ever made is stored in those blocks in a .dat file

then a sufficiently powerful computer with enough time can draw a picture and determine which address has how many bitcoin, and continually update that picture as soon as the next block in, so only ~10 minutes late.

although that won't identify who owns the address, but at least one would be able to see, oh that address has 180,000 BTC. so that address might be your company.

wait, so you're saying that most merchants have a different address, one for EACH client? and they use some program to manage ALL those different addresses?!

ok also to clear up some confusion

lets say you go solo mining

is it GUARANTEED that you will get a block, and it all depends on how fast / how much you have hashed?

or it is a probability that you are the 'lucky' one to get the block...?

thanks

hi, i love pringles... ok

so you can either mine solo, or in a pool right?



so if you mine solo, lets say you keep the mining rig operational for a year, what's the expectation? that you will get 1 block out of all the blocks that year?

doesn't sound sustainable to me... or practical...



so if you mine in a pool, if the pool gets a block, everyone gets a share of the reward right? what's the share look like? .0005 btc?

because that doesn't look very appealing either.

what about privacy?

since all transactions are public, you can just go through the blocks and trace an account to individual / groups

well really obvious ones, like for example, a account with 10,000 Bitcoin per month revenue, there are only so many organizations capable of that, and through process of elimination and probably other tracing techniques, you can find out the EXACT amount of bitcoins any individual/group has.

and not only that, you can deduce who these individual/groups do business with and how much is transacted.