For those still interested, this has been discussed on Bob Murphy's blog:

http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2013/12/a-bit-of-silliness.html

http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2013/12/yet-more-on-tyler-cowen-on-bitcoin.html

and here:
http://elidourado.com/blog/tyler-vs-tyler-on-cryptocurrency-network-externalities/

Wow, such necro. It's been almost exactly a year and I guess I'll replace Gavin to "bit" in my half-baked scheme.

Anyway, I would say that late enlightenment philosophers are far too removed from any economic theory underlining Bitcoin.

Chaum.
Here's the rest of my proposal for the naming scheme:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196867.0

I'm sure that one day I will be able to buy a coffee for one Gavin, but in the meantime lets come up with something more memorable and meaningful than "100 microbitcoins". Here's my humble first draft. The above-one names will probably never be used, but it's still fun to have them named.

Denomination	Name	Legend
21000000	The Coinbase
10000000	Menger	Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian School of Economics
1000000	Nakamoto	possible number of BTC owned by SN
100000	Hayek	Nobel prize for contribution to the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle
10000	Pizza	first Bitcoin transaction - 10000BTC for a couple of pizzas
1000	Mises	In "Monetary Reconstruction" (1953) Ludwig von Mises argued for a fixed money supply
100	Milton	Milton Friedman proposed replacing the FED with a computer
10	Murray	Murray Rothbard argued for competing private currencies
1	Bitcoin
0.1	Finney	Hal Finney created the first reusable proof of work system
0.01	bitcent
0.001	milicoin
0.0001	Chaum	David Chaum - ecash
0.00001	Szabo	Nick Szabo - bitgold
0.000001	microcoin
0.0000001	Bit	Previously "Gavin"
0.00000001	Satoshi

I couldn't fit Wei Dai or Adam Back, although it is possible that they're already on the list
Anybody else should/shouldn't be on the list?  Perhaps fit them in place for mili- and micro- although those seem established by now.

rMyq6iePWEZJ35qRhdi2rKjT9YUiyfjKHU

Your question was in relation to the Bitinstant Card.
Charlie's answer would indicate to me that the announcement is not about any product, service or feature, but is more 'meta' - something about the Project itself.
Perhaps they secured some funding and are changing the structuring of the Project (Foundation? INC?). Maybe a reveal of Satoshi's identity (huge mistake IMO).

Alternatively, lenders are expecting Bitcoin to skyrocket and borrowers are competing against that expectation. Now, why would that expectation be reflected in the interest rate and not the BTC/USD ratio I don't know.

He abandoned it probably after realizing how much damage he's done with his "live crash" video.
This thing got reblogged all over the net with titles like "Watch the death of Bitcoin" etc.

And what is the point of making a video where you slowly read parts of some articles - something you could've done in a two-paragraph blog post?
And then in the video you show a freakin video of you READING WIKIPEDIA?? Are you kidding me??
And then you have real blogs (http://www.bitcoinnews.com/post/24023272127/brotherjohn-capital-controls) making posts about this crap?
Is that what the Blogosphere has come down to - everybody wasting everyone's time with 20 minute videos??!!

God, I hate video blogging  

Of course they do. I didn't say there was anything wrong or immoral about this. Maybe slightly unethical - creating false perception of public consensus - but then, anyone who lets some random comments shape his political views is an idiot anyway and what they think doesn't matter that much.
On the other hand, when it comes to technical and scientific stuff - like Bitcoin - there's absolutely nothing unethical about correcting common misconceptions. In fact, I wish someone knowledgeable commented on that random "Bitcoin is a scam" blog post that made me miss out on early adoption, when I googled Bitcoin in 2010.

What MNW proposes here is actually a very common practice among various interest groups, political parties etc.

This tactic was perfected by Israeli intelligence, who would organize anti-Palestinian, pro-Israel comment mobs using their Megaphone software.

These days, I suspect that many comments under political and economic articles on major sites are paid for as part of PR or Public Shaping campaigns. Not to mention the articles themselves.

*BUMP*

Did The Machine get to them?

Hi, I'm trying to buy February 2012, Issue 1, Print + Digital (INTERNATIONAL) with BTC, but the country keeps defaulting to United States. As a result Buyer Information on the invoice doesn't even contain a country field. Please advice.

And yet, this is exactly what you have right now. What now?




(BTW world's most diverse country is India, no western society is even close)

No offense OP, but I have trouble understanding how are you willing to invest in bitcoin mining apparently without even knowing about online exchanges, dwolla etc.

Reminds me of when my wife tried to explain to her coworkers how we are taking additional income from online poker.
She passionately talked about how it's not really gambling but a game of skill and a duel of minds, where you need to exploit your opponents weaknesses to be rewarded, how we're playing several hours a day and having made so-and-so much money...

And after all that, her coworker said: "yeah, it all sounds neat and all, just too bad you can't take the virtual money that you won from inside the computer and actually buy something with it"...

What about smaller brand manufacturers, like XFX, Gigabyte, HIS and others? Surely it must be somewhat bigger of a deal for them?
And by supporting BTC I don't mean necessarily any kind of an official campaign, maybe a slow and quiet reinvestment into the BTC market, to help keep the price growing and mining profitable.

Not sure if it's the right board or if it's been already discussed, apologies if so, but:

with all the talk about top ATI cards being sold out throughout the western world, do you guys think that the card manufacturers actually take notice of bitcoin phenomenon, or is it not even a blip on ATI's and NVidia's radar?
How about manufacturers, like MSI, Saphire and others?
Do you think they are working on custom chips?
Do they realize that they have a interest on helping to keep BTC alive?

I think it's pretty easy to "ignore expert economists". Especially after 2008.

As long as you have quality discussions and interviews, you might as well play Eskimo music, I'll still tune in.

Sounds great, BTC needs all kinds of sturtups. Brzmi świetnie.