When gold backed currencies where a "thing" no one much cared about the face value or even which country (as long as the mint was trusted) minted the damn things, indeed the face value was directly tied to weight, all anyone cared about was the gold weight. I'm not sure where you do the idea that they would deflate older coins by minting new ones with less weight and same face value, that's just daft; the gold would simply be remelted - it did not remove gold from circulation (deflation).. Your probably thinking of bullion coins being minted today with metal of value much higher than face...which is a post fiat construct, that has nothing at all to do with gold back currencies.

Bitcoin deflation would encourage spending in 2030 the same way that it does on these forums in 2014, which can be summed up in "I bought a 150k dollar pizza in 09' and we are the new wealthy elite". Any financial system with a highly deflationary currency like bitcoins would ball up and die, as no funds would ever move through the system; Inflation pushes smart money to invest in creating means of production, in to research, and building income producing properties while all that deflationary currency encourages is the building of Scroodge McDuck banks (which in the case of bitcoins you cant even swim through).

Confirming! The reporter randomly picked a man named Satoshi Nakamoto in search of someone named Satoshi Nakamoto, this was done purely by chance with no consideration paid to any other external fact. Heck even you could be named Satoshi Nakamoto!

There is literally no reason to misuse words like random, nobody, and could. There is a real argument to be made about Dorian not founding Bitcoins... I think all of the members of this forum would appreciate a bit more effort.

As everyone plainly knows we live in a 4 dimensional universe where people's emotional state at the last point in their life reverberates backwards through time to every other point. Since soon after the paper (its not at all possibly that his desire for privacy was an outgrowth of attention received); Satoshi wanted to remain anonymous his desires would have clearly undone the mistake of using his real name to begin with (clearly this could not have been his real name).

Thank god for the retrograde movement of desires which create a standardized emotional space envelope; It keeps us all from saying "derp i shouldn't have done that" because its not like after using your real name once you can say don't call me that any more without being even more suspicious.  

I'm not saying that he is who Newsweek claims he is, i'm saying we live in a world where not all actions are rational or consistent with people's long term goals. Just because a smart person mad an irrational error does not make the error impossible; remember this is something that cant be undone after the first instance.  

What likely happened is that he used his real name very early on in the project since at the time there was no real reason to hide, but as things progressed he got spooked at some point and started being very careful. At that point however it was already to late to use a pseudonym without raising even more suspicion; imagine saying don't call me "Satoshi Nakamoto" any more, from this day fourth I shall be known as "Little John" its like announcing to everyone my real name is actually "Satoshi Nakamoto" and I dun messed up.

What most people say was that he was very careful towards the end, and assumed he had always been careful...clearly on day one i would have been hard to predict that bit coins would be where they are today.

This is a much more plausible argument than the OP.

Consider china for a moment: Strong capital controls, strong censorship of speech, vast resources dedicated to tracking personal activity, brooding civil unrest (in part do to corruption scandals). China's main objective in the next few decades is to manage it's social transformation, and they believe they can do it with government control; now do you think china would see bitcoins as a help or a hindrance to achieve this goals? lets face it there isn't a whole lot about bitcoins for the Chinese government to like.

Now its entirely possible for individuals within the government to act in self interest (and enrich themselves while bucking the party line) however surly there are more efficient and less public ways to do that (remember being a corruption sacrificial lamb in china is no joke).

I think the most probable explanation is that this is something China doesn't understand and cant control, thus they don't like it (don't blame them i wouldn't either in their position).

When people act rationally a conspiracy is unnecessary in order to explain their behavior.     

Yes! the worlds second largest economy, made this announcement so then can steal the bread crumbs from your pocket. Because a country with 8.2 trillion in GDP and 1.3 trillion in held US debt needs to lower the prices of bitcoins in order to be able to buy some.

I'm not saying the price of bitcoins wont go back up, I'm saying that statements like this smell of panic.

you mean with acids like Aqua Regia? yes because that's how you can REALLY destroy elements, with acid!...its not like its part of a processes for gold purification or anything...

Congratulations you've added a misunderstanding of elements to your misunderstanding of bitcoins.

Hello,

I am making this terrible post so that I may head to the economics section and take part in discussions that caught my interest about ponzi schemes. I have been lukering here for a about two years but really didn't feel like posting till now.

I don't really have any general questions because I understand the search function.

Apologies to the people that wasted time reading this bad post; with any luck it will be the last one.