> I can choose whichever Government / Central bank fits me the best.
Bitcoin actually provides a new choice: government or no-government. People that want government/cb currency are free to choose it. People that want no-government money can choose Bitcoin.
Gold is not really practical for modern commerce without first converting it into an alternate currency (passthroughs in dollars, for instance) or trusting a third-party. Bitcoin can be traded really easily, no conversion or trusted intermediary (unless you count the btc swarm) necessary.
Unless you want instantaneous transfers. Which requires you to use either a Bitcoin Bank (ie: Flexcoins), or an intermediate trusted 3rd party (Green address).
Which is the entire point of this thread of discussion. People are not liking the restrictions on Bitcoin (ie: wait X number of hashes before the transaction is complete), and are recreating "alternative currencies" for Bitcoin. Which to me... seems against the point of the medium.
The IRS is not regulating the foreign currency. It is regulating your conduct as an American taxpayer, pursuant to a Congressional grant of such authority.
I'm guessing Clay is in his 20's? If so, I'm approaching 52 years old and I loved this book equally as much in 1966 or thereabouts. If you're reading this, you made my day by reminding me of it.
> "Coding democratized how we can solve our own problems, regardless of age."
Well said. I'd add that very few old men are innovators, especially when it comes to CS or the like.
What I'm glad to see is more folks in this generation learning how to create their own channels, sell what they make and not depend on larger entities for their survival.
> If the company you store your wallet with is hacked you lose everything, if your laptop is stolen or your dropbox account is hacked... it's as safe as keeping cash in your apartment. If your bank fucks up your money is (almost always) insured.
What unthinking person leaves his bitcoins with a third party or on a computer? Would you leave your RL wallet with a stranger? Would you leave something easily stolen in public?
Store bitcoins in a paper wallet until you need to use them. They'll never get lost or stolen unless one is just as careless with the paper as they might be with their live keys.
The Euro is an experimental currency. Don't invest time or money in it that you can't afford to lose. Hackers can break into your account and steal your Euros in the middle of the night if you don't secure your wallet so never store your Euros with a third party.
There must be some shifting in the geekforce. I just switched back to Firefox a couple of weeks ago on OSX 10.7. Flawless, which is more than I can say for Chrome or Safari.
The problem is that currently the closest thing to a prediction market is Bets of Bitcoin, and they use probably the bizarrest set of rules you have ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on. So.. not really an alternative at all except for the most wildly mispriced bets on it (where you can be sure to come out with a profit regardless of how much the rules screw you).
I see the wiki lists 2 other prediction markets, but they seem to handle sports only.
Prediction markets don't necessarily have to be real currency and it's a misconception that they are only accurate if you're using real money. We have run a prediction market using fantasy currency for years: http://home.inklingmarkets.com. We also run run private markets for companies...
Of course they don't have to use real money. But if you're happy with playmoney, nothing stops you from, say, just writing down predictions and checking how they ultimately do. (I do just this; great practice and useful in many ways.)
However, we shouldn't forget that many people aren't going to contribute their time and expertise without a concrete reward. Nor do I blame them.
You don't specify when you are sampling the market. It often wouldn't be surprising, or useful, that a market correctly predicts an event the day before it occurs.
> No one is accepting Bitcoin as payment and then holding on to them in order to buy something else or pay their workers.
Brewster Kahle at archive.org gives his employees the option to be paid in bitcoin received by the site.
> As a long term (or medium-term anyway) store of value, Bitcoin is really quite useless for the time being.
That's quite incorrect. Bitcoin has proven to be an excellent tool for buying low, waiting for a price rise, trading some of the bitcoin for gold, selling some of the gold and buying more bitcoin with the proceeds.
It's a great tool if you're willing to learn how to use it.
>Brewster Kahle at archive.org gives his employees the option to be paid in bitcoin received by the site.
That's pretty cool actually, although personally I wouldn't do it. Hope to see more of that.
>Bitcoin has proven to be an excellent tool for buying low, waiting for a price rise, trading some of the bitcoin for gold, selling some of the gold and buying more bitcoin with the proceeds.
This speaks to Bitcoin's utility as an instrument for speculation, not for storing value. If it was a good store of value you would print out your private key and put it in a safety deposit box, confident that whenever you returned to retrieve it, it would represent approximately the same amount of wealth that it did when you left it.
This is most definitely not the case with Bitcoin at all.
> If it was a good store of value you would print out your private key and put it in a safety deposit box
I have quite a number of btc stored in cold wallets.
My point is that because of Bitcoin, I actually have fluid wealth to move around and store, be it with metals or cryptocurrency. I didn't have that freedom with US cash, an instrument whose value is rapidly decreasing and has been for a long time.
Yes, discussion about technology, math, physics, crypto, P2P and the markets they're creating have no place here on Hacker News.