well, the good thing is that i knew what my response was the moment i read his rebuttal. the bad thing was that i took the wrong pony out to deliver it.

Something interesting (?) happened to me today:

My bank refused to facilitate an international money transfer to BitStamp (for 7k US).

In the past I've transferred money to and from several poker sites, Neteller and numerous business suppliers around the world, including very small companies in China. Never had any problem before.

The reason they gave was that it was outside their 'risk profile', whatever the hell that means. Like, it's MY money, send it where I want to be sent, ffs.

It's a New Zealand bank, but is owned by one of Australia's largest banks, Commonwealth.

Is this a common occurrence?

Guess I'll have to use the HSNL transfer thread instead to get my BitCoin.

Mostly wild ass guesses.
10 bagger in 5 years is not a high bar. >50%.
100 bagger, much harder, probably around 20%
$10 or less in 10 years, 5%.

Take little stock in this.

not uncommon


banks are notorious for refusing any kind of business they deem gray in terms of legality.

even if it isnt expressively illegal
, they reserve the right to refuse.

Right. I assume they would attack the BTC/USD conversion companies, which would basically be the UIGEA of BTC.

This is sadly far too common. IMO the banks don't want to be caught in any kind of legal trouble and consider that money theirs and not yours. So instead of applying common sense, they just blanket refuse to touch it.

Bitcoin users not affected

There have been people who have Bitcoin in their business name (sell Bitcoin shirts or something), and they are getting refused by banks just by being too risky.

Future price is hard to determine, because we're looking at two different things:

1) Ease of use as currency

vs.

2) Store of value

The BTC protocol could be wildly popular as a transaction vehicle but still stay at a low price. (After all, many people don't care if BTC is $1 or $100, they just want to know how much they need to get whatever they want) My hunch is that the terrible track record of currencies will take care of 2), but who knows.

Yeah I heard about that. Totally and completely insane.

As time goes I think more people will adopt bitcoin (or some other digital currency) as young people are generally much cooler with technology and radical new ideas than old people.

I mean for years old people still liked to go into the bank rather than use an ATM because they didn't trust that crazy machine to handle their money, etc.

Yeah, that's why I called the doubters the conservative christians of money in the politics thread.

If it's really popular it will be a lot more scarce, therefore it's value will go up. Right now maybe there's a million users worldwide (total guess). That number could easily 1000x. Not saying that means the value should therefore 1000x, but it should be somewhat related to the amount of users.

Most likely this is going to be correct, but it's far from certain IMO. In my mind, BTC being "really popular" means MAYBE 5% adoption.

Hoarders will eventually divest if the price goes up more and more, though. The supply is limited in one sense, but the amount actually "in use" evolves. Hell, early adopters are divesting right now quite a bit (through investments or purchases many times).

This is an example of how easily regulations can severely hinder transacting in a new currency. The future of bitcoin is at the US government's whim, and no country has ever looked favorably upon a competing currency.

I'm thinking about getting a "bought with bitcoin" or something of tht nature tshirt. Can anyone recommend a reliable site?

"Easily" a billion people? That number is almost as big as the number of credit card users in the entire world. That took decades, and involved:

- The backing of all major worldwide banks
- Hundreds of billions in capital investment
- Extensive widespread advertising
- A fast, secure, networked instant payment approval system
- Extensive credit offerings

How on Earth is Bitcoin going to achieve this? There are several huge impediments to widespread Bitcoin adoption:

1. The time taken to verify a transaction is two orders of magnitude too large.
2. Security is limited to something you know, stored digitally
3. The value can drop massively in a short time if a security flaw is found, or regulation comes in, or something happens to the Internet, or global security deteriorates, or if someone invents a better cryptocurrency with fewer flaws.
4. Your money is irretrievable if the thing you know (the private key) gets lost or forgotten
5. There is no central authority to arbitrate transactions, protect against fraud, or offer consumer protection.
6. A sufficiently large botnet could shut the network down for days, weeks or months
7. Every transaction you make is recorded in an entirely public ledger, which could one day be traced to you.

Against this it offers the following benefits:

1. Anonymous digital transactions (below a certain threshold, and with sufficient care and technical know how)
2. Avoidance of central authorities (with the above caveats)
3. Potential speculation profits
4. The fun of something new and cool

The large majority of people are not interested in the above benefits. It's of interest to illicit dealers, gamblers, speculators, the tech savvy and the anti-government types. Those people number in the millions, at least in the West.

The product is deeply flawed as a mainstream offering. If I offered a credit card with the above list of drawbacks and advantages, most people would avoid it like the plague.

So how do you get to a billion people? Why would people choose this product who aren't in the above classes?

If you can figure this out, surely you can also figure out why those other 5 billion are missing from the world economy

If the protocol still works why would it no longer be viable as a transaction vehicle? If the protocol still works it will serve as currency for those who wish to use it as a currency. For some strange reason it works today, so that debate should have been settled. There are lots of other debates if bitcoin can be used differently in the future, but we can be pretty certain that it will at least work in the same way as today. Sure we can debate if more or less people will accept it, but imo we can be pretty certain that more than 1 person will accept it, and that is all that it takes for the protocol to be viable.

Check out:

http://www.cafepress.com/+bitcoin+gifts

http://tothemoonguy.com/products/the-shirt

Satoshi Nakamoto found and outed: http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/b...-nakamoto.html

http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/b...-nakamoto.html

It's behind a paywall. Newsweek says I've surpassed my limit of 5 free articles per month.

I have never even been to the Newsweek website before.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashi...-may-be-found/

Sounds like a cool mother****er.