All of trifith's Comments + Replies

Let the record also show that 2 years later, bitcoin is up 243%

https://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD

LOL. Would you like to apply this generally, e.g. as in "The principle of Rule of Law is a bad idea because it's an invitation to gaming the laws. Much better to have a tyrant...err... benevolent philosopher-king decide matters because it's harder to game him".

I favor more of a polycentric legal system. Call on someone agreeable to all parties to solve disputes when they happen on a mostly case-by-case basis with some generally agreed guidelines.

Downvotes on posts/comments older than X time affect the downvoters karma the same way as they do the downvoted.

Downvotes made after X time from the original posting affect karma at a rate of y%

Downvotes from users with karma below X don't affect the downvoted's karma score

All of these are made on the assumption that malicious downvoters are engaged in a E-Peen measuring contest using Karma as the measuring tool.

Only if the miners are all behaving rationally. Sunk Cost fallacy is a thing in far more people that it is not.

Plus the investment in the mining equipment market will make for more efficient mining equipment, which would be needed for the new difficulty. We'd have a second mining equipment bubble.

State actors would need to aquire mining hardware in order to make a 51% attack. Several million dollars worth of it. Trying to do so would have obvious effects on the small bitcoin mining equipment market, and unless the government turned all their machines on at once, they would spend the time they ramp up to a 51% attack actually strengthening the network, and causing other miners to also buy more equipment to keep up with the new difficulty.

This is certainly a possibility, if someone in the government recognizes the potential threat bitcoin offers to ... (read more)

Bitcoiner here, so bear that in mind

A 51% attack is hard. It's come close to happening once with a mining pool called GHash.io. The community quickly responded, and as of right now, the largest pool has about 17% of the network hashing power, and GHash.io has about 4%. The current state of network power distribution can be viewed at https://blockchain.info/pools , as well as other blockchain watching services. It is in any particular miners interest to be in the largest pool possible, but counter to any miners purpose to be in any pool with the possibility... (read more)

This is, IIRC the long aftermath of the 3rd major bubble. One in June 2011 (to ~$30), one in April 2013 (To ~$220) and one in November 2013 (To ~$1100).

Personally, I'm not expecting a major recovery until the protocol hits the next halving of the mining rate, which is July of 2016 on the current mining timetable. In the mean time, I'm dollar cost averaging my investment in Bitcoin, and stacking up whatever I can get.

No, I am not.

I personally rate the probability of catastrophic negative effects of this action as significantly lower than the probability of any negative effects, and the probability of no negative effects.

I am also speaking from a position of ignorance, and I don't like making decisions from ignorance.

I don't know what the ill effects would be, but the benefit is clear. If more cheap information is readily available, I want it (and some has been provided). If some amount of expensive evidence would increase my estimate of catastrophic effects, and that evidence can be clearly defined and gathered, I want it. If only vague, hard to measure risks remain, I say do it.

I'm a little cautious about deliberately eliminating a species, even a harmful to humans one. The environment is a complex system, and sticking our monkey hands in and pulling leavers can backfire in unpredicted ways.

What other environmental effects do the mosquitoes have? Do they control some other pest species? Are they food for something larger? Does the additional infection vector of mosquito bites significantly improve the general immune system functions of humans or other species bitten by these mosquitoes?

Hal Finney has not died, he has entered long term cryopreservation . Death is permanent, Hal still could get better.

1) The rationale is that silver is significantly harder to create, while paper notes are easy. If the paper notes must be redeemable for silver, it is some level of control on the creation of paper notes, in that a rational economic actor is unlikely to create significantly more notes than they can redeem. Austrian Business Cycle Theory places the blame for the business cycles firmly on the creation of unbacked paper currencies and the resulting inflation. Most people calling for sliver (or gold for that matter) backing of the US dollar subscribe to ABCT, and believe that such backing would reduce or eliminate the damage done by business cycles.

For Germans, I personally would advise homeschooling anyway as a supplement to the formal schooling. There are vast educational resources available online for both parents and students, and the fact that formal schooling is going on is no barrier to making use of those resources. Don't let your schooling interfere with your education.

Here

I have posted this to /r/bitcoin, so as to allow the market to learn of this proposed inefficiency, and thus remove it, should it in fact exist.

Your link to the study hall is broken. The study hall can be found here.