Wesley

Almost all of this information was taken from Let's Talk Bitcoin's newest episode E74 – New Ideas in Bitcoin. You can hear the entire episode on the link if the current development in bitcoin is a topic that interests you. I find the current stage of bitcoin development to be a very interesting topic and it helps me get an idea of what the next few months and years will bring to the bitcoin marketplace. snapCard https://www.joinsnapcard.com/ snapCard is the stop-gap solution to sites that allow you to buy anything online with your bitcoin. There is no need for merchant-side integration of bitcoin into their site. All you do is shop on any online marketplace through the snapCard bookmarklet that can be added on to any browser. This service currently costs 1-2%. It will also allow the potential for the company to tell a company exactly how much money they could be getting by accepting bitcoin as payment. Hopefully, sites will increasingly have native bitcoin integration and snapCard will become irrelevant. In the meantime, you will be able to shop with bitcoin anyway. Bitcredits.io http://bitcredits.io/ Bitcredits.io is a very fast way to integrate bitcoin payments into a shopping cart. It allows websites a way to create their own currency to transact for subscriptions, donations and payments. It allows a very user-friendly real-time way to send the payments and instantly have access to the content. Feel free to go to their website and send a few pennies to them to try out the service on the homepage if you are interested. Invictus Innovations Incorporated http://invictus-innovations.com/ Invictus is working on the development of building crypto-equities. You can create decentralized corporations in which shares are represented by a coin on a blockchain. These shares show ownership and can pay dividends in a very secure and decentralized way. There is a lot of future potential for marketing, crowd-sourcing, and other such applications. Kipochi Wallet http://kipochi.com/en This is a wallet that is working hard to bring bitcoin to the third world and the un-banked, especially in Africa. It is a way of using a bitcoin wallet on any web-enhanced mobile phone. It allows people in countries that are dependent on tyrannical regimes and foreign aid to begin to have a stable currency and no state interference in their savings. Armory Wallet https://bitcoinarmory.com/ Armory has been around a while as a very secure wallet and I recommend it for anyone who is concerned about security and wants some coins not on a paper wallet. Armory is doing more work. Multiple signature transactions are being innovated to allow funs to only be spent if (say) a key on your computer is sent and a key that is on your phone is sent, dramatically increasing security. They are also working on micro-billing which allows a way for someone to walk into a coffee shop and be connected to their network. Which instead of having to buy minutes, you can just be charged a tiny amount automatically for the amount of time you spend at the location connected to the network. You could also sign up for online content that charges you automatically for the number of pages you read or things you listen to. It would make things along these lines a lot easier. Justus Ranvier He is working on a solution to create a method of stateless arbitration and contract service, which this would include the contract and the dispute resolution if needed. The goal would be to create a programmable script that can escrow funds from both parties that will be released upon completion of a contract. If a dispute message is sent by one or more parties, the funds will instead be sent to an agreed-upon third party that can resolve the dispute in some way and then send the funds in the appropriate direction. The best part of this is the ability for international recourse and decisions that do not require a state for the contract to reside in which that contract law would be applied. The arbitrator is decided only by the parties who are making the transaction, only will happen if there is a dispute, and it allows worldwide access to quality contracts and dispute regulation.

Personally, I would be a lot less bored if new members who may not be aware of things asked questions and showed curiosity as to why things exist the way they do, rather than attacking without this knowledge... ...and also when they finally realize they may have messed up and attacked before they knew things, they would not continue to attack in more subtle and passive-aggressive ways. I have found people on the boards to be extraordinarily helpful when asked for clarification or when curiosity is expressed. It would be impossible to try to tell new members about every possible little minutiae of what might be discussed or needs clarification. However, if new members asked questions about what they were unsure about, things would likely move more smoothly.

It is hard to predict. However, most likely banks would issue metacoin apps on top of bitcoin. This would allow blockchain-like security and transparency as to the value of the coin. They would then loan out bitcoin and provide interest and value to the account holder in the form of the metacoin. When someone wanted to withdraw money, it would be a simple exchange conversion. People would be able to easily judge what the value of their coins will be after the exchange vs before based on an exchange and past history of inflation and deflation within the metacoin. This would provide a lot of potential tools for banks to attempt to provide value to their customers. I would not get in on these systems unless they are trustworthy or provide some sort of insurance. It would be interesting to see how it develops. Banks in the form of storage will probably exist minimally. There will be some services that guarantee the safety of your coins for a fee (or maybe the fee could be the amount of deflation of the coin, so it technically could be free in real terms). The main service you are getting is a guarantee where if they lose your coins, then they will owe you the value of the coins they lost which would put a large incentive on their being able to keep your coins safe until you eventually want to withdraw them. For contracts, I would show you to ribuck's response. You do not need to reveal identity in the same way in bitcoin as identity can be achieved through mathematical signature rather than through government identification. Someone would just need to provide the key in order to access a piece of property and to prove ownership. Escrow and contracts also work under bitcoin and mediation services to help people set up escrow and contracts will exist as an escrow third party will require some trust and would be used in the event of large and important transactions.

Yes, we defined that term as X, but some other person might define it as Y, so I am going to argue against you as if you defined it as Y. Re-attempts to focus the terms will not help.

This really makes me want to get a pet beaver and name him Justin. I can then come home to Justin beaver, rub Justin beaver's belly, take Justin beaver for a walk, and cuddle with Justin beaver on the couch... I am sure there are other things I can do with Justin beaver too. I will have to see.

AH! Been a while since I've seen Boxxy videos.

I created this thread: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/38170-the-future-of-bitcoin/ and I was somewhat disappointed with the response, and in revisiting the thread I think I realized I wasn't addressing the topic in the right way and asking questions. Thus, I decided to revisit the topic, but re-vamp and address things from a slightly different angle, which should make a higher quality post and, hopefully, provide a better discussion around bitcoin's future. The Money Regulation Algorithm Bitcoin has produced an amazing thing by creating a system that eliminates the idea of state inflation and money regulation. Money instead is regulated by math. Math tells you that 2 + 2 = 4 every time. A politician tells you that, “If you vote for me, for 2 + 2, I can get you 5” but he doesn’t tell you that in order to get 5, you have to pay 2 more later in the year, and your progeny will owe 5 in debt. A banker tells you, “I can tell you what 2 + 2 equals and let you use it, for a fee.” When you can create an algorithm that replaces a function, you get a ton of resources that are freed up and a lot of savings in money as the old system becomes obsolete. Altcoins and Metacoins Based on bitcoin, there are several things that are being practiced. Altcoins are cryptocurrencies that are somewhat based on bitcoin that try to provide a different service of some kind. Litecoin allows faster transaction times and would be great for buying a candy bar where waiting around for several minutes for a transaction to confirm would be arduous. Namecoin can help to create an internet that is resilient to censorship and outages by using new domain name creation. There are many types of altcoins. Some of them are not going to stick around because they are just pump-and-dump (the creators mine a bunch, then tell people, then cash out on the hype) or they have great features where if they are successful, they will just integrate them into bitcoin. However, some make changes that bitcoin cannot replicate without creating an entirely new system in itself. Metacoins are coin apps that users can create on top of the bitcoin application. I will be able to use a Mastercoin-like service to create the WesleyMetaCoin. These coins can be used in any way that I want them to be used, whether it is shares for a company, or “I owe you’s” for people, or investors in a project where the coins are a badge of honor, or even a donation certificate given to supporters of a charity. Further Replacement Thus, I have talked about before how these coins could be used to replace contract law. Ownership and contracts are determined by mathematical hashes rather than any state-run arbitrator. Ownership can be simply determined by a private key, and contracts can be signed in a similar fashion. This would provide further obsolescence of the state as a complex service that can be simply replaced by an algorithm. Experimentation I want to see even more experimentation with this. Why don’t people try to come up with a coin that has built-in welfare allocation that allows these social programs to become obsolete. Maybe bitcoin in itself already allows this as a per-unit gift in USD vs Bitcoin has a large efficiency gap. Why don’t people create inflationary currencies in which the inflation goes to provide some service to the user. Even voting can be done using “coins” that can be allocated in a certain way and would provide better features and accountability than any system that the state may run. Results and Questions Thus, the state no longer would exist as it currently does. Slowly, more and more gets replaced by math, computers, and entrepreneurs rather than the arbitrary cloud of opacity surrounding the hero-worship of arbitrary words and theory. Welfare and charity can be done in a voluntary and transparent way and a million different solutions can be tried until a solution is decided upon by enough people as to become the standard. Maybe with all of these other "services" being replaced, welfare wouldn't even be necessary in the long run. People can choose what coins to use, and it becomes a simple protocol that is open-source and voluntary in nature. What other “state-run services” can be replaced by bitcoin? Or, more importantly, do you think that anything can’t be replaced by bitcocin? Why not? If you think there is something that can't be replaced, maybe someone else can come up with a way that it can be. Slowly, bitcoin will wear away at bits of the state and become more popular while entrepreneurs are creating more features and more solutions in the background. Maybe the DRO gets replaced entirely by math? Maybe it can't be, but so many of the services we currently view as state services can be that the DRO becomes a much smaller entity than was previously thought, with much aid from bitcoin, altcoins, and metacoins so that they operate in a much more efficient manner. It is certain that the future of bitcoin will make major impact on how we view rules and laws, bringing them from the government into voluntary rules that are driven by math which is always consistent. The implications are intriguing.

I have a thread in my signature called Bitcoin: Getting Started that has had positive feedback. If you have any further questions, you can post them in the thread or message me and I would be happy to answer.

I feel like its funny that my first reaction to reading this was: "Phew! At least its not THAT bad." It's like you got shot and you're not sure where as the pain hasn't registered. You turn to a friend who says you were shot in the head. Then you turn to your other friend who corrects it to say you were only shot in the ear. You feel relief and pain simultaneously as everything registers.

If someone slandered you and called you names and insulted and everything else (as you say is the case), would you really wade through all that in search of one or two hidden arguments? Or after the first two insults and lack of arguments would you just ignore them as trolls or something else? I do not think posting anything necessitates a response, especially from people who do not want to have civil discussion of ideas and do the things you describe. Giving this site advertising by linking it is also silly, if it is as bad as you describe. Why would Stefan pay bandwidth to link someone to a site that does that stuff? That doesn't make sense either and it would be appropriate to delete it I would think.

Did a YouTube search, and that's what came up.

That is good with me. Hopefully it will lead to wider participation.

I only was providing a possible option. There may be a time where transacting in one currency is cheaper when you transact between 0-8 times a year and another will be preferable for 9-infinite times a year. Businesses especially that do really large volumes will pass on half of their discount to the customer to show the preference for the other currency which leads people to have a "checking account" in an inflationary currency and a "savings account" in a deflationary currency. Of course, I have no idea what would happen, I am just providing a potential situation where inflationary currency could be positive in the framework of cryptocurrency that is voluntary. When it is voluntary and transparent, even some of the ideas that the Austrian school have brilliantly came up with may not apply. I don't know if they have yet, but the Mises Institute would do well do devote a lot of resources and thought to a bitcoin environment. The fact that I haven't really heard of work produced by them in this area (besides the occasional article) may be evidence that they are not doing this. This particular idea may not be perfect is all, it is just a possibility, though I think it is a very plausible example.

Well, I at least provided a possible example. That inflation compensating the miners could lead to lower transaction costs as a smaller transaction fee is needed in order to process the transaction quickly. Thus, an individual who makes many transactions would prefer the lower transaction costs and would be ok with the inflation rate as it actually saved them money. Then any savings could be transferred into a deflationary currency that has higher transaction costs, as you have minimal desire to transact very often in that currency anyway.

I do think you clarified things with the first part a little more. It would not be stealing if: 1. You knew beforehand that the currency would inflate 2. You chose that currency anyway 3. You have the option to leave at any time and go to a different currency. It is theft mainly in state systems, because of the lack of choice and the lack of transparency. I do not know if an explicit and voluntary inflationary currency will be good or not. I think that someone should try it and see what happens. In fact, I can almost guarantee that if anyone thinks it would be valuable at all, then it will become so. One possible way that it could be beneficial is to continue to encourage mining. Maybe transaction fees will not become enough (or cost too much in order to get a good time), so someone decides to make a currency that puts a pool of .5% of the current pool as rewards for mining, with transaction fees added in. This is just an idea off the top of my head, but that may lead to lower transaction costs for the currency, as they would be paid through inflation instead of directly. Maybe this currency will be swapped to for people who make many transactions, were savers will tend toward the deflating currency. I would not consider a transparent and voluntary currency to be theft no matter how much inflation there is. You should have the ability to choose between options and people should experiment with many different ways to have a currency and see what works and what doesn't.

Proverbs 29:15 ESV The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. Proverbs 29:17 ESV Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart. Proverbs 13:24 ESV Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. Exodus 21:17 ESV “Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death. Proverbs 22:15 ESV Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. Matthew 15:4 ESV For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ Hebrews 12:5-11 ESV And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? In short, you should be modeled as a child, because then it is ok for your god-father to beat you and call it discipline. No thanks.

I was a bit confused in this area. Is this a contradiction? Or am I missing something? I think that macroeconomics will be somewhat re-written in the bitcoin experiment. Bitcoins may be inflationary or deflationary, but how much does that matter when everyone knows exactly what the total amount available is and what the current monetary velocity is? Macroeconomics also used to be a system of policy management with arbitrary levers to pull, where now it would be explicitly data mining and statistics. I also do not think that a deflationary spiral would occur. If money started losing value because people were hoarding it, then people wouldn't hoard it as it would be losing value to disincentivize hoarding. There becomes a check against it. Right now, I do think a deflationary currency would be preferable to an inflationary currency as people need to go through a generation or so of building wealth rather than spending wealth. However, I think that there will be a basket of altcoins to choose from which could provide many interesting options of inflation and deflation in order to give people the chance to try out different money theories. Again, macroeconomics becomes something that will be rewritten and based on scientific and empirical evidence, rather than pseudo-religious theorizing and attempts to correlate past events. I tend to be of the opinion that inflation only is a problem when people do not know that inflation is happening and to what extent. I think the effects of inflation and deflation will be greatly reduced when everyone knows exactly what is happening.

I would be interested to see that post. The point of this thread was that anyone who looks at bitcoin as just a currency is fundamentally missing most of what bitcoin is, let alone what it will become. I do not think that bitcoin will necessarily be deflationary, especially with potential future altcoins and applications like "Wescoin" that will create some value external to the current bitcoin app. If anyone can create any coin they want, it would be hard to call it deflationary as in some strange way, people can print money- though it only gains value based on the value they provide in exchange for it. Also, it is hard to tell if bitcoin is inflationary or deflationary as right now it is still in the introduction phase, before the block reward lessens to be less than the transaction fees. Inflation (the increase in the money supply) is technically happening. Inflation (the rise in prices relative to the currency) is not because of increased awareness, added value in the bitcoin economy are moving faster than the increase in money supply. It also seems apparent that bitcoin's current inflationary status, as well as the surges in awareness fueled by the media create very similar short-term bubbles as have been seen in the past. However, because of the value in bitcoin itself, it survives the bubble (just like houses had value after the housing bubble, but paper currency may not) Finally, there are advantages to inflationary currencies and there are advantages to deflationary currencies. There also are disadvantages for each. For instance, if bitcoin were to become deflationary, then Keynes argued that the increased hoarding would lead to some sort of deflationary spiral that would kill the currency. I do not think that this is likely and I do not fear deflation, but I do see problems with a medium of exchange that may deflate too quickly. However, I do not think bitcoin will have this problem for reasons stated earlier. If you create this other thread, I will post any further thoughts there

On a forum that focuses on personal relationships and integrity, putting "logical" in there does not mean that people have free reign to be assholes. It actually means someone is far more likely to be called out on it. Logical is not a bind for the listener where I am supposed to ignore all the irrational stuff and stick to the logic. Rather it is a "bind" on the person presenting the argument, for if you are not logical I will be unlikely to listen to you.

These points are always so tiring to me. I know a lot of things, but that doesn't mean I created any of them. Not to mention that "the bible says so" is not exactly what I would consider proof. Proof requires the scientific method and testing and all that.

recommended minimum I would say that this seems to be a contradiction in terms. Is it recommended or minimum? What did she say about this list? Does she want to take some things away and add other things? I think you should maybe start with this, tell her that everything is optional, and negotiate what she wants to get done. Then tell her she can renegotiate at the start of any month if she changes what she likes or what she wants to do. If she is fine, then the list can just carry over. I could make a lot of things as to what I would want to learn or what I think others should learn, but her input is the most important piece that you want to have.

He has interviewed many political or economic experts and not talked to them about foreign policy. He has talked to many foreign policy people and not brought up economics. He has talked to those people and not brought up relationships and personal history. With the relationship and spanking people he doesn't bring up politics. With any of those people, he rarely brings up atheism. Almost no one is perfectly consistent with their principles and that doesn't mean they do not have information of value to bring up. Most of all, you need to understand that Stefan is almost never talking to the person he is talking to, at least exclusively. Experts are invited on when Stefan often knows exactly what they are going to say, but he wants to relay the information to the audience. Debates occur, not because he wants to win the debate and change the other's mind, but because he wants to put the logical arguments forward toward the people. He goes on other people's shows sometimes to talk to the hosts and pass information, but more to talk to that show's audience in order to grow his audience while also providing an interesting show that their audience so that they can grow as well. Thus, I see no problem not talking about every possible topic or issue as it is an impossible standard, and also it is very little about the actual interview/debate and much more about bringing what he is good at to his audience and bringing some Chomsky fans to the FDR show. No matter what Stefan said, it is nearly impossible that Chomsky would change his mind. Thus, the best way to serve the audience is not to use the limited couple minutes to do something that is a waste of time and instead tell his audience the good stuff and "poach" a little of the Chomsky audience.

I am pretty sure that none of these statements are true. IP was designed to do what it does. Provide monopoly privilege to the wealthy so that they cannot be out-competed by the young and the poor. I would send you Stephan Kinsella's way for some of the evidence and history around IP. It is possible that the idea of a logo or trademark existed in a free society (I am having trouble remembering) but the other two, certainly they were not designed for anything but monopoly protection of the rich.

I would agree that a lot of fairy tales are terrible stories. However, that can be a conversation in itself. Who was right? Was it a good story? Are all bad people ugly? Are all good people beautiful? When is it ok to steal? You can just question things endlessly and have great philosophical and moral conversations. My understanding is that Stef does this with his daughter when they read the fairy tales called "The Bible" about "the big invisible guy" and they just talk endlessly about motives, ethics, plausibility, and more. As long as they are treated as fiction that can be analyzed and the differentiation is established, then I see no problem with it. In the past, the Bible and fairy tales were treated as at least somewhat true in an effort to scare or threaten kids into performing certain behaviors. This would be abusive. However, stories can be treated as just stories. I also would probably read ahead on some before telling them. Some stories are quite gruesome. Like Cinderella's step sisters cutting off their toes to fit into her smaller shoes and things like that. I don't know how gruesome it gets, but it might not be the best children's read. You can then talk about the story in somewhat abstract terms by leaving out some adjectives and replacing some words so you can still talk about the content without any gore that may be present. Maybe others will have different input, but this is how I would do it.

There is already a thread started on this topic here. Just so that things don't split off too much in discussion.