ferdo

Bitcoin's rise in value will reflect the same curve that rise of information has taken:

http://peculium.net/2013/04/08/bitcoin-is-a-bubble-only-if-y...

Straight up is also a curve.

> Name a time and place where you'd rather live than today in the western world.

Fiji, circa 16th century.

Maybe you could submit a video of someone doing a dramatic reading of the Patriot Act as a counterpoint.

Buy gold at a coin store/jewelry store. Sell gold for btc to:

https://www.goldsilverbitcoin.com/products/gold/gold-america...

> "The distrust of the political system is unhealthy," he says.

Tell that to the dead souls of the Jewish, Russian/kulak, Native American, Cambodian, Central American and hundreds of other communities that were beneficiaries of these State-centered political systems that Sunde supports.

Trusting politicians and political systems is unhealthy. Healthy behavior is antithetical to politics.

The future price of Bitcoin will recapitulate the rise of information:

http://peculium.net/2013/04/08/bitcoin-is-a-bubble-only-if-y...

> if you can't buy BitCoin in your native currency legally

My native currency is now Bitcoin. ;)

The first altcoin to utilize and implement M-of-N-signatures will take over. Bitcoin is close but not quite.

China likes Bitcoin because the USG doesn't. As long as that dynamic holds, Bitcoin is safe in China.

Unlike the US, a hundred million+ internet users in China are already accustomed to digital money through the use of the now defunct Q coin.

It makes no difference to me if Bitcoin stays fringe or goes mainstream. It's value will continue to increase as long as it finds uses all over the globe, with or without the blessing of the USG.

And as more dollars come into existence, they'll continue to be worth less in comparison to Bitcoin's fixed supply.

Also, the accumulated transactional value of Bitcoin is increasing. All of the fees and other costs associated with moving money are being lost by banks and other agencies.

> Step 1: make Bitcoin exchanges illegal to operate. There is no Step 2.

Step 2 is moving my Bitcoin business to a country that's not afraid of Bitcoin.

Then the yuan exchanges will pick up the slack. I'd dump my dollars for yuan and btc, as would other people. The USG would be slitting its own throat if it made btc > $ exchanges outright illegal.

How does the US govt. deploy force against decentralized crypto? It can go after the exchanges and clamp down on bank-to-Bitcoin services but it can do nothing against the network itself. Should the USG clamp down on Bitcoin too hard, Bitcoin will thrive in those places that are harder for the regulatory agencies to reach.

ATM, 1 bitcoin is worth ~350 times more than one Federal Reserve Note, making Bitcoin the most valuable currency in the world. I expect demand for Bitcoin will only rise elsewhere in the world even if the USG tries to make it difficult for its own citizens to use.

> Filtering is not always bad

That wasn't the issue. The issue was the word 'censorship' being perceived as a biased word. Only censors or those with the predilection to censor would think the word is "biased".

Buy some gold or silver if the price of btc gets up to where you want it:

amagimetals.com

goldsilverbitcoin.com

I fixed up my house with a Lowe's giftcard bought with btc:

gyft.com

Let them bust a few miners. More will take their place.

> US billionaire Sheldon Adelson - a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a big donor to the Republican party - who said dropping an atom bomb in the middle of Iran's desert would ensure that they get the message.

I can't recall any of Iran's upper crust publicly stating that they should nuke America. America's hardliners appear to be more insane than Iran's hardliners.

> "Censorship" is a biased word

Only to someone in favor of censorship.

Kyle, you're kind of a badass. This could be an important project for Bitcoin usability. I'll be sending you some satoshis in the next few days for a bounty to hand out.

> But the users are idiots.

Since mods come from the userbase, what does that say about the mods?

> The users on the thread you linked think that filtering out shitty new sources is some kind of right-wing conspiracy.

Some do, sure. Many others, including ex-mods, see it for what it is: censorship.

> "I don't get the sense that this was unwanted from the community either."

It was unwanted. The mods' announcement was even downvoted to zero by the community:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1pedlv/concerning_...

I suspect that reddit's management is looking for the kind of audience that's perfectly content just staring at a TV screen no matter what's on. This appears to be an active push to chase away people with higher functioning intellects.

The market for dumb is huge. I can't say that I blame them for going after it, but I won't be one of their users anymore.

The sad part is, they probably did hack the upvotes. That was their best effort.

You're welcome to your opinion. He strikes me as a man in over his head.

Killing American citizen without a trial puts American citizens on the same footing as any peasant in history.

> Your quote about the NSA has nothing to do with criminal evidence.

It shows historical patterns of gross negligence in observing legalities by the Executive Branch that lead to things like killing your own citizens based on your own "evidence" without benefit of a trial.

> in what sense does this executive branch have secret rules or norms that apply to the criminal justice system?

It considers itself above the law to the point of being able to kill Americans without trial.

That aside, 40 years ago the NSA stated that it was above the law because it was created by Executive decree and tus not bound by statutory law:

"NSA does not have a statutory charter; its operational responsibilities are set forth exclusively in executive directives first issued in the 1950s. One of the questions which the Senate asked the Committee to consider was the "need for specific legislative authority to govern the operations of...the National Security Agency."

According to NSA's General Counsel, no existing statutes control, limit, or define the signals intelligence activities of NSA. Further, the General Counsel asserts that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to NSA's interception of Americans' international communications for foreign intelligence purposes." [1]

[1] Church Committee Report on NSA Surveillance Affecting Americans (1975)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5920793

Bitcoins bought with US dollars last year buy over 40x more than if the dollars had been saved. Bitcoin is here to stay for as long as the internet is.

Bitcoin has a gigantic first mover advantage. The free rider alt coins are all essentially based on Bitcoin's blockchain innovation.

Until Bitcoin is broken through advances in computing or a solution better than Bitcoin comes along, Bitcoin is the top of the heap for digital cash.

If Bitcoin was a natsec honeypot, the NSA/NIST-approved secp256r1 algo would have been used instead of secp256k1.

> the developers of popular Bitcoin software have tremendous power over Bitcoin (e.g. they can trigger block chain forks).

If Bitcoin developers do something that miners don't like, they lose their base. Developers are as invested as miners are and don't want to risk a drop in the value of their bitcoins.

The balance is that developers are accountable to miners and users, unlike central banks that aren't accountable to us.