Will this method work against the common cold? *cough* *cough* It affects many more people than AIDS ever did. *trumpet sound* Probably causing more sick days at work as well. Can we, now that we have a cure for AIDS, please *cough* focus on finding a cure for the common cold? *Sneeze* It has been a menace for much longer than AIDS.
My title says "Bitcoins Join Global Bank Network", which is only half true. You can transfer Bitcoin to your Bitcoin address, and have it set up to convert them to Euro on your bank account instantly as they arrive, and this bank account is joined with the global bank network. Bitcoin can not travel through the global clearing systems banks use for fiat money and arrive at another bank as Bitcoin on a bank account. Bitcoin-Central is now an European Payment Services Provider which exchange Bitcoin as well as handle fiat money like a bank normally does. Not a Bitcoin bank and not even a bank by the proper definition (it doesn't issue credit).
I'll switch to this bank (PSP for the nitpickers) for my daily banking until my old bank can handle Bitcoin in the same way.
1. They do not claim to be a Bitcoin bank. 2. They do not claim to be a bank (just licensed to operate as one). 3. They are technically a PSP, which means they are not allowed to issue credit, i.e. increase the money supply. 4. Bitcoin banks are not impossible, just not necessary. You see the difference?
There is no official exchange rate from EUR to USD either. The only currencies operating with official exchange rates are IRN (Iran), KPW (North Korean won), and a few others. For those there is a black market using completely different rates.
If you check the currency rates from different banks, you will see they differ. Usually by very small amounts, because every time a robot discovers it can buy USD with EUR in one bank and sell in another at a profit, the market rates at both banks will even out. The same mechanism is at work in Bitcoin. Sometimes however, the bots run out of funds and the exchange rate stays sparated by a few percent.
As for taxation, I have reported my bitcoins and Bitcoin earnings to the tax authorities every year, and they still have no clue what to do about the information. Bitcoin is an undefined entity. All their calculations return undef, NaN, null or similar.
Why does Google get so low that they need to have proxy patent wars with Microsoft? Why can't they leave MS alone or at least sue them themselves?
Google can't sue Microsoft for breaching a patent held by Motorola. Neither can Google's owners (their shareholders). Motorola has to do that. Do you really think Google should spend valuable time and effort to transfer all patents and patent licences from Motorola to Google first, just to have their name on the plaintiff?
Depends if he his right or not. Obama isn't a mormon (my spell checker wants to correct that to moron) as far as I know, so at least I would tell Linus to do better research.
For example, his “Utility MACT” rule is purportedly aimed at reducing mercury pollution, yet the EPA estimates that the rule will cost $10 billion to reduce mercury pollution by only $6 million (with an “m”).
It is very clear that Romney doesn't know what mercury is. Why do you think he knows what air pressure is? It's science, you know. Poison for the minds of religious fanatics. When it is so obvious he didn't follow the normal science curriculum in school, he should be very careful when joking about it, If it was a joke.
It actually saved the taxpayers money because his house is truly "green" and is much easier to secure than the White House.
Yeah, the White House was completely open and abandoned in those three years. No security at all. In fact there are still homeless people living in the attic.
Strange that I didn't see Obama meeting with any world leaders on any of his trips to Hawaii.
Me neither, but I couldn't see him all the time of course.
I don't recall Merkel tagging along when they went to a Broadway show. I didn't see Netanyahu with Obama on The View or David Letterman.
I'm sure both Merkel and Netanyahu have better things to do than watch Broadway shows with Obama. Such people usually prefer to talk in a more private atmosphere. I don't recall Bismarck tagging along Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre either, by the way. Bad US presidents not hanging out with foreigners allt he time.
And when Bush was on vacation, the unemployment rates was not over 6%.
Nope. The breaking down of U.S. enconomy employed a lot of people full time. Many people even had two or three jobs to do it properly.
People can't find jobs while Michelle is whooping it up in Aspen on the backs of the taxpayer.
Yeah, because it's all his wife's fault and responsibility. G. W. Bush didn't destroy the U.S. economy. Barabara did!
Must be easy to be a US company. Make a product. Doesn't matter if it sucks or not. If someone else make a better competing product with their own technology, sue their ass with bogus patents on rounded corners and whatnot, which are only possible in the US, and grab all the competitors profit in the entire world.
This sentence from Mitt Romney just doesn't compute:
For example, his “Utility MACT” rule is purportedly aimed at reducing mercury pollution, yet the EPA estimates that the rule will cost $10 billion to reduce mercury pollution by only $6 million (with an “m”).
How do you reduce mercury pollution by "$6 million"? Does this guy have any idea what mercury is?
This will an unfair advantage to the runners far away from the gun. The eye reacts very quickly to movement on the side. Try looking at the side of the traffic light when waiting for green, and you will react faster than if you look straight at it. If the runner closest to the gun starts fast enough, the runner farthest away will react on his movement instead of waiting for the sound. And while the closest runner only have the sound to react to, the runner farthest away will have both sound and movement.
Drafted recruits in general, I think. We weren't there for the exercise. I didn't even choose the navy. When I had to put up three choices, I put the navy on second and crossed "can't swim" to make sure the draft office wouldn't place me there. It didn't work.
This reminds me of my time in the navy. There was a minimum requirement for everything, including 60 meter sprint. I ran it once, and got clocked in 1/10th of a second to late. Fearing I would have to run 60 meters once more, I protested because the starter gun was at the finish line! The sound would take almost exactly 1/10th of a second to reach the starting line from the finish line, I argued. They had to accept the protest, of course, and I made the requirement exactly.
And the price for best connected island goes to... Guam! If you zoom satellite view in to the north-western airport, you can see at least four B52s. And the main road is called "Marine Corps Drive". I guess those guys need a lot of porn.
My point is that Microsoft deserves quite a bit more credit than they're getting for this OS. I've found that friends of mine who've actually used a WP7 phone have been quite impressed.
Impressed as in "Wow, in spite of being from Microsoft, it is actually usable" or "This is better than Android or iPhone"?
A couple of months ago I tried to find sales numbers for WP7. I could only find thousands of descriptions of how to replace WP7 with Android. If there are as many WP7 phones sold as there are descriptions of how to install Android on them, the phones must sell very well. When the number of howtos on converting Android phones to WP7 outnumber the howtos in the other direction, I'll start believing in WP7.
Microsoft Vacuum Cleaner didn't suck either, but it wasn't a great product that users wanted.
By the by, do SI users measure their weight in newtons (the correct unit) or kg (from what I remember from when I lived in Germany, the one they actually use)?
We measure our mass in kg. (1 kg is also the mass of one maß of beer.)
It means that each transfer is recorded by the network with a sender and receiver address. You can make a new address for each transaction, and the address does not have to be known to anyone except the sender and receiver. When a transaction is spread each node will check if the coins which are beeing sent actually belong to the address sending the coins. Otherwise it would be possible to spend the same coins twice.
IOW, not "freely" at all. I have to announce my transaction to every single other person using the bitcoin system, and sufficient people using the bitcoin system have to be available with some sort of transaction history to make sure their earnings aren't being double-spent.
So, do you think it should be possible to spend the same coins twice? Even banks keep track of transactions on your account, you know, to make sure you don't spend the same money twice. Do you know a better mechanism? And you don't announce the transaction to every other node. You just have to announce your transaction to at least one other node (which must be connected to at leas one other node, etc).
Each transaction is 260 or so bytes. Each block, which can contain many transactions, has a merkle hash which can be used to verify the entire block chain all the way to the genesis block. You don't need the entire chain if you record the state at a trusted point, and then continue from there. This will be implemented when there is a need for it.
For anonymity I have to rely on source, destination and machines close enough to my machine not being monitored.
No. Please go and read about Bitcoins and peer to peer systems in general. If you are worried about your own network being monitored, you may use Tor or I2P anonymous VPN services (Mullvad accept payment in Bitcoin, btw) and proxies and whatnot. You don't even have to send the transaction from your own computer. Valid transactions spread quickly among the peers, and it is not trivial to find out where a transaction first originated. The destination for the coins is not involved in the transaction, btw. Transactions are recorded in the block chain, and the destination client reads about it there.
For security I have to rely on my networked machine not being compromised with a keylogger and uploader - more fucking likely than someone walking into my home and stealing my wallet, especially if something on my hard drive represents the value of, say, a shiny new house.
There are web based wallets. Just as secure as other means of Internet banking. Also you can back up and encrypt your Bitcoin wallet. Try to back up and encrypt the wallet in your pocket.
How many coins would be enough? How many microcoins? Nanocoins? Yattocoins? In the current version of the protocol you may send as little as 0.00000001 coin. This may be expanded when needed. His name is Satoshi, btw.
So what you're saying is that the protocol upgrade will mitigate slightly against the hoarding that always takes place with backed currencies.
I don't think a protocol upgrade will be needed, but there are free bits which may be used to signify extra resolution if there ever is a need. And hoarders only make troubles for themselves. If you can't get enough bitcoins, you will stop using it, the value of Bitcoins will drop, and the hoarders lose in the end.
So what if they monitor the networks? They have no means of finding out who owns an address, unless the owner reveals it. There is no practical limit on the number of addresses you may own or use. Addresses are just cryptokeys.
So where does the actual packet communicating the coin payment initially get sent from? Do I throw some pixie dust into the air and it simultaneously appears on all the computers involved in the BitCoin system, including the receiver? Does the doublespend
If you had invested in Bitcoins a year or so ago when they were worth a penny, your investment would be worth 100 times more by now.
Perhaps a currency which flows freely without borders,
Freely? So what the hell does this mean in the FAQ: "a public list of all the previous transactions is collectively maintained by the network of Bitcoin nodes, and before each transaction the coinâ(TM)s unusedness will be checked."
It means that each transfer is recorded by the network with a sender and receiver address. You can make a new address for each transaction, and the address does not have to be known to anyone except the sender and receiver. When a transaction is spread each node will check if the coins which are beeing sent actually belong to the address sending the coins. Otherwise it would be possible to spend the same coins twice.
artificial restrictions
There is a plan for there to never be more than 21 million coins! How is that not the most fucking retarded artificial restriction for a currency? Why in the name of fuck would anyone propose a currency which would only just cover one coin each per resident of New York?
How many coins would be enough? How many microcoins? Nanocoins? Yattocoins? In the current version of the protocol you may send as little as 0.00000001 coin. This may be expanded when needed. His name is Satoshi, btw.
or monitoring by governments and tax collectors
Where are the computers and networks outside of the reach of monitoring by governments and tax collectors, please?
So what if they monitor the networks? They have no means of finding out who owns an address, unless the owner reveals it. There is no practical limit on the number of addresses you may own or use. Addresses are just cryptokeys.
If you use electricity to heat your house, you should be setting up a couple of dedicated boxes right now to generate Bitcoins in the process.:)
And connect a water-cooled rig to your aquarium while you're at it.
I'm way ahead of you! I've rebuilt my bathroom and exchanged the old electrical floor heating with water pipes. The water pipe is connected to my water cooled computer and graphics card in the basement below. I actually earn money by heating my bathroom! 400W of bitcoin generation. I added a lot of sensors and stuff while I was at it, and connected everything to a microcontroller which reports temperature, humidity and controls a couple of switches. The microcontroller reports to my computer, where I adjust GPU frequency and CPU load for optimal bathroom temperature. I may add a second graphics card to get an extra temperature boost when it's cold, and some heating in the basement as well. The first card paid itself and the water block after about five weeks of Bitcoin generation.
I'd invest in penny stocks before I invested in this.
If you had invested in Bitcoins a year or so ago when they were worth a penny, your investment would be worth 100 times more by now. Perhaps a currency which flows freely without borders, artificial restrictions or monitoring by governments and tax collectors isn't something people would want to use after all. In that case the value may drop and your investment get worthless. But a lot of people think this currency has useful qualities over other currencies, and invest in them. That's why the value of bitcoins increase so quickly.
The total eventual circulation will be 21 million bitcoins. There will never be more coins than that. The coins are entering circulation gradually, at a steady pace over many years, to nodes supporting the network in proportion to the CPU time they contribute. With the current total CPU power on the network, most CPUs will usually take months between successfully generating 50 BTC.
So basically, this is like "collector items", not currency.
In the current protocol you can transfer 0.00000001 coin. This can easily be expanded by more decimals in the future, so scarcity is not a problem. How many nanobitcoins are enough? How many yoctobitcoins? Many people need some time to grasp this concept, but don't worry about the limit of 21 million bitcoins. Only one coin is enough to make everyone in the world a multimillionaire in attobitcoins!
I've sold a lot of bitcoins (in the past when the value was lower than 1/4 of it's current value) for normal money in the bank, and I have bought coffee, gadgets, a month of VPS and more for bitcoins. My main use of bitcoins now is to transfer money to a foreign account without paying outrageous fees to my bank. (The foreign account is for paying expenses in that country, not for tax evasion or anything illegal.) I buy bitcoins in my currency and sell in the other. Often with a profit as well. Can't do that with monopoly money.
which the Obama administration says will put 'countless' lives at risk, threaten global counterterrorism operations and jeopardize US relations with its allies
They said the Iraq war documents would put people at risk, too. They didn't, though
The Iraq war put people at risk as well, but the administration tries to hush that down. According to some sources even more innocent lives were lost in the war than in the aftermaths of the Wikileak.
Slashdot Mirror
Will this method work against the common cold? *cough* *cough* It affects many more people than AIDS ever did. *trumpet sound* Probably causing more sick days at work as well. Can we, now that we have a cure for AIDS, please *cough* focus on finding a cure for the common cold? *Sneeze* It has been a menace for much longer than AIDS.
They don't claim to be a Bitcoin bank.
But the story title does.
My title says "Bitcoins Join Global Bank Network", which is only half true. You can transfer Bitcoin to your Bitcoin address, and have it set up to convert them to Euro on your bank account instantly as they arrive, and this bank account is joined with the global bank network. Bitcoin can not travel through the global clearing systems banks use for fiat money and arrive at another bank as Bitcoin on a bank account. Bitcoin-Central is now an European Payment Services Provider which exchange Bitcoin as well as handle fiat money like a bank normally does. Not a Bitcoin bank and not even a bank by the proper definition (it doesn't issue credit).
I'll switch to this bank (PSP for the nitpickers) for my daily banking until my old bank can handle Bitcoin in the same way.
1. They do not claim to be a Bitcoin bank.
2. They do not claim to be a bank (just licensed to operate as one).
3. They are technically a PSP, which means they are not allowed to issue credit, i.e. increase the money supply.
4. Bitcoin banks are not impossible, just not necessary. You see the difference?
They don't claim to be a Bitcoin bank.
There is no official exchange rate from EUR to USD either. The only currencies operating with official exchange rates are IRN (Iran), KPW (North Korean won), and a few others. For those there is a black market using completely different rates.
If you check the currency rates from different banks, you will see they differ. Usually by very small amounts, because every time a robot discovers it can buy USD with EUR in one bank and sell in another at a profit, the market rates at both banks will even out. The same mechanism is at work in Bitcoin. Sometimes however, the bots run out of funds and the exchange rate stays sparated by a few percent.
As for taxation, I have reported my bitcoins and Bitcoin earnings to the tax authorities every year, and they still have no clue what to do about the information. Bitcoin is an undefined entity. All their calculations return undef, NaN, null or similar.
Why does Google get so low that they need to have proxy patent wars with Microsoft? Why can't they leave MS alone or at least sue them themselves?
Google can't sue Microsoft for breaching a patent held by Motorola. Neither can Google's owners (their shareholders). Motorola has to do that. Do you really think Google should spend valuable time and effort to transfer all patents and patent licences from Motorola to Google first, just to have their name on the plaintiff?
Depends if he his right or not. Obama isn't a mormon (my spell checker wants to correct that to moron) as far as I know, so at least I would tell Linus to do better research.
Wouldn't be appropriate in this case. I think his comment is representative of the Linux/Open source community.
Romney was not being serious, linked video and whatnot
Is this a joke as well? Let me quote:
It is very clear that Romney doesn't know what mercury is. Why do you think he knows what air pressure is? It's science, you know. Poison for the minds of religious fanatics. When it is so obvious he didn't follow the normal science curriculum in school, he should be very careful when joking about it, If it was a joke.
It actually saved the taxpayers money because his house is truly "green" and is much easier to secure than the White House.
Yeah, the White House was completely open and abandoned in those three years. No security at all. In fact there are still homeless people living in the attic.
Strange that I didn't see Obama meeting with any world leaders on any of his trips to Hawaii.
Me neither, but I couldn't see him all the time of course.
I don't recall Merkel tagging along when they went to a Broadway show. I didn't see Netanyahu with Obama on The View or David Letterman.
I'm sure both Merkel and Netanyahu have better things to do than watch Broadway shows with Obama. Such people usually prefer to talk in a more private atmosphere. I don't recall Bismarck tagging along Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre either, by the way. Bad US presidents not hanging out with foreigners allt he time.
And when Bush was on vacation, the unemployment rates was not over 6%.
Nope. The breaking down of U.S. enconomy employed a lot of people full time. Many people even had two or three jobs to do it properly.
People can't find jobs while Michelle is whooping it up in Aspen on the backs of the taxpayer.
Yeah, because it's all his wife's fault and responsibility. G. W. Bush didn't destroy the U.S. economy. Barabara did!
Must be easy to be a US company. Make a product. Doesn't matter if it sucks or not. If someone else make a better competing product with their own technology, sue their ass with bogus patents on rounded corners and whatnot, which are only possible in the US, and grab all the competitors profit in the entire world.
For example, his “Utility MACT” rule is purportedly aimed at reducing mercury pollution, yet the EPA estimates that the rule will cost $10 billion to reduce mercury pollution by only $6 million (with an “m”).
How do you reduce mercury pollution by "$6 million"? Does this guy have any idea what mercury is?
This will an unfair advantage to the runners far away from the gun. The eye reacts very quickly to movement on the side. Try looking at the side of the traffic light when waiting for green, and you will react faster than if you look straight at it. If the runner closest to the gun starts fast enough, the runner farthest away will react on his movement instead of waiting for the sound. And while the closest runner only have the sound to react to, the runner farthest away will have both sound and movement.
Drafted recruits in general, I think. We weren't there for the exercise. I didn't even choose the navy. When I had to put up three choices, I put the navy on second and crossed "can't swim" to make sure the draft office wouldn't place me there. It didn't work.
This reminds me of my time in the navy. There was a minimum requirement for everything, including 60 meter sprint. I ran it once, and got clocked in 1/10th of a second to late. Fearing I would have to run 60 meters once more, I protested because the starter gun was at the finish line! The sound would take almost exactly 1/10th of a second to reach the starting line from the finish line, I argued. They had to accept the protest, of course, and I made the requirement exactly.
And the price for best connected island goes to... Guam! If you zoom satellite view in to the north-western airport, you can see at least four B52s. And the main road is called "Marine Corps Drive". I guess those guys need a lot of porn.
My point is that Microsoft deserves quite a bit more credit than they're getting for this OS. I've found that friends of mine who've actually used a WP7 phone have been quite impressed.
Impressed as in "Wow, in spite of being from Microsoft, it is actually usable" or "This is better than Android or iPhone"?
A couple of months ago I tried to find sales numbers for WP7. I could only find thousands of descriptions of how to replace WP7 with Android. If there are as many WP7 phones sold as there are descriptions of how to install Android on them, the phones must sell very well. When the number of howtos on converting Android phones to WP7 outnumber the howtos in the other direction, I'll start believing in WP7.
Microsoft Vacuum Cleaner didn't suck either, but it wasn't a great product that users wanted.
By the by, do SI users measure their weight in newtons (the correct unit) or kg (from what I remember from when I lived in Germany, the one they actually use)?
We measure our mass in kg. (1 kg is also the mass of one maß of beer.)
It means that each transfer is recorded by the network with a sender and receiver address. You can make a new address for each transaction, and the address does not have to be known to anyone except the sender and receiver. When a transaction is spread each node will check if the coins which are beeing sent actually belong to the address sending the coins. Otherwise it would be possible to spend the same coins twice.
IOW, not "freely" at all. I have to announce my transaction to every single other person using the bitcoin system, and sufficient people using the bitcoin system have to be available with some sort of transaction history to make sure their earnings aren't being double-spent.
So, do you think it should be possible to spend the same coins twice? Even banks keep track of transactions on your account, you know, to make sure you don't spend the same money twice. Do you know a better mechanism? And you don't announce the transaction to every other node. You just have to announce your transaction to at least one other node (which must be connected to at leas one other node, etc). Each transaction is 260 or so bytes. Each block, which can contain many transactions, has a merkle hash which can be used to verify the entire block chain all the way to the genesis block. You don't need the entire chain if you record the state at a trusted point, and then continue from there. This will be implemented when there is a need for it.
For anonymity I have to rely on source, destination and machines close enough to my machine not being monitored.
No. Please go and read about Bitcoins and peer to peer systems in general. If you are worried about your own network being monitored, you may use Tor or I2P anonymous VPN services (Mullvad accept payment in Bitcoin, btw) and proxies and whatnot. You don't even have to send the transaction from your own computer. Valid transactions spread quickly among the peers, and it is not trivial to find out where a transaction first originated. The destination for the coins is not involved in the transaction, btw. Transactions are recorded in the block chain, and the destination client reads about it there.
For security I have to rely on my networked machine not being compromised with a keylogger and uploader - more fucking likely than someone walking into my home and stealing my wallet, especially if something on my hard drive represents the value of, say, a shiny new house.
There are web based wallets. Just as secure as other means of Internet banking. Also you can back up and encrypt your Bitcoin wallet. Try to back up and encrypt the wallet in your pocket.
How many coins would be enough? How many microcoins? Nanocoins? Yattocoins? In the current version of the protocol you may send as little as 0.00000001 coin. This may be expanded when needed. His name is Satoshi, btw.
So what you're saying is that the protocol upgrade will mitigate slightly against the hoarding that always takes place with backed currencies.
I don't think a protocol upgrade will be needed, but there are free bits which may be used to signify extra resolution if there ever is a need. And hoarders only make troubles for themselves. If you can't get enough bitcoins, you will stop using it, the value of Bitcoins will drop, and the hoarders lose in the end.
So what if they monitor the networks? They have no means of finding out who owns an address, unless the owner reveals it. There is no practical limit on the number of addresses you may own or use. Addresses are just cryptokeys.
So where does the actual packet communicating the coin payment initially get sent from? Do I throw some pixie dust into the air and it simultaneously appears on all the computers involved in the BitCoin system, including the receiver? Does the doublespend
If you had invested in Bitcoins a year or so ago when they were worth a penny, your investment would be worth 100 times more by now.
Perhaps a currency which flows freely without borders,
Freely? So what the hell does this mean in the FAQ: "a public list of all the previous transactions is collectively maintained by the network of Bitcoin nodes, and before each transaction the coinâ(TM)s unusedness will be checked."
It means that each transfer is recorded by the network with a sender and receiver address. You can make a new address for each transaction, and the address does not have to be known to anyone except the sender and receiver. When a transaction is spread each node will check if the coins which are beeing sent actually belong to the address sending the coins. Otherwise it would be possible to spend the same coins twice.
artificial restrictions
There is a plan for there to never be more than 21 million coins! How is that not the most fucking retarded artificial restriction for a currency? Why in the name of fuck would anyone propose a currency which would only just cover one coin each per resident of New York?
How many coins would be enough? How many microcoins? Nanocoins? Yattocoins? In the current version of the protocol you may send as little as 0.00000001 coin. This may be expanded when needed. His name is Satoshi, btw.
or monitoring by governments and tax collectors
Where are the computers and networks outside of the reach of monitoring by governments and tax collectors, please?
So what if they monitor the networks? They have no means of finding out who owns an address, unless the owner reveals it. There is no practical limit on the number of addresses you may own or use. Addresses are just cryptokeys.
If you use electricity to heat your house, you should be setting up a couple of dedicated boxes right now to generate Bitcoins in the process. :)
And connect a water-cooled rig to your aquarium while you're at it.
I'm way ahead of you! I've rebuilt my bathroom and exchanged the old electrical floor heating with water pipes. The water pipe is connected to my water cooled computer and graphics card in the basement below. I actually earn money by heating my bathroom! 400W of bitcoin generation. I added a lot of sensors and stuff while I was at it, and connected everything to a microcontroller which reports temperature, humidity and controls a couple of switches. The microcontroller reports to my computer, where I adjust GPU frequency and CPU load for optimal bathroom temperature. I may add a second graphics card to get an extra temperature boost when it's cold, and some heating in the basement as well. The first card paid itself and the water block after about five weeks of Bitcoin generation.
I'd invest in penny stocks before I invested in this.
If you had invested in Bitcoins a year or so ago when they were worth a penny, your investment would be worth 100 times more by now. Perhaps a currency which flows freely without borders, artificial restrictions or monitoring by governments and tax collectors isn't something people would want to use after all. In that case the value may drop and your investment get worthless. But a lot of people think this currency has useful qualities over other currencies, and invest in them. That's why the value of bitcoins increase so quickly.
From the site,
The total eventual circulation will be 21 million bitcoins. There will never be more coins than that. The coins are entering circulation gradually, at a steady pace over many years, to nodes supporting the network in proportion to the CPU time they contribute. With the current total CPU power on the network, most CPUs will usually take months between successfully generating 50 BTC.
So basically, this is like "collector items", not currency.
In the current protocol you can transfer 0.00000001 coin. This can easily be expanded by more decimals in the future, so scarcity is not a problem. How many nanobitcoins are enough? How many yoctobitcoins? Many people need some time to grasp this concept, but don't worry about the limit of 21 million bitcoins. Only one coin is enough to make everyone in the world a multimillionaire in attobitcoins!
I've sold a lot of bitcoins (in the past when the value was lower than 1/4 of it's current value) for normal money in the bank, and I have bought coffee, gadgets, a month of VPS and more for bitcoins. My main use of bitcoins now is to transfer money to a foreign account without paying outrageous fees to my bank. (The foreign account is for paying expenses in that country, not for tax evasion or anything illegal.) I buy bitcoins in my currency and sell in the other. Often with a profit as well. Can't do that with monopoly money.
They said the Iraq war documents would put people at risk, too. They didn't, though
The Iraq war put people at risk as well, but the administration tries to hush that down. According to some sources even more innocent lives were lost in the war than in the aftermaths of the Wikileak.