You are making my point. A five-seater luxury sedan not built to be a race care beats a race car in zero to sixty. How is this fact not sufficient evidence as to why Porsche is investigating an all electric power train? The Tesla is not a test platform, an experimental vehicle, it is a production vehicle. That is incredibly significant and shakes things up, its a major milestone that changes the game. Again, you are missing the obvious.
A smaller lighter car would not need the same sized battery.
That is not my experience. I've used a pi running raspbian as an alternative to a linux box with simultaneously active ethernet and USB ports, transferring data to/from both for weeks at a time. Also with a USB based wifi adapter rather than ethernet. The USB devices plugging in had their own power. Some folks have problems by trying to draw too much power from the pi via USB.
I don't know. I've been building my own PCs and installing OEM Windows since 486 days. I also use this thing called the "No" or "Cancel" button when installers and websites generously offer me things I was not looking for. I really don't understand many of the PC/Windows problems that so many talk about.;-)
Not if the desktop has other I/O channels other than USB. The R.Pi only has USB, and fails hard at trying to handle multiple devices.
The only thing to plug in are ethernet and a USB cable to the uninterruptible power supply. My pis are older and have ethernet, which I understand is implemented via the USB controller.
There is a footnote to my comment that there is virtually no good use for a P4.
Yep too loud for a headless server in the closet. I actually left the even older P2 in the closet when the P4 was retired. Still have the P4 in case I have to test/debug on a 32-bit system. As you say its paid for, its here, why bother setting up a 32-bit VM for testing/debugging? FWIW, I eventually replaced the P2 motherboard with some Intel all-in-one motherboard. Approximately $75, add RAM, passively cooled. I did add a low RPM quiet fan inside the cavernous case (the old P2 box, an Antec case with a quiet power supply) that put a little airflow directly on the motherboard CPU and chipset heatsinks just to be safe.
I now wonder about replacing these with a Pi plus a NAS device which I have already. SD-card for linux, apps and config. NAS device mounted for the actually data.
Why is everyone trying to build a desktop PC out of these things? As a $5 embedded platform they are massively overpowered for all sorts of projects, yet the only thing these articles ever rate it on is PC type tasks.
Actually they may be competitive against old desktop PCs that have been retired to the closet as headless Linux servers. Read/write the data for the device being provided to a NAS box that has been mounted. Might work for a personal/home server. I'm thinking non-media applications, source code control, documentation wikis, etc. Less power and much quieter than a repurposed desktop. Again, note a NAS box has the data, the sdcard only the operating system and configuration.
We know that the NSA has released flawed crypto systems before, and it took people a long time to notice because those guys are pretty sly and have a lot of talent working to screw us over. We know that supposedly shallow bugs in popular open source software have gone unnoticed for years.
Frustrating as it is, we have to be suspicious of anything that the NSA has had a hand in, even if it looks okay.
Whether the source of a crypto algorithm is university researchers, private industry researchers, or government researchers bugs and oversights are always an issue. Intentional flaws unnoticeable by all the non-governmental researchers seems a lesser concern.
Its the bitcoin exchanges offering these merchant services, not the merchants themselves, that are at risk. However their risk is not based on day to day prices, rather minute to minute prices. The number of minutes determined necessary for sufficient confirmations to validate a transaction. The price could crash from one day to the next, go from a a high priced plateau to a low priced plateau and the exchange would not care. Its only those transactions that would occur in the midst of the crash that would be detrimental and its a pretty safe bet that exchange services would go offline automatically should the bitcoin price become too volatile. Much as stock exchanges have their automatic "circuit breakers" that halt trading if a stock price drops "too much".
Keep in mind that a dump by someone with a huge horde of bitcoins is limited by buyers. Without a willing buyer at an agreeable price the seller can not get rid of their horde. Someone wishing to cash out and maximize their "winnings" is going to sell more slowly over a long period of time. In any case, selling quickly or slowly, what is the problem with a horde of coins moving from a single owner to many owners? A creator cashing out is not the end of the world, especially a creator that has absolutely no power or control over the system, a system that has been running well and that has proven itself a useful transaction/payment system for years without any influence by the creator.
If the founder is an entrepreneur bitcoin becomes viewed as a startup, possibly a mechanism for speculation or even a ponzi scheme.
Well bitcoin prices are pretty much speculatively defined, despite that it is still a pretty useful transaction/payment system. The day to day price of bitcoins is irrelevant to people making these transactions and payments. Bitcoin is quite useful despite any speculation involved.
If the founder is has a checkered past people will focus on the cyber criminals using bitcoin for ransomware, arms deals, and other disreputable purposes.
Porsche. You realize who they were partnered with in the 1930s/40s? What well known "leader" commissioned the Volkswagen design that became so popular around the world two decades later.
So? There's no inherent distrust of the US Navy when it comes to security or privacy.
The point is that people who are not so trustful of the US government have examined the Tor design and source code and are using it. The notion that people will inherently avoid something designed and/or created by the government is demonstrably false. Complete openness can overcome the suspicions.
Merchants never see or touch a bitcoin despite the buyer making payment using bitcoin.
For a fee. So why bother?
Your pricing and accounting is entirely in dollars, euros, whatever you native currency is. Your taxes are simpler for never having seen nor touched a bitcoin. You pay fees to credit card processors for most transactions anyway, if the bitcoin exchange fees are competitive it fits into your existing business model. You don't have to have the infrastructure and expertise to offer and process bitcoin payments in house, you need an exchange to cash out the bitcoins anyway.
They will care if during these transactions there's some sort of "flash crash" where companies start losing money. Maybe it won't be the end users or maybe not the merchants -- but somebody is holding the coins during the transaction and making the whole thing work. If the value takes a severe enough nosedive and becomes too volatile, it makes it risky for the intermediaries to keep handling the exchanges.
The bitcoin exchanges offering the merchant services would be at risk and perhaps they would temporarily halt their services. However I don't think that would be the end of the bitcoin world. I imagine they already have some automated monitoring of prices and automatically go offline during a "crash" of some sort. But if prices move from a high plateau to a low plateau they probably automatically come back online.
Also, they will care if bitcoins become so worthless that they are no longer feasible for these sorts of transactions.
$1,000, $100, or $1 per bitcoin. What does it matter for a convert, transfer, convert cycle?
Ah, you're a true believer -- just stay in for the "long haul," and the price is guaranteed to go up.
No, I am not a speculator (or an investor as they like to call themselves). I do not think bitcoin is a currency nor will it become one anytime soon. It fails on the store of value criteria, too volatile. However I do believe that as a transaction system it is quite useful. But that too may have limits, once block rewards for miners become low enough that transaction fees must become substantial to keep miners going... that is the point where we will find out if bitcoin is a success or a failure. However that time is a long ways off and for the near future bitcoin is quite useful for transferring money around.
To put it another way. Bitcoin is not a competitor to the US dollar or the Euro. It is a competitor to PayPal.
No, the price is not guaranteed to go up after someone with a huge horde of coins dumps them. But it probably will on the scale of years not decades, and in the short term it will probably plateau at some lower level. A person can not dump coins without willing buyers, and a huge horde of coins moving from a single person to many people is not something everyone will consider "a bad thing". So the "creator" "cashes out". The system has been running for years without the creator's input, its a proven transaction processing system. The creator after all has no control. So no, I don't think a creator dump will be anything more than a one time and temporary (months, years not decades) price crash.
That and the market power if he decided to dump them all at once.
But that is not quite control. He can't move other people's coins, he can't override the community consensus on the blockchain, etc.
Even if he crashes the price many bitcoin users won't care, how the price changed since yesterday won't matter. They just use bitcoins for transfers or payments, they aren't holding bitcoins. They immediately convert to bitcoin as needed and from bitcoin immediately. Especially so for merchants, well that is their 3rd party payment processors do, the merchants never see or touch a bitcoin themselves. The 3rd party converts the merchant's fiat price to bitcoin in real-time, collects the coins and pays the merchant in fiat currency immediately.
Only the speculators will get hurt, well, that is if they sell in the panic. So the creator cashes out, his coins are still in the system, in the hands of others, others who bought his coins at their preferred price. The price may be depressed temporarily, but he wasn't able to shut down anything or take a single coin from anyone. So transactions and the blockchain continue.
I do. BTC is gaining a lot of traction as the defacto digital currency standard, and we have no idea who's behind it. Bitcoin is a solid design and has survived a lot of scrutiny so far, but imagine what would happen if we found out that the design was introduced by, say, the NSA.
That would be irrelevant. Who created the Bitcoin system, be it a Satoshi or an NSA, is at best a historical piece of information. Bitcoin is an open design and its code open source, free to be analyzed by anyone who has an interest. It is not controlled by its creator.
if the creator amassed millions of coins early on, they certainly do control it, as they control it's ultimate value through their willingness to part with it.
No. The creator has no control over bitcoins, he/they can not move anyone else's bitcoins, he/they have no way to override the community consensus of what resides in the blockchain, he/they can not take their ball and go home.
As for your tangent regarding a bitcoin's price. Only the speculators really care whether bitcoin is $1,000, $100, or $1 on a given day. Many consumers are buying only enough bitcoins for their immediate purchase/transfer needs and most merchants "accepting" bitcoins never see or touch a bitcoin. A 3rd party payment processor calculates a bitcoin equivalent price, collects bitcoins and immediately pays the merchant in fiat. Basically few consumers and merchants are holding bitcoins, its just a transaction mechanism, a payment processing system.
So no, a massive "early adopter" holder of bitcoins could crash the price but few beyond speculators and crypto enthusiasts would care, the later more for political reasons than personal financial impact. And of course any such massive holder would crash the price before they could sell anything beyond a small fraction of their holdings. So such a holder who wanted to cash out would do so slowly over an extended period of time.
Whoever created it is sitting on a huge, huge reserve of Bitcoin. Enough that he or she still have some significant influence over the market, if that person decides to wield it.
Only to the speculators who hold bitcoin. To people merely using it for transactions the price is largely irrelevant. Fiat converted to bitcoin as needed, bitcoins transferred, bitcoins converted to fiat immediately. For example merchants accepting bitcoins generally do not hold them. The neither see nor touch a bitcoin. A 3rd party does all bitcoin pricing and payment processing and conversion to fiat for them. To these merchants whether bitcoin is priced at $1,000 or $100 or $1 is irrelevant. Consumers who are not also speculators will tend to only have small amounts of fiat converted to bitcoin, like small amounts of "cash" in a wallet. These consumers would be annoyed perhaps, but for transferring larger amounts of money they are most likely converting immediately before the transfer so they too would not care if bitcoin were $1,000 or $100 or $1. Pretty much what we saw when bitcoin crashed from $1,000 to $250.
Right. Tell me you can't see people distrusting a digital currency if we found out it was surreptitiously designed by the NSA.
Open design, open standards, open source and a peer to peer community implementing the application of the technology restores trust.
See what happened to the last TrueCrypt release after someone thought it found a hidden message referring to the NSA, even when no evidence of foul play or backdoors where found whatsoever.
Users did nothing. The TrueCrypt developers released an update that was read-only, stated they were done, and suggested folks look elsewhere. However given that TrueCrypt was open source users and other interested parties audited the source code, found no back door or serious bug or flaw and have created new products based on the TrueCrypt source code. These new products merely go by different names since the original developers own the rights to "TrueCrypt".
A lack of intrinsic value is not equivalent to speculatively priced. The USD/EUR/etc have many other economic factors in play with respect to their price. Bitcoin does not, it is primarily speculatively priced.
Then don't use Bitcoins if you don't accept the risk. It's super easy.
What risk? There is little risk in using bitcoins. Convert USD/EUR/etc to BTC, transfer BTC, convert BTC to USD/EUR/etc. *Use* does not have to involve risk.
Holding bitcoins does involve risk, just like holding any other speculatively priced asset. However many users of bitcoins do not hold them. For example merchants accepting bitcoins for payment. They contract with 3rd party payment processors to do real-time "currency conversion" for BTC pricing (so products and services only need to be priced by merchants in USD/EUR/etc), payment processing and delivering the originally specified USD/EUR/etc to merchants. Merchants never see or touch a bitcoin despite the buyer making payment using bitcoin.
It is not. Knowing who the author is might very well impact BTCs reputation and adoption though, specially if we found out some government agency is behind it.
No. Given open design, open standards, open source and a peer to peer community implementing the application of the technology... a government agency being behind blockchain theory and its use in a digital currency is irrelevant. You do realize the "internet" is largely a creation of Department of Defense research? That Tor was a creation of DOD research?
Well, the creator owns a huge chunk of coins that are worth some serious money today and will only increase substantially if the network continues to have growth.
OK, I suppose there is gossip value in additional to historical value.:-)
Not as much opportunity for enrichment as you might assume. Any cashing out on the scale you suggest would crash the price. Bitcoin's price is largely based on speculation and is highly volatile.
I do. BTC is gaining a lot of traction as the defacto digital currency standard, and we have no idea who's behind it. Bitcoin is a solid design and has survived a lot of scrutiny so far, but imagine what would happen if we found out that the design was introduced by, say, the NSA.
That would be irrelevant. Who created the Bitcoin system, be it a Satoshi or an NSA, is at best a historical piece of information. Bitcoin is an open design and its code open source, free to be analyzed by anyone who has an interest. It is not controlled by its creator.
Shifting in and out of gear every couple seconds isn't an answer, your decades of driving are no better than my 40+ years. Rush hour traffic is bumper to bumper or you're doing it wrong.
Your "Having personally be stuck in rush hour traffic for two hours, and a left leg that was getting numb from holding down the clutch" proves you are doing it wrong.
If your riding the bumper in front of you in stop and go traffic, instead of creeping forward at your lowest speed when the person in front moves, you are doing it wrong, missing the occasional smoothly moving forward while the person in front start stops two or three times. You don't get there faster by being obsessive compulsive about matching what the car in front is doing. And in those really bad situations where there are few to no opportunities, your left leg should not be going numb.
"numb" = "your doing it wrong". 40 years just means 40 years of doing it wrong some times.
When traffic is moving and stopping every few seconds, you've either got it in or out, there's no leaving it in any gear.
Neutral, its a better option than hold own the clutch. Seriously, I've driven in such traffic for decades. If you are holding down the clutch then you are doing it wrong. If you are staying on the bumper of the car in front of you then you are doing it wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
You are making my point. A five-seater luxury sedan not built to be a race care beats a race car in zero to sixty. How is this fact not sufficient evidence as to why Porsche is investigating an all electric power train? The Tesla is not a test platform, an experimental vehicle, it is a production vehicle. That is incredibly significant and shakes things up, its a major milestone that changes the game. Again, you are missing the obvious.
A smaller lighter car would not need the same sized battery.
The station wagon is Porsche branded.
Using both at once is what causes it to fail.
That is not my experience. I've used a pi running raspbian as an alternative to a linux box with simultaneously active ethernet and USB ports, transferring data to/from both for weeks at a time. Also with a USB based wifi adapter rather than ethernet. The USB devices plugging in had their own power. Some folks have problems by trying to draw too much power from the pi via USB.
haven't they always?
I don't know. I've been building my own PCs and installing OEM Windows since 486 days. I also use this thing called the "No" or "Cancel" button when installers and websites generously offer me things I was not looking for. I really don't understand many of the PC/Windows problems that so many talk about. ;-)
Not if the desktop has other I/O channels other than USB. The R.Pi only has USB, and fails hard at trying to handle multiple devices.
The only thing to plug in are ethernet and a USB cable to the uninterruptible power supply. My pis are older and have ethernet, which I understand is implemented via the USB controller.
There is a footnote to my comment that there is virtually no good use for a P4.
Yep too loud for a headless server in the closet. I actually left the even older P2 in the closet when the P4 was retired. Still have the P4 in case I have to test/debug on a 32-bit system. As you say its paid for, its here, why bother setting up a 32-bit VM for testing/debugging? FWIW, I eventually replaced the P2 motherboard with some Intel all-in-one motherboard. Approximately $75, add RAM, passively cooled. I did add a low RPM quiet fan inside the cavernous case (the old P2 box, an Antec case with a quiet power supply) that put a little airflow directly on the motherboard CPU and chipset heatsinks just to be safe.
I now wonder about replacing these with a Pi plus a NAS device which I have already. SD-card for linux, apps and config. NAS device mounted for the actually data.
Why is everyone trying to build a desktop PC out of these things? As a $5 embedded platform they are massively overpowered for all sorts of projects, yet the only thing these articles ever rate it on is PC type tasks.
Actually they may be competitive against old desktop PCs that have been retired to the closet as headless Linux servers. Read/write the data for the device being provided to a NAS box that has been mounted. Might work for a personal/home server. I'm thinking non-media applications, source code control, documentation wikis, etc. Less power and much quieter than a repurposed desktop. Again, note a NAS box has the data, the sdcard only the operating system and configuration.
We know that the NSA has released flawed crypto systems before, and it took people a long time to notice because those guys are pretty sly and have a lot of talent working to screw us over. We know that supposedly shallow bugs in popular open source software have gone unnoticed for years.
Frustrating as it is, we have to be suspicious of anything that the NSA has had a hand in, even if it looks okay.
Whether the source of a crypto algorithm is university researchers, private industry researchers, or government researchers bugs and oversights are always an issue. Intentional flaws unnoticeable by all the non-governmental researchers seems a lesser concern.
Its the bitcoin exchanges offering these merchant services, not the merchants themselves, that are at risk. However their risk is not based on day to day prices, rather minute to minute prices. The number of minutes determined necessary for sufficient confirmations to validate a transaction. The price could crash from one day to the next, go from a a high priced plateau to a low priced plateau and the exchange would not care. Its only those transactions that would occur in the midst of the crash that would be detrimental and its a pretty safe bet that exchange services would go offline automatically should the bitcoin price become too volatile. Much as stock exchanges have their automatic "circuit breakers" that halt trading if a stock price drops "too much".
Keep in mind that a dump by someone with a huge horde of bitcoins is limited by buyers. Without a willing buyer at an agreeable price the seller can not get rid of their horde. Someone wishing to cash out and maximize their "winnings" is going to sell more slowly over a long period of time. In any case, selling quickly or slowly, what is the problem with a horde of coins moving from a single owner to many owners? A creator cashing out is not the end of the world, especially a creator that has absolutely no power or control over the system, a system that has been running well and that has proven itself a useful transaction/payment system for years without any influence by the creator.
If the founder is an entrepreneur bitcoin becomes viewed as a startup, possibly a mechanism for speculation or even a ponzi scheme.
Well bitcoin prices are pretty much speculatively defined, despite that it is still a pretty useful transaction/payment system. The day to day price of bitcoins is irrelevant to people making these transactions and payments. Bitcoin is quite useful despite any speculation involved.
If the founder is has a checkered past people will focus on the cyber criminals using bitcoin for ransomware, arms deals, and other disreputable purposes.
Porsche. You realize who they were partnered with in the 1930s/40s? What well known "leader" commissioned the Volkswagen design that became so popular around the world two decades later.
So? There's no inherent distrust of the US Navy when it comes to security or privacy.
The point is that people who are not so trustful of the US government have examined the Tor design and source code and are using it. The notion that people will inherently avoid something designed and/or created by the government is demonstrably false. Complete openness can overcome the suspicions.
Merchants never see or touch a bitcoin despite the buyer making payment using bitcoin.
For a fee. So why bother?
Your pricing and accounting is entirely in dollars, euros, whatever you native currency is. Your taxes are simpler for never having seen nor touched a bitcoin. You pay fees to credit card processors for most transactions anyway, if the bitcoin exchange fees are competitive it fits into your existing business model. You don't have to have the infrastructure and expertise to offer and process bitcoin payments in house, you need an exchange to cash out the bitcoins anyway.
They will care if during these transactions there's some sort of "flash crash" where companies start losing money. Maybe it won't be the end users or maybe not the merchants -- but somebody is holding the coins during the transaction and making the whole thing work. If the value takes a severe enough nosedive and becomes too volatile, it makes it risky for the intermediaries to keep handling the exchanges.
The bitcoin exchanges offering the merchant services would be at risk and perhaps they would temporarily halt their services. However I don't think that would be the end of the bitcoin world. I imagine they already have some automated monitoring of prices and automatically go offline during a "crash" of some sort. But if prices move from a high plateau to a low plateau they probably automatically come back online.
Also, they will care if bitcoins become so worthless that they are no longer feasible for these sorts of transactions.
$1,000, $100, or $1 per bitcoin. What does it matter for a convert, transfer, convert cycle?
Ah, you're a true believer -- just stay in for the "long haul," and the price is guaranteed to go up.
No, I am not a speculator (or an investor as they like to call themselves). I do not think bitcoin is a currency nor will it become one anytime soon. It fails on the store of value criteria, too volatile. However I do believe that as a transaction system it is quite useful. But that too may have limits, once block rewards for miners become low enough that transaction fees must become substantial to keep miners going ... that is the point where we will find out if bitcoin is a success or a failure. However that time is a long ways off and for the near future bitcoin is quite useful for transferring money around.
To put it another way. Bitcoin is not a competitor to the US dollar or the Euro. It is a competitor to PayPal.
No, the price is not guaranteed to go up after someone with a huge horde of coins dumps them. But it probably will on the scale of years not decades, and in the short term it will probably plateau at some lower level. A person can not dump coins without willing buyers, and a huge horde of coins moving from a single person to many people is not something everyone will consider "a bad thing". So the "creator" "cashes out". The system has been running for years without the creator's input, its a proven transaction processing system. The creator after all has no control. So no, I don't think a creator dump will be anything more than a one time and temporary (months, years not decades) price crash.
That and the market power if he decided to dump them all at once.
But that is not quite control. He can't move other people's coins, he can't override the community consensus on the blockchain, etc.
Even if he crashes the price many bitcoin users won't care, how the price changed since yesterday won't matter. They just use bitcoins for transfers or payments, they aren't holding bitcoins. They immediately convert to bitcoin as needed and from bitcoin immediately. Especially so for merchants, well that is their 3rd party payment processors do, the merchants never see or touch a bitcoin themselves. The 3rd party converts the merchant's fiat price to bitcoin in real-time, collects the coins and pays the merchant in fiat currency immediately.
Only the speculators will get hurt, well, that is if they sell in the panic. So the creator cashes out, his coins are still in the system, in the hands of others, others who bought his coins at their preferred price. The price may be depressed temporarily, but he wasn't able to shut down anything or take a single coin from anyone. So transactions and the blockchain continue.
I do. BTC is gaining a lot of traction as the defacto digital currency standard, and we have no idea who's behind it. Bitcoin is a solid design and has survived a lot of scrutiny so far, but imagine what would happen if we found out that the design was introduced by, say, the NSA.
That would be irrelevant. Who created the Bitcoin system, be it a Satoshi or an NSA, is at best a historical piece of information. Bitcoin is an open design and its code open source, free to be analyzed by anyone who has an interest. It is not controlled by its creator.
if the creator amassed millions of coins early on, they certainly do control it, as they control it's ultimate value through their willingness to part with it.
No. The creator has no control over bitcoins, he/they can not move anyone else's bitcoins, he/they have no way to override the community consensus of what resides in the blockchain, he/they can not take their ball and go home.
As for your tangent regarding a bitcoin's price. Only the speculators really care whether bitcoin is $1,000, $100, or $1 on a given day. Many consumers are buying only enough bitcoins for their immediate purchase/transfer needs and most merchants "accepting" bitcoins never see or touch a bitcoin. A 3rd party payment processor calculates a bitcoin equivalent price, collects bitcoins and immediately pays the merchant in fiat. Basically few consumers and merchants are holding bitcoins, its just a transaction mechanism, a payment processing system.
So no, a massive "early adopter" holder of bitcoins could crash the price but few beyond speculators and crypto enthusiasts would care, the later more for political reasons than personal financial impact. And of course any such massive holder would crash the price before they could sell anything beyond a small fraction of their holdings. So such a holder who wanted to cash out would do so slowly over an extended period of time.
Again, Tor, US Navy designed.
Whoever created it is sitting on a huge, huge reserve of Bitcoin. Enough that he or she still have some significant influence over the market, if that person decides to wield it.
Only to the speculators who hold bitcoin. To people merely using it for transactions the price is largely irrelevant. Fiat converted to bitcoin as needed, bitcoins transferred, bitcoins converted to fiat immediately. For example merchants accepting bitcoins generally do not hold them. The neither see nor touch a bitcoin. A 3rd party does all bitcoin pricing and payment processing and conversion to fiat for them. To these merchants whether bitcoin is priced at $1,000 or $100 or $1 is irrelevant. Consumers who are not also speculators will tend to only have small amounts of fiat converted to bitcoin, like small amounts of "cash" in a wallet. These consumers would be annoyed perhaps, but for transferring larger amounts of money they are most likely converting immediately before the transfer so they too would not care if bitcoin were $1,000 or $100 or $1. Pretty much what we saw when bitcoin crashed from $1,000 to $250.
Right. Tell me you can't see people distrusting a digital currency if we found out it was surreptitiously designed by the NSA.
Open design, open standards, open source and a peer to peer community implementing the application of the technology restores trust.
See what happened to the last TrueCrypt release after someone thought it found a hidden message referring to the NSA, even when no evidence of foul play or backdoors where found whatsoever.
Users did nothing. The TrueCrypt developers released an update that was read-only, stated they were done, and suggested folks look elsewhere. However given that TrueCrypt was open source users and other interested parties audited the source code, found no back door or serious bug or flaw and have created new products based on the TrueCrypt source code. These new products merely go by different names since the original developers own the rights to "TrueCrypt".
A lack of intrinsic value is not equivalent to speculatively priced. The USD/EUR/etc have many other economic factors in play with respect to their price. Bitcoin does not, it is primarily speculatively priced.
Then don't use Bitcoins if you don't accept the risk. It's super easy.
What risk? There is little risk in using bitcoins. Convert USD/EUR/etc to BTC, transfer BTC, convert BTC to USD/EUR/etc. *Use* does not have to involve risk.
Holding bitcoins does involve risk, just like holding any other speculatively priced asset. However many users of bitcoins do not hold them. For example merchants accepting bitcoins for payment. They contract with 3rd party payment processors to do real-time "currency conversion" for BTC pricing (so products and services only need to be priced by merchants in USD/EUR/etc), payment processing and delivering the originally specified USD/EUR/etc to merchants. Merchants never see or touch a bitcoin despite the buyer making payment using bitcoin.
It is not. Knowing who the author is might very well impact BTCs reputation and adoption though, specially if we found out some government agency is behind it.
No. Given open design, open standards, open source and a peer to peer community implementing the application of the technology ... a government agency being behind blockchain theory and its use in a digital currency is irrelevant. You do realize the "internet" is largely a creation of Department of Defense research? That Tor was a creation of DOD research?
Well, the creator owns a huge chunk of coins that are worth some serious money today and will only increase substantially if the network continues to have growth.
OK, I suppose there is gossip value in additional to historical value. :-)
Not as much opportunity for enrichment as you might assume. Any cashing out on the scale you suggest would crash the price. Bitcoin's price is largely based on speculation and is highly volatile.
I do. BTC is gaining a lot of traction as the defacto digital currency standard, and we have no idea who's behind it. Bitcoin is a solid design and has survived a lot of scrutiny so far, but imagine what would happen if we found out that the design was introduced by, say, the NSA.
That would be irrelevant. Who created the Bitcoin system, be it a Satoshi or an NSA, is at best a historical piece of information. Bitcoin is an open design and its code open source, free to be analyzed by anyone who has an interest. It is not controlled by its creator.
Shifting in and out of gear every couple seconds isn't an answer, your decades of driving are no better than my 40+ years. Rush hour traffic is bumper to bumper or you're doing it wrong.
Your "Having personally be stuck in rush hour traffic for two hours, and a left leg that was getting numb from holding down the clutch" proves you are doing it wrong.
If your riding the bumper in front of you in stop and go traffic, instead of creeping forward at your lowest speed when the person in front moves, you are doing it wrong, missing the occasional smoothly moving forward while the person in front start stops two or three times. You don't get there faster by being obsessive compulsive about matching what the car in front is doing. And in those really bad situations where there are few to no opportunities, your left leg should not be going numb.
"numb" = "your doing it wrong". 40 years just means 40 years of doing it wrong some times.
When traffic is moving and stopping every few seconds, you've either got it in or out, there's no leaving it in any gear.
Neutral, its a better option than hold own the clutch. Seriously, I've driven in such traffic for decades. If you are holding down the clutch then you are doing it wrong. If you are staying on the bumper of the car in front of you then you are doing it wrong.