It was a preemptive answer to a question in case you asked it to save some time.
I'm going to disagree that an abstract concept is a real thing, so I have to take your answer as no, they are not real. And that's an answer, and may very well turn out to be the correct one. As I said, all I have is observation; I can't think of a falsifiable theory or experimental test.
You have observation of your own subjective experience. No one is disputing that. Almost everyone feels the same thing, and agrees that most of us feel it. The feeling of love exists, case closed.
If you are trying to explain what love in terms of particle physics, you are barking up the wrong tree. That's like trying to explain how a chess playing computer works with an oscilloscope. That's the wrong level to attempt to understand a chess playing computer and the wrong level to try to understand love. Yes the chess playing computer is made of quarks and electrons, just like human beings and brains are, but that doesn't mean that these things are best understood at this level.
BTW I specifically did not say abstract concepts "were real" in order to avoid this semantic debate. I said that they have real physical manifestations. A jpeg image is not real, but it has a physical manifestation. It can exist as magnetic charges on a harddisk, or pits in an optical disc, or 1's and 0's written down on a piece of paper. Is there really a point to getting all bent out of shape that the standard model can't model jpeg images?
If I'm not, does that make it easier to dismiss the question out of hand? Does the truth of a statement depend on the ignorance level of the speaker? Or does that truth stand on it's own, regardless of who says it?
Nope, I am just concerned for the field of science.
What I can't accept, though, is a violation of the conservation of energy and mass. Everything comes from something and somewhere, ie; there is no such thing as magic. Even outside of our 4 dimensions, whatever that means; strings or whatever, there is no free lunch.
Do you believe in quantum mechanics?
If everything comes from something, then where did God come from? You say God is eternal? Well maybe the universe is eternal too. The big bang is only the start of the part of the universe we can see, that does not mean our universe is not part of something bigger that was eternal.
Based on a lifetime of empirical observation, I believe love and truth (among other things) are real. And yet, there is no particle in the standard model for them.
Cars exist, and yet, there is no "car particle" that cars are made of. This isn't a failing of the standard model. It is possible to make complex things out of simple things. Yes love and truth are real. They are abstract concepts with physical manifestations. When I see a car, I think "that's a car", maybe an alein just sees a pile of up and down quarks, electrons arranged in an interesting fashion. The fact that you can look at a car that way doesn't imply cars aren't real. Similarly you can look at examples of love and truth and see only particles, but there is no reason you have to.
I'm an astrologer who actually cares enough about both science and correct astrology to know the answer to this is laughably no. And I consider this sort of incredibly bad pseudoscience and other equally stupid superstitions to be the primary cause of that.
Even if you take my assumption that what month you were born in continually affects daily life in a significant, relevant, and predictable way, incompetent astrologers of various stripes make astrology seem like pseudoscience. There is little wonder that only 55% of Americans still believe in astrology.
Ironically this is the exact same data I was looking at, but I would not interpret the data the same way. What I would take away form this data is that both currencies are equally volatile with respect to gold in that they follow the same medium term trends (the peaks and valleys are in the same places), they both have a lot of short term volatility compared with gold (the general roughness of the line), but that the gold price in dollars is rising at a higher rate (indicating a higher rate of inflation for the dollar).
What would convince me that that the dollar was the cause of the volatility is if the gold price in US dollars was squiggly and the price in australian dollars was 6x as smooth.
If you call the function of price of gold in australian dollars over time f(x), then the price of gold in us dollars looks basically like f(x)*scalar starting at about 2007
From mid 2009 to late 2011 the price in USD went from roughly 900 to roughly 1900, about a 110% increase.
During that same time frame the price in AUD went from roughly 1500 to 1800, about a 20% increase.
Yes but this range of data seems like an anomaly especially if you look at the 10 year graph. The 1500 value of gold in australian dollars in 2009 is a huge local maximum it immediately dips back down to something like 1150.
I can pick a range where the price in dollars actually goes down and the price in australian dollars goes up, but that would be cherry picking data too.
It would be interesting to see 20 year, and 30 year graphs.
I think you are worried about the wrong things. You are worried about your kids school enemies knowing your phone number? I don;t know if you are aware, but kids have cell phones these days. One could argue that no responsible parent would let their kid be without one, but I won't stoop to making these "no responsible parent" arguments. I don;t know why you think it's crazy not to trust a kid with $10 but crazy to trust them with a $40 device. You can even buy used cell phones for like $15. Are you worried that some enemy kids will learn your phone number buy simply bullying your kid until he tells them? Is that a rational fear?
No but I was a kid. Yes my parents gave me small amounts of money. I don't see why the cell phones and money can't come at the same time. In fact, bitcoin is actually safer than a credit card. 1. Your kids can have a separate wallet where you can decide how much money to transfer to them. 2. The most they can be robbed by is how much money is in their wallet, and that's assuming they accidentally give their private key to someone (equivalent to giving out bank routing numbers).
If I felt safe giving a kid $5 to go to the store, I'd feel safe transferring $5 of bitcoins to their wallet and letting them go to the store to spend it (assuming there was a store that accepted bitcoin). Tablets are like $100 nowadays. I just got 2 free ones as promotions. They are only going to get cheaper.
Mt Gox is the financial institution which traded about 70% of the BitCoin volume in the world. If, out of the handful of nations using the USD, the USA suddenly ceased to exist, I'm sure the rest would have issues.
And even with this "catastrophic" event (e.g. an event that would have been catastrophic for the dollar), bitcoin is still trading at what it's price was in november 2013 (3-4 months ago). Other exchanges pick up the slack. This does nothing to affect actual bitcoin transactions or how many bitcoins are in the supply. In this respect I think bitcoin is more resilient than a government backed currency. Bitcoin is not dependent on Mt. Gox like the dollar is dependent on the US government and the democrats and republicans controlling it.
Who is more resilient? Someone who has bones broken all the time, or someone who has never broken a bone but will die instantly if they ever do?
Would you trust other casino chips == Would you trust another bitcoin exchange/promise of bitcoins (e.g. goxcoins).
Would you trust the dollar == Would you still trust bitcoin
Why would you give small children cell phones or cash? Parents can just buy things for their kids. I really don't think the inability for small children to use cryptocurrency to be a significant disadvantage. You may as well complain that dogs can't use it.
You are mistaken to think that the volatility of the dollar would translate into a rise in the price of a can of soup. If all the inputs into a product are sourced from a region whose currency is the dollar there is no problem.
There really aren't that many products whose inputs are all from America. It's a global economy.
The volatility of gold comes from the fact that it lacks utility. Obviously there are some uses for gold, but it is essentially just sitting in vaults around the world. The price of gold is due almost purely to speculation. How much you value owning a bunch of gold is purely subjective. When currencies look like they are taking a bad turn, gold looks more appealing, and the price goes up. When we are in a boom, gold doesn't look so good, and the price goes down. Granted these prices are in dollars, but this price fluctuation happens with just about every thing you compare gold to.
I am not saying the dollar is not volatile. I am saying that it's crazy to believe that gold is not. Lets say hypothetically that the value of gold never changes. The only things that change are the dollar, euro, yen, cans of soup, cars, etc (everything besides gold). How do you differentiate this scenario from one where gold is volatile? The result is the same.
The OP made no mention of using certificates. He said:
i would rather see platinum, gold, palladium and silver made in to coins and used as currency, at least the government can not counterfeit it like they do with the USD
Presumably he is not talking about paper certificates because the government could counterfeit those just as easily. Furthermore, what is the point of having the gold be in coins if you never use them as currency?
You can't tie the price of bitcoins to anything. This is because it is decentralized. The price is governed by supply and demand. The government can control the price of the dollar somewhat through increasing or decreasing the money supply. You can not do this with bitcoin.
Kind of a strawman argument. The real question is whether transferring bitcoins is more convenient than transferring dollars from my phone.
It's not more convenient. Anything you do on your phone will be more or less equally convenient. Actually the OP was talking about using gold and silver coins, so I was responding to that.
Frankly I can't really think of any meaningful advantages to bitcoin compared with dollars especially once you account for all the costs and the risks.
There is risk in putting your bitcoins in an exchange (i.e. permanently transferring your bitcoins to them with the promise that they will transfer them back when you request it). The same risk exists in putting cash in an unregulated bank. You can pay higher fees (either directly or indirectly) and put your bitcoins in a regulated bank. There is no reason that you couldn't have a government regulated bitcoin exchange.
But my main point is that when you buy something in a store, you are drastically reducing the likelihood of fraud. You can see the item you are buying and you exchange money for goods at the checkout of the store in a way that doesn't really require escrow. You know where the store is and who was working in it. It would be difficult for them to disappear overnight.
Bitcoin doesn't provide any fraud protection. Cash doesn't provide fraud protection either. Bitcoin is as safe as using cash. It is safe to by groceries with cash. It is not safe to put your cash in an unregulated bank. It is safe to buy groceries with bitcoin. It is not safe to put your bitcoins in an unregulated bank.
The advantage to bitcoin over cash, is that it *can* be used online. It is not necessarily *safe* to use online, but this is better than not even having the option.
And yet the guys who set up this country 225+ years ago were not wise enough to see that slavery was wrong. Clearly we can not take their ideas as gospel. They must be re-evaluated periodically to see if they still make sense, and also to see if any of their ideas would have any implications on new scenarios (e.g. how does the right to bear arms relate to nuclear weapons, etc)
Gold is still volatile. The steadily increasing price of gold is due to the dollar being dilluted over time. The short term booms and busts of gold are just due to the volatility of gold. It is not due to volatility of the dollar. If this were true, then you'd see the price of everything compared with dollars just as volatile as gold. Cans of soup don;t jump in price every time gold jumps in price (i.e. keeping cans of soup and gold at the same exchange rate).
Why are fractions impractical? Are concepts like $0.13 or $1.2 Million or 4.5 micro bitcoins too hard to understand? Are milliliters or kilograms too hard to understand?
Are fractions still too hard to understand? Well luckily you don't have to. The smallest unit is called a satoshi and it represents 1/100000000 of a bitcoin. If you hate fractions you can just count everything in satoshis.
That total number of satoshis is 210,000,000,000,000 = 2.1x10^15 = 2.1 quadrillion. This is 300,000 satoshis per person on planet earth.
The reason I chose a casino, is because banks don't typically run away with people's money because they are usually heavily regulated. I figured an indian casino might better conjure an image of a unregulated exchange. That said, I don't think bitcoin is dependent on exchanges, especially one particular exchange, even if it was the biggest.
if the bank refused to cash out my account, then yes, it is possible that I may not trust the dollar afterwards, depending on the size of the bank and why it was that they refused to cash it out. If I had my money with the biggest, most trusted bank in the world, and it suddenly collapsed, I'd question whether it would have an impact on the value of the dollar and would start to ask questions about how dollars are being managed.
I think this confuses the issue, because we know how bitcoins are managed, because it is a decentralized currency with open source code, and freely available information of every single transaction that has ever occurred. How a currency is run is separate from how an exchange is run. You can have a good exchange that deals in poorly run currencies. You can have a bad exchange that deals in well run currencies.
If the largest bank in the world collapsed, it might well be due to some destructive manipulation of the dollar. Bitcoin is not able to be manipulated in this same way. An indian casino really doesn't get to affect how many dollars are printed. While Mt. Gox certainly had an effect on bitcoin prices, they don't get to change the parameters bitcoin operates on. They don't get to adjust mining difficulty or the 21million cap. Nobody does.
it may be an indication of a more deep-rooted problem with the underlying currency (e.g. volatility in inflation), and we have things like the FDIC and other forms of monetary policy in place to prevent those sorts of issues from taking place. Bitcoin doesn't.
It doesn't, but there is nothing stopping you from insuring your bitcoins. Depositors are actually indirectly paying for FDIC insurance. If there really is a problem with the dollar tanking, and FDIC doesn't have enough money to cover the losses, they will just have the fed print more money, in essence dividing the loss among all people holding dollars. People could also buy insurance on their bitcoins to achieve the same risk mitigation. Or they could hedge their bets, neutralizing the risk of holding bitcoin but also the potential for gains.
I think part of the reason these sorts of bitcoin risk mitigation strategies aren't used is because the people currently investing in it, are doing so because they like risk. People who want to play it safe are not investing in bitcoin. That doesn't mean that it's not possible to make bitcoin less risky to hold.
I see two problems here. First, you seem to be contradicting yourself. Either you believe it's OK to discriminate or you don't.
That's a false dichotomy. I think discrimination should be legal. I do not think it is "ok" or "good" or that anyone should do it. This shouldn't be hard to understand. For example, if you believe in freedom of speech, it means you think it should be legal to say racist things. Does that mean you think it's ok to say racist things? That's a semantic debate. If you say yes, then I think it's ok to discriminate. If you say no then I don't. In short I think it is the same kind of ok to discriminate is how it is ok to say racist things.
Specifically, discrimination based on something like attire, which is relatively easy for anyone to alter to meet a businesses' requirement, is inherently different from discrimination based on an inflexible aspect like ethnicity. In other words, I can change my shirt and tie without too much trouble, but I can't ever change the racial makeup of my parents, grandparents, etc. Conflating these two types of discrimination is, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest.
I am not conflating these two types of discrimination any more than they deserve to be conflated (i.e. they are both types of discrimination). I am not saying they are morally equivalent, or have no noteworthy distinctions (you mentioned the distinction of being able to change your shirt but not your ethnicity), and I agree. There are other forms of discrimination that are equally as unchangeable as ethnicity, like height, some slightly more changeable like weight and income, and all these features by which one can be discriminated against falls on a spectrum of differing changeability (or mutability as someone else in this thread called it).
The question at hand is, "In Arizona, will a restaurant be able to post a sign that reads, 'We refuse to serve gays.'"
I don't know what will happen. I am just expressing what I think should happen (i.e. my preference), and I am trying to convince others that they may actually want this outcome too. I would prefer if people had the right to post a sign saying "we refuse service to gays". But this is not *all* I want. I also want people to post signs like this "We refuse service to anyone who is anti-gay", or "We will fire any employee who refuses to serve a gay person even for religious reasons". In short I would like a society which values autonomy and free association over the right not to be discriminated against by private citizens.
I think this will be a more open and honest society where people act with intention. If someone acts in a racist manor, it is because he is racist. If someone goes out of their way to be unbiased, it is not because they are just trying to avoid a lawsuit. I think the social pressure to do the right thing will be a better tool to combat racism and anti-gay prejudice than laws.
But Bitcoins do not exist physically. There is nothing I can stuff under the mattress. And there lies the ultimate problem I think.
You can print out your private key and put it under your mattress. In fact many people do precisely this. This removes the possibility of your private key being discovered by malware on a computer you might use to access your wallet. But if you do this, you need to make sure that this private key is kept safe, because if you lose it or it burns in a fire, those bitcoins are lost forever.
I don't see why physical manifestation matters, especially since all your bitcoins can be converted to a physical thing (piece of paper with a long number on it), in the same way that a digital picture can be converted to a physical picture by printing it at CVS.
Slashdot Mirror
No, actually, I didn't.
It was a preemptive answer to a question in case you asked it to save some time.
I'm going to disagree that an abstract concept is a real thing, so I have to take your answer as no, they are not real. And that's an answer, and may very well turn out to be the correct one. As I said, all I have is observation; I can't think of a falsifiable theory or experimental test.
You have observation of your own subjective experience. No one is disputing that. Almost everyone feels the same thing, and agrees that most of us feel it. The feeling of love exists, case closed.
If you are trying to explain what love in terms of particle physics, you are barking up the wrong tree. That's like trying to explain how a chess playing computer works with an oscilloscope. That's the wrong level to attempt to understand a chess playing computer and the wrong level to try to understand love. Yes the chess playing computer is made of quarks and electrons, just like human beings and brains are, but that doesn't mean that these things are best understood at this level.
BTW I specifically did not say abstract concepts "were real" in order to avoid this semantic debate. I said that they have real physical manifestations. A jpeg image is not real, but it has a physical manifestation. It can exist as magnetic charges on a harddisk, or pits in an optical disc, or 1's and 0's written down on a piece of paper. Is there really a point to getting all bent out of shape that the standard model can't model jpeg images?
If I'm not, does that make it easier to dismiss the question out of hand? Does the truth of a statement depend on the ignorance level of the speaker? Or does that truth stand on it's own, regardless of who says it?
Nope, I am just concerned for the field of science.
What I can't accept, though, is a violation of the conservation of energy and mass. Everything comes from something and somewhere, ie; there is no such thing as magic. Even outside of our 4 dimensions, whatever that means; strings or whatever, there is no free lunch.
Do you believe in quantum mechanics?
If everything comes from something, then where did God come from? You say God is eternal? Well maybe the universe is eternal too. The big bang is only the start of the part of the universe we can see, that does not mean our universe is not part of something bigger that was eternal.
Based on a lifetime of empirical observation, I believe love and truth (among other things) are real. And yet, there is no particle in the standard model for them.
Cars exist, and yet, there is no "car particle" that cars are made of. This isn't a failing of the standard model. It is possible to make complex things out of simple things. Yes love and truth are real. They are abstract concepts with physical manifestations. When I see a car, I think "that's a car", maybe an alein just sees a pile of up and down quarks, electrons arranged in an interesting fashion. The fact that you can look at a car that way doesn't imply cars aren't real. Similarly you can look at examples of love and truth and see only particles, but there is no reason you have to.
Are you sure you're a scientist?
I'm an astrologer who actually cares enough about both science and correct astrology to know the answer to this is laughably no. And I consider this sort of incredibly bad pseudoscience and other equally stupid superstitions to be the primary cause of that.
Even if you take my assumption that what month you were born in continually affects daily life in a significant, relevant, and predictable way, incompetent astrologers of various stripes make astrology seem like pseudoscience. There is little wonder that only 55% of Americans still believe in astrology.
I think it's fine to teach children not to offend people. When they get older they have a better chance of being able to do it with some tact.
citation needed
Ironically this is the exact same data I was looking at, but I would not interpret the data the same way. What I would take away form this data is that both currencies are equally volatile with respect to gold in that they follow the same medium term trends (the peaks and valleys are in the same places), they both have a lot of short term volatility compared with gold (the general roughness of the line), but that the gold price in dollars is rising at a higher rate (indicating a higher rate of inflation for the dollar).
What would convince me that that the dollar was the cause of the volatility is if the gold price in US dollars was squiggly and the price in australian dollars was 6x as smooth.
If you call the function of price of gold in australian dollars over time f(x), then the price of gold in us dollars looks basically like f(x)*scalar starting at about 2007
From mid 2009 to late 2011 the price in USD went from roughly 900 to roughly 1900, about a 110% increase.
During that same time frame the price in AUD went from roughly 1500 to 1800, about a 20% increase.
Yes but this range of data seems like an anomaly especially if you look at the 10 year graph. The 1500 value of gold in australian dollars in 2009 is a huge local maximum it immediately dips back down to something like 1150.
I can pick a range where the price in dollars actually goes down and the price in australian dollars goes up, but that would be cherry picking data too.
It would be interesting to see 20 year, and 30 year graphs.
How did you calculate this? I am looking at some data, and I just don't see it. What data are you looking at? What time span are you looking at?
I think you are worried about the wrong things. You are worried about your kids school enemies knowing your phone number? I don;t know if you are aware, but kids have cell phones these days. One could argue that no responsible parent would let their kid be without one, but I won't stoop to making these "no responsible parent" arguments. I don;t know why you think it's crazy not to trust a kid with $10 but crazy to trust them with a $40 device. You can even buy used cell phones for like $15. Are you worried that some enemy kids will learn your phone number buy simply bullying your kid until he tells them? Is that a rational fear?
You don't have kids, do you?
No but I was a kid. Yes my parents gave me small amounts of money. I don't see why the cell phones and money can't come at the same time. In fact, bitcoin is actually safer than a credit card. 1. Your kids can have a separate wallet where you can decide how much money to transfer to them. 2. The most they can be robbed by is how much money is in their wallet, and that's assuming they accidentally give their private key to someone (equivalent to giving out bank routing numbers).
If I felt safe giving a kid $5 to go to the store, I'd feel safe transferring $5 of bitcoins to their wallet and letting them go to the store to spend it (assuming there was a store that accepted bitcoin). Tablets are like $100 nowadays. I just got 2 free ones as promotions. They are only going to get cheaper.
Mt Gox is the financial institution which traded about 70% of the BitCoin volume in the world. If, out of the handful of nations using the USD, the USA suddenly ceased to exist, I'm sure the rest would have issues.
And even with this "catastrophic" event (e.g. an event that would have been catastrophic for the dollar), bitcoin is still trading at what it's price was in november 2013 (3-4 months ago). Other exchanges pick up the slack. This does nothing to affect actual bitcoin transactions or how many bitcoins are in the supply. In this respect I think bitcoin is more resilient than a government backed currency. Bitcoin is not dependent on Mt. Gox like the dollar is dependent on the US government and the democrats and republicans controlling it.
Who is more resilient? Someone who has bones broken all the time, or someone who has never broken a bone but will die instantly if they ever do?
Would you trust other casino chips == Would you trust another bitcoin exchange/promise of bitcoins (e.g. goxcoins).
Would you trust the dollar == Would you still trust bitcoin
Why would you give small children cell phones or cash? Parents can just buy things for their kids. I really don't think the inability for small children to use cryptocurrency to be a significant disadvantage. You may as well complain that dogs can't use it.
You are mistaken to think that the volatility of the dollar would translate into a rise in the price of a can of soup. If all the inputs into a product are sourced from a region whose currency is the dollar there is no problem.
There really aren't that many products whose inputs are all from America. It's a global economy.
The volatility of gold comes from the fact that it lacks utility. Obviously there are some uses for gold, but it is essentially just sitting in vaults around the world. The price of gold is due almost purely to speculation. How much you value owning a bunch of gold is purely subjective. When currencies look like they are taking a bad turn, gold looks more appealing, and the price goes up. When we are in a boom, gold doesn't look so good, and the price goes down. Granted these prices are in dollars, but this price fluctuation happens with just about every thing you compare gold to.
I am not saying the dollar is not volatile. I am saying that it's crazy to believe that gold is not. Lets say hypothetically that the value of gold never changes. The only things that change are the dollar, euro, yen, cans of soup, cars, etc (everything besides gold). How do you differentiate this scenario from one where gold is volatile? The result is the same.
The OP made no mention of using certificates. He said:
i would rather see platinum, gold, palladium and silver made in to coins and used as currency, at least the government can not counterfeit it like they do with the USD
Presumably he is not talking about paper certificates because the government could counterfeit those just as easily. Furthermore, what is the point of having the gold be in coins if you never use them as currency?
You can't tie the price of bitcoins to anything. This is because it is decentralized. The price is governed by supply and demand. The government can control the price of the dollar somewhat through increasing or decreasing the money supply. You can not do this with bitcoin.
Kind of a strawman argument. The real question is whether transferring bitcoins is more convenient than transferring dollars from my phone.
It's not more convenient. Anything you do on your phone will be more or less equally convenient. Actually the OP was talking about using gold and silver coins, so I was responding to that.
Frankly I can't really think of any meaningful advantages to bitcoin compared with dollars especially once you account for all the costs and the risks.
There is risk in putting your bitcoins in an exchange (i.e. permanently transferring your bitcoins to them with the promise that they will transfer them back when you request it). The same risk exists in putting cash in an unregulated bank. You can pay higher fees (either directly or indirectly) and put your bitcoins in a regulated bank. There is no reason that you couldn't have a government regulated bitcoin exchange.
But my main point is that when you buy something in a store, you are drastically reducing the likelihood of fraud. You can see the item you are buying and you exchange money for goods at the checkout of the store in a way that doesn't really require escrow. You know where the store is and who was working in it. It would be difficult for them to disappear overnight.
Bitcoin doesn't provide any fraud protection. Cash doesn't provide fraud protection either. Bitcoin is as safe as using cash. It is safe to by groceries with cash. It is not safe to put your cash in an unregulated bank. It is safe to buy groceries with bitcoin. It is not safe to put your bitcoins in an unregulated bank.
The advantage to bitcoin over cash, is that it *can* be used online. It is not necessarily *safe* to use online, but this is better than not even having the option.
And yet the guys who set up this country 225+ years ago were not wise enough to see that slavery was wrong. Clearly we can not take their ideas as gospel. They must be re-evaluated periodically to see if they still make sense, and also to see if any of their ideas would have any implications on new scenarios (e.g. how does the right to bear arms relate to nuclear weapons, etc)
Gold is still volatile. The steadily increasing price of gold is due to the dollar being dilluted over time. The short term booms and busts of gold are just due to the volatility of gold. It is not due to volatility of the dollar. If this were true, then you'd see the price of everything compared with dollars just as volatile as gold. Cans of soup don;t jump in price every time gold jumps in price (i.e. keeping cans of soup and gold at the same exchange rate).
Currently, one bitcoin is US$585. That means that 300,000 satoshi is worth... US$1.75.
That's a good thing not a bad thing.
You are talking about gold backed currency. The OP was talking about using gold *as* currency.
Why are fractions impractical? Are concepts like $0.13 or $1.2 Million or 4.5 micro bitcoins too hard to understand? Are milliliters or kilograms too hard to understand?
Are fractions still too hard to understand? Well luckily you don't have to. The smallest unit is called a satoshi and it represents 1/100000000 of a bitcoin. If you hate fractions you can just count everything in satoshis.
That total number of satoshis is 210,000,000,000,000 = 2.1x10^15 = 2.1 quadrillion. This is 300,000 satoshis per person on planet earth.
The reason I chose a casino, is because banks don't typically run away with people's money because they are usually heavily regulated. I figured an indian casino might better conjure an image of a unregulated exchange. That said, I don't think bitcoin is dependent on exchanges, especially one particular exchange, even if it was the biggest.
if the bank refused to cash out my account, then yes, it is possible that I may not trust the dollar afterwards, depending on the size of the bank and why it was that they refused to cash it out. If I had my money with the biggest, most trusted bank in the world, and it suddenly collapsed, I'd question whether it would have an impact on the value of the dollar and would start to ask questions about how dollars are being managed.
I think this confuses the issue, because we know how bitcoins are managed, because it is a decentralized currency with open source code, and freely available information of every single transaction that has ever occurred. How a currency is run is separate from how an exchange is run. You can have a good exchange that deals in poorly run currencies. You can have a bad exchange that deals in well run currencies.
If the largest bank in the world collapsed, it might well be due to some destructive manipulation of the dollar. Bitcoin is not able to be manipulated in this same way. An indian casino really doesn't get to affect how many dollars are printed. While Mt. Gox certainly had an effect on bitcoin prices, they don't get to change the parameters bitcoin operates on. They don't get to adjust mining difficulty or the 21million cap. Nobody does.
it may be an indication of a more deep-rooted problem with the underlying currency (e.g. volatility in inflation), and we have things like the FDIC and other forms of monetary policy in place to prevent those sorts of issues from taking place. Bitcoin doesn't.
It doesn't, but there is nothing stopping you from insuring your bitcoins. Depositors are actually indirectly paying for FDIC insurance. If there really is a problem with the dollar tanking, and FDIC doesn't have enough money to cover the losses, they will just have the fed print more money, in essence dividing the loss among all people holding dollars. People could also buy insurance on their bitcoins to achieve the same risk mitigation. Or they could hedge their bets, neutralizing the risk of holding bitcoin but also the potential for gains.
I think part of the reason these sorts of bitcoin risk mitigation strategies aren't used is because the people currently investing in it, are doing so because they like risk. People who want to play it safe are not investing in bitcoin. That doesn't mean that it's not possible to make bitcoin less risky to hold.
I see two problems here. First, you seem to be contradicting yourself. Either you believe it's OK to discriminate or you don't.
That's a false dichotomy. I think discrimination should be legal. I do not think it is "ok" or "good" or that anyone should do it. This shouldn't be hard to understand. For example, if you believe in freedom of speech, it means you think it should be legal to say racist things. Does that mean you think it's ok to say racist things? That's a semantic debate. If you say yes, then I think it's ok to discriminate. If you say no then I don't. In short I think it is the same kind of ok to discriminate is how it is ok to say racist things.
Specifically, discrimination based on something like attire, which is relatively easy for anyone to alter to meet a businesses' requirement, is inherently different from discrimination based on an inflexible aspect like ethnicity. In other words, I can change my shirt and tie without too much trouble, but I can't ever change the racial makeup of my parents, grandparents, etc. Conflating these two types of discrimination is, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest.
I am not conflating these two types of discrimination any more than they deserve to be conflated (i.e. they are both types of discrimination). I am not saying they are morally equivalent, or have no noteworthy distinctions (you mentioned the distinction of being able to change your shirt but not your ethnicity), and I agree. There are other forms of discrimination that are equally as unchangeable as ethnicity, like height, some slightly more changeable like weight and income, and all these features by which one can be discriminated against falls on a spectrum of differing changeability (or mutability as someone else in this thread called it).
The question at hand is, "In Arizona, will a restaurant be able to post a sign that reads, 'We refuse to serve gays.'"
I don't know what will happen. I am just expressing what I think should happen (i.e. my preference), and I am trying to convince others that they may actually want this outcome too. I would prefer if people had the right to post a sign saying "we refuse service to gays". But this is not *all* I want. I also want people to post signs like this "We refuse service to anyone who is anti-gay", or "We will fire any employee who refuses to serve a gay person even for religious reasons". In short I would like a society which values autonomy and free association over the right not to be discriminated against by private citizens.
I think this will be a more open and honest society where people act with intention. If someone acts in a racist manor, it is because he is racist. If someone goes out of their way to be unbiased, it is not because they are just trying to avoid a lawsuit. I think the social pressure to do the right thing will be a better tool to combat racism and anti-gay prejudice than laws.
But Bitcoins do not exist physically. There is nothing I can stuff under the mattress. And there lies the ultimate problem I think.
You can print out your private key and put it under your mattress. In fact many people do precisely this. This removes the possibility of your private key being discovered by malware on a computer you might use to access your wallet. But if you do this, you need to make sure that this private key is kept safe, because if you lose it or it burns in a fire, those bitcoins are lost forever.
I don't see why physical manifestation matters, especially since all your bitcoins can be converted to a physical thing (piece of paper with a long number on it), in the same way that a digital picture can be converted to a physical picture by printing it at CVS.
There is no reason you couldn't have a bitcoin bank that was regulated by the government.