re: Bitcoins were hacked yesterday?

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Yet you question the viability of bitcoins as a store of value because they don't exist in the physical world.

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No we question it because of it's ability to only buy drugs, hackers and pirates. And the fact that it will collapse in a train wreck of epic proportion at some time in the future.

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I disagree. If I figure out how to build a machine that converts air into food, that idea has value wether I patent it or not. It will help people regardless of what patent laws exist.

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Is the idea valuable, or the implementation? The implementation is clearly valuable, but the "idea man" only gets paid if he implements it himself, or collects royalties forced by law. Anyway, the point of bringing up IP was to show that non-physical or virtual "things" can have value. I think that fact is self-evident.

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But a bitcoin doesn't necessarily have to be scarce or finite. The person(s) who developed it could have just as easily said that every prime number is a bitcoin. It may be math but its still arbitrary.

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The rules placed on it make them necessarily scarce. And the rules are necessarily arbitrary. Neither of those change the fact that bitcoins are scarce. Whether it's by design or "natural" doesn't matter.

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No we question it because of it's ability to only buy drugs, hackers and pirates.

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This is not true at all. You can buy many things with bitcoin.

LINK /

You can buy over 500,000 electronic items there and many at a discount.

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You know it can buy more than that. But I get it, it's new and scary and you don't want to trust it. That's fine, I don't have any bitcoins either.

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Nor will I. I am a financial professional and a part time econ professor. I don't have any trust in bitcoin or what it's trying to be. I see failure. Not now, but eventually.

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Is the idea valuable, or the implementation?

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I think both are. You can enter into agreements even in the absence of law that reward the idea man, but I digress.

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The rules placed on it make them necessarily scarce. And the rules are necessarily arbitrary.

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I thought I read somewhere that the rules can be changed if the majority of machines on the network agreed (maybe I misunderstood).

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Whether it's by design or "natural" doesn't matter.

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If the rules can be changed it definitely matters.

But whether or not the scarcity is permanent, that still really doesn't explain why a bitcoin has value. There are plenty of things in the world that are both scarce and worthless.

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The rules placed on it make them necessarily scarce

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rules are necessarily arbitrary

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Neither of those change the fact that bitcoins are scarce

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except for the fact that

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rules are necessarily arbitrary

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except for the fact that

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or, except for the fact that the rules are not arbitrary

they are detailed, documented and enforced.

any changes result in a fork.

I've explained this at least 100 times on here. I don't know why y'all refuse to acknowledge and accept bitcoin basics.

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I think both are. You can enter into agreements even in the absence of law that reward the idea man, but I digress.

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I agree with you, and my stance on the value of IP says the same.

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I thought I read somewhere that the rules can be changed if the majority of machines on the network agreed (maybe I misunderstood).

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As far as I understand, yes, this can happen. Each participating machine builds upon the longest "blockchain". I believe forks in the chain happen occasionally, and both may be built upon until there is a clear "winner". The transactions in the losing chain are then verified again in the winning chain. If someone wanted to change the rules, they would have to put more computing effort into it than everyone else combined in order to win this race. I am not 100% on this, but I think what would happen at this point is that there would be 2 separate bitcoin networks fighting over which transactions are legit. I'm not sure if the legit network would eventually concede defeat, or if they would just exist together but separate, and people could go with either one and double-spend their coins. I just don't know enough about it, but whatever would happen it would be disruptive and probably destroy it.

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If the rules can be changed it definitely matters.

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As I kind of talked through just now, an attempt to game the system would probably destroy it, and little to nothing would be gained. It's designed to make honest participation most beneficial to yourself and the network as a whole.

What happens if someone hoards millions of bitcoins and then dies without anyone else knowing the private keys to those BTCs?

Are those coins forever locked away or is there a mechanism to claim or to release them?

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I see failure. Not now, but eventually.

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Broke, I must disagree with you here. As I've said elsewhere, bitcoin does fulfill a very particular need for semi-wealthy people who live in countries with questionable financial institutions, and also for those who wish to engage in transactions defined as criminal by various authorities.

I'm not defending the practices of either crowd, just pointing out that the market demand is there for reasons that I don't see going away.