re: Daily Bitcoin Article

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How many Bitcoin owners are there?

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No more than the number of public addresses in existence. There has not been a single day in which as many as 200,000 unique addresses have been used.

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I don't know what you're talking about. All I know is that I would have assumed that if Mt. Gox crashed, the whole thing would go down the toilet.

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Let me quote someone you might be familiar with,

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Would you mind providing me with evidence of this sweeping statement?

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False. Coinbase just eclipsed 1,000,000 users. Those users Coinbase wallets are off chain wallets and not identifiable on the block chain.

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Then Coinbase owns the Bitcoins and not the wallet owners. Those wallets have nothing until Coinbase transfers the Bitcoins to them on the blockchain. All the wallet owners possess is trust that Coinbase won't screw them over. Coinbase is essentially nothing more than Bank of America for Bitcoins without FDIC backing.

How does a Coinbase wallet owner, who just so happens to find himself in Greeley, CO, go to the one convenience store in the United States that accepts Bitcoins and buy a pack of chewing gum? Please tell me what steps a someone would have to go through to use the Bitcoins in their Coinbase wallet to purchase a pack of chewing gum.

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Well, accept Coinbase is a full reserve bank of sorts.

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Is this a coherent statement?

You've just described a glorified debit card transaction denominated in Bitcoins. That is some Earth shattering technological breakthrough. Reinventing a process that has existed for decades. How much do you pay for this revolutionary service?

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Again, as Wiki and myself have said for some time now, the bitcoin network MUST develop as a transaction network before it can develop into anything else.

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We know...we know. It's early in the development, right? Five years is not nearly long enough......

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We know...we know. It's early in the development, right? Five years is not nearly long enough......

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It took two decades for TCP/IP to be introduced to DHTML. SMTP came way before.

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I didn't say it was an earth-shattering point-of-sale breakthrough.

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Are you sure? You've hyped Bitcoins as something earth-shattering, but you concede it relies on mundane point-of-sale procedures. The mundane prevents anything earth-shattering.

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If it's between Coinbase wallets it's free, if not you pay whatever mining fees are denoted.

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Bitcoin charges 1% for processing transactions according to this article. LINK That's just a little bit more than free.

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No more than the number of public addresses in existence. There has not been a single day in which as many as 200,000 unique addresses have been used.

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And you have taken a poll of all of these owners? May I see it?

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Let me quote someone you might be familiar with,

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Would you mind providing me with evidence of this sweeping statement?

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I need to provide "evidence" of my opinion?

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You are asking me for evidence to support my statement. How about some empirical evidence? Coinbase claims to have over 980,000 consumer wallets. How much advertising does Coinbase do explaining the technology on their website? None, it links you to a Youtube video to explain what Bitcoins are. Based on that I conclude that Coinbase users are not overly concerned with the Bitcoin protocols.

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You made a strong declarative statement about a group of people that probably numbers in the millions as if you knew something someone else didn't. I guess it turns out you know nothing.

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Some evidence in support of your opinions would be a nice courtesy since you seek it from others.

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When a nascent "currency" has one dominant means of exchange that gets the majority of the press, I would assume that severely hampering that exchange would be a crippling if not terminal event for the "currency". I was surprised to see that that was not the case...at least not so far.

Are you saying that if 2 months ago I had given you advance knowledge that Gox would be virtually frozen, your prediction would have been for bistamp and others to still be as high as they are?

The head of MtGox has resigned his board seat with the Bitcoin Foundation leading to speculation another bad news announcement will be forthcoming from MG.
LINK