That's another great advantage of bitcoin over the obsolete payment systems.  You would never get such fun as spam, hate mail, and mockery on you bank account statement.  Anonymous messages that you cannot erase and everybody can read.  Way to go, bitcoin. 

Very weird conclusion...

But in fact signalling and signal-processing systems, natural and artificial, have always evolved towards using as little energy and matter as possible; and this has often been the most important criterion, more than speed.  Thus we have DNA, an information storage system that uses only a dozen atoms per bit; the nerve fiber, that uses much less energy than a copper wire of the same length, and wastes no energy in the form of external electromagnetic fields; and insect pheromones, that can trigger a response miles away with only one or two molecules. 

A more energy-efficient solution to achieve a needed goal is an obvious advantage in natural selection, and in a free market as well.  For that reason, the necessary waste of energy and resources called for by the PoW crypto protocols is a serious weakness of the concept.

The mutual recognition of individuals and the creation of trust bonds between them is an innate human trait, older than humans themselves.  Getting rid of trusted intermediaries in payments is not a human necessity by itself; it is only a proposed strategy to avoid certain perceived bad consequences of the current intermediaries (banks and governments) under current laws and institutions.  If there is a cheaper way to avoid or diminish those bad consequences, without necessarily junking the trusted intermediaries, society will prefer it to PoW distributed cryptos.  Ditto if those  bad consequences end up being less serious than the cost of the proposed remedy.

Didn't you know that vodka is more expensive than water because it is a 40-proof liquor, which means that proof is much more often found pasted on vodka bottles than in math books?

Wouldn't I need a liquor store license for that?

That is what I meant.  People don't switch to a better technology because everybody they have to interact with is using the old one.

Betamax comes to mind...

Although it is a bit of a tautology: how can we tell that the technology is a "winning" one, if it is not adopted?

For things that people can choose and use independently of others, such as microwave ovens and fly-swatters, better technology is an important advantage (although advertising and other factors are important too).   But for things that depend on a network, like money or document formats or email protocols, inertia often trumps technology.  (That of course is the main argument that Bitcoin supporters use to predict the demise of Litecoin and other competitors.)

Wasn't that myth debunked long ago, and is now a moth moot point?

Someone claimed somewhere on this forum that he submitted one.  Got a canned reply "we got your request and we are processing it, be prepared to pay up to 25$".

Why do people say "long time ago", and not "broad time ago" or "deep time ago"?

Er, the facts (if we believe the leaked database) are only that "Markus" and "Willy" bought a lot of coins, and those buys caused the price to rise at MtGOX.

The Report claims that those buys were the cause of the October-November bubble, but that is not a clear conclusion.  My interpretation of the charts is that the October pre-bubble rise (from 120$ to 200$) was caused by a surge in demand at BTC-China, and the November bubble proper (from 200$ to 1200$) by a bigger surge of demand at Huobi, OKCoin, and BTC-China (and possibly at other Chinese exchanges whose history is still unavailable).

In that case "Markus" and "Willy" were not driving the bubble, but only bringing it to MtGOX, by doing arbitrage: buying coins at MtGOX (possibly with non-existent money) and selling them in the Chinese exchanges. 

Ignoring the fact that you also spelled Bitcoin with a demeaning lower case 'b', which would excuse my assumption that you wrote Time that way only because you were a fan of e e cummings, aren't you bothered by the fact that 'Satoshi Nakamoto' is an anagram of 'Satan has oskimoto', even though we don't know what 'oskimoto' could mean?

Magazines like Time won't last a century, while a religion may last for millennia; could bitcoin be a religion?

With a legally binding and notarized contract, of course.

Thanks, it was a stupid question, sorry.

Could a PoS miner "rent" coins from a hoarder to simulate that he has the required stake, without actually having it?

I was busy writing my question for the previous question, isn't that obvious?

Hm, when was the last 6-month period where the purchase power of the dollar fell 50%?  

The Brazilian real did that in 1996 (days after the reelection of the president whose only campaign point was its stability). Since then it has fallen gradually by another 30% perhaps.

Indeed, anyone who bought bitcoin at any time before November 1st, 2013 has seen about 1000% increase per year on average.

BUT those who bought after that moment have had a much mixed returns, from very good gains (if they bought in May, for example) to very bad losses (if they bought in January, or after mid-November).

So bitcoin is a good hedge against inflation only for those lucky ones who have a time machine in their attic that allows them to buy their coins in 2013 to sell now.  For those who are forced to buy now to sell in the future, it is not an investment: it is a gamble in a lottery with unknown prize and unknown odds.

I didn't see your question in time, would you accept my apologies for that?

Didn't he ignore the other guy's primary question as well?

But, wouldn't a pizza by any other coin taste as good?