AndrewB

This is probably the best creepy bedtime story I've ever come across.

Open source doesn't necessarily mean it's OK to use it for commercial purposes, and even then there are usually strict conditions.

Someone asked where the bitcoin people went, I kindly responded.

Given that he's ripped off assets and code without proper permission, it's probably better for him if he sells nothing.

Remember, I was telling people to buy it around $100

I would recommend immediately cutting the price to no more than $2-$3, possibly free, or it will end up pretty well immediately forgotten and buried.

Proof-of-work systems like bitcoin are "inefficient" in the same way that militaries are inefficient. Nations spend considerable portions of their GDP to build up massive armies and fleets, only to never use them. The "wasting" of energy on bitcoin is for one purpose and one purpose only: To guarantee and protect the 21 million bitcoin limit against any and all attempts to change it (to counterfeit new bitcoins into existence). To this end, the security of bitcoin is absolutely unrivaled by any competing system that humans have ever discovered. The details on how and why this works is an entire essay in itself, but the best way of summarizing it is that bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm is the only known way to convert real-world scarcity (energy) into digital scarcity. The rationale behind this is that digital scarcity can never truly be guaranteed in itself, as there will always be some creative new way to defeat copy protection. Therefore, true digital scarcity must come from the physical world. This was the missing piece, and the key reason why attempts at creating a digital super-money before bitcoin had all failed. The reason why bitcoin isn't, and can never be a ponzi scheme, is that a ponzi scheme at its core requires that promises be made that can't be kept indefinitely, paying returns of early adopters using capital of new adopters. For this reason, a ponzi scheme must continue to rise in value in a stable and continuous manner, and can't tolerate even small setbacks without collapsing. This is clearly not the case with bitcoin, as it has survived and recovered from many enormous crashes of 80% and 90% in its earlier years. Bitcoin can never become a ponzi scheme because it promises nothing. Sure, some of its supporters might promise pie-in-the-sky returns, but the asset itself does not. Bitcoin could turn out to be a passing fad, but passing fads are not ponzi schemes. However, there can be ponzi schemes built around bitcoin, in the same way that Madoff's scheme was built around dollars. One example of a possible "bitcoin ponzi scheme" that might already be in operation right now is the crypto.com token (CRO).

Whenever it was, mainstream attitudes toward disruptive technology early in their life are generally the same "Sure, it sounds fancy, but what can you actually use it for? I don't think it's going to work."

People were saying the same thing about email in the 80s and 90s. "Sure, it sounds good in theory, but what can you actually do with it?" A major difference is that you can place your bets directly on its success this time around; this wasn't the case with email. But I think its use case its basically this: A better scoreboard to keep track of who's rich and who's poor. Only in the next few years will many people realize how important this is.

Have you ever heard of the phrase "give credit where credit is due"? My predictions were made on these forums many years ago, and have been extremely accurate.

I don't see how anything I described can be called non-usage. The vast majority of people pay the vast majority of their expenses using bank transfers instead of withdrawing cash and delivering it by hand, because doing so saves a lot of cost and headache. So if you're pinning your hopes that this will never happen with bitcoin, I think you will be disappointed.

Look up Dunu products. I have a couple of their headphones and they're generally better bang for the buck.

The flaw in your argument is that the vast majority of bitcoin transactions will be moved off-chain, into derivatives and bitcoin-backed coins and bills and other inventions. Settlement-layer assets really don't need more than a couple transactions per second worldwide, even if the asset's total valuation is 100 trillion dollars.

Bitcoin will replace the US dollar as the world's currency. It could be an ugly transition, with wars and attempts at banning and regulating it, but ultimately the world will be forced to give in and accept it. And it will an usher an era of prosperity and world peace. People can go back to the early pages of this thread (and this one: ) and see my original predictions. I believe the "final" price of bitcoin will be between $2 million and $5 million when measured in today's dollars.

Which server was this? It sounds like it might be my kind of place.

I would strongly encourage as many people as possible to install and use the browser extension mentioned above. When they eventually remove the dislike count from the API feed, the extension will turn to user extrapolation to estimate the dislike count. The more users using the extension, the better the extrapolations will be.

If you watch YouTube without an ad blocker, then you're either a grandma who doesn't know what an adblocker is, or you're just really dumb.

I decided to load it up into my Yamaha MODX and tweak the style a bit just for fun: airport_attack.rar

Or you could, you know, just not scroll down?

Some workers are rare, others are common. Like you said, focusing on unproductive and arts-based jobs is going to give you a false sense of cynicism.

Can't say much about the style you're looking for but this is my kind of style

Romans 1:18 - 2:11

One of those cornerstone moments where the entire world stops what they're doing and tells their friends and family to turn on the TV right now. Think 9/11 but without the tragedy. Then after a few hours in bewilderment you'll remember that someone posted something all ominous sounding on DW forums. How could he possibly know? Did he just get lucky? It doesn't make sense.