The government attempting a 51% attack is more than “they can simply buy more mining power.” Sure, the government can outspend civilians, but there is much more to it than that because it is not just about how much money they have. First, there would have to be a MASSIVE operation that involves the building of huge…

I see that you might be a big fan of central banks. Here is a good quote from Alan Greenspan, “Gold and Economic Freedom” in 1966, five years before coming off the gold standard (before he sold out and became a statist):

Oh, take it you personally review the books and electricity costs of each individual miner out there. Good job with stating facts with no basis. There might be a few that fit your description, but the majority are still turning out a profit because the ones in red have to shut down since they have no income.

A very brief possibility of double spending and slowing things down until a new algorithm is chosen to make their billion dollar investment worth zero.

I did say “never SUCCESSFULLY hacked”. If that exploit were successful, there would be people today with billions of coins.

Here is some basic information for you: You are very wrong when it comes to being open/decentralized vs closed/centralized. Being open means the entire community is able to improve the model - making the system more secure and resilient. We see with with operating systems - Linux is open source, and is the most secure…

well since all that power is going into securing the blockchain, the blockchain is now usable as a secure platform for permission-less financial innovation. think smart self executing contracts, smart property, shares, titles, deeds, new user created tokens, new decentralized stock markets, decentralized autonomous…

Gold is deflationary, and it was currency for 6000 years, that’s the reality. Paper money was gold backed until 1971. Today, there is nothing stopping countries from printing their currencies into hyper-inflation. I, and plenty of other bitcoin and gold advocates, would rather hold something deflationary instead of…

heh :P I’m just a huge advocate of liberty and free markets :) you do your thing, and I’m going to do mine.

yet, the entire mining capacity of the network keeps increasing every month. it isn’t going down. That is indicative that people are still making more efficient mining equipment that does turn a profit.

exactly, that is the point of mining. it musn’t have any other uses beyond securing the blockchain.

Simply put, if a solution was found (folding for example) using a different process other than mining (a more power electron microscope perhaps) then that solution can be used to undermine the security of the entire bitcoin network - it would mean that the mining power of the network is now useless, since another…

Sure, it should go without saying that everyone has rights to their life and property - no civilized person would argue against that. but extending that to include your narrow vision of how people should trade, I don’t think so. If I want to use bitcoin or gold and the other person wants to accept it for their goods…

There is nothing to break in bitcoin - it is an open protocol.

Bitcoin blockchain has never been successfully hacked/exploited. The best hackers have tried and failed. Any failures/hacking you have read about regarding bitcoin was all do businesses and services getting hacked, losing customer funds. if you keep your own wallet secure, then you can rely on the security of the…

liberty and freedom of choice have inherent risks. if you don’t like it, there are plenty of dictators left in the world who would love to make decisions for you.

The miners check each other - actually, anyone can freely check them because whatever work they produce has to be shown in a transparent way. Mining the blockchain is a very transparent process. If a miner says they found a solution (a block in the blockchain), but instead of taking the set reward of 25 newly created…

Currently, speculation is the main determining factor in the price of bitcoin. But this will most likely change as more real transactions happen - and this is something that is growing steadily. Bitcoin is still in its infancy, so it needs time for real transaction volume to pick up. as for breaches in exchanges, that…

Mining bitcoin is determined by a set algorithm that cannot change - no matter how many people jump into mining. Mining isn’t an arbitrary process, and it isn’t about writing code. mining computers have to expend large amounts of energy to create new coins (and ensure the integrity of the network). It is like digging…

Deflationary currency is bad if your debt is denominated in it, yes. You are right about people needing to be informed - that will be a good way to ensure that people don’t do something stupid as taking debt denominated in a deflationary currency.