"People who do math don't have credit card debt."

[gone-ot]

Old sailors saying: "If you can't EAT it, spend IT, or haxe SEX with it...it has no value."

[Xist]

Bitcoin is still called a "crypto-currency," right?

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

Manipulation more so than speculation? Those who know "How To" gaming the system?

No, because 'those who know "How To"' are mostly a product of conspiracy theorists, searching for someone or something to blame for their own ineptitude. As for instance "If I buy a bunch of these tulips/beanie babies/bitcoins and hold on to them, they'll be worth a fortune.

It's like the old story (Mark Twain, maybe) about the man who, back in the gold rush days, started a rumour about a big gold strike in Hell. Within a few days everyone in town had left for Hell, so he said "Well, maybe the stories are true", and he went to Hell too.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Xist

Bitcoin is still called a "crypto-currency," right?

Crypto- refers to the mechanism, not the effect. It's a distributed, unfalsifiable ledger.

Let's look at an example: unpopular opinion. Rather than pointing to individuals, organizatons or movements, I'll have DuckDuckGo do that:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon&q...tcoin+activity

Privacy is an illusion.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

Old sailors saying: "If you can't EAT it, spend IT, or haxe SEX with it...it has no value."

Yes, and the new sailors say if I have to lug it around, maintain it, or visit it in person... it has no value.

[Xist]

In whatever manner it is cryptic, why is it called currency?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Xist

In whatever manner it is cryptic, why is it called currency?

Cryptic meaning if the data related to the Bitcoin is obtained, it's still worthless without the distributed ledger agreeing on the ownership. It's currency for the same reason the USD is currency; it meets the definition of money (store of value, medium of exchange, agreed upon value, etc).

[freebeard]

Crypto- from cryptography. Currency from people latching onto the first use case that stoked their greed.

It's a floor wax, and a dessert topping.

[gone-ot]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Yes, and the new sailors say if I have to lug it around, maintain it, or visit it in person... it has no value.

In reality, that saying ended: "...then PAINT it!" (wink,wink)

[redpoint5]

I'll point out that E-currency was the inevitable evolution of wealth. A good currency should allow the owner to pay for something regardless of where the person being paid is located, and that transaction should take little time. Furthermore, a good currency is secure from theft and catastrophe by decentralizing the ledger. Hacking or destroying 1 ledger should have no consequence due to the redundancy of the other ledgers. Finally, a good currency should have a low cost to store and to transfer.

The last point is where I think Bitcoin should be improved. It isn't efficient to have many powerful computers solving artificial puzzles to authenticate a transaction.

My question is, how quickly can Bitcoin transactions clear given that a limited number of transactions are processed in batches, and that authenticating the transactions requires a compute-intensive solution?

For any e-currency to survive, it needs to get to the point that I can pay for groceries almost instantly, and for next to no transaction cost.