Topic: Preparation for the inevitable (Read 5028 times)

Something tells me a certain washed-up comedy forum is going to be excited when they come across this.

I believe tools like the following for "in person" exchanges can be beneficial to avoiding the use of banking services:

http://TradeYourBitcoin.com

I believe that mid and high level bueracrats will become increasingly desperate to cash out before the fiscal situation becomes untenable so if they start paying attention to Bitcoin at all it will be to launder whatever public funds they can get their hands on for their own use.

i think a nation/state financed attack on the network would actually be quite harmful to Bitcoin.  They could hire a much bigger nest of hackers

oh...and they can kidnap people and send them to Cuba...without too much international outcry...

Sorry, but the Pirate Party here in Germany are wussing out already.

They don't accept Bitcoins because it's too "uncontrollable", they largely lean towards leftish socialism. They want a basic income guarantee for everyone.

They weakened their position about copyrights due to pressure from the establishment, their position's got not much to do with Rick Falkvinge's recent point anymore. They'll go the way of the German Green Party in the 80ies which started with high (albeit leftish) ideals but eventually got assimilated into the system.

Wow, I did not know you knew OBL and he used bitcoin, or could see ironic jokes.

Right, they don't typically offer routes across their high speed network to the rest of the world.  The whole point is having a good system for connecting one I2 node to another I2 node, not improving the internet for everyone.  But the project also is for learning how to manage dynamic high speed networks, and that will trickle out to the rest of the world as the rest of the world upgrades their shit.

Even if the Pirate Party came into power in any European country, wouldn't they ultimately face the same problems that bitcoin will be causing?

I doubt any country/government can allow to be without full control over their currency, not even the most liberal of all. Or would it be different if they started to accept taxes in bitcoin?

Excellent trolling sir!

Déjà vu. I've heard these words said by a guy who organized September 11 attacks...

Bitcoins are legal its just numbers...

This is new to me, that it uses the same protocols is clear, why reinvent the wheel. But from my understanding traffic from the regular internet isn't routed over internet2 lines.

Bitcoin may be changing the financial system. But the political systems are changing as well.

Look at this guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_Germany

Last year they have already moved into four state parlament in germany and will probably move into the parlament in the next elections.

Parties like them are forming in all european states. And there is already one in Canada ( http://www.pirateparty.ca/ ). (Damn US with their two party system.).

Systems are chaning. Not only the finacial system, but on many layers in paralel.

Getting this party to accept bitcoin donation would be awesome though. Pirate Party of New Zealand has already stated they will accept bitcoins. And the founder of swedens pirate party has moved his complete savings into bitcoin.

So maybe bitcoin will not be illigal after all.

No, internet2 is mostly just a physical network, a subset of the internet, but with faster lines.  It carries same internet protocols and traffic that you are used to.  It just means that nodes on it have reliable high speed links to each other.

For example, Stanford can send data to MIT using private I2 links between universities across the country rather than handing the traffic to commercial carriers.

Yes, yes, and yes!

Viva Satoshi!

I don't believe the meshnet behind the freedom box is supposed to replace the internet, but rather a way to get around censorship and provide free internet access to those who can't afford it and so on. But if Big Internet decided to attack something like bitcoin, it would certainly work as a "darknet" around such censorship.

AFIK Internet2 is a genuine separate network, a darknet if you will, only that people behind it are in academia and goverment.

The declaration of Independence of Cyberspace is an old hat, and it doesn't necessarily just apply to the internet as Cyberspace by definition transcends it. It is just, that if going through the hassle of creating a mesh network it should be part of the internet. Creating a physical darknet on purpose is equal to burning bridges which should be avoided if possible.

Interesting developments, the Cyberspace declaration as well as Internet 2. So, do you think Internet 2 will be something separate from the internet, or is it just a name for a project on the internet? Also, I'm not 100% sure if the analogy to an age old declaration of independence makes sense or is valid. It seems a bit wanted, as in made to fit, and I have difficulties of understanding how a world of thought can or should be disconnected from a world of bodies. Would love to learn more though.

Concerning the topic of this thread: Btc is far from safe imo. Just look at all this crap going on with Megaupload and others, lawyers and courts acting massively against internet users who download copyrighted material. They are of the opinion that yes, thoughts and ideas can be shared with everyone in the world at no cost, but should they? They think ideas are property, and artists, inventors, businesspeople, and scientists need to be compensated because their minds cannot survive without their bodies.

Universities and other institutions,even though they use the net, are de facto separate from the internet already. Thinking about expensive subscriptions like Jstor and locked databases with scientific knowledge. If someone attacked wikipedia the "good old internet" would be left with homepages and blogs and facebook alias myspace pages only.

Indeed, gold is the best analogy to bitcoin because it is both scarce and not controlled (in an outright way) by the nation states. However, I am convinced that through the use of the massive reserves that both the IMF and the governments around the world have, they are manipulating the price of gold as they please. The difference with bitcoin is that it has no historical precedent and the governments and other major players have not had the time to invest in it (nor the need to do so... yet).

For this reason bitcoin is actually a much safer hedge against inflation (or global fiat currency meltdown) than gold imo.

That's the wrong answer.

We don't need an alternative to the Internet. At least not at this stage, if it becomes nessecary to fork the network that decision can be made on an individual basis.
But the opposite is happening. THEY are leaving. The Internet is here to stay, and so are we.
If this one is played out right we will inherit all the existing infrastructure (including the power over ipv4 space) in addition to the list of community networks  (google that one).

But that's not enough, the next logical step is to decentralize power and production which will be a colossal task even compared to running the whole internet.