You are so so so wrong and naive :-(, and i dont mean that in a mean way, but if majority of bitcoin people are like you then got save me :-(... You are too passionate of something that is just money... and investment... your "ideals" are not good in this manner, its not good for you either. Dont get me wrong i would like or even love bitcoin to skyrocket, but there are serious arguments againts it...

If gov. BANS bitcoin worldwide, serious ban, even some agreements signed  internationaly with some economic secretary of state, bitcoin is DOOMED. If no normal merchants will take it, and if it is clear that no one "normal" will take it (not counting underground sellers of drugs guns etc.) because he would face some serious troubles with government (just high taxes on bitcoin bussiness would do the deal) the price would so low, nobody would care about it... Yeah... it would still exist but it would be a marginal thing... I im not interested in marginal things because no money... (and vast majority of people think like me in this matter).

How would the price of bitcoin ever recover if there would be globall (just few important states would do) "ban" on bitcoin with international publicity, signed documents etc.. If everybody knows this is a serious and permant ban then bye bye bitcoin high price. Argue this... you cant probably... I would like to put more fiat into bitcoin but this one issue (serious international ban on bitcoin) is a big nightmare for me, and its easy to accomplish for governments.

It's not just money and investments, it's much, much more than that. Do your homework and sometime you might realize that what I speak of is not idealism or naivety.  Governments are not going to universally ban anything and they are not even considering this.  The current evidence all points toward acceptance and not banning by most of the governments on earth. It is not currently illegal in any country in the world..even China.  Everything you want is on the other side of fear. Stop peeing your pants and work toward what you want in life with a clear understanding of risk management. I am hoping for lower midterm bitcoin price because it serves my interests right now, but really price is secondary to the social and technical aspects of distributed p2p networks like bitcoin.  The current centralized systems are highly fragile and are doomed if we do not allow more robust systems to be in a position to take over when they inevitably get FUBAR.

"NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB: The banking system, the way we have it, is a monstrous giant built on feet of clay. And if that topples, we're gone.

Never in the history of the world have we faced so much complexity combined with so much incompetence and understanding of its properties."  - http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec08/psolman_10-21.html

And before anyone says "Ya but that was back in 2008, things are great now."  Well, things are only holding together with a strand of thread because of billions of dollars worth of QE per month propping it up.

That's the one type of statement that worries me the most...

People talk about believers...
But when it comes to money, believes are truly the most irrational, risky, dangerous and fail-prone incentives a human could possibly dig up in his motives.

It's knowledge that counts and only that. Unknown/future factors shall never be replaced with believes - they shall be estimated with calculations, realistic approximation, available empirical data and a resulting probability that at least passes a common-sense test and is free of emotions or hopes (greed/fear/get-rich-quick-symptoms).

I know it takes some believes to create visions of a brighter future.
But that bulldozer with the steel blade labeled reality all but too quickly does a cleanup of these visions if not firmly anchored to realistic expectations.

Seeing how difficult it is now to just either buy or sell BTC for reasonable prices and with reasonable trust plus the wild speculation-driven price fluctuations alone are telling me BTC right now is clearly a hardly seaworthy fishing boat battling the open sea in stormy weather. And I know this type of sea actually does have monsters that are up to no good.
BTC is a shark tank, operating it is like playing minesweeper - if you calculate hard & correct and keep your eyes wide open your chances of survival drastically improve (if you are skilled with LOTS of common sense to circumvent the mines you cannot directly calculate) - but in the end you're still crawling around in a minefield. And every single failure costs you money, every time.

As it stands now, BTC (IMHO) would be better off staying below the radar as good as it can. Its success could otherwise be its own demise, in its present infrastructure it's just an easy target for goverments and central banks who own them. For now they just don't seem to see it as a threat and avoid wasting ammunition (which if BTC survived would give it a boost in credibility).
I agree that BTC could technically survive law & regulation but realistically wouldn't be able to survive the high price-tag of a black market only currency.

JohnnyBigs,

1) Can you please elaborate on point #2 about Gavin meeting with the CIA and Satoshi disappearing?

2) Can you provide evidence that school shootings are staged so the Govt. can pass gun control laws?

3) What percent of your original bitcoin holding do you still have?

In addition to what you said being untrue, it comes off as smug and elitist.  Bitcoin would be good for the world and the vast majority of humans inhabiting it (except perhaps some dinosaur bankers and corrupt politicians).

The average person may not understand the intricacies of our monetary system, but they are certainly not stupid.  

Then why do most people in this thread (including you) have such a low IQ? They shouldn't even be able to use BTC and yet they are.


That's completely impossible because
1. Not everybody sells their BTC
2. Even if everyone did and one entitiy would buy more and more BTC from people and take them away from the market, the price would continuously skyrocket in a ridiculous way that at some point even the richest man on earth would run out before he owns all Bitcoin.
3. Even if someone was rich enough to buy all Bitcoin right now, he'd only have about 50% of the total amount of Bitcoins.

@OP
I really wanna see how any government wants to regulate a global currency. Sure they can tax stores that use BTC, but that's about as far as it goes.

I'm sorry that the OP sold all his bitcoins at a low price (I understand that this is what happened). Trolling the bitcoin won't help, but I feel for you.

"Even if they allowed Bitcoin to become successful, they will regulate it so heavily, that it will pretty  much lose any “benefits” that it had, (Europe is preparing to tax and regulate Bitcoin) and pretty much becomes centralized and just like anything else. "

Of course it will be regulated and taxed when it 'becomes' a currency, and you should be paying tax on your earnings now. But it will still be peer to peer.

The only one of those points that concerns me is the blockchain size. I'm not so worried about the size of the blockchain once it's on the computer, but rather getting it onto the computer. Internet DL speeds are not adopting at the speed in which harddrive size is. For example, i've had highspeed internet for years now and i've only seen a couple mbps (that's megbits not bytes) boost from when I first got it. My point being, if the blockchain is 100TB and we have 7 Petabyte drives, we still might be only downloading at 10 MBps (megabytes)...

don't blame the blockchain for your own ineptitude. email was clunky to work with at one time too and it seems to have become a smashing success despite early challenges including adoption.  some people see problems and say it won't work, some see opportunities and get busy. which are you?