If the global community switches to a deflationary currency like BTC, the big problems are that people are less willing to spend, less willing to take on debt, people are less able to pay debt and wages have to fall (which is very hard to do).
No no, I get that point (well, by get I mean, I'll take other peoples' word for it). What I meant is, the deflationary nature of BTC makes people that treat it as a commodity inclined to hold it. There will be many people for whom BTC isn't a commodity they care or choose to hold -- the value for them would be its extremely competitive transaction fees. With more and more ATMs coming online every week, this isnt that farfetched. Buy BTC at ATM, scan code onto smartphone, send elsewhere.
Yeah I agree, that's one of the huge advantages of BTC and I think as transactions get easier and easier you're going to see this become very common.
Are you talking about the makers of BTC or the unwashed masses of people buying BTC? Because the makers of BTC are very smart guys, but most people using it are just internet-savvy people, not necessary smart computer guys.
I agree regarding the regulation -- I highly doubt the know your customer laws will change anytime soon. Quick google check shows Paypal at 4% + "a fixed fee" for international transactions. I'm assuming they do the currency exchange themselves at unfavorable rates. Ouch.
Bitcoin is an experiment. It's only until recently that it's even been taken seriously by its own developers. For years bitcoin.org labeled it 'experimental' right on the front page. If they were truly serious about bitcoin taking over the world from day 1, they would have premined a lot more. You can read stories from the guys mining in the really early days about them losing their coins because they never thought they would be worth anything.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong:
Hm, I always thought they were. Then do the mining calculations serve a purpose, or are they just wasted energy?
They serve as a natural way for BTC generation. But yeah it's a complete waste of energy and computing resources from a usable output. It's like botting in diablo2, lol.
Mining also is used to verify transactions. I think the idea is as the reward for mining continues to get smaller, transactions would get larger and those verifying the transactions would share in transactions fee
I would consider them a mandatory acquiescence to the human nature. If EVERY miner unilaterally agreed to play nice and have no more than X power, then everyone mining would have an equal share of the generated coins. However, it's obvious that this isn't feasible.
You have a public/private key pair with X bitcoins. When you transfer ownership to me, you need my public key. To transfer ownership, you'll publish a transaction to the network saying ("Move coin in this public/private key pair to that public/private key pair"). The network checks to make sure you actually have the coin that you say you do. If you do, then your transaction waits for a miner to confirm by adding it to the blockchain. The blockchain is no more than every block (group of transactions) from the genesis block onward.