Right, my comment was just concerning the summary's claim that Snapchat's popularity was due to NSA privacy concerns.

Although there are conflicting claims about whether the NSA listens to phone calls, as outlined on the Wikipedia page covering the NSA's Utah Data Center), I suspect the truth is that they maybe collect recordings of most of the activity taking place on the internet and phone networks (the haystack), but never have to search for a needle because they don't look through it unless they have a specific target (a specific phone number or email/IP address). If they don't actually listen to that content without a warrant, then their statement that they don't "listen in on phone calls" could be true even though they are collecting them all. They have the storage space for it there, so it's not out of the question, and what else could they use it for? And according to a Wired Magazine article from March, they are wired into the phone network. (Note the article is 5 pages long; the talk about wiring into telecom is on the top of page 3).

The article is older than all the recent concern over privacy from the NSA, and I suppose it's possible that all this has turned around since then as a result of the outcry. But who knows?

And the assumption is that the NSA can record text messages, but not phone calls?

How is the content exchanged on Snapchat any more ephemeral ("vaporized") than a phone call? Or isn't it? Just because it's "vaporized" from your perspective doesn't mean it wasn't captured *somewhere*.

Okay, maybe I was the one splitting hairs by distinguishing a pedantic definition of anonymity from a guaranteed of a lack of being identified.

Fine, I'll go about this the long way. The definition of anonymity is "not identified by a name." Bitcoin transactions don't have a name directly associated with them, therefore they are technically anonymous by definition. And although in many cases you may be able to link a name to a transaction indirectly if the person performing the transaction has somehow linked themselves to their bitcoin transactions, that link is not a required part of participating in bitcoin transactions as much as it is often a part of participating in other kinds of transactions such as Paypal and credit card transactions. As for Bitcoin not being "designed" for anonymity versus "used" anonymously, I don't think that's a hair you intended to split here because the comment you responded to did not talk about the intentions of Bitcoin's designers. In fact I don't even detect a suggestion that the poster thought that Bitcoin transactions were anonymous, so if you're trying to get a point across, it may require more than just re-reading the same things I've already read.

If it's not anonymous, should you be able to tell me what bitcoin addresses I own? Can you?

What makes socialism such a beast? Aren't we more productive as a collaborative community than individuals? Don't you think that bitcoin will gain much more acceptance if the government promotes it rather than fighting it? Did you notice how much more popular bitcoin got a few days ago when the government finally talked about it (and in a positive light!)? The value doubled in a day if I recall correctly.

Well, if you consider that (as I understand it) the reason these bitcoins were transferred is because people were buying bitcoins, and the exchange didn't have enough to fulfill the demand, I think this is the opposite of the problem we need to be concerned with. (Keeping in mind that opposites are very closely related things, just going toward opposing extremes.) Who in their right mind is going to sell that many bitcoins at once when they could sell them out in a trickle and make millions more in the process?

Like this: https://www.bitcoinshop.us/

Yes, the price is different every time I visit.

And, although I admit I have not bought anything from that site, I can tell you that I *have* used bitcoins to buy Humble Bundles, which are another thing you can buy directly for bitcoins (optionally). There's just less overhead (complexity, time, effort, security, fees) in my perception of a bitcoin transaction over, for example, a paypal or credit card transaction... at least if you have a mobile device containing bitcoins that can scan QR codes easily.

I get your point that it's not really wise to spend bitcoins because 1) it's not wise to keep the majority of your wealth in bitcoins due to volatility and 2) it's not wise to spend bitcoins if you have other currencies because bitcoins are most likely to increase in value if you hold on to them. But for micro-transactions where I don't feel like I'm giving up a significant portion of my bitcoin investment, I do like making use of my bitcoins for convenience. It's also possible that if and when enough people are using bitcoins, their value will become less volatile. It might be an interesting path to get there, but barring some catastrophe, I don't see them going away completely, and I don't imagine that they can stick around for decades more without more people getting involved.

Testing is often the hardest part of writing any feature or fix because often times it takes a relatively long time to set up an environment and a test scenario. It's also particularly difficult to narrow down a problem to its source when integrating with software for which no source code is available and support is sketchy. I've seen problems in Microsoft and SAP software that take a long time to work out and sometimes leave me SOL.

What do you mean? Are you talking about the value of something produced being less than that invested to produce it? It may be stupid, but people are spending more resources to produce bitcoins than they are worth. That doesn't mean bitcoins aren't retaining their value. It just means people are wasting resources acquiring them. Do you disagree the the resources expended in mining gold are never regained?

Yeah, 0% and negative interest rates would be pretty ridiculous. But so is the notion that when you're repaying loan you're not paying more than you borrowed anyway. Loan repayments always entail extra cost beyond what was borrowed.

Saying that you owe more than you borrowed in real terms doesn't introduce anything new into the financial services economy. Everyone is charging interest to make money, which means you always owe more than you borrowed. How does anyone pay off their debt with interest? They have to earn it from outside sources.

Doesn't that just mean that the interest rate is bad. 10% per year on a currency in deflation is ridiculous. The interest rate on such a currency should be 0% or less because the mere fact that the currency is gaining value would represent its own interest.

I think you need to review the purpose or meaning of having a currency "backed" by something. The whole point is that the real value is in the scarcity of the currency or resource backing the currency. Anything that is truly scarce can "back" a currency because it represents an expenditure of resources that can't be counterfeited. This is why gold has value. Mining gold takes resources (time, transportation, and exposition of which are the most difficult to come by -- merely finding the gold) which you never recover, but the gold itself is the valuable asset that backs itself and/or other currencies. Bitcoin, then, could be viewed similarly. You spend the resources to acquire a new bitcoin by "mining" it, which you should never expect to get back, just like you can never expect to get back the time and other resources you spend to mine gold. Bitcoin, like gold, retains its value in its quality of scarcity. You can't get another one without expending resources relative to its value. That's why the existing bitcoins retain their value and new bitcoins add value to the bitcoin economy. They don't need any external backing because they are scarce and represent a past expenditure of resources, just like gold.