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Comment Re:Conversion (Score 1) 595

Those are what dollars and so on monetize.

BTC monetizes the infrastructure of anonymity, but does not enforce transactions. It's short of key differences between a token and a currency. Fiat is the ability to create currency, but fiat does not come by fiat. A real currency is one that can command an economy capable of enforcing its will. This is why the money of many countries is called "junk" currency - the country can't actually enforce its writ.

Comment Re:Conversion (Score 1) 595

Divisibility is not a part of being a currency. Divisibility dates back to grain as currency in Sumeria. Your interlocutor may be a fanatic, but that does not mean he's always wrong. Of course the BTC want to talk about divisibility as a way of convincing people that infinite deflation isn't a problem. that they will still be able to pay BTC tax on their transactions, since they won't be holding BTC for long, and that, not the divisibility, is the issue. No one actually wants to do business in BTC, they only want to use it as a proxy or as a chip in a game.

Comment Re:90% of new solutions ... (Score 3, Insightful) 92

An idea is joining two things which seem different, but can be shown to actually be the same. By providing possible reapplication, that is part of the way to "something new," depending on how far afield. If you look at many "new" ideas, the parts and their origins become obvious. The "new" part will often be the means of moving the solution to its new context.

Take, for example the derivation of the Lorentz contraction from a description of the movement of light in aether. Lorentz simplified the mathematics by inventing the idea of local time, to move equations meant for kinematics to this new context of Maxwellian radiation. Poincare recognized that "local time" was an ingenious idea, but did not quite get to what we think of as relativity. The Lorentz contraction, and "local time" are then moved, essentially wholesale, into Einstein's kinematics.

New isn't always the elephant, it is the ability to visualize the elephant where it has never been before. Since innovation is not a completely black box problem, aiding visualization of it can be valuable.

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