[PassTheAmmo]

I do not think that this is a hype. It seems to me that a fully decentralized payment system would be of huge value to buyers and sellers.

Don't you agree with this?

Or do you believe that while useful, bitcoin won't be the system that prevails, or that no system like this can prevail because of government and/or special interests?

And on the issue of energy.. The sha256 generation is only to prove that you did invest time into it, and it is not a specific amount of time or energy either, but in relation to the total time spend by ALL miners during the past hours. I'm not saying that you don't know this, but it seems to be a common misconception.

[anamax]

> It seems to me that a fully decentralized payment system would be of huge value to buyers and sellers.

You seem to believe that "huge value" is somehow decisive.

It isn't.

> that no system like this can prevail because of government

And you're dismissive of that factor because ?

Govts require taxes. You want a system that makes it trivial to avoid taxes. Guess which one is going to win?

[noglorp]

The one that cannot possibly be stopped? How are they going to "crack down on bitcoin"? Note how well the crack down on filesharing is going...

[gbelote]

If you make it illegal to accept BC as a business that will deter many websites from using it. And the best way to kill BC is to make sure it doesn't hit critical mass.

The difference between filesharing and BC is that in the former the value is in the files, but BC is only valuable if you can trade them for something you value.

[anamax]

> How are they going to "crack down on bitcoin"?

Govt can crack down at any point where bitcoin is convertible into something that they can affect.

For example, they can stop many biz from accepting bitcoin.

Sure, you'll probably be able to buy foreign porn with bitcoin, but ....

> Note how well the crack down on filesharing is going...

That's a very different problem.