This is wandering away from crypto

No better way to naysay BTC than to break the crypto and wash
everyone out. $Billions gone, and a permanent seat in the research
hall of fame ;-) (BTW, where are the BTC insurance companies...)

announced that they will not exceed 40%. Down from 55% to 32% now...

That's not surprising.  Bitcoin is a speculative asset, and at this
point the Bitcoin fans have a shared interest in keeping its price up.
The story that nobody's in charge is one of the things that makes
people want to buy it, so, well, sure.  In the admittedly unlikely
event that there are enough contracts or debts denominated in Bitcoin
that there were significant non-speculative demand, things could
change.

I'd agree that actual market float outstanding is thin right now.
Yet different from purely propping things up, speculation is all
about assessing future value and making moves accordingly today...

https://ciphrex.com/archive/bofa-bitcoin.pdf
http://honestnode.com/bitcoin-fair-value-a-first-assessment/
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-2014-report/
http://www.coindesk.com/state-of-bitcoin-q2-2014-report-expanding-bitcoin-economy/

This is what's technically known as "marketing BS".  Dell accepts
dollars. They have a deal with Coinbase in which Coinbase takes the
risk of raising dollars by selling Bitcoins in return for a commission

Not so fast! Yes, Dell accepts dollars (subject to whatever BTC
holdback they, like Overstock, may be specifying). However obtaining
those dollars is totally dependant on Coinbase's ability to convert
BTC to dollars on exchange or privately. And Coinbase is surely
nowhere near whole enough from commissions to be able to back their
contracts against any significant outstanding float in a long price
dive situation. Therefore Dell *is* in the BTC game before dollars
on these sales, regardless of the denomination they're booking. So
is everyone else who 'accepts' BTC. Dell and others are large
companies, with well paid accountants and lawyers... it takes more
than whim of 'marketing BS' for them to put a BTC sticker on their
door.

volatility

but if
there's another collapse in the Bitcoin market

The BTC market has been in a fairly steady log uptrend over the
long term. The 'collapses' people speak of are, in that context,
spikes returning to normal. All new markets and properties undergo
price discovery. It's a continual process. Ever watch the NYSE,
it's volatile too.

the distributed notary idea seems likely to be useful for something

There is no 'useful for this or useful for that' concerning things
riding on top of this tech... the underlying model, including the
social contract aspects, either works for all uses, or for none.
It's either broken or it's not.

but it's never going to replace real money.

Neither will credit/debit cards. Nor is your fiat paper of choice
'real money' either, it's just called money by default. (Probably
because the next default, real property, is hard to fit in your
pocket.) Digital currencies will, like 'money', operate in the layer
above real property.

Again, here's the recycle bin for your trash, this time I'll even
waive the recycling fee... ;)
btc:1C96B6DszNqnX4KRzveu6BKRuznmmdFhdm

On re, replies on: Ghash.io, 50%, takeovers, self regulation...

50% is not a magical binary breakpoint, it merely permits more
influence as the share moves along the scale from 50% to 100%.

Right now, the $130M plus expenses (or $27M plus for ghash) that
is needed to reach 50% seems to not be worth it to anyone.

Who is graphing the cost-to-50%? And the cost-to-50% to market cap,
volume, and quantity ratios? Those would be interesting and important
graphs to watch.

$130M is nothing to someone who wants to own a currency. So why
hasn't it happened to BTC yet? Perhaps because the value of BTC
owes a lot to its decentralization. If so, and you take that away,
you're risking your own value before you start. And risking an
exodus fork.

Just as easy as it was to add BTC to Dell's checkout in N days time,
adding another currency is easy if yours (or your takeover) fails,
or customers continue to demand a decentral one.

And you're not going to win a takeover anyways because no one will
tolerate you blocking their transactions... no entity survives
having 50, 40, 30 percent of its users in abject protest against
theft, loss of value and service, and principle. Among other things,
you'd be prosecuted, sued, DDoS'd off the net, badmouthed, and
forked against.

Probably better to start your own digital currency and put $115M
into marketing and $15M into central hardware.

Also, were such a thing in the works, I wouldn't count on the
people involved publicly broadcasting their intentions on Twitter.

That only applies to mining 'companies'. Mining 'pools' derive
their share from the users who elect to use them. Of course a
pool could become a company. And a company could uphold the
social contract.

The Ghash was a remarkable social contract event by both shedding
users and users leaving. It's happened before, and each time it
does it underscores the importance of the contract to the currency
to everyone involved.

In the end, if anyone succeeds in taking/making any private/centralized
coin, there will be some users who follow it, and some people who
reject it in favor of other decentral coin.

Digital banking and transacting has been done for decades. Banks
could have made ACH/Wire compellingly attractive to users and the
marketplace. But they waited, and didn't, and lost the chance...
just like telcos lost the internet and music lost itself.

As with those things, crypto in the 90's and overlay networks today,
what is really being tested with BTC along with the tech, are meta
concepts such as freedom, regulation, where value is stored, law,
etc.

At the moment it would be quite hard to say decentral digital
currency is failing or holds little long term prospect.

You can fund more drunken rambling here... :)
btc:1D6rPeQUETfGpSp2JB2oojJUC8GiURyhp7