Let's Talk Bitcoin

It is largely used in black market transactions, it exists without any regulations at all, and there are almost no mainstream businesses that actually deal in it

As we used to say back in the day, “don’t believe the hype.”

As for business using Bitcoin, more “real” businesses are doing so all the time, including Foodler, OKCupid and WordPress to name a few: http://www.coindesk.com/10-businesses-that-use-bitcoins/.

On a recent podcast of Lets Talk Bitcoin (http://letstalkbitcoin.com), it was mentioned that donations to projects, websites, etc. were the majority of Bitcoin transactions, not black market ones.

It’s not a coincidence that Bitcoin first appeared in 2009, after the world economy was nearly destroyed by regulated financial institutions and government-controlled central banks.

There’s certainly nothing shady about wanting a way of exchanging and storing value (i.e. money) that’s unencumbered with the legacy of how we’ve handled transactions in the past.

One of the innovations of Bitcoin is that it decentralizes trust, which is just what we need these days--Bitcoin May Be the Global Economy's Last Safe Haven: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-28/bitcoin-may-be-the-global-economys-last-safe-haven

well I certainly didn't mean to imply that you were full of hot air. :) and although I agree with you about nicotine but I'm personally more interested in the idea of consuming medicinal plant oils this way as a form of relaxation therapy because it would seem that cannabis prohibition is rapidly evapourating in the United States. I suspect it'll be a lot more difficult for scientists to find any medical evidence that this form of vaping is harmful, that is once they're finally able to conduct research into it.

One problem with conducting this kind of science however is that different varieties of cannabis have different profiles of cannabnoids and turpentines, so what science would really need first is a way to determine what genetics are what. This is why I'm so excited about the work that is being done to track the genetics.. here is a fascinating interview with a leading scientist about this if you're interested:

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/episode-73-distributed-consensus-on-cannabis-genetics

When it comes to aesthetics though I think we're on the same page about those portable smoke monstrosities.

There are thousands of videos popping up on YouTube with how much money these people have 'made' on MMM Global, it's sad to see;

https://www.youtube.com/results?lclk=week&search_query=mmm+global+pays&filters=week

It's very likely a big part of the price increase, many of the local MMM sites advertise that they're bitcoin-only and all of the exchanges are extraordinarily shallow so small surges in demand really move prices.

Here's a pretty good article from a mid October predicting the huge run-up based on interest in MMM and how they reward posts to social media where people show off how much they've "made":

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/mmm-global-republic-of-bitcoin-cryptos-next-scandal

If anyone pays for better website analytics, I bet you'd find a pretty striking increase in the MMMGlobal rankings in the past month or so that corresponds pretty strongly with bitcoin price. One more note is that the exact same price runup happened in July with Litecoin based on a different Chinese ponzi scheme:

http://www.dailytradingprofits.com/4669/was-litecoin-pumped-by-a-chinese-ponzi-scheme/

This is really not a very practical picture of bitcoin's capabilities outside the developed world. In the developing world, bitcoin is very difficult to spend or cash into local currency, even assuming access to a capable smartphone/pc with internet and the technical skills necessary to manage and securely store bitcoin

>Vendors in the middle of Africa do not need a bank account and credit card merchant account to sell products online. Plus they can distribute the earnings to their family members working across the country with their mobile phone, without their family needing accounts.

The "middle of Africa" is pretty much the quintessential example of a region where bitcoin is completely impractical. Poor internet infrastructure, high rates of computer illiteracy, limited access to capable computers... bitcoin simply isn't the answer (yet).

Consider this guy who went over to Kenya in the name of a bitcoin charity effort, only to be sobered by the reality of the situation on the ground.

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-133-the-digital-divide

Capabilities to enforce regulatory compliance on permissionless chains is coming. You could, say, have zero-knowledge proofs in smart contracts that enforce that tokens representing security X can only be transferred if the receiving account has performed KYC and confirmed as an accredited investor in jurisdiction X, Y or Z, without leaking any PIIs that went Intl the verification.

Or more trivially, TPL for account tagging.

Microsoft's initiative on decentralized identity leveraging on the Bitcoin blockchains could be a component in this. Excellent podcast episode here: https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/what-bitcoin-did-107-microsoft-is-building-on-bitcoin-with-daniel-buchner

Not to say you're completely wrong, just that smart contracts can be used to enforce regulation rather than skirt it - like any tool the outcome depends on the intentions of the one wielding it. :)

"nearly everyone actually using it to exchange value is really just using it as a just-in-time proxy for some other currency"

And this is fantastic! It demonstrates clearly that the payment processing aspect alone (without even arguing about the currency aspect) of Bitcoin is a killer application. Being able to receive international payments from any country, in a few minutes, 24/7 (no bank holidays), with extremely low fees, with zero fraud (thanks to transactions being irreversible) beats any current payment processing platform. Quite a few business and financial leaders have noted this.
These are also the reasons why Bitcoin is starting to provide great competition to the remittance industry (eg. http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/in-depth-review-bitpesa)