Thomas Jefferson was concise in his early warnings to the American nation, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Proper encryption is the corner-stone for crypto currencies....with a transparent governance model and proper "checks and balances" it indeed can work.

The current Central-bank controlled fractional reserve and its associated fiat-based monetary system is simply not sustainable and Thom, we will find this played out sooner or later as indicated in your book "The Crash of 2016"

See Richard Wolff A Cure for Capitalism:

evade taxes. Our democratic government depends on people cooperating in paying their taxes.

What do you think bitcoin essentially is? Exactly what Jefferson warned against -- private banks issuing currency.

As Paul Krugman, the progressive economist, recently titled his post, "Bitcoin is evil."

And the Fed takes 6% of taxes off the top and recklessly print money into the pockets of the oligarchs.

It was dreamed up by a handful of libertarians, who are enjoying the profits of their ponzi scheme.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_reserve

The Federal Reserve System's structure is composed of the presidentially appointed Board of Governors (or Federal Reserve Board), the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities throughout the nation, numerous privately owned U.S. member banks and various advisory councils.[13][14][15] The FOMC is the committee responsible for setting monetary policy and consists of all seven members of the Board of Governors and the twelve regional bank presidents, though only five bank presidents vote at any given time (the president of the New York Fed and four others who rotate through one-year terms). The Federal Reserve System has both private and public components, and was designed to serve the interests of both the general public and private bankers. The result is a structure that is considered unique among central banks. It is also unusual in that an entity outside of the central bank, namely the United States Department of the Treasury, creates the currency used.[16] According to the Board of Governors, the Federal Reserve System "is considered an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms."[17]

The authority of the Federal Reserve System is derived from statutes enacted by the U.S. Congress and the System is subject to congressional oversight. The members of the Board of Governors, including its chair and vice-chair, are chosen by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The federal government sets the salaries of the Board's seven governors. Nationally chartered commercial banks are required to hold stock in the Federal Reserve Bank of their region; this entitles them to elect some of the members of the board of the regional Federal Reserve Bank. Thus the Federal Reserve system has both public and private aspects.[18][19][20][21] The U.S. Government receives all of the system's annual profits, after a statutory dividend of 6% on member banks' capital investment is paid, and an account surplus is maintained. In 2010, the Federal Reserve made a profit of $82 billion and transferred $79 billion to the U.S. Treasury.[22] This was followed at the end of 2011 with a transfer of $77 billion in profits to the U.S. Treasury Department.[23]

It is owned by its users and miners. In fact a voting mechanism was built into Bitcoin.

And of course they're not claiming it, "as theirs." That would defeat the purpose.

Those early whales have only one option to manipulate the price; sell, which can only drop the price. The biggest wallet known belongs to the FBI (30k coins). If and when they auction them off the distribution will widen again. It's not like we have multimillionaires aspiring to be the first trillionaire, while just a few bucks could feed somebody.

thereby increasing the price in typical ponzi scheme fashion. Once they sell out at a profit, they won't care if the price drops for everyone else.

However, the system is inherently inflationary since as time goes on greater and greater computer power (and more and more electricity) is required to "mine" the bit coins.

And there is this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024580925

big guys cashed out already. Why don't they want to see it go up still more as more and more people around the world are adopting it. It would actually improve the Bitcoin community if they did liquidate those big stacks.

Twenty-five bitcoins are minted every 10 minutes regardless of the computer power behind it. Power consumption is going up because there are ever increasing miners with increasing bigger machines but it is not critical to have more.

their individual level of greed. For all we know, many of the early movers have already cashed out.

You are wrong about the power consumption. It is bound to go up because the math required to "mine" the bit coins becomes more and more complicated as time goes on.

He kept saying that there wasn't enough gold to expand the economy... doesn't he understand the value of gold would go up given the existence of any amount of gold? The amount of gold isn't relevant... its the value of that gold.