Bitcoin comes up a lot in cigar shops ... Earlier this week I spent 2hrs talking to a bc miner; I found this guy more reasonable than some. The conversation eventually opened up to several people and was quite pleasant. Takeaways:

- miner agreed bc is not currency

- Miner agreed that software is not a constant of nature. If I want to fork bc at current block and change bc supply from 21mm to 10 billion and offer miners 30% premium over classic bc ... Nothing stops me.

- for a random person such a move may be dubious ... But not if Goldman Sachs or the nyse did it. Thus the value of classic BC can radically change if serious competition arises. Such competition might push down classic bc to dollar value. As such the claim bc isn't deflationary I find iffy at best

- in classic bc as things stand now ... What happens when all 21 million coins are mined? At that point all miners can do is take a percentage of money they mine. If the transaction is too small they might say screw it.
If they only work on big transactions it'll be for the relatively more affluent ppl buying rolexes, art, and yatchs.

- miner agreed bc is too slow ... It can't compete with cc rates. There is operational inertia to increased use

- Miner said it costs ~$15k to mine a coin. At current bc to USD there's lots of profit for him

Some other things that we could not agree on:

- miner made classic claim that bc is no different from usd; fiat USD is not asset or gold backed like bc. However he agreed bc isn't currency. So no crisp conclusion arose here. My stand however was that bc would have come and gone except that people believe it's valuable --and-- they can convert it to real bonafide fiat currency. If either one of those fail bc is noise; nobody would care. It's not clear here why bc to USD is possible. Where's the cause and where's the effect? Is it that bc is something (cause) and converting to USD is effect? Or rather did ppl merely believe bc is valuable (no cause) and the fact those same ppl accepted usd for bc and vice versa was the effect that caused bc to seem important? I think it's the latter case in which case bc is a shell game, a elaborate multi-level marketing game.

- on the question of what happens if a Goldman Sachs gets into the game ... The miner implied (I inferred) that it'd be good for much the same reason. While miners like him might get a hit in short term because ppl flock to a serious crytpo player GS, it'd actually be good long term because the GS brand gives gravitas to crypto that bc by itself doesn't have. Here again cause and effect is subtle.

- fiat usd is a reserve currency and integrated into the us economy and world economy at fantastically higher numbers and complexity. It has had to respond to economic cycles, fiscal problems, stock market crashes and numerous other pressures. Bc has none of this. The idea that bc would survive as-is with a fixed 21 million bc in the real world ... is pretty silly. Bc isn't the locked in deflationary currency that could survive as is not subject to external pressures claimed.

Finally:

- it's worth pointing out bc isn't as anonymous as claimed

- miners are fairly centralized. And here problems with block sizes and other aspects of running the block chain have arisen between users and miners