Bitcoin Forum

 Hi guys,

 Iv been watching this exchange https://exchange.bitparking.com/main for some days and prices have more or less only been going down. Bought around 70 a few days ago at 0.06~, and own an additional 100 through solo mining (before the difficulty rise). Was thinking about trading in for bitcoins and sell via mt Gox if namecoins are a dead market in the short term (as it dosnt look like I can transfer any money into mt Gox in time for the reopening). Whats your opinions on pricing - will they go back up, or is it a slippery slope and time to cash out and play with bitcoins?

 Are there any other namecoin exchanges, or GBP bitcoin exchanges with faster payment options

The problem with namecoins, in my opinion is that people just don't understand them.  Are they meant as a currency?  Are they meant as a reserve or token of web addresses?  Whenever someone explains it, they go into DNS servers and stuff like that.  Regular folks understand coins, transaction fees, confirmations, etc...  Only webgeeks understand DNS; I know I don't.

This is exactly why namecoin will remain forever just a 'project' like a small Linux distribution, and Bitcoin will probably reach great adaption like Ubuntu.

The masses have to understand what you are proposing to them. The moment you start talking about DNS seizures and ICANN, you alienate 99% of the population.

If you explain you can create an anonymous wallet in 20 seconds & recieve money into it, that's a much easier concept to sell.

 Iv just sold them all off at current market value (~1/3 of the value when I mined them). In ~1&1/2 weeks of various forms of mining BTC and NC with a 6990 I have ~4BTC.

 Would be interested in trading BTC if any GBP exchanges pop up with fast bank transfers (if anyone finds this in the coming weeks please post), as mining seems like a waste of time for anyone without a large number of already paid off fully loaded rigs imo (made more than 4BTC's value in my morning coffee break during the 1&1/2 weeks lol)

Namecoin serves a niche that doesn't appeal as widely as Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a currency/commodity that you can directly exchange for goods or cash. Namecoin at its heart is based on making a decentralized DNS.

It's not surprising that a BTC/NMC exchange popped up relatively early, though.

What you'll notice is that the exchange rate depends on the difficulty ratio between BTC/NMC. the NMC -> BTC rate SHOULD be around the difficulty ratio for NMC vs. BTC.

People expect that you'd get similar profits from mining NMC vs. BTC, but the fact is that people can currently use BTC for much more, while NMC only really has 1 role, so you see most of the trades going for the majority of miners going from NMC -> BTC.

Also, BTC difficulty is skyrocketing, while NMC difficulty is actually falling.

This means, that if you're mining NMC to convert to BTC to sell, sell it now. The difficulty ratio will plummet and so will the exchange rate.

I forgot the site that shows this, but the difficulty ratio is going to go for a massive drop really quickly. Soon your NMC will be trading at 0.010 BTC each.

Should've sold mine when the difficulty ratio / exchange rate was ~0.063.

Also, look at the instantaneous difficulty. That can hint at where the exchange rate is going.

 Yea, wish I had sold ASAP. Was getting one namecoin block of 50 per day when I started... (which I roughly worked out was 3x BTC mining profit at the time in relation to the exchange rate/my daily pooled BTC mining rate). Did expect the exchange rate to hold up, and it was my first experience of difficulty increase. Thankyou for the info relating to why it has not  :)

It could be cyclical. I think there's a pretty high chance that Namecoins will increase in value alongside Bitcoin increasing with value (compared to dollar).

When?

There's no need for people to understand about the DNS part of Namecoin. You could just tell them that it is a currency just like Bitcoin except that it has at least one additional use.

Actually, from my perspective, i think namecoins arent going to stay at 0.010 btc, why? Because next btc difficulty will make a lot of people jump on to namecoin mining, because it will be more profitable to mine NMC and exchange for BTC than it will be to mine BTC. Its going to be a cycle, where people jump from namecoin to bitcoin mining and vice versa depending on profits.
Currently, whats missing in namecoin is an easy-step program with a simple interface for those who want to mine solo. Theres also an aspect where namecoin lacks of, which is POOLS! We need more people to step forward and create new pools, because, if im not mistaken, theres only one pool for namecoins.

It would also be nice if exchanges pick up namecoins as well as BTC.  Hear that, TradeHill?  Add namecoins to the list of currencies you deal with, should be pretty easy using your BTC code.

I'd love it if mtgox and tradehill both did NC and BTC trading together.  I'd play the markets off each other.  It's so much easier to move BTC or NC from exchange to exchange than USD.  It takes days to move a dollar, a BTC or NC can be moved in seconds.

Just as a long term trend I meant.

Namecoin will skyrocket if one or more of these happen:
- someone (maybe bitcoin/namecoin collective) buys the .bit tld so it works universally
- an easy way to enable .bit support for the major OSs is created (some sort of installer, probably)
- some high-traffic porn/torrent site start to use a .bit domain

My opinion?

buy with both fists NMC will never be cheaper (well maybe a little) .... they began at around 0.001 btc or less so are up 3000% ... a correction was warranted to gather the thoughts.

They have all the potential of BTC, 'people don't understand them', so what? ... which average joe actually understands money? how else has fed. res. been able to screw yous over for soooo long?

People who matter understand them. Buy and hold is my free advice. DYODD.

why buy .bit?  Why not just make the namecoin client create a NMC protocol on every computer it's installed on?  So all namecoin addresses would be as follows: nmc://address  Seems like the best way to do it to me.  Although I haven't looked into name coin at all so I have no clue how it works atm.

In addition to the reasons mentioned above I think it's an extension of the Mt. Gox panic. People intending to exchange NMC for cash are at the mercy of two different exchange rates/markets, and some people will naturally panic when a 'perfect storm' turns both of those rates against them.

I'm hanging on to what I had and bought a bit more at 0.02XX. It's not like I'm working with 'money' I can't afford to lose, so why not? If it keeps slipping I won't sink any more BTC into it, but if it returns to previous levels I'll come out much better than if I hadn't bought anything on the dip.

Problem is, at the current hash rate (still dropping) on the netcoin network it'll take at least a month until a difficulty adjustment down.  During those times BTC difficulty (and $ cost?) will probably continue going up, so your .02/nmc could look like buying at the top in a week or three.

In other words, NMC is currently INflating due to an anticipated fall in difficulty and BTC is DEflating.  Double whammy against NMC.

And that's what people figured out a few days ago and started the dump at .05 down to .02 right now, and still falling.

Ultimately I guess the question is whether the project has staying power. If so then at some later time it may be handy to have lots of namecoins stashed away. Or, one or both currencies could well become completely worthless. In the long term I don't think you can really predict what the exchange rate may settle at, it's ultimately a function of popularity. If both projects stick around then eventually there will basically be the same number of coins of each, and mining costs may have almost no bearing on prices at all.

I don't really understand Namecoin, and don't really see any value in it.  I believe the prices spiked due to initial speculation.  The Bitcoin architecture doesn't seem like a good fit for DNS.  Plus, even if authorities can't remove Namecoin DNSs, they can still shutdown the servers.  There are already anonymous, distributed DNS-like systems out there within the Tor and I2p networks, and they protect the servers as well.

You could still argue it has more value tham Bitcoin, since namecoin = bitcoin + dns.

Initially, I thought it might have more staying power than Bitcoin, but obviously that depends largely on the publicity it gets. Currently, it isn't getting any.

I am pretty up to speed with geeky computer stuff. I do it for a job and i spend most of my free time on my computer at home.
However I dont understand namecoin either. I dont see a need for it. Why would anyone want a web address that cannot be controlled by a proper domain regulator? probably for illegal purposes.

Think Wikileaks.

Also, I think the idea is that eventually it'll be almost free (though free market laws would still apply, I suppose).

It's early days for namecoins. Currently there is little in software and support for users of it so it's expected that the price and interest in mining would vary. Currently if you buy a domain name you are restricted in its use. You must essentially re-buy it every year and it's subject to control by ISP's, registrars and various governments (ie. domains are easily seized). Aside from the 'domain name' side of things, namecoin is a generic naming service. I'm sure other innovative ideas using it will appear.

There doesn't need to be '.bit' DNS proxies for it to be used. Software can build in support for the namecoin protocol itself. For example, a poker client could use namecoin to lookup IP addresses for its servers. There's no need to worry about the user's ISP filtering their DNS for such things (like the 'blacklists' that some countries ISP's use). Torrent applications could use namecoin directly to find torrent search engines. Browsers could build in the lookup and bypass the need of '.something' and just have 'name'.
 
I think namecoin will remain a niche for quite a while as services as software build around it. If that doesn't happen then it will probably fade away. Maybe it'll see some use as a secondary currency. If services and software do start to use it things could get more interesting. If it fails, hopefully something will learn from it and a better alternative system to DNS will rise out of it.

(Disclaimer: I run a namecoin pool and exchange)

If someone will buy the .bit domain namecoins will be over also to resolve a .bit domain you need specific software.

Not much useful for now.

If simple browser plugins existed right now that made the experience seamless, would any of that be a problem? Most people think nothing of installing an extra plugin to view previously inaccessible content (e.g. pdf, flash).

99% of Bitcoin users and 100% of regular people have no idea what any of that means.

And that's fine. 99% of regular people have no idea what bitcoins are good for. These things take time to catch on. At some point regular users won't even need to know they're using a namecoin service. There was time time when 99% of regular people didn't know what a foo@example.com email address was or what an http://example.com URL was. I remember people thinking I was strange when I used those.

But those thing can be explained fully in a single sentence to anyone who is confused.  I'm saying that not only do people not understand namecoin, they don't understand anything in your explanation.

My explanation wasn't an explanation of namecoin. It's a description of different ways it could be used. If someone asks me what namecoins are I say "It's a system for registering a special type of domain name".

Still over everyone's head.

We need someone to make a simple program with a simple interface so people can create their adrdess and mine without having to issue command lines and stuff like that.

You are right. Maybe specify the project you want in a good, tight spec. and start asking around for pledges to a bounty? Lots of s/ware talent around here that can be motivated by BTC, NMC bounties.

Namecoin is useful but only for the people who have a need for them.

Still an arbitrary 99% of people do not understand what is a domain name let alone what is the value in a "special type of domain name".

If I tried to guide my grandafther over the phone on how to access a .bit domain I'd be spending the good half of a day on the concept.

If I tried to guide him to download the bitcoin client so he can create a wallet, that will take about a minute. Even less for me to send him 0.05BTC as a test.

Yet there is a demand for domain names.

See, the general public don't need to understand the inner workings of namecoins any more than they need to understand the inner workings of, say, a web server, to browse the web.

All that's needed is demand for namecoins. Whether or not it's there, no one really knows yet.

On a releated note: Bitcoin.de and Bitcoins.de, sold for €14,875 ($21,420) each
http://www.dnjournal.com/ytd-sales-charts.htm

Who's your grandafther and why does he need to go to .bit domains? Did you tell him how to secure his bitcoin client and wallet.dat against malware on his Win XP machine? 2 days on phone?

Buy some namecoins now for when you are grandafther and they are ubiquitous ... but you'll probably need to be CLI savvy else you are sool ... techie premium barrier to entry.

Which is why it should be as simple as explaining how to configure your browser to view flash or pdf content. Obviously there is only a reason to do so if it enables access to some content that's useful to the user. Such content could be expected to be developed more readily if it was at least easier to get to the sites.

It is an open source project that has been alive for less than 8 weeks and you want what ... a fully functioning distributed DNS service with browser pugins available for download from all major repositories ...  ::)

... reality check chaps.

Why not? Nobody said it will happen tomorrow. But until/unless the dns aspect matures there is not much setting the project apart from bitcoin except as an alternate speculative token with 'potential' to become more useful.

What kind of content is going to need protection from DNS seizures (besides the gambling example that's going to be used here, I do believe people have a right to gamble their money be it on the internet or Las Vegas and wont argue about that)?

To my mind springs instantly certain sites & services, not talking about Silkroad.

Mostly sites that practically contain evidence of crimes against young human beings.
Those people are batshit crazy and paranoid about security & anonymity due to prison realities against their kind.

Then again, I could see legitimate activity as well that could be at risk of seizure in the future such as Bitcoin business, prepaid cell phones/visas, online payment processors similar to e-gold, or torrent sites.

Bitcoin has the "care about it" factor. I just don't care about Namecoins. That's why I don't care what the difficulty of mining a Namecoin is right now, the people who jumped into Namecoin first were opportunists/miners that were looking for a quicker buck than what Bitcoin was going to give them. This is ALWAYS going to be the case. You are buying Namecoin from people who didn't think it was a good enough idea to mine Bitcoin itself. This means the difficulty isn't a good way to determine what the value of the coins are, IMHO.

ah, the old "anti-privacy troll" angle ... like we didn't see that one coming ... why don't you just say "namecoins are for paedophiles, terrorists, money-launderers, druggies and gang-rapists" ...?

yawn ... we've been through all this back when bitcoin was starting, you guys are going to have to go back through the archives to check your originality ... with privacy comes great freedom and responsibility, if it is not for you go back to your gubmint scrip and the debt-slave mind-prison that has become your security blanket .... pants-wetting at first sign or trouble is not cool.

Who need anonymous, decentralized DNS?

How about:
Sites like Wikipedia
Chinese freedom of speech sites
Muslim women's rights organizations

Then, who do you think might like almost free DNS?

I already listed a bunch of legitimate sites and businesses that might need it at the end of my post.
Nothing against the idea in general.

Guys, 99% of people don't even know what the hell a browser is either, and yet 45% of the people use Firefox or Chrome. How do you think that happened? Well that's simple, the nerds installed them on every computer they were asked to fix. Same thing could happen with a browser plugin or whatever that resolves .bit domains.


Actually my reason for jumping into Namecoin was that I truly believe it is the superior block chain. I'm convinced that if Bitcoin and Namecoin both had started at the same time nobody would know about Bitcoin today. The only thing that Bitcoin has going for it is popularity.

Not really. Bitcoin has a lot sexier name.

"Namecoin" is awful.

Quite right, that's a very strong point in favor of Bitcoin. Totally forgot that a sexy name is one of the most important prerequisites for the widespread adoption of a new technology.

Namecoin is not only for DNS.

The plan is to make it a generalized distributed namespace.

There are a lot of uses for that.

seriously...bitcoin is sexier...

what would you guys prefer, bittorrent or nametorrent?

I gotta stop coming to this forum.

A browser plugin is not really possible as DNS is set much deeper in any operating system, and for a good reason. It's the registry in Windows, specific files under /etc in Linux and so on. If a browser would be able to change the DNS resolution process, the Internet would be a much more dangerous place. Hacks galore !!! I run a commercial e-learning site, and within a few months of operation, we already had cases of DNS hijacking of registered clients asking them to pay more money. If the browser would be allowed to be "creative" with DNS, a thousand problems can emerge.


I agree with that, and the possibilities that namecoin offers apart from DNS is its biggest strength. An alternative currency like Bitcoin can and will be very volatile because people can't help hot thinking about it as money, whilst a generic naming service can be extremely valuable (and not only as money) as soon as a killer application is discovered for it.

And BTW, I agree with previous posters that it's only a couple of months old, let's give it a little more time. Think that DNS itself took several years to be finalized and standardized (and it's not considered complete yet).

Not even the creator of Namecoins cares about Namecoins...

 Interesting... more info?

If the goal was just to have namecoin links in some standardized form (e.g. nmc://) work properly within the browser, do you really need to make low level changes just to do that?

It doesn't mean much if it's a different URI. The browser needs to be instructed to translate such a URI and then perform DNS resolution to find the target address. Therefore this would have the same results - and problems. Or should we rewrite DNS for our purposes?

I'm as frustrated as you are about the lack of a smart solution, but I don't lose my hope.

During their 41 conference in Singapore last week, ICANN approved the motion to allow new generic top level domains (gTLDs) to be registered with their organization. That means any 'established' company would be allowed to register .WAHATEVER domain name. If .bit gTLD is registered through ICANN how head-to-head collision with namecoin network will be resolved?

I probably have a pretty vague idea of the workings of DNS resolution or browser plugins but intercepting addresses at least seems like plugin level stuff (ad blocker, net nanny style plugins) even if the next stages are not. Would it help if some intermediate server was involved, selectable by some setting in the plugin like how you might subscribe to an ad blocking list? It might not satisfy purists or those concerned about maximum anonymity, but it would let those nontechnical grampa users at least get a taste of web 1.95 as it were. Also, users who happen to desire a certain degree of 'filtering' for whatever reason could choose a server that caters to that.

Namecoin is essentially filling a need that does not yet exist.  The US gov't has been meddling with the internet more and more and wants to control whatever they can. 

Remember lawmakers talking about 'tax' on email like 15 years ago?  I think domain name seizures will become increasingly common (we already saw major poker sites and seizure of a botnet earlier this year) and the need for a P2P DNS will be realized.

The easiest solution I can see is to simply become so large before this option is made available that others won't *want* to register a .bit address for fear of collisions. I'd imagine the TOR folks are having this problem too, since .onion won't be unique to the TOR network any more. It might be worth asking them how they're getting around it?

Wondering when Silk Road will start accepting Namecoins as well as Bitcoins?   A extra layer of abstraction wouldn't hurt ... how hard would it be to trace something simultaneously through btc and nmc blockchains back and forward like?

Browsers already do this. When you enter a domain in the URL bar of the browser they can interpret this however they want. Sometimes they lookup the domain in DNS. Sometimes they use a search engine. Sometimes they use 'keywords'.

Ten years ago there was a system called RealNames (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealNames). This was a way for people to register a 'name' with a location. It was effectively a DNS replacement. Browsers built this in and you could go to sites by just entering the 'RealName'. At one point they had $130 million of funding. Namecoin is similar to this in concept but is decentralized. From the wikipedia entry:


It would be interesting to learn from the RealName experience - why it didn't succeed.

But to look at it another way, the benefit of dns seizure immunity doesn't necessarily have to be a key selling point in order for there to be an appeal for namecoin domains. The internet as seen from Google becomes progressively stupider over time, overflowing with SEO fluff and populated by high schoolers testing out their arguing skills. There can be a certain appeal to a site/server being a little out of the way, even if doesn't relate to anything remotely illegal or controversial.

This is real ... exclusivity through obscurity. Hard to find corners of the net are now .... well hard to find, not like the good old days ... out of site of the googly-eyed all-seeing monster is nice.

If Wiki topic on Realname anyhow true, they suffered from behavior of their partner, - Microsoft. But it is not fully clear.

Their long term strategy didn't seem to account for the possibility of MS dropping support. Sounds like a lot of stories from around that time where it was so profitable to just coast on stock price increases that nobody worried too much about the longer term outlook. There probably are some parallels to namecoin in there, speculative investment is all well and good but what really matters at the end of the day is whether some user base can actually access the name service and find some content they consider worthwhile.

This is one of my chief concerns. There are some things that simply should not be allowed just because "that's how the system works".

And believe me, these degenerates will flock to any safe harbor.

HOWEVER, wont a server hosting such material still be traceable? I mean physically, via IP/ISP?

All the .bit namecoin address does is resolve an IP address, right?

I read that if such were the case, an update to the client could change the url extension to whatever, all throughout the block chain, though .BIT sound good and simple as is.

There's no need to change the client as far as I know, only the nameservers would have to update.

I still don't understand the need for Namecoin.  Governments can still take down any servers they want to, or block access to them like the Great Firewall.  These sites need a way to not only protect domain names, but also their servers.  And there are already networks for that; i2p and Tor.

Yes, but the great unwashed don't use Tor or i2p and probably never will since they don't give a rat's about going deep black for privacy ... e.g. facebook. BUT they will click en masse to a "forbidden" link that has titillating details about what scandal their congress critters or State Dept. have just gotten up to or a simple 1-click link to a low-risk site serving up on-line poker, etc, etc ...

... .bit domains will serve those grey markets just fine. Not so much about clandestine operations and secrecy but freedom of speech and transparency.

By that logic there's no need for Bitcoin either since governments can take down any node/merchant/exchanger they wish.

Well, Bitcoin's strengths aren't only in anonymity; and yes, without Tor or i2p, if anonymity is to be maintained, there is no need for Bitcoin :)  For instance, if Silk Road wasn't on Tor and used Namecoin, the servers probably would have been taken down by now.

You could be confused, namecoin and bitcoin would provide exactly the same level of anonymity/traceability for transactions .... depending on how you use them.

Plum eating, you say? Absurd. Namecoin seeds not all germinating as swiftly surely and strongly as some might have hoped, maybe.

But plum eating? Sheesh, first you gotta grow the plum-sapling, then let it grow into a plum-tree, then some harvest time see if it is that harvest time or next cycle's that will see an actual plum appear.

If, in fact, the seeds are plum seeds at all in the first place.

-MarkM- (Beaglecoin prices plummeting! Beagle Brother Snoopy wants to know why! Oh my gosh!)

Namecoin has all the strengths of Bitcoin. Anyway, each business is able to choose their level of protection so your argument is invalid.

Fortunately this service is already available, at http://register.dot-bit.org/.

I expect many more services will spring up to facilitate the purchase, administration and trading of .bit domains, in time.

Namecoin prices have been increasing this past week... they were at 0.025 BTC and are now 0.035 BTC. Keep in mind that their peak was at 0.14 BTC.

Trading volumes seem pretty low at the moment but it's good to see the price going back up. Seems like a great time to do some easy mining if you think the price will keep rising.

http://tvori.info/bitcoin/charts/


I wonder if this trend upwards will continue. Namecoin mining is nearly as profitable as Bitcoin mining now.

Duh, I was misreading "Instant" difficulty as being the current difficulty at http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.php, I thought that "Last" was the difficulty last time. Mining BTC to buy NMC is of course the better strategy right now, but if everyone does that then the difficulty will never come down.

Sure it will.  Around the 21st of the month the namecoin difficulty will be a tiny fraction of bitcoin (I estimate 20k or less for namecoin, 3 million for bitcoin).  For a brief, shining moment with all of us dogpiling on namecoin to generate all 2016 blocks in less than 24 hours the BTC difficulty will drop. =)

There should be a name for this occasion, since I suspect it will be periodic.

https://i.imgur.com/Img4H.jpg

Namecoins on the rebound? Just hit 0.0388.

Currently it is slightly more profitable to mine NMC than BTC. It'll be interesting to see if the price maintains after Bitcoin's retarget tomorrow.

Hello,

I think Namecoin has quite a good potential.
The idea itself is really good.
Sure, currently you could get more out of Namecoin but that's not the only Point.

regards, talpan