Why are you talking about businesses when I'm talking about mining pools? Who's Roger Ver?
There must be some kind of misunderstanding. Why were you talking about mining pools? I was talking about venture capitalists not making back their investments in Bitcoin companies in the post of mine that you quoted. Are you serious about the 2nd question? You still haven't answered adequately. Why are you saying that any Bitcoin business, mining or not, is rushing to fork the blockchain, when none are? I think I got my wording wrong. What I meant to say is that they are supporting, not rushing, the hard fork for bigger blocks. From all the news that goes thru in this forum we know Roger Ver is one of Bitcoin Unlimited's biggest supporters, we also know Brian Armstrong supports bigger blocks and now it appears that Bitmain are also supporting Bitcoin Unlimited, if the rumors are true. Surely there are others among the "Bitcoin elite" who wants the hard fork to happen. If the nodes follow the whims of the the Bitcoin elite and does switch to Bitcoin Unlimited then that could be a sign that Bitcoin could be controlled by an oligarchy. |
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Why are you talking about businesses when I'm talking about mining pools? Who's Roger Ver?
There must be some kind of misunderstanding. Why were you talking about mining pools? I was talking about venture capitalists not making back their investments in Bitcoin companies in the post of mine that you quoted. Are you serious about the 2nd question? |
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I am sorry if it sounds like FUD. It is only an opinion and it may come out strong for some. If I am mistaken about the individuals and the venture capitalists not making back their investments then please list the Bitcoin companies that are making money today. Let us start with the Bitcoin businesses that Roger Ver has invested since he is the most vocal supporter of Bitcoin Unlimited.
I would guess that only some major exchanges and darknet market sites are the only ones really making money.
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How big does a block have to be to fit in 2000 - 3000/s worth of transactions in there?
The math is rather simple for providing a estimate. In theory, Bitcoin can do 7 TPS at 1 MB. However, in real world usage we are talking about 3 TPS. In order to reach 3000 TPS (Visa can do a lot more) you would need 1000MB blocks (over 50 TB of storage per year). Bitcoin, as a decentralized network, will likely never be able to scale up to Visa without additional layers. Segwit can do 14 TPS in theory (testnet block with ~8+k transactions). I have noticed that only some of the centralized Bitcoin based services, miners and exchanges are in a hurry to fork to Bitcoin Unlimited. If the nodes follow the whims of the said entities which are really what can be considered part of the "Bitcoin Elite" then Bitcoin has debased itself as a project controlled by an oligarchy.
As I always say, the primary reason to rush adoption, while hurting decentralization, is greed. I do not think it is greed but more like desperation. Almost all the individuals and the venture capitalists who have invested millions of dollars in different Bitcoin businesses do not look like they will make any money in their investments. They could be blaming it on the scalability problem so now they are rushing a hard fork to bigger blocks at the expense of the network. The only Bitcoin businesses that are really making money are the popular darknet market sites. |
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That looks good! Please take it to the newbies area and request for a mod to make it a sticky thread. It will surely help stop the "which wallet to use" threads that keeps popping up every now and then. One suggestion is to also list the web wallet services available. |
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What legitimate reasons are there for wanting one's bitcoin 'mixed' or 'anonymized?'
You want a legitimate reason to get your Bitcoins tumbled? Fungibility. Some online services like Coinbase are starting to block Bitcoins used in online gambling from entering their services. If more and more services and exchanges start doing this practice then this will affect the value of the coins. One coin that went thru the darknet market or thru a gambling site would potentially become less valuable compared to the clean coins. This is not a flaw in Bitcoin per se but some centralized services have a choice to accept certain inputs or not depending on their rules and policies. |
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Here is another thought. Did it not occur to anyone that Bitcoin might not really be able to scale to the Visa standard? How big does a block have to be to fit in 2000 - 3000/s worth of transactions in there?
I have noticed that only some of the centralized Bitcoin based services, miners and exchanges are in a hurry to fork to Bitcoin Unlimited. If the nodes follow the whims of the said entities which are really what can be considered part of the "Bitcoin Elite" then Bitcoin has debased itself as a project controlled by an oligarchy.
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Most likely it was just another inside job masked as an unfortunate security breach. How surprising eh?  And why would the hacker communicate with them? To get a prison sentence and a nice bunk bed with some sketchy inmate? They are probably off the grid already and all the money is laundered and funneled in offshore accounts overseas. Yes an inside job is more likely here. Whether or not the owners were in on the hack is the main question. Maybe one of their top employees knew the ins and outs of how Bitfinex secures the Bitcoins and found a way to get access to them. Maybe the hacker may even be someone from inside BitGo, the wallet provider by Bitfinex. |
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ok. another worse case scenario. a government could via united nations/interpol set up a sudden international tactical strike this can be done by https://bitnodes.21.co/getting all the IP's and finding out which ISP that ip belongs to. EG in the UK its under 230..in the U.S its under 1500 so imagine tomorrow under 230 homes out of 20 million households have their internet disconnected at the same time in america under 1500 homes out of 100mill households have their internet disconnected and so on even things like proxies are useless because the landline has been literally cut off for upto 6000 locations think its impossible? its not. ISP's have millions of customers and regularly turn the internet off on 10's of thousands of users every week due to breach of contract/non payment of bill. they would also take bitnodes and other DNS seeding locations offline to further cause drama of new node locations not being able to link up, though smart people will just join an IRC channel and request a list of working ip addresses to manually add node connections as for the network what would happen is that the countries with no "partnerships" to whatever agency is organising this tactical strike will continue on. and people who are affected would need to either move house or go to court to get their internet ban lifted or change ISP which can take upto 10 days in some cases. again it wont require an all out "ban the internet" of 1.5billion people. but instead disconnecting the land lines of under 6000 people to cause alot of drama and issues. the solution is to get more diverse. instead of bitcoin nodes running in just 91 countries it needs to be running in all 200 countries. and also needs to be running via satalite and other non landline/ISP reliant methods Then we are witnessing one threatened and angry government using everything they got just to stop an independent, decentralized and peer to peer internet tokens system which is giving more potential benefit to humanity just like the invention of the telephone. If they were to use their powers that way then they should start using it to stop child porn or something morally wrong. |
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Even though, I've been several years buying, selling and even holding Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies there is one thing that I need to master yet and that is the ability to trade effectively any crypto in order to maximize profits. Since crypto is highly volatile (especially alt coins), there is a good chance to make decent profit via trading. Any good recommendations or resources that you could recommend me in order to trade cryptocurrencies effectively? (books, or any other resource) I know one key rule which is buy low, and sell high but most of the times I end up loosing more than what I have invested initially instead of maximizing profits.  We all end up loosing in trading because our emotions get the better of us. When the prices go up very fast we tend to chase it and buy at whatever price there is available because we are fearful that the "train will leave" without us. Then to only see that a fall in price happens making our trade a losing one. So one trait that would be good to have as a trader is to be calm in the face of the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies. that is why you should never trade in your life because you are an emotional guy. a trader should delete any emotional thinking out of his mind and instead starts thinking more logically and like a machine. That is easier said than done. Even professional traders make bad trades because they also get affected emotionally. We are only human so we cannot really "switch off" our emotions.
and actually that is why many traders use bots for trading because that would eliminate the emotion part.
This is a very good suggestion. Using bots would automate your trade and follow all your orders even in the face of volatility. The limitation of this is your trades will become too "robotic". Some traders trade by feeling the market. It is an art form to them and it has to come with a little finesse. Bots will only ruin their style. |
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So I can see why you would have some difficulty to explain it to the average guy on the street. The best I can explain it, is to tell them that each Bitcoin user < running a node on their computer > are a branch of a bank ledger that are not controlled by anyone. They are a bank on their own. ^smile^
It might be easy to tell people to run their own node years ago but it will be laughable to make an ordinary person run one today. Have you seen how large the blockchain is and how much it is to maintain one? To maintain a node you have to have a special love for Bitcoin and some extra money because there is no incentive. Your everyday ordinary person will for sure not be willing to run a node. |
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Recently many file sharing sites and torrents had been banned in my country to stop piracy.
Is there a way that the government or the isp may block the connection to bitcoin network by its users ??
It is more like the ISP's will limit or even block the nodes from accessing the internet as the blockchain gets larger and larger. As the whole network demands for more bandwidth, the ISP's can only accommodate so much that it has to limit some nodes' access to the internet. There is a reason why we are seeing a smaller no. of nodes every year. One of the main reasons is that its getting harder to maintain a node because of the blockchain's size. Storage is not really a problem but bandwidth will be the real major problem. Give it 5 more years. |
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Thanks for the analysis. It is always good to see other people's analysis to keep your own in check. It helps you from being carried away by the mania of a bull run.
I mostly disagree with that analysis because it attempts to anticipate what the next of Bitcoin would be thru indicators and by basing them on what has happened in the past. The markets are known to be unpredictable by nature because it is comprised of a lot of individual human minds that are often irrational. If we knew what all the people were thinking at the same time then it would be possible to predict what would happen. But that is not the case.
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What cryptocurrency and blockchain technology has shown is that it would be now possible to "mint" your own private money and put that in circulation. Of course no single individual would be successful without the help of a community around it to help support it and make it grow the user base. POW based coins are a good example of what the future of money could look like. It's secure, it's peer to peer and there's no centralized power that controls it. It's a historical breakthrough.
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The day that a quantum computer is able to decrypt and take Bitcoin apart is the day that says that quantum computing has arrived. Will it destroy the Bitcoin economy? Sure it might but let us look at the bigger picture here. Putting our own self interests aside the test for a quantum computer to break Bitcoin opens the door of more possibilities and opportunities for humanity. It is an innovation enabler. It is still a threat, but a welcome one.
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That is incomplete. If we are talking about Bitcoin solely as an investment then a stock market crash alone is not a reason enough to make Bitcoin a good investment. The price has to appreciate in fiat value and the Bitcoin economy should expand side by side with the influx of new users. That would make it a good investment. If the stock market crashes and Bitcoin also crashes then it would not be a good investment. |
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Often when I talk to people about Bitcoin they ask questions that seem to indicate that they think Bitcoin is centralised, the way that most things are.
Is there a good analogy that one can use in order to illustrate the decentralised distributed nature of Bitcoin?
It takes a special kind of person to appreciate decentralization, libertarianism and "sticking it to the man". If you see that the person you are talking to is the usual worker-drone who usually does not care about anything except for the petty things in life then do not bother explaining Bitcoin to them. You will not make them interested in the concept and you will only be wasting your time. |
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It seems to be a desperate attempt by Bitfinex to get at least part of the funds back. But I doubt it will work, because the hacker would have to trust Bitfinex that he is not exposed to risk of identification. Even if Bitfinex enters a deal with the hacker this won't stop the ongoing investigations by law enforcement.
But first of all it's questionable in the first place that the hacker has any motivation to make a deal, because he may have already washed all his coins and has zero problems spending them.
The whole announcement might even be a red herring, assuming that the alleged "hack" was an inside job by the Bitfinex operators...
ya.ya.yo!
If the hack was not an inside job then this should be viewed as a desperate last effort for Bitfinex to recover the stolen funds. This means that they might be having financial and liquidity/cash flow problems and the exchange might even shut down in the near future. It would also mean that there might be a group of whales in the exchange who might press charges if they do not get their Bitcoins back in full. If the hacker does not communicate with Bitfinex then I would expect a bad press release from them in 2 or 3 months. |
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To be honest here the lucrative businesses in Bitcoin are still based on the darknet businesses. The idea is to look for markets where there are inefficiencies regarding payment matters. Bitcoin fit perfectly well in the darknet because there is no way you could get paid for illegal goods using legal payment processors. The other idea to look for is to find how Bitcoin can open up new markets. An example is an exchange for multi player online game items. I believe trading Warcraft and Diablo 3 items is still popular online? A successful exchange market for that using Bitcoins would be really good to see happen if someone can find a way to set it up.
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Funny thing about those ISP providers. They give you a certain download and upload speed, but if you attempt to use your internet at full speed for 30 days you're likely going to hit some cap after which you will either get your speed reduced or access cut off completely.
Could this be a possible attack vector on Bitcoin? We have seen a motivated government put pressure on some business institution before to get its agenda going. So let us say if the banking cartel pressured the governments around the world and then in turn these governments pressured the ISP's to disallow Bitcoin nodes to have internet access, would that be a possible scenario for the start of the Bitcoin witch hunt taking Bitcoin underground? |
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