Must be a lot of stealing going on then...
http://www.ebay.co.uk/csc/i.html?rt=nc&LH_Complete=1&_nkw=HD%205970&_fln=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m283

Completed listings.
£275.00
£320.00
£290.00
£300.00
£325.00
£300.00
£240.00
£258.00

Actually can't find a COMPLETED sale for >350.  Granted there is always the idiot noob who values his crap at insane prices but I am willing to wager a BTC that card doesn't sell for 400.00 and likely the idiot will try again 2 or 3 times and then drop it to 350.00

In the beginning there was only the endless fiat and the masses cried out in agony from the persecutions inflicted upon them by the FED. The Satoshi said let their be a block and there was a block and it was good.  The world was divided between the fiat and the block and it was good ...

Funny.  Charging for a service = attack.  In related news mining pools and Mt.Gox daily launch massive attacks on the Bitcoin economy.

Also please don't slander p2pool.  p2pool is made up of individual members.  Saying p2pool is attacking Bitcoin makes no more sense than saying Bitcoin is attacking Bitcoin.  Be a man and say DeathAndTaxes is attacking the network when you lie.


I would say something like "cry bitclown cry, your freeloader tears only nourish me", but that would be trolling so I won't.

There is no standard tx fee.  Non spam tx can be sent with 0 BTC and will be considered valid.  Miners have the choice of what tx they will include and can exclude tx that have too little (or no) fee, but almost all include all valid (non spam) txs regardless of fee.

About spam.  To protect the network the protocol requires a fee of 0.0005 BTC if the inputs are less than 1 bitcoin day old*.  For example if you received 1 bitcoin and wanted to spent it you would have to wait 1 day to avoid a fee.  If you received 10 bitcoins you would need to wait 1/10th of day.  If you received 0.1 BTC and wanted to spend it you would need to wait 10 days.

If you wait that long (or longer) you can send coins without any fee.  If you want to send it early you need to pay the spam-fee.  Other nodes will declare your tx invalid and refuse to relay it if you don't pay the fee.  The client also needs to be modified to get around the fee.  Since unmodified clients will refuse to relay the tx you run the risk of having the tx in limbo or not seen by recipient if you modify a client to break the spam rules.

The important thing is the spam fee isn't designed to "make money".  You can simply wait (or keep some "old coins" handy) and never pay it.  The spam fee is designed to protect the network from a DOS attack involving massive amounts of tiny transactions.

*technically the limit is in blocks but it is roughly 1 bitcoin day which is slightly easier to remember than  57,600,000 satoshi blocks per byte.

sturle I don't think you get the idea of a free market.  

You think 0.01 is too high..  Fine don't pay it.  some miners set fee requirement at 0, some at a single satoshi, some at 0.001 BTC.  Some at 0.01.  The market determines the price.  The intersection of supply and demand.

You make it sound like if I (me little ole D&T) set min fee of 0.01 for my 0.15% of network suddently no tx which a fee less than 0.01 will ever be processed.  Take all your arguments and replace 0.01 with 0.001 instead.  Problem solved.


Extrapolating the cost when BTC is worth $30 or $100, or $20,000 is just intellectually bankrupt.  Obviously no miner's fees would be fixed in stone for the life of the GPU.  I think a tx should be worth a couple cents.  If BTC price doubles the tx fee can be cut in half and miner generates the same.  As BTC rises competitive pressures will ensure prices are held in check.  That is also a part of a dynamic fee market. Even the spam fee eventually will need to be adjusted.  OH NOES BTC has a 0.005 hardcoded fee on tx smaller/younger than 1 BTC/1day.  When BTC is $100,000 each that means all tx will cost $1,000.  It will cost $1,000 to send $1.00.  OH NOES OH NOES SELL YOUR GPUS NOW BTC IS HORRIBLY HORRIBLY FLAWED.

Ironically you just pointed out something the total cost to users (in terms of fees + inflation) is falling.  Even with a 0.01 fee on every tx without exception (as if I could control 100% of all hashing power on the planet) the implicit cost is lower today than even a year ago and will be significantly lower after the subsidy drop.


Of course not.  Why would someone pay more fees than necessary?  That is the point.  Charging a higher fee gives those who pay more a higher level of service.  

Or terrorist.

The sad thing is some people would be like "damn right".  The whole "you shouldn't care unless you got something to hide" nonsense.

Patriot Act = no problem.   You got nothing to hide unless you are terrorist.
Warrantless searches = no problem. You got nothing to hide unless you are a criminal.
Mt.Gox invasion of privacy = no problem.  You got nothing to hide unless you are a money launderer.

Anyone think that maybe some people don't want Mt.Gox to have their ID (likely in a pile of thousands of other ID poorly protected).  That an image which will give any identity thief an erection.  Remember this is the company too stupid to salt user passwords.  I mean it is understandable since per user salting was only invented in 2010 ... er wait no it wasn't it has been around since the 1960s.

Similar system would provide non-51% double spend protection.  Broker gets contracts for 51%+ of hashing power.  Merchant sends tx to broker who sends it to contracted pools.  Pools guarantee they will include tx in the next block and will not replace it will a double spend under any conditions.  A merchant (like say Walmart) would have a high level of confidence they couldn't be double spent economically.  Walmart would process tx instantly using the guarantee provided by a broker.  Likely that 0-confirm guarantee would be worth a lot more than say normal tx processing so it would provide an additional revenue stream for pools/miners.

That would be great.  Thanks.

That is how free markets work.  If I want to change 0.01 BTC I can.  Obviously I lose your business.  Someone else might charge 0.005, someone else 0.001, someone else might accept free tx.

There is no scenario where every miner demands the exact same fee amount.

Hypothetically someday lets say:

10% of miners require a fee of at least 0.01 BTC
25% of miners require a fee of at least 0.005 BTC
25% of miners require a fee of at least 0.0001 BTC
20% of miners require a fee of at least a single satoshi.
20% of miners require no fee.

Obviously in reality this sliding scale would have many more data points but using this as an example.

If you included no fee your tx would still be processed but only 20% of the network would be working on it so confirmation time is 50 min.
If you included a single satoshi as a fee then 40% of the network would be working on it so your confirmation time drops to only 25 min.
If you included a fee of 0.0001 (1/20th of a cent at todays value) you buy 65% of the network and avg confirmation of 15 min.
etc.

If miners broadcasted fee schedules and hashing power via a p2p protocol clients could advise users on fees and projected confirmation times.

Another option would be to include a "charity window".  Miner could specify to include x  or x% of outstanding tx which are below the fee limit.  "low fee" tx would be processed first come first serve after priority tx so confirmation times would be longer but they would be processed.


% based fees are neither desirable nor possible in the Bitcoin network.  What you or I consider fair is irrelevant.  Most miners will likely accept 0 BTC tx, each if free to set their own price.  Users are free to set what they are willing to pay.  The market (not you or me) will determine what is "fair".

Fair price in a free market is what someone is willing to pay and someone is willing to sell.  What is being bought and sold is inclusion of a tx in the next block.


That is simply impossible.  100% consensus on "fair" never happens.  Only central control can implement price controls.  IF you feel that is the only possible "fix" then you should uninstall Bitcoin now because it will NEVER happen in a decentralized network.



This requires no protocol change.  If hypothetically miners setting their own tx fees was outlawed by some future protocol change well I could simply stop (and I likely would stop mining too).

Because the network has no idea how much the tx is for.  It only knows the inputs and outputs which are greater than the amount being "spent".


It could but miners have no effective way to determine what that % is. 

I lay out some reasons why % based fee rules are not viable.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=73941.msg819583#msg819583


There are alternative methods of handling micro payments.  Long, only read if interested in alternative payment scenarios. One would be bulk contracts.  Say WSJ wants to to charge 0.01 BTC per page.  WSJ could pregenerate a list of payment addresses to provide users.  It would provide a copy of the public addresses to a mining pool.  Since micropayments are unlikely to be a source of fraud and likely need to be 0-confirm anyways WSJ can wait for longer than normal confirmations.

The pool could create a contract with WSJ for a flat fee or a nominal fee per tx. So on a per tx basis maybe the pool has a fee requirement of 0.5 cents (USD nominal) however by signing a bulk contract with prepayment the WSJ effective cost is (1/10th of cent per tx).  WSJ pays $500 and pre-purchases 500K low priority tx.  The pool fills blocks as normal w/ "priority tx" and then fills up the blocks w/ these lower priority tx as space is available.  Sometimes WSJ gets 1 block confirms but often it is 4 blocks, 8 blocks, 20 blocks.

The analogy would be low cost bulk mailing from postal service vs Fedex overnight.  junk mail doesn't work at Fedex prices it doesn't mean everything needs to be one size fits all. 

Now hypothetically if enough micro tx demand existed a broker will acts as middle man.  It would contract w/ multiple pools for their "junk mail rates".  The broker would sell the services to multiple micro tx receivers.  The brokers cut would be based on the difference between what they contract mining pools for and what they sell that service to service providers which use micro txs.

Custom Fee Rules for p2pool (and solo) miners:

As a p2pool miner would you like to be able to control which tx you include in a block?

I created a bounty to modify bitcoind to allow a miner to set rules on which tx are included in the block they are working on.  Luke Jr has created and published the source code.  Code is open source licensed under MIT license (same license as bitcoin).

As the block subsidy declines over time fees will play an important role in miner revenue.  If users can get included in the next block w/ no fee they will never have an incentive to include a fee.  The RPC calls allow a user to set the minimum fee they will accept and tx w/ smaller fee are excluded from the tx list that p2pool uses to build a block.  p2pool miners also are unlikely to alter the fee dynamic but we can be part of the discussion.  As pools (including p2pool miners) set fee requirements >0 confirmation times for free/low fee tx will increase.  This will create an incentive for users to increase fees.  We aren't talking massive fees but every bitcent helps.

Luke has requested a pull into the "mainline" bitcoind here:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/989

Please don't comment at the link above unless you are an active client developer.  Cluttering up this with "yeah add it" is bad form.  I included the link to allow people to allows you to see the status on the pull.

Here the "custom fee" git created by Luke
https://github.com/luke-jr/bitcoin/tree/customfee

I will try to get some compilation instructions up for windows/linux for users who wish to try it out before it becomes part of the mainline.

Non-developers can indicate support with a post in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=73941.0

More support = quicker inclusion in mainline client.

Yeah someone has asked forrest to remove the /xxx+y from charts and reports.

thus "username/3000+1" = "username".  Maybe in a future version.

Thanks Pieter I learned something today (I knew it would be a good idea to get out of bed).

Interesting.


Why does BFL always wish me good luck?  Do they think I am in competition with them?

Paypal costs $0.30 plus 2.9%. 

Current fees are roughly 0.001131751 BTC per tx. 
Even if tx fees on avg were 0.01 that would be an 883% increase but still a tiny fraction of Paypal.

However compared to Paypal (using current BTC:USD exchange rate)
$1 USD transferred  Paypal fee: 0.07 BTC (7x higher)
$10 USD transferred Paypal fee: 0.13 BTC (14x higher)
$100 USD transferred Paypal fee: 0.70 BTC (70x higher)
$1,000 USD transferred Paypal: 6.50 BTC (650x higher)

MtGox for example never includes tx fees.  One of the most sucessful bitcoin ventures and it provides nothing in compensation to the network.  The Bitcoin network will eventually need to be run on fees.  Nobody is saying massive fees overnight or that even 1 bitcent is going to make up the majority of block rewards but it starts the ball rolling.

Currently: ~0% fees, 100% subsidy
Someday: 100% fees, 0% subsidy

Even IF average fees were increased 800% (<1 bitcent per tx on average) and tx volume doubles after the block reward declines to 25 BTC fees would only make up 4%.  Still I consider 4% more healthy than 0%.


One Bitcent tx fee would increase fees

No keep the advance.  We likely need some testing and the code may require some tweaking.  20 BTC IMHO is well spent. 

Now is there a guide anywhere for compiling modified version of bitcoind under windows?

Of course but right now you choices are accept all tx or pocess no tx.  Here at least you now have some crude control.  This was intended to be a starting point to a) provide p2pool users some control and b) spark a conversation on mining fees.


For most tx the default fee is 0.00.  It is based on coinage (1 day, 1 BTC input = free).  One could reject only zero fee txs (accept tx which don't violate spam rules and have at least 1 satoshi in fees).

One could modify the spam rules but I didn't want that because I think it is reckless.  The spam rules are designed not to cost users money but to protect the network.  If enough miners foolishly removed the spam rules one could cripple the network, users, wallets with massive (TBs) worth of spam for a negigible cost.  I intentionally asked for the spam rules to be enforced for that reason. 



True miners will reduce their direct compensation by excluding paying low fee tx but the amount they lose is essentially negligible.   Chart tx vs fees in the blockchain for the last 100,00 or so tx.  You will notice that even excluding tx w/ fee < 0.01 results in only a negligible drop in gross revenue (as in pennies a block).  With a lower min fee you "lose" even less.

At this point it is more the principal of the issue and to spark a debate.  The "cost" to a miner is essentially nothing (even one with dozens of GH/s).  If not enough miners start enforcing higher fees then fees won't rise but the amount lost remains "almost nothing".  If enough miners start enforcing higher fees then all miners benefit.  Yeah there is some aspect of tragedy of the commons but w/ block subsidies still high (yes 25 BTC is high) the "cost" of helping is nearly nothing.

So share the images (the CAD ones not the sphincter ones).

I wonder that myself.  I wonder how large it will need to be not because the FPGA take up a lot of space but due to the fact that 2.5KW is a lot of energy and the smaller the pkg the harder it is to cool.  

A visual excercise:
A 4x5970 rig is ~1KW.  Open framed it requires good amount of airflow to cool.   In a closed case, forget about it.  Now 1.25KW would be 20% more thermal load so image a hypothetical 5x5970 rig (pretend no 8 GPU limit). The "full rig box" (if it ends up getting built) would be double that.   To get an idea of the thermal energy vs volume visualize a 4U server chassis w/ 5x5970s inside now stack two of them on top of each other to simulate 2.5KW of power draw.  That is a pretty big box (8U = 14" by 19" by 24").  Could you cool that with air?
 How noisy would it be?  We already have a pretty large "rigbox".  Going larger would make it somewhat easier to cool.

Before I get flamed:
I am not saying the rigbox isn't more efficient.  It is.  The same sized box with the same amount of electricity/heat would produce 50 GH/s vs ~7 GH/s (10x 5970s). Still the laws of thermodynamics don't care what (or how much) the 2.5KW produced.  50GH/s on 2.5KW or 7GH/s on 2.5KW is still 2.5KW either way.  

That is an interesting challenge.  In mining the difficulty in cooling 1KW+ heat loads is what has lead to open frame rigs, extenders, extra high rpm fans, etc.  Will be interesting to see how they intend to cool them and how noisy they will be.  Not saying high potential noise is a problem (it isn't as most will be in datacenters or semi-industrial locations).  It just may shock some people who think of FPGA as silent and cool but that is just because nobody has scaled FPGA up to tens of GH/s in a compact space yet.

So BFL come on at least give us some estimated dimensions and db specs.

BAMT is x86 only.  That means no 8 GPU rigs (at least I have never gotten it to work).  I am converting all my rigs to 8 GPU rigs for improved efficiency.   The other minor annoyance is you need to build cgminer from source if you want to upgrade.  There are no x86 binaries for cgminer so it isn't as easy a "wget" and decompress.

If you only want to use 6 ( not sure about 7) GPU per rig then I found BAMT very "plug and play".  
Download the img, use the writer to write it to a USB stick.  BAMT includes a "fixer" daemon which downloads and installs hotfixes.  Very nice "setup" it just doesn't work w/ 8 GPUs.   I held out hope because developer said he was testing x64 version but "it didn't work".  I guess it was a closed beta so I was never able to try it out.