Essentially all.   None of the last 100 blocks were larger than 400KB.  Only 5 were larger than 300KB.   The vast majority are 100KB to 250KB.  More than 20 are <100KB.   The block size limit is 1MB.

I hate banks, they want to charge me a $25 fee to investigate why I was charged an extra $50 in fees over the expected 5% + $40 with my international wire to an exchange.

edit: sorry off topic but I don't read any other threads :]

Confirmation time =/= block time.

Average time between blocks is <10 minutes.  I pointed this out in the prior thread but it will likely get ingored again.  Any "answer" which involves miners solving less blocks would mean the time between blocks would be greater than 10 minutes and that is not the case.

Miners are on average producing a block size of ~160KB.
http://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size

To clear the backlog and reduce the average wait time to ~1 block would require blocks to be roughly 50% larger.  Miners are chosing not to do that.  The average block has ~300 tx vs the ~2,500 tx limit imposed by the 1MB or ~600 tx it would take to clea the backlog

Simple version: blocks are 90% empty, tx wait longer to be included in a block

now we have got passed the fact that coinvalidation is not a personal identifier of every user (todays hysteria) and moved onto the deeper topic of the actual risk.. then yes using an american exchange that volunteered to use coinvalidations services to directly withdraw FIAT, and not mixing your coins first would be a risk. thats why there is always localbitcoins.com or other exchanges that have not used coinvalidations services. or as mentioned, putting coins into an exchange (not converting to fiat to not trigger any FIAT regulation checks(mixer)) withdraw the coin so it shows as fresh from a regulated exchange. and then put into another regulated exchange to then transfer to fiat.

but this is a headache to do for some. but inevitably apart from ensuring that exchanges learn how to handle the US Dollar legally. coinvalidation database will become the useless part, because everyone will be mixing and hopping transactions around certified businesses before finally triggering the FIAT checks.

im more concerned with mike hearns brainfart of tainting actual coins

It doesn't matter who creates the list.  If the list is trusted by enough people, and governments mandate that businesses register or only accept from "verified" bitcoins on some approved list, then you get the same thing.  Again, it doesn't matter if everyone's complaining prevents the Foundation from implementing something like this, because there's really nothing that can be done to prevent somebody from doing it and from governments from legislating for it.

I opened a new topic on the Bitcoin Foundation's forum:

Deep concern about the foundation's chairman of Law and Policy (Mike Hearn) pushing for coin taint

Me, and many others in the bitcoin community are deeply concerned about Mike Hearn pushing for coin taint.  We feel that if the Bitcoin Foundation is even going to consider mentioning this in the upcoming government meeting, that we can no longer stand behind them.  This is serious.  Coin taint is even worse than increasing the 21 million limit.  Since the chairman of Law and Policy is involved here, I would like to call for a vote against this, and a clear stance from the Bitcoin Foundation.  I know many of the board members are supporters of mixing coins even more, so something like this can never happen again.  It would be a good message to the bitcoin community to confirm that the foundation supports keeping coins anonymous, instead of going in the opposite direction.

Yes, but there is no feasible way to stop Bitcoin usage. They may be able to not "allow" it, but how could they possibly stop it.

Here's my question:  What choice do we have?

If the government decides they want businesses to report what Bitcoin addresses they are using (say, on a new virtual currencies tax form), and who has sent them money and who they have sent money to, it will effectively de-anonymize the whole network.  Businesses couldn't operate legitimately without compliance, and businesses who complied would effectively rat out all of those who didn't.

If the government decides to implement it, it wouldn't be hard to get enough businesses onboard to make it eventually fully effective.

I agree this would effectively kill Bitcoin - no one wants every financial transaction they make to be aired to the public.  Basically, the government is in control of Bitcoin's future.

coinvalidation from reading the proposals and not the media hype are not about mike hearns idea of marking coins. but just highlighting known business addresses. so if the FBI moved DPR's funds into an FBI pubkey, it would show as low risk. if left in a active silk road pubkey, it would show as highrisk, especially if found guilty.

i personally didnt join the hysteria train. instead i went on the look beyond the newspaper train, and followed down the tracks till i reached investigate furtherville.

knowing coinvalidation is just a VOLUNTARY tool of business advisors to help businesses dealing with FIAT exchanges to become compliant* is much needed, especially when some of these exchanges are/have been run by teenage basement dwellers and other people that do not know FIAT laws in regards to handling the fiat side of their exchange

* by making it easier to recognise high risk transactions EG 2 hops from silk road or recognise safe transactions EG 20 hops from silk road or 2 hops from bitstamp. makes it easier for businesses to assess the need to throw paperwork around the office as useless paper aeroplanes due to low risks or use them to inform fincen of serious money laundering.

i have then come to the conclusion that its soo easy to mix coins dilute taint* that in the end coinvalidation will become useless

*by transacting with 20 other addresses owned by an individual to increase hops/decrease taint. to then put into an coinvalidation accredded exchange, (not converting to fiat) but after waiting a few confirms withdrawing BTC from that exchange as clean coins(mixer) .. to then put into a new exchange to withdraw as FIAT without issues.

Redlist is a horribly bad idea. It only requires a small portion of Bitcoin users to start disliking redlisted coins and the fungibility we now enjoy is GONE. Redlisted coins will be less valuable than other coins, even if just slightly (depending on the amount of users/services that build blacklists based on that).

I would boycott each and every Bitcoin client that tries to add a feature such as this. If it's the reference client, the whole core dev team needs to quit. If this were to go through I would also be afraid if I was part of the core dev team. Afraid for my life. I'm not kidding here, this would be a game changer and would essentially kill Bitcoin as it is now. A lot of people would be quite unhappy.

I hope the Bitcoin community is smart and reacts to these propositions with never before seen hostility. Redlist is a pre-requirement for a blacklist and it's 100% sure that with a redlist feature some users would use it as a blacklist, thus destroying fungibility.

I know this was only a discussion starter from Mike Hearn but even proposing this deserves a very strong reaction.

Sure their is. To make Yifu's coins worth more!!

remember coinvalidation is just a business advisory service with a database. Compliant exchanges are just businesses that have to monitor for serious crime transactions (large FIAT transactions that are linked to serious crimes) they themselves cannot "freeze" funds. only a bank or a court order can.

infact if you were being investigated you would not know about it. this is the whole "it will take 3-5 business days" bit. giving the exchange a few hours or days to check you out before sending the funds onto the bank and your bank having a few hours or days for their own compliance checks. within the 3-5 day window.

some businesses to avoid risk of being penalised, headaches of looking at certain transactions, and avoid headaches of paperwork have the right to refuse service to any customer they please as long as it has been done before the transaction is processed.. although this would be bad for business. its the same as alcohol laws.. the law is simple dont sell to underage. but the shop can reduce its own risks by making a policy to refuse service to anyone that looks young that fails to provide ID. EG 'challege 21', 'challenge 25'

its worth reading the regulations of your country instead of asking other peoples opinions, they are not that hard to find. as although most developed countries are the same, there are some small variances in a few details. but the general rule of this scenario affecting the USA is:

US customers transacting over $10k need AMLKYC info,
US customers that have revealed information that their funds are 100% crime related will have their info passed onto fincen. and may find out later that their bank has frozen their funds..
thers more but go read it for yourselves.

the exchange cannot freeze funds. but they can without explaining why, refuse the customer and ban them (again this is bad for business, but they can do it, if given sufficient information before hand to prevent the transaction occuring.)

so i cant tell you what policy alpaca socks or bitstamp may create if they used coinvalidation as advisors. as half of it is the businesses own risk prevention, which goes above the law.

the main question to ask is why woud you want to highlight yourself as a high risk by doing large payments knowingly from illegally obtained funds.
if lets say you done a $10k FIAT withdrawal and maybe $20-$100 was from others who were stupid enough to send directly from silk road to you, then :
1) slap them across the face with a wet fish for being foolish and not mixing before risking YOUR funds
2) dont worry too much, as small amounts VS  YOUR larger clean funds will dilute risk.

but lets say all of the $10k came directly from silk road... slap yourself across the face with a wet fish...

the main question to ask is why would you want to highlight yourself as a high risk by doing large payments knowingly from illegally obtained funds.

2) dont worry too much, as small amounts VS  YOUR larger clean funds will dilute risk.

the exchange cannot freeze funds. but they can without explaining why, refuse the customer and ban them

But isn't the purpose of CoinValidation to label adresses and not coins?

I don't get why the fungibility of coins is destroyed if only adresses are impacted?

Mike does not decide, lawmakers will. Have you contacted your congressman, senator, any regulator? No?, then I guess his opinion trumps yours.
You will get nothing complaining here. Like it or not, bitcoin regulation IS coming to the USA. If you want to be heard then write. Not here, write your representatives. If you want no regulation then write your own code and fork the chain. Maybe someone will use your alt-coin.