Go ahead, we've got no reputation at this point of time, and we need to build the confidence. Alternatively we can use offer to use paypal or something. Whichever the buyer prefers.
I would really prefer bitcoin, it's just way cooler. Unfortunately I cannot find an escrow service. Clearcoin is closed. Maybe we could find a trusted community member? Paypal is an option however, if we cannot find someone. Also: I would prefer some form of secured, tracked shipping, would hate to see this precious thing lost in shipping. I'm in germany. Can you give me a quote on shipping? EDIT: it seems all xilinx platform cables I can find on ebay.de (german site) are shipped from hongkong... maybe you could even get one for me and include it to save a little on shipping? I'd have to shell out $57 incl. shipping to get one myself. |
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Awesome! I'm almost buying it. Unfortunately you will not allow using an escrow service for my protection, because you need the money up front, right?
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especially do not trust this post.
Gödel? Is that you? |
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First off: it's really nice to see you're digging into this stuff. A lot of people don't really bother, but I think it's important to understand. Also: I'm not a full expert on this either, but I think I can clear things up a little.
No, that's not correct. There's no "issuing" of a block. You're probably thinking in terms of a "round", as pools often call the timespan until they find a block. If the difficulty changes during a "round", the block has to be found with the new difficulty.
This might not be the right thread but after i read your answer i thought id better get dirty and get rid of my missconceptions. So i went to the lions den ( https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block) and honestly, that page could use some clarifying. As i understand it now the generation of blocks is actually done when the block is solved (and several blocks can be solved competing for the same space in the block chain). But other pages ( https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm) talk about it as if the block exists from the beginning, which i guess it does: "When generating, you constantly hash the block header. The block is also occasionally updated as you are working on it." I think it helps here to talk about different kinds of blocks, or different stages a block can be in. Initially it's merely a " block candidate". The bitcoin client constructs a " block candidate" with all the transactions, a nonce (initially "0"), previous blocks hash, etc. Then all that is needed to make it a " valid block", is the hash of the block being smaller than the target. This can be accomplished by manipulating the nonce (usually increasing it by 1) until the hash matches the target. Once this is done (usually by the miner software), that "winning nonce" is put into the block and the block becomes a " valid block". It's now sent to the network and the block is added to the chain by all nodes and becomes an " accepted block". Once enough new blocks are accepted to the chain after this block, it becomes a " confirmed block" and is now truly part of the bitcoin block chain and will very very likely remain part of it forever. When reading about the generation algorithm ( https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Generation_Calculator) it says that: "Divide by 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639935, which is the maximum value of a 256-bit number. You now have the probability of a single hash solving a block." If this holds true there is a finite number of hashings that would guarantee that a block is solved. Thus the following statement on the https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block page is incorrect. "What if I'm 1% towards calculating a block and...? - There's no such thing as being 1% towards solving a block. You don't make progress towards solving it. After working on it for 24 hours, your chances of solving it are equal to what your chances were at the start or at any moment. Believing otherwise is what's known as the Gambler's fallacy [1]. - It's like trying to flip 53 coins at once and have them all come up heads. Each time you try, your chances of success are the same. " The citation above is only true if we are talking about an infinitely long serie. As an example. - The maximum value is: 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639935. - If the calculation above (Generation_Calculator) is true the chances of finding the hash when 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639935 - 1 hashes has been done equals 1. - Thus proving the block page to be wrong. I have no idea what the correct answer is  The answers do not contradict each other. Let's make an example: Let's say we're not solving a bitcoin block, but where throwing a dice with 6 sides. Let's say rolling a 6 is analogous to solving a block: Answer 1 is analogous to: "If you divide 1 by 6, you have probability 1/6 of rolling a 6" Answer 2 is analogous to: "Question: 'if I'm 1% towards rolling a 6 and...?', Answer: 'There's no such thing as being 1% towards rolling a 6. After rolling the dice for 24h the chances of rolling a 6 are equal to what your chances were at the start or at any moment. Believing otherwise is what's known as the Gambler's fallacy''" Rolling a dice 6 times doesn't guarantee you throw a 6, does it  , probabilities don't add. The probability of rolling a 6 in 6 rolls is not 1/6 * 6, but: 1 - (1 - 1/6) ^ 6 = 0.6651, in words: it's the probability of "not rolling a 1,2,3,4, or 5 six times in a row" So, both answers are correct. I hope I was of help. |
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PEOPLE LIKE MONEY. BIG FUCKIN SURPRISE.
Yes and all these people here pretending that bitcoin is or every was more than a money making scam are full of it. I mean really an encryption based project that somehow manages not to take wallet security into account in that equation seriously deserves questioning.. If someone has access to your wallet.dat, he can also easily install a keylogger. |
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now that i look at it, it seems to be trying to do too much.
its asking for salts and seeds and stuff, a normal person will not have a single idea of what that is and just forget it.
really in an ideal world, it would simply just respond to queries for amounts of coins associated with an address, and accept signed transactions to send into the network.
you could call these 3 important things: - your email-address (the salt)
- your PUK (the seed, STORE THIS SAFELY (both safe from theft and safe from loss)
- your PIN (your PIN, not so bad if you forget it, device asks for PUK and takes 2 minutes time, then you can enter new one)
If you can manage your SIM-card, you should be able to manage this. |
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That would take a lot of hashing power to do! And the person doing it would lose money unless it was a PPS pool.
It would be highly profitable if a found block could be used elsewhere. According to the bitcoin paper this seems possible but people on IRC were very sure it wasn't. I'd love to know why this isn't possible. From my tcpdumps I see miners don't get the whole block to hash but surely what they do get can be predicted from the last block and the transactions to be added to it, i.e. from the data known to every up to date client. Anyone want to enlighten me? The address the new coins are generated for is included in the data that's hashed and sent to miners? So stolen blocks could be submitted anywhere in the network but they would credit the pool address that sent the block to the miners anyway. Anyone want to confirm or deny this? Confirming this. The private key to the txout address of the generation transaction is known only to the pool operator. That transaction and therefore that address is of course part of the block hash. If you changed it to one of your own, the hash would change and the block would be invalid. Is this documented anywhere other than in the bitcoind source? The bitcoin paper seems to be pretty abstract and missing implementation details like these. The bitcoin wiki might be of help: on this page: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm you can see that the "merkle root" is part of the block hash. If you look on this page: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vocabulary you can see an explanation of what the Merkle root is (hash of hashes of transactions). The wiki also has a description of the bitcoin protocol. You wont find anything about pools in the vanilla bitcoind sources. You'd have to look at pushpoold, for example, or other pool software. |
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Quite possibly. But then iXcoin isnt trying to compete with Bitcoin.
What a foolish statement. What is it doing? ixcoin or I0coin or whatthehellever is ABSOLUTELY trying to compete with Bitcoin. IXCoin is a scheme to shovel bitcoin into the founder's pockets, which sadly seems to have worked well. As the promoters themselves said: It's not a competition to bitcoin per se. It's competing for hashing power, though, which is - as has been pointed out by many - a good thing for the miners of bitcoin. |
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Maybe the MM was using the resources of an unsympathetic employer and was discovered/fired after a week. I'm sure hundreds of people have access to big hash power for "free" (others pay electricity etc.).
Cool graphs, and thanks for the donation!
Honestly, this is the closest explanation we have. GPU mining was popular at that point in time, but it in no way was being done on a grand scale. A system administrator for a gaming company or large 3d processing outfit would have both the tech and possibly the know-how for something like this. It could be that after running the operation it was determined to be too risky and they backed off. Or, they were caught and fired. It is possible that if this was all done on work computers, the coins might have even been destroyed if they were caught and their machine was wiped. Unfortunately we cannot discern hoarding from loosing. |
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1) We are all early adopters. See the wiki linked above. The adoption rate is still WELL below 2.5% of the US market alone. 2) Satoshi must maintain his anonymity. If he reveals any info about himself, he will be easier to track down for robbery, capture, and interrogation. It would be like announcing in the town newspaper "I have $16 million in a suitcase only I know the location of. I live at X address", you'd just get robbed. 3) Diamonds market cornered by DeBeers, does that keep you from buying diamonds? Gold market cornered by secret account holders - sure doesn't seem to slow down the gold market much this decade. Do you know the names of the 600 princes of Saudi Arabia before you buy stock in Chevron? etc. List goes on and on, OP started an interesting thread but Satoshi (one person or group of people) is wise to ignore his questions and continue sitting on his 1 mil bitcoins until it is worth 1 billion dollars or more. and THANKS for the charts and research, MOLECULAR! MR. FSM!  I agree with you on point 1.) and 2.). Number 3.) I can't really judge, cause I've never invested much in anything, so I don't know how I would go about that. Making the charts has been fun and the donations I received are greatly appreciated. I think moving around a little BTC, however few, amongst us bitcoiners is a very good thing. So I passed on part of the donations to John Tobey, who wrote bitcoin-abe. Kind of the gift-economy that's been talked about a lot since a decade ago, mainly in relation to the music world. Receiving a donation is really motivating and giving one is satisfying. I have a feeling this culture of donating small amounts for contributions is in decline, which is sad. People have become more protective of their BTC and I can understand that... all the scamming and shit going on and the price being substantial compared to last year. But keep in mind, a bitcent is just a dime. I give a beggar on the street a lot more than that... So, lets keep the donations going, it's currently the closest thing we have to a "closed-loop bitcoin economy" |
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If I had the programming skills, I'd do it.
I have programming skills, arguably better than his, and I didn't do it. Neither did millions of other programmers. The true novelty of Bitcoin lies in the math, not in the programming (as the programming is a reflection and implementation of the math). That's why the programmers (and you) didn't do it. This is getting ridiculous. P.S. I have a maths degree. Damn, I must be an idiot. No, you could've done it if knew how to generate the algorithm from the theory, but you didn't; he did. And, no one else did before him. Thus, it's novel. The Egg of Columbus comes to mind. That's why nobody else did it and people that saw it early had all kinds of objections... "An egg of Columbus or Columbus's egg refers to a brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple or easy after the fact." A million bitcoins is the least he deserves. His "invention" is worth more than that if in the end, we have free money. |
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I want to know who are those people that I'm going to make rich? Very rich.
I don't care who those people are that are going to make me rich. |
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That would take a lot of hashing power to do! And the person doing it would lose money unless it was a PPS pool.
It would be highly profitable if a found block could be used elsewhere. According to the bitcoin paper this seems possible but people on IRC were very sure it wasn't. I'd love to know why this isn't possible. From my tcpdumps I see miners don't get the whole block to hash but surely what they do get can be predicted from the last block and the transactions to be added to it, i.e. from the data known to every up to date client. Anyone want to enlighten me? The address the new coins are generated for is included in the data that's hashed and sent to miners? So stolen blocks could be submitted anywhere in the network but they would credit the pool address that sent the block to the miners anyway. Anyone want to confirm or deny this? Confirming this. The private key to the txout address of the generation transaction is known only to the pool operator. That transaction and therefore that address is of course part of the block hash. If you changed it to one of your own, the hash would change and the block would be invalid. |
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This thread seems to have gone a little quiet. Are people interested in this service? I've spent some time over the last few days working on an Android client. Currently my app shows a page for generating a wallet from passphrase, salt and pin. Once that's set up the app simply prompts the user for a pin. When successfully connected the current balance and addresses are displayed.
I've wasted a bit of time last night and today with issues with the testnet but now I've managed to get some test bitcoins I want to work on sending bitcoins. I really like the idea of BCC API but am a little concerned there isn't much interest.
I think there is a lot of interest for an app like that. Can you try to make it work on Android 2.1? |
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EDIT: this puts a lower bound to the answer of question 1: "How many Bitcoins in total does "Nakamoto" have?" (assuming "Nakamoto" means "Satoshi and friends"). Answer: at least 1.2 Million. No it doesn't, because the fact that the coins haven't moved is not proof positive that someone is still in possession of them. True. I am wrong. We'll probably never have proof-positive they're not, because a) no one's going to admit to burning what's now worth a few million bucks and b) there's no way to prove you're not in control of them anyway.
You're assuming he lost the keys. Given how long Bitcoins went being almost completely worthless, I would hazard a guess that a not insignificant portion of those BTC will never move, ever.
I don't think he lost keys. He's just not that careless and he was fully aware bitcoin could work well. Now let me ask another question: How many miners where there in 2009? |
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But I think that until the person(s) behind Bitcoin doesn't come forward I think that the best I can do is to reconsider if I should invest time and money into this project. Same here. So I've decided not to invest until I know who are people that labeled themselves 'Satoshi'. I don't understand. What would it change if he/they came forward? You don't need to trust Satoshi, you need to trust math, mainly. |
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Now I know I'm making the mistake of including blocks from orphaned chains.
Is there an easy way to exclude blocks from orphaned chains in a sql query?
Yes, well not too hard: select b.* from block b join chain_candidate cc on (b.block_id = cc.block_id) where cc.chain_id = ? and cc.in_longest = 1 I see, of course. Thanks a lot for your help. Hey, someone gave me a donation for a chart I made about coin age (pretty interesting: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37333.msg459678#msg459678) using bitcoin-abe. Couldn't have done without, so I'm passing on part of it to you. |
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Any chance you could add the number of bitcoins in existence + market value in the same graph?
I've thought about adding the amount of coins mined in each month. (Consider making a small donation if you want to increase my motivation: 1SQL2R5ijCn2ZiBG8aDYpCiecNPuxzMJJ) Well, whoever it was, I got a donation which increased my motivation:  like this chart? consider donating: 1SQL2R5ijCn2ZiBG8aDYpCiecNPuxzMJJ |
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There's 2 problems with solo-mining that stopped me from doing it once the difficulty got too high: - Too much luck involved (or bad luck for that matter)
- Having an average time to find a block that is greater than the difficulty window will increase the average difficulty you're mining at if difficulty rises (which it usually does)
Is this really correct? If i start a block today at difficulty 1. and the difficulty changes tomorrow and becomes 100. would the part of my block that is left then really be mined at difficulty 100? I would think that the block would be mined at the difficulty it was issued at. Just wondering /GoK No, that's not correct. There's no "issuing" of a block. You're probably thinking in terms of a "round", as pools often call the timespan until they find a block. If the difficulty changes during a "round", the block has to be found with the new difficulty. |
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Interesting graph. Looks like people started saving their bitcoins in 2011/3. That march spike is actually an even smaller spike in week 9 (beginning of march), as you can see in a weekly breakdown I did: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37422, where I speculate that this is the MysteryMiner keeping his coins. Any chance you could add the number of bitcoins in existence + market value in the same graph?
I've thought about adding the amount of coins mined in each month. (Consider making a small donation if you want to increase my motivation: 1SQL2R5ijCn2ZiBG8aDYpCiecNPuxzMJJ) I could also add the market value, if I had the data. Can anyone help me with that? |
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