Ambient Backscatter for transmission in urban areas perhaps?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX9cbxLSOkE

The possibilities are exciting...

Simple, break it down into smaller parts, managed by a collaborative database hosted somewhere in the darknet (I2P/Tor) for now.

This could be applied to any other country, but I'll use the USA for an example.

Continent Subdivisions:

East Coast - Further subdivided into contiguous zones based on population, so the effort to link-up would concentrate on higher density areas first. So, major cities like Boston, NYC, Baltimore, DC, Atlanta, and so on...

Same thing for the Midwest, Mountain and West Coast areas.

The main effort would be to build meshes with people who are in the urban zones using user-commodity hardware that isn't cost prohibitive, and linking up those nodes with well-placed Outdoor Solar Nodes (OSN's). For redundancy, you'd probably have to have at least three different long-haul-strings of OSN's connecting each mesh, since you'd be putting these things on natural and artificial structures, and there is a possibility of singular node failure.

I'd also like to have at least 2 - 3 nodes at any given time able to overlap on the long-haul side, so you don't suddenly get a break in one of your long haul routes because that one OSN you put up between Boston and NYC decided to crap out.

Then you'd need an ongoing program where you'd have mobile techs, sponsored by the largest pools, to keep their area of nodes functioning - either dedicated to a long-haul segment or a given area of urban mesh. That is really the only way to get it going, compensating people for some of the cost of keeping it running. It could be debated that this activity would be limited to fixing breaks, instead of an ongoing fee - but I would like to have someone maintaining active monitoring of the routes so you can tell when reconvergence events occur, indicating a possible 'break'.

I suppose getting that started would be a tough argument at first, because no ISP that I know of in North America is currently messing with Bitcoin traffic, and most people would probably switch over to Tor or I2P -- however, I think it is still important to aspire towards independent networking sooner rather than later.

If we don't have something set up, then we'll have to resort to "Data Couriers" of some type to make regular 'drops' of the blockchain between places and/or countries - which wouldn't be optimal, but better than nothing.

I'll keep thinking about this problem, and I encourage any suggestions or ideas regarding this.

Edit: Was also considering "gamifying" the whole thing and making reward bounties available for the entire project (across smaller deliverables), but I'm not sure how to prevent something like that being gamed by bad actors.

Ah funny, I thought they were just doing a small promotional thing, limiting it to a small area in Berlin or something.

Oh well, it is an interesting idea and fits right in with the "gamification" push for solving tasks.

Also known as "Blockchain Bloat Squared" if it actually takes off.

Step 1. Exploit the existing hashing power of the Bitcoin network

Step 2. Contribute... nah, just make something you can profit off of, contributing is for idiots

Step 3. Profit at the expense of all the Bitcoin miners and full nodes

Hard Forks? Oops!, we'll be counting our money over here while you nerds go fix something we fucked up for everyone.

Programmers stuffing data into the blockchain without anyone able to opt-out is complete and utter bullshit. Stop doing this, you fucking fucks.

Given some of the rabid trolls on this forum, I don't blame them honestly.

Easier to provide service to professionals than to rank amateurs.

Oh the irony. Satoshi created a global hybrid payment system/currency, and the best use so far is some profit-uber-alles MBA's gambling site.

*slow golf clap*

We should be *so* proud.

My primary aim was to stimulate discussion on a bitcoin-centric type of network. Trying to be everything to everbody is a recipe for failure, especially if you have diverse bandwidth needs like streaming video AND supporting bitcoin.

I figure the traffic the average bitcoin client produces, full nodes, miners and the like aren't too onerous - and could be serviced by some kind of distributed mesh. The first person that crams a linux-on-a-USB-Stick into a 3D Printed all-weather case with some solar and antenna leads is going to be frickin famous. We need these, and we need them before we get messed with.

So, you like it because you like it - great circular reasoning. You also collectively ignored everything else I said, good job.

I do see a future with other coins that have something to contribute, not these dial-twiddling crap-coins. But you would've realized that if you had read my fucking post.

I'd be more optimistic about alt-coins if they actually had something interesting to offer, beyond twiddling the existing Bitcoin magic numbers and calling it "new" and in some misguided cases, "better".

Satoshi wasn't an idiot, and clearly thought a long time about the implications of setting confirms faster/slower, etc -- but no, the source code is out there and some muppet thinks that they've suddenly rediscovered the magic way to make Bitcoin II - The Betterer Bestest Version.

And don't get me started on potential cancerous pustules like Mastercoin, which can't be bothered to maintain their own blockchain, because hey, that takes effort -- so lets just stuff a funnel down the already bloated body of the Bitcoin blockchain and push torrents of greasy Mastercoin ravioli down its throat -- you know, because they can.

And furthermore, when someone has the audacity to even suggest that their brainchild isn't "the one" or perhaps it is exploiting a resource best left to its own devices, then they get severe backlash from their muppet followers who have already invested in the idea, and can't afford anyone to say anything contrary.

So yeah, that is my problem with the "community" of idiots who think they've got it all solved, and in some cases - actually manage to magnify the blockchain bloat problem via their shortsighted greed.

Clear enough for you?

Instant gratification doesn't mean it will scale. But go ahead, risk your own money.

Nobody is really inventing a new "lightbulb".

They're just changing the filament color and the socket sizes/voltages and calling it "new".

If any altcoin had any innovations that were truly worthwhile, the main bitcoin client would fork to include it, therefore invalidating the existence of the alt-coin in the first place.

The only alt-coin that has any purpose beyond outright bamboozlery is Namecoin, and it won't flourish until the ISPs come under attack from governments desperate to control citizenry.

Good point carlton, I also think Bitcoin is rapidly becoming the number one way to give the USA a nice big "middle finger". I look to China as well as evidence of that.

I love the fact they are doing this.

This is precisely how supply-chains denominated in BTC start to form. I'm glad that the German government has too many fires to put out right now to focus any effort on stopping it. Naturally, when they get around to it, it will be far too late.

Yeah, most posts on this forum about transactions not going through usually has been from people "cheaping out" on sending fees.

I'd like to mention Nightweb, a decentralized way to share text and images - which is much in the spirit of Bitcoin. It runs over I2P, and before you go running in horror because you think it will be too "slow", it actually runs decently.

Check it out here - https://nightweb.net

They have a standalone desktop client, which is just an executable .jar and an android app. It is beta software, so there will be changes and such, but so far it seems rather interesting.

There's a reddit for it as well here - http://www.reddit.com/r/Nightweb

Haha, I see - the "noise floor" would be so high it would be like humidity in the air!

Hopefully not

Don't know why it took me so long to notice this thread, I like your analysis and meticulous methods, chodpaba.

I'm just going to put this here before the next wave up happens. (No, I don't know the timing, just saying it will happen eventually...)

If you take the prior traded extreme to the next traded extreme, the high of 31 to 266 was approximately ~758%.

If you use this as a general guide (and it could be utterly wrong in terms of magnitude - as in, not high enough) projection would say from 266 to our next theoretical oh-no-that-is-impossible-high would equal: 2,283

Crazy? Perhaps not. Our original rise from the first 'tick' of when bitcoin traded was ~3,000%+ to the 31 high. Maybe I'll come back later and find out that even extrapolating that lofty number wasn't enough. Or, as some cynics believe, it will be worth zero - but I highly doubt it.

I meant in the sense of capturing available RF for low-power consumption, not transmitting on an already crowded band of frequencies.

"Why are all these balloon things in the path of our microwave link?" Haha.

The practicality of such a thing is probably not worth it, or we'd see a lot of things using that method to convert RF to microvolts to get some free power. I'm not an electrical engineer, but passive capture is possible depending on the signal strength and specific frequency you're aiming to "harvest".

Thanks for posting everyone, great reading material.

Yeah, I'd avoid using 'coin' as a suffix for something like that - can potentially cause confusion as to what they really do. But the whole idea of competing with Gox is a welcome development.

I think Litecoin is fundamentally flawed technically, without even going into the whole premining thing.

So, maybe its more like pewter or barely-refined copper than silver.