Of course once we get all the computers back we will then have more computers and phones than we know what to do with. Anyone want to buy a used computer that was under government control for nine months?
Maybe offer it on a crowd funding site as a reward for donations to your legal fund to make you (closer to) whole after this tragedy? Or something else that may attract some publicity. Please consider doing something profound. Your situation is rare. Few people have undergone this torture and come out with so few wounds. Forfeiture law is one of the most egregious legal disasters in the USA. The property is considered criminal and people do not even need to be charged with a crime in order for the property to be seized. This is one of the most corrupting influences on law enforcement. Seized property goes to fund their department slush funds. The law turns all law enforcement into a vast corrupt criminal conspiracy worth of RICO. You are incredibly lucky. These laws get people killed, they impoverish, they are a great blight on the USA and any other country that follows this evil path. The worst part is that these laws are on the rise. In most jurisdictions they are being expanded in order to be 'tough on crime', but what they do is turn those who are meant to be enforcing law into the worst criminals. Whatever you decide, know that there are many that are grateful to you, for being strong during a horrible ordeal, and for setting a hopeful precedent that there are at least a few judges that aren't yet completely corrupted. Thank you. |
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solex, where do you go to get your mempool size info? there seems to be discrepancies btwn sources.
Lately I am using tradeblock as their site is fast and informative. https://tradeblock.com/blockchainFor some reason the leadership at blockchain.info has become rudderless and their site is often not keeping up and development there seems static. My impression anyway. you're referring to the 1MB single tx block that f2pool constructed as a non std tx to help reduce the UTXO set?
why was that a bad thing? it was a one off to help consolidate all that dust and required that a miner self construct this type of block and transmit it. that wouldn't be a repeatable, viable attack to inflict on the network by a rogue miner looking to gain an advantage over other miners for the following reasons:
1. constructing an 8MB bloat block while the rest of the network is making 1MB blocks runs the severe risk of orphaning
2. if the pool consists mainly of hashers, they would react by redirecting their hash away from the attacking pool to preserve the network
3. if it was coming out of China from a large miner, that miner runs even more risk of orphaning due to the GFC.
4. other miners receiving such a bloat block could react defensively by switching to mining a 0 tx block during the validation process.
5. game theory suggests a miner wouldn't even begin to do this attack for preservation of BTC value and his hardware investment.
Yes. The block which reduced the utxo set. That was the good part (though Greg posted on irc that it could have been constructed much more efficiently). Anyway, the bad part is that validation took 25 secs (because of all the inputs). Bitcoin full nodes have no way at present to look at a block and decide to orphan it in advance because it is a "bloat block" that will take too long to validate, they will all chug through the block first.You are probably right bloat blocks would not propagate fast enough and get orphaned. I think something is being missed here. The block is not a 'bloat block' more of a 'bloat transaction'. It will propagate just as fast as the other blocks, the size is not the issue so much as the construction. This issue arises when larger blocks are permitted. Though even at 1mb block construction can be made to be disadvantageous to other miners in order to increase the validation time. I am not pretending that there is no resolution to this, only that there is not yet one implemented. It is more important to develop in order rather than rush in a fix to 1mb block limits for which we are not ready, or one which is poorly designed. |
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So it took 6 years, not one month, but... That passes up Russia for the 5th largest hoard. Actual billboard in Bangkok near airport:  Grats, China. |
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Brian Klein Baker Marquart LLP 10990 Wilshire Boulevard, 4th Floor Los Angeles, California 90024 Phone: (424) 652-7814 Email: bklein@bakermarquart.comOh snap, isn't that the Oppenheimer tower across from the federal building? Good to know there's someone who knows their shit when it comes to Bitcoin. It's good to see you back again, and I'm sorry that you had to go through that whole mess. They're also the firm that tried to threaten me into censoring anti-Josh-Garza topics on this forum... Lawyers are paid to be advocates. Hired guns with a mercenary spirit. Its rarely personal. Looks like one they lost and one they won. They failed to impinge your user's free speech. They succeeded in keeping BurtW out of jail, and earned a dismissal. |
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Clearly, a rogue miner using FPGA tech was the thing Satoshi feared at that time. Satoshi did not always explain his actions and one reason for this is that detailing an attack vector increases the probability that it will be acted upon.
There's still ways to make nasty blocks. Blocks as small as 8mb that would take >10 mins to verify, and radically expand the UTXO dataset. It isn't as though we are out of the woods. The economic incentive to do something like this is that the miner could be building on it immediately whereas everyone else is still verifying, (or they just skip doing that, which fine but brings its own set of issues). |
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A bad thing is when people like cypherdoc derive from the conflict of interest malicious intents without proof other than "I don't trust them" What actually happened is that when Blockstream was announced multiple noted that it created the appearance of a potential conflict of interest. Instead of acknowledging this potential (fairly standard practice in many business situations!), the Blockstream founders took the bizarre route of denying even the possibility of a conflict of interest. That choice of actions is what lead to ongoing concern about their motives, not the founding of Blockstream itself. I had not seen this comment until it was pointed out to me today: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhy7kk?context=1There clearly were some accurate acknowledgements of potential conflicts of interests in that Reddit post. I'd not seen it either, and it is a bit reassuring. It would be nice to see some method for evaluating and accommodating if it is really something they recognize. |
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...
If i start to count up cash they look at me like i am an idiot. Noone use cash i my country. Cash will be removed in a few years because noone want it.
Then you are living in a strange country. Which is it? A modern country in northern Europe.  My guess would be Sweden. It is one of the more complicit in the banks' war on cash. |
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On the whole, it appears better than the BitLicense. I guess we'll see. Hopefully, something more like this becomes the trend rather than the BitLicense.
The title of this post is VERY misleading. There is NOTHING in this bill that makes running a Bitcoin Startup easier. It is a bad bill, it should not pass. |
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The block size limit is a short term hack. Someday we might get beyond such a limit, but it could be quite a while. BIP100 looks promising though.
"a short term hack" is how I see it, what concerns me is developers appear to be leveraging it to push through other hacks. (hacking the hack - postponing indefinably until such time as other hard fork changes could be bundled in with this one.) BIP100 is good in that it removes the hard fork limit, my reservations though are that it does nothing to erode the centralized control system that has evolved. I prefer Bib 101 as it implies some central gate keepers need to eat humble pie, however nether are my first choice. At this stage I'd like to start seeing more decentralized development, the notion that Bitcoin is resilient in that if the protocol is modified the ideals will never be eroded because it is open source and can be forked to keep the original intent appears to only be valid so long as we share the same motives as the centralized development team. The very idea of forking that was originally proposed to protect Bitcoin Values was vehemently opposed by the centralized developers who expressed disdain that they were not consulted and their process for seeking permission to propose change was not adhere too, even going so far as calling the idea of forking to remove the hard limit a threat to the very success of bitcoin. I think there is a distortion of perception and lack of empathy all round. ultimately it is the people who put economic energy into the idea that make it viable, and while developers are all important, they are not the gods who conduct this experiment, its the people who put in there economic energy. Your reasoning is interesting to me. Mostly because your evaluation appears to contradict your conclusion. And so, I suspect you have a some well thought out ideas and nuances that you've not yet communicated. Both 100 and 101 provide a mechanism for more block size. Choosing between the two may depend on your perspectives and assessment of different risk levels within the operating groups. Do you see more centralized control among developers or miners? - If development is more centralized, BIP100, (developers giving controls to miners). - If mining is more centralized, BIP101, (developers retaining control over block size increases and schedules). Both remain fairly centralized, though both are less so than they previously have been. From your discourse, it would seem your evaluation would be the devs are more centralized and so would favor BIP100, (irrespective of who authored it). I'm not sure I see the contradiction, my understanding is based on the situation we have now and it's a typical political one. The moment we started to see mining pools and solo miners contributing hashing power with little regard to hard forks is when this trajectory started, I cant remember what the BIP was back in 2011/2, where miners had to choose which fork to support, back then I didn't care as it was the fundamentals that were important to me and that wasn't considered one given my limited understanding back then. ( i just supported my "political mining pool by giving them my vote" to use as they saw fit.) anyway I think all developers need a reason to develop and I'm happy with the idea that some will be commercial, however developers are just developing the code that runs the protocol. The people that invest in Bitcoin invest because they understand the incentive structure that makes the protocol possible. Bitcoin is more about the network of current users than it is about the code, changing the code and protocol to appeal to old world industrious is not how we should be working, we want them to change to adopt Bitcoin. I may be underestimating the concerns with centralized mining but I dont see it as an issue, miners will always mine the bitcoin that has the most users, and that typically is misunderstood as the most nodes, so long as miners do not have a say in changing the incentives in the protocol I see no problems moving forward with larger blocks. (Blockstream have crossed this line) I am concerned that development is very centralized just a handful of people determine the code that runs on almost 99% of nodes, I favor many implementation of the code, not just Core, so in my view BIP100 and BIP101 are a political compromise to keep centralized development in the hands of a few. BIP100 essentially takes the block size it out of the hands of developers and gives it to the miners. They will decide if it grows or not. BIP101 keeps block size as a centrally managed resource, pre-determined by developers, and if modification up or down is needed, it would need to be done by developers. The weighting of your discussion suggests the developer centralization is a more serious concern, which suggests that BIP100 would be a strong favorite for you. Personally I like BIP100 more also just because it does not have the hubris to attempt to predict what future changes to block size may be best suited for the protocol, and leaves those decisions to the future folks who will know better than we could possibly do now. I also like that it decentralizes the management of the decision to the miners, which to me is a fine place for it. That you favored BIP101 was the surprising part for me, I don't see why that would be the case considering your concerns. |
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I support Satoshi's ideas.
I have never heard that Satoshi propose exponential growth of block. (doubling size every 2 years) that's a compromise Gavin did for you folk, Satoshi didn't support a limit at all. The block size limit is a short term hack. Someday we might get beyond such a limit, but it could be quite a while. BIP100 looks promising though. "a short term hack" is how I see it, what concerns me is developers appear to be leveraging it to push through other hacks. (hacking the hack - postponing indefinably until such time as other hard fork changes could be bundled in with this one.) BIP100 is good in that it removes the hard fork limit, my reservations though are that it does nothing to erode the centralized control system that has evolved. I prefer Bib 101 as it implies some central gate keepers need to eat humble pie, however nether are my first choice. At this stage I'd like to start seeing more decentralized development, the notion that Bitcoin is resilient in that if the protocol is modified the ideals will never be eroded because it is open source and can be forked to keep the original intent appears to only be valid so long as we share the same motives as the centralized development team. The very idea of forking that was originally proposed to protect Bitcoin Values was vehemently opposed by the centralized developers who expressed disdain that they were not consulted and their process for seeking permission to propose change was not adhere too, even going so far as calling the idea of forking to remove the hard limit a threat to the very success of bitcoin. I think there is a distortion of perception and lack of empathy all round. ultimately it is the people who put economic energy into the idea that make it viable, and while developers are all important, they are not the gods who conduct this experiment, its the people who put in there economic energy. Your reasoning is interesting to me. Mostly because your evaluation appears to contradict your conclusion. And so, I suspect you have a some well thought out ideas and nuances that you've not yet communicated. Both 100 and 101 provide a mechanism for more block size. Choosing between the two may depend on your perspectives and assessment of different risk levels within the operating groups. Do you see more centralized control among developers or miners? - If development is more centralized, BIP100, (developers giving controls to miners). - If mining is more centralized, BIP101, (developers retaining control over block size increases and schedules). Both remain fairly centralized, though both are less so than they previously have been. From your discourse, it would seem your evaluation would be the devs are more centralized and so would favor BIP100, (irrespective of who authored it). my take on this is that BIP 101 would be more favorable b/c it doesn't involve "voting" twice, imo. formal vote once and then again with the block versioning. example might be they formally vote yes and then change their minds and vote no thru versioning for whatever reason. giving miners that much say doesn't seem proportionate to everyone else's (nodes, merchants, users) participation. i like 101 b/c it is automated and imo attempts to remove as much core dev decision making in the process. knowing Gavin, he'd like to remove himself from the process as much as possible, except for routine maintenance on core. he has the big picture and all his actions to date have demonstrated a willingness to let Bitcoin Run with a hands off approach as well as from a charity perspective as demonstrated by giving away 10000 BTC, Satoshi's trust in him, his refunding of BTCGuild for lost rewards from 0.8.1, and his overall demeanor and presentation. personally, i like No Limit b/c of the free mkt dynamic it creates by placing all the control on to a user/miner negotiation. miners have every incentive to prevent bloat and adverse network affects from that. Fundamentally, anyone with a vote, could also sell their vote. |
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(Matonis is clueless to claim there is a fee-market - though my estimation of him is now down to zero as he talks about monkeying with the 21M limit).
+KB blocks now.
yep. his whole thesis is, "ZOMG, if we yield on the block size limit, it's a foregone conclusion we'll get a supply increase!" furtheremore, listening to him dissemble over the technicalities of the block size limit is painful to listen to. as little understanding as iCEBlow. Well, that was sort of just him trolling, (but he won't call it that), call it link-bait or whatever, but Matonis never really said any such thing. Lawyerly parsing of his statements just say that many of the the arguments are in a similar form, not that he advocates for either. I called him on it directly also. |
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Speaking of zero hedge as an information source, which we don't really do at the moment, anyway, I found these two near perfect articles today: This is about mining, but the author nearly completely understands that in general, the low interest rate and money expansion distorts both production, by focusing on the investments that has a long time interval between investment and finished consumer goods, and consumption, because the consumer due to low interest has exhausted his resources in advance, and is now in a consumption reduction mode: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-13/miners-buried-billions-debt-after-colossal-misjudgment-demandAnd this, which reveals (to me, anyway) new details about the conditions in Argentina, and how the state's intervention in just about everything reduces productivity, running all kinds of value destructive enterprises, including the traditional export industries which are now unprofitable due to the managed peso dollar exchange rate. There is only one single important difference to conditions in greece, and that is that greece have relatively sound money. If anybody think that not joining the euro in 2001, but keeping the insane regulations, the outrageous spending on welfare, and the defense spendings, would change anything for the good, this article gives food for thought: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-13/argentina-model-greece...and this one was an interesting cross-over for the Armstrong followers: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-14/bofa-stumped-fund-managers-have-highest-cash-levels-lehman-yet-nobody-selling"The latest BofA Fund Managers Survey has left the report authors stumped: on one hand fund managers have the highest cash levels since Lehman at 5.5% (most since December 2008 and prior to that November 2001), which combined with a capitulation in risk appetite due to ongoing stress in Greece and China would suggest a screaming buy signal... but there is one problem: the same fund managers refuse to actually capitulate and sell, and as a result not only are bank longs at record highs, but equities remains solidly overowned but the group, offset by "protection" levels which are the highest since February 2008. In short, the current positioning is a "complete contrast to 2008."" ... "In short: not only is everyone on the same side of the boat when it comes to underlying cash positioning, but this groupthink is doubled down as virtually everyone has all the same hedges. If nothing else, this explains why even on down days volume lately has been anemic (we know "up" volume barely exists): the smart money no longer sells at all but merely buy index puts." |
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Not really, only the confirmations have taken longer time lately.
And it's the confirmations that some transactions rely on in order for the transaction to actually process for the user to get their purchase. As far as others saying the answer is to raise fees... I totally disagree. Fees are already too high. It's disrespectful and represents a defeatist attitude towards bitcoin to impose such high transaction fees as if this is what bitcoin is supposed to be about. hahaha. Bitcoin is supposed to be about perpetual inflation and no fees? no I think that is a different protocol. When mining decreases, you should expect longer intervals between blocks. If you don't like this fact, you should be using a different protocol. With the fee pressure, mining has increased, but it had been decreasing prior to that. We get to chose between: Longer between blocks, or more fees and higher bitcoin mining and valuation. |
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[extensive wailing]
[gnashing of teeth] The 1MB "short term hack" got Bitcoin to where it is today. Go ahead and make all the noise you want. Stamp your feet and hold your breath. Enlist Reddit as your personal army. Issue threats. Spin up XT nodes. It won't make a difference; the block size is staying at 1MB for the foreseeable future. Nobody except your fellow Gavinistas cares how many times you fatuously repeat 'ZOMG TEMPORARY 1MB LIMIT IS TEMPORARY RAISE IT NOW.' It won't stay, because the Gavinistas are the majority and you represent a minority. Democracy is over rated. |
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I support Satoshi's ideas.
I have never heard that Satoshi propose exponential growth of block. (doubling size every 2 years) that's a compromise Gavin did for you folk, Satoshi didn't support a limit at all. The block size limit is a short term hack. Someday we might get beyond such a limit, but it could be quite a while. BIP100 looks promising though. "a short term hack" is how I see it, what concerns me is developers appear to be leveraging it to push through other hacks. (hacking the hack - postponing indefinably until such time as other hard fork changes could be bundled in with this one.) BIP100 is good in that it removes the hard fork limit, my reservations though are that it does nothing to erode the centralized control system that has evolved. I prefer Bib 101 as it implies some central gate keepers need to eat humble pie, however nether are my first choice. At this stage I'd like to start seeing more decentralized development, the notion that Bitcoin is resilient in that if the protocol is modified the ideals will never be eroded because it is open source and can be forked to keep the original intent appears to only be valid so long as we share the same motives as the centralized development team. The very idea of forking that was originally proposed to protect Bitcoin Values was vehemently opposed by the centralized developers who expressed disdain that they were not consulted and their process for seeking permission to propose change was not adhere too, even going so far as calling the idea of forking to remove the hard limit a threat to the very success of bitcoin. I think there is a distortion of perception and lack of empathy all round. ultimately it is the people who put economic energy into the idea that make it viable, and while developers are all important, they are not the gods who conduct this experiment, its the people who put in there economic energy. Your reasoning is interesting to me. Mostly because your evaluation appears to contradict your conclusion. And so, I suspect you have a some well thought out ideas and nuances that you've not yet communicated. Both 100 and 101 provide a mechanism for more block size. Choosing between the two may depend on your perspectives and assessment of different risk levels within the operating groups. Do you see more centralized control among developers or miners? - If development is more centralized, BIP100, (developers giving controls to miners). - If mining is more centralized, BIP101, (developers retaining control over block size increases and schedules). Both remain fairly centralized, though both are less so than they previously have been. From your discourse, it would seem your evaluation would be the devs are more centralized and so would favor BIP100, (irrespective of who authored it). |
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So when are the developers of Bitcoin going to fix the horrid transaction times of Bitcoin, waiting 35 minutes to 2 hours for a transaction to confirm one time is getting a bit ridiculous.
And for you Bitcoin lovers Dont waste our time quoting any crap from bloickchain.info, I dont want to hear it, because you know what, those stats and charts on blockchain.info are not accurate and it doesnt matter what those things say when the end user is experiencing actual times of 30 minutes to 2 hours.
I mean you guys want acceptance, you want adaptation yet your biggest competitor in what Bitcoin is supposed to be used for can transact cash in 15 minutes. it takes me 5 to 8 hours to get cash for my bitcoins, its time to step up the game a bit.
EDIT: oh and yes before the bitcoin lovers even go there, I pay a 10,000 Satoshi transaction fee for High Priority on all of my personal transactions I send. So lets not try the pay a bigger fee for faster transaction times.
So the question remains what are the Bitcoin developers doing to fix this problem with transaction times we have been facing for the past year or more, that seems to keep getting worse as they ignore it and keep posting biased charts from unreliable sources.
Splurge on the extra $0.0003 and go to the head of the line with a 10010 satoshi fee. Its crowded at 10K. |
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I can't imagine you're getting many buyers if you're asking for 12% over Bitstamp.
Your imagination aside, isn't it much like localbitcoin with a concierge service? The rates are fairly similar to lbc, and often discounted in comparison. LBC does maybe a thousand bitcoin a day, yes? If you don't like it, don't use it, or set up your own better service, but I don't see a reason for the disparagement. |
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I support Satoshi's ideas.
I have never heard that Satoshi propose exponential growth of block. (doubling size every 2 years) Satoshi would never trade trustlessness and resiliency for efficiency and adoption. Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices. - Satoshi Nakamoto 2010 Did you read the posting right above mine? Its completely clear that he supported the idea that as the network grows the full nodes would need to be dedicated servers and most users would use SPV. This is what you guys are calling "centralization". But its really not, because it remains permissionless. That's the most important thing, because if you don't like the full node choices you could always get a few people together and rent your own. Additionally, the node centralization fear is simply stupid because we've already lost the fight. Miners have 99% of the power in the Bitcoin network and they are much more centralized than full nodes. You're closing the barn door after the cows have already gotten out! @odalv: AFAIK Satoshi didn't say anything about whether increases should be pre-baked in or not. But regardless I think the blocksize increase crowd would compromise on a static but significant (8MB or greater) increase. Most folks won't take an appeal to authority argument very seriously, but for those that might, it merits pointing out that it is not entirely clear that this means that node quantities should be expected to decline, or just that SPV users should increase at a much greater pace percentagewise. |
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It is improved. A rotted corpse is also improved by burying it.
If 1326 does not pass, we'd be better off.
Crypto currencies do not need any special legislation. There is no benefit to this passing for any of us.
Current laws are more than adequate.
It is just more make-work for government employees.
It provides just yet another avenue for corruption, paying off government to do (or not to do) something completely unnecessary.
To your main point. We absolutely do NOT need a law to prove to anyone that "Bitcoin is not dead".
There are laws against fraud, and against stealing and all the "concerns" the lobbyists are using in order to prevent businesses in the State of California from offering any competition to the entrenched interests and banks
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I have massive doubts that a population that gets itself in such a situation (either by being corrupt themselves, or voting for a government that is), can manage Bitcoins. Bitcoins require a minimum intelligence for usage and protection against theft.  The US government has even more debt (as do many countries). Does this mean that the US population is more corrupt than Greece? |
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