I think you mean bitscalper is highly negligible, not theymos...
Negligence is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances.

Sounds to me like bitscalper putting themselves in a position to have their passwords leaks matches that definition a lot better than someone who actually accesses those passwords.

I have said it in the past, and will say it again, do not support people who can't or won't design a secure system. They are holding your MONEY ffs, this is not acceptable. It doesn't matter if you only put in a tiny amount, even though the risk to you personally is small, the risk to the perception of bitcoin community and the formation of a stereotype of 'the kinds of people that use it' is simply too high to be worth the tiny returns you will get.

'Imagine' a point of sale system that accepts bitcoin, operating in a popular grocery store. Payment is done by the customer reading a QR code of the address to pay to using something like BitcoinSpinner on their phone.

What happens when someone makes a fake app which looks just like one of the popular wallet clients which can read the amount from the QR code, then displays a fake 'i have sent x BTC to the store' in their client? Obviously nothing will come through on the POS side of things to confirm the transaction since there is no transaction, however the customer will say for certain that they sent the money cause their wallet app says they did, and it definitely looks like it has been sent according to the person standing at the POS terminal.

What policy should be set by the store and why? On the face of it, it seems like a good idea to simply say 'no sale' to the customer. I am interested to know if any other options can be reasonably considered that leaves both the store and the customer happy.

Are there any situations where the payment is legit but the terminal may not have received it? Some situations I could imagine which look like the above situation but are not, and thus confuse how to deal with the situation are:
The pos terminal temporarily loses internet connection and thus cannot confirm the transaction.
The customer has a bad read on the QR code and has accidentally sent it to the wrong address (unlikely, but possible).

Do you think this is going to be an issue? How would you suggest dealing with it from the perspective of the POS operator? Is there any good way to be able to accept offline transactions without pre-established trust?

If you think that the specific POS implementation matters, please say why and how it may be implemented in a specific way to avoid this potential problem. I think that this issue is independent of the pos implementation, but am happy to be shown to be wrong.

0 - the service on offer is entirely feasible. The manner in which it has been offered is so opaque that it can't possibly be the service that they state to offer.

I do not want to see you shut down your site. I want to see you run a service which both offers profit to the users and benefits to the markets and overall bitcoin system. If your service does what you say it does, this seems like a sure thing.

However, we cannot trust you, and you seem unable to establish any sort of trust between your clients or your skeptics. Perhaps it was unlucky to post the video straight after a series of accusations by other forum users, but it seemed very reactionary. As a professional, you can't afford to appear like that. It undermines the (supposedly) professional service you are offering. You are not offering a 'toy' service. You are a businessman. Act like one. You owe it to yourself.

I am not one to dictate standards, but if you are as experienced as you say you are, in the field of money of all things, you are failing to set any sort of standard whatsoever. Maybe you are, but we don't know, and apparently never will. I am posting in the hope that you can change your ways, establish trust, act in a professional manner that is suitable for the kind of industry you are part of, and that the bitcoin community can be pleased to have you among them. As I said, it seems like you could be potentially offering a valuable service, why not establish some trust and see that potential met?

I am still skeptical of your service. I have tried in this post to give you every excuse possible that you are legit. I hope I am not making an ass of myself if you prove to be a scammer.

To users of bitscalper: I understand you won't be sad if you lose your 1BTC. I understand the personal risk is minimal with those amounts. But the risk to the bitcoin community by supporting these sorts of operations is too high. Please, demand a minimum level of service beyond just the income. You owe it to the community you are part of. Don't put your money into bitscalper until you can be sure you can trust them. Same goes for any company really. Idealistic? Yep!

At the moment the only trust people can establish with this site is based on the notion that 'they earn me money' (something other forum users have verified, and I don't doubt this claim).

To me, this is a shaky basis for trust. I personally do not trust bitscalper. For a professional person to offer 'proof' via the youtube video posted earlier is terrifying and extemely unprofessional. No truly professional person would be willing to say that the video posted legitimises their business. It amazes me that they are brazen enough offer that as 'proof'. The video showed nothing. Yes, nothing. Messages from the websocket ticker proves nothing at all. It actually decreases the trust because bitscalper claims the video conveys information, yet there is only the appearance of information.

Whether you use this service is entirely up to you, and I concede that they may be legitimately offering a valid service, however there is NO ESTABLISHED TRUST and until that is established... I would stay clear.

interesting 'predicament' but I guess there's no arguing with the notion of 'don't buy' during that big fall, and 'do buy' when confidence came back... I guess we're all action junkies at heart huh?

I find it very interesting that no matter the strategy, essentially you end up following the general market trend no matter what. Of course there are some differences between strategies, so the end result is 'one strategy is relatively better than the other', although when both loose it really reflects the market more than the strategy I reckon.

Also it's interesting that this only works for 'trivial' amounts, as anything more than that would have affected the market and the historical data becomes moot.

Great analysis, it's nice to see a bit of coding to pass the time.

edit:

do you suppose if you ran the flippest method many times and averaged the result at each point in time, you'd end up with a 'returns' chart that was pretty-much the same as the market price?

I will drop by, it'll be good to pick your brain about some things I'm working on.

If you were the manipulator, what would you do? How would you 'direct' the market and why?

Of course there is the option to 'fleece the dumb people' like we recently saw with extreme leveraging/bragging on bitcoinica.

But at some stage you have to also protect your own wealth and having it fluctuate like mad isn't in those interests.

And also there may be some desire to set a 'nice' growth rate, something consistent, sustainable, appealing to other potential investors.

Me personally, if I were the manipulator, I have no idea what I'd do. Probably make the market seem more stable than perhaps it really should be so it looks desirable for new money that may be lurking (which does sorta seem to be the theme since that large shakeup).

What are your thoughts on RSI? It seems like another simple yet popular indicator for overbought / underbought

I am mainly aiming to get these systems into bricks and mortar shops. I am still interested in talking with you Hunterbunter but am really looking for a fixed location as the current priority.

NFC + iPhone5 + iPhone wallet app. To me, this is the combo that will result in retailers saying 'yeah we can feasibly do bitcoin now' and then it snowballs from there.

When the hipsters can do it, everyone will realise it's a real thing.

I am creating a point of sale system which includes bitcoin as one of the payment options.

This system will initially be aimed at small retailers and restaurants and will double as business management software if required, although the focus is on point of sale.

There is a strong emphasis on the retail experience for both the staff and the customers. As such, I am looking for businesses in the Melbourne area who are willing to trial the system. It's very important that they be in Melbourne so there can be face-to-face interaction.

The aim is to launch this product for sale globally in June 2012.

If you are interested, or know anyone who is interested, please let me know.

Key features:
Provides all 'cash register' services.
Multiple payment options (cash, card, paypal, bitcoin/flexcoin, others as desired)

Additional features depending on nature of business:
Product and inventory management
Online ordering
Report creation (eg monthly report, tax report etc)
Payroll / staff schedule / timesheets
Reservations / seating / ordering / billing for restaurants

This sort of thing also makes me wonder, is leverage hurting bitcoin (borrowing money to invest and hoping it's worth more in the future so you can pay the loan)? What happens when all this leverage reverses and people want to cash out? Doesn't it just transfer the problems of fiat to bitcoin markets?

Isn't it better to let bitcoin markets reflect a non-leveraged price rather than a leveraged (and hence gambled) price?

I'm a bit of a n00b with this sort of thing so don't be afraid to post explanations that you feel are simplistic.

Sorry I should say if the price of electricity suddenly jumped so that each coin cost a lot more to produce... as per


So I'm saying that if electricity suddenly jumped up to 100x, the amount of people mining would drop because they couldn't afford electricity; consequently the difficulty would go down and hence the amount of electricity to produce 1btc would correct itself to roughly the price before the jump.

Quite true. If a miner spends $1 creating a bitcoin and can only sell it for $0.01 it only stores $0.01 of value, ie the demand value not the production value. Thanks for pointing that out.

However if price jumped, less people would mine, difficulty would go down, the amount of electricity required would be less, and the price to create 1btc would eventually roughly even out... which makes me think that still electricity is a reasonable estimate of the minimum price of a bitcoin.

I'm working on an infographic and thought people here might be able to help me speculate about the current actual value of bitcoin and not just the future market price of bitcoin.

Currently, bitcoin stores some sort of value.
The most obvious store is the electricity from the miners, which is roughly a function of bitcoin difficulty, and of course the price of electricity where you live (and the efficiency of your hardware etc).

This aspect of the value of bitcoin reflects the bare minimum value. Bitcoins should be worth at least the cost of electricity miners put into their creation.

I'm also trying to work out the social and commercial value which is roughly a function of:
how many services are being offered
how valuable those services are to the people who use them
how many people use those services (with bitcoin)

So for example, selling pizza - the market is large, but the number of people offering and using that service (with bitcoin) is small, so it doesn't really add much value to bitcoin. If the number of people offering this service increased and the number of people using it also increased, bitcoin would gain additional value.

I'm thinking as there's increases in point-of-sale infrastructure, international money transfer options, stores of wealth (ie replacement for gold) etc bitcoin value will also increase, and as such it's just as sensible to speculate about these things as it is to speculate about market trends.

Currently these non-mining factors all contribute a tiny  amount to the value of bitcoin, I'd say less even than the electricity cost of mining. As these aspects grow, their value will far outweigh the energy cost of maintaining the network.

So, any ideas of what the current ACTUAL value of 1btc is? Or how to calculate it? Or what will be the big value-adders that are on the horizon?

Any ideas on how to approach creating this infographic are welcome. I have my own ideas of course but I would like it to be an actually useful piece of information rather than just some curiosity that means little.

My guess is currently around the 10 USD mark, but not really based on anything solid yet, I still have to do some data research.

I would have thought there's no need to insure bitcoins so long as banks do genuinely 'hold' them and don't dig their own graves by loaning at an interest rate which would of course eventually mean that there were more loan repayments to be made than bitcoins to pay back. Actually this point makes me wonder if 'bitcoin loans' can ever be meaningful.

It is this 'pure holding' bank that I am interested in, to provide security for me (which is what I pay the bank for). I believe that such a bank can exist (ie there is a method of security that means you can always get back your coins) and that it can be trusted (not sure how that trust can be established, and certainly can't think of a 'mathematically verifiable trust').

Safe deposit boxes are one such style of bank. However, they don't really provide me with the infrastructure (especially digital) to easily move the contents of my deposit around (eg use some of it to buy goods)

I think that ultimately bitcoin banks will exist and be successful and trustworthy, however I personally like that I don't have to trust them and I have the option to safely (encryption etc) store them on my own terms.

I've compiled a pool hashrate distribution pie chart, just for laughs and to try out python image library

http://maverickcharts.com/pool_hashrate_distribution.png

generated by the script at

http://maverickcharts.com/getPools.py

Any suggestions or bugs are welcome. The chart is updated every 15 minutes.

So for the 99% of people who don't even own multiple machines let alone know that they should use them in this manner and least of all even care to use them (laziness etc)... what about them? I think they need a bank. You grandmother would never use multiple machines to store bitcoin, but she can use fiat cash and she can use a bank. Hence, imo, she can't use bitcoin. I think this is a big part of allowing adoption of bitcoin as a currency, and the current attitude of 'its safe as it is' contributes somewhat to the hinderance of uptake.


This applies as much to regular people as much as to banks if not moreso. Banks can use the collective money from fees to provide legitimate security and 'hired muscle' to protect wealth that an individual never could. Any responsible/trustworthy bank would do this

I always think to myself, if my boss paid me in hard cash, I would be nervous as hell trying to store that in my house or wherever. But really, this is exactly how bitcoin works, and it seems kinda, not unsafe, just... absurd. It's not right to expect people to put themselves at those sorts of risks.

flexcoin is a really amazing site, a great idea, I am very impressed.

However, what distinguishes it as trustworthy as compared to something such as MyBitcoin? How do you verify that this organisation will keep your coin for you?

I guess this boils down to philosophy more than technology, but I can imagine a lot of people would genuinely wonder how to verify the trust of what is essentially 'just another website'.