And this is why ASICs suck and why we need cpu-only mining.

Meet the manic miner who wants to mint 10% of all new bitcoins

Recently one pool surpassed 50% of the total mining power of Bitcoin. As well, the individual miners are a just a few people. The rest of the world is left out.

This makes it very easy to regulate and control the transaction processing in Bitcoin. Blacklisting of coins could be easily implemented by the government. I warned about this a year ago.

Regarding Risto's comment about adoption continuing and thus a demand increase and JoeyD's point about markets being unduly influenced by false data from Chinese markets, I just want to offer the thought that market price is (in economic theory) set by the marginal supply and demand, and thus in this case rushes in and out by speculators, not by the fundamental supply and demand.

Over the long-term marginal supply and demand is affected by fundamental supply and demand.

I am just really curious if you understand the engineering of a steel beam structure?

I mean you speak with such venom and ridicule, then certainly you must be knowledgeable?

So can I give you some test engineering questions and expect you to answer?

Don't get shy now fonzie. I remember you as an outgoing cool guy from Happy Days.

Can you tell me how fires and debris could bring the Eiffel tower down vertically in free fall entirely with not any portion standing nor falling off center?

Add: I will have to go restudy my reasons from before if you decide to get into this with me. As I remember offhand when I had studied it before the finite element analysis of the NIST model made assumptions which were impossible.

Basically it boils down to common sense. You can't get domino failure across a lattice structure and free fall.

The discussion continued in another thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=548418.msg5975715#msg5975715

Nonsense. Only Grover's algorithm applies to the SHA hash of the blocks and thus difficulty of proof-of-work would not be adversely affected. The quantum computing threat is Shor's algorithm which applies to the elliptical cryptography used in the signatures of transactions.

OROBTC, I had already explained to you before in that other thread you started. That is a nonsense claim about a thermodynamic limitation for quantum computing attack:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=500994.msg5562217#msg5562217


They correctly assert that a brute force attack would exceed fathomable entropy (thermodynamic) limitations. However, what they fail to tell you is that Shor's algorithm isn't a brute force attack. Shor's algorithm takes advantage of the fact that in quantum computing the computation is unfathomably parallelized.

So you are saying that if it turns up after establishing a new larger triangle it will still be contained within the upper trendline and eventually be lower.

My problem with TA is that it is about 50% accurate.  

Rather I look to see if the sentiment matches my reading of the chart and I'd rather look at some macroscopic pattern such as noting the psychology of the market might be similar to the silver market from 2011 peak on down.

Remember how everyone had a reason that silver couldn't go lower, yet it did because the markets had shifted. Capital began to return to the USA from emerging markets and the Fed was able to slow down on QE and prepare to reverse. Thus there wasn't going to be a mad rush into precious metals any time soon. In short, the expectations had exceeded the reality.

What we have here is a massive rush into Bitcoin last year as it went from obscurity to being discovered by the mass media. The short-term expectations exceeded the reality.

Now we have the reality of numerous problems hit and now everyone exhales and tries to call the bottom. And so we go down and find the point at which everyone says, "I don't care if it goes lower, this is too darn good of a price to not buy".

And I believe that price is $300 and below.

To get there we need capitulation where all those who have an excuse why it can't go lower, have to finally panic. When they panic near the bottom, then you should buy.

Add:

Examples of such excuses. We can see them actively in denial of the market movement.

Rumors of Bitcoin's libertarian death have been greatly exaggerated.

Taking responsibility is so haard.

White House Petition to AMEND IRS NOTICE 2014-2 Taxing virtual currency/Bitcoin

The mass media basically did this "Buy, buy, buy" since summer 2013 and now the "Sell, sell, sell". I mean to say there is a lot of emotion and extreme expectation in the demographic of people who entered because they saw something on the mass media. Emotions and expectations diehard then reverse too late in a frenzy. The assumptions these adopters made upon entering was more akin to overhearing something than deep analysis:

Torque, my guess (based on talking to them here in the Philippines) is it is more cultural than incentivized by the economic realities of their governance, but aren't the two probably causing each other any way (symbiotic). Realize that to large extent the Communist Party is now a mirage, and what is really going on is a lot of crony capitalism.

My guess is the Chinese are clamoring for something to move their money to from those bubbles which are cracking.

Interesting point on the speculation on numerous altcoins, and point taken that anonymity may have nothing to do with it. However anonymity might be desirable, because for example the Chinese have developed ways of obfuscating their comments in blogs and forums by hiding the main point in a joke or an idiom that has multiple meanings. And perhaps more so as the officials clamp down on crypto-currency. Although the government is allowing more freedom now, so maybe it is becoming unnecessary.

Also normal human nature is the more the government restricts something, the more people want to do it. Unlike Westerners who have become quite compliant (fattened with debt, filled with noise on TV, etc), the Chinese are still fighting for their success and appear to have 50,000 protests and riots per year (wonder if that is moderating since the government has been raising minimum wages rather aggressively of late).

What is the first thing you did when your mom said, "don't do that".

Also the Asians are really adopting technology. Even here in the Philippines, the most prized possession is a smart phone (a computer). So the crypto-currency may appear to be a like a game currency paradigm to the Chinese (but they haven't hit consciousness yet in Philippines but if someone makes a game with them then they will). In that case, proliferation of currencies would probably be what they would embrace.

I was told by Charles Hoskinson, that the Chinese are drooling to invest in altcoins. He said he could bring $10s to $100s of millions into an altcoin. And you see he has done it already twice with ProtoShares and Ethereum.

Bitcoin is the exchange currency between them, so the more the altcoins grow, the more Bitcoin grows.

The discussion on China is intriguing. You all appear to be looking at it only from the perspective of Bitcoin. You all appear to continue to have this tunnel vision which is forced on you by your vested interest. I think we need to fight our vested interest in order that we don't miss the bigger picture.

Am I correct that Chinese masses are more open to black market investments than Westerners? They have this shadow banking underground sub-economy wherein relatives refer each other to non-standard investments.

Thus is China Inc. forced to regulate more strongly because unlike in the west where Bitcoin appears to mostly limited to white males who hate central banking or high tech merchants who hate credit card payments, in China perhaps they see the seeds of a mass movement towards Bitcoin, i.e. not as a currency for normal purchases but as an investment vehicle and an investment currency?

Bear in mind that Chinese haven't been able to easily invest outside of their country and their culture really values investing excess income and the participation rate in the stock market and condo bubbles was apparently very high. Also the real interest rate paid on savings accounts is even more negative than in the west, so this forces the middle class to invest instead of save. Also the mainstream investment bubbles are popping already (not yet in the west). Michael Pettis's (mpettis.com) main point is that China's consumption share of GDP is 38% (with investment share at 58%) whereas normal is 50% and in the USA it is 70+% (thus investment share is much lower).

The differing regulation might tell us the different adoption demographics in each country. This might be a very insightful proxy.

If that assumption is correct, then apparently the Communist party are pushing Bitcoin further towards the underground economy (which I am hoping becomes the dominant economy).

This seems to play perfectly towards decentralized exchanges and anonymous coins.

I had already pondered that China (Asia) would be potentially the largest market for an anonymous altcoin due to the extremely high levels of corruption and bribery, e.g. Philippines still has a bank secrecy law for domestic citizens (for now although the IMF et al are working to get it removed ... no conspiracy eh?). Note as a foreigner the bank secrecy doesn't apply to you, the Philippines already has agreements with for example the IRS to share data on any foreign owned local bank account.

Interested to read your thoughts. Hopefully someone can dig up some data.

Risto in spite of knowing the masses will always be fooled, I am the naive optimist who believes every individual can be convinced to be rational. Throughout my life I engaged in discussion those people who disagreed with me, e.g. my grandmother on my father's side from the deep South (New Orleans) who had some negative stereotype of blacks in the 1970s and I think before she died her view had moderated. Probably wasn't due to me, rather society shifted. Also I dislike winning by being politically cunning (which is very obvious I am intentionally trying to fail politically), because I feel it is disingenuous. I despise political organization so much that I actively seek to destroy my political standing. I'd rather my arguments be in the open. I am never trying to win politically. Those times when I do win (and we have to fail often before we win), it is because of algorithmic or marketing insight. Those wins are absolute, and those are the best kind in my opinion. Politics is like a sinking sand, because every person has at least one issue they disagree with you on, and they turn from your supporter to your enemy overnight (there is a scripture about this). It requires so much effort to keep the supporters cohesive. The only self-sufficient wins are technological. I think what aggravated me so much is those who keep trying to turn it into a political contest. I want scientific debate. If someone disagrees with me, then presents some facts. Those snide political retorts have no merit. I really respect someone who had done research and can teach me something. I am not impressed by those who ignore history, as if human nature has changed and history doesn't repeat.

I am really a geek.

P.S. I will moderate my derogatory language in your threads.

Risto you are probably correct, but do you know I've tried being polite in forums about this topic (on and off over a decade) and am tired of being labeled a kook.

I don't like to talk to someone that way. But it is a two-way street. I have invested an enormous portion of my life being knowledgeable about such issues and being a sheepdog (meaning I am protecting society), and it is very frustrating when n00bs blather at me and disrespect my effort.

Discussion going on in another thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=400235.msg5971226#msg5971226

---

Breaking News! Smoking gun! Eyewitness account released by well known Jim Rickards (former intelligence agent turned analyst and author of best seller, Currency Wars) who was in the room when the CIA was doing the insider trading on option puts against the two airlines involved in 9/11. Corroborated by Max Keiser who was talking to Cantor Fitzgerald brokers who told him they were betting short against bombings and airplane attacks imminent on New York.

So STFU mofo! You dumb ass white boy slave.

You've had all these prior examples of false-flags, e.g. Pearl Harbor, Reichstag fire, etc. and you see the clear motivation for 9/11 was the Patriot Act and subsequent executive orders and laws that have created all seeing police and tax slavery state exposed by Edward Snowden. Yet you still want to believe your white world isn't so corrupt as it is. You want to live in your fantasy bubble.

The only thing you might understand is "Mooo. Mooo".

Arrogance? No. Just don't want to join dumb ass fools. I prefer humble, but am I supposed to just fall into the queue with you chattel.

It has nothing to do with lapping up my word. It has to do with you being too lazy to actually research. If you did the research, you would understand why it is physically impossible for the steel buildings to entirely collapse from fire and debris. Add to that free fall velocity of collapse, meaning no resistance. The only way for WTC7 to collapse the way it did was demolition. And if you are not an engineer then maybe you don't understand that, but we engineers understand why. And yes in fact the building was evacuated several times for long periods leading up to this. And in fact there were dozens of workers in the elevator shafts of the twin towers (where the structural steel beams were) for many weeks leading up to the demolitions. If you did some research and capable of understanding engineering and science, then you would know this.

This is another example of what I was explaining upthread (about Bitcoin's white male nerd demographic) wherein we can be separated from the masses who will never be able to comprehend the engineering about 9/11 and so will believe the government's impossible concocted whitewash (or in Bitcoin's case masses are not adopting, only white males against central banking are). We see the same ignorance of science or facts mechanism in play with all the current things white people are fooled into fighting for (to do what the elite want), e.g. Bitcoin, man-made climate change, discrimination, feminism, environment, etc.. The elite lull you into your comfort zone where you can be manipulated with emotional propaganda, e.g. "save those cute polar bears or cute little African kids".

Discussion going on in another thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=400235.msg5971226#msg5971226

---

Breaking News! Smoking gun! Eyewitness account released by well known Jim Rickards (former intelligence agent turned analyst and author of best seller, Currency Wars) who was in the room when the CIA was doing the insider trading on option puts against the two airlines involved in 9/11. Corroborated by Max Keiser who was talking to Cantor Fitzgerald brokers who told him they were betting short against bombings and airplane attacks imminent on New York.

So STFU mofo! You dumb ass white boy slave.

You've had all these prior examples of false-flags, e.g. Pearl Harbor, Reichstag fire, etc. and you see the clear motivation for 9/11 was the Patriot Act and subsequent executive orders and laws that have created all seeing police and tax slavery state exposed by Edward Snowden. Yet you still want to believe your white world isn't so corrupt as it is. You want to live in your fantasy bubble.

The only thing you might understand is "Mooo. Mooo".

Arrogance? No. Just don't want to join dumb ass fools. I prefer humble, but am I supposed to just fall into the queue with you chattel.

It has nothing to do with lapping up my word. It has to do with you being too lazy to actually research. If you did the research, you would understand why it is physically impossible for the steel buildings to entirely collapse from fire and debris. Add to that free fall velocity of collapse, meaning no resistance. The only way for WTC7 to collapse the way it did was demolition. And if you are not an engineer then maybe you don't understand that, but we engineers understand why. And yes in fact the building was evacuated several times for long periods leading up to this. And in fact there were dozens of workers in the elevator shafts of the twin towers (where the structural steel beams were) for many weeks leading up to the demolitions. If you did some research and capable of understanding engineering and science, then you would know this.

This is another example of what I was explaining upthread (about Bitcoin's white male nerd demographic) wherein we can be separated from the masses who will never be able to comprehend the engineering about 9/11 and so will believe the government's impossible concocted whitewash (or in Bitcoin's case masses are not adopting, only white males against central banking are). We see the same ignorance of science or facts mechanism in play with all the current things white people are fooled into fighting for (to do what the elite want), e.g. Bitcoin, man-made climate change, discrimination, feminism, environment, etc.. The elite lull you into your comfort zone where you can be manipulated with emotional propaganda, e.g. "save those cute polar bears or cute little African kids".

Breaking News! Smoking gun! Eyewitness account released by well known Jim Rickards (former intelligence agent turned analyst and author of best seller, Currency Wars) who was in the room when the CIA was doing the insider trading on option puts against the two airlines involved in 9/11. Corroborated by Max Keiser who was talking to Cantor Fitzgerald brokers who told him they were betting short against bombings and airplane attacks imminent on New York.

So STFU mofo! You dumb ass white boy slave.

You've had all these prior examples of false-flags, e.g. Pearl Harbor, Reichstag fire, etc. and you see the clear motivation for 9/11 was the Patriot Act and subsequent executive orders and laws that have created all seeing police and tax slavery state exposed by Edward Snowden. Yet you still want to believe your white world isn't so corrupt as it is. You want to live in your fantasy bubble.

The only thing you might understand is "Mooo. Mooo".

Arrogance? No. Just don't want to join dumb ass fools. I prefer humble, but am I supposed to just fall into the queue with you chattel.

It has nothing to do with lapping up my word. It has to do with you being too lazy to actually research. If you did the research, you would understand why it is physically impossible for the steel buildings to entirely collapse from fire and debris. Add to that free fall velocity of collapse, meaning no resistance. The only way for WTC7 to collapse the way it did was demolition. And if you are not an engineer then maybe you don't understand that, but we engineers understand why. And yes in fact the building was evacuated several times for long periods leading up to this. And in fact there were dozens of workers in the elevator shafts of the twin towers (where the structural steel beams were) for many weeks leading up to the demolitions. If you did some research and capable of understanding engineering and science, then you would know this.

This is another example of what I was explaining upthread (about Bitcoin's white male nerd demographic) wherein we can be separated from the masses who will never be able to comprehend the engineering about 9/11 and so will believe the government's impossible concocted whitewash (or in Bitcoin's case masses are not adopting, only white males against central banking are). We see the same ignorance of science or facts mechanism in play with all the current things white people are fooled into fighting for (to do what the elite want), e.g. Bitcoin, man-made climate change, discrimination, feminism, environment, etc.. The elite lull you into your comfort zone where you can be manipulated with emotional propaganda, e.g. "save those cute polar bears or cute little African kids".


We natives refuse to be slaves (I am % Cherokee) and I see the same daily here in the Philippines, they refuse to obey laws (and that is why I love living here). Some white people (or all except for those who adjust) hate it here because no one follows the rules. They complain incessantly and everyone just leaves the room and lets them blabber to themselves. It is quite hilarious to see the white control freaks go into a livid hissy fit (reminds me of a child whining on the floor of Toys-R-Us about a toy) because the hotel staff refuses to listen to their tirade, wherein the staff escapes to and is giggling in the back office. Here you have no law support to tell your neighbor to stop blasting their karaoke all night for days and weeks. Instead if you want peace, you better buy a large enough area of land. And that is a free market. No big brother to hold your feeble hand.

Even if you think you've enslaved a filipino, they will be doing what ever they damn well please when you turn your head. They live for the moment, so it is very difficult to change their motivation to what you want them to do. Of course I also have white traits in me, such as planning for the future. So it is interesting how I try to balance the two cultures that inhabit myself.

And those armchair sociologists who accuse of me of being racist are equivalently insane. Should I be racist against white or brown people when I am both? Nonsense.

Very detailed reply for you here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455141.msg5961832#msg5961832

I was aware of the ZeroCash innovation over ZeroCoin with more details to be forthcoming May 18, but your video added some new details for me now specifically from the following linked time forward to the end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7LSSE0bRRo#t=492

Both ZeroCash and ZeroCoin have the following weaknesses:

• The don't make your IP address anonymous, i.e. others can still see that your computer sent a transaction (and Tor and VPNs are honey pots). The government has the law to compel you to reveal your passwords or throw you in jail if you don't.
• They require we trust someone to generate the master key and never use it maliciously. If the master key is compromised, unlimited new coins can be created and we won't know which coins these are (anonymity is not compromised), thus the entire crypto-currency comes crashing down. I think this is too much of a risk to put in a currency. Would you trust you money if you can never prove if someone is creating more coins? In other words, we will never know what the coin supply is. That for me is a step backwards to fiat central banking. They may claim they will generate the master key at a ceremony where it is destroyed in front of all viewers, but there is no way to know that the computer used isn't somehow backdoored. The NSA even has means of using electromagnetic sensors to eavesdrop on air-gapped computers.
• Their ZK (zero knowledge) system uses bilinear pairings so this means it is vulnerable to potential secret NSA cryptanalysis and any future quantum computer. I would much prefer we use Lamport signatures on the block chain and helped generalize an improvement for them recently. I haven't yet seen a ZeroCash type zero knowledge employing McEliece binary Goppa codes which are thought to be resistant to quantum computing, even then I would still prefer Lamport because very unlikely cryptanalysis can ever break it.
• Even with ZeroCash's improvement to 9ms per transaction verification speed (ZeroCoin was 400 - 500 ms), this can't scale to Visa scale without requiring that mining be highly centralized. Bitcoin already has the horrific weakness that one pool controls more than 50% of the hash power and thus could blacklist coins...
• It is brand new cryptography and often weaknesses are found in new cryptography. It is premature to put this on the block chain wherein if it is later broken, then it is too late to undo it and the currency potentially collapses. New crypto (especially this complex Pinocchio SNARKs stuff which is a higher order polynomial abstraction of Span Programs) requires 5 - 10 years to be fully vetted.
• If ever the crypto is broken, all the historical anonymity is lost because it is sitting on the block chain.
• It appears to be incompatible with a Mini block chain design.
• There is no way to make mixed anonymous transactions indistinguishable from regular unmixed transactions.
• ZeroCash adds 3 minutes to the transaction time (from time you click checkout) whereas ZeroCoin only added less than 1 second, and this is for all transactions unless you give up the anonymity of the transaction amount for ZeroCash so that you can do some of the transactions outside of ZeroCash (and do anonymity mixing only when you need to) in which case might as well do it offchain as I explain below.

Any way, the immediate solution to all this is to use ZeroCoin offchain (not ZeroCash because ZeroCoin is simpler, much faster to generate transactions, and open source code already exists) and decentralized (no risk of coin loss nor need to trust as with centralized mixers). More details will be forthcoming. The only feature that would be lost is ZeroCash's ability to hide the transaction amounts with Pour transactions, i.e. we'd be stuck with fixed denominations for mixing.

I'd rather see a conservative strategy and give time for something like ZeroCash to mature and solve the weaknesses I enumerated. In the meantime, ZeroCoin could be used offchain decentralized very effectively. So we don't lose much and we don't take the big risks. And we gain some other capabilities.

I had forgotten how insightful this essay was (even though it could be improved):

http://www.coolpage.com/commentary/economic/shelby/Demise%20of%20Finance,%20Rise%20of%20Knowledge.html

I was obviously in a better health condition because I can barely read it now (my concentration is really suffering lately).

I worked very hard to get financialsense.com, marketoracle.co.uk, and gold-eagle.com to publish it (as they had published some of my prior essays), they refused. In particular Chris Sheridan at financialsense said that it was of no value to their readers.

I just fixed the broken links on that essay. In particular, mpettis.com was hacked and my old comments are only available on the internet archive. Here is the one about China which was probably about the time Risto got (mildy) offended by my comments about China as follows:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130410170312/http://www.mpettis.com/2012/10/07/how-to-be-a-china-bull/#comment-17629

---

windjc, I originally posted very far upthread (week or so ago) to reply to a post from Risto (the creator of the thread) about the adoption.

Lately there was some mention of FA vs. TA. So I provided some FA (fundamental analysis) and tied into the current TA w.r.t. to April 15 deadlines.

I also took this opportunity to try to impart some wisdom to Risto (hoping to see him on the winning side) and in the process hopefully touched a few others who might be interested. No doubt I probably offended many others.

Also I made posts in this thread about TA comparing the shape (but compressed duration) of the current BTC crash to that of silver's since 2011.

And why are you so offended? Because your world view is threatened by the facts you'd prefer everyone ignore. I am not impressed by those who are afraid of reason and truth.