In a year from now BTC will have its own anon options with projects such as Coinjoin or Darkwallet which will make theses alts obsolete and pointless. Nope Bitcoin won't have any of those because of their centralization and regulation of their currency. If you speak with the Bitcoin Foundation then you will notice that they really don't like anonymity inside a currency But if and this is a big if, Gavin Andresen and the Bitcoin Foundation get their way on the 1 MB blocksize issue Dark Wallet, can become a reality, regardless of their position on anonymity. If on the other hand the 1 MB blocksize limit remains in Bitcoin, Dark Wallet is doomed. |
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I was thinking that, the masternodes are still assisting in providing services to others.
You are right, they do more services to the network then assisting the TX obfuscating process. This is far from clear. One actually needs a strong understanding of both the FinCEN regulations and the inner workings on how a Darkcoin masternode actually works. Of course anyone can apply to FinCEN for a specific ruling, presumably with a bona fide intent to actually run a Darkcoin masternode in the United States. The way I prefer to look at the masternode as an MSB question is that there is a significant regulatory risk present in Darkcoin that is not present in Monero. The degree of this risk may take a fair amount of work and research to determine. |
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The Achilles Heel of Proof of Stake is debt (or borrowed stake) where stake does not equal exposure. Given the history of pirateat40 and his massive short position in Bitcoin built up during late 2011 and 2012 an attack on POS named after him is apt. The "Second Pirate Savings and Trust" attack on Proof-of-Stake. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=897488.msg10182752#msg10182752There can other variants of this such as an exchange gone bad leading to a "Goxing" of the POS coin or the use of derivatives to short the coin. In all of these scenarios the attacker has both a significant stake combined with a net short exposure to the coin. |
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I get the following error on bitmonero wallet v0.8.8.6-release
Error: not enough outputs for specified mixin_count = 4:
output amount = 0.024590360000, fount outputs to mix = 1
The transaction will go through with a mixin of 1 but not with a mixin of 4. It has happened for my last two transactions so I suspect a wallet issue, may be related to mixing change transactions.
When the fee was 0.1, we also had the dust threshold set to 0.1 which meant anything <0.1 was not broken down into denominations. These undenominated amounts tend to be unique and they can't be mixed. The current threshold is 0.01, so it happens only with smaller amounts. In the future I think it will be 0. One workaround is to try the transaction a few times. There is some randomization in which outputs the wallet uses for a spend transaction. If it doesn't pick those odd outputs, the problem doesn't occur. A longer term solution is to create a new wallet, or do a one-time unmixed spend of the entire current balance (which clears out the wallet off all old outputs, effectively making it new again). That will link those amounts together on the blockchain but future spends will be mixable so the trail is broken. Thanks. I figured something along these lines. One question; Would a coin control feature to spend all of these un denominated amounts to a new wallet work? |
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I get the following error on bitmonero wallet v0.8.8.6-release
Error: not enough outputs for specified mixin_count = 4:
output amount = 0.024590360000, fount outputs to mix = 1
The transaction will go through with a mixin of 1 but not with a mixin of 4. It has happened for my last two transactions so I suspect a wallet issue, may be related to mixing change transactions.
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Monero.
Edit: Disclosure I have a position in Monero
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Yes. That can work because there is an effective hedge, given that a rise in the value of XMR would lead to an increase in the value of CK and the assets therein. Without an effective hedge one can create a situation similar to the one in Russia where people were financing the purchase of Russian real estate with USD mortgages. Only in this case the impact can be far worse since for example XMR/USD can easily spike by a much greater factor than USD/RUB.
The fate of pirateat40 in 2012 with his massive XBT short position, is a very important lesson to anyone considering taking on XMR denominated debt today.
There are no real-world guarantees for the ingame loans. (This of course is the reason why "useless" = no opportunity cost XMR can fetch such an interest rate.) So if CK does not have at least beta=1 with the rise of XMR, the borrowers can walk away by surrendering their ingame assets to the bank. If the bank cannot meet its own obligations due to cascading defaults, it goes belly up and creditors do not receive in full. This is how it should be IRL also, and was, when money was still something that could not be created at convenience. Most creditors however, have a bond position of 200 XMR against a real-life XMR position of 20k or so. This creates to them a situation where they enjoy the nice interest rate with the "only risk" being that XMR rises so fast that the game cannot keep up, and they lose a fraction of the 1% lent, while the remaining 99% in cold wallet increases 10x or so in purchasing power. The borrowers' risk is limited to ingame assets anyway. Resemblance to pirateat40 is superficial at best. So if I understand this correctly there is no net short XMR position for over 99% of the debt and the remaining 1% is backed on a non recourse basis by in game assets. Given that the in game assets would likely hold their value against XMR under most scenarios, there is no resemblance to pirateat40 in any practical sense. The situation I am talking about is a classic short position where the asset purchased with the borrowed XMR is uncorrelated to the value of XMR, not a tightly hedged situation such as the CK case. |
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The idea of borrowing XMR in any market but particularly in this market sends shivers up my spine. Just my two moneritos.  IN CK, it's possible to lend XMR short-term at about 0.38% and borrow about 0.60%. The bank has borrowed 4227 XMR and lent out 3767 XMR. It will be interesting when the value rises, how it will affect the game and if there will be foreclosures.  Yes. That can work because there is an effective hedge, given that a rise in the value of XMR would lead to an increase in the value of CK and the assets therein. Without an effective hedge one can create a situation similar to the one in Russia where people were financing the purchase of Russian real estate with USD mortgages. Only in this case the impact can be far worse since for example XMR/USD can easily spike by a much greater factor than USD/RUB. The fate of pirateat40 in 2012 with his massive XBT short position, is a very important lesson to anyone considering taking on XMR denominated debt today. |
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The idea of borrowing XMR in any market but particularly in this market sends shivers up my spine. Just my two moneritos. |
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My losses would be a negative amount.  |
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The big issue I see with Bitcoin Dark Wallet is the 1 MB blocksize limit in Bitcoin.
Which will be 20MB before it reaches Beta. Yes. This is one thing that Gavin Andresen got right but in my opinion his proposal does not go far enough. |
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The big issue I see with Bitcoin Dark Wallet is the 1 MB blocksize limit in Bitcoin.
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1) Monero
2) Bitcoin
3) Namecoin
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ClamAV under Linux...  +1 I would not trust a single satoshi to Microsoft Windows regardless of the Anti Virus software used. |
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But Bitcoin actually works with regulated third parties. I would start with actually reading the regulations. Here is a good starting point for those in the US http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html... and did the US Government not actually sell a fair number of XBT? Edit: The real barrier here to Bitcoin and other crypto currency adoption is DRM infested locked down propriety platforms such as IOS and Windows 8 RT and malware infested propriety operating systems such as virtually every version of Windows. It is not governments. Here is an interesting application of firearms to solving the DRM infested locked down propriety platform issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuQZTAJ2KLk |
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Before commenting on this it is critical to listen to the whole interview. http://insidebitcoins.com/news/bill-gates-3-criticisms-of-bitcoin The interviewer does an excellent job of asking the tough questions and Bill Gates attempts but in reality fails to "doge the bullets". The first of course is when the interviewer effectively pins down Bill Gates into supporting GMOs. The real bullet he has to doge is when the interviewer reminded Bill Gates how he benefited from open systems to develop as a coder, and how many systems today are closed. No mention of the dreaded G (GNU) and L (Linux) words but the message is loud and clear. Bill Gates avoids the issue by shifting the focus to basic literacy rather than coding skills. My take is that he knows that many of the answers are to ditch propriety solutions but of course will not admit to that. Poor people cannot currently rely on bitcoin
“The effort to make sure your bitcoin provider isn’t going to lose your money and your understanding of the volatility of bitcoin — I’d hardly say that it’s ready for, you know, poor people to have it go up and down by a factor of two and, you know — ‘Oops, I was at Mt. Gox. Now that’s not good. Now I’m at Bit-whatever.’” He is wrong on both counts here. First on the volatility issue there are many situations where the the fees associated with a propriety transaction outweigh the volatility risk even for the homeless. http://www.wired.com/2013/09/bitcoin-homeless/all/. The issue of the provider risk misses the entire point of Bitcoin. The solution is to not rely on a provider but instead store the XBT on a device that one trusts. This of course brings up the issue of malware, in order to prevent the theft of the XBT. The solution to the malware issue is of course very simple. Ditch Windows and run GNU/LInux instead. Now does anyone really expect Bill Gates to admit to that! Lack of transaction reversals
“So that basic technology shows that digital can do these things very cheaply, and the fees that have been building up over time won’t stand up even for small transactions. Now making sure that the thing is fraud-resistant and that money can be refunded – there’s somebody that you call up if you think you transferred to the wrong account or your account balance is not what you’d expect.” He is wrong again. The problem with this argument is that it only works if the payee has good credit in order to honour the reversal. There is a reason why one of the requirements or of a Merchant account of a PayPal account is a good credit rating. Now if the real objective here is to address poverty a payment system that relies on the payee having good credit makes absolutely no sense since in many cases poor people have no credit or bad credit. After all if it is difficult or impossible to make payments to poor people how on earth can one expect such a payment system to help reduce poverty! Potential Anonymity
“Also governments, for most transactions, will want attribution, that is, the idea of a system where you can’t see — is that drug money, is it terrorist money? Should that be taxed? You’re going to have some tension between the attributed systems like credit card [or] debit card systems where there’s actually a record of who’s engaging and the purely anonymous ones. The one where I see it getting to critical mass, along with the government regulatory support we need is where it’s attributed; where we can see who actually did this transaction.” He is wrong again. The issue here is cost vs return pure and simple. The cost of doing AML/KNC on a prospective client is close to the same regardless of the net worth of the client. This net worth can be 0.60 USD or 60,000,000,000.00 USD. The difference in the profit potential for the institution doing the AML/KNC differs by 11 orders of magnitude. For this reason the only digital money transfer systems that actually work and are cost effective for the poor are those that do not have or effectively do not have attribution. |
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