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For what it's worth, I took the OP up on his offer for a free personal report. It was fascinating to see the names of people I've worked with years ago when I was living in America, and even some old email addresses I had that I had completely forgotten about. Some of the information is a bit misdirected, but I think that has something to do with my bizarre and reckless history of registering companies on a whim and never using them, and coming to Korea at 20 and never going back to the USA. Other than that, I would recommend this user's services if I needed basic information or a list of kin etc. Very good and very fast.
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Wow what an amazing writeup. It's really interesting to get a glimpse into how someone completely new to Bitcoin learns about it and I thank you for taking the time and writing your post!  +1 It's always interested to see other peoples' perspective of this community, and sometimes humbling and embarrassing when their write-up ends with "and then I was harassed regularly and left bitcoin forever because of the trolling". @OP: You can now add to the list that on January 26th, 2013 you learned that Bitcoin had a Christmas Special. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGuD9ru27d0 |
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Hardware is a tough industry as I've come to learn. You don't get anywhere in hardware without burning money. The question then is if you're able to replenish it or not. I can safely say that as an open source project, I have no confidence in the bitcoin community's ability to support its large overhead for manufacturing as there just isn't a large enough market for such a device.
That said, I have come to grow fond of the principles of open source since coming to the Bitcoin community and I hope to appreciate it even moreso as I work on open source projects this year. Here's to broader minds and strokes in 2013.
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I really wish every website had something like this. Many websites are still sending login information in the clear, especially small bitcoin websites.
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Is there a way to read these in reverse and get the string from the image? |
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I have been longing to try out LiteCoin since I first heard about them but I've got no idea how they work. If they're more or less the same protocol as Bitcoin, I wouldn't mind incorporating them into my life as well.
Thank you for helping out with a starter balance! LPeVpxPMsfS7e9dcDvMNUEcaf3ka3tJWjr
I do have a question also: Is it really true that Litecoin solves the GPU/FPGA/ASIC mining crisis? I have heard so many people claiming it so and so many others claiming that it's simply not true. I wish I could get a definitive answer.
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Interesting perspective. I have to say I agree with most of what you said, but even a million signatures doesn't solve the problem of scamming or else being President would make you honest (lots of signatures required for that!). What would be a good way to handle the then theoretically minuscule amount of scammers?
The key parameter for fraud prevention through escrow isn't the quantity of signatures; two approvals are always enough to resolve any dispute, guaranteed. No need for millions. If the buyer and seller are satisfied, they vote "yes" and the funds automatically clear. The third (i.e. predetermined arbitrator) signature is only used in case the buyer and seller don't agree, in order to break the tie. So basically all bases are covered, and the maximum "votes" needed to achieve a fair result is 3, with 2 being sufficient for the majority of transactions where no fraud is involved. Politics is a wholly different topic, unfortunately not subject to math...there is no easily implementable multisig solution that can be used to restrict political fraud  I see politics in its simplest form as being the science of dealing with more than 2 people. Wouldn't it be impossible to be absolutely fair with 3 signatures as 1 person could also be influenced? |
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Since this seems to be the thread to post in for people who can't math, I have a question as well: Would it be possible to win eventually if you just keep tripling your bet every time you lose or would the amount required be larger than the maximum bet allowed eventually (which I think the upper end is at 500Ƀ)?
Bets (at 50%)
1) 1Ƀ - Lose
2) 3Ƀ - Lose
3) 9Ƀ - Lose
4) 27Ƀ - Win (40Ƀ spent, 52Ƀ won, 12Ƀ profit) Lose
5) 81Ƀ - Lose
6) 243Ƀ - Lose
Fake edit: I answered my own question. If it took more than 6 tries, you wouldn't be able to break even much less profit due to the max bet allowed.
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My main question is though, how is the BitCoin economy currently solving the problem of verifying the legitimacy of the various locations offering goods and services for bitcoin?
The problem with reputation systems is that they break down once the gain from stealing customer funds sufficiently exceeds the gains from keeping a clean reputation. See: Pirate, Patrick Harnett, mybitcoin, etc. Problem is not exclusive to Bitcoin; ratings and oversight entities similarly fail to prevent fraud in metaspace. See: Madoff, MFGlobal, etc. So rather than try to subjectively rate people, and provide a false sense of security, why not try a better approach, and create a system that mathematically removes incentives for vendors to steal your money? Well, it turns out, we kind of have that: Bitcoin has escrow functionality built into the protocol. Full support for that technology in miners, clients, and vendors will make it unprofitable for sellers to seal your funds. For even greater security against dishonest buyers or totally suicidal sellers, human arbitration services can be layered on top. Details, from the main man himself: It's not implemented yet, but the network can support a transaction that requires two signatures. It's described here: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=750.0It's absolutely safer than a straight payment without escrow, but not as good as a human arbitrated escrow, assuming you trust the human enough. In this kind of escrow, a cheater can't win, but it's still possible for you to lose. It at least takes away the profit motive for cheating you. The seller is assured that the money is reserved for him, while the buyer retains the leverage that the seller hasn't been paid yet until completion. BTW blockchain.info apparently already supports (and has a nice UI for) 3-way multisig, which would accommodate a buyer + a seller + an arbitrator. Check out: https://blockchain.info/wallet/escrowSo what we really need in Bitcoinland aren't ratings agencies, but cheap arbitration services on top of vendors offering a multisig option to buyers. Interesting perspective. I have to say I agree with most of what you said, but even a million signatures doesn't solve the problem of scamming or else being President would make you honest (lots of signatures required for that!). What would be a good way to handle the then theoretically minuscule amount of scammers? |
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That would mean the casino is essentially gambling with its own funds in my eyes. It would have to hope that the $ value goes up enough to cover the amount that was "destroyed" in the first place, you also would have problems with transparency and showing people how you are "destroying" the coins and not just keeping them.
Could be as easy as publicly sending to a black hole address. This is a silly idea just the same. |
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Adam,
Is your car a manual or automatic? And yes, batteries don't do well in the winter time.
automatic Pop starting would have been a temporary fix anyway. Although it might have been useful to get to the auto parts store! It might not work anyway. I tried "pop starting" my bike last month when the battery died in the cold and the bike would just slide on the ice.  |
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Adam,
Is your car a manual or automatic? And yes, batteries don't do well in the winter time.
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It's exactly like gold in sunken galleons  Except that gold has a small chance of being found.  There is a small chance lost BTC can be found if the cryptographic algorithm protecting it eventually is compromised to the point that "treasure hunters" can brute existing addresses. That's something to look forward to in the future. As the son of a man who has panned for gold, metal detected on beaches and old civil war sites, and looks for treasure all the time, that interests me. It would only apply to wallets that were "lost" because they never upgraded their encryption right? |
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Twas a fun project to work on indeed.
Thank you for being there for the earlier prototypes. It was fun. The project itself has stalled for funding reasons (it costs about $1 million to get even 50,000 of them produced). We thought about a kickstarter or indiegogo campaign, but in shopping around for distributors we found that most of them were scammers trying to steal our ideas. For the moment, we're taking our time and watching the market for interest (as we should have done in the first place). Slush, who was there in the beginning of the Ellet's development for a few months has also started making a physical wallet device. Check his out too! |
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constitution may also be an alt.
I instantly felt this way when I noticed he posts responses/follow-ups to himself in several threads. |
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Wow surprised to see this turn around in Mathew, your doing the right thing. But like others said, that move still makes you an ass, for eternity..
Some may choose to remember me for that, but I'll be making it very hard for them to. |
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Unfortunately, what you're asking me to do is treat you differently than everyone else who has already agreed to a settlement. If you'd like it be paid, I'm afraid it will require at least minimal communication. Thank you for understanding and I apologize if it seems as if I'm making it more difficult than it needs to be. This comes from direct advice of theymos and several others. Don't think there's anything to discuss. You have my address, you know the bet amount, you know that you'd have demanded that amount in full if you'd won as you expected. In case you've forgotten: After poking my wallet a bit, I'd like to increase my previous bet to:
20 BTC
1FXWXErhhfdrGvu65earaRss5wNcyigupL
Still not entirely sure what Matthew's point is with all this, but I suspect it may not work out the way he's hoping it to.
Accepted. |
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@amandaplease223 do you have any pictures of what's going on at the school to share with CNN? I've seen this happen many times. The number of media people who hit the FB and Twitter accounts of witnesses/victims is amazing and their persistence is pretty awful. Seriously? I wonder if there's a term for them, like socmediarazzi for the whole lot, with twitarazzi and effbeerazzi for Twitter and Facebook, respectively. [/quote] Opportunazzis. |
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I wasn't aware your shareholders made the bet. To discuss a settlement (which cannot realistically be 750 BTC unfortunately), please PM. Thanks.
They were heavily invested in Pirate and lost out pretty badly from what I recall, even the ones that didn't realise it. Not sure to what extent usagi was relying on his bet with you though. By the way, my address from the original thread is still valid. Thank you makomk. If you could respond to my message I would like to discuss with how to make things right. I've learned from some people that the reason they didn't respond was that they didn't take the message seriously. I just wanted to reiterate that I have the most serious intentions with this and I am only looking to make things right. |
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