not so fast Lazer, what if it's a euphemism ?

look up justthinking, he's got the right idea. replacing the QR code is just the start - best use of NFC with bitcoin would be to use the nfc secure element to store the private key for the wallet. suggest using microSD secure element for this, unless we can persuade rim or google to sign off on a bitcoin app in their embedded secure elements. no chance of it going in the SIM for commercial reasons.

no it doesn't, no it isn't and no they don't. This is about the roll out of smart grids, which is going to happen in a seriously insecure way if they don't legislate a standard soon.

you mean like 3rd party market forces where they take a cut ?

linking an account to an apple id would scale*


*i have no idea whether gavin et al, almost certainly including the CIA, have done a deal with apple to include a bitcoin friendly keypair in every embedded secure element in the iphone 5 out next week, using the well established apple id credentials to access the keypair to transfer funds or make purchases on the app store.**

** no really i haven't, but wouldn't it be a good idea if they had. would save apple a buck or two in fees too. can't say it would add stability to the bitcoin price in the short term tho.

Thanks all for your replies. For me this one spelt out the bit I hadn't grasped. If 99% of the users representing only 2% of the supply/demand/wealth go and do something else, the effect on bitcoin is low.

Maybe one day we can find a way to artificially decrease the supply of inflation threads...

The 21m limit is by reasonably unanimous agreement between the existing users. That is, more than 50% of clients would have to decide to fork and run a different client to change it.

Let's say that the existing users are a small proportion of the people that will use bitcoin over the years. About 1%, if you will.

By and large, existing Keynesian economic policies use expansion of the money supply during lean times to devalue everything a little bit now and in the future, to get a lot right now, in order to "prime the economy", save/create employment, see us through the bad times, pay bankers bonuses etc etc. By and large, democratic countries at least do this because it wins votes right now, putting the burden on those who will vote later.

In a world where the 'other 99%' have started using bitcoin, but have less money than today's average user and don't use bitcoin as a savings vehicle (let's say price is largely stable so there are better investment opportunities elsewhere) why shouldn't they get together via a grassroots campaign during a global crisis, to move to a client that has a larger money supply ? The argument would be that the bitcoins are unfairly distributed and the rich have too many of them anyway. The regulation/cartels/barriers-to-entry/institutions that protect the super rich today from this happening more often are less likely to exist in bitcoin. In effect a majority agreement to apply a type of QE into the bitcoin economy. Would this be justifiable ? Would it have the desired effect on the worth of the newly issued bitcoins in people's pockets ? Would it stimulate anything, or make anything more equal ? Is there a technical reason why it couldn't happen in practice ? And what about going the other way ? While bitcoins are still being issued, is there any tipping point where users might want to make the block reward asymptote at less than 21m ?

I suggest that we all start emailing african strangers with 'a business offer you can't refuse'. We should probably make sure to email quite a few at once to make sure enough of them see it. If they don't get it first time we'll have to be quite persistent. I think we'd have the best hit rate in Nigeria, they seem very business minded. It would help to have important people back it, but luckily I happen to know the president's family are on email quite a lot and interested in financial things too !

Edit: for these guys i think the automated translations without any review will be just fine

Very good, no I don't have flash (who knew)

To the tune of 'how much is that doggie in the window'

Oh why does mount gox live hang my iPad
The site with the wiggly line
Oh why does mount gox live hang my iPad
It really detracts from the shine

It seems you can look oh so briefly
To see what a bitcoin might cost
But the interweb packets keep streaming
Till Safari gets full and gets lost

[chorus]

I try to move on to clark moody
Or rotate to make the site tall
But safari just sits and sucks prices
And won't do my bidding at all

[chorus]

I once tried the site on my handset
It was all I could think of to do
But the interweb packets kept flowing
And my iphone gave up on them too

[chorus]

Perhaps it is only my iStuff
Perhaps that the interweb's broke
Or maybe 1PL6ej9K334XKnmRFbvxfF4Tzoeu7brZNR will fix it
He's surely that kind of a bloke

Good answer, thank you

To make amends I'll make my next question luckier, by only asking it if the hash of it (mod 65535) comes in below a satoshi throw.

what's all this then

Sold.

(literally)

Hi

I happened to see that the bitcoin episode from the good wife aired in the UK on 5th April 2012, so is now freely available on the 4od service in the uk

That is all

Ok, but as a reason for this leading to more miners, Vlad is entrepreneurial, has created a unique position at this point, and there's a long term and elastic source of reward money. why would he stop there ?

Let's say you invested in inventing a new spade that you could use to dig up $100 of precious metals. There's plenty of precious metals around, but no-one else's spade is any good. Do you make more money by :
A) making a spade and digging
B) selling spades for $99 each ?

For anyone equating ASICs with 51% mining, I wouldn't worry too much. ASICs become financially viable if you plan to sell them in consumer products in high volume (millions), or for dedicated tasks at high cost where a higher power and larger FPGA just won't cut it (say, a pacemaker).

If vlad's plan is the first, this will lead to a high volume product that's good at mining. Much less chance of anyone getting 51% in a market like this with cheap commoditised hardware available, whether he sells them, allows his subcontractor to sell them after a lockout, or his subcontractor owns the design (in which case he needs a pretty good reason for the investor to invest in him rather than the sub), and also the sub will sell the design to as many people as possible = more miners

If it's the second, you can still achieve his hash rate with gpus or fpgas. You'll just need to buy more hardware and spend more on electricity and cooling than he will. But nowhere near the amount he spent on designing the chip ($2-$5m depending on complexity and whether you cock it up or not). He's got a lot of money to make back. So perhaps he'll rent out his new ASIC hashing power from a central location. But then you're back to more distinct miners in the market = less chance of anyone hitting 51%.

Oh, and for the record, GPUs are ASICs themselves... (the GPU guys had to design the first GPU, right?). Just not ones that are particularly dedicated towards SHA hashing. Oh, and the GPU designers will have tried the design out first on an FPGA. Crystal ?

Ok, I finally got it. Sure you can play tricks with the previous block hash, but you'll never get the right merkle root. The time stamp is tricky too, but the merkle root completely nails it. Nothing to see here, our mystery miner indeed does have lots of hashing power (and that satoshi chap thought of everything). Thanks for your corrections, will read more of the wiki next time...

if your first comment is right, I've misunderstood what difficulty is for...  On your second, sure you can add in previous real block chain hashes to your attack, but then you're reduced to very unlikely collisions. Why not look for some too, with your prior knowledge that the hashes will get smaller and smaller ?

But the difficulty keeps coming down, right ? So by 2021 there aren't very many input hashes you're going to be faced with ? let's say you know any possible remaining input hash is going to be under 0x00000000000000000000000000000064, just for instance ? I can spend more than 100 times longer than you can if I start now based on empty blocks and you wait for the real transactions ? Or do I get scuppered by the timestamp which I have to guess ? Or something else ?

Yes you would have more work, but you would also get more time than other people to do it in (you can start ahead of time). If you find a match now, with a timestamp in the future, you'll just be storing it for use in case that hash ever comes up. In fact, if you can find suitable 217 byte matches for each of the last 100 hashes (and you can start this now if you pick a good date), can't you just pull them out of the bag within seconds of each other in 2020 ?

However, I'm convinced by the argument that the bandwidth benefits of skipping transactions are worth it if you have a botnet, so perhaps I'm thinking too hard about the possibility of someone having a cheat rather than a botnet.  

On another note, do we know if the mystery miner just looks as if he does more empty blocks, because he has enormous hashing power so gets there before there are any transactions, and because the empty blocks are easier to spot ? (put another way, are there full tx blocks coming from the same IPs as he uses as well as empty blocks)