Probably helps that he has twice as many Bitcoins now as he needs to refund for the equivalent USD value.  Only if they didn't cash out the Bitcoins. The fact that he said they'll have to buy BTC to make the refunds suggests they weren't holding large Bitcoin reserves. Interesting. Last I heard, someone said that he was holding all of the preorder BTC money in BTC. |
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Probably helps that he has twice as many Bitcoins now as he needs to refund for the equivalent USD value. |
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Ok, Micon, I generated the same address as you for this coin flip. I sent 0.001 BTC to it: http://blockchain.info/address/1JhXYPL22cZF3q9iXqKRz5iPfFarDH9DNmCasascius: it would be great if you investigated why Micon encountered the error when he tried to be a payer with my payment invitation code: einvpQjRf4Gi9yodNgaFfYrvCiBtfSyXyrwvAZXcKR7rWJzZLiyYLse74RjT6DxEcz8g9MporecpR L5 mC74n36QiMvkcZw28Vh9cvgpz1a which should have produced the address 1JUsk88BGbZbRs3R3JoKxeR4Mc9sxf74kQ You have all 3 pieces (a, b, payment invitation) to investigate. I've highlighted the problem for you..? |
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This is part of the problem: the average American has no idea what is happening in Washington.
The House voted to SUSPEND the debt limit. That means there is NO DEBT LIMIT at all if the bill is passed by the Senate and signed.
The terms of the bill are that the suspension is "temporary", but this is ridiculous because if once the Treasury borrows past the "limit" which will happen immediately if the bill is signed, then if the bill "expires" it has no effect. You cannot "unborrow" money.
If it looked like congress was going to re-impose a debt limit in May, Obama can just borrow all he needs, say, an additional $20 trillion before they have a chance to re-impose a limit.
I see what you're saying... crazy. Of course, they won't borrow a huge sum of money in the next few months, because such an action would make headlines and dash approval ratings, but it is nonetheless a very concerning step on a very slippery slope...! |
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The U.S government is a huge, bureaucratic nightmare where dreams go to die.
I should know I've worked for them for 9 years.
Ok, ok, not necessarily true but I've taken this quote by generally respected famous person to heart:
"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency."
Eugene J McCarthy
When ever I'm stuck in a bureaucratic process and I ask myself "Why do we need this?" I have to think of this quote: "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."Civ 5! Ok, here's my prediction: - For the sake of example, we'll say that the US deems it illegal. - A massive sell-off would occur - Bitcoin would immediately lose at least 90% of its value (there are few who are interested in doing anything illegal). - Other first-world countries would follow suit. - Bitcoin would drop another 50% in value (total of 95%). - It would continue to be used by niche/fringe crowds of libertarians and black market traders. - Price would very slowly rise after a few months of shrinkage, possibly recovering completely and rising beyond even the current price levels, depending on how much it is used in the underground. - Bitcoin would never achieve mainstream use at this point. - Governments might create their own crypto-currencies, but create them in such a way that they still control the issuance of the currency. People would accept this as ok, because the government knows best, right? |
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Print out of the blockchain. LOL. If there is an issue with electricity BTC dies instantly and no one will give a damn about them when they can even find gas,food or water.
[E]MP = DEATH lots and lots of death. The panic alone will make everyone and anyone in the area of effect either loot,move out fast or wait until the bad guys with guns come to take your food, water, life, etc.... In the first week alone do any of you have an idea of how many people will die because they cant refrigerate or get the medicine they need. Dialysis anyone? It could and likely would take weeks for any help to arrive. NO ONE will give damn about funny money or the internet. This. Bitcoin won't survive a global EMP, the internet won't, the modern world won't, hell even current nation states won't. Integrated circuits are in everything. A hundred million people will die almost instantly billions as society breaks down. Some from starvation and disease and more from violence as the strong take from the weak. Imagine an EMP powerful enough to warrant a paper blockchain hit right now. The first thing is that the internet is toast. Not just your PC but hundreds of billions of dollars in switches routers, network interconnects, datacenters, etc. Gone. Turned into scrap metal. Oh but it gets far worse. Rebuilding isn't going to be easy. Guess what is used in semiconductors FABS? Yup integrated circuits. The FABS that build computer chips will also be destroyed. Ok so we can live without computer right? Well it goes way beyond computers. Integrated circuits are a critical component of everything from communication systems, to the electrical grid, to mass transist, to the water supply. They will all fail massively and catastrophically at the same time. Planes will literally fall out of the sky, every major highway in the world will turn into a parking lot (but not before killing tens of millions of people). The electrical grid will acts as an giant antenna and the grid will tear itself apart. Nuclear powerplants if you are lucky will SCRAM hard and be idle for a lifetime, and if unlucky will meltdown due to a combination of uncontrolled decay heat and widespread equipment failures. The imbalanced grid will cause electrical fires everywhere, and destroyed transformers, and damaged powerplants. Restarting it will be impossible without replacement parts on a massive scale. If you have any pressing medical condition more complex then setting a broken bone your dead already. With the transist systems down hospital will run out of supplies quickly and then people will start dying like they did two hundred years ago. Once the fires start they will burn out of control. What are fire departments going to do? Send fire trucks down miles and miles of streets clogged with cars that won't start? Get water out of fire hydrants with no functioning pumps. Whole cities will burn to their foundations. The big killers will be starvation and disease. Cities will become graveyards in a matter of weeks. The average urban area only has enough food to feed the population for a couple weeks. That is everything, the food in homes, in stores, and in distribution centers. When the water stops flowing lack of sanitation means age old killers like dysentery will burn through the population like a biological weapon. Governments will try to restore order but it will require martial law. I don't mean call out the national guard because there was a hurricane I mean executing "enemies of the state" by the tens of thousands in the street. It won't be enough though. Modern nationstates with hundreds of millions of people can't survive on a pre-industrial technological base. Troops and police will desert by the thousands to return home and protect their families. The strong will band together and take resources from the weak. Our modern society can't survive significant supply disruptions so for the first time in a century there really won't be enough to go around. The strong taking from the weak ensures some will die but some will survive. The surviving people will abandon the cities (graveyards) and move back into rural areas. The human race will survive and in time society will rebuild itself starting back at citiy states (a stable political structure which can operate at a minimal technological level). If anyone finds a surviving printed copy of the blockchain (under the corpse of some nerd who's skull is caved in by a cinderblock) they will either use it to wipe their ass or burn it to stay warm. Nope, Bitcoin won't survive a massive (and unlikely) global scale EMP or other end of the world type event. Bitcoin can survive temporary outages but it is a product of a computer aged civilization and if that civilization dies so will Bitcoin. I suspect that after an "earth-level" EMP, bitcoins, gold, paper fiat will all become useless as currency. People will quickly revert to trade in the things they need to survive: weapons, ammunition, fresh water, food, building supplies, etc.
I think you've forgotten why money appeared in the first place: because the guy with ammunition who wants fresh water can't trade with the guy who has ammunition unless that guy wants fresh water. Maybe in a couple decades or a century. No your dilemma is easily solved. The guy with the guy puts two bullets into the chest of the guy with the water and now the guy with the guy has a gun AND water. Hah, nice narrative. Makes me want to stock up on canned foods or something. |
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Paypal accounts are easy to steal or buy. Get the associated eBay account, buy a few dozen auctions for BTC at whatever price it goes to, and hand out your BTC addresses once the auctions are finished, raking in a huge amount of BTC and not caring at all when the legitimate account owners look at their Paypal activity and say "WTF is this???" and charge it back.
I've thought about some sort of website for buying Bitcoin with a CC or Paypal that just wouldn't let you have access to them for 180 days. But Bitcoin, I hold them in escrow for 180 days, then you can have them afterward.
Sounds like more trouble than it's worth though.
Feb 18, 2000 Payment From xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Completed Details Payment From xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx $510.00 $0.00 $510.00 USD see how long ive had my paypal account. now someone trade me some dwolla! didn't amazon.com open before '99? shame you can't see your full order history Shipment #1: Shipped on October 20, 1999 Shipping estimate: October 20, 1999 Delivery estimate: October 25, 1999 - October 27, 1999 (More about estimates) 1 package via USPS 1 of: Elric of Melnibone [Mass Market Paperback] By: Roy Thomas, Michael Moorcock Sold by: Amazon.com LLC $4.79 1 of: Ender's Shadow [Hardcover] By: Orson Scott Card Sold by: Amazon.com LLC $17.47 1 of: Enders Game [Paperback] By: Orson Scott Card(Introduction) Sold by: Amazon.com LLC $3.19 you know, i am pretty sure those were new paperbacks... ender's game for $3.19.. wtf? Yeah, and if a hacker had control of your paypal account, he could claim all the same things. That's my point - you don't know if the person you are talking to is truly the account holder. |
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allright, choose a shipping option. assuming worldwide tracked letter:
4 Casascius 1 BTC series 2 coins BTC 5.52
tracked letter worldwide BTC 0.33
-------------------------------------------
sum BTC 5.85
please pay to 1DgBUr3rLQBSNtmHSW6nJF8MBcm5fDkknM and PM me shipping info if you want to take the offer. (I just changed my policy to require up-front payment for all orders. However you ordered before I made the change, so you can pay 50% now and 50% on receiving the coins) UPDATE 2013/01/14: 50% down payment received UPDATE 2013/01/15: shipped, PMed tracking # and coin addresses I received the coins, remaining 50% payment sent..  Thanks Nice. Payment confirmed. Pleasure doing business with you. This just reminded me... I don't believe I ever sent you the second half of my payment Molecular. Will get that on its way! |
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And we have a bet! https://blockchain.info/address/1B3EAGAgXoALFd6o9762hitoCyH61JxF4Y
No, actually, sounds like a major hole. This needs to be addressed somehow (not necessarily for the case at hand, but in general for the system).
Also the idea of relying on MtGox breaking their customer's confidentiality is bad. I know MtGox used to do this in the past, but since MPEx introduced standards for such that sort of shit doesn't seem to fly so well anymore in the public eye either. Frankly, I doubt they'd tell you, and if they did tell you they'd just be stupidly allowing you to rehash the ver-blockchain.info experiment.
You taking "as long as necessary" is yet another hole. The average person using escrow for any purpose is not interested in adding unspecified delays to their process.
Doesn't sound like a big deal to me. I'm not worried about it. |
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Good stuff! However, I started about 2 weeks before this comic, and over the course of my GPU mining career, made over $5,000 on a $1,100 investment over the course of a year. In the FPGA realm, I made over $2,500 on a $6,000 investment in 2 months. Waiting for the ASIC realm, but I expect it to be quite profitable for me as well. |
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I have gone ahead and emailed SgtSpike and Micon a set of codes.
One feature I feel worth pointing out: besides the codes starting with "einva", "einvb", or "einvp", I have made it so the following 5 characters are random but identical for a matched set.
I sent SgtSpike a code starting with einvaPoHB4
I sent Micon a code starting with einvbPoHB4
When they generate a payment invitation, it will start with einvbPoHB4
Notice PoHB4 is in all of them...this is deliberate, just so you have a quick visual way to see whether codes are part of a matched set.
Each time the Escrow Agent generates a new pair of invitation codes, these 5 characters are shuffled to something random.
In Dooglus's example above, they were T9CMj.
Ok, I get Bitcoin address 1B3EAGAgXoALFd6o9762hitoCyH61JxF4Y. What do I do with the payment invitation I generate? |
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C) Gavin is a necessary part of the core Bitcoin development team, and doesn't want to work for free.
Then we all have failed, there shouldn't be one person that is "Necessary" to the development team, while Gavin has brought a lot to the table and helped moved us farther in the software, he should be expendable just like anyone else. This is kinda border line breaking a core value of a decentralized currency, if one person is "Necessary" to the development team. I really hope one day someone will build a full node to compete with bitcoin-qt but until then we are in this horrible position according to software. Fair enough. How about: D) Gavin is greatly encouraged through monetary incentive to work harder, longer, and faster on various fixes and features for Bitcoin-QT. Instead of things taking months or years to get fixed by whomever feels like they want to tackle it in their spare time, the paid full-time developer Gavin can address problems in days or weeks instead. And given that the foundation believes he is the best/most efficient/most trustworthy coder on the QT project, he gets paid. Another way of going about it might be to offer bounties on various bugfixes and features, but how do you know that the person implementing the fix is trustworthy? What happens when their sloppy coding results in more bugs found down the line? What if their documentation is poor? Etc, etc. Mozilla pays workers to work on their software, but many people also make their own contributions on a voluntary basis. How does that differ from this current situation in Bitcoin? Gavin is a paid lead developer, and everyone else can contribute at their leisure on a voluntary basis. |
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I watched the client on stats mode for awhile, it turns out I am getting speeds above 350MH/s. It goes up to about 600Mh/s for about 1 second then a red light appears on the speedometer and the hash rate drops down to 320MH/s before returning to 350MH/s, stays at 350MH/s for the next 5 minutes then repeats the cycle. Why?  Is this on GPU or FPGA? The red light just flashes when your hashrate goes more than 10% above the hashrate expected from the particular device. Nothing to worry about (except burning out the GPU if you overclock too much). Got a question... a friend who is running Bitminter ran into trouble after his power supply died. He replaced the power supply, Windows ran checkdisk upon startup, and then BitMinter would fail to start, just stuck at this screen:
It's usually one of two things causing this problem. Upgrading Java, at least from version 6 to version 7, sometimes breaks something and you need to clear out the java temporary files. The next time you start the app after that it will download everything anew and it works. How to clear java temporary files: http://www.java.com/en/download/help/plugin_cache.xmlThe other frequent cause of this is antivirus software. Sometimes they like to inspect file transfers. Sometimes they do that and accidentally break file transfers so that Java web start isn't able to finish downloading the files. I think this is usually AVG antivirus. But it may be that other antivirus programs can do this too. Try whitelisting the javaws.exe program or turning off file transfer inspection. Consider the security implications of what solution you use. Turning antivirus completely off on a Windows computer is not recommended. Thanks - we'll try those things out! |
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No Micon, I do not want to make the same bet you and MRB made. That bet is also based on whether they meet specific MH/Joule requirements, which I do not want to bet on. I want to bet on them delivering an ASIC device that works (creates valid hashes for the Bitcoin network) by the end of 2013, regardless of speed or power usage to at least two forum members that prove they are running (video or pictures or ??).
If you believe they aren't going to deliver (which is what you keep stating over and over again), you shouldn't have any problem with this.
When making a wager, both sides must agree. If you look at mrb's and my discussion, a standard practice is to suggest terms, then refine on both sides until both parties agree. To have a 20 coin bet with me I would like: -- statement of a certain Mhash/Joule that proves that this BFL ASIC is a significant step up from the current top miners - that is the point of ASIC - to hash the proof-of-work problem much faster and more energy efficient than current FPGAs, as I understand it the current top dog - they claim ~ 20x-30x as fast right? current FPGA top metrics around 25 Mhash/Joule? Let's find a number you and I are both comfortable with it - as your statement reads, BFL could ship you some thumbdrive that creates 1 valid hash using your CPU and you would win the bet. Also there is no need for taunting - I won't say to you "why won't you bet me at same terms if you are so sure BFL will ship an ASIC based on specs they describe?" - I will simply go back and forth and list out the terms that would make me accept the wager. What about a statement such as 10x shipments at 5x current top Mhash/Joule ratings? And excuse the newb-ness to mining, but what is top Mhash/J ATM? it is FPGA cards? Fair enough - I shall taunt no more. I'll bet that BFL will put out at least as efficient as Avalon's advertised specs. So that's 400w @ 60GH/s. Is that agreeable? It is a vast improvement over even FPGA's, where 60 GH/s would consume almost 6,000w. I'd rather not go as high as 10 end customers, simply because it might be difficult to find 10 individuals willing to post proof of ASIC delivery. I'm not sure that there's even 10 different people who have posted pictures of FPGA's. So then, my new bet proposal is this: I'll bet 20 BTC that BFL will ship out an ASIC miner capable of at least 150MH/s per watt to at least 3 end customers by the end of 2013. You have a bet if you make it by 7/1/2013 - they said they ship in Feb. and I don't want to wait all year for this bet to settle. Those 40 coins could be worth $10k by then and I may need a WSOP main even buy in I feel 7/1 is more than fair given the current timeframe directly from BFL, it keeps everything nice and clean for me, and even allows you months and months of further delays past their posted timeframe. If BFL is real, this seems like an easy win for you under these terms. Ok, I can agree to those terms. What's the next step? I don't entirely understand Casascuis' escrow system yet... Casascius - can you generate an escrow invitation for Micon and I on this bet? |
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The fact that the Foundation pays Gavin a salary now is reason enough to join as a member.
This is another reason I will not join. Your telling me Gavin needs a salary which tells me two scenarios A) Gavin didn't believe in bitcoin so he never invested his money which at is time could have made him a millionaire, which would mean he doesn't need a salary. B) Gavin is super greedy and wants a salary which really should go to all those developers equality that work hard not just him. C) Gavin is a necessary part of the core Bitcoin development team, and doesn't want to work for free. |
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Well, that's capitalism. Take chances, win big or lose your money.
If BFL does have ASICs, then the people who put their money on the line in pre-orders are going to have a heyday when it first gets released and the difficulty hasn't increased yet. The people who decided to wait will still have a chance to mine, but not until after the difficulty has ramped up.
If BFL doesn't have the ASICs... well. That's highly unfortunate, but hey; you're working with experimental technology that works with a relatively experimental e-currency, you have to expect that things might not turn out according to plan. Invest at your own risk.
I haven't pre-ordered (Although I gave the Jalapeno some serious thought with the low starting price), so I think I'll see how it works when the first people begin to get theirs and think about it.
In the meantime, if the current rally is for real, those people who already paid in bitcoins are falling further behind. This is true...! (though also true for those who paid by any other method, as they could have instead invested those funds into Bitcoins at the time of purchase). I paid 450 BTC for my two SC singles. My only consolation is that I know I wouldn't have kept that much in BTC anyway had I not bought the singles. |
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So, everyone wants more pictures, but wouldn't it be up to the Avalon manufacturer to provide more pictures, not BitSyncom or anyone else on this forum? BitSyncom would probably rather have said manufacturer focus on shipping units to customers instead of fiddling around with a customer service request to take more pictures. It's probably not something they're set up to do expediently anyway.
Unless BitSyncom has unit(s) on-hand?
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Might have to wait until BTC is worth a lot more and transaction fees drop to the 0.000005 area.
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