I understand your enthusiasm, but I'm focusing on the active nodes in the network only. I suppose we would see where demand takes us, but I don't want this post to be relegated to the 'speculation' sub-forum.

Yes, we have some interesting months ahead of us, I agree

Since the market lull and relative stability around the 14.00, there have been a few topics posted regarding how to spread the word about bitcoin. I understand the client isn't exactly what you would want to hand your middle-aged mother and say 'go buy things', but we're still in the early stages.

But how early?

The closest comparison I can draw is the growth of web servers on the internet, or the web in general. According to the bitcoin maps posted here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Map

Specifically, this one:



The estimated number of 'active' nodes is a little north of 37,500. (See imperi's post below.) Of course, this omits clients which are installed and only started when specific payments have to be made, but for our purposes it is close enough. (Even if we assume a number like 100,000 it won't make that much of a difference as you will see.)

If we take a graph of known websites (which of course assumes 1 site = 1 server, which would've been more accurate in the 90's versus now - but even then, interesting stuff) we can see the growth curve here:



Based on where we are now, I'd have to say we are in the apparent 'flatline' of the growth curve. (Roughly in the 95 - 96 timeframe.) This is purely focusing on number of nodes. I don't see this as a bad thing, you have to start somewhere, after all. But the future portends quite interesting numbers.

But, you say "The client looks like a gray piece of crap! Who wants to use it!!??" well, take a look at one of the first web pages:



1993 looked pretty 'gray' and 'crappy' too. But it didn't stop the people who believed in the underlying premise. Which reminds me of where we are now. A core of entrepreneurs, techs, crypto-geeks and dreamers.

Hell, the first web server wasn't much to look at either:



The first bitcoin client running on someone's desktop probably wasn't much easier on the eyes. In short, we do have a long way to go, but I think the journey is worth taking. This summary statement on the web is a good start for 'taking the long view' :


(Taken from here: http://dret.net/lectures/web-spring10/history#%2830%29 )

I'd rewrite this for bitcoin as follows:


Keep your eyes on the horizon, we haven't even begun to climb the dizzying peaks of success.

Oh? I like how you summarized it - since it was so elegant. I thought 'elegant' ideas would be easily expressed?

Oops, I see, you're just treading in someone's footsteps, like an annoying toy dog. Here rover, fetch!

Missed that little point on the first read-through.

People should be represented by how much wealth they have? Hello, welcome to U.S. Politics. Just call your favorite lobbyist or give to your favorite corporation to proceed.

Love the 'net worth' part of the graph. Mimics price, which means it isn't any more efficient than price. That doesn't hit me as a particularly effective system. Most system makers want their equity graph to have a nice upward trend, not full of drawdown excursions when price falls.

I give this a big 'meh'.

George Carlin was right. Politics and voting only exist to give you the illusion of a choice. Whoever has the money runs the show. Period.

Executive Summary:

1.) This isn't about early adopters profiting. (Nice setup, nearly believed you.)

2.) The market can't absorb all of their bitcoins at once and not decline precipitously. (I'll file this under 'no kidding'.)

3.) Hey guys, can't we just reset it and redistribute everything? (Awww, and you nearly went the whole post without whipping this out.)

Always with the redistribution. May this thread die in a fire.

Yeah, just a basic page of ASCII for daily bar open, high, low, close. I understand if you don't have the retention in the system. Just threw it out there if it becomes feasible at some point.

I appreciate all the work you've done on the site - it really is the standard in charting right now, as far as I'm concerned.

Comboy,

I know you are busy enough, and your site is frickin' wicked, but I was wondering if you could possibly throw something up there. I like to do chart analysis, and to do that I need tabular data. I know it is possible to get it from bitcoincharts on a tick-by-tick basis, but that is like drinking from a firehose, and the timestamp is a pain in the ass to convert.

If you ever feel like it, I'd love a plain 'ol crappy page of daily tabular data (Mt.Gox/Tradehill), where the demarcation between one day and the next is 12 midnight UTC. That's it. Something in the comma-delimited format of:

<Exchange>, <MM/DD/YY>, <Open>, <High>, <Low>, <Close>, <Volume>

I'd gladly send you 1 BTC for your efforts. It won't buy top-shelf, but hell - at least some beer then

Just PM me your BTC address if you'd like to take this on.

Thanks!

Bitcoin itself is a triple-entry system in accounting terms. (Ref: http://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html )

Just restrict access - I'd code up a simple scraper that would present balances to someone who needed to do the books, but not physical access to the actual client. So you'd separate the data from the actual 'vault'. You could do this with blockexplorer if you knew all the addresses that you've received to.

I'm sure there are other methods, as suggested above.

I love slashdot. I love how they'll fight over a misplaced semi-colon, how they rage at the tiniest perceived flaw. I also enjoy how they absolutely suck at predicting the future -- of anything. One of their last massive goofs was when the first iPod was going to be released, every single one of them thought it would be a failure, oh my god it has a physical hard drive - no way! There are solid state devices that can play music, blah blah blah...

They were, utterly, horribly, ludicrously wrong.

Guess what they're wrong about now?

I see your point about percentage increases, but that isn't the ultimate goal here. (Or at least, it isn't for me.) I'm here because I believe in the promise of bitcoin, what it can do to liberate people from unnecessary restrictions and censorship. While I wouldn't mind increasing value, I don't demand it, because the underlying system is what needs to continue and propagate.

Every time the client is downloaded and used, is an incremental victory for bitcoin. I think all those numbers will add up to something quite impressive.

Increasing the block rate means you're undercutting the time for verifications with the same hashing power, which opens up a vulnerability when it comes to network propagation. There's a reason one block every ten minutes was selected, so every node had a chance to 'see' the transactions.

Anything else risks forking the chain more easily than it can now. (And given the collective hashing power, 'easily' isn't such an easy target to hit.)

Troll Grade: C+

You did the requisite baiting with the 'bashing of payment choices', but you really fell short on the last bit. I know you can do better. I realize you aren't out of troll preparatory academy just yet.

hahahahahahaha

Oh man, at least *try* when you troll.

Here, you'll be needing this Shinobi:

You're doing it wrong, Jalumtroll, needs more bold emphasis and other wacky assertions. Only going by prior examples, of course. But keep trying, I'm sure you'll get your troll-diploma soon, after all the hard work you've put into it.

I'm not surprised either. In fact, it gives me even more confidence. We're talking about the same 'ivory tower' factory (in principle, not literally) that produced the current failing monetary policies in place now. I've also noticed that the older generation over 50 has a hard time understanding bitcoin, much less supporting it.

Glad to see NPR doing a even-handed job on the story.

Having a port open on a specific range above 1024 forwarded to a single machine on your internal network isn't that damaging. I've done it for my entire career on the internet, with proper internal security measures in place. (Up to date OS, anti-malware, virus-scanning. Not to mention 'safe' data-handling for any unknown binaries.)

Also, I don't know of any current exploits that could use port 8333 of the bitcoin protocol as an attack.

Fixed that for you.

That's what we like about you, your consistent raving-hobo-in-a-back-alley tinfoil logic. This is probably how the joker got started.

As for the trip, good idea, just plan carefully. You may want to talk to plato who has taken a long road-trip for the same purpose.