So I guess that means I'm still a day away from 95% 5% of the time you should expect to take longer than that 95% estimate. |
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Imagine a botnet of these!
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Within the last 24 hours.
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Well the difficulty has just ramped up to 3091. Why don't you estimate your total khash/sec and type that into the Bitcon Generation Calculator. See if you've gone longer than the 95% expected time-to-generate at the current difficulty. |
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Grondilu, I was looking for a "ballpark figure" of how likely it is that something will be adopted where it is clear to the adoptees that there are significant benefits to its adoption.
For my purposes, Esperanto and Bitcoin share the characteristic that they achieve their fullest potential only if most people use them. Despite the "obvious" benefits of Esperanto, it hasn't achieved "critical mass" and I expect the same will apply to Bitcoin. I don't expect to be able to buy, say, a hamburger from my local fast food outlet using Bitcoin any time soon, just as I can't order it in Esperanto.
I didn't know that you were an Esperantist, although I saw that there was an Esperanto translation at bitcoin.org.
My grandparents were fervent Esperantists and tried very hard to teach it to me in the 1960s when I was a young child. They spoke it all the time, and went to all the International Esperanto Congresses. But I've never been able to pick up any other languages, and Esperanto didn't stick. Today I can count in Esperanto, and remember another ten or so words, but that's all.
Pacon,
ribuck
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When comparing the max number of bitcoins to the current USD M1, 1 BTC = ~84,076 USD.  OK, that's quite interesting for a "naïve approach", so let's play a bit more. Suppose that, instead of using the USD M1, we look at the US currency in circulation, around 900 billion dollars. Suppose that the population of the USA uses bitcoin for 1% of their "cash-like" economic activity. Then, 21 million bitcoins would need to have the same purchasing power as 0.01 * $900 billion, and each bitcoin would eventually be worth $428. But hang on, bitcoin is global. The global economy is about four times as big as that of the US, so if bitcoin was used for 1% of global economic activity, each bitcoin would eventually be worth $1712. But hang on, not everyone in the world is going to use bitcoin. Let's assume that it becomes as popular as other niche interests (say, Esperanto). There are perhaps a million esperanto speakers worldwide, about 1/7000th of the world's population. So if one million people use bitcoin for 1% of their economic activity, each bitcoin would eventually be worth $0.25. So there you have it, my naïve prediction is that the value of a bitcoin will end up somewhere between $0.25 and $1712.Oh dang, there are so many confounding factors. If the takeup is less than a million people, the value will be proportionately less. Oh, and only about 20 million BTC will be generated during my lifetime. Oh, and the world's population keeps growing. Oh, and what about those BTC that are lost forever due to lack of backups or copy-and-paste errors when entering receiving addresses. Oh, and a million other things... |
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Bitcoin - because You don't need government.
Fixed that for you. |
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I must say the photo looks exactly like those chunky "gold" rings that the gypsies use for their gold ring scams in Paris. (The photo in that linked article is not of the actual scam ring). So the price people bid should definitely depend on how confident they are that this ring is made of gold. |
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Maybe I will have to wake up at 4am. Maybe you don't have to wake up if you trust the forum timestamps. Finishing the auction at a random time defined by a block number is a clever way of stopping people from all submitting their bids at the last second. |
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Guys, it's only a small business, don't try to make it so complicated that it can never get started.
Kiba, just set out clearly how the business is going to work, then people can decide whether or not to invest. Some kind of plan like this:
1. I "sell" 50 shares in the profits of the business. Each share is BTC 300 and entitles the purchaser to 1% of the profits.
2. If I don't sell 50 shares within 90 days, I return everyone's BTC and the project ends.
3. If I sell 50 shares within 90 days, I stop selling shares.
4. I use the BTC to buy the Thing-o-matic and other expenses needed to start production, plus the initial stock of raw materials.
5. I set up a website so that people can upload their shape-files and pay with BTC to receive the produced "things".
6. The shareholders and I will have a weekly meeting, but I will make the final decisions about how the business is run.
7. If the shareholders don't think the business is working out satisfactorily, they can vote to close it down.
8. If I don't think the business is working out satisfactorily, I can close it down.
9. If the business is closed, all of the equipment will be sold and the funds distributed to the shareholders according to their shareholding.
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...You can't tell anyone that you're in jail because you refused to discolse your keys... No, it's not like that. If you're found guilty, the reason for your imprisonment is a matter of public record. But if the authorities demand your keys, you have four choices: 1. Give them your keys, and don't tell anyone, and remain free (unless convicted for something else). 2. Give them your keys, tell someone, and go to prison for up to 5 years. 3. Don't give them your keys, tell someone, and go to prison for up to 5 years. 4. Don't give them your keys, don't tell anyone, and go to prison for up to 2 years. When the legislation was introduced, the reason given was that if the police were investigating, say, a drug ring and demanded the GPG key from one of the ring members, that ring member was to be prohibited from warning the other ring members. |
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...The idea of them taking bitcoins as easily as they took gold and silver from people is actually absurd when you think about it... Well ... in the United Kingdom there is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which requires people to disclose their cryptographic keys to the government upon request. The penalty for failing to do so is 2 years imprisonment. But the process is secret. You are not allowed to tell anyone that your keys have been demanded. And if you tell anyone, the penalty for that is 5 years imprisonment. I guess "cryptographic keys" includes Bitcoin wallets. There is already a guy in prison for not handing over his keys on demand. He is acknowledged by the authorities as not being a threat to anyone. His "crime" is not co-operating with the authorities. |
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"Bitcoin is honest, peer-to-peer money"
Or, for those who don't think Bitcoin is currency,
"Inflation is coming. Bitcoin barter tokens are the alternative."
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With Bitcoin, where is the "claim on the issuer" referred to in article 2(2)?
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Philosophical question for economists to ponder:
What is it that makes BTC from the test network have no value, and BTC from the other network have value?
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The instructions say that PayPal "personal gift transactions ... are not chargeback-able". In a sense that's true, but those transactions can still be reversed by PayPal if they were made fraudulently (e.g. by someone who stole the login credentials of the legitimate PayPal account owner). So don't assume that they are irrevocable.
Also, is there a way for the recipient to know whether or not the payment was designated as a gift? Maybe the PayPal email says "You have received a gift" or something similar; I don't know.
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The first paper referenced by Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin Paper is Wei Dai's 1998 proposal for " b-money". It's a short but very interesting paper, and it shows that many of the ideas behind Bitcoin were well along the way to fruition back in 1998. The part that has me interested relates to the enforcement of contracts between pseudonymous participants. The key idea is that there is distributed accounting, as in Bitcoin. The participants to a contract, and an arbitrator, each transfer a deposit equal to the maximum "penalty" they will pay if they break their contract. If the contract is carried out, these "reparations" get refunded. If the contract does not succeed, the reparations are paid out as agreed by the participants, up to the maximum amount deposited: 3. The effecting of contracts. A valid contract must include a maximum reparation in case of default for each participant party to it. It should also include a party who will perform arbitration should there be a dispute. All parties to a contract including the arbitrator must broadcast their signatures of it before it becomes effective. Upon the broadcast of the contract and all signatures, every participant debits the account of each party by the amount of his maximum reparation and credits a special account identified by a secure hash of the contract by the sum the maximum reparations. The contract becomes effective if the debits succeed for every party without producing a negative balance, otherwise the contract is ignored and the accounts are rolled back. A sample contract might look like this:
K_A agrees to send K_B the solution to problem P before 0:0:0 1/1/2000. K_B agrees to pay K_A 100 MU (monetary units) before 0:0:0 1/1/2000. K_C agrees to perform arbitration in case of dispute. K_A agrees to pay a maximum of 1000 MU in case of default. K_B agrees to pay a maximum of 200 MU in case of default. K_C agrees to pay a maximum of 500 MU in case of default.
4. The conclusion of contracts. If a contract concludes without dispute, each party broadcasts a signed message "The contract with SHA-1 hash H concludes without reparations." or possibly "The contract with SHA-1 hash H concludes with the following reparations: ..." Upon the broadcast of all signatures, every participant credits the account of each party by the amount of his maximum reparation, removes the contract account, then credits or debits the account of each party according to the reparation schedule if there is one. But what if the participants can't agree? That, of course, is the crux of any contract enforcement scheme. Wei Dai has this to say: 5. The enforcement of contracts. If the parties to a contract cannot agree on an appropriate conclusion even with the help of the arbitrator, each party broadcasts a suggested reparation/fine schedule and any arguments or evidence in his favor. Each participant makes a determination as to the actual reparations and/or fines, and modifies his accounts accordingly. I don't get it. What is Wei Dai saying here? Surely he can't be saying that each participant does whatever they choose to do, because that would result in everyone having a different idea of what everyone else's balance is. Hmm. Or maybe he is actually saying that. If I think Starbucks cheated me, I can adjust my balances so that Starbacks has less money and I have more. At the same time, Starbucks will adjust their balances so that they have more money and I have less. I guess everyone else can decide whose balances they want to believe. But I feel I must be missing the point here. Can anyone shed some light on this? Naturally my interest is in how this could be adapted to Bitcoin, but I feel I should understand Wei Dai's proposal first. |
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if quantum computers come into play If it becomes practical to break current encryption using quantum computing, bitcoin will probably be the least of your worries. |
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...Only legal digital electronic cryptographic certificated Bitcoin commodity purchase payments will be allowed in accordance with Terms of Service Wow, a 9-word string of buzzwords. Is that a record? Bitcoin transactions are of course self-certifying. If CurrencyFair is serious about Bitcoin, they would need to adapt some of their ways of working to support it. |
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