I haven't confirmed it yet - but I have my suspicions - that I've been blocked from my account on ZH after treading too closely to the main thesis of the site - that any downward movement in any given market is "THE BIG ONE", even if it subsequently rallies thereafter. This is usually explained away as "manipulation" or whatever term is convenient.
I guess it has been bothering me, reading Tyler's posts year after year about how it is all going to hell, only to face a rally in the Dow or whatever by +200 points. While I think the conventional financial system is due for a bloody big correction, I just disagree with the manner in which Tyler goes about it.
I've emailed them about the access problem, but frankly I'm not holding my breath. Guess I won't be able to counter the trolls and other muppets in the bitcoin-centric threads, but hell, I've done enough and there are others who are articulate and able to carry on.
Just wanted to post this somewhere if you wondered why I was "ghosted" from ZH.
I've been reading ZH since it started, and commented often, but not seen much about any accounts being blocked. Considering the flat-earth Neanderthals which hang out there, it is hard to imagine what you might have said to warrant this treatment. I think a lot of smart financial bloggers have been surprised at how successfully the system has been propped up with QE offsetting deflation from the credit money and shadow-banking contractions. People like Graham Summers have been warning of systemic collapse almost every day for years. Seems inevitable that one day they will be right, but that day is being seriously delayed by CB efforts. |
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Mr. Che, all pants pulled together, finally sobered up, have washed with cold water and soap, talcum fingers \ strewed palms, all rolled into a garbage background is the sound of flickering and swap out the ... In ALHALVU!! the moment came unexpectedly!!
In Hell adische, burn it with fire but stronger! Who will throw the first rock into the den? Pressing the loot from ASIC-builders and investors throughout the "third wave"? Whatever that means... Yes. I got the same garbage. "Lost in Translation" has never been more true than with this one... |
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How about instead of rejecting the block when it doesn't have at least 50% of the unconfirmed transactions you know of, you just don't relay it?
Can of worms there. You would have a solved block discarded which contains dozens of transactions which people have been waiting on for a confirmation? Also, a spammer could immediately cripple the network by generating loads of new transactions. A few weeks ago I saw over 12,000 unconfirmed on blockchain.info, most were not legitimate. Only 2400 (on average) fit into the current block limit. |
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First, the "20 USD" that you state is very far-fetched, way too high in my impression...
The track record of banks charging as much as they can for wire transfers is shameful. Between $15 and $45 is cited here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_transfer#Regulation_and_priceThe standard fee for international wire transfers is generally $25. No reason to expect the profit motive to weaken for Bitcoin banks. Also, if people pay this much now then blockchain fees could reach this level too. The wire business should be bread and butter for Bitcoin to steal, but millions of such fiat transfers are done every day, well outside the current network capacity (even if SatoshiDice-like volume were zero, instead of 50% of current volume). Note that gamblers have a high tolerance to fees and Bitcoin may well prove to be a huge hit for the whole online gambling industry which could easily saturate the blocks by itself. I have not yet advocated infinite blocks, just supported the idea of a flexible limit that might help the fees market develop by block space rationing. Until recently Bitcoin operated with a block limit that was effectively infinite because the number of transactions was far too small to trouble it. Then a soft-limit of 250KB was tried (to see how the network behaved), as well as 500KB later. As soon as the 250KB blocks approached saturation the limit needed raising because of users having unreasonable delays. Fees are rising but probably due to client changes rather than block space rationing. https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees?showDataPoints=false×pan=&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=You make more points, but, have you read these threads? The MAX_BLOCK_SIZE fork https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140233.0How a floating blocksize limit inevitably leads towards centralization https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144895.0Funding of network security with infinite block sizes https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=157141.0To be clear, I am all for decentralization as well. This is not monolithic. Miners are one aspect, but also non-mining peering/propagating full nodes are another. It is the latter case which is hard to measure well. If there are 6,000 such full nodes then this seems much healthier than the mining situation where one miner has 25% of the network hashing power: http://www.asicminercharts.com/, let alone that only a few pools hash most of the blocks. This is a good part of the answer to block size concerns, and becoming more urgent. |
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Not if they use something I'm developing.
Oh, do tell?!! I'm guessing it's some sort of risk managed 0-confirmation payment provider. Merchants pay him x% as a fee and he provides a guarantee (within a few seconds) on the transaction. Excellent. This is exactly what is needed to make Bitcoin better for quick transactions at bricks-and-mortar shops. It is already supreme for on-line purchases because people expect a delay before receipt of goods. |
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Maybe, but maintaining the status on those cheques would be a management nightmare with 600 friends. Ripple makes it easier.
More evidence that social media has corrupted the word "friend" until it is almost meaningless. Someone might have 600 acquaintances, but friends?, no. Trusted friends, much less. Robin Dunbar's wrote the first paper on social group maximums without a hierarchial/authoritiarian structure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_numberTL;DR 150 friends is the most anyone can reasonably have, and that is exceptional. |
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The obvious question now: what are LR users going to transact with instead? |
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further a personal agenda which is to be the renowned architect of the 3rd-party systems As far as I can tell this is a slanderous personal attack. It is unsupported by an information available to me. I must insist that you actually substantiate it or withdraw it. Withdrawn. I made the comment because of frustration that the debate on this crucial issue was moved from a civilized thread to a youtube video. I respect Peter's intellect, yet remain completely puzzled at the naive viewpoint that the video presents. He makes no attempt to measure decentralization, yet this is crucial to its message. It is only pieces of information, such as what you posted just now, which aids building an overall picture within which decisions on the block size can be made. |
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Is the market deciding that one cryptocurrency is enough and the identity of that one was apparent all the time?
No. The market is saying shallow weak copies are worthless. Gavin routinely references the "Bitcoin hard fork wish lists". Ideas and concepts which are interested but will never be introduced into Bitcoin due to the implications of a hard fork and consensus. There are lots of cool ideas and concepts that alt-coins could explore but simply taking Bitcoin source code (often missing critical bug fixes and improvements) changing a few variables and/or hashing algorithm and pretending you have something new doesn't mean you do. Fair enough. But we are 4.5 years on and, and apart from NameCoin's specific function, no one has introduced a coin with anything fundamentally new, or solving problems in the wish list which makes it an obvious improvement. All the "dev" teams do for the alt-coins is clone the latest Bitcoin changes, if they can be bothered to do anything at all. It does not look promising that a stunning new concept will arrive, unless that new concept is a system which builds upon Bitcoin itself like ZeroCoin, for example. |
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IANAA, but I think anyone who tries to argue that Bitcoin falls through the cracks of tax law will find themselves very quickly disabused of that notion by the army of lawyers that the ATO has at its disposal.
Correct. Clearly the closest definition is "foreign currency". It is trivial for the ATO to issue guidance that this has always meant "virtual/internet" currency as well. Even if someone got as far as a courtroom argument the clause could be amended by parliament in a forthcoming budget to put the matter beyond doubt. |
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PS: Moreover, long-term movement of transactions to off-blockchain systems is not a bad thing I think, because these operators would serve the non-tech-savvy masses (who don't know how to create safe cold storage etc.), while the minority of tech-savvy people (like >95% in this forum) may continue using the "proper" block chain, at least to a reasonable extend.
Unfortunately Michael, that's the problem I have with a low inflexible block limit (like 1MB), because it is fees which will determine who gets their transactions onto the blockchain. In the vision of keepbitcoinfree it will only be the large 3rd party banks and services which can afford the high fees (in the order of $20 per transaction at least). The >95% of this forum, tech-savvy types, will be effectively banned from the blockchain. Then we can ask: "Who will run a Bitcoin node to maintain the decentralized network, when they can't afford to use the blockchain for everyday transactions?" Answer. No one. So the network becomes very centralized because only the bitcoin banks and 3rd party systems will run full nodes. |
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You have no clue why the importance of a secure and functional financial system in a modern society is relevant to a discussion on the merits of devoting resources to said financial system instead of other projects those resources could potentially be used for? Wow. And you're allegedly an SEC agent? You really ought to turn in your badge. Tell them it's because you suck at getting clues.
+1  |
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Since the Bitcoin fx rate has stabilized after the huge run up this year two interesting situations have arisen. There have been many new Alt-coins released: ChinaCoin, WorldCoin, YetAnotherCoin etc etc. A new coin is always accompanied by a flurry of interest (especially from newbies who are looking to get in at the ground floor on a new Bitcoin-clone) but soon after interest wanes. The number of new coins is now frustrating even the alt-coin enthusiasts. It is painfully apparent that unless coins are going to be widely accepted by merchant websites, then they are doomed. Already their value after initial listing are all in steady decline: https://bter.com/trade/ftc_btcEven LTC has gone off the boil. Chinacoin is almost dead in the water considering its blocks should be 60 seconds apart: http://cnc.cryptocoinexplorer.com/chain/CHNCoin?count=20Clearly the Chinese are not dumb enough to be fooled by just a name and an 88 coin block reward. Is the market deciding that one cryptocurrency is enough and the identity of that one was apparent all the time? |
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I don't understand people and their linear charts. That's not how Bitcoin works. As the more people adopt, the speed increases exponentially as well as the number of adopters. Bitcoin is a virus, its mechanics are based on it. Nobody's chart ever accounts for viral spread.
That's why the chart above uses the logarithm of the fx rate, therefore you can plot a linear trendline but it is actually exponential! This is capturing the "viral" super-growth rate. I see. Well I guess we just disagree on what viral means in terms of Bitcoin, I think this will be happening much faster than that. $1000 next September is laughably low. September 2013? I'll bet you $1000 that won't be the case. We are talking about Sept 2014. |
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I don't understand people and their linear charts. That's not how Bitcoin works. As the more people adopt, the speed increases exponentially as well as the number of adopters. Bitcoin is a virus, its mechanics are based on it. Nobody's chart ever accounts for viral spread.
That's why the chart above uses the logarithm of the fx rate, therefore you can plot a linear trendline but it is actually exponential! This is capturing the "viral" super-growth rate. I see. Well I guess we just disagree on what viral means in terms of Bitcoin, I think this will be happening much faster than that. $1000 next September is laughably low. That chart is using 3 years of MtGox prices. So it is 100% in terms of Bitcoin. You are forgetting what a run it has had already from a few cents. Even that trendline has to flatten off soon or one bitcoin will buy this entire planet in just 12 years from now. Got to be realistic about limits to growth! |
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above link is broken!
fake news?
Not quite. In the last couple of hours Tech Crunch have pulled the article because the company is a scam operation. It was probably feedback from this forum which alerted them about it. Link still works for me. Try shift+F5 Still works. Edit: VPN with USA IP and it's gone.  odd. Yeah, I get a 404, so maybe a mirror server in Europe with masked address You've caught us with our pants down! Well, this is embarrassing. We can't find the page you asked for. Bad link? Mistyped address? We're not sure. Perhaps a search will get you on your way. If you think something's wrong, contact us. Now if you'll just turn around for a moment we'll be putting our pants back on... |
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above link is broken!
fake news?
Not quite. In the last couple of hours Tech Crunch have pulled the article because the company is a scam operation. It was probably feedback from this forum which alerted them about it. Link still works for me. Try shift+F5 |
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I don't understand people and their linear charts. That's not how Bitcoin works. As the more people adopt, the speed increases exponentially as well as the number of adopters. Bitcoin is a virus, its mechanics are based on it. Nobody's chart ever accounts for viral spread.
That's why the chart above uses the logarithm of the fx rate, therefore you can plot a linear trendline but it is actually exponential! This is capturing the "viral" super-growth rate. |
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The comparison is not completely useless, because it is possible to estimate the hashrate the supercomputers could sustain and compare that to the current bitcoin network. Then it is comparing apples to apples. The comparison done is going the other way, trying to estimate the FLOPS rat of the bitcoin network's hashrate.
I think the comparison is interesting in that it gives us a good idea of how much impact th eexisting supercomputers could affect the bitcoin network if they were reprogrammed to mine bitcoin efficiently. The fact that even with all 500 top super computers turned on bitcoin, they could capture about 10% of the hashrate is rather interesting and somewhat comforting that we are beyond the possibility of a 51% attact by these supercomputers. If somebody was to try a 51% attack, they would have to build the system from scratch and not just repurpose an existing system.
Exactly. It is perfectly sensible to ask how many flops a supercomputer would need to simulate the calculations performed by an ASIC chip. Then to scale this as a comparison to the network (and include all the non-ASIC hardware as well). |
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