I've seen JoelK (I think) answer these kinds of questions at least a few times.
Care to link it here? I couldn't find it. Thanks. By the way, I believe the wiki article should be edited to answer this question as I don't think I'm going to be the last one asking it. |
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I think there are a few ways that could work that might be interesting. For example, a minute after a block was found, mining pools could issue a signed statement that they commit to never publish a block not built on a chain that includes the recently found block. If you had such signed statements for significantly more than 50% of the hashing power, you wouldn't need to wait for any more confirmations.
This could be done right now, with no modification in Bitcoin protocol. It could be a parallel protocol. Nice idea. The reason why checkpoints are included in the reference client isn't to define what the valid blockchain is. They are included primarily so that during your initial synchronization with the network, when your client has no idea what the valid blockchain is, someone can't create an alternate blockchain from scratch with a lower difficulty, but equally long history.
The length of a chain is not the number of blocks, it's the the total aggregated difficulty. As long as they new node has one connection with a non-attacker node, he'll fetch the correct chain. |
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Hello all, I'm trying to understand this new cryptocurrency making the buzz lately. Ripple looks interesting. For what I can see, there are two different things in Ripple (as in BTC): the "payment network", a p2p trust-based network, that might be useful in many situations, and the "ripple currency", a cryptocurrency that does not use a blockchain for consensus. AFAICT, the payment network is totally complementary to Bitcoin. Actually, I think they could have just developed this payment network and have used BTC as settlement currency if they wanted, but it seems they had more ambition. The XRP is not complementary to BTC, though. It's a competitor. And perhaps the first one with potential to shake things on the cryptocurrency world. The main difference between XRP and all BTC-based cryptocurrencies is the fact that the p2p consensus is obtained without the use of a blockchain. That's quite interesting, because a blockchain is an expensive thing to maintain. If XRP consensus can prove itself to be as safe as the blockchain, then I see no reason to keep spending so much money to keep this expensive data structure. If their p2p consensus is really safe, eventually they would beat BTC. So, I started reading about ripple and went right away to the consensus wiki article. After reading it I had a doubt. I imagine there is a solution to this, but I just couldn't find it detailed anywhere. How does this consensus process deal with a fork? With a blockchain it's pretty straightforward: the larger (as in amount of calculus done) chain wins. Simple. Even if a piece of the Internet is temporarily disconnected from the rest of the world, as soon as a single link between them is available, consensus will be once again established by having everybody accepting the largest chain. How does that work with Ripple? Say node A has a UNLa and node B has a UNLb. And suppose the intersection between these two UNLs is small, like, less than 20% of the size of each. Isn't it possible that node A sets on a different Transaction Set than node B? Both nodes will agree with the large majority of their UNL, it just happens that their UNLs don't agree among themselves. Couldn't that "fork" the network, at least temporarily? How does the Ripple protocol avoids and/or fixes such forks? By the way, won't the Ripple people create a forum.ripple.com for questions like this? (so that eventually it gets crowded with trolls saying lots of BS and making those responsible for ripple.com ashamed and, in an elitist attempt not to get mixed with such trolls, kick the forum to a new domain like rippletalk.org or something  ) |
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To suggest that GOX (as the Largest exchange) is not INTRICATELY and PSYCHOLOGICALLY involved in Bitcoin's price, is frankly, RIDICULOUS.
There's no reason for them to be. Bitcoin remains the same thing even if MtGox disappears tomorrow. People who bought and sold did on their own. It was their actions that set the price downwards, not MtGox. AND - AGAIN - A site that has made MILLIONS $$ can at least make sure it is run right.
GOX doesn't do that.
That's irrelevant to this topic. I'm not arguing whether their service is good or bad. By all means - keep using them!  .. I think this is known as the stockholm syndrome. I, for one, don't use them. I just find it ridiculous to claim that they "set" the price. The price of everything is set by supply and demand, nothing else. EDIT: And btw, that's how you should express your disagreement with some service provider: just don't use it! Don't cry all over the place with capital letters and make lame accusations, as if MtGox had an obligation in providing you the service you'd like to receive. They have no obligation whatsoever. Not happy with them? Don't use it. Or make a better alternative yourself. Just stop saying bullshit (like blaming them for the price, seriously..) |
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Because they haven't proven that they have really fixed anything. DDOS protection doesn't work, lag still exists, support doesn't answer questions fast enough (seriously that would go a long way to slow panic, lighting fast support response) no phone number to call.
Are we still talking about Bitcoin or you've switched to MtGox stocks without warning me? Seriously... the ability of MtGox to operate should not, by any reasonable, rational analysis, influence in the viability of Bitcoin as an investment - and I'm not even talking as a currency, only as an investment. If hypothetically so many BTC holders are influenced in their decision to hold or sell by things like MtGox lag or lack of support, then it just shows they have no idea about Bitcoin in the first place, and should probably not be investing in it. And if so many people bought without having any idea of what they were doing, then it was just a matter of time for it to collapse, in spite of MtGox very existence. Criticize MtGox as much as you want, I don't care. But please wake up to the fact that they do not set the price. Bitcoiners "set" the price, collectively, by buying and selling. |
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Of course the big bitcoin dump affected the price, but the 1 hour lag, that caused MOST OF THE PANIC, is simply unacceptable.
If it's only a panic caused by such lag, then why haven't the price recovered so far? It makes no sense to claim that the demand for Bitcoin is a function of MtGox health or competence. Either people want to hold bitcoins or they don't, and that has nothing to do with the efficiency of MtGox. (and if there are people whose decision to hold or sell bitcoins is influenced by MtGox health, then sorry, but these people should not have bought any bitcoin at all - and it's still not MtGox fault that they sold out, but their own) It's not MtGox that makes the price, it's the people that buy and sell. That should not be hard to understand. |
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The lag killed it as people were trading on prices which were one hour old.
This happened because the idiots who run MtGox failed to act when they should have.
If these Bitcoin holders really wanted to hold Bitcoins, that would be no reason to start selling. And even if it was, they would have already bought back. No, the price fall has nothing to do with MtGox problems. It has to do with lots of people buying Bitcoin just because it was rising fast, in an attempt to make money out of it. And then selling when they thought it was about time. It's quite simple actually. Supply and demand. Unless you're claiming that bitcoins' demand is so intimately linked with MtGox health, your argument has no ground. Honestly I see no reason why the demand for bitcoins would be linked to MtGox, it doesn't make much sense. But if it really is the case, then it's even better that this part of the demand disappears and leaves the space to those who want bitcoins because they understand Bitcoin and its potentials, and for those who are actually using it for something else other than a store of value. |
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Only 32 bits, yeah.
But the timestamp is also part of the header. And the miner can manipulate coinbase as he wants, what changes the Merkle Root which is also part of the header.
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There's no easy way to enforce a "correct" timestamp on blocks, so some variance is accepted.
(I guess some miners also use the timestamp as a nonce, and that means that if you can produce more than 232 hashes per second you'll likely mine on blocks with "distorted" timestamps)
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I've seen many people on these boards attempting to input this recent price fall on MtGox issues.
I'm sorry, but this is just silly. The price fell because too many people sold at once. These were mostly, IMHO, people who had bought bitcoins without even knowing what the hell they were doing - they only saw the price increasing like crazy and decided to get in.
The price soared insanely fast and now it has fallen. This shouldn't be such a surprise.
I'm not trying to defend Gox or anything (although I think that, if you're not satisfied with them, either use someone else or open your own exchange*, instead of complain like a baby that wants everything delivered to him). But blaming them for the price fall is just not fair. The price fell because too many people panicked too easily and started selling, that's all. Blame these chickens who don't get Bitcoin if you want a scapegoat, not MtGox.
* I realize that now it's much more complicated to open your own exchange due to different state rulings, and it's thus impossible for most. But still, if you want to criticize someone for this, it's your government, not MtGox, that you should target.
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In general a change in money supply is irrelevant. What matters is what those changes effect. If the amount of USD would increase by the factor of 10 tomorrow that makes no difference. What makes all the difference is where the money goes to (subsidies of financial institutions and the government). Becoming more clear on these factors is I think quite important.
It's not irrelevant at all. Inflation is never "neutral". Some people will always receive the money first, and will drain wealth from the lasts to receive the new money. (it seems you understand that by your comment, but then how do you say it's irrelevant?) |
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All I can say is that if you get this emotive about 0.08 BTC, perhaps you should not be buying Bitcoins at all. You might have a heart attack or something.
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Yeah, this is not very clear, and I'm not even sure it's true.
I opened a topic in Hebrew section, perhaps someone in loco will have something to say.
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Note that it doesn't prevent Israelis from wiring money to mt.gox from their personal accounts. It just means there won't be legit bitcoin exchanges based out of Israel.
That's not what I understood from OP. It seems that banks are forbidding people to send money to MtGox. Whoa, if true, this would be quite significant, and one of the more oppressive Bitcoin-related restrictions to date
+1 The most oppressive, no doubt. So far only business were being censored, never individuals. |
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Quelle est la différence entre centralisé et décentralisé ?
Bah... un dépend d'un serveur central, l'autre non.... la slush pool c'est centralisé ?
Oui. Il n'y a que P2Pool qui n'est pas à ma connaissance. Comment les pool operators génèrent les blocks ?
c'est bien toute les 10 minutes, quelqu'un est choisi sur le réseau pour hasher un block ?
Tu trouveras tes réponses sur le wiki, je suis un peu pressé là pour tout expliquer. (peut-être quelqu'un d'autre le ferra à ma place?) Mais en gros personne n'est "choisi", c'est celui qui produit un block dont le hash est acceptable selon la difficulté courante qui "gagne". Le réseau essaye de régler cette difficulté pour que ça se passe une fois à chaque 10 min en moyenne, mais il y a une bonne variance. |
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that number does not make much sense.. to me;. gox queue in total can be this big. but not on a daily basis.. I know people waiting for days now so and they are around number 10k.. 20k a day.. sounds a bit far stretched... to me..
Aren't people in US allowed to start trading small volumes without verifying? I think verification is only mandatory for Europeans, but I'm not sure. |
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Et voila comment la loi de wirth arrive: "on s'en fou des performances, le hardware s'améliore tout le temps".
On ne s'en fous pas des performances, au contraire, elles sont fréquemment en train d'améliorer. Il y a eu du gros progrès dans la 0,8 par ex. Les développeurs travaillent soigneusement pour améliorer ces performances sans mettre le logiciel (et donc tous les bitcoins) en péril. Si tu n'es pas satisfait de leurs progrès, tu es toujours libre pour collaborer toi aussi. Râler dans un forum est facile mais n'aide pas énormément, tu sais... Le point de mon message précédant c'était de dire que Bitcoin est parfaitement capable de monter en échelle. Si tu ne le crois pas, peux-tu me le dire pourquoi? Surtout que AMD à anoncer la fin de la loi de moore (j'ai une gros doute la dessus).
 Ils vont se laisser faire par leur concurrents alors? (et d'ailleurs, ce n'est même pas CPU le principal point d'étranglement pour Bitcoin, c'est plutôt IO et bande passante). |
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