The default transaction fee can be adjusted as the value of BTC dips and rises. If the BTC price drops to $10, it could be made higher. If it skyrockets, it could be made lower. Furthermore, what we call the "default transaction fee" isn't really enforced on a protocol level. It's just the fee that is recommended by the reference client and you can choose to include a higher or lower fee with your transactions if that is what you prefer. Miners aren't tied to it either as they can choose to reject transactions with a fee less than x BTC where the value of x may or may not be the default transaction fee.

The price of a single bitcoin in terms of fiat shouldn't make a difference as to whether or not mining for transaction fees is profitable. If the BTC price is low, a miner might get 0.5 BTC (maybe worth $10) from fees. If the BTC price is high, the same miner might get 0.0005 BTC (still worth $10) instead.

Mining works in a way that if it's too unprofitable and too many people start leaving, then the difficulty will adjust so that mining becomes easier. If it's too profitable and too many people start entering, then the difficulty will adjust so that mining becomes harder.

There has been some discussion lately about a proposed altcoin called Fedcoin which would fit that description:

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=984823


The idea isn't completely without merit since users of such a coin would benefit from decreased volatility while leveraging the power of the blockchain that makes cheap and near-instant transactions possible. While it would be competing with Bitcoin, it would also make fiat-BTC conversions much easier since both coins would exist in the form of trustless code. Those who already dislike fiat will obviously reject its blockchain version too and I know most people around here aren't big fans of fiat so the negative reaction to the idea isn't surprising.

Then there are also altcoins and crypto assets which are designed to closely track the value of USD. Examples include BitUSD (BitShares), Nubits (NuShares/Peershares/Peercoin), and CoinoUSD (NXT - redeemable for real USD at Coinomat).

There will be mining for as long as Bitcoin exists. New blocks will still be added to the blockchain every 10 minutes on average. The difference is that instead of mining for newly generated bitcoins, miners would be mining for transaction fees instead. Just like today, miners with more hashing power will solve more blocks and miners with less hashing power will solve less blocks. Today, the block reward consists of 25 newly generated bitcoins and the miner gets a few extra (e.g. 0.5 BTC) from transaction fees. In about a year or two from now, it will be 12.5 BTC plus transaction fees. Then a few more years later, it will be 6.25 BTC plus transaction fees and so on.

We don't know what the Bitcoin economy will look like two or three decades from now when the generation of new coins becomes insignificant due to continued block reward halvings or whether or not the model of mining for transaction fees is even viable at all although a few altcoins have tried to replicate the experiment. Premine (PMC) is/was one of them:


Unfortunately, it failed:

You can send a transaction without paying a fee if you wanted to although it might take longer to confirm or not happen at all (and the coins will be returned to you). The default transaction fee used by the reference client was already lowered once in the past from 0.0005 BTC to 0.0001 BTC in May 2013 so it should be easy to change it in the event of a significant increase in BTC price:


Link: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=219504

EDIT: And the original default transaction fee was actually 0.001 BTC back when 1 BTC was worth cents.

For the OP to reach member status, they would need to make almost 50 more posts.

That being said, selling the account would be my recommendation too and the OP could do it right now if they wanted to. However, it would be smarter to sell it once they reach junior member status since prices for junior members are higher and the market for newbie accounts is very small. For the OP to reach junior member status, they will only need to make 11 more posts and because they posted across multiple activity periods and a new activity period will begin in a few hours from now, it should be achievable today. A junior member account can generally be sold for about 0.01 BTC.

Also, there have been very rare occasions where people have asked theymos to change their name and such a request was granted. But it's EXTREMELY rare and almost never guaranteed to happen. In cases where it did happen, they were usually long-established senior or hero accounts. Requests for minor changes such as adding or removing a character are also more likely to be successful.

Finally, the OP could donate 50 BTC to the forum and become a VIP. VIPs have the ability to change their usernames at will. TradeFortress did this and he changes his name occasionally.

I posted about this topic a few months ago and the responses I got were pretty interesting:

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=677129

Bitmixer.io automatically excludes posts that are under 75 characters in length although I believe it is the only one out there that has such a restriction. For any particular post, length is a poor-to-average indicator of constructiveness. For example, here is a post I made that was very short but reasonably constructive. The OP complained about the newbie posting limits and believed that their posts were getting discarded by the forum software. I was the first to reply that that this was not in fact true and showed them how to retrieve their posts by accessing the draft feature.

Post length becomes a better indicator of constructiveness once it is applied to posting history. Those with entire post histories that consist of short one or two sentence replies are highly likely to have their posts classed as unconstructive while the opposite is true for those who have a history of making lengthier posts.

As for some examples of highly constructive posts, here is one and here is another. Note that these posts manage to be constructive without being overly long.

For an automated solution, post length is probably the only realistic measure of constructiveness that we have today since machines currently lack the intelligence to classify posts based on their semantics and context within the overall thread.

While it might be more time-consuming for signature campaigns than the current system we have now, some form of automated method like the one Bitmixer.io currently uses combined with a manual method that roughly scans through users' posting histories and paying users in proportion to the constructiveness of their posts should be encouraged in my opinion - i.e. make lots of constructive posts and you will get paid more and spam the forums with one line posts that simply parrot whatever previous posts said and you will get paid less. Not only would the advertiser benefit but the system should, at least in theory, increase the average quality of posts across the board since it would provide an incentive for users to create higher quality posts.

Neither 60k bits, 6,000 bits, nor 60 bits are worth one penny. One US penny is currently worth about 3,500 satoshis according to Preev. To convert that to bits, just chop off the two zeroes at the end - i.e. 35 bits.

CoinTelegraph published an article about this on their site. It's likely that CoinDesk underestimated the community's reaction towards the irony of a BTC news site not accepting BTC (technically this isn't correct - see below) on their deals page:

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113674/coindesk-launches-deal-site-without-bitcoin-support


This is true. In fact, the company they are using seems to be StackSocial. Thus, CoinDesk isn't actually selling anything. They are simply referring users to buy products from StackSocial and they get a small percentage of the profits of each sale. Technically since StackSocial is a Groupon-esque site, you could say that even they aren't really selling anything directly themselves either.


A lot of people have already suggested using a solution like BitPay to protect against BTC volatility but the reality is that it's a bit more complicated than that. Some sort of agreement will probably need to happen between BitPay or Coinbase and StackSocial.

Well there is this link.

It's probably the closest thing to an official list around here since it's recommended by theymos:

I'm launching a new site called WikiScams.

I was reading dree12's thread about his research into Bitcoin heists and thought it might work nicely in a wiki-style format since it is rather long. The name was inspired by WikiLeaks.

It works the same way as Wikipedia basically. And anyone can create or modify an article. No accounts required (yet). The idea is that it should educate people and hopefully make scams less common. Since the site uses an open license, some of the info could probably be trimmed down and ported over to the official Bitcoin wiki too. I'll probably be moving over some of the content to separate articles in the next few days.

There are two articles at the moment: Stackcoin and dice.ninja. Pirate's ponzi should have its own article too. I'll write it tomorrow unless someone else wants to do it.

The URL is www.wikiscams.org.

In my experience, you might get 10-20 cents per week from a faucet. Even using your analogy, I would say that spending a week to get a coupon that saves you 10 or 20 cents is not a good use of your time.

That being said, I'm guilty of using faucets myself although I just stick with Freebitco.in these days. They might have some limited value for paying transaction fees if you manage to save up enough and withdraw all of it at once, but I still think they're a waste of time.


It's an interesting theoretical exercise but nobody really knows if Bitcoin will reach $1 million or not and the question of whether or not it's a good idea to use faucets is debatable even if you are fairly certain that the BTC price will reach stratospheric levels. I posted an old topic about this very subject almost a year ago and the responses I got were pretty interesting:

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=720087

It's also unlikely that Bitcoin will be experiencing the same rate of growth that it had in 2009-2013. As I mentioned previously, going from a $4 million market cap to a $4 billion one is fairly easy. Going from a $4 billion market cap to a $4 trillion one is bloody hard. So you might have to wait decades before your 300 satoshis is enough to buy even a soda.

There are reports that uninstalling Epic Scale via the control panel isn't actually quite as straightforward as it seems since a lot of files and registry entries are supposedly left behind which need to be removed manually.


They do it for the money basically. Since the software itself is free, that is one way they can generate money from it. Many freeware programs also have a paid pro version that omits these extra "goodies" which might be worth the extra expense. You're right that many companies are doing this although the practice isn't exactly new. Kazaa did it. Nero did it. You could even argue that OEM PC manufacturers that install pointless third party bloatware on their products are doing some form of it. Even Oracle does so by including the Ask! Toolbar and McAfee Security Scanner with their Java installer.

As for exactly how uTorrent might benefit in this situation:


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ΜTorrent

I actually did a bit more reading about the rules of different signature campaigns since I wrote that and each one is slightly different but I'd say most allow for rolling over of posts. The old PrimeDice campaign definitely did if you didn't reach the minimum limit of 50 posts per month and once Stunna reopens his campaign, it should do so as well. ActionCrypto (currently closed) also rolled over previous weeks' posts if it was under the minimum limit of 20 posts but in order to receive any payment, you had to make 20 posts in that week. So if you made 10 posts in week 1, 15 posts in week 2, and 20 posts in week 3, you would get paid for 10 + 15 + 20 = 45 posts in week 3. 777coin and Bitin.io don't allow for any rolling over of posts except for posts that were made in the first week. Bitmixer.io (closed for new participants) doesn't need to roll over posts since they don't have a minimum limit.

I also remember there was another campaign that had a special program for those who posted very infrequently. I'll see if I can find it...

EDIT: OK, I can't seem to be able to find it but BIT-X seems to have no minimum posting limits. But you will need to wait until you are full member to join.

I think the idea behind this is that sex and gender are not necessarily the same. Usually they are, but not always. Sex is a biological concept and is determined by your chromosomes and physical attributes while gender is a social concept. Someone can be biologically male but identify as female, or vice versa. Or at least that's how I think it works. In this case, the gym decided to segregate people depending on their gender rather than their biological sex.

It's fun but don't expect to get anything serious out of it since the house edge is a whopping 5%. Most dice sites (e.g. Primedice, PRCDice) have a house edge of just 1%.

Well, "hackers" sounds a bit harsh.

They seem to be a legitimate group with a philanthropic mission. Their idea isn't too different from other distributed computing projects such as BOINC (e.g. SETI@home) or Folding@home. While their current software mostly just mines litecoins apparently, a part of the profits are donated to charitable causes and they have plans to expand the software to other causes which could benefit from the distributed computing model. For example:


Link: http://www.epicscale.com/

The program actually mines litecoins but otherwise, yeah. They wouldn't make much money at all.


Freeware often does. Free and open source software (FOSS) usually (but not always) doesn't.


I posted a calculation on another thread here about how much money 1 million PCs would be able to make by mining bitcoins. The result was that 1 million PCs mining 24/7 at max performance would earn roughly $150 per day. Using the same hardware to mine altcoins would earn much more:

From what I've read, the program actually mines litecoins rather than bitcoins. It's still not the best choice of altcoin since there are many CPU mineable altcoins out there. I've done the calculations and every single one of them suggests that a computer mining LTC will only generate fractions of a cent per day assuming the average CPU is capable of 20 KH/s so I'm not sure what exactly it is that they're trying to achieve.

As for using supercomputers to mine, well it depends on the supercomputer. Some supercomputers use GPUs in addition to CPUs which would have been well suited for mining scrypt-based currencies until ASICs came into the scene in 2014.

Most Bitcoin whales were early adopters who had the luck or foresight to become involved in the Bitcoin community when it was still largely unknown to the outside world. This can be verified this by looking at the blockchain - i.e. a few addresses control a very large number of bitcoins.

The definition of a whale being someone who has over 1,000 BTC makes sense because a whale is someone who has enough coins that their actions can cause a noticeable shift in the markets. 100 BTC would probably be enough to effect a small change in the Bitcoin markets and several times that (e.g. 200-500 BTC) would produce a very noticeable spike or drop in prices, but most people don't play with their entire balance.


There are many dead, almost zero volume coins on exchanges with minimal volume. It would be possible to manipulate the prices of some coins with just 0.1 BTC.

So the exchanges still have bank accounts then? The government hasn't blocked these?