It's so nice to be in the early stage of a bubble! everyones so happy  I've witnessed every one of Bitcoin's many bubbles. From my experience, a bubble is always in the "early stages" until the moment it pops. Just some food for thought  . |
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Bitcoin is naturally deflationary, so units will have to change. Just like we no longer use MB and instead measure disk capacity in TB, we will eventually have to change units.
Going from BTC to mBTC to μBTC to (eventually) nBTC is the natural direction. As time goes on, prefixes get stronger. This is how it works with disk capacity (kB to MB to GB to TB and eventually to PB), which people are familiar with. This is how it works with frequencies (MHz to GHz and eventually to THz). This is how it works with die sizes in semiconducting (μm to nm and eventually to pm).
Humans like to have prefixes increase in intensity as time goes on, not decrease. This is not possible with using Msat, because instead of going to the intuitive Gsat, it goes to ksat. The prefixes are not increasing in intensity. Worse yet, when the prices go from ksat to sat, the next step is msat. From here on, prefixes do go in order of increasing intensity. Not only is using satoshi cumbersome and unprecedented, but it is also inconsistent in the long run.
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See, it wasn't that "far" from passing the April high eh? Yep, that storm sure came faster than I expected! Speaking of storm, another riotous record has been set (surprise, surprise). 1. 2013-11-05: 0.23837 USD/mBTC
2. 2013-11-04: 0.22048 USD/mBTC
3. 2013-04-09: 0.21467 USD/mBTC
4. 2013-11-03: 0.20650 USD/mBTC
5. 2013-11-02: 0.20422 USD/mBTC
6. 2013-11-01: 0.20261 USD/mBTC
7. 2013-10-30: 0.20105 USD/mBTC
8. 2013-10-31: 0.20040 USD/mBTC
9. 2013-10-29: 0.20017 USD/mBTC
10. 2013-10-23: 0.19625 USD/mBTC
11. 2013-10-28: 0.19485 USD/mBTC
12. 2013-10-22: 0.18914 USD/mBTC
13. 2013-10-27: 0.18876 USD/mBTC
14. 2013-10-24: 0.18591 USD/mBTC
15. 2013-04-10: 0.18465 USD/mBTC
16. 2013-10-26: 0.18218 USD/mBTC
17. 2013-04-08: 0.18149 USD/mBTC
18. 2013-10-25: 0.17940 USD/mBTC
19. 2013-10-21: 0.17572 USD/mBTC
20. 2013-10-20: 0.16518 USD/mBTC Laziness. It is a logarithmic-trendline fitting exercise, and it does not change anything. But if you have the monthly VWAs, (starting June 2013 in Stamp), I could replace the values. Does your month end on Friday or the last day of the month?
Months in my dataset start on the first day and end on the last day. To be honest, I do not see the point of ending months on a Friday, but I am not a financial analyst so I have little experience with how they tend to do it. Here's the full dataset, which switches from Gox to Stamp in June 2013. Note that June 2011 is incomplete due to Gox shutting down for a few days. "2010-08","0.0647499670783823"
"2010-09","0.061954020274147086"
"2010-10","0.10582991127505428"
"2010-11","0.27056745743101035"
"2010-12","0.24010984584593584"
"2011-01","0.38858180917534374"
"2011-02","0.8960578304157628"
"2011-03","0.8507913320085179"
"2011-04","1.502187236294624"
"2011-05","6.384160766440483"
"2011-06","18.548271754213044"
"2011-07","14.1037341177656"
"2011-08","9.752957091428916"
"2011-09","5.759628530472161"
"2011-10","3.301818830471977"
"2011-11","2.59770303849321"
"2011-12","3.508841773813272"
"2012-01","6.106948530818074"
"2012-02","5.0629012809481555"
"2012-03","4.88026245169567"
"2012-04","4.979702748141324"
"2012-05","5.062788532597013"
"2012-06","6.026649772612354"
"2012-07","8.043786615126523"
"2012-08","10.87919315075586"
"2012-09","11.465951649610172"
"2012-10","11.578438689611142"
"2012-11","11.505423856163247"
"2012-12","13.329754439355359"
"2013-01","16.30940895076361"
"2013-02","25.933876759727013"
"2013-03","58.144059684555"
"2013-04","115.09268141788563"
"2013-05","112.81303150360635"
"2013-06","108.3900675602325"
"2013-07","83.80252582024497"
"2013-08","105.79276538949902"
"2013-09","124.32868197086977"
"2013-10","156.4950743054255"
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If you add up all the BTC volume across all currencies for MtGox its about 780,000BTC over 30 days.. so BTCChina still has a little ways to go to knock them off the top in terms of BTC Volume.
Not to mention BTCChina has zero trade fees at the moment, which makes me very suspicious about their volumes.
You can't just "add up" all the BTC volume across all currencies for Mt. Gox. That would be double-counting. To understand this, one needs to understand how Mt. Gox works. You see, Mt. Gox doesn't have a market for each currency. Rather, all currencies share a single trade book. When an order is placed with one currency, it is injected into the trade book and potentially matched with other currencies. Thus, traders in obscure currencies have the benefit of being able to trade with a more mainstream currency. There are then two types of Mt. Gox transactions: transactions with two of the same currency markets (e.g. USD and USD or EUR and EUR), and transactions between two different currency markets (e.g. USD and EUR). Because the USD market is so much larger, most of the volume for other currency markets has already been counted in the USD currency market. Thus, adding up the volume across all currencies for Mt. Gox is a gross overestimate. The USD volume is much, much closer to actual volume. Are you 100% sure of that? because i had order in euro that were not fulfilled completely while an equivalent higher price in $ was hit. See: https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20800336-Multi-Currency-TradingQ. Do you keep independent ask/bid tables for different currencies?
A. No, ask/bid tables for different currencies are not independent. All currencies are relative to whichever currency has the highest volume, which is based on said currencies current market price in bitcoin. Every trade is in one pool and in fact, not are not separate currency markets. This allows users the added benefit of trading in "the greater market" -in currencies they understand- while not limiting them to smaller currency markets.
For example, if a buy order for bitcoins is placed in EUR, the order can be executed against another user selling bitcoins in any currency and not necessarily only against another user selling bitcoins in EUR.
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Nodes prefer the first heard among those with otherwise equal work. How often does it happen that two miners simultaneously find a block with exactly equal work values? The issue here is the definition of work. Work is based on the target, and not based on the block hash itself. It is a statistical fallacy to claim that a block with a lower hash required more work than another block mined with the same target. When two blocks have the same target, the earliest-received is preferred. |
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All ASIC will be broken so basically no one will follow this hardfork. All ASICs get replaced after a few months anyway, so it would be no problem to define it 6-12 months in the future before implementing it. The arm-race won't last indefinitely and it will eventually slow down. I don't see any chance to change the format of the 80bytes header unless absolutely needed, e.g. SHA256 weakened or timestamp overflow in the far future A better solution is to allow both types of blocks for the next year, then force the new type of block. No ASIC is going to last a year. |
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What you mean is the most difficulty, which is not the same as the numerical block hash. The natural numbers less than 2^256 are a total order, but difficulty is a partial order on block hashes.
What are you talking about? You deleted my example; that may be the source of your confusion… Here, look at it in fixed-width font, with some emphasis:
0xffffffffffffffffffffffffffff0000
0x000000000000000000000000000f0000
See how they have the same number of trailing zeroes? For any target you choose, either both will match it or neither will. Yet these two numbers are not equal. Therefore difficulty is creates a partial order on block hashes. On the other hand "less than" is a total order on block hashes. Your example would be easier to understand if you wrote it in big endian, but now I see your point. |
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This is a statistical fallacy. Two blocks will always be equally difficult when they were mined with the same target.
This is a definitional fallacy. What you mean to say is that clients prefer to choose the block with the least block hash.
What you mean is the most difficulty, which is not the same as the numerical block hash. The natural numbers less than 2^256 are a total order, but difficulty is a partial order on block hashes. What are you talking about? Let's say I have two hashes: 0xF000 and 0xEFFF. Target is 0xFF00. Then: - The two hashes have the same difficulty.
- The second hash is numerically less than the first.
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The minimum difficulty required for a block to be valid is the thing that stays the same. Within that 2016-block window the actual difficulty of various blocks varies above that threshold.
It would be less ambiguous if you said, "Successful pools do not build on the first block they hear; they build on the block with the highest work they hear." Well, we're splitting hairs here, but technically I might have gotten lucky and not worked very hard to find a block whose hash, in binary, ends with 250 zeroes in a row (outrageously high difficulty). But yeah we're talking about the same thing. This is a statistical fallacy. Two blocks will always be equally difficult when they were mined with the same target. What you mean to say is that clients prefer to choose the block with the least block hash. This is effectively a deterministic pseudo-random algorithm for choosing which block to build on. I do not remember this being the case, but it is possible this has changed recently. |
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How do I revoke an API key? I accidentally generated one and can't seem to get rid of it.
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your blocks ends up increasing the risk that you get orphaned since nodes prefer the first block they heard.
I think this assumption of theirs is the flaw. Successful pools do not build on the first block they hear; they build on the most difficult block they hear. If you rerun their calculations under that assumption, the cost of losing the work done on their second block in the private two-block chain swamps out any possible benefit. If the end-user bitcoin-qt client is using the "first block heard" rather than "most difficult block heard", then it's a bug, and one that is already fixed on the network nodes that matter most for security (the mining pools and large solo miners). Blocks that are not near a difficulty change will always have the same difficulty. |
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Bitcoin miners should take steps to prevent selfish mining.
Yes, miners should be using P2Pool. Developers should integrate P2Pool into the default client to encourage this. There hasn't been much of a reason for them (miners) to do so yet. If they (miners) find their source of income dwindling because of a potential threat, that may (or may not) change. Is there evidence that P2Pool would alleviate the situation? So long as P2Pool is honest, it seems the selfish mining strategy still gives an advantage. The real way to solve this is a change to the consensus algorithm. |
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If you add up all the BTC volume across all currencies for MtGox its about 780,000BTC over 30 days.. so BTCChina still has a little ways to go to knock them off the top in terms of BTC Volume.
Not to mention BTCChina has zero trade fees at the moment, which makes me very suspicious about their volumes.
You can't just "add up" all the BTC volume across all currencies for Mt. Gox. That would be double-counting. To understand this, one needs to understand how Mt. Gox works. You see, Mt. Gox doesn't have a market for each currency. Rather, all currencies share a single trade book. When an order is placed with one currency, it is injected into the trade book and potentially matched with other currencies. Thus, traders in obscure currencies have the benefit of being able to trade with a more mainstream currency. There are then two types of Mt. Gox transactions: transactions with two of the same currency markets (e.g. USD and USD or EUR and EUR), and transactions between two different currency markets (e.g. USD and EUR). Because the USD market is so much larger, most of the volume for other currency markets has already been counted in the USD currency market. Thus, adding up the volume across all currencies for Mt. Gox is a gross overestimate. The USD volume is much, much closer to actual volume. |
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Has anyone actually read the study? It seems like a legitimate problem from a cursory glance. Bitcoin miners should take steps to prevent selfish mining.
As the paper points out, what we thought was a 51% attack looks to be a 26% attack.
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Today's update confirms a new record high people were predicting by noon. 1. 2013-11-04: 0.22048 USD/mBTC
2. 2013-04-09: 0.21467 USD/mBTC
3. 2013-11-03: 0.20650 USD/mBTC
4. 2013-11-02: 0.20422 USD/mBTC
5. 2013-11-01: 0.20261 USD/mBTC
6. 2013-10-30: 0.20105 USD/mBTC
7. 2013-10-31: 0.20040 USD/mBTC
8. 2013-10-29: 0.20017 USD/mBTC
9. 2013-10-23: 0.19625 USD/mBTC
10. 2013-10-28: 0.19485 USD/mBTC
11. 2013-10-22: 0.18914 USD/mBTC
12. 2013-10-27: 0.18876 USD/mBTC
13. 2013-10-24: 0.18591 USD/mBTC
14. 2013-04-10: 0.18465 USD/mBTC
15. 2013-10-26: 0.18218 USD/mBTC
16. 2013-04-08: 0.18149 USD/mBTC
17. 2013-10-25: 0.17940 USD/mBTC
18. 2013-10-21: 0.17572 USD/mBTC
19. 2013-10-20: 0.16518 USD/mBTC
20. 2013-10-19: 0.16326 USD/mBTC If this parabolic rise is to continue, this thread will likely take another nap until the next bubble. |
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Your numbers are a bit different from mine, and I suspect it is a difference in methodology. It seems you are taking the arithmetic mean of several weekly weighted averages. Is there a reason why the monthly weighted average is not used? Revision: Also, since we are talking about longer-period weighted averages, here are some data for various ranges. One-day weighted averages: 1. 2013-04-09 through 2013-04-09 W. Avg: 214.67 2. 2013-11-03 through 2013-11-03 W. Avg: 206.50 3. 2013-11-02 through 2013-11-02 W. Avg: 204.22 4. 2013-11-01 through 2013-11-01 W. Avg: 202.61 5. 2013-10-30 through 2013-10-30 W. Avg: 201.05 Two-day weighted averages (overlapping permitted): 1. 2013-11-02 through 2013-11-03 W. Avg: 205.65 2. 2013-11-01 through 2013-11-02 W. Avg: 203.53 3. 2013-10-31 through 2013-11-01 W. Avg: 200.99 4. 2013-10-30 through 2013-10-31 W. Avg: 200.82 5. 2013-10-29 through 2013-10-30 W. Avg: 200.70 Two-day weighted averages (curtailed to avoid overlapping): 1. 2013-11-02 through 2013-11-03 W. Avg: 205.65 2. 2013-10-31 through 2013-11-01 W. Avg: 200.99 3. 2013-10-29 through 2013-10-30 W. Avg: 200.7 4. 2013-04-08 through 2013-04-09 W. Avg: 197.45 5. 2013-10-27 through 2013-10-28 W. Avg: 192.1 One-week weighted averages (curtailed): 1. 2013-10-28 through 2013-11-03 W. Avg: 200.94 2. 2013-10-21 through 2013-10-27 W. Avg: 185.09 3. 2013-04-05 through 2013-04-11 W. Avg: 175.81 4. 2013-10-14 through 2013-10-20 W. Avg: 147.77 5. 2013-04-24 through 2013-04-30 W. Avg: 142.27 Ten-day weighted averages (curtailed): 1. 2013-10-25 through 2013-11-03 W. Avg: 193.90 2. 2013-10-15 through 2013-10-24 W. Avg: 169.47 3. 2013-04-02 through 2013-04-11 W. Avg: 159.03 4. 2013-04-21 through 2013-04-30 W. Avg: 138.35 5. 2013-05-23 through 2013-06-01 W. Avg: 129.49 30-day weighted averages (curtailed): 1. 2013-10-05 through 2013-11-03 W. Avg: 167.28 2. 2013-08-31 through 2013-09-29 W. Avg: 124.57 3. 2013-04-20 through 2013-05-19 W. Avg: 120.72 4. 2013-05-20 through 2013-06-18 W. Avg: 116.84 5. 2013-03-13 through 2013-04-11 W. Avg: 108.63 |
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A slow but steady trot. 1. 2013-04-09: 0.21467 USD/mBTC
2. 2013-11-03: 0.20650 USD/mBTC
3. 2013-11-02: 0.20422 USD/mBTC
Was the #1 spot in Gox dollars, but the rest of the top 10 in bitstamp dollars? Was Gox already having trouble processing dollar withdrawals back in April? Yes. Gox had no trouble in April, as the Bitstamp numbers then were similar (0.21486). The cutoff in my dataset is June 10, 2013, as I find this date the starting-point of Gox's troubles.. |
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A slow but steady trot. 1. 2013-04-09: 0.21467 USD/mBTC
2. 2013-11-03: 0.20650 USD/mBTC
3. 2013-11-02: 0.20422 USD/mBTC
4. 2013-11-01: 0.20261 USD/mBTC
5. 2013-10-30: 0.20105 USD/mBTC
6. 2013-10-31: 0.20040 USD/mBTC
7. 2013-10-29: 0.20017 USD/mBTC
8. 2013-10-23: 0.19625 USD/mBTC
9. 2013-10-28: 0.19485 USD/mBTC
10. 2013-10-22: 0.18914 USD/mBTC
11. 2013-10-27: 0.18876 USD/mBTC
12. 2013-10-24: 0.18591 USD/mBTC
13. 2013-04-10: 0.18465 USD/mBTC
14. 2013-10-26: 0.18218 USD/mBTC
15. 2013-04-08: 0.18149 USD/mBTC
16. 2013-10-25: 0.17940 USD/mBTC
17. 2013-10-21: 0.17572 USD/mBTC
18. 2013-10-20: 0.16518 USD/mBTC
19. 2013-10-19: 0.16326 USD/mBTC
20. 2013-04-11: 0.15893 USD/mBTC I note that this upwards movement has neither the speed nor the decisiveness of the two bubbles. Volume, instead of increasing, is actually decreasing. This feels less like a bubble inflation and more like the lull before a storm. Volume has actually increased each of the last 2 days. I expect volume to rise over the next 48 hours as well. That is mostly because the volume two days ago was anomalously low. There has been a clear downwards trend in volume over the last few weeks. |
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A slow but steady trot. 1. 2013-04-09: 0.21467 USD/mBTC
2. 2013-11-03: 0.20650 USD/mBTC
3. 2013-11-02: 0.20422 USD/mBTC
4. 2013-11-01: 0.20261 USD/mBTC
5. 2013-10-30: 0.20105 USD/mBTC
6. 2013-10-31: 0.20040 USD/mBTC
7. 2013-10-29: 0.20017 USD/mBTC
8. 2013-10-23: 0.19625 USD/mBTC
9. 2013-10-28: 0.19485 USD/mBTC
10. 2013-10-22: 0.18914 USD/mBTC
11. 2013-10-27: 0.18876 USD/mBTC
12. 2013-10-24: 0.18591 USD/mBTC
13. 2013-04-10: 0.18465 USD/mBTC
14. 2013-10-26: 0.18218 USD/mBTC
15. 2013-04-08: 0.18149 USD/mBTC
16. 2013-10-25: 0.17940 USD/mBTC
17. 2013-10-21: 0.17572 USD/mBTC
18. 2013-10-20: 0.16518 USD/mBTC
19. 2013-10-19: 0.16326 USD/mBTC
20. 2013-04-11: 0.15893 USD/mBTC I note that this upwards movement has neither the speed nor the decisiveness of the two bubbles. Volume, instead of increasing, is actually decreasing. This feels less like a bubble inflation and more like the lull before a storm. |
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A satoshi is an nonsensical unit. People throw around the argument that "a satoshi is the smallest possible division of a bitcoin" without considering how temporary such a designation is. The mill ($0.001) was once the smallest subdivision of many major currencies. Now, its use has become cumbersome and the smallest subdivision has adapted to the cent ($0.01) in many cultures.
A similar fate will happen to the satoshi because it simply isn't granular enough to sustain an economy consisting of 7 billion people. Ignoring potential impacts of fractional reserve, when considering lost bitcoins, there will only ever by 2 quadrillion satoshis to work with. Even with the most equal distribution, at 285714 satoshis per person, this isn't enough for day-to-day use. Most people in the United States, for example, have over $3000.00 of cash savings, which is already more than the 285714 smallest subdivisions. This ignores businesses, which are like people in their own right, and often have even greater cash reserves.
Fact is, Bitcoin was never designed with the satoshi as the smallest subdivision in mind. Initial versions of the client showed only 2 decimal digits, though all 8 were tracked. Satoshi believed that the subdivisions will be changed as time goes on to accommodate usage patterns. Thus, there is no reason to measure prices with 0.00000001 of a bitcoin, since that measurement has only temporal significance. In a decade or so, the last languages to use 58-bit integers (JavaScript primarily) will have gained 64-bit (and likely 128-bit) integers as well. There will then be no encumbrance in subdividing the bitcoin further.
If we believe mBTC to be too large a unit, perhaps we should use nBTC. This will do everything a satoshi does without using an awkward power of 10 not commonly seen in today's society.
Really? This is your argument? That the satoshi is too large of a unit to use in daily transactions for 7 billion people? Roughly 30K people use bitcoins sometimes, and less than 100 use them daily and exclusively. Do you really think that bitcoins will ever be the exclusive, or even primary, unit of exchange for all the people on this planet? I doubt it. Yes, there can be unit divisions less than a satoshi. So what? How many decades before we need to even name that unit? The satoshi is around half of the Uzbek tiyin by value. This is the lowest denomination of any government currency (which admittedly is not often used). With only the 30000 people using Bitcoin now, the satoshi is already comparable with lower denominations of government currency. If even a billion people used Bitcoin, it would make transactions in numerous countries difficult. Also consider the transaction fee. If I were to buy a bottle of water for 10 satoshis, I certainly do not want to pay a 1 satoshi fee (that would be 10%). But there is no option to pay less. Even off-chain transaction processors are likely to charge a 1-satoshi usage fee to avoid DDOS. Once a satoshi rises too much in value, that would become an obscene fee for a microtransaction. |
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