I think the Tacocopter may have been a joke, but this isn't
http://singularityhub.com/2013/05/21/matternet-building-quadcopter-drone-network-to-transport-supplies-in-developing-world/

I don't really put anyone on ignore. I can just ignore them "manually"

^ See good example of someone who can't imagine shipping being done by automated drones, and over-reacts at the idea as if it's some sort of voodoo magic 

I would hope that big miners who, unlike regular users, actually have a huge incentive to keep mining, would also be aware of this issue, and would base themselves in multiple countries, just to make sure they don't get taken down all at the same time. Plus I would hope that all the users will go to where all the hardware and software development is taking place, and all the hardware and software developers will go to where all the users are, and not just where all the mining takes place. (hardware as in ATMs, hardware wallets, etc) I.e. if this ASIC thing and centralization is really an issue, then people won't leave bitcoin for anything else until there is a catastrophic failure from this issue, which may turn people off from crypto-currencies completely for a long while.

Bitcoin is created at a rate of 25BTC every ten minutes. It doesn't matter what kind of hardware you throw at it, that does not change.


Only a small number of miners. Hobbyist miners. A large number of miners who mine as a business instead of a hobby are still at it. And an even larger (WAY LARGER) number of bitcoin supporters aren't miners, but those who support everything that bitcoin does and allows.


Funny, but a good thing. There's finally a reason for people to get themselves weaned off MtGox's centralization. I suspect Coinbase will become the largest in the US soon, just due to its convenience.


Most people did not GIVE A FUCK about smartphones (I had one since 2002). Or e-mail. Or internet. Or hell, even cars at one point. We see the benefits that bitcoin provides. Other people will too eventually.



Almost no one pays with cash any more. Everyone pays with plastic cards or smartphones (the later is rare, but being more adopted). Everyone can use plastic cards and phones to pay with bitcoins eventually, too. You can already pay with bitcoins using phones, and it's only a matter of months until the hardware wallets and plastic cards come out that will allow even a grandma, on a WinXP machine, running Internet Explorer, and running every file e-mailed to her, to keep her coins safe.



You forgot tax evasion, bypassing currency controls and sanctions, gambling, illegal file sharing, anonymous VPN access...
Does SilkRoad accept Litecoin yet? Last time I checked, SilkRoad, online gambling sites, and shady characters willing to trade cryptocurrencies for fiat on the street only used bitcoin.


Not sure what you are trying to say with this. Does lead paint provide some sort if inherent utility that nothing else can provide?


So... how does the number of quality of developers, merchants, and hardware compare between that "new technology" and bitcoin? Are there any ATMs yet? Hardware wallets? Point of sale systems? Easy to use shopping card software plugins? Companies that can accept that "new technology" and deposit it into your account for you? Or do those "new technologies" just provide minor tweaks that don't really give anything new, and have little support because everyone else is using bitcoins?


Tulips are a multi-million dollar global business, accounting for a sizable chunk of Denmark's GDP. I *wish* bitcoin was as big as tulips.

Regarding private security and corruption, go to Wikipedia, and read up on crime statistics in Italy, and on Cosa Nostra. You'll find out that crimes like murder, theft, and rape in southern Italy is some of the lowest in the world, that the mafia there actually does run a business that people actually actively seek, that most of the horrible crimes we hear associated with mafia are primarily between mafias themselves of politicians that interfere, and that the mafia actually has a code of conduct that uses the "have a reputation of violence so great, that you never actually have to use violence" system. I.e. they maintain an image of being very scary, while being very courteous and resorting to violence as a last resort. Also, what they charge for protection is way way lower than what governments charge for protection.
So hell, even mafia is better, cheaper, more effective, and more fair than police.

Don't mind crumbs. If you read through his prior posts, you'll see that he's an ex-Soviet socialist commie, who pretty much wants things to remain the way they are, because that's the way they are, and he can't imagine them being any different. You know, "reality."

Exactly. Because, at least here in the states, the IRS doesn't give a crap what you used to trade, be it barter, virtual currency, or government currency. You get taxed on the equivalent dollar-value of what you bought and sold, and have to keep a detailed accounting record of that transaction. Same thing applies to Europe. Why? Because without that rule, dollars and euros would have long been abandoned in exchange for pogs or some other virtual tokens, just so that all businesses can avoid paying taxes until they have to sell to customers who are forced, for whatever reason, to use government currencies.

If you don't count my mining from May 2011 to June 2013, then yes, I never mined.


Thank you for sort of proving my point that pools come and go, and their power changes with the miner's changing whims. Deepbit, Eclipse, and Eligius used to be really big pools. 50BTC didn't even exist until somewhat recently, and many other pools there are very new, too. Miners control hashing power, not pools, and if the top 15 on that list are taken down, or do something scammy, the bottom 5, or any new ones, will take their place as the top mining pools. And by the way, since pools go down all the time, it's customary for miners to set their mining software to switch to other pools, or solo-mine, when they lose a connection to a pool. So, if some pool is taken down suddenly, Bitcoin users probably won't even notice a change in confirmation times.


I do, you don't. Pools START by not solving any blocks, and trying to entice miners to join them. It costs almost nothing to run a pool, until you get a lot of connections and mining power pointed at you, so these pools could run indefinitely, waiting for miners to join.


Totally wrong, so I'll explain it to you. The clients/nodes do the work of verifying transactions to make sure they are following all the rules. Clients make sure that coins that were recorded in the blockchain are not double-spent, that coins are legit and not created out of thin air, that coins are following correct difficulty requirements, and that there are no more than 21M coins. If a transaction is sent that breaks any of those rules, it is the clients that reject it and stop it from propagating on the network before miners even hear about it. Miners just verify the transactions same as clients, and store it in a safe database. So if miners change some fundamental rule, such as mining strange transactions, or trying to increase the coin limit, their blocks will be rejected by all the clients, and their mined coins will be useless.


Check the date. That's an article from a year ago. P2Pool has been patched and upgraded many times since then, now supports Stratum, and can be used with Avalon and BFL (though Avalon is still buggy).

I noticed BitPay sometimes rounds off donation amounts to whole bitcoins, or just one or two decimals. That could be a problem I think.

What happened to those exploited, underpaid children since then? And what were their options before?

Also, can you provide some examples of a monopoly?

Rovchris, please stop being a whiny bitch. Pools are not central mining powerhouses. If one goes does, all miners will switch to another one. If the second and third go down, they will solo mine. This is typically set by default in mining software. There are plenty of smaller pools that aren't going anywhere, that will become large pools should the larger ones are taken down. For example, Eligius used to be a really big pool, but people quit it for personal reasons. Other small pools became big instead. Worst case scenario, there's always P2Pool. You can't take that down.
Also, if you have to ask what is the difference between a central bank money creating monopoly, and a centralized mining operation, then you really don't understand an enormously important aspect of Bitcoin. It has to do with clients, not miners.

There are free-ish markets in the same way there are prentant-ish women - you either are or you aren't. A free market is one where two entities trade freely, voluntarily, based on their best knowledge, and without coercion or force from any outside party. So, while they don't necessarily interfere, laws and regulations do coerce the trading parties into trading against their wishes, or prohibit them from trading entirely. One of the parties lying about the product, or holding a gun and saying "your money or your life," isn't a free market, either, since it is fraud/theft/crime, and the other party was coerced into trading something they normally wouldn't have. With those, we can discuss what kind of crime issues can arise, and how to deal with them, but not claim that "free markets don't work" because there are fraudulent exchanges, since, obviously, free, unregulated, unfettered trade happens all the time.



My concern is that when you start to protect people from assholes, you run into the issue of a nanny state having to rely on more and more restrictive protections, in order to deal with more and more clever thieves. And people assume that they are protected, so don't pay attention or do research, making it easier for thieves to get away with new ways of stealing from them. If people had to rely on their own research and knowledge before taking part in any trade, such assholery would be a lot harder to get away with. Plus assholes generally don't last in the market for very long, since, no one really buys stuff from assholes. They are assholes, after all (yes, I'm aware BFL somewhat flies in the face of this). Think of how many huge corps we have now who aren't assholes, like Apple, Google, Vanguard, Honda, and how many asshole companies have collapsed spectacularly once they were found out.


Here's a simple but interesting exercise. Can you name a monopoly, that isn't specifically a government agency, or is not something that is specifically mandated by government (like power companies in some places)?

Can you describe how you believe your ideal society should lice? What exactly do we need to abandon, and change to be like what you think we should be like?

If ASICMiner gets to the point of having 50% of the total hashing power, and are then shut down by the government, the only thing that will happen is that for <2 weeks transactions will take 20 minutes to confirm instead of 10. Not that big of a deal, really.

There's no "free-ish" markets. There are free markets, and there are coercive markets. If someone is forced to toil or purchase something against their will, that's not a free market any more. If your argument is that free markets can't survive the influx of assholes, then argue that, and we'll have a discussion about how to keep assholes out of free markets. But don't tell us that "free markets don't exist" because of what coercive non-free markets do. Because if your argument is that coercive non-free markets require violence to maintain, then yes, we totally agree with you. And we want to get rid of that violence, because we believe it's not needed.


I agree, people generally are not good at that, but giving them the title of "government" doesn't somehow impose more wisdom on them. If a person in a free market destroys the very soil he gets his produce from, he has killed his own business, and is out of the market. That's a damn good incentive to take care of one's soil. If a government employee or agencies did that, however, they are generally not accountable for that, since their salary depends on taxes from people who have no choice but to pay them, not from the product of that soil.



Interesting. We, market invents this crazy digital currency, this market gets so big that it at tracks hackers, criminals, tricksters, and scammers, including many ponzi scheme operators, there was a public outcry when things went really bad and ponzi schemes collapsed like dominos, yet no one stepped in to regulate it. So, is Bitcoin dead now? Is it continuing to exist in an unregulated way? What happened that it doesn't seem to want to follow your method?

Oh! Is THAT why when I worked at a candy import company, whenever we bought and sold imported candy using Euros, without that trade ever involving US dollars, we didn't have to pay taxes on that trade, nor keep track of that candy's dollar-equivalent value?
Oh, no, wait, we did have to do that, and did have to pay taxes on it. Just like we had to pay taxes on direct barter of goods for services. Huh... 

What do you mean "SCAM site?" "Site run by scammers," or "site used by scammers?"
If the latter, then bitcointalk.org is also a scam site.

Anyone who runs a full node by running Bitcoin-qt is running all of Satoshi's code, and thus is one of the chosen, who's computer has been touched by Satoshi.

Are you advocating we don't pay taxes on our Bitcoin capital gains, or any business profits earned through Bitcoin? Also, don't we buy government money through our labor and products? Or does the government just lease us that money in exchange, but still owns it, the was USSR rubles worked?

And worse, if such a place ends up having a little "too much freedom," they'll come in to stop us, then accuse us of not paying our fair share for taking care of something we didn't consider to be a problem in the first place (drugs, gambling, prostitution, weapons, whatever).