It doesn't matter about you having to forfeit something, noagendamarket says you are trustworthy for this then it is not an issue. If you run away with the machine we will have to kill him.

OK a hardware list can be drawn up, with appropriate prices etc.

Some downtime in acceptable, just not too much, how much is too much I don't know. Is there a way you can be contacted if you are not at home to let you know the machine is down?

When we end our agreement.... we should have a minimum period for the agreement, maybe 6months. At the end we can either continue for another period, or sell the equipment (for cash or bitcoin), or if we have found someone else ship it to them. I think we should pay for the shipping if that is the choice.

This can be done no problem, if the secret is shared between for example, 10 people, we can set it so that 7 people are needed to unlock it (we can have this number higher or lower, it can be changed).


Sorry I can't find any information about the hardware cost, is there a link, that cost seems very low.

I don't know Theymos, but if you say he is trustworthy then that is the best we have, so for this I am go.

About the issue of shares, I am working on the trading platform right now. I hope to have it ready (with enough functionality to issue shares at least) in time. If not then that is not a problem, we can use signed certificates. The platform will allow for payment of dividends, and voting by share owners.

I recommend we issue 8000 shares at 1btc each, this will mean that each of us can buy the shares we wish but it also means that we can tap the bitcoin market for people who only have a few bitcoins but wish to be able to use it. 1btc is a low barrier of entry and should make it easy for us to fill the hole if there are not enough high level investors (like us).

It also means we can jump start our market/trading platform which will be, over the long term if it is successful, more profitable than mining.

I also think that all btc generated should be paid out as dividends, and that if we want to get more hardware we must issue more shares. This will allow for members to choose between reinvestment or to take their earnings. It will also mean more trading on our platform if our venture is profitable.

Yes and no, some people will generate and then get bored and leave.This will influence the difficulty a little. Because this is a free market quite quickly specialisation of labour will happen (because it is more competitive) and we will have clusters of high end machines working on generation(this is where most of the networks block generation will come from in the future, but this is not a problem). This will happen for as long as it is profitable. Once the cost of electricity rises over the value of bitcoins generated then the mining will stop.

This will continue on and off forming an equilibrium that will trend upward slowly, following the value of bitcoin. Guided by the invisible hand. It is almost poetry.

I understand about not needing too much security on the client, meeting face to face wont work for this club, we are too distributed across the globe.

My only worry is the operator taking the mining machine for himself. But I think we should continue forward with this ASAP.

Who want's to be the machine operator? I will pay a bonus from my mined bitcoins to the person for this role.

ColdHardMetal why not go for the accountant role? Specialisation of labour.

Exactly, although this is more of a technical requirement it does help with auditing especially for remote systems.

But I can't think of any way to prevent our machine operator running away with it. Maybe trust is the only option.

Specialisation of labour. Should I say more?

Copy and Paste will do.

Recommend change to Part 5, a, i ;hardware operator duties should include the installation and maintainence of a hosts intrusion detection system, and to provide regular, updated copies of it's database to the members.

A HIDS is a system that has a database of checksums for all files in the system, easily allowing us to know if there have been any changes.

This is to allow members to examine which files have been changed by the operator, making software audits easier.

Also that the operator must, at the request of the club conduct an audit or allow the members (or chosen members, or a chosen professional) to audit the machine.

I also recommend the requirement that each member has an email for contact made available, and that all members get gpg and a gpg key pair, must share their public keys, sign each others public keys.

Voting can be done by forum, but each vote must be signed by the members key.

And that this document be signed, and any document of the future(that this document may become) also needs to be signed by all members. This will prevent any changes being made without the others permission.

I also want more restrictions place on the machine operator. There is the increased risk that once he has the money for the server he will just keep the money or keep the server. He must forfeit something to the other users that is of high value (maybe more bitcoins) as a kind of deposit that he may get back over time (for example after everyone has earned back their investment,I also have no problem with the operator being paid an extra btc bonus, once off after a certain time if they prove to be trustworthy).

These bitcoins can be kept in escrow or maybe a bitcoin wallet that is encrypted where the key is again encrypted and using secret sharing cryptography each member gets a piece of the key, and it would take all keys from all members to decrypt the wallet.

Just pricing a mining rig with 4x ATI 5970 cards comes in at around $3000(prices are from newegg, and I checked my own hardware market where I am and the prices work out about the same). This is not that much, thats 730btc per person for 10 people at mtgox current rates of exchange.

We need to get started ASAP to take advantage before the block difficulty increases.

In building the stock market application I want to use the public key from an RSA generated pair as the account owners id, so no username or password, just the public key.

If they wanted to use another keypair(for example the one they have is compromised) they can keep the same public key as an ID but the actuall public key used for authentication is a new one.

Is this a good idea? Or is it a better choice to use an email address as the users ID (remember the ID must be unique), this way a user can change the keypairs used for their account

How does bitcoin manage this? It can generate many keys (bitcoin addresses) for a single wallet, what is the id used in the wallet(that owns all those public keys?)?

In answer to issue 2, it is almost certain that a large number of governments would ban everything bitcoin related( some governments, not all ). And the effect of this will be the same as the government and recording industries efforts to prevent file sharing, that is, almost no effect at all.

The weakest points of entry and exit into the bitcoin economy are the currency exchangers and these will be the first targets. Already hidden, anonymous currency exchanges are begining or being developed in for example, China that would allow continued entry and exit into the bitcoin economy despite being entirely illegal.

Secondly because of the financial motivation as long as there is money to make from using bitcoin people will use it, as long as the internet has not been turned off completely bitcoin will continue to work unaffected.

QQ coin was easily targeted by the Chinese government as it was a currency based on the servers of a Chinese company, the government only had to ask and Tencent(QQ's owners) had to take action. Bitcoin is entirely p2p and short of turning off the internet there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

It is a numbers game, x number of people are exposed to bitcoins idea and website, half of those install tthe client, maybe one tenth will buy a few bitcoins, and of those maybe only a few will stay. The more exposure the better. It will all result in more people using bitcoin and an increase in price.

At 350btc investment from 100 people we should have our investment back in three to four months in btc and then it's all profit less running costs from there. That is my guess anyway.

I have not used mtgox, is he the one doing the exchange or is he just running a market?

If he is the one doing the exchane himself then yes the price will drop for a while( shouldnt be more than one or two weeks ). However if he is just running a market then it wont effect price at all, there must be a buyer for that 20,000 btc. It just means the market will be very liquid over that price for buying btc and under that price other btc sellers will be filling orders.

Either way mtgox moves that amount in one day at this point.

Just to get an idea of how many people are using bitcoin.

pm me a topic or two and a general idea of size and I will see what I can do, you can decide after if you want to include it.

A magazine to write for? Who is paying in btc for articles? What kind of articles are they looking for?

It is very possible, at this rate it could easily reach parity with the dollar by July.

There is the very real danger that btc is becoming a bubble. I think a lot of people buying into btc are doing it only because they expect it to rise. Which will happen, but wont continue forever unless it is being used to trade goods and services.

I think too little of bitcoin activity is around goods and services whike most is around exchanging.

Although, many people here are Libertarian, and are buying bitcoin for the long term as it is a Libertarians dream curreny( there is of course gold and silver, but until you can send those in the email then btc is better for international trade), but I'm not sure by what amount.

Just had a look, it's staying steady over 0.40 and even hit a high of 0.45

I'm rich......er that I was, exciting times.

What if someone has no savings except for a few bitcoins? Would that be the same thing?

And the lack of a general stock market does not help, not being able to trade across with various currencies and commodities and meta-trading.

The btc market is as efficient as it can be at the moment, and the price is the correct one, even taking into account the expectation of an increase in value. The only issue is that the market does not know by how much the value will increase or when, if it did then btc would already be at that point.

A market can't predict the future, but it can see a general trend. The fact that people are spending btc is disproving the deflationary spiral myth, and if it's not being spent now, it will later, which will fuel growth as accumulated capital.