The question which fiat currency to use could probably be solved by using a composite of the most widely used fiat currencies. In the end I still see 2 challenges:

1) Defining a reliable exchange rate source. So far Bitcoin is pretty much self contained without relying on external information sources. Not even timestamps are fully trusted.

2) This still wouldn't prevent a fee market from emerging. Someone will always be willing to pay a premium to get first in line, regardless of whether you calculate the price in fiat or BTC terms. As a result the fees will still increase according to network load factor.



/thread

Ah, sorry, I guess that came out wrong.

I merely wanted to point out that sometimes the error lies beyond the scope of the application developer, ie. your software can still fall victim to a vulnerability without your code being shit. In either case it should be reported because best case the application has a problem, worst case its the platform's -- or the used crypto library's -- fault.

I didn't mean to imply that Bitcoin's keyspace is even remotely small enough for a collision to occur.

I've seen NZDT (New Zealand Dollar Token) based on the WAVES platform being used / issued by cryptopia.co.nz, but that seems to be only exchange supporting this token -- well, apart from the WAVES trading platform itself, I suppose.

EURT may just be a matter of time, but so far I don't see any likely issuers. The only exchanges that I can think of right now that support EUR trading are linked to the traditional banking anyways, fairly transparent and fully AML / KYC compliant -- which makes issuing something like EURT an unnecessary evil.



Indeed, I also think that alts will get hit harder by a possible USDT collapse than BTC. Most alts are traded on exchanges that can be only reached via BTC or USDT in the first place.

Always double check whether you are sending to a BCH address or a BTC address. Never send Bitcoin Cash to a BTC address. Never send Bitcoin to a BCH address.

You are lucky you sent it to an address that you have the private key for. If this had happened with an exchange your coins would have been effectively lost.

According to Ledger's support page, you should be able to simply log into your BCH wallet and access your BCH there:

https://ledger.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003836734-How-to-recover-BCH-sent-on-a-BTC-address

Unless you sent it to a SegWit address (starting with "3") in which case -- sorry for your loss.



I think OP is referring to Blockdozer, which is a Bitcoin Cash blockchain explorer.

You're not going to get the network any more energy efficient -- ie. higher transaction throughput for less electricity spent -- by simply decreasing the block interval. Apart from the orphan / propagation problem that aleksej already mentioned, this would also cause the blockchain to grow faster than is likely sustainable for healthy node decentralization.



Yes. In practice you can very well accept small transactions with just one confirmation. If it weren't for a full mempool, even zero confirmations would be fine for some cases.



Hashrate will always be a reflection of Bitcoin's price and the size of its block rewards / transaction fees. As long as its profitable to squeeze some more miners in, that's exactly what's going to happen. Block intervals have little to do with mining profitability and reducing block intervals would not cause a decrease in hashrate.

All things equal, the only way to reduce electricity spent on Bitcoin is by reducing the block reward. Which is exactly what is happening every ~4 years. It's just that Bitcoin's price and thus mining profitability has always managed to keep up with the decline of mining profitability caused by the halvings -- and then some.



I don't understand what you are trying to suggest. What, according to your definition, would be the 51st % node? Every node follows the longest chain. Every miner that creates a new block by definition has prolonged the longest chain and thus created the longest chain.

I still think that USDT / Bitfinex is only partially responsible for Bitcoin's growth this year. The market was ready for Bitcoin's re-awakening and that's how we got here.

Still, it does indeed look like USDT is heading for an iceberg. Question being whether Bitcoin is on the same ship or if Bitfinex is going to be the only casualty.

Well, sometimes it does go deeper than your own code:

https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-08-11-android

Either way, if a user comes across such a "collision" they should definitely report it -- albeit rather by contacting the devs directly instead of posting on a public forum.

Also I will now blame you for my newfound phobia of rocks falling from the sky.

Depends on (a) your local government and (b) the amount and type of income.

In some countries, under certain circumstances, there's no tax on capital gains on Bitcoin. However if you accept bitcoins as a form of payment, depending on the amount, you very likely will have to file it as part of your tax report.

Holy shit, are you serious? That's friggin' hilarious. Given the crypto community's awareness of money supply in and its importance I can't imagine anyone falling for that. Then again greed and dumbness never cease to disappoint.



I agree that competitive force will do their work. I doubt that many Bitcoins will survive. I'm sure that even less of the surviving Bitcoins will be actually useful.

The incentive will come in form of transaction fees.

Right now the block reward is the lion share of mining profits. Within 3-4 halvings however, you can expect transaction fees becoming the main mining income. This also leads to contentious hardforks such as we see today to become harder and harder to pull off, because in the end actual transaction throughput will define which chain is the most profitable to mine.



Proof of stake is a wholly different approach and has nothing to do with BTC.

I don't think any of these forks have much influence on the current BTC price since I honestly doubt that anyone really cares about these forks anymore.

Also the amount of forks we are seeing isn't all that strange. After all anyone can do a hardfork, and there seems to be profits to be made for the devs of each fork.

On average, every 10 minutes a limited amount of transactions get consolidated into a block. Each block into which a transaction is included, equals 1 confirmation. Miners get compensated by (1) a fixed block reward and (2) transaction fees. Neither has anything to do with the amount of confirmations that are needed to be sufficiently confident about a transaction's validity.

New coins are only issued in accordance to the block reward per block. The transaction fees that are paid, are already part of the money supply. Once all coins have been issued and no block reward is released, miners will only be compensated by transaction fees.


For details regarding block rewards, see here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply


Regarding transaction fees, see here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees


Regarding the relevance of confirmations to prevent double-spend attacks, see here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Confirmation

The most important takeaway here.

If you invest in something -- be it stocks, commodities or cryptocurrencies -- only use an amount that you are comfortable with having invested for a prolonged timeframe. With everything else just stay in cash. Simple as that.

I think OP might have come across a broken wallet implementation.

OP, have you gotten in touch with the devs of NBitcoin? If not, now would be the time. It seems like they got a serious bug in the way they generate their private keys.

Bitcoin's mining difficulty is decided by the protocol based on the average block time of the last 2016 blocks, which equals 2 weeks assuming an average block time of 10 minutes.

If hashrate decreases, average block time increases, which leads to the protocol lowering difficulty once the difficulty period has completed.

If hashrate increases, average block time decreases, which leads to the protocol heightening difficulty once the difficulty period has completed.

For a more detailed explanation on how difficulty is determined, see here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty


Note that Bitcoin Cash has a different difficulty adjustment algorithm than Bitcoin.

Well, a distributed database, but a simple database all the same.

The main issue is that without any form of token there's little incentive for the participating parties to stay honest. And if you don't worry about whether the participating parties stay honest, why use a blockchain in the first place?



Agreed. A viable alternative to PoW would be a game changer, but it doesn't seem like we're quite there yet. IOTA's tangle is basically a DAG, both IOTA and Byetball suffer from the fact that they as of now still require central entities to protect their networks from attacks.



Depending on the state of the mempool, instantaneous 0-conf transactions are viable for small transactions even today.

USD 10k,- => 2017/2018 (we're more or less there already)
USD 20k,- => 2019
USD 50k,-  => 2022 (imho we need at least one halving to reach this level)
USD 100k,- => 2035 (imho we can only reach USD 100k,- based on inflation and loss of purchasing power, not by BTC's merits alone)



Bitcoin's growth from 2009 to 2016 has also been rather swingy and unpredictable from year to year. A wild rise with a sudden drop and lots of sideways action is exactly what happened from 2013 to 2016.

Since you're in it for the long run, don't bother timing the market. Just make sure that you are actually aware of what you are getting yourself into, know how to keep your coins safe and don't invest more than you can afford to lose.

If BTC's volatility is a concern, you could try dollar cost averaging your way in. It may reduce your long term profits, but it can also work as a hedge against sudden market turndowns. Search for something like "dollar cost averaging vs lump sum investing" and you should get a rough idea about the up and downsides of both approaches. Most articles you'll find on that matter will be about traditional stocks, but for the most part it can be applied to cryptocurrencies as well.



I wouldn't bother too much with keeping an eye on CME's announcement. It's influence on the BTC market is hard to predict, may go both ways and once the market has reacted it may be already too late to change position.

I guess the main question is how long this bull market can keep going until reversal kicks in and we're facing a new bear market.

It sounds crazy, but despite the amazing increase in price BTC's growth has been surprisingly sane and stable. I honestly don't see the BTC train stopping anytime soon, yet I know there must be some major correction further down the road. It's both scary and amazing.


So what's going to happen? I currently see 3 possible scenarios:

1) We reach USD 10k,-. Everybody's happy and goes home, crypto enters a bear market until we see a new rush in 3-4 years.

2) We reach USD 10k,-. BTC goes batshit insane, hits something like USD 30k,- only to spectacularly crash down to... USD 10k,-.

3) BTC keeps its growth level up because everybody that wanted to dump already took their profits and the remaining sellers sell only so little amounts that they get absorbed by the market more or less immediately.

Depends on how you use it.

You can use MyEtherWallet in conjunction with hardware wallets, in which case it's as secure as it can get. By default MyEtherWallet works as a web wallet, in which case it's as safe -- or unsafe -- as any other wallet that is stored on an online device.



See above.