The likely way forward to provide merchants more security for 0-conf transactions would seem to be a service offered by a collection of large mining pools, where the merchant could submit a transaction, and receive the following guarantees:
- We have not seen a conflicting transaction
- We will accept your transaction
- We will not replace it with any conflicting transaction
- We will relay your transaction to all of our peers
- We will include your transaction in our next block
(Controversially, if the merchant pays extra)- If a block is created with a conflicting transaction, we will not build off it, but will work to orphan it and include your transaction in our replacement block
If enough hashing power agrees to offer guarantees like that, it would be in the interests of all other miners not to mine a conflicting transaction either, to avoid being orphaned.
This is (sort of 1) how bitcoin already works except the merchant receives this "service" by default. And this is why even 0-confirm double-spend attempts careful crafted to game mempool acceptance heterogeneity still only succeed with a small probability. I think most people who want to "fix" bitcoin don't realize how secure it already is! 1Bitcoin is more secure and not as convoluted.There is no guarantee that a transaction will be included in the next block. And 3-4 are assumed to be default behaviour, but not required? Plus, the merchant currently only receives the 'service' from the node they submit to. Receiving it simultaneously from pools covering say 60% of hashing power is a much more powerful guarantee. |
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Bitcoin is powerful because it is useful. It is therefore useful both for good and for bad, by definition. Any attempt to make it less useful for bad will also make it less useful for good.
I guess what I'm trying to understand is this: Finney attacks as a service are an entirely predictable reality. What response should there be? Is Mike's proposal any more likely to be abused than a mining pool providing double spends as a service? Firstly, I think we need to accept that P0-confirm will never be 0. It is simply not possible for the entire world to come to consensus one every transaction in less than a second. That being said, how can we minimize the success rate of double-spend attempts? The answer is to make it easier to come to consensus! This means that miners and nodes should accept into mempool and relay all valid transactions. This means that miners should build on top of the longest chain in all circumstances. This means that protocol rules should be simple and codified. The likely way forward to provide merchants more security for 0-conf transactions would seem to be a service offered by a collection of large mining pools, where the merchant could submit a transaction, and receive the following guarantees: - We have not seen a conflicting transaction - We will accept your transaction - We will not replace it with any conflicting transaction - We will relay your transaction to all of our peers - We will include your transaction in our next block (Controversially, if the merchant pays extra)- If a block is created with a conflicting transaction, we will not build off it, but will work to orphan it and include your transaction in our replacement block If enough hashing power agrees to offer guarantees like that, it would be in the interests of all other miners not to mine a conflicting transaction either, to avoid being orphaned. |
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Secondly - if I read it correctly, this doesn't affect the fungible nature of Bitcoin, does it? It does not allow for arbitrary blocking of transactions or theft of coins, nor does it "taint" an ouput. Is this understanding correct? Does it not just allow for reallocation of the coinbase? The proposal is theft of coins. The Bitcoin protocol right now has no built in mechanism via which a third party can reassign a balance. Speaking specifically of the coinbase only, that isn't really true, is it? Miners can already attempt to deliberately orphan a block, which would have the same effect of removing the coinbase allocation. If a block gets orphaned, then its associated coinbase is simply unusable. Nothing was re-assigned. The old block's coinbase is unusable. The new replacement block get a coinbase. The exact coinbase hasn't been reallocated, but 25 BTC have been taken from one miner, and 25BTC have been given to another. The financial result is the same as if the original BTC were reallocated, even if the technical details are different. |
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Secondly - if I read it correctly, this doesn't affect the fungible nature of Bitcoin, does it? It does not allow for arbitrary blocking of transactions or theft of coins, nor does it "taint" an ouput. Is this understanding correct? Does it not just allow for reallocation of the coinbase? The proposal is theft of coins. The Bitcoin protocol right now has no built in mechanism via which a third party can reassign a balance. Speaking specifically of the coinbase only, that isn't really true, is it? Miners can already attempt to deliberately orphan a block, which would have the same effect of removing the coinbase allocation. |
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Alternatively, they knew from the beginning that they will rip off their clients and put the "business"-paragraph into their TOS, planing to refer to it once the whole operation blows up. Perhaps a little harsh, but yes, this was deliberately added to remove any fallback on consumer protection laws. Bitcoinorama shilled really hard to make it sound like it didn't matter, but hey, he was wrong. Haven't seen him around much since he got paid, have we? |
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Plus theres this "However even though the Bank of England is now state owned its important to note that up to 97% of the UK’s money supply is privately controlled being in the form of interest bearing loans created by the big commercial banks." That is just the reality of modern finance, and I would imagine is true of most developed countries. |
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chinese central banks are not commercial banks. they are personal banks.
A country has one central bank. Except for the US, all countries' central banks are government owned. The central bank is the financial regulator for the entire country and its job is to be the government's banker. All commercial banks in a country have to answer to the central bank. The central bank does not deal with individuals. It is not a commercial bank or a personal bank. China's central bank is called the People's Bank of China or PBoC. All of the above is stuff you learn in a basic economics class. Not quiet all correct, in a basic economics class you would have learnt that the Bank of England is also privately owned in much the same way as the US Fed Reserve  If your basic economics class was held after 1945/6, you would have learnt that the UK Government nationalised the Bank of England then, and hold all the shares. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1945/oct/29/bank-of-england-billhttp://www.bankofengland.co.uk/about/Documents/legislation/1946act.pdf |
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Is Sharia Laws above any nation's laws?
1) Yes This is the closest to correct. Religious laws are disjoint to national laws, because there are essentially optional. They are 'above' in the sense or covering greater area/population than any single nation's laws, and in the sense of adding on to them, but not in the sense of removing them. People must obey the laws of the country they live in, or be punished. Religious people may choose to obey extra religious laws, but the legal system of the country they live in has no interest in whether they do or not. Religious rules would be a better terms than religious laws. If you want to choose not to eat pork, go ahead. |
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For example, in Cambridge: There are 12 Subway stores in the Cambridge region - seven in Cambridge itself, two at Newmarket, one at St Neots. one at Haverhill and one at Huntingdon.
Only one of the 12, the Subway branch at 301-303 Mill Road in Cambridge, has become a halal store. Is that really a terrible thing? People who want Halal sandwiches can now buy them. People who want pork sandwiches can but them at one of the other 6 stores in Cambridge. |
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Yes, because Subway is the only place in the UK which sells pork.
Oh, wait...
Jews have been to the United Kingdom for the past 1,000 years or so. Pork is a taboo food for them too. Yet I don't see any of them demanding that restaurants should serve Kosher food and they should refrain from serving pork... just saying.  You don't think there are any kosher restaurants in the UK? Also, there are close to a million Hindus in the UK, for whom beef is a taboo food. They are also not making any demands to ban restaurants which serve beef. Who are making demand? From the link you posted, not Muslims: This week people have taken to Twitter calling for a boycott of the chain, and protests have been organised for this weekend outside outlets nationwide.
But a spokeswoman for the company said the menu had not changed, and stores had been able to open as halal franchises since 2007, due to customer demand.
Turkey ham and turkey rashers are being used instead of pork products in 185 stores nationwide, where all meat is prepared according to halal rules.
Four stores in East Lancashire currently serve halal meat: Texaco Service Station in Nelson, Blackburn Beehive Service Station, the Blakey Moor store in Blackburn town centre, and Blackburn Total Garage.
In the past, police have had to intervene after right-wing groups organised protests outside KFC shops in East Lancashire when they started to serve halal meat.
[...]
A Subway spokeswoman for Subway said: “Due to the growing popularity of the Subway chain, with the diverse multicultural population across the UK and Ireland, we put a programme in place in 2007 to ensure that the population demographic is taken into account when new store openings are considered in order that we meet consumer demand in each location. Subway thinks they can sell more sandwiches by allowing Halal franchises. That is the market at work. From another link: Both Stoke outlets are now serving halal-only products – the Shelton location since it opened five and a half years ago and the Tunstall store for the last few years. They haven't suddenly 'banned' pork from 185 branches, there have been Halah branches for years, it is just that now someone has decided to publish a misleading story to stir up bigots. |
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^^^ This is exactly the problem. Muslims are not even 5% of the population in UK. Now the remaining 95% of the population is unable to eat pork due to unfair demands from Muslims. Yes, because Subway is the only place in the UK which sells pork. Oh, wait... |
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^^^ OK... even from these sources:
728 civilians killed by Republicans
1,055 civilians killed by Loyalists
187 killed by British security forces 728 killed by terrorists in group A 1055 killed by terrorists in group B Lets not give them the dignity of calling them 'loyalists', as though they are deserving of praise. Terrorists are terrorists. The 'Troubles' devolved largely into large-scale gang warfare to protect criminal profits, will little concern for noble political goals. |
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I don't sympathize with Gerry Adams. He should be punished, if found guilty. But as far as I know, Margaret Thatcher and her army killed many more civilians than the Irish Republican Army ever managed. Both should be punished.
Wrong, by a large margin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles#CasualtiesCasualties[edit]
Between 1969 and 2001, 3,526 people were killed as a result of the conflict.[139] In The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland, Brendan O'Leary and John McGarry point out that "nearly two per cent of the population of Northern Ireland have been killed or injured though political violence [...] If the equivalent ratio of victims to population had been produced in Great Britain in the same period some 100,000 people would have died, and if a similar level of political violence had taken place, the number of fatalities in the USA would have been over 500,000, or about ten times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War."[140] In 2010 it was estimated that 107,000 people in Northern Ireland suffered some physical injury as a result of the conflict. On the basis of data gathered by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, the Victims Commission estimated that the conflict resulted in 500,000 'victims' in Northern Ireland alone. It defines 'victims' are those who are directly affected by 'bereavement', 'physical injury' or 'trauma' as a result of the conflict.[141]
Responsibility
Approximately 60% of the dead were killed by republicans, 30% by loyalists and 10% by British security forces.
Responsibility for killing[142]
Responsible party No.
Republican paramilitary groups 2057
Loyalist paramilitary groups 1019
British security forces 363
Persons unknown 82
Irish security forces 5
Total 3526
According to Malcolm Sutton's Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland:[143]
Of those killed by British security forces:
187 (~51.5%) were civilians
145 (~39.9%) were members of republican paramilitaries
18 (~4.9%) were members of loyalist paramilitaries
13 (~3.5%) were fellow members of the British security forces
Of those killed by republican paramilitaries:
1080 (~52%) were members of the British security forces
728 (~35%) were civilians
187 (~9%) were members of republican paramilitaries
56 (~2.7%) were members of loyalist paramilitaries
10 (~0.4%) were members of the Irish security forces
Of those killed by loyalist paramilitaries:
868 (~85.4%) were civilians
93 (~9%) were members of loyalist paramilitaries
41 (~4%) were members of republican paramilitaries
14 (~1.3%) were members of the British security forces |
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Dos attacks are illegal in many places. They still happen.
From a libertarian view, no. It would maybe prevent some individuals, but to what extent?
A 51% "attack" is not a Dos attack. It's only hitting a coin with tons of hashing power. Nothing illegal about it. A DDOS attack is just hitting a server with tons of network connections. Nothing illegal about it? |
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joe blow doesn't want to put a large some of money for him into something where he will only get a piece. People don't want to feel like they own a fraction of something.
And yet they seem happy buying shares of companies. They don't seem to feel they have to buy whole companies. Maybe they should think of satoshis as shares of bitcoins. Wow. You can currently get a million shares for less than five bucks. So the idea then is that bitcoin is not digital money, is not payment system ... it's kind of stock generated by bitcoin community ? I personally like that idea ... but I don't know if the general public sees bitcoin like that .. Problem 6: Even people in favour of Bitcoin don't really know what it is. |
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1)Try move your money outside your country and see if it is easier and cheaper with btc or with fiat. Commom people sometimes goes to other countries too, or just wanna import stuff for personal use without the importer's man in the middle and taxes.
2)The costumers might does not pay for the credit card service(what is not really true where I life, but ignore that), but the service providers pay a % for each credit card transaction, and that ammount is transfered to the customer. So with the man-in-the-middle credit card system, the customer either pays more or get less discounts, and bitcoin can solve that.
3) You need really few cash to start investing in bitcoin, and bitcoins returns are far better than any other investiments. Others top return investiments, like gold, silver, markets, options, foreign currencies, etc... have too high fees, and many fixed fees, so you need already a good amount of money for them to be profitable. Investiments for low initial capital gives ridiculous returns that are almost an offense.
4) The wire international transfer system sucks really hard. Anyone used to use it can tell you about that. That might be why some companies like Mastercard are defending btc.
So, still btc can't benefit the common guys?
NO one said it cannot benefit the common guy, it is that the common average person has no need of it at all and won't use it EVER. Well,most common guys go on vacation and exchange money,so you must have picked EVER out your arse More than half of Americans have never left the US. Between the 'USD zone' of the US, and the Euro zone of Europe, a very large number of people (and proportionally much higher number of middle-class to well-off people) can travel without ever needing to exchange currency. |
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my thesis is that systems without a middlemen are always more cost efficient than systems with a middle men - that is for me the most convincing reason why crypotcurrencies will succeed Bitcoin has thousands of middlemen, anyone running a full node and processing transactions. Could even stretch that to anyone mining at a pool. |
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I believe that new bitcoin investors are facing problems that needs a fix.
First, everyone hears about btc by either social media, tv, internet articles, googling digital currency alternatives, etc.
Problem 1: They either play it off because they did not take the time out to research the utility or do not understand the concept. (solves double spending etc).
Problem 2: They do not have the capital to invest a decent amount in bitcoin, so they blow it off. Problem 3: It doesn't actually offer anything they want. |
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eBay DELETED my auction for Avalon Miners because I accept Bitcoin!
I only mentioned in the auction description that I accept bitcoins and they pulled my auction citing a "violation of payment policies." They claimed that buyers and sellers "aren't protected" because transactions can't be proven.
[...]
I mentioned in the revised auction description to contact me with questions about "alternate payment methods." Do you think they'll pull my auction for that too?
This is clearly against their payment policies, and I'm not sure why you are surprised about it: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/accepted-payments-policy.htmlNot Allowed
-Sending cash through the mail
-Sending cash or money orders through instant, point-to-point cash transfer services (that aren't banks) such as Western Union or MoneyGram
-Mailing checks or money orders (except for items in categories specifically permitted)
-Paying through bank-to-bank transfers (except for items in categories specifically permitted)
-Paying by "topping off" a seller's prepaid credit or debit card
-Paying using online or other payment methods not specifically permitted in this policy
-Asking buyers to contact you for additional payment methods
-Offering a payment method to some buyers and not to others
-Discouraging buyers from using any payment method you specified in the listing
-Asking buyers to pay using a method not mentioned in the listing
-Paying with Virtual or Cryptocurrencies
These rules apply to all transaction-related correspondence between a seller and buyer, as well as to the listings.
In addition, you aren't allowed to make statements such as:
-"Contact us for payment information."
-"Contact us for other payment methods."
-"Contact us for your preferred payment method."
-"Buyers may request to pay by check or money order." |
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For example, Apple's online store demands that authors produce exclusive content in order to reach their locked-in users (this is typical of DRM platforms). As a consequence, (Free and) Open Source Software is prohibited in the app store. No it isn't, that is simply not true. |
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