Not true, the 'pro-masonic homosexual propaganda' propaganda is actually Animal Rights propaganda. NASA are probably involved, too. (They usually are, aren't they?)

Stop believing conspiracy theories and face the truth. These Musketeers are, and always have been, dogs. I don't remember who on here suggested that they were chocolate bars, but that's clearly false, too, as the photo below proves beyond any reasonable doubt.

Yeah, I didn't want to do it, but at the same time I don't want to start a debate where I am pretending I believe something, and then arguing against people who I actually agree with. What kind of lunatic would do that?

Yes probably, I suppose you'd expect the atmosphere to burn up some of the smaller stuff. I think the 635k was a count of current craters rather than an estimate of all impacts - Mars does have vulcanism, so lava has likely covered over a lot of old craters. Plus also when a meteor hits milk chocolate, the chocolate tends to melt and then reform, so likely there are plenty of meteors buried within Mars's delicious interior.

The real question for me is why does the UK Mars look very similar to the US Milky Way? And why is the UK Milky Way called 'Three Musketeers' in the US? And why does the UK not have Three Musketeers? I'll tell you why: because in the UK, a chocolate bar cannot be a swashbuckling epic of chivalry, honor, and derring-do, set in France during the 1620s, richly populated with romantic heroes, unattainable heroines, kings, queens, cavaliers, and criminals in a whirl of adventure, espionage, conspiracy, murder, vengeance, love, scandal, and suspense - that's why.

Sorry, veering off-topic a bit.


_{Edit: Wow, I've just got promoted to Senior whilst writing that. I must be doing something right. Guess I'll continue posting in a similar vein to the above. Apologies in advance :p}

No, I'm the same. I stopped using Facebook because of the data mining / surveillance capitalism. More than this though, I like the breadth of discussions here, and the fact that we are exposed to opposing views rather than channelled into meticulously curated echo chambers. It is always important in life to challenge your preconceptions and what you consider to be established truth. We can do that here across a wide range of subjects, whilst still sharing a universal common interest in crypto.

I agree, and I'm well aware of the distinction. Post-quantum cryptography and quantum cryptography are completely different things. It's unfortunate that they have such similar names!


Not sure I agree with this point. I would contend, as I have previously, that work in quantum cryptography is progressing at pace and whilst there are technical issues to overcome, it does potentially offer a fundamentally unhackable solution to quantum attacks, and one which can be used in the mainstream. Having said that, of course post-quantum cryptography is hugely important as well, and work is progressing there, too. There's no need to focus on just the one approach, though, and dismiss the other.


I think we agree, but are coming at this from different angles. An increase in key length is trivial to overcome if we're talking about asymmetric cryptography, where a quantum computer can apply Shor's algorithm. But as you state below, AES-256 is symmetric.


AES-256 security may be fine currently, it may be resistant to the best current attack (Grover search), but that's my point. Quantum cryptography uses the laws of quantum mechanics to make a system absolutely unhackable for all time, whereas post-quantum cryptography makes a system secure against current attacks, with no guarantee of security against future technology or future algorithms.

If AES-256 can beat Grover, what about other approaches? Quantum Square Attacks? Biclique Attacks? How about all mathematical attacks that haven't yet been devised?

I'm being flippant, and I do agree that there is certainly a chance that a post-quantum cryptography solution will remain forever secure, but we can't know for certain. My point is merely that we should investigate both quantum cryptography and post-quantum cryptography. It seems wasteful to focus solely on one approach.

I value the discussion immensely, by the way - thank you

No, it's not. QC processing power increases exponentially with each new qubit. This is why scaling up a QC can produce such phenomenal power.
Where a classical computer with 'n' bits can represent 'n' states, a quantum computer can represent (2ⁿ) states.
So as we increase complexity, the number of states that can be represented are as follows:
Classical: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 etc
Quantum: 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 etc.


Yes, there is. A QC can use Shor's algorithm to break ECC.

There is a lot of good work being done in post-quantum cryptography, as we've covered previously:


... and I do think that many of these approaches look promising. My main concern is that post-quantum-cryptography solutions are based merely on being very difficult to hack, whereas quantum-cryptography is in theory fundamentally unhackable due to the immutable physical laws of quantum mechanics.

I wouldn't invest because it's a very very small coin with an ultra-low marketcap.
I can't say whether it's a good coin or not, but I am not a big trader, and I steer clear of small stuff for long-term holding. Maybe it's a good coin, maybe not, but for me a coin with such a low cap represents a huge gamble. As we drop down the alt charts in cap, the risk increases. Small coins are certainly sometimes the big bargains, but far more often they stay small and just drop in price. Small stuff is not for me, sorry.

This is a newer link, and covers the merit requirement: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0

As well as the activity threshold, you also need 1000 merit now to become Legendary - not that I'm likely to ever get there!
I think this is better than the purely activity-based rank. If someone is really legendary, then they are well-known for excellent post quality, so the merit requirement is entirely fitting.

Sorry, I was being sarcastic. Notbatman seems to think that most things are fake or a conspiracy, I was making a joke based on that. The astronaut is indeed real (as is the ISS). The photo of him in his underwear I suspect is fake, but honestly I have no interest in researching that.

You could, but I'd still argue that gold is universally accepted as a store of value, whereas bitcoin is merely anticipated to become a store of value at some point in the future.

I'm happy to accept that you have greater knowledge about markets than I do. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just giving an amateur's opinion.

No need to be aggressive again! I'm trying to agree with you about TA not being so great (and even merited you because it's a good point, and I concur ) Apologies if my (admittedly uninformed) opinion about everything being based on expectation of future utility is a bit amateurish and overly simplistic. I'm learning as I go here!

I agree. I started a thread on this a while ago.

We are all aware that crypto markets are highly speculative - and how could they be otherwise? Comparisons within traditional markets invite erroneous inferences. Bitcoin has no physical assets (beyond mining equipment), it owns no patents or copyrights, it has no operating profits or costs (you can't really talk about mining costs because difficulty can change), it has no CEO. It even has no real current use case.

Everything with crypto is based on expectation of future utility. Store-of-value? Faster payments? We are all guessing what bitcoin and alts might be worth based on guesses as to a) the extent to which they will become 'mainstream' and a part of everyday life for everyday people, companies and governments, and b) the purpose we think they will fulfill in some future economy that doesn't exist yet.

This is why it is so speculative, why prices move so much, and why TA applied to crypto can be seen as largely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think it is a good idea to take a longer term perspective to get some context. We all know that prices fluctuate, often quite alarmingly, day to day and week to week. But I think it can really help to see how coins are behaving over a much longer term. We are still just about in the early days of crypto, there is so much more to come. I don't think there is cause for concern at current prices, at least for the good coins.

This impeachment will prove counter-productive for the Democrats. The Senate will clear him anyway. What will happen is that Trump's existing supporters will support him even more as the valiant underdog fighting the establishment, and in all likelihood it will get him some new anti-establishment votes, too. I can't see how the Democrats gain from this at all; Trump will remain in power, and support for him will increase.

Absolutely agree. A lot of Donald Trump's power is based on him positioning himself as the 'anti-establishment' candidate, standing up for the regular man-in-the-street against the mighty powers that control the economy. Regardless of what Trump's real position and motivation is, the risk remains that the impeachment process simply entrenches Trump's existing support, and even draws in new voters to his 'anti-establishment' cause.

The question of whether a billionaire who literally has a tower of gold can be 'anti-establishment' is beside the point...

The problem with making predictions in an area that has a history of exponential growth, particularly when the prediction is a continuation of that exponential curve, is that it is very easy be orders-of-magnitude wrong. Yes the prediction could turn out to be accurate, but the range of plausible prices for bitcoin in a few years' time ranges from zero dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. I would take every prediction as more of a wild guess than anything to rely upon.

Let's have a look at the latest outburst of Don Quixote Trump. What do we think? Truth or lies? If lies, then ad-libbed, off-the-cuff stuff, or carefully choreographed? Or a bit of both - the theme carefully prepared and then communicated in his standard conversational style?

_{https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/23/president-trump-lashes-out-an-old-enemy-windmills}

I may (do) think that he's not particularly intelligent, but he's not an idiot, he's well aware that renewables have a tiny carbon footprint compared to fossil fuels, and his positioning here seems quite skilful. 'We have a world', 'Our air, their air', even the word 'spewing' that he uses 3 times in just this segment, very evocative and emotive. So whether this is ad-libbed or not, his message - although I disagree with it profoundly - is communicated perfectly here. He is one of us, fighting the establishment powers, standing up for our rights against the massively polluting renewable energy companies. Of course it's all nonsense, lies of almost breathtaking audacity, but he's good at communicating exactly what he wants to communicate to his target audience. He's also thrown in a bit about it being un-American to support windmills, because if you do, you're not supporting American industry, but rather America's enemies, both current and historic 'They’re made in China and Germany mostly — very few made here, almost none'. Barely a word is wasted here. Windmills are 'very expensive'. Even 'the world is tiny compared to the universe', he's evoking images of vulnerability, as if he's deeply concerned about our helpless little planet.

I despise him, and think that he sounds like a fool, but I can't deny there is a lot of skill in this speech. How much is his and how much is at least loosely scripted I couldn't say, but it's impressive nevertheless.
The syntax and grammar are appalling 'I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody', 'they’re manufactured tremendous [...] fumes', and some of it invites ridicule 'I never understood wind', 'You know we have a world, right?' ... but beneath this is a well-targeted and skilfully delivered message.

$1000 seems perfectly reasonable for ETH in the longer-term. But no, I can't see the update pushing up prices that much. Remember that this stuff tends to get priced in well in advance. We may see rises, we may not, but 1k is a huge rise from current levels, not unprecedented I know, but nevertheless it has to be very unlikely.

I don't think 2020 will be bearish, no. 2017 was insanely bullish, particularly at the end... then came the bearish aftermath, which we are still recovering from. The market is not overheated at the moment. Confidence seems to be slowly returning, as we have seen in the bitcoin rise over the last couple of days, so I would think that 2020 should see a return to a more optimistic outlook, and then hopefully to more bullish price movement.

We don't necessarily have to look that far ahead. What about the price rises we are seeing right now? Bitcoin has bounced back very strongly from a lower support line, and we are seeing a strong recovery now. If bitcoin can push through $8k, I think that might mark the start of another bull run. Not saying it will definitely happen as it is very early days, but the current movements are promising.

Taken in isolation, I can see how the autistic genius thing might be the case. But it's not isolated; the rise of Trump is being mirrored across the world - Boris Johnson here in the UK behaves in an extremely similar way to Trump, and in a way that is unprecedented amongst UK leaders: He couldn't care less about his lies. He governs largely through a series of outrageous soundbites that appeal to the prejudices of ordinary people - xenophobia being the most common theme - muslim women look like "letterboxes" and "bank robbers" (some more examples here, very similar to Trump).

It's very unlikely they are both near-autistic geniuses. I think it's more likely the rise of the right-wing populist strongman (Bolsonaro, Modi, Erdogan, Duterte et al). The extreme right-wing often claims to represent the people against the corrupt politicians, and at the same time implement policies to increase wealth inequality. People across the world increasingly feel disenfranchised, but they don't elect left-wing politicians (Bernie Sanders etc) who would really represent the interests of ordinary people, instead what we have is demonisation of the left by the moneyed elite, and the right stay in power. They can't just have more of the same though, they need someone who is a bit of an outsider, who can convincingly be portrayed as a maverick fighting the system. This I think is why the extremists are taking power.

He's certainly followed through on some of the promises. Others he has certainly been blocked on. Others, such as "lock her up", I would argue he never had any intention of following through on.

No, of course not. And I'm not disputing that he has extremely competent advisors who are much more intelligent than I am, and are supreme political strategists. The Trump phenomenon can't be taken in isolation however, here in the UK we have Boris Johnson, who is very much a Trump-lite, cast in a very similar mould. Trump isn't a maverick one-off, he's representative of a developing trend. In many areas the US leads and the rest of the world follows a few years later. This is think is one of those examples.

Yes, point conceded. The petulant child bit is how he appears to me, appreciate he does not appear that way to everyone, or else he would never have got elected. I will stop the bitching and griping, let's get back to the subject of how he lies without caring about being perceived as a liar.