http://www.shadowstats.comGovernment issued inflation numbers say exactly what the government wants them to say, even if it means excluding energy, mortgage payments and anything else important they feel like excluding from CPI numbers. Inflation can't actually be derived from CPI anyway, since it depends on how much money is issued by the Fed, the Treasury, and inflationary reserve banks. That said, I overstated a bit, it's more like ~6%, although it varies. That's still more than you'll make in any US based savings account. While I do agree that the CPI doesn't fully reflect reality as the standard basket of goods which it is based on keeps changing. But with 6% we are looking at a doubling of prices on average within 12 years, or halving of value. That simply hasn't happened. I remember well enough what my purchasing power and of the company I work with was in 2000 and how it changed given income and my standard of living. I guess there are some areas in the US where that happened, but I don't see it. SGS recently calculated even 10.5%(!), nobody could believe that we are dealing with stats that have longterm validity here. There value is just as skewed as the CPI, just in the other direction. |
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Haplo, thank you for your lengthy response. Where do you get the 8% number for US inflation? The average over the last 3 decades is about 3.3% per annum, which numbers are you using?
MoonShadow, I don't think bitcoin is screwed if the dollar returns to a gold standard, these are not mutually exclusive. Comparing the graph for gold value to bitcoin I don't see the correlation, and I don't think these two will be excluding each other even if they would both be deflationary. They are 'controlled' by different mechanisms for starters.
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Here's a little hint for you to consider your error in logic.
If the money power would love to have a gold standard, we would have a gold standard.
And you support Ron Paul, because he actually supports a return to the gold standard (which he indeed does, being heavily invested in gold himself)? I really don't see your logic... |
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I am uncertain. There is a part of me which imagines that the current system also provides advantages to the money power, via access to the mechanism by which money is created. And these advantages are removed in a system where anyone can become a transaction signatory, given a landlord who pays utilities.
The other side of the coin, however, is that, if Bitcoin is truly an "experiment", then people ought to be willing to learn from it. If your proposed scenario is truly how things go, then I should hope that, once the story starts to play out in our economy, people will be wise enough to notice, and will react by creating another blockchain that has more Keynesian properties - leveling out to, say, a one percent expansion per year, rather than zero.
Absolutely. That's why we need to continue to have these discussions and not just treat Satoshi's white-paper as the Bitcoin bible; he proposed an experiment that will provide insights which could be used to improve our monetary system. We will probably see more block chains with modified characteristics in the future. |
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- But putting such theoretical plutocrats aside, here is the argument that convinced me to not be so concerned about the Bitcoin's deflationary properties: on this Earth, there has never been a deflationary currency. There has never been a currency whose supply increases predictably and significantly more slowly than the supply of the goods it represents. We do not actually know how such a currency will behave in the wild, and while we may speculate, we are speculating. Bitcoin is, in some ways, still an experiment.
Gold? Well, if you talk about extremely long periods of time, decades, generations, ...., then you can't really have a net-deflationary currency forever; it's like the energy or mass preservation law in physics. But for sure, whenever a currency is fully tied (not partial reserve or other monetary instruments) to the value of a scarce commodity (such as gold) then you will get a deflationary currency. And we already know how that works: Value of the currency rises (other goods drop) to the point where the economy cannot sustain it any longer, then a depression follows as correction, and then it starts again. In the process, more and more assets are transferred to the money power. I already mentioned an example of a failed forced re-introduction of the gold-standard by Winston Churchill, and the result was massive deflation and a depression that followed. I understand there are always other factors at work, and Austrian Economists will ignore most of the evidence that's there and tell you "human nature cannot be predicted". But the statement "we do not actually know how such a currency will behave" is simply untrue; we have a really good idea how it behaves, that's why the money power would love to have it. |
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Can we pleeeeeease get back on topic?
I'd like to read news about the Mini-Rig, no interest in ponies.
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You need compile Cg Miner with this options: CFLAGS=-I/usr/local/cuda/include LDFLAGS=-L/usr/lib64/nvidia ./configure
make clean
make Works great, thanks! |
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personally, i'd rather my grandmother accepted bitcoin for her incredible baked goods then have her set up a mining rig.
Fantastic *rotflol* you don't mind if I borrow it for my signature (I'll quote you)? |
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Considering ngzhang had about 100 FPGAs in his room mining at about 380 gigahash A 3.8GH/s FPGA? Me waaaaant one!  It's ArtForz, folks. Move along.
Evidence please? |
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Thanks for your answers (except for the Troll that is).  DeathAndTaxes and realnowhereman point out that deflation in electronic devices doesn't stop us from buying it. There is some point to that, however let me point out a) part of the equation here is innovation and not pure deflation: I can't buy the same $1000 PC of 10 years ago for $15 today (assuming approximately 33% deflation per anno) and I don't want to; I want to buy the way faster one that was not even remotely available 10 years ago in the same space and energy envelope, no matter how much I would have been willing to spend. b) deflation actually does slow down economy in the IT business; there is tons of stuff that I would buy now, if I expected no more innovation and no more falling prices. More generally, you guys argue that nowadays deflation is usually the result of an economic depression and not its cause. But no government or central bank has ever voluntarily caused a deflation, because they are pretty sure it will cause a huge depression in turn. Sure realnowhereman will still buy water and food, but who with a sane mind would still buy e.g. a house or car if you get two houses or two cars for the same money 18 month later? But for the sake of arguments, let's assume for a moment, that 33% deflation per anno is acceptable. Where would bitcoin be 10 years from now at that rate? $5 * 64 = $320 per bitcoin, 20 million coins mined, total value $6400 million - sounds like a lot, is just $1 per human being. In other words irrelevant to economy. However, you are used to live in a nerd niche, maybe you are comfortable staying there. Or do you expect the monetary base of bitcoin to be broadened by book money at banks? BrightAnarchist and Haplo point to credits and bank assets as reasons for current crisis. But I guess you would not put your bitcoins on a bank account, because that would give up most of bitcoins advantages? dark.w, welcome to the forums, your opinion will add a lot of color to the discussions here. As you have already noticed, there are mostly Austrian Economists (how I hate that term, originating from Austria and knowing that it never got a stronghold there) and Monetary Libertarians here (at least those are the ones who shout loudest ) One article you might want to look at is here: http://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/bitcoin-a-positive-step-in-monetary-reform/While they are not technical about Bitcoin, there's a bit of economic discussion going on in the comments section. You said "But no government or central bank has ever voluntarily caused a deflation, because they are pretty sure it will cause a huge depression in turn". Actually sadly not true. The British tried to return to the gold standard under Churchill and got a major depression in turn; even Churchill admitted that in was a mistake to return to the gold standard, and they eventually abandoned it again. So the evidence for your statement is actually right there, it's just that Austrian Economics will always find a clever way to dispute it. One thing I'd like to point out that Bitcoin has been basically designed as a commodity like gold, and everybody likes to see commodity values rising. Personally I'd like to see Bitcoins as currency, but most arguments really run down the commodity path (even if the term currency is used) and there's already evidence that people rather hold than circulate bitcoins (which you are right is not good for a currency as means of exchange) which would be preferable for an economy. But I also believe that Bitcoins has many traits that are needed for a viable eCurrency, and it appears to be a human character trait to adopt something that promises an increase in value more easily. I actually find the signature of Revalin quite revealing: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=39897So I'm supporting Bitcoin, but keep my mind open for other new eCurrencies that might come along. And besides, most of my hobbies only cost me money, this one actually has the potential to pay for itself, at least right now. |
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And if someone figured out a way to cheat, it doesn't automatically mean they completely "solved" SHA256. Even if you find a way to save some magnitudes of time, they'll be king.
This already happened when GPUs started mining (orders of magnitude faster mining). For a while a couple folks made a killing. This is certainly right. When I think of cheating I actually thought of bypassing some of the proof-of-work. But certainly a new technology can do that too; the reason why I don't automatically throw new technologies into the same box as cheating, is that new technologies are part of progress and typically require a large initial investment. Otherwise we would all be mining like crazy with ASICs by now, with an astronomically high difficulty and similar block rate and profit as before. @D&T. Yeah, the lack of including transactions is indeed something to ponder about. Maybe this guy had the urge to create a mystery? Just brain-farting... |
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Isn't this just a 'guess' since hashrate is calculated based on block solving rate? If someone has bypassed the proof of work, we would be calculating the hashrate incorrectly.
However if someone has broken SHA-256 and can solve 3 blocks per hour with a handful of computers why not buy 10 handful of computers and solve 30 blocks per hour? He wants money but only the amount of money that 1.4TH/s "effective" produces. Not less money and not more money he has just decided that is the right amount. Seems implausible at best. If nothing else one would expect greed to creep in. If you had a method to print $750 per hour you wouldn't be tempted to "boost" that to say $1000 per hour or $1250 per hour? Nope. Not going above $750 per hour. Also not going lower to reduce suspicion, and not going to include tx which really makes me stand out. yes, throttling ensures he can keep it going.. too many too fast will send btc value to zero in a hurry
Wow, and I nearly got crucified by just bringing up that thought in the past... The Bitcoin game is after all a game with many players, if one becomes the only viable player, there would soon be no profitable game anymore. It's really hard to even discuss the topic "Can the bitcoin algorithm be broken?" because that's like blasphemy and could weaken the trust in bitcoin. Nobody who broke that algorithm would immediately post their Eureka! moment. But I'm glad that it gets discussed once in a while. And if someone figured out a way to cheat, it doesn't automatically mean they completely "solved" SHA256. Even if you find a way to save some magnitudes of time, they'll be king. |
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Personally I actually prefer mining at a pool that includes transactions (even if they don't pay the fees out to miners).
Including transactions is important for the Bitcoin network to be utilized by merchants and users, and that usage is important for the future of Bitcoin.
Right now with 50BTC block reward (or even with 25BTC) transfer fees would need to be immensely high to compete with block rewards. Too high to ensure the use of the BTC network in its early stage. As the number of transfers increase and the block rewards decrease, transfer fees will become more viable. But that requires a high network utilization with a large volume of transactions.
While I don't advocate free transactions (any fee right now however small is better than zero, as it habituates the concept of charging TX fees), including transactions in mining operations is a really easy and cheap way for a miner to show support for Bitcoin. And if you want to see Bitcoin as a future currency that support is certainly worthwhile.
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lol, I did a CTRL + F on the front page for 680 and didn't come up with anything. Le sad. Fail on me. haha
Shouda tried to search 'Kepler' in the search box instead. At the time many speculations started, we didn't even know for sure that the 680 would be the first Kepler card released. Also, you have it in your subject heading. |
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the raspberry Pi is hard to get, i am trying since rls, but rs-components doesn't have that much
i think my wlan router need around 4-5watt, i am currently not mining on it because there was no webinterface for MPBM
but there is a new beta version with WebUI frontend
MPBM is the way to go for headless devices
you only have to install python and ncurses, no compiling
but i think if you want to go on ARM devices the BFL is the wrong choice
What is MPBM, and why shouldn't I use an ARM device? i didn't mean you shouldn't use a ARM device, i think it's smart to use an ARM device but i don't think BFL is(will) support ARM devices you have that ARM support with MPBM which supports X6500 icarus and ztex Isn't there ARM support for cgminer? |
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Really, your entire premise is just flawed. Successful speculation leads to stable prices, which leads to investment and growth. Unsuccessful speculation is self-correcting. It's not even a question of "more" speculation or "less".
IMO you're just looking at this from the other side: People are speculating that an 'investment' would go up or down. An 'investment' assumes there's value now or in the future. A few hashes have no value (not even a few trillion), neither does a bunch of speculator 'assigning' a price to it (by speculating on it) add any real value. Real value arises from the goods/commodities and services you can trade it for (that includes other currencies). Otherwise it wouldn't even make sense investing it it, or speculating on that investment. But I understand that this becomes forgotten if someone is just concerned with a number game of trends going up or down. |
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Changing the fundamental protocal would be death to bitcoin. At the begining this would be suitable, not now. Not ever now.
Everyone knew what they were getting into and will stick by the block loss year on year. all is good here.
I really don't think so. I generally like the proposal, that was actually one of the things I wondered when looking at the rewards curve for the first time: Why are there steps in it, when computational power these days can easily afford a gradual, more 'natural' increase'? Overall I don't see why it could hurt Bitcoin as long as the overall shape/trend of the curve is sufficiently maintained. |
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so lets say there is no speculation, speculation is gone, u know magic
personally I don't like magic, but why so black and white? so you need 10 btc to buy ur drugs from SR, what you need to do ?
1) set a mining rig, this solution is like "you work for bitcoins"
that option is feasible right now, but the lower the payout per block over time, the less meaningful that option will become 2) go on a exchange and wait until a merchant/miner wants to sell 10 btc at current price, what if nobody wants to sell you btc at this price ? what volume you get doing this ?
The statement reiterates the commodity status of BTC right now. I would like to see BTC as a currency in the future. So then, what do you do if you need some $$ right now? |
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