On topic is the new off topic, didn't you know?
Just don't tell the moderator ;-)

Was it from falling, or from that prolonged squawk?

... or two.

Neither am I. It's just a hypothesis about how government/institutions would react if this technology were available. The speculation is not sterile, since it may become available any day, if there is enought interest. Not necessarily interest in this community.

Sorry V8, too much noise, oversights are unavoidable.

Ah I see! I thought you were poking some fun at me, and I couldn't abstain from an Oxfordian retort ;-)

^^ TROLL BAIT 

It was Rosewater who brought the topic into this arena of gentlemen.


The taint paper has stirred several reactions.

Hm, by the refined language, I sense a fellow Oxford scholar?  

Seriously, I don't see the paper as advocating anything in particular. If it actually is, I didn't notice or I deem the advocacy irrelevant. The strength of that discussion is the what-if speculation it suggests. It is assumed that the public Taintchain is a reality. The Taintchain makes it effectively instant to look up taint, which is distributed in a strict LIFO fashion. This sounds as a prescription (advocating), but I hear a scientific stance. "It's a precise working hypothesis with good effects on the engineering," it sounds to me. The Taintchain can actually become real today, once the blockchain is scanned to create a different view of the transaction database. Keeping the Taintchain current is a trivial matter.

Under these assumptions, there are interesting consequences. Different administrations will be interested in tracking different events. And they will each be able to do that in a much easier way than today. And anyone else can do the same, too. The algorithm is there. How long before an open source solution allows you to track any taintchain known to man, as well as hypothetical ones defined by the user's ow custom rules? I think this ease of implementation makes it likely that it will get done.

Now, initiating taint on a whim or on user action can be a daunting task for a public administration, but limiting the initial " taint award" to only a few well-known events (like, Mt.Gox size only - either finance-wise or  by media resonance) is completely doable. As is picking your own pet taint-generating events.

No one has to like that. I don't know if I would myself. But it's a realistic possibility in, say, China for export controls. See the what-if? Chinese taint wouldn't mean much in the USA, right? Or wouldn't it?

Food for thought.

Possible limits to exchange liability are also vaguely hypothesized, but it's lawyer stuff, so the authors - computer scientists, remember - don't toy with the idea too much. They appear to be fascinated by the game theoretical implications. I also am.

Or maybe it's no trouble at all. Your claim is simply ignored because it didn't make it to the master list of scams. It's not even 1/100,000 of Gox size after all. Or maybe someone snitches on you, dealing in drugs or military technology or whatever. One address paying you gets leaked. What happens to your coins? Which countries are involved? Which exchange did the coins pass through?

A paper that gets me thinking along these lines must be a good paper under some definition of good.

Nice find my ass, my ass
As we say in Oxford after class.

Entirely. I do have partial close orders sprinkled - you guessed it - along a ladder. The lowest, most profitable, is well above 3200 for now, but I hope that by the time we get to that, I'll be profiting already and perhaps the ladder will be exhausted.



Right. That's if we get to that, which I also doubt.

I'm nursing my hedge to  as high an entry point as I can. My loose guidance: I'm trying to keep approximately fixed hypothetical profit at, say, 5k or 4.5k. This can be done with a smaller position as long as the entry is better (higher). So I make the position smaller by closing partially when in the money, waiting for another climb to average up, so that when it gets down in the money again, I can release (cash out) a little more than in the previous cycle. All this goes by small increments, small sums. The idea is not to be found flat when it really plunges, and be ready to release with some predetermined stop when the pain becomes unbearable.

(When/if are used interchangeably. It's the same thing. I don't know. I don't care.)

Just make an example, please. I still don't follow you. Remember, once a coin is successfully disputed, it is tainted. This is not always desirable. Furthermore, if they bust you bullshitting the system, it's trouble that goes beyond losing some coin.

With LIFO tainting, there's no taint spread. WHICH addresses get tainted might be arbitrary in some cases (coin mixers/tumblers, especially).

I'm thinking how this would work in a world where LN has taken hold. LN is a bit of a tumbler in itself. Once a coin reaches, say, Amazon or Starbucks... who takes the hit when the taint hits the fan and some customers rightly complain? They haven't considered this - or maybe that paper is pre-LN, I haven't checked the date.


In that paper, this is called the "bitcoin enthusiast" (or supporter?) position.

Hm, I hadn't thought of that.

Can you name a scenario where the game of falsely reporting a crime ("someone stole my coins!") has a positive probabilistic sum? Penalties can be harsh, and partners in crime won't be happy to see their newly tainted coins decrease in value.

Thanks for the appreciation.

My insurance is doing fine! With today's dip, I'm comfortably in the money. With the latest fluctuations, I'd already managed to nurse it to a higher entry point with incidental small profit. My aim isn't maximum profit, but maximum comfort, as JayJuanGee said. This makes it a little easier, but it's still hard work for me. Of course there's a different "hard work" threshold for each one of us. With the position moving to a higher entry point, the amount of work decreases.

However, if it doesn't hurt at times, I feel I'm doing it wrong. It's supposed to hurt a little now and then, unless you're magically able to spot either tops or bottoms (which would make hedging moot anyway).

I'm not closing it yet. Bring it down to 5k or 3k, will you? Please??  

I've also worked out a "pain threshold" in advance. That's where I'll close the insurance hedge (at a loss) before liquidation if I don't manage to close gradually on the way up while still in the money. The numbers are good: by the time we reach that threshold, it will be Carolina Train time around here.

That's just my play money, of course. If it was my stash at stake, I wouldn't be so detached or cool headed in making difficult decisions.

The authors don't detail much experimental evidence about their new taint model (basically FIFO accounting for taint), but they do offer a couple of numbers which, if supported by more testing, would be quite impressive. At any rate, there's ample food for thought.

If the legislative landscape they hint at really comes into being, I don't know where I'd stand on the line between "hard" and "soft" approaches. Bitcoin enthusiasts? Investors? Law enforcement? All of these positions would entail both "good" and "bad" practical consequences from my self-interested point of view.

Nice piece of work. Computer scientists discussing legal implications with a practical, technically sound background. A rarity.

Tasty find merited.

The way I see it, in this particular moment it's very hard to name a "no chance" event.

How unexpected! A plunge on Monday. I'd have thought it wouldn't happen before, say, tomorrow or better yet Wednesday.

Recently, fiat settled derivatives are one of my pet worries. There is no proof that they actually did much real damage by themselves yet: some reasonable sounding opinions argue that it's more of a psychological thing, like metaFUD/metaFOMO. These opinions sound reasonable on the basis of the numbers reported. Volume on futures was - is! - too low to harm seriously (although, with the underlying bitcoin market as thin as it is now, nothing is impossible).

However, if Soros and other big players are really getting into the cornfield, it's going to be tough play. I really hope the SEC approves some ETF, but backed by actual bitcoin, stored in blockchain addresses known to the public.

Along the same lines, futures and similar derivatives should be entirely bitcoin-backed. "For delivery", as they say, since delivering bitcoin is as easy as can be. BY doing so, you can push and pull the market only according to how many coins - not dollars - you hold. You can probably push/pull a bit further than that, because exchanges are quick to kiss the right ass, but when you finally have to deliver, you have to buy or sell actual bitcoin. Let the markets (and the unavoidable slippage) do the rest.

Not many folks buying the rumor though.

Actually, I think we had another green weekend recently. Just a small thing in the general wasteland.

However, I think it's all a bit of a show. No real meaning to it right now. The numbers (volume) just aren't there yet, and we're being inundated with FOMOish news.

A good deal of care is advisable. There might be a sudden, violent mid-of-week dump for all we know. That would be more unexpected than the usual weekend move, therefore more fruitful for the actor doing it. My gut tells me we aren't done with the shakes yet.

Now if the month-long triangle goes on (higher lows, lower highs), maybe we might be on to something in late April/May, when people on the stock market traditionally lick their wounds.

The previous paragraph is a SOMA Analytics guaranteed forecast! Enjoy!

Straight Off My Ass Analytics(TM) - Almost always wrong, almost all the time!

Oops, it was Jojo's money, not Hairy's. Sorry for the mixup.

I'm far from being a fan, but my money's on the skinny one too, FWIW.

It's old stuff, actually. Computer stuff, I think, but they figured these useless complicated things before Amazon. Now there's obviously no need.