This tends to be the way I feel about it too.

Why did Europe adopt the Euro?  It prevented individual countries from printing their own money and paying their governments with inflation?

I think there actually are people in the government who see potential here and think it's the right way forward and don't want to stand in the way of progress.

Plus they've probably all bought some Bitcoin themselves before making announcements that it is legal

Why do you say Proof of Scam?  What do you have against Proof of Stake?


haha, thanks for asking the question first on another forum


wtf? Please discuss this off forum

I think that Mt. Gox scared some people away.. I've talked to a couple people about crypto's and have gotten the response: "Oh, that's the one where a lot of people lost a whole bunch of money on when a whole bunch of them were lost/stolen?"

I also think that it's pretty big as it is, people in Bitcoin are used to exponential growth but that was mostly because people didn't really understand crypto's.. most now have by now heard of it, they have formed opinions, and some are going to get into it but don't see a rush.. if anything they'd like wait till more stores accept it and they can actually use it in various places.

Also, smart money realizes that while none of the platforms are 100% complete, Proof of Stake is going to obsolete Bitcoin.  My money is on Nxt.

Finally, find me another stock where 40% growth in marketcap over 90 days would be something to complain about...

I think it was ASIC's that really did it for me, I figured that Litecoin had potential as being ASIC resistant due to it being memory hard.. and while it probably still does and I'm not sure if ASICs totally kill off graphics cards.. but I just kind of don't see the point.  What does Litecoin have going for it that BTC doesn't?

Proof of Stake.. that's where the next big thing and direct Bitcoin competitor will come from.  I'm mostly in Nxt as the algorithm behind it is genuis.  They've fixed the 'Nothing At Stake' problem by using an algorithm different from Peercoin, and no centralized checkpoints unlike Peercoin where a developer could overwrite Peercoin 'minters' blockchain just by manipulating his checkpoint.

MAYBE if we didn't have ASIC's or GPU's, I could buy this.  But when you have Satoshi owning almost 9% of all Bitcoin (assuming that is his only wallet..  seems to me like he must own another one he's cashing out from) or this guy who is currently mining over $4 million of BTC per month ( http://www.coindesk.com/inside-north-americas-8m-bitcoin-mining-operation/ ), how does this provide 'fair' distribution? By which I assume that people are saying that even distribution = fair distribution.

Personally, I think that a IPO is the way to go, like Nxt did.. only thing I would've done different was require a government id for every IPO participant. After all, wouldn't surprise me if a couple of people double IPOed.

I also don't have a problem with this distribution for Bitcoin.. some people got in earlier and being 'fair' seems like an impossible fantasy to me but people are arguing that the reason Proof of Work is a major plus is the distribution and I'm just asking.. why do you feel that is the case?

What do you mean smart contract?

I know Nxt's asset exchange is quite nice if that's what you mean.  Their automated transactions, basically ethereum like capabilities, are still quite young (but they should be beating ethereum to implementation!)  And from an algorithmic standpoint, Nxt has much more scalability than other POS coins, and has a lot of really nice features coming out soon.

Nxt has decentralized checkpointing for now, no fork longer than 720 blocks is accepted by the network.  They are soon adding a couple others methods.

The real way Nxt protects is by requiring that a SHA256 hash be performed for every block along every possible fork (along with taking into account stake and time since an account last forged).  If an attacker wanted to generate a fake fork that was only forged by his own forgers, then he would have to do far more SHA256 hashes within ten minutes or so than the Bitcoin network does within a week in order to calculate how he can build a strong enough fork in order to claim he's built a better fork entirely made out of his forgers... and after all the odds are against him unless he owns ~50% of Nxt.. at which point he can basically 51% attack the network.  Though granted he can 51% attack in burst even when he only has say 40% of all Nxt forging power,  that's the same as Bitcoin though, even only > 20% of all mining power owned by one pool should scare people.

So that's a no... right? That's what I thought...

Seems to me like Nxt is the one with the best shot at beating out even Bitcoin.

Way I see it is that Proof of Stake is the future.  It's much more energy efficient, doesn't require extreme inflation to power the network because it's more cost efficient, it's more secure and just all around better.

Nxt has far more developers working on it.  Did you know that Gavin is the only core developer for Bitcoin?  Nxt has at least 10.. probably over 20 developers.

Even Gavin Andreson at some point was saying that he hopes it's Bitcoin but he sees another coin potentially beating out Bitcoin some day.  It's the reason Warren Buffet refused to invest in Bitcoin.. because it's got some strong potential competitors.. Nxt is the strongest in my mind.

And anonymity(or Privacy) will be implemented in Nxt too.. but it won't be the one main feature, it'll be just one of the many feature it'll have.

Possible competitors If Nxt screws something up:
Ethereum
Ripple.. but them holding onto 90% of the coin is a really deal and I think might kill it in the long run

The idea behind a nothing at stake attack is that in a Proof of Work system a miner can't mine along multiple forks at the same time.

The Nothing at Stake attack is that every forger will decide to forge along every fork he sees because he doesn't have to commit to any one fork in order to forge for it(Nxt's version of mining). Meaning that he can just continue to forging fake forks and at a later point in time the entire network can decide to accept a different fork instead of their own.

Everyone keeps saying that Nxt is vulnerable to a Nothing at Stake attack..  as I understand it you need to have over 50% of the stake of the network decide to participate in and forge along multiple fake forks in order to perform such an attack.. right?  Meaning you still need at least 50% of the stake of the network to agree to accept a fork as correct in order to attack it..  meaning an attacker still needs to be greater than 50% of the forging stake..correct?

Because my guess is that the Nothing at Stake problem is just an argument being passed around by miners who have placed thousands or millions of dollars into buying mining equipment that will suddenly become worthless as soon as people realize that Proof of Stake is a viable replacement and that Nxt is going to replace Bitcoin some day.

Which leads me to my question.. if a Nothing at Stake Attack is a big problem.. then why hasn't one been performed yet?  Surely the miners who own millions of dollars on mining equipment have spent some money hiring people to attack Nxt, right?

Congrats!

People don't realize that Nxt was once exactly like many of the current IPO's being offered now.  You tend to avoid them because you don't know if someone is simply going to run off with your money.  However, they are valuable to the currency creator because BCNext actually decided to quit his job so that he could work on Nxt full time.  He was able to support himself using the money raised by the IPO.

And for most people investing in the IPO was risky enough, let alone double-investing.  It held some potential promise but there was no way of knowing just how successful Nxt would prove to be at the time.

Also, keep in mind that most people(only one of the largest stake holder's believed in Nxt enough to hold onto his full stake) dumped the majority of their Nxt onto the market when their $200 ish initially invested turned into $100,000, yet was still a risky investment.

Yeah.. until Cunicula came up with Proof of Stake..

The blockchain is what solves the problem, not the Proof of Work.. he just implemented Proof of Work because he hadn't thought up Proof of Stake and it wasn't until this was released to thousands and thousands of people that someone else realized there was a better way to do it.. Proof of Stake.

First of all, Nxt is somewhat resistant to 90% attack of the underlying system. Because in order to build the longest chain, a 90% attacker would have to perform a whole lot of hashes to figure out which chain was the longest one in advance, that also excluded the blocks of all other forgers.

We're talking 10^100 hashes or something in that range... probably much, much higher.  Those would have to be done within about 12 hours time.  Considering that it would take the entire Bitcoin network, by far the biggest source of hashing power, approximately 2^75 years to calculate that.. I'm not all that worried.

Certainly, the more decentralized the better when it comes to crashing the price but.. if you consider Nxt like a stock, it is much more decentralized than that of any big company out there that I know of.

In Bitcoin, 2 or 3 guys could gang up and take down Bitcoin or hold it hostage when it gets big enough..  imagine once Bitcoin grew to be US dollar sized and 3 guys could threaten to take down the network(or be hacked or a terrorist organization threatens them by saying they'll kill their kids, or whatever) in Nxt, you'd need 33 accounts to do so?  And even then, you'd knock out some of Nxt's cooler features but the main network features could still continue to run even against that attack. And not only that but it is getting better distributed with time, I think the constant downward pressure on the price is proof of that as those with big accounts are continuing to cash out over time.

In Ripple's case, yeah I stayed away from Ripple once I heard that the company held onto 90+% of the stock.. but in Nxt's case, I just don't see it as that big of a risk.

Yeah.. POS is dead.. probably the reason why we are seeing Nxt clones emerging left and right.

Seriously though.. this is why I think Nxt will suceed: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8uhdshu9epGRrQHBaloGc4itdvuAHZDAUtNDjOhz-8/edit?usp=sharing

It uses at least 8000 times less energy to power the network and transaction fees will be able to be 2000+ times smaller once Bitcoin stops printing more money and inflating the supply in the mean time.

Regarding the nothing at stake problem, Nxt solves it by making it computationally tricky to figure out how to fake a fork, as well as some other tricks.

Anyway, you may think this for now.. but 10 years from now, I suspect you'll be wishing you'd gotten in on Nxt while you could get it for only 6 cents each.

So, I'm playing around with an idea that involves a decentralized system and a number of nodes agreeing on something.  Maybe someone here can help.

Let's say I want this to be really secure, so I randomly pick 30 nodes, via a proof of work like system, I send those 30 each a small packet, they process it and return it. Say that out of those 30, at least 28 are required to reply.

If they reply then there is no problem, I can deal with malicious replies.  The one thing I can't figure out is how can you quickly deal with them simply deciding not to reply?  I'm thinking that maybe I can find a way to let them prove they have replied by propagating their own message to the network, and those that don't reply get kicked off. It's not important if it's a double spend or anything like that, they can either reply with a yes or no, if both are detected, then they are cheating.

I would like to be able to kick them out, or black list their ip address for a day or something like that.  The issue is that I have to be able to prove to the entire network that they are haven't responded within a minute or two.

Any thoughts?

As they forge, they are forging along a fork using the regular PoS algorithm.  Say this one resolves itself within 10 or 20 or even 120 blocks, you can always point to the block X blocks back as proof that you are on a certain fork.

Economic Clustering is just a way of committing to a specific fork.  You can't later go back and rewrite the blockchain with a different fork because the majority has chosen one chain.

You want a carbon friendly coin?

I recommend Nxt: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8uhdshu9epGRrQHBaloGc4itdvuAHZDAUtNDjOhz-8/edit?usp=sharing

They are even starting their own carbon credits program on top of this.

You should check out Nxt's UI... their asset exchange is very pretty.