i do understand the conversation that took place earlier about "selling" essentially being equivalent to "shorting" but most professionals don't view it that way.
It's not even close. If you are caught on the wrong side of a naked short you are looking at huge losses. On the other hand, if you missed the train on an upmove after you just sold your bitcoins you don't have any losses, you just don't have the profit you otherwise would have had. Serious question, not trying to be a smartass: If borrowing the shares is required to call it shorting, why does the term naked short mean? I thought a naked short was shorting without actually owning the asset to begin with, and therefore "regular" shorting would be shorting when you do start out owning the asset. Am I mistaken? naked shorting is when you don't even have to borrow the share from a long to put on the short. WTF, how is that supposed to work? |
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I don't quite understand, what is to stop for example Paypal from buying a shitload of ASICs (or FPGAs should ASICs all be a fraud) and shut down the network by DOS?
I fear such an attack would severely undermine bitcoin user confidence, send prices really low, and undermine incentive for other miners to up their game by buying new equipment etc.
I don't understand how a client update could prevent this problem. Wouldn't the attacker just upgrade too? Is there a way to distinguish between attackers and "true" miners?
I would love a good answer to this as together with scaling issues this is my main concern for bitcoin's survival and success.
Why attack it when you can join it? Because joining it can be risky because others can attack it. And attacking it if you are part of a money-making business could ensure give you a small chance for a large capital outlay that you eliminate competition. I am not saying this definitely will happen. I wouldn't own bitcoins otherwise. I just see it as a serious risk. FTFY |
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One Bitcoin can be compared with one ounce gold coin, so we could use 1/2, 1/4, 1/10 BTC etc... Below that, there are other weight unit, like carat (bitcarat) and grain (bitgrain) I suggest that one carat bitcoin (bitcarat) = 1/1000 bitcoin, this sounds luxury enough  And one grain bitcoin (bitgrain) = 100 satoshi = 1/1,000,000 bitcoin facepalm Yes, lets make up our own terms instead of using standard terminology used with every other form of measurement. That way nobody will know what the fuck we are talking about! |
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I refuse your definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_%28finance%29 the practice of selling securities or other financial instruments, with the intention of subsequently repurchasing them ("covering") at a lower price. In the event of an interim price decline, the short seller will profit, since the cost of repurchase will be less than the proceeds received upon the initial (short) sale. By your own definition I'm not sure you are shorting: I refuse to cover a short at a loss
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i do understand the conversation that took place earlier about "selling" essentially being equivalent to "shorting" but most professionals don't view it that way.
It's not even close. If you are caught on the wrong side of a naked short you are looking at huge losses. On the other hand, if you missed the train on an upmove after you just sold your bitcoins you don't have any losses, you just don't have the profit you otherwise would have had. Serious question, not trying to be a smartass: If borrowing the shares is required to call it shorting, why does the term naked short mean? I thought a naked short was shorting without actually owning the asset to begin with, and therefore "regular" shorting would be shorting when you do start out owning the asset. Am I mistaken? |
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And a ginormous debt that we already have that our kids will inherit ARE WE MARRIED? ?  He's probably speaking as a US citizen and by "we" he means other citizens. |
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Come now. It's totally possible to have a government that spends money without totally invalidating its nation's markets. If the US doesn't have a pricing mechanism, who's telling the grocery store how much to charge for my peanut butter? The economic calculation problem is the wogly in command economies, not all government spending everywhere. talk to me about Libor. it's only the most fundamental interest rate upon which all bonds are priced and thus every other risk asset. Yep... It's the bankers controlling the peanut butter prices, not the peanut farmers or the grocery store, who should be the two actors concerned with pricing. |
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I think this is very shiny: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdfIt is the first thing I read and I was hooked. Haven't been able to get enough since, but then again I've got a degree in Math and Computer Science, and most people would laugh at me for being turned on by a whitepaper. |
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i considered it, probably for weeks, after wikileaks started accepting bitcoins
... what's wrong with wikileaks.... since when did whistle blowing become evil? |
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If your computer is made of matter, and it occupies space, even if it is perfectly, ideally, efficient there is not enough energy in our sun to power it long enough for it to COUNT to 2^256, let alone compute the bitcoin address and check the balance. If such a matterless, spaceless device exists, you have a point. If not, you are wrong.
Oh, and look up who got rich in the various gold rushes... it wasn't the miners, it was the shovel makes and the blue jean companies. The money in ASIC is in selling them, not mining with them.
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you will have to get yourself quite a large bag of popcorn, can be waiting for half a year or longer.
Yeah, I highly doubt that. I bet we'll see another multi-dollar drop within the next couple weeks, if not sooner. I also think we will see another drop to single digit range by the end of the year. I was here for the last bubble and crash (when the price reached $30 and dropped down to around $2), the sentiment around here is exactly the same as it was then, just with (mostly) new people. I believe that more of us are short, than we care to admit.
I keep hearing people talk about shorting bitcoin, but how are you doing it without bitcoinica or similar leveraged trading platform? Or are you just shorting through private btc loans? Or is the term "shorting" just being misused on this forum? The big difference between now and summer 2011 is a question of scale. Mining power is up, users are way up, merchants are way up, exchanges are more diverse, press is better received (more sensible comments). I see no reason for it to crash this time. Now there are many more people with an interest in buying the dips before they turn into valleys. If it goes up too fast, sure, but I don't see that happening yet. |
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There is no configure file!
But ok, I resolved the boost dependency... but now it can't compile the db because suse 11.3 has berkeley 4.5 and bitcoin requires 4.8, so thats the segmentation fault right there I guess?
So is it possible to fix this?
If you're using a direct git clone rather than a release tarball, you need to run ./autogen.sh first to generate ./configure, same as nearly every other autotools setup in existence. Yes, you can compile and install berkeley 4.8 yourself if your distro doesn't provide a package. If you run bitcoin in a gdb session you should be able to get a backtrace that tells you where the segfault is occurring. I believe the binaries from bitcoin.org have all the dependencies compiled in, so I don't think the berkeley db version is your issue. |
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Suggestions: shilling, penny farthing, drakma, scat, baug, mongol
I second the suggestion of calling a denomination of Bitcoin a scat. We have discussed the fractions many times, I believe consensus has been fairly reached in different polls. Has consensus been reached on the centi contra milli question? I see people use bitcents from time to time. You can use any standard prefix you want... that's why we have them. If you tell me not to use bitcents, I will tell you to fuck off. |
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It seems that transaction fees are much harder to predict though, and are more closely based to the overall activity of the bitcoin economy. Will this make it exceptionally hard to mine in the future? Will it become analogous to playing the lottery?
The block reward only changes every 4 years. Currently the block reward easily covers mining costs (or miners would stop processing transactions w/o fees). It will probably still be a few halvings before transaction fees come into play. Once that is the case, they will probably be pretty steady except for a few months around the block reward decreases. The larger miners will most likely post their fee requirements - and the smaller miners will follow their lead. You'll probably be able to pay any fee you'd like, it will just correlate to how quickly it is added to a block. The smaller the fee, the longer you'll have to wait. But I think it will be pretty common knowledge what the current going rate is to get your transaction into the next block. And obviously every 4 years the fees will increase until the block reward is practically none existent - then fees will become even more predictable. It's a bit more complicated than that because of the exchange rate variance, but I agree that it will be fairly stable. |
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gold exchanged in barter for its intrinsic value*
*) There were probably other commodities before gold, but that is not the point here.
Specifically what was that? It looked pretty in someone's nose? That is one example yes. And why can't bitcoins have the same "intrinsic value"? Bitcoins have no intrinsic value, as 1) You can not use bitcoins as wall covering 2) You can not use bitcoins to wipe your ass 3) You can not use bitcoins as ear-rings 4) You can not use bitcoins to create great electrical connectors 5) You can not use bitcoins as paperweights 6) You can not toss bitcoins to randomly select heads or tails 7) You can not throw bitcoins on somebody when you are angry and so on. What _can_ you use bitcoins for, other than exchange? You might not be able to use bitcoins themselves to randomly select heads or tails, but using a specific block hash is agreed to be a good random data source that provides proof that the random number generator is not cheating for the benefit of someone else. Also, my Casascius coins also counter 5, 6, and 7. And maybe 3 if you don't mind looking like an idiot. My bitcoin check I got free with my last order can counter 1 and 2. All that's left is electrical connectors, and Casacius makes coins that would work well for that too, I just don't have any. |
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A five-day-newbie here, and I haven't yet obtained my first bitcoin. I've a few fractions of one though!  Why I'm here is simple - this is a very unique "experiment" (and I use the word in quotes, because I can't think of the right word). When you consider all of the various traditional payment systems we use - credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, fiat currency in general, they all fit into a paradigm we're comfortable with - even though we shouldn't be. And we shouldn't be, because these systems are outside of our control, the rules can be changed at will, and not by us. And the powers that be can (and have) decided to erode the value of these currencies with their continual printing of more fiat. This is *almost* like growing up knowing the world is flat, and then having the opportunity to take part in a voyage that will prove it isn't so. Here we have, with Bitcoin, a non-inflationary currency system, with clearly defined rules, and a decentralised control system that no "powers that be" can change for their own advantage. The more you stop and think about it - the more incredible and brilliant the design and outcomes of the design become. I'm not here to make a few shekels of fiat, I'm sad I didn't discover this a long time ago, but glad I have now. Call this silly if you will, but I grabbed an ATI 6xxx card second hand today, just to set up a mining client on a box in the corner to eke out a few bitcoins just to be part of the whole thing, and perhaps one day, to be able to actually spend a few coins on something, knowing I *earned* those coins. Yes, I know about ASIC's etc - this isn't a money making thing for me, it's a participation thing  GPU mining is still reasonable if you can put the heat to use. When it warms up outside, my mining cards will be shut off until next winter though. |
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Looks like you are missing the libboost development package. Make sure configure is happy before you try to run make. |
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Buy bitcoins while they are super expensive guys!
Just hold it up there until the first of the month and I will, same as every payday. |
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You definitely have to define bitcoin as money. It has all the required features, and it is used in exchanges. That's not a good reason to classify bitcoin as money. Bitcoin has additional features that money lacks. We don't have a word for it yet but what ever Bitcoin is, money is a subset of that. Exactly. Bitcoin is more than any other money ever was. What other money can move from here to the other side of the world faster than I can make dinner? |
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The general consensus is that significant inflation in USD is unavoidable in the medium-term future, correct? I've seen the topic discussed dozens of times on these forums and people might disagree on the reasons why or the potential magnitude, but I don't think I've seen too many opininions to the contrary being outlined.
If everyone believes this, then certainly it has an impact on BTC adoption, I would think.
I don't believe they can print feast enough to overcome the deflation from all the bad debt. |
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