I did some low hashrate testing of Mineco.in comparing it against Deepbit (with all things being equal except the pool).
These are the results in the order in which I tried running against both pools:

Deepbit: [50 Accepted] [0 Rejected]
Mineco.in: [27 Accepted] [13 Rejected]
Deepbit: [39 Accepted] [0 Rejected]
Mineco.in: [18 Accepted] [12 Rejected]
Deepbit: [13 Accepted] [0 Rejected]

Something is causing a very high number of rejects on Mineco.in.

Personally I think a proactive approach to countering claims made by those two senators is a good thing. I am glad someone did it.

My point was that this thread was about the malicious trade and not about Tux's letter to the DEA.
But I see you like to twist words and sentences out of their original context, good luck with that, but I have got better things to do.

This thread is about supporting MtGox in their efforts to recover from the malicious trade.
Even with the other issue you raise, wtf do you want MtGox to do? To say that they won't cooperate with authorities? That's a sure way to get shut down.

Besides it strikes me that the whole point of that statement was to counter the ridiculous and baseless claims made by those two senators that Bitcoins are merely a money laundering tool.

I can't quite make the connections you are making.
Let me put it another way, I may not like everything the police does, but when I am a victim of a crime, I'll still report it to the police.

Also: it's not snitching to report a crime you are a victim off.
If the FBI can get the missing funds returned to MtGox and/or catch the cracker that would be a good thing, regardless of what anyone thinks of the FBI.

Due to the amount of money involved in MtGox, they are most likely bound by certain rules and regulations (regardless of the Bitcoin side of the story). They are probably legally obliged to report any incident above a certain threshold. Just as they are obliged to report suspicious transactions, as is any other financial institution.

If MtGox chose not to abide by those laws all our Bitcoins at MtGox would be at risk, so I for one want them to be 100% legit and go by the book.

As for why the FBI was involved, my guess is that some suspicious activities took place in the US.

Magical Tux has always been most helpful to me, and I know I am not the only person with that experience.

Tux is doing the right thing in this crisis.

Regardless of MtGox responsibility in this matter, I don't think anyone should hold on to stolen goods they bought at 1500 times below the market price.

Wisest seems to me to give those 643 BTC back to MtGox. If you choose not to, your lawyer fees will likely far surpass the value of those bitcoins and you may end up with a criminal record as someone who knowingly kept stolen goods (which most likely is a criminal offense in your jurisdiction).

If someone accidentally transfers a million dollars to your bank account, you'd have to give it back too, even if you moved some of that to another account at an other bank in another country shortly after seeing your statement. I seriously doubt a judge will see your case any differently. If you hide the money a judge can order you held until you reveal the whereabouts.

The fact that you got money (or bitcoins) as a result of someone else's error (or crime) does not make them legally yours. That it's the other party's fault for not securing their passwords properly still does not entitle you to that money.

That said, I am no lawyer but I do remember a case of a woman being held for several months because she had hidden money accidentally wired to her account. She had also claimed it wasn't her fault that she got the money and was thus entitled to keep it. The judge clearly did not agree.

Regarding the pool fees, the table misses the fact that some pools keep all the transaction fees. Eligius and BTC guild do for sure (they are open about it), the others I don't know, Deepbit seems to keep them too (or so it seemed to me), no idea about the others.

This community will be doomed if it doesn't welcome newcomers. How else can a community grow?
Newcomers don't know all and ask questions, what's the problem?

There's been discussion on maintaining the minting of new Bitcoins before, there will be in the future.

As I understand it if the largest mining pools decided together to continue to mint 50 new BTC beyond 2012, there isn't much the non-mining bitcoin community can do to stop them. Correct me if I am wrong.

(Not that I want that to happen btw)

That's pretty cool!

You should put this on OTC so you don't need to adjust the price manually each time the BTC price increases.
(I sent you details by E-mail).

My initial observation, got me interested in these odds. For instance what the chance of a pool with a certain hashrate underperforming or overperforming by say 10%? Or 20%. I'd just like to get a better feel for these things.

BTW, switched to mining on BTCGuild last night. :-)

Thanks for the helpful comment.


Me neither, I thought 40% difference between two pools was rather extreme with such huge hashrates.
Is there a tool online where you can calculate those probabilities?

OK, that would explain my observations, assuming BTC mine was also 20% luckier than expected average over the same period. Thanks for clearing that up.

BTW, I am considering giving BTC guild a try, it seems very detailed and open. Hope your unlucky streak ends soon...

I had noticed a similar thing between BTC mine and BTC guild over the past 3 days. Both pools had a similar hashrate over that period (around 400 MH/s), yet BTC mine usually showed some 4 more unconfirmed blocks found than BTC guild. Usually 14 vs 10. That's a huge difference.

Earlier today it equalized (btc mine got unlucky with a block that took 7 hours), but now it's back again, with BTC mine showing 13 blocks awaiting maturity with 407 MH/s while BTC guild shows only 10 blocks awaiting maturity with 490 MH/s (i.e. 20% higher hashrate but 25% less blocks found).

I thought for a while that both pools might calculate the Hashrate differently, but jasonk's post above makes that unlikely.

Is BTC guild unlucky or BTC mine lucky? What are the odds of a 4 day persistent difference at these hashrates?

Better wait until the site accepts Bitcoins, before transfering bounty... (it's my fault I've been busy with other things)

BTW, I have a Pagerank bookmarklet that doesn't depend on any 3rd party service, but takes everything directly from Google: http://ottodv.com/pr

Moneybookers might be a solution, it functions much like paypal, it has an e-wallet and allows payment by credit card.
However they locked out Wikileaks months before Paypal did, so who knows how tolerant they would be of BitCoin?

Another possibility could be Click and Buy, http://clickandbuy.com/ , not looked at them in detail, but I used them once to pay something by credit card.

Nope, it has Pagerank of 6.

A nice deflationary example is computers. I can buy one now for X Euros, but if I wait a year I can buy a much better one for X Euros or the same one for much less than X Euros. This isn't apparently stopping people from buying computers.

What I think is more of an issue, is that with the current extreme exchange rate changes of BTC it's simply hard to put a BTC price on things. I've seen BTC prices for things that now appear to be absurdly high. You have to constantly adjust the price of your products or services. If you accept bitcoins their value might be significantly different in a matter of hours (even minutes). Fine when it goes up, but not that great when it goes down.

Of course a solution is to simply fix your price in Euros or Dollars and always quote a BTC price based on the latest rates, but still.

I will try to convince the owner of http://accessfirefox.org/ to accept BitCoin donations - he's a good friend of mine and I help him out with technical issues for his site. The site focuses on accessibility features and add-ons for Firefox - the owner himself is visually impaired, yet still managed to build that site!

If there is still a bounty for convincing sites to accept bitcoins, I will donate it to AccessFirefox or ask it to be donated directly to AccessFirefox.