So who is to blame? I did not say their economy was top notch, it was as bad as my personal finance, but I am doing fine, so did Greece. The fact they had to do some fiddling with their bookkeeping to statisfy the EU commission and the banks has never been a secret, everybody knew at the time and everybody knew how bad it really was, nobody cared and accepted it, nobody checked the books. The banks have made big profits out of it and got away with a big bonus paid by the EU tax payers.
They cooked their books and everybody stood by and let it happen, laughed when they shaked hands on joining in with the big sharks, now they are shred to pieces and if not enough they get pissed all over by the same sharks and a big propaganda machine is at work to blame the greek people, turning away the blame from the real culprits which are the big banks and companies that have profited from the fall and bankrupcy of a whole country.
Everybody involved is to blame, not just the banks and that also include the people, who were just happily evading taxes, not caring, what will happen in the near future. Saying, it is not my fault, banks/politicians are bad and than acting to make it worse, because I can't do anything about it anyways, doesn't release me from any responsibility. What makes me angry the most, is that the ones, who it will/has hit the hardest(the younger generation) are not the same as the ones(the older generation) who benefited for a short time from driving it down the cliff. And that's also, why I am saying, that they were not doing fine, before joining the EU, they were just postponing their problems(like most countries do). It would have hit the younger generation, also without the EU, maybe not that hard, but it would have hurt. |
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I have a checking account with $100 in it. I go to a Starbucks and charge a $6 cup of coffee. I now have $94 in my checking account and Starbucks has $6. There is no fee for either. I don't care if that cup of coffee costs the bank a million fucking dollars. The customer doesn't pay and the business doesn't pay. That's all the public will see or care about. If that cup of coffee costs one penny more they will keep using their debit card. Remember I'm not talking about credit. Credit is another story and something Bitcoin isn't currently competing with on a large scale.
Edit: I'm talking about Pin Debit using qualified large merchants.
Hmm.. I wasn't aware that there are merchant service providers who have zero fees for pin based debit card transactions. According to the FRB, fees for debit card transactions averaged $0.31 in 2014. Large merchants like Starbucks bank where the tiered pricing is negligible or free. In the case of tiered pricing a business does not pay interchange fees. Instead, a business pays qualified, mid-qualified and non-qualified rates to a processor. Smaller merchants pay larger fees. Different types of businesses pay different rates also. The point remains that consumers won't pay anything because they don't currently have to. I am such a cheap bastard that I buy gas at ARCO with only cash because they charge more for any card. I refuse to give those blood sucking leeches one penny more than I have to for gas. Bitcoin has a strong ability to compete with the international money transfer business even if the fee was two dollars. I see no reason why it should be used for everyday purchases where the competition will win. I can pay cash for little stuff under $20. Sending $10k to another country I would want to use Bitcoin and so would anyone else. Sorry, I am a bit tired, so I am not sure, if I really got that. So, Starbucks is paying a fee, the customer doesn't see? If so, there is really a simple solution to that: A discount. When the merchants saves fees, when you use Bitcoin, he can give you part of it back as a discount and if you get a discount, that is bigger than the fee you are paying for sending Bitcoin, you have enough incentive to do so. |
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Sorry, but what a BS. Nothing worked in Greece, before and after they joined the EU. They had problems long before they joined the EU, they were just hiding them better. Seriously, they don't have any economy besides some tourism. How is that supposed to work?
And no, I don't want to defend the Banks, but saying you can't blame the Greek people at all, is just a big pile of bullshit.
What is the BS? They have so much more than just the tourism, they have export. It is not a big economy, it is a small part of the whole EU, they did not bring much, they did not need much, they had enough to go arround in Greece itself, but when up with the big boys and their bubble economies it all tumbled down, there is no BS in that. I have no idea, where you get your information from. When Greece joined the Eurozone, they cooked their books. I thought that is common knowledge. Here some random news article about that: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/united-kingdom/eu-knew-greece-cooked-its-books-when-it-joined-eurozone-243927.htmlThey did not have a healthy economy. I have no idea, why you are denying that. |
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So, this is, what all this stress testing was about?  |
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I guess the vote result was the better of two evils. You cannot accept any more loans from the EU or other country, because it will only dig the hole deeper.
They need significant internal financial reform :
1. Increased Tax
2. Government Salaries & Pension cuts. {Eg.. reduction of 30% or more for a period of 5 years, until the economy healed}
3. Assistance to help entrepeneurs to create jobs. {Subsidizing innovation}
4. Strong anti-corruption strategies
5. Creation of a Bitcoin friendly environment {Also informal job creation}
6. Very strict lending practices for high risk loans.
7. Negotiations with the EU to write off a percentage of the debt. {Some countries have done this with 3rd World country debt}
These are just some of the things, they can do to resolve this situation.
Raising taxes is the most bullshit thing you can ever do. Raising taxes only shrinks the tax base, thus they will have less government budget eventually. Not to mention the fact that its highly immoral to send armed thugs to your store extorting you for money  The problem with Greece is not, that the taxes are too low. The Problem is that paying taxes was hardly enforced in the last few years. Just a little reminder, that Greeks are not just the victims of this crises, but fucked up pretty hard them self and that also counts for the poor people, who also didn't pay taxes, because culture. Thats why they should lower taxes even lower. If they have medium taxes which are not enforced, then why cant you have low taxes that are enforcet? You can easily fire some tax collectors, and save some budget money anyway. But just look at the morality of the entire system, all sorts of inspectors coming to your small store to "check" you is exactly like the maffia. Plus all the debt that has build up to save 'Greece' as a country only saved the banks and multinationals to get a free pass to leave greece and let it sink even further, none of the IMF loans has gotten to the greek people. All of it went to the german and french banks that have played a good one on greece and its population, winning big and walking away with a big profit. You cannot blame the people, the tax evasion was a status quo that was working ok until the eu and banks pushed them to reform and then the whole system started to shift and fall apart. Sorry, but what a BS. Nothing worked in Greece, before and after they joined the EU. They had problems long before they joined the EU, they were just hiding them better. Seriously, they don't have any economy besides some tourism. How is that supposed to work? And no, I don't want to defend the Banks, but saying you can't blame the Greek people at all, is just a big pile of bullshit. |
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What I don't understand: there is a huge backlog (lots of waiting unconfirmed txs in the mempool) yet most blocks being mined are far from full. Most blocks seem to be ±731 KB, so there's almost 30% of unused space to put in more txs.
Why would miners not want to include txs when there's a whole bunch of them waiting? It's only extra fee for the miners.
yes, i always ask why ... they don't use the real 1Mb size : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1096975.msg11687498#msg11687498  you're right. it seems only Antpool and discuss fish are using full size all the others not so much... https://tradeblock.com/blockchainNope, Antpool is also not using the full size. Some weeks ago, I read an article about this block limit the miners(pools) set them self, but I obviously haven't bookmarked it. I have never heard of Discus Fish, but they seem to make the blocks as full as possible. |
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I guess the vote result was the better of two evils. You cannot accept any more loans from the EU or other country, because it will only dig the hole deeper.
They need significant internal financial reform :
1. Increased Tax
2. Government Salaries & Pension cuts. {Eg.. reduction of 30% or more for a period of 5 years, until the economy healed}
3. Assistance to help entrepeneurs to create jobs. {Subsidizing innovation}
4. Strong anti-corruption strategies
5. Creation of a Bitcoin friendly environment {Also informal job creation}
6. Very strict lending practices for high risk loans.
7. Negotiations with the EU to write off a percentage of the debt. {Some countries have done this with 3rd World country debt}
These are just some of the things, they can do to resolve this situation.
Raising taxes is the most bullshit thing you can ever do. Raising taxes only shrinks the tax base, thus they will have less government budget eventually. Not to mention the fact that its highly immoral to send armed thugs to your store extorting you for money The problem with Greece is not, that the taxes are too low. The Problem is that paying taxes was hardly enforced in a long time. Just a little reminder, that Greeks are not just the victims of this crises, but fucked up pretty hard them self and that also counts for the poor people, who also didn't pay taxes, because culture. |
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One of the funny things about these threads is, that people think, when they write often enough, that a stress test is "not allowed" on the main-chain, people will stop doing them.
It's not even like this stress tester have used a bug or something. There is no "not allowed", no court to decide, that what they did is bad.
People who are whining on forums are not the judges. Everything the stress testers did/do is according to the (coded) rules of Bitcoin.
These stress tests are a reminder to the devs, that there are still unsolved problems. Problems that could really hurt Bitcoin, not just if somebody wants to do so, but also when Bitcoin goes mainstream(and nobody knows, when that will happen).
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Why is this taking so long to resolve?
Surely it is in the mining pools interest to fall into line? Or is there something more sinister going on?
Re stress testing I suppose it needs to be done isnt bitcoin still classed as beta or am I missing the point?
It actually was resolved pretty fast. (6 blocks ~ 1h) I guess the news at the top of the forum, is just a reminder that you should update your client. Theoretically this could happen again(I highlty doubt it, since pools/miners already lost money) and the only prevention is to use a up-to-date client(or connect to an up-to-date node) It is clearly not resolved. Look at the forum header and you will see. Things are not "back to normal" if you have to wait for ~30 confirmation on many clients. This is ongoing as of now until the above warning is removed. Sorry, for the misinformation. Seems like there was another split according to: https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2015-07-04-spv-miningSo, miners are stupid enough to still lose money. Sorry, I assumed, they were smarter. @RealBitcoin There is no reported double-spend. From the way, I understand Bitcoin a double spend is still very hard to execute. So, no lemon merchant has the resources to do that. And yes, I would trust coinbase. |
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Ah right thanks for the info, I just presumed as it was on the forum and still mentioned at Redit that it was ongoing  Could you give me a link to Reddit, where people claiming, that it is still ongoing(I am hardly ever on Reddit, I don't even have an account there)? Maybe I am missing something. |
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Why is this taking so long to resolve?
Surely it is in the mining pools interest to fall into line? Or is there something more sinister going on?
Re stress testing I suppose it needs to be done isnt bitcoin still classed as beta or am I missing the point?
It actually was resolved pretty fast. (6 blocks ~ 1h) I guess the news at the top of the forum, is just a reminder that you should update your client. Theoretically this could happen again(I highlty doubt it, since pools/miners already lost money) and the only prevention is to use a up-to-date client(or connect to an up-to-date node) |
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Yeah, sorry, I don't think I was clear about what I wrote.
What I meant is that there is a limit on how much the difficulty can go up or down on each difficulty retarget
So, it can't drop/rise more than a certain number each time.
My bad, I should have been more clear about what I wrote.
You are clear, I understood you perfectly. I have known that difficultly do cannot drop "too much" but I couldn't find a definite answer what is "too much". I have an impression that it's 80% (drop by 80%, so 20% of original difficulty). Any coders can confirm that? Look here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficultyand here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/TargetThere should be the answer in there. @Topic I think, in Bitcoin we see the advantage in a global market. With miners all around the world, there isn't a way to stop them all. Also keep in mind, the difference between pool and miners. Sure, you can take down a pool, but that just means miners are going to another one. So, how much miners can be shut down in one sweep? Even if it is 50%(which I doubt, that it is possible), that would just mean, confirmation time doubles from avg. 10 minutes to avg 20 minutes till the next adjustment. Big deal  |
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So, you got free money.
What is the problem again?
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I don't get all the talking about miner's fee, we don't need to pay any fee at all if we don't want to and miners can leave if they want to.
If they leave the diffculty will be adjusted to the available hash power. We should not be held hostage of these mining corporations, mining could go back as low as the GPU days and it would not be a problem.
Why would the miners leave? What if they just ignore all the "low-fee" transactions? What could we, the bitcoin users, do except increasing the tx fee? You are right that we could choose to not pay any fee if we don't want to. But at the same time, the miners could choose to include our transactions if they don't want to. That's exactly the problem, fees were created solely to avoid spam but it is actually being used as an extortion instrument. The block reward should and must be the only reason to mine.I believe miners themselves are spaming. Are you aware, that the block reward will go to zero eventually? So, that basically means, miners should work for free. It is believed that the price should follow when rewards halve, but even if not, the difficulty factor should then adjust when people no longer see mining profitable, leaving it to those who can afford and those who have cheapest electricity. Miners that no longer see profit in their operation should just stop mining, and not spam the blockchain, since the "extortions" are bound to be eliminated one way or the other. cheers So, when the block reward goes to zero, the price of Bitcoin in infinite? Sorry, but what some speculators believe(translate to "hope that will happen, so they get rich") doesn't concern me. I'd still like to store the little wealth, I have, in Bitcoin 20 years from now. That wouldn't be a good idea, when the hashrate drops so dramatically, that an attack would be cheap. and btw.: "Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free." https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf |
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I don't get all the talking about miner's fee, we don't need to pay any fee at all if we don't want to and miners can leave if they want to.
If they leave the diffculty will be adjusted to the available hash power. We should not be held hostage of these mining corporations, mining could go back as low as the GPU days and it would not be a problem.
Why would the miners leave? What if they just ignore all the "low-fee" transactions? What could we, the bitcoin users, do except increasing the tx fee? You are right that we could choose to not pay any fee if we don't want to. But at the same time, the miners could choose to include our transactions if they don't want to. That's exactly the problem, fees were created solely to avoid spam but it is actually being used as an extortion instrument. The block reward should and must be the only reason to mine.I believe miners themselves are spaming. Are you aware, that the block reward will go to zero eventually? So, that basically means, miners should work for free. |
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The fact that they didn't charge the investigators who stole the Bitcoins until after sentencing makes the trial illegitimate. Not according to the laws written in the books. Perhaps it is according to some weird made up laws which exist in your head. But the courts aren't using those laws. Credibility is an important part in a trial. Especially this trial is based a lot on the assumption, that the state officials told the truth. |
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Username: turvaryaCurrent member rank: Hero Member Current post count: 1336 BTC address where you wish to receive payment: 19t1i1zoAbhoUYjZqewWn7gCPPGzMY9BnL Payment preference:full |
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a Long road ahead for Ross, most of the public is out rage about hes sentence
Really? Outrage? The general public don't seem to care. The only people who do are his mother and a few libertarians but a lot of angry anarchists arn't going to get him freed. The general public doesn't care about anything. Have you seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M |
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As for the murder for hire claims, correct me if I'm wrong but that wasn't proven as directly related to Ross.
They didn't even try to prove it. However, if they did we all know what the end result would be. It is quite clear he was deep in this murder for hire thing. That the DEA was a shithead didn't lesson the fact that Ross was all-in when it came to killing that guy. Oh, it was clear, no prosecution needed. Please jump from a bridge. |
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Ross Ullbricht did not get a fair trial. Evidence was withheld to protect the agents, who also stole Bitcoins.
The murder charges was never used in court, they only fabricated that story, to make him look bad, and the sentence is clear evidence of that.
I doubt they were fabricated but it may have been entrapment. If you're going to say evidence was fabricated then you might as well say the entire evidence they had against him was fabricated too. There are people much more more familiar with this case, who are saying exactly that: Most evidence is fabricated. There were a lot of lies, about how they got certain data(since, what they said didn't make sense in a technical way). There was evidence used, that no court should accept, since they are easily manipulated. Also: If there was entrapment, that is illegal in the USA, as far as I know. He is not convicted for the murder charge, there isn't even a prosecution for that and there will not be one. |
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