blood for oil While I whole-hearted agree with the atrocities that are being committed to secure oil, unfortunately bitcoin does not solve this problem. Energy is the absolute life-blood of an economy in fact our very lives. If the whole world converted to bitcoin tomorrow we would still live in a blood for oil world unless we were willing to accept the tremendous pain of converting off of fossil fuels. If we get rid of money printing presses, then kings or parliaments that want to commit these atrocities must ask their subjects to donate their savings to do so. A nation willing to commit atrocities wholeheartedly is easier to deal with by the world courts. Maybe there are alternatives to bloodshed. |
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Sure, bitcoins can be used for "dirty deeds done dirt cheap," but when they come out of the virtual laundry, they smell April fresh and free of taint. They may still have a lascivious history Just like a scammer wrapping himself in a fresh new account. Aaaah, so clean. There is a fine line between a scammer and a criminal. Bitcoin's cryptographical magic can help protect you from the latter. This forum can innoculate you from the former. |
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I personally, can't wait for "The Bitcoin Machine" to be released into the wild. The scanner will need to be of the highest quality in order to read the crap that goes into them. Have you looked at money these days? Every other bill has writing on it. Worse, they have traces of narcotics, bodily fluids, and the taint of corruption that printed them.
Sure, bitcoins can be used for "dirty deeds done dirt cheap," but when they come out of the virtual laundry, they smell April fresh and free of taint. They may still have a lascivious history, but at least they are not used to exchange blood for oil. I won't say if or what I may have written on such foul notes in the past, but can only hope that when I put these federal reserve notes ito "The Bitcoin Machine," they will find their final resting place within the bowels of the beast from which they spewed. Hopefully that scanner will forgive some final thoughts that find their way onto these filthy scrips of debt.
With any luck, those bills won't be replaced much longer.
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In space no one can hear you sing.
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Difficulty determines the electric cost per bitcoin. Electricity is a large part of the cost of good sold. This has been the rule for most of the last four years.
The USD trade has dropped with the US hashrate. Coincidence?
The Bitcoin protocol is finished thanks to the great effort of the talented developers we have, but a few million dollars investment in a breakthrough disruptive technology is barely a start. It will take decades of man hours of software development to make the protocol user friendly. Either we pay programmers now or educate future generations to continue development in their spare time.
Isn't it more the price that determines difficulty? You could replace the hashrate of GPUs with ASICs and wouldn't the cost per bitcoin in electricity go down with the same difficulty? When price goes up mining is more profitable and more miners enter the game, then the difficulty rises due to this not the other way around. We are supposed to get an approximately flat rate of coin generation regardless of difficulty. Do you have evidence of the correlation of US hashrate and USD trade? I have no idea if this is coincidence or not as I haven't tracked both closely. I agree with your last part that it will take considerable development to make the protocol user friendly. I think development will continue to increase as wider and wider adoption and knowledge is spread. It looks like more startups are focusing around bitcoins now than in the past. Of course we all want more money and work put in to make things happen faster. There's a lot of speculation that goes into price, but it usually corrects with difficulty. I expect a downward trend in price to overcome any speculative exuberance until adoption and utility grows. The globe on blockchain.info shows that the USA has quickly diminishing hashrate in relation to the global participation. The fact that this occured as the hashrate in China boomed leaves little doubt that GPU miners in the West are shutting down and China has new ASIC miners. Price is dropping as GPU miners drop out and hashrate continues to climb. Maybe if price drops far enough and difficulty goes high enough, we'll start seeing more ASICs in the West, after the profitability of ASICs in down. Do you have a theory on why price would correct to difficulty? Logically it makes sense to me that when price rises it becomes more profitable to mine, then more miners are turned on and difficulty goes up following price. When profitability goes down due to lower price then some miners turn off and difficulty drops, again following price. There is probably more to the story than just that but an explanation why you think price would correct to difficulty might help me understand your point of view. Yes, profitability is the incentive for turning on miners except when we have game changers like ASICS. The difficulty jumps these days are an order of magnitude higher than a year ago. Profit margins for GPU mining are so small that only when there are speculation driven price spikes does it pay to run GPUs. Still, that's a good reason to hang onto them as reserve miners.
I also think increased adoption and utility could be somewhat decoupled from more hashrate since it's likely a different class of users will be attracted into the future. Less technically savvy users will also start mining in much lower ratios to number adopted when measured against early adopters in the past.
It will be interesting to see if major firms jump into Bitcoin with dedicated mining consumer products. As far as US hashrate falling vs China (and elsewhere) and a corresponding drop in BTC price, if we assume the two are correlated then my only theory there would be that possibly US miners had more disposable income and the larger percentage of coins mined outside the US now have a larger portion being sold back on the market as soon as they are mined. Is this your thinking as well?
I don't think it is necessarily a disposable income issue as much as the market freedom of countries. Competition amongst exchanges will provide liquidity. When the world has easy access to Bitcoins, volatility will diminish and Bitcoin price will grow steadily with market confidence and utility. Until then we will see bubbles, slow access to ASICs, and media FUD. |
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Even with a 10% higher difficulty, the downward trend continues. The small GPU miners are shutting down and being replaced by ASICs. The USA is no longer a major contributer to the hashrate, so the ecosystem is going into unfamiliar territory. What currency will replace the dollar for buying bitcoins? VCs also look at things like infrastructure and the USA has diminishing support for Bitcoin. Until Western miners can get their hands on ASICs, there probably won't be much investment in USD to raise Bitcoin price, nor develop Bitcoin businesses at the rate they should be seeing by now. I suppose as long as the Chinese have all the ASICs and they are not buying Bitcoins, then the price of Bitcoins will drop to the cost in electricity for ASIC miners. Any idea how much that is at the current difficulty?
Do you believe price follows difficulty and not the other way around? Why does some other currency have to replace the dollar for buying bitcoins? You seem to imply the hashrate is tied to this somehow? Has the price of bitcoins, to your knowledge, ever followed the electricity cost to produce it for any reasonable length of time? Haven't there been a handful of recent articles about more (mostly US) VC money than ever being pumped into bitcoins, most notably the $5m from Fred? What rate of Bitcoin business development "should" we be seeing right now? Not saying you are wrong about anything but can you connect the dots a bit better to show how you've come to the conclusions you have? Difficulty determines the electric cost per bitcoin. Electricity is a large part of the cost of good sold. This has been the rule for most of the last four years. The USD trade has dropped with the US hashrate. Coincidence? The Bitcoin protocol is finished thanks to the great effort of the talented developers we have, but a few million dollars investment in a breakthrough disruptive technology is barely a start. It will take decades of man hours of software development to make the protocol user friendly. Either we pay programmers now or educate future generations to continue development in their spare time. Isn't it more the price that determines difficulty? You could replace the hashrate of GPUs with ASICs and wouldn't the cost per bitcoin in electricity go down with the same difficulty? When price goes up mining is more profitable and more miners enter the game, then the difficulty rises due to this not the other way around. We are supposed to get an approximately flat rate of coin generation regardless of difficulty. Do you have evidence of the correlation of US hashrate and USD trade? I have no idea if this is coincidence or not as I haven't tracked both closely. I agree with your last part that it will take considerable development to make the protocol user friendly. I think development will continue to increase as wider and wider adoption and knowledge is spread. It looks like more startups are focusing around bitcoins now than in the past. Of course we all want more money and work put in to make things happen faster. There's a lot of speculation that goes into price, but it usually corrects with difficulty. I expect a downward trend in price to overcome any speculative exuberance until adoption and utility grows. The globe on blockchain.info shows that the USA has quickly diminishing hashrate in relation to the global participation. The fact that this occured as the hashrate in China boomed leaves little doubt that GPU miners in the West are shutting down and China has new ASIC miners. Price is dropping as GPU miners drop out and hashrate continues to climb. Maybe if price drops far enough and difficulty goes high enough, we'll start seeing more ASICs in the West, after the profitability of ASICs in down. |
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Even with a 10% higher difficulty, the downward trend continues. The small GPU miners are shutting down and being replaced by ASICs. The USA is no longer a major contributer to the hashrate, so the ecosystem is going into unfamiliar territory. What currency will replace the dollar for buying bitcoins? VCs also look at things like infrastructure and the USA has diminishing support for Bitcoin. Until Western miners can get their hands on ASICs, there probably won't be much investment in USD to raise Bitcoin price, nor develop Bitcoin businesses at the rate they should be seeing by now. I suppose as long as the Chinese have all the ASICs and they are not buying Bitcoins, then the price of Bitcoins will drop to the cost in electricity for ASIC miners. Any idea how much that is at the current difficulty?
Do you believe price follows difficulty and not the other way around? Why does some other currency have to replace the dollar for buying bitcoins? You seem to imply the hashrate is tied to this somehow? Has the price of bitcoins, to your knowledge, ever followed the electricity cost to produce it for any reasonable length of time? Haven't there been a handful of recent articles about more (mostly US) VC money than ever being pumped into bitcoins, most notably the $5m from Fred? What rate of Bitcoin business development "should" we be seeing right now? Not saying you are wrong about anything but can you connect the dots a bit better to show how you've come to the conclusions you have? Difficulty determines the electric cost per bitcoin. Electricity is a large part of the cost of good sold. This has been the rule for most of the last four years. The USD trade has dropped with the US hashrate. Coincidence? The Bitcoin protocol is finished thanks to the great effort of the talented developers we have, but a few million dollars investment in a breakthrough disruptive technology is barely a start. It will take decades of man hours of software development to make the protocol user friendly. Either we pay programmers now or educate future generations to continue development in their spare time. |
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Does anyone know if the Chinese ASIC farms are confirming transactions, or creating empty blocks?
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Even with a 10% higher difficulty, the downward trend continues. The small GPU miners are shutting down and being replaced by ASICs. The USA is no longer a major contributer to the hashrate, so the ecosystem is going into unfamiliar territory. What currency will replace the dollar for buying bitcoins? VCs also look at things like infrastructure and the USA has diminishing support for Bitcoin. Until Western miners can get their hands on ASICs, there probably won't be much investment in USD to raise Bitcoin price, nor develop Bitcoin businesses at the rate they should be seeing by now. I suppose as long as the Chinese have all the ASICs and they are not buying Bitcoins, then the price of Bitcoins will drop to the cost in electricity for ASIC miners. Any idea how much that is at the current difficulty?
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Cash and Bitcoin generally don't have a double spend problem, but Ripple does. Using Ripple as an exchange leaves a problem on both ends of the transaction.
"I no give credit, you get mad."
"I give credit and you no pay, I get mad."
"Better YOU get mad!"
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Craigslist type classified ad services would benefit greatly from such an app. Two-party multisig transactions add additional privacy and security.
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Closed source development doesn't have much cred in the Bitcoin community anymore. I do hope we hear good news about this someday.
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vanitygen has a namecoin flag. You can generate key pairs. You would need to pshop a NMC note.
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Palestine, North Korea, and Cuba. Hate never dies. Maybe Bitcoin will heal the world.
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The good thing about China investing a lot in mining is that they are in it for the long haul. Mining is finite. Soon they will hunger for MOAR!
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Can we wait until after Gavin dies to memorialize him? Hopefully that is a very long time from now. Sure, there will be statues, schools, and shopping malls named after him someday, but for now let's just use metric denominations for Bitcoin.
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speculation - Chinese may be more interested in mining than in buying BTC...
longer term transferral of wealth from US (and other western countries) to China - sounds about the right kind of mentality? US no doubt account for the majority of BTC holders and miners at this time
That is also why they hoard rare earth metals and gold. China is investing heavily in mining globally. I would expect they will be buying bitcoins soon. They may simply not have an easy market for them. Early adopter miners are shutting down their GPUs in the US. If China is building ASICs and not exporting them, the rest of the world is screwed as far as mining. |
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How did they get mining up so fast? Is China hoarding ASICs?
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