I'd debate that.  I don't see that "bits" is objectively easier to say than "mikes".  In fact, I've noticed that people of various different cultural backgrounds, with different natural languages, have a bit of a problem with "b" and "v" when it comes to English.

I'm not saying that "bits" is bad because it's hard to say, far from it.  I simply reject your claim that it's easier to say than "mikes" and that's why "mikes" should be rejected from consideration.


The name "mikes" existed long before "bits" was ever coined, and for precisely the same reasons.  The only new thing the Reddit "it's bits" post gave to the community was a new name for an old idea.  This in itself is not such a bad thing, but the newly proposed name created an ambiguity, one the poster was well aware of (they reference milli-bits and micro-bits in the post).  The whole "bits" movement has only ever been about the name.

If the "bits" crowd really cared about readability, familiarity, and accessibility for new users, the last thing they should have done was intentionally start a name flamewar for the unit.  Fortunately, the same attack against "satoshi" never picked up steam.

Why do you all support "bits", being good only for "normal people" when you could support something like "mikes" which is good for both "normal people" and the technically minded.  Why outright try to alienate a good chunk of the existing Bitcoin community for no gain whatsoever.

"easy to remember and associate" or "unambiguous" is a false dichotomy.  Why choose between them when we can have both for free?

Yes, this is true.  Sorry, allow me to clarify.

Thin-clients via Tor should be fine for protecting payment privacy.  You would also need to run a verifying node of some description, not on Tor, to check the state of your addresses and be sure that attacks such as the one you described are ineffective.  I'm sure we'll see this setup more if Bitcoin's bandwidth requirement rises.

It's not a debate so much as an arms race:

• Camp A will develop blacklisting/tracking tools.
• Camp B will develop anonymising functionality.

Bitcoin's very life depends on Camp B's victory.

To the best of my knowledge, there's no fundamental weakness in the use of Tor with Bitcoin Core (and, by extension, Armory).  Theoretically, thin-clients such as Electrum or MultiBit should be fine too, but I don't know enough about these particular examples to trust them myself over Tor without further research.

For best results, you should have at least a basic idea of internet routing and how, Tor, and HTTPS interact.  This will help you guard yourself against other ways of losing bitcoins.

A worked example:  Suppose you want to send some bitcoins to me and I gave you an address in a bitcointalk.org post, say 5 mills (0.005 BTC) to 1J1ikF1fJVDzGKjwzZKnMfyHaguGkpbyug.  Can you be sure you're seeing my address?  Can you be sure the amount hasn't been tampered with?  Does anyone have the power to swap their own address in place of mine?  Does HTTPS make a difference?  Does using Tor Browser introduce risk?  Does changing identity and reloading the page to double-check help?

Armory communicates with the network via Bitcoin Core so you'll want to set the proxy settings there.  This works pretty well; satoshi built Bitcoin Core's proxy support with Tor in mind back in 2009, see v0.2 changelog.

Yes, by default Tor Browser's socks listening port is 9150.  I believe Bitcoin Core's default proxy port is 9050 (Tor's default port) so you'll want to change this to 9150 if you're using Tor Browser to manage your circuits.

Excellent, I'm glad I understood you.

I'm sorry to hear that you've been burnt before by altcoins; please be careful.  There are many scams but there are also some genuine efforts.  I vaguely recall NEM which might be of interest to you (haven't done enough research to tell you whether or not it's a scam but it has been around for a year or so).  Here's a taster:

Good luck!

The 'mikes' solution is precisely the same as the 'bits' solution, only with a different name.  I believe 'mikes' predates 'bits' by nearly 3 years (or, about 2 years, if you count the older suggestion that we rename 'satoshi' to 'bit').

I completely agree that there's no single solution.  At a low level, satoshis are useful; for some applications, SI is good; for the coffee shop, I'd like a slang term.  I recall reading the reddit "it's bits" post almost a year ago now and thinking: "I very much agree with everything here except the term".

You're evading the question.  OP has already gathered the information they sought and has settled on "satoshi".

Again, why do you choose between alienating "common people" (with "μBTC = microbitcoins") and alienating "crypto-electro-engineers" (with "bits") when you can accommodate both so easily with "mikes"?

Not necessarily.  A blockchain.info ruleset may not be available depending on the users setup.  For example, Tor Browser comes with HTTPS Everywhere by default but there's no blockchain.info entry at present (I do see good ol' blockexplorer.com ).  As a result, if I download and launch the latest version of Tor Browser (currently v4.0), and enter "blockchain.info" or "blockchain.info/wallet" in the URL bar I'll be given a plain, unencrypted, HTTP connection.

HTTPS Everywhere is, more accurately, HTTPS at a wide selection of sites.  Their slogan:

Aha, now we're getting somewhere.  You perceive that early adopters have a disproportionate advantage over late users.  I assume that you see that these early adopters have input work and taken on risk that latecomers have not but still feel that this does not adequately justify their resultant wealth.

I feel that it does.  There are two factors which are quite easily overlooked or underestimated.

Firstly, an early adopter that still has thousands of bitcoins today has taken on a huge amount of risk.  Each day they hold a lot of wealth in Bitcoin and choose to continue holding.  A person which buys a million dollars worth of bitcoin and holds them for a month before selling has taken on significantly less risk than a long-term holder has in total.

The second factor is even more subtle, that these early adopters have done something highly valuable.  The first few 1000 people that supported the project may well have done something extremely valuable for mankind.  The free market does not assign wages to such people arbitrarily, they reap benefits based purely on voluntary exchange, based purely on the fact that Bitcoin is being used by over a million people worldwide and many people are freely willing to part with things of great value for these bitcoins.

Of course, part of this free-market way of rewarding the early adopters comes quite rightly from critics such as yourself.  You're certainly under no obligation to support Bitcoin.  There are altcoins which attempt a "fairer" initial distribution and I honestly encourage you to seek them out and lend them your support.  If none of them are satisfactory and you have an idea for something better then you might consider building or commissioning a "fairest of them all" cryptocurrency.

No, this is free market.  Here, an innovation has increased the efficiency of mining and this is communicated to the customer via the price system.  All exchanges involved are voluntary.

Yes, this is understood.  jonny1000 is intentionally breaking the roles and incentives down for analysis.

It is true that the fees make the network safer, but the big question is whether or not they provide the correct level of safety?  What if the fees are low and the network is vulnerable?  What if the fees are forced to be very high through some selection of magic numbers baked into Bitcoin but this generates too much safety (is wasteful of resources).

The eventual realisation of this study is that rules to do with fees and block scarcity do affect safety but not in a robust way.  There is no price mechanism and it's easy to undercook or overcook the safety level.  Given that market solutions exist "assurance contracts", it seems that the burden of proof rests with those that would jerry-rig the fee system to provide an appropriate level of safety.

I don't follow you at all.

Let's suppose we have another cryptocurrency called "faircoin".  Initially, everyone in the world gets 100 faircoins.

Let's suppose you want to go to the airport and I offer to take you and your luggage in my car for 5 faircoins.  You agree.  I take you, you catch your flight and are satisfied.  I now have 105 faircoins and you have only 95 faircoins.

Now that I am rich and you are poor is this unfair?  Is this the naturally occurring "filth" which you refer too?  Should I be forced to give the 5 faircoins back now to make things fair again?

Why choose?  I'd prefer to think of both groups.

"mikes" is just as good as "bits" for the average consumer and it's far better for crypto-electro-engineers.

Are you suggesting that wealth is a zero-sum game?

It isn't so different but, as jonny1000 correctly observes, the competition mechanics between miners are atypical.  We really shouldn't, for example, make assertions about how mining companies will operate and how mining power will be distributed by appealing to economic theory which assumes that these miners are simply competing for business with people that want transactions confirmed.

However, in the simple case of debunking the Transaction Fee Death Spiral argument, we do not need to consider competition between miners.  Here, we care only about the distinction between some mining and "no mining = network death".  Basic supply and demand certainly does apply: if people desire transaction confirmations, then there will be at least one miner.


Just to clarify: You prefer block-space scarcity to assurance contracts as a method of ensuring network security?  Even knowing the contents of Gavin's post?  Could you please link me to the best argument you know of for this?

Thanks for the post Gavin.  There was nothing of substance I disagreed with.  I didn't care for the opening of the "Transaction Fee Death Spiral" section though.

What is written:

How I read this:

I see no need to appeal to economic theory here.  Perhaps I misinterpreted the argument.

Expanding markets do attract new entrants in general, but in the case of Bitcoin, it also increases the barrier to entry, because each participant must be capable of handling all Bitcoin transactions.  The cost to the network of processing a transaction grows at least as quickly as the number of miners (assuming constant technology for simplicity).

Also, you're right that in a reasonably decentralised environment, large mining companies cannot exclude competitors through voluntary means alone.  However, with Bitcoin, there is the 50% threshold to worry about too, something absent in most markets.  In a typical free-market, if an entity accumulates more than 50% of the business then they'll keep that monopoly if and only if they continue to outperform their competition.  This entity will begin to lose market-share if they even cease to innovate, let alone try to abuse their position.  With Bitcoin, there are different incentives involved and a monopolist may well stand to gain from excluding small miners by dropping their blocks.

Because I believe these trends are dependent on the negligible cost of handling blocks, costs which will become significant soon enough if the block-size growth trend continues unabated.