So would 50 BTC be able to be used to do the same thing then?


No fees are being paid (check the links to blockchain,info).

Oh - well I must admit that to me it is a bit magic - but from what you're saying then the random number being not actually embedded at all would make it pretty useless for storing information then.

In that case we can rule out the "storing information" hypothesis - any other ideas why this spamming is being done (to prove some point perhaps)?

Aha - I thought something like that might be the reason - so does the figure of 300 BTC have any "magical property" in regards that it seemingly can get into every new block (despite the UTXO being no older than the last block)?

If they used 100 BTC instead would that not work just as well?

The only concern with single tx blocks would be if they were a part of a huge >50% attack where *all* new blocks appearing had only the "coinbase" tx (as this would stop other tx's from getting processed).

A good question - does it have something to do with the minimum tx fee algo or maybe the spammer is just "showing off" how much BTC they have?

Huh - exactly how do you embed a "secret" number when ECDSA just does signing (it does not do encryption)?

Okay - so random number rather than timestamp - the point is you *can* embed information then (and if random number then easier probably as perhaps if it was a timestamp it might be checked for range).

Of course I assume it is not that big so not much information can be sent with such an approach (yes - too lazy to check the exact details as I don't think it matters very much - if the wish is to send messages then Bitmessage would be a much better option).

Of course - so the question is whether there something wrong with current fee rules that are permitting this?

So what is the thing that makes an identical tx different each time you sign it (I have tested this so I know it to be a fact)?

It certainly is a lot of BTC to be doing this with - am guessing the owner must have quite a lot of BTC to spare.

Indeed - if wanting to send information that would make a lot more sense - perhaps it is just an experiment (although using 300 BTC for such fun could be rather expensive if something goes wrong).

Does GST apply to gold or other PMs?

I think that Bitcoin being a "virtual commodity" (if not considered a currency) would probably be closest to those commodities.

Of course as has been stated - a "ruling" can be applied for from the ATO which might help clarify the situation.

Isn't Bitstamp effectively doing just this (although the actual trading is done *through* Ripple)?

Hmm... at a rate of a few bytes per 10 minutes (assuming one tx per block which this spammer isn't even achieving btw) I would guess you would not want to be backing up anything very big (unless you are willing to wait years for your backup to complete).

I assume timestamps is referring to what is stored in a tx itself (not the block timestamp as that is provided by the miner).

Note that if you sign the same raw tx multiple times (by repeating the sign command) you end up with a different signed raw tx each time - this is due to a timestamp field in each tx (AFAIA).

Indeed GST makes little sense to be applied to bitcoins themselves but makes perfect sense for things like DNS registration or VPS/VPN.

I wonder whether the free tx criteria is too lenient (it could become quite a problem if we end up with 100s or even 1000s of bots doing the same thing).

The possibility of it being a (rather slow) method of sending data (via the timestamp part of the tx) does indeed make some sense - the address that I linked to is constant (it keeps being sent out from and back to that address) so that is also interesting as it may well be possible to work out *who* it is that is doing this.

Of course it is always possible that the computer that this bot is running on might crash and burn with the 300 BTC being lost forever.

I think it's clearer from this address: https://blockchain.info/address/15Z4XmorKSN51ndyPrZ2EtL7Nnksb88888 you can see that each tx is between 1 and 3 blocks after the previous tx.

It is a little surprising that these tx's are being mined without fee (although that is of course up to miners), however as they only each have the one UTXO they are all very small and of course the amount isn't considered as "dust" (maybe it's some sort of a protest?).

Progress towards the new website design

We now have an image of what the new design will look like:

http://ciyam.org/docs/home_page_design_h.png

the next step is to get it coded into HTML/CSS and then making the necessary changes to the FCGI UI.

Hopefully it should be completed before the end of August - I have also recently made some changes to the session handling code (you may need to force a browser refresh) that should reduce the incidence of "session timeouts" as well as "Invalid URL" errors.

Xenland has his own project listed on CIYAM Open (http://ciyam.org/open/?cmd=view&data=20121222131254938000&ident=M100V137&chksum=24be696c) which has a general donation address or otherwise you could donate specifically to the GUI task for Moneychanger that he is currently working on: http://ciyam.org/open/?cmd=view&data=20130607042814077000&ident=M100V131&chksum=9e58a546.