Does anyone know the easiest way to get an Electrum wallet working with CLAMs? As I understand it, the CLAM client can only accept the wallet.dat file that comes from the Bitcoin-Qt client which I don't have. I have addresses that held coins during the snapshot in 2014 and I can grab the private keys of the addresses using Electrum's export feature but I'm not sure if the CLAM client will accept these.

And yes, I've made sure that these wallets are empty (or close to it). Currently, they only have a few dollars worth of BTC in them. The rest has already been moved to another wallet.

OK, so this time I tried downloading Fairbrix from the official page here:

http://github.com/coblee/Fairbrix/downloads

There are also updated versions of Fairbrix which wiggi released which incorporate some of Litecoin's features. You can find them by searching here on the forums or on Google. coblee didn't like them because he felt no need for Fairbrix to exist anymore, since Litecoin can now do everything that it does and more.

After downloading and running the official coblee client, it looks very similar to Tenebrix but unlike Tenebrix, the network is actually functional. I was able to connect to two nodes and can now download blocks. I'm currently at block 7,800. Thing's pretty fast too. I'll try mining some coins on my ancient laptop later. Shouldn't be too hard since the coin is abandoned:



UPDATE: Now I'm at 30,000 blocks. I'm not sure how long this will take. I still have only two connections though.

UPDATE 2: It's stuck at block 43,004. Not sure what's going on. I'll keep it running for a few more hours to see if it finally syncs.

UPDATE 3: Working again. 50,000th block.

UPDATE 4: 131,000 blocks downloaded. Still only two peers.

UPDATE 5: 240,000 blocks downloaded. Roughly nine hours has passed since chain began downloading.

UPDATE 6: 260,000 blocks downloaded. Since Fairbrix is roughly three years old and has a block time of 5 minutes, there should be slightly over 300,000 blocks. So it seems I'm getting close to the end.

UPDATE 7: 282,000 blocks downloaded. It's starting to get slower...

UPDATE 8: 282,671 blocks downloaded. Actually I think it's fully synced. Weird how it doesn't show it though...

Interesting to see that the dev was looking six years ahead. He must be very disappointed to see what his coin has now become.

But on the bright side, Litcoin probably wouldn't exist today if Tenebrix and Fairbrix had never existed so he still played an important part in the history of cryptos.


Seconded. OP's link to binaries for Windows brings up a 404 error. The source is available on GitHub but I don't have a C++ compiler with me right now and I'd rather not bother with compiling it myself. I could find references to something on the Internet called "Ufasoft Coin" which seems to have supported TBX at one time (and the dev seems legitimate and posts on these forums) but the version that supported it has been removed from their homepage.

EDIT: I'll see if I can compile it myself and I'll post the binaries here. I'm not sure if the thing will even work though since there might not be enough available nodes. The network is pretty much dead I think.

EDIT 2: Scratch that. I think I found the Windows binaries. They're here:

http://github.com/Lolcust/Tenebrix/downloads

EDIT 3: Just tested it and yup, I was right. No nodes so it's stuck at block 156:

Cryptominer's rates seem abnormally high. I'm on the ActionCrypto sig campaign (link). As a senior member, I get 0.00025 BTC per post so 100 posts a month would pay 0.025 BTC.

According to that thread, Cryptominer pays 0.125 BTC + 0.1 BTC for 100 posts to make a total of 0.225 BTC.

If that's true then damn, that's a lot.

OP's offer is quite a good deal. Other account sellers around here are selling 350+ activity accounts for 0.53 BTC and 400+ activity accounts for 0.55 BTC (here and here). Once your activity reaches 480, you'll become a hero member and the prices for hero member accounts are much higher than senior member accounts so perhaps it might be a good idea if the OP waited a bit longer too.


Sure, it might be possible. But is it feasible? I think a lot of people underestimate how much work goes into a sig campaign. I browse these forums quite a lot but I still have trouble posting more than 30 posts per week. I'm a senior member but my sig campaign earnings have all been less than 0.01 BTC per week so far (0.005 BTC, 0.00605 BTC, and 0.007975 BTC). An account such as mine would typically sell for ~0.4 BTC so it would take about a year to become profitable.


It's not illegal (in the legal sense), but it would not be allowed under the sig campaign rules and Stunna would be very mad at you. He might remove you from the campaign too if he finds out.

With cryptocurrencies, there is choice. You don't have to buy or use Bitcoin or Litecoin or Peercoin, but you can if you like these coins. People aren't suddenly going to switch to an altcoin unless it has clear benefits over that of Bitcoin or existing altcoins. If the government is able to create a coin that is a better product than the choices we have today, then I'm sure that many will switch, but it would just be the typical market forces in control.


This is a possibility. After all, Google wasn't the first search engine, Facebook wasn't the first social networking website, Windows wasn't the first operating system, the iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, the PlayStation and Xbox weren't the first games consoles, and the iPhone wasn't the first mobile phone.

Thanks the the responses and links. I suspected it was random too and it seems to be that way after cycling through some more seeds. I didn't realize the chances of related words being present in a random seed would be so common though. Nor did I know about the first four letters thing. That's pretty smart of the devs to implement it that way.

Other examples I found were "strength coffee", "accident spill", "teeth mouth", "lung machine", "study math", "mourn murder", and "men soldier". I think I saw one with three related words too, but I don't remember what it was.

Well, there is Huntercoin which proves that the concept can work:



Link: http://huntercoin.org/information/faq-info/

I've never actually downloaded it but the blockchain size is probably huge though so you do have a valid point.

Has there been any attempts at using a blockchain to record the events that occur in an MMORPG? I know there is Huntercoin which proves that the concept works. Unfortunately, their dev died and their market cap is tiny. I can't find any other examples out there.

Building an MMORPG on a blockchain would eliminate the requirement for centralized servers. It would also allow for the use of internal currencies within the game itself. Perhaps the biggest downside is that you would need to run as a full node to play the game unless light clients were developed.

Well if the purpose is to minimize the impact of scams then it doesn't seem to have worked. Recently, a coin called Magnetz announced its IPO through C-CEX. The dev didn't put up a buy wall like he promised and dumped his coins on everyone in the market. I wasn't directly affected but it's sad to see such things happen.

I think the OP is talking about traditional fiat-based banks that are friendly towards the interests of Bitcoin traders but don't directly deal with Bitcoin itself. While Bitcoin is supposed to eliminate the need for banks (an idea which I disagree with if Bitcoin is ever to become mainstream), those traders and businesses that deal with both fiat and BTC will require a traditional bank to process fiat transactions. Many banks today are unfriendly towards Bitcoin traders and Bitcoin-based businesses and will shut down their accounts if they see the word "Bitcoin" being mentioned too much.

For example, I know a very popular LocalBitcoins trader who lives in New Zealand. He buys BTC from exchanges and sells it to people via LocalBitcoins in exchange for fiat. He has had two bank accounts (BNZ and ANZ) shut down recently because of Bitcoin-related activity and he recommends those who deal with him from not mentioning the word "Bitcoin" when sending money. This is because the banks don't like Bitcoin and are scared of it. A Bitcoin-friendly bank would easily remedy this situation.

As you said, it is rather expensive to start a bank and even if the necessary $10 to 20 million were raised via crowdfunding, there would also be real-world expenses to take into consideration such as rent, salaries, utilities, insurance, etc. Bitcoin traders are a tiny minority in the world today, and established businesses like Coinbase and Bitstamp that deal with Bitcoin already have the paperwork in place and links to mainstream banks. I don't think the profits from bitcoin traders' deposits would be enough to sustain a profitable business.

Your target demographic would be individuals who trade and conduct business with bitcoins. For example, LocalBitcoins traders, altcoin exchanges, shops that accept Bitcoin without using BitPay, etc.

I see you read my thread.

Yeah, I was an early adopter too just like you, although I came a bit later in the game and was less involved with the scene. Many people assume that all early adopters are all insanely rich but that's only true if you were an extremely early adopter (i.e. you discovered Bitcoin in 2009) like that Norwegian guy who put $27 into Bitcoin and now it's worth over $1 million or if you happened to pour a significant percentage of your savings into Bitcoin or invested in powerful GPU mining hardware when the price was still low. And even then, I'm sure many of these people would have sold their stash or lost some or all of their bitcoins in the hacks and exchange failures that were soon to follow. I'm sure there are many others like us who knew about Bitcoin back in the early days, were somewhat interested, but didn't put enough investment into it to fully reap the rewards of being an early adopter once the rest of the world realized its true potential.

Hal Finney, the person who developed the precursor to Bitcoin called reusable proof of works (RPOWs) is now cryogenically preserved. Both Wei Dai and Nick Szabo (developer of Bit Gold - the direct precursor to Bitcoin) were Extropians who contributed to discussions in the Cryonics Mailing List and are likely to have cryonics plans in place for them in the event that their health deteriorates to the point where current medicine can't sustain them:

http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=1400

I wouldn't be surprised if Satoshi also has a cryonics plan in place since he appears to fit the demographic.

Looking at the prices, there is the Cryonics Institute which offers a $28,000 contract where you can preserve the whole body and Alcor which offers a brain-only option and a full-body option although both are more expensive than CI. This is only about four times as expensive as a traditional funeral and it is possible to purchase this using a life insurance policy that only amounts to several dollars a week.

The preservation process minimizes the cellular damage from ice crystals by using a vitrification solution. This means that the structure of the neural connections are preserved and so the structures that represent all your thoughts and memories aren't damaged.

Ray Kurzweil has written a lot of books about nanotechnology and the trend of accelerating progress which suggests that one day we will be able to revive cryogenically preserved bodies. Furthermore, there is also something called the Singularity which will occur when the abilities of computers exceed that of humans. Computers will be able to improve upon themselves and accelerate the progress of technology even further to the point where it is a certainty that cryonics patients will be revived.

What do you think? Is this a good idea?

There are coins which tried to set the distribution to an equal amount for one person (e.g. Auroracoin for Iceland). Then there are coins like NEM which tried to make the initial distribution as equal and widespread as possible by distributing the coins for free at first and then for a small amount of BTC, removing sockpuppets, and setting a limit of stakes per NXT account.

The skewed distribution of Bitcoin wealth is a legitimate concern but it's not something that we can really change. They are the early adopters who took the risk and invested/mined when the BTC was worth pennies while the rest of the world watched and laughed. Besides, most of the earliest adopters were libertarian computer geeks like Satoshi and Hal Finney and I guess it's better to have them in control of the majority of the world's wealth than the bankers and politicians of today.

I wonder if there is any demand from the Bitcoin community for an auditing service. Currently, the most suitable people to audit Bitcoin exchanges are people who have an in-depth understanding of Bitcoin - e.g. people like Roger Ver (who audited Mt. Gox in 2011), Andreas Antonopoulos (who audited Coinbase), Mike Hearn (who audited Bitstamp), and Stefan Thomas (who audited Kraken).

Only problem is, those who have the technical capability to audit Bitcoin exchanges do not have the capability or knowledge to properly audit the fiat aspects of a business. And the people who have the capability to properly conduct an audit of the fiat aspects of a business (typically performed by charted professional accountants) do not have the technical know-how to audit the Bitcoin side of things.

Why is the fiat component important? If you're dealing with an exchange, it is possible for a business to make up for its shortage of BTC by borrowing or buying BTC with fiat. Someone like Roger Ver or Andreas Antonopoulos would look at the Bitcoin wallet and think that everything is OK, but a closer look at the fiat side might indicate that the exchange is actually insolvent.

NXT has an auditing service called NXTInspect which calls itself "the first crypto audit service". They look at whether a security listed on the NXT asset exchange is legitimate or not by looking at its business plans. This is great but NXT assets typically don't deal with fiat, so while their team may be competent enough for auditing the crypto side of things, they are unlikely to have the accounting know-how to undertake a proper audit of the fiat dealings of a business.

What do you think? Do you think that having a Bitcoin auditing business which teams up fiat experts with crypto experts is a good idea?

A lot of people are saying that this is the end of Bitstamp. That they've been goxed and that any bitcoins held on the site are now gone. This isn't true. Bitstamp WILL easily recover from this hack. It sucks that this happened, but this isn't really a huge disaster and it should by no means affect the survivability of the company.

On the 5th of January, Bitstamp lost 18,000 BTC from a 200,000 BTC reserve. That's about 9% of the total reserve.

Percentage-wise, this is very similar to the hack that Poloniex suffered in 2014. It lost 12% of its bitcoins due to a technical glitch which was exploited by a hacker. That exchange was able to recover its reserves in just mere months. It has enjoyed a spotless security record since then.

In August 2014, Bter also lost 50 million NXT worth about $1.6 million due to a hacker. After a while, they were eventually able to recover 42 million NXT making their net loss 8 million NXT and a couple hundred BTC which they sold to the hacker for bargain prices in exchange for the return of the bulk of the stolen NXT. Today, they're still operating perfectly fine.

Bitstamp has had $10 million injected into it from venture capitalist/hedge fund firm Pantera. So as a last resort, they could use this money to refund its customers. Bitstamp earns millions of dollars every year from trading fees. The majority of their coins are held in cold storage. Mike Hearn, a trusted Bitcoin dev audited their BTC reserves several months ago and confirmed that everything looked OK. The fact that only 9 percent of all funds were stolen means that the security benefits of separating hot and cold wallets is working. Services like MyBitcoin, inputs.io, and Mt. Gox that failed to properly separate the two have seen the majority of their funds disappear. From the look of this hacking incident, it is clear that Bitstamp is not making the same mistake.

TL:DR; Your deposits are safe. There is no need to worry.

It used to be quite common for an IPO/ICO/ITO to be managed entirely by the dev and done directly in the [ANN] thread. For example, Stackcoin, NXT, Qora, and Reddcoin.

Now it seems that most IPOs are managed by exchanges like C-CEX and Bittrex. What is the reason for this trend?

I made a thread about Bitcoin banks here and I think most people in the Bitcoin community think it's a bad idea. Personally, I think it's a necessary evil if Bitcoin has any hopes of ever becoming mainstream.

However, I think the OP here is talking about a traditional bank that deals mainly in fiat and is friendly towards those who trade cryptos. I see no problem with such a bank. I have no idea how much it would cost to form a bank and I'm not sure how successful it would be since crypto traders are a very small niche to cater towards.

Here in New Zealand, we have banks like ANZ and BNZ which are very unfriendly towards cryptos. If they catch you dealing with cryptos then they will suspend your account. But there are also other banks out like Kiwibank (ironically, a government-owned bank), Westpac, and ASB which aren't nearly as hostile. Even so, it is recommended to avoid using references to Bitcoin when dealing with large amounts of BTC (e.g. while trading on LocalBitcoins).

I would guess that it would be somewhere between passive and active income. Most of your income would come from the house edge for a dice site or trading fees for an exchange. This part is automatic since it is programmed into the software. There are some bits that aren't passive though. You will need to test the site for bugs and exploits, run marketing campaigns to attract new customers, run signature campaigns, answer customer queries, and update the site constantly to keep people interested and coming back for more.

If it's an exchange then you will need to perform security audits, add new coins, and delist old coins.

There are very few ways to make money that are either fully active or fully passive. I would guess that dice sites and altcoin exchanges are a mix of both.