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If this trade goes against you you're going to be screwed. You can never discharge student loans in bankruptcy and the interest will keep accumulating until they start garnishing Social Security payments.
Really the only way out of unpayable student loans is to permanently expatriate.
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Is this really possible? can they get this done? is it in the realm of possiblity? Would it meant that you could direct deposit and could convert your salary instantly to bitcoins? I know Etrade can do it for their brokerage accounts, and as far as I know most companies in that space can do it as well. |
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one other related question........ will armory let you see your own private key on the offline computer in case you want to memorize it as well?
I think so. For sure it shows up when you print out a paper backup. Note that Armory uses a deterministic wallet so all the keys are generated from one private key and a chain code. |
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No. A transaction is just data, it has nothing to do with the OS.
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So does this means that due to today's 1 MB limit per 10 min (i.e. per block), if the number of transactions get so large that more than 1 MB of transaction data is generated every 10 min, then some transactions will never ever make it into the blockchain, if their transaction fees are too low?
Then this means that the queue of transactions that are waiting to get into the blockchain will grow larger and larger all the time, because the rate at which new transactions are created (> 1 MB/10 min) would be higher than the rate at which transactions could be processed (== at maximum 1 MB/10min).
If this is correct, then there would be the following consequences for the future of the bitcoin system, as transaction volume increases:
(1) Only transactions with sufficiently high transaction fees will make it into the blockchain at all.
(2) The Bitcoin clients should get a feature to revert transactions that are not yet in the blockchain, because if I transfer 1 BTC to address xxx with a low fee yyy, and after some days or weeks my transaction still does not show up in the blockchain, then I might want to revert my transaction and try again with a higher fee zzz > yyy.
(3) As a result of this mechanism, there will be a real "fight" to get one's transaction into the blockchain, so in practice this means that transactions will no longer cost "almost nothing", but to the contrary, transaction fees would soon become so high that for example micro-payments and small donations become prohibitive due to the high fees, and it would soon be cheaper again to use PayPal!
(4) As a result of (3), people will move to make bitcoin payments more and more inside "closed sub-systems", i.e. bitcoin banks that do their own bookkeeping on their customers' accounts without loading the blockchain. For example there could be a MtGox subsystem or a blockchain.info subsystem, to name just two. When I transfer BTCs from my MtGox account to another person's MtGox account, I would not use the blockchain, but the MtGox internal bookkeeping would carry out the transaction, just like in today's banking system. This would avoid transaction fees, so people will favor this variant. But this also means that many benefits of bitcoin as we know it today would vanish, and the whole bitcoin system would move towards a de-facto centralized system that is again built on trust into a cartel of a few "subsystems" (bitcoin banks), and these sub-systems may even run fractional reserve banking without their customers knowing about this.
So we would again end up with two kinds of money like in today's fiat money system: First the true bitcoin money (corresponding to today's fiat central bank money), and secondly the account balances of the "subsystems (=bitcoin banks)", that may finally run fractional reserve, like today's bank accounts.
Also, these sub-systems (bitcoin banks) would be vulnerable to government interference etc. So with such an evolution we will reach the point when the bitcoin experiment has finally missed its original goals and has failed. I think such an evolution should be avoided!
If my understanding is essentially correct, then I think the only solution to keep the bitcoin system open and avoid the outlined evolution towards closed sub-systems (="de-facto-bitcoin-banks") would really be to change the way that transactions are stored, as outlined in my last post, such that memory needs for saving the blockchain (be it the complete history or only the current state plus a short incremental history) does not increase infinitely.
Maybe my thoughts are relating to what may happen rather far in the future, but this future might also turn out to be nearer than what we think.
...Or am I missing some fundamental point here and all my worries are pointless?
I think this is very close to what will happen if the 1 MB limit is not increased before the demand for transactions catches up to the limit. With regards to blockchain size, you might want to take a look at this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.0;all |
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How about we just use BTC until it's so commonly accepted that ISO just follows along?
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I tried to do an order through them a few minutes ago, they said they already reached their daily limit. Do they operate on weekends? When does their day start?
I read either on their blog or in another thread that it's a rolling 24 hour limit. |
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Perhaps it's time to move your coins away from MtGox at this point ? Why would you ever leave bitcoins in an account somewhere instead of in a wallet under your exclusive control? |
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The killer app for a Bitcoin exchange would be to give customers an account number they can use for ACH push transactions and direct deposit.
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Coinbase is frequently selling out of coins. It took me three tries today in order to actually get an order in, starting from fairly early in the morning.
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But that is why we don't want to scale it up to the napsters and megauploads scale, we want to keep it lean and mean so millions of pople all over the world can run full nodes at home. Millions of people all over the world can run already Bitcoin at PayPal-like transaction rates if a few identified optimizations are implemented. You'll never get millions of users, though, if you ration them to a couple of transaction per person per year. |
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the other thing to consider is what if Bitcoin was meant to become the world's next reserve currency to be used to settle daily trade imbalances like we had with the gold standard? perhaps that is it's most optimum and efficient usage and might be served by the block size staying right where it is. That would be suicide for Bitcoin. The Napsters and Megauploads of the world get shut down while Bittorrent successfully resists all efforts to stop it. The only protection Bitcoin has is growth and widespread, diversified usage. |
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Really? We just crossed 400 Petaflops, roughly 20 times the tested max for the fastest (unclassified) supercomputer on Earth, and you consider Bitcoin not yet too big to shut down? Who would be doing the shutting down?
I meant in terms of commerce conducted in Bitcoins, exchange volumes in countries outside the US and Europe, international trade, use for remittances, etc. The user base is still below what I would consider a safe critical mass that would continue to grow in spite of active attempts to forbid or hinder bitcoin use. |
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Right now is a bad time to talk about increasing expenses because everyone is still waiting since last year for the supposedly any moment now advent of ASICs. The huge delay in getting ASICs along with the constant claims they would be arriving at any moment already screwed up GPU system upgrades and new investment in GPU rigs, now there is talk of making everyone devote twices as much (or more) bandwidth yet here we still sit waiting to buy ASICs or even to just find out whether there are really going to even be any ASICs.
Once we can order an ASIC that will be shipped immediately, and, as looks likely, bitcoin exchange rates are up farther too, talk of upgrading our bandwidth will maybe be better received. I do not dispute the problems caused by ASIC delays. At the same time Bitcoin is in extremely vulnerable place. It's attracting attention but isn't yet too big to shut down. Anything that slows down or stops the rate of adoption, such as an inability to process more than 7 tps, is dangerous. |
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I am having this same problem. When I mention Bitcoin and go into "its like digital cash", almost everyone I talk to is so very skeptical that they wont even look it up online. I have a fairly wealthy friend that is into stocks and was only interested in listening to more after a few beers. But that was over a week ago, talked to him last night and he still has not looked into it. Hell, my best friend growing up still has not checked it out and I told him about it in June of 2011.
When you include "digital" "online" "300,000%" "cryptography" in the same conversation, they all think it is easily hacked. I have an idea and I will try it this weekend to expose 100-200 people to Bitcoin and I will report back and let you know how it went.
But, that is why I still believe that it is in its infancy and I cannot wait until they come back to me and say they are kicking themselves. I already have an accountant at work doing that because I told him to buy some at $12.00. Now he just keeps saying "If it drops back down I will buy!". I keep telling him to buy some anyway at whatever price and he wont. If this survives, man will I have some stories to tell!
There's a trick to distinguishing between a legitimate concern and a smokescreen, and that trick is to look for curiosity. Somebody who is really interested in Bitcoin but concerned about hacking will ask questions about it. A person who just throws out a conclusion (It will never work because hackers) without showing any curiosity has another reason for rejecting Bitcoin that they aren't telling you, and probably aren't even consciously aware of. |
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Once you hit the hard limit of 1MB constantly for every block, there will be competition to be included in blocks and drive up fees. A hard limit is not necessary for competition. The reason there is only a little bit right now is because transaction fees are so small compared to the block subsidy that miners don't have much incentive to be selective. You also can't predict with certainty how far users will be willing to bid up the transaction fees. We know how much they are willing to pay now. If future users are unable to get their transactions in a block they might be willing to pay more, or they might decide not to use Bitcoin at all. You can't take demand for granted. Right now Bitcoin is attracting new users because the advantages it offers, but anything that reduces the value proposition reduces the number of people willing to use it. How many businesses maximize their revenue by intentionally limiting the number of customers they service and refusing to increase production to meet demand? Based on the facts we have available we know Bitcoin users are willing to pay 50 BTC per day in transaction fees with 250k blocks. Right now the number of transactions can only increase by a factor of about 4 before the block limit is reached. At this point we can only process 7 tps no matter how many people are trying to use bitcoin. Assuming that the world-wide users of Bitcoin will happily accept this situation and try to outbid each other to get their transactions included instead of just giving up on Bitcoin entirely is extraordinarily dangerous. The idea that you can preserve the decentralized nature of mining with a hard cap on the transaction rate is insane. Once the blocks saturate and you get price discovery for transaction fees, then the total mining revenue will reach its maximum possible value. After this point the block subsidy will decrease, and the fee revenue will remain constant. Assuming Bitcoin remains in use after this point there will be no incentive for new miners to enter the market. Mining will slowly get less profitable over time so existing miners will slowly drop out until only a few are left. Nice job preserving decentralization. |
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There is actually a Facebook page in my town where people sell things to each other.
If they are interested in selling to a wider audience Bitcoin would allow them to receive payments from anywhere in the world. |
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Does anyone in the community have anything they can sell online?
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The only reason people pay fees now is because there is a minimum fee requirement in order for transactions to get relayed. Paying more than the minimum fee requirement doesn't help because blocks aren't full. And? |
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