I have a few thoughts. An attacker isn't likely to want a bunch of services, those can't usually be resold easily. Goods will usually not ship until the next day so the attacker has to overcome the whole network for ~12 or more. Even if he pulls this off people will notice and many will be warned not to ship goods ordered after X time. Gambling sites don't make a great target, because you win bitcoins, which will be devalued if you are successful. The exchanges are probably the most fertile ground, but major exchanges (where the most money will be available) will have the best detection of funny business. In addition to all the power that the attacker will have to buy or rent there will be a lot of planning involved. They need to search out what goods will ship fast enough to go out during their attack, if they can't hold on to the network for over a day this will only be certain parts of the world. They need to set up a place or places for delivery, and a way to resell the goods unless they are doing this for their own consumption. They need to find all the little exchanges and make accounts and set up bank accounts to send the money to, under different names I guess. LR makes this pretty easy though. Yes, it is reasonable to assume that the price of BTC will plummet. Unfortunately goods and services are already in the hands of the attacker. This means that the attacker looses nothing, while every BTC owner sees the value earned true labour or mining evaporate before his very eyes. Do you mean that after an attack people will stop using bitcoin? Some probably would, I think most would move to safer arrangements. Certain types of business would be unaffected, live sex shows, programming work, donations, etc. People using bitcoin for these purposes would presumably buy on the cheap driving the price back up somewhat, granted not all the way. In short, I don't think a for-profit attack is likely. Government attacks are where the risk is imo, damaging stuff is a lot more viable when you are using other peoples money. We have some advantages though, government is slow to act and difficulty is growing exponentially at least for now. When government does act it isn't likely to be all at once and decisive. The publicity of "Bitcoin is worrying world governments and bankers" will be pretty huge. The greatest thing about bitcoin is that they have to outmatch all of us combined at once. Sure it looks really easy right now, but there are like 4 users in Japan and 3 in China. We can easily grow by a factor of a hundred thousand. I don't even think that it is forgone that every government would want to break bitcoin, if a few realize the value in embracing it first there won't be a chance at breaking it. |
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Absolutely. No-one should buy BTC unless they are comfortable with the chance of losing everything.
I completely agree. And this goes for buying Euro, USD, and cocaine too. |
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With help from Theymos and Genjix I wrote an article that describes why money is good, why the dollar isn't a good money, and why bitcoin is a good solution. I wrote it for a new, not-yet-well-visited blog. The second half of the article is a pretty good layman terms explanation of Bitcoin. Please repost any or all of it wherever it will help people. http://theanarchistmother.blogspot.com/2011/01/guest-post-solution-to-dollar.html |
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Or one could just create a separate device running a highly secure OS with a simple bitcoin client, and with wireless enabled so that it could connect to the internet. With such a secured device viruses and other types of attacks on the wallet would be highly unlikely, as there would be no third party applications, and installation of additional software would be disabled.
Then the safety of the wallet would simply require one to be able to physically secure the actual device.
Create a bitcoin space heater with 1 or 2 gpus and use powerline networking ? In winter you could have a nice foot warmer as well .  This would be so amazing. If you could a thermostat working roughly accurately a little heater/fan that paid back the electricity that it used in bitcoin would be the best thing ever (for cold feet and for bitcoin). |
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The impact it have on forum traffic is next to nil.
Yeah, but what happened on the 19th?! 303 people on at once. And why haven't you made a thread about it Kiba? |
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Zimbabwe? Brazil?
Do these countries have readily available internet service providers for cheap? I know that in Indonesia broadband is a bit a luxory. Most people go to internet cafes for high-speed broadband. At home, they use dial-up if its absolutly nessecary.
I can't see how countries like that would ever adopt BitCoin, when the main blindingly obvious drawback is that internet is not so freely available!
Maybe we should find a lovely island and just settle there, create the first country with BitCoin as its currency!
Or just keep it as it is, BitCoin - the stateless currency.
You only need the internet for a transaction, I'm sure a lot of stores in these areas have it or can get it for less than they pay in CC fees. For spending online dial-up is no problem, even if you don't want to use an online wallet, you don't need the blockchain in order to send a tx. |
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Just an idea, write a fictional story cyberpunk style, about near future when a few nations support a new cryptocurrency not unlike bitcoin and some evil central banks hire a bunch of assassins and saboteurs to liquidate some prominent crypto miners, in response resistance blow up or hack a bunch of supercomputers evil central banks are using in futile attempt to match cpu power of half a planet home heating systems. Plot thickens... :-)
Asimov will be green with envy..
It would be cool to write a story where a revolutionary new decentralized currency changes everything, and then reveal all technical details at the end and the fact that we are using an implementation of it already |
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I think we all agree that there is no monetary incentive to do so... the costs clearly outweigh the benefits.
- It is possible for the double-spends to be removed if the community can come to an agreement about which transactions were real. Isn't the point that it doesn't matter once he's got what he 'bought'? If two people both give him USD for the coins which is the real spend? The first I suppose, but someone is still screwed and attacker still gets money. |
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Economics in One Lesson.
It is available free all over the web.
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This is true.
Ultimately the value of anything is whether people perceive value in it, that is all. I only worry of "crashes" that may happen in the future. Where everyone will buy BitCoins hoping they will increase in value, I don't think thats a good thing to base its value on. To buy something comparing it to what you think the future value is. But if you believe one BitCoin can buy you 50 cents worth of goods and services, this is "good" in my opinion.
Otherwise when the price gets too high, the speculators who bought the BitCoins will sell it and then we find it tumbling down, and unless there are enough Goods and Services to go around to protect the value it will crumble.
For example. I can set up a market for each of the hairs of my head. And if somehow there is madness and people buy it, not because they wanna own my hair but believe it will increase in value. Then when the bubble bursts it will go back to its original value, which is 0, (unless there is a cult that believes that owning my hair will allow them to perform Magic)
So if I think it can buy me 50 cents worth of goods tomorrow this is "good", but if I think it'll buy me 60 cents worth of goods in a year then what? "bad" idea? I don't think so. |
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I think the growth will be slowed down as soon as we hit 0.50$ because someone has an order in place, selling 20'000 BTC at 0.51$ and it will take some time to work that down. Hopefully we'll get over that one fast enough :-)
I have not used mtgox, is he the one doing the exchange or is he just running a market? If he is the one doing the exchane himself then yes the price will drop for a while( shouldnt be more than one or two weeks ). However if he is just running a market then it wont effect price at all, there must be a buyer for that 20,000 btc. It just means the market will be very liquid over that price for buying btc and under that price other btc sellers will be filling orders. Either way mtgox moves that amount in one day at this point. He is just running a market; others make the bids and asks. A large offer can slow down price movements. There is no guarantee that some person or people will want to pay that much. It could take a minute or months. We sat with with an order of at least 15k at 34 cents for a month I think, then it was all bought up in two days. |
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Hopefully I'm not wrong or confusing here.
Your wallet interacts the block chain to make an index that lets you know how many coins are at addresses that you own and to give you an account of how they got there (when and in what amounts, and what was spent).
When you put a new wallet in, a new index is not automatically created unless you delete the old one. That's what lzsaver walked you through doing.
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Like the "no animated ad" option, I could also add a "no xxx ad" option A more workable option might be "No unapproved ads", so that an ad doesn't go live unless the publisher has explicitly approved it. Yes, I think in general a publisher ought have control of which bid is taken, it shouldn't automatically be the highest. If two bids are close then a publisher will probably prefer the more attractive ad, or the more interesting site. This will give ad makers incentive to not have ugly ads. And if crappy sites have to pay a more to get accepted I don't think that is a bad thing. Of course you can make the default to take the highest, but give the publisher override power. Eventually it might be good to have a message system, so you can say "Hey, I only turned down your bid because the color clashes really badly with my buttons" or "Sorry, I find your site disgusting." |
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Yes, I meant it could direct people to a malicious site through the ad.
That is always possible (even if content on a valid site changes after the ad is placed (e.g. a site defacement or through other (flash?) advertising on the site it links)). There is little I can do about that. If the malicious content is on purpose I can currently only remove the bid, ad, link or account of the advertiser in question and contact him/her through the email address (if that is valid). Most browsers however check these days if the URL is reported for containing malicious content and refuse to load the site if that's the case. That makes sense, I guess it isn't something that can be perfectly policed. It's probably best to address problems if/when they arise than to implement annoying procedures before they are necessary. |
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If I were a publisher I would be concerned that nasty porn or viruses or even just sites I hated would win and i would display them unknowingly for hours. Do you plan to implement a screening process? I really like how it is now where I can update and ad or turn it on or off instantly. I'm just looking ahead to when people will inevitably have issues. I think you don't want to be the advertising site that put horse porn on MtGox for 2 hours As a Publisher you have the possibility remove a bid from the list on your site. Viruses should in principle not be possible (as long as a browser handles images safely), because only JPEG, GIF and PNG files are allowed. Although an ad could link to a site that has malware, there is nothing I can do about that. Including a screening process would be possible, but that would mean that while a winning ad is not approved by you for your site, your site would display nothing or a placeholder. You would not get paid in that case. Like the "no animated ad" option, I could also add a "no xxx ad" option. But Advertisers that don't check the ad as "Animated" or "XXX" would still be able to advertise on your site. Yes, I meant it could direct people to a malicious site through the ad. |
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If I were a publisher I would be concerned that nasty porn or viruses or even just sites I hated would win and i would display them unknowingly for hours. Do you plan to implement a screening process? I really like how it is now where I can update and ad or turn it on or off instantly. I'm just looking ahead to when people will inevitably have issues. I think you don't want to be the advertising site that put horse porn on MtGox for 2 hours |
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Bitcoin is a more modern solution. Bitcoins are not dug out of the ground; they are found when computers solve a math problem that validates Bitcoin transactions and prevents double spending. Individuals can use their computers to help process transactions.
There are only two ways to get bitcoins: contribute resources to the network or provide goods or services that people with bitcoins want. There are no privileged users, and there's no backdoor access to free coins.
The number of new bitcoins issued in return for processing transactions decreases gradually to nothing over the next 120 years resulting in a fixed limit of 21 million bitcoins. At some point the low reward of new coins will not be a sufficient incentive for participation in the processing network. Users have the option of attaching a fee to transactions for faster processing. That fee goes to those working to process transactions.
Bitcoins are divisible. The Bitcoin software shows the familiar two digits for cents, but a bitcoin really has precision to the hundred millionths place. A Coke costs about 3 bitcoins now, but maybe in the future one will cost .003 bitcoins.
Sending and receiving bitcoins is easy. The Bitcoin software creates receiving addresses for you; you give an address to the payer and wait for them to send coins. Once you have coins, you can pay by copying and pasting the recipient's receiving address and entering the amount you want to pay. You do not need to be online to receive coins; they will be waiting for you. Payments can be anonymous, but aren't by default, just like cash could be anonymous if you were very careful. Payments cannot be revoked.
Payments appear to the recipient immediately after they are made, but it takes 10 minutes on average for the network to confirm that the coins now belong to the recipient's address. Bitcoin's design confirms transactions repeatedly. Each confirmation means that the transaction has been accepted deeper into the permanent record. A transaction with six or more confirmations is extremely secure; this takes about an hour.
When the Bitcoin software makes a receiving address for you it also produces a corresponding key which it holds in a file on your computer. While you will never see this key, it is what enables only your software to spend your coins. If this file is lost the coins can never be spent. If this file is stolen the coins can be spent by the thief. If you use Bitcoin seriously you should back this file up and keep your computer free of viruses. Bitcoin banks exist that can manage your bitcoins for you.
bitcoin.org - information, discussion, list of merchants and exchanges, and the official Bitcoin download link
bitcoinme.com - introductory information
mybitcoin.com - bank
mtgox.com - buy and sell
The bold section is brand new. I moved the one sentence paragraphs into an earlier paragraph. I elaborated on confirmations.
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