I ideal of a bitcoin that you can spend across the internet is a most beautiful concept.
Wow! If you consider the ability to "spend across the internet" a beautiful concept then I encourage you to keep studying because you'll be blown away when you discover and understand the real ideals behind Bitcoin. |
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Would you like a beer?
Ditto. |
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I believe the first time I ever laid eyes on the network the difficulty was... around 12 million?!
Yes, it has been very fast. It was at 12 million little more than a year ago. The 24 billion we're about to hit is a bit of a milestone for me because I started mining ("generating") when the difficulty was just 24. |
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A year ago the poll may have looked something like this: 1. < 1 2. 1 - 10 3. 11 - 50 4. 51 - 100 6. > 100 How times change.  You're telling me! How cyber-rich are you? (Feb, 2011)- 0
- 1-10
- 11-50
- 51-100
- 101-500
- 501-2000
- 2001-9999
- 10000+
- I don't want to say.
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Note: The Good Wife touched on Bitcoin a couple of years ago: Season 3, Episode 13, "Bitcoin for Dummies".
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The smallest block hash yet found is an estimate of the total work done by the network. Also, the sum of the difficulties (well *2^32) on the blocks so far is an estimate, which is the one returned in the bitcoin core logs or in the getblockchaininfo rpc.
I see, thanks. Interestingly, it seems to me that we should be "ahead" in this sense about 2/3 of the time. I believe this follows from the fact that given some amount of work done, n say (number of hashes), the probability that we are behind at that point is simply (1 - 1/n)^n which converges to exp(-1) as n tends to infinity. |
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00000000000000000000b7de9e5c19e52be073156924b7cf235efb27ae8a202a
math.log((2**256)/0x00000000000000000000b7de9e5c19e52be073156924b7cf235efb27ae8a202a,2) = 80.47746080768307
"Apparent difficulty" of 391,895,084,984,304.
And pretty much just on track with the regular block measured work: UpdateTip: new best=00000000000000000000b7de9e5c19e52be073156924b7cf235efb27ae8a202a height=313338 log2_work=79.978295 tx=43580048 date=2014-07-31 13:29:05 progress=0.999999
This is the first block solution we've found which is a >80 bit partial preimage of 0.
Oh, nice! May I ask how you are calculating/estimating the total work done by the network? |
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I currently have no rent and bills (living on a military base) but next month when I get out I will add that to my routine. It will encourage me to get a cheaper apartment instead of getting too greedy.
+1 for significant under-consumption. I know from experience that this takes some self-discipline. Interesting that most people here consider such frugality impossible. As for how I can afford it. I'm single. I am just finishing 20 months in Afghanistan as a defense contractor making a lot of money working 12 hour days, 7 days a week. I spent most of those 20 months putting all of my money into bitcoins (after I paid off all credit cards and other debts). Now I head to Germany where my company will give me money toward housing. I have downsized my life to be able to fit all of my belongings into a carry-on bag and a backpack. I don't plan on spending a lot on material items unless I absolutely need it or don't care about donating it when I'm done with it.
I've been there too. I myself was down to a single suitcase (~25kg) for about 2 years a while back (same attitude of donating items of temporary utility). For 1 carry-on bag + 1 backpack, I tip my hat to you. |
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I booked my flight for a vacation (used Lufthansa.com because the price was a lot lower than cheapair.com) which cost about $630. So after booking the flight I went to Coinbase and bought 1 bitcoin.
How did the price compare to https://btctrip.com/? I paid for the hotel with bitcoins on Expedia for 3 bitcoins. So I turned around and bought 6 bitcoins on Coinbase after that.
Nice! Doing it this way, I will be forced to save 50% of all of my spending.
Are you including things like rent and bills in "spending"? |
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Suppose that a 2-of-3 key storage system is in use. Label the private key locations as A, B, and C and let p(A), p(B), and p(C) be the respective probabilities that these locations become compromised (within a certain time window related to checking/key-refreshing freqeuncy; compromised meaning either theft or destruction). Suppose that A is far more secure than B and C, so much so that p(A) > p(B)p(C). In this case, storing the bitcoins with a single key at A offers greater security. Well you can encrypted (BIP32) each of the multisig keys. For example I keep one of my multisig keys in a safety deposit box. Sure it could be compromised but the probability that the box with be compromised AND the passphrase brute forced is remote. Yes, a practical enhancement, even under the simplifying assumption that the passphrase is stored at A. My argument was only that 2-of-3 encryption is not necessarily more secure than vanilla encryption. One needs assumptions about the relative security (and independence) of the three locations to make this deduction. It seems unlikely to me that a person would have one location so much more secure than any others that my argument will apply. A prisoner may qualify, who's mind may be far more secure against searches than anything external to their body. I imagine that most people with 30k bitcoins will have access to a range of highly secure locations. |
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It makes a huge difference...It is one of the single biggest hurdles to mainstream adoption....
So? Bitcoin does not have an adoption problem. If anything, it's being adopted too quickly already and minor hurdles to mainstream adoption could well be a good thing! Bitcoin suffers from marketing, which is a common problem with advanced technology because just like doctors, usually people skilled in the creation or adaptation of advance technology are terrible with marketing....reason being, their brains are far more advanced and they don't relate to the average public in the same way....
Bitcoin is not a company trying to sell a product, it's an experiment in p2p money. I do not market; I think, criticise, share, debate, and learn. Some years ago, bitcoiners would primarily lead others into understanding. Today it is considered proper to mislead others into buying. |
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How does someone with a single wallet (with all their coins in) not have an address that starts with a fucking 3? That's what I want to know.
Suppose that a 2-of-3 key storage system is in use. Label the private key locations as A, B, and C and let p(A), p(B), and p(C) be the respective probabilities that these locations become compromised (within a certain time window related to checking/key-refreshing freqeuncy; compromised meaning either theft or destruction). Suppose that A is far more secure than B and C, so much so that p(A) > p(B)p(C). In this case, storing the bitcoins with a single key at A offers greater security. |
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To prove that these bitcoins are invalid one would have to prove that there is no corresponding private key and I suspect that this is a hard problem. |
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As of block 305,303 the coin supply is limited to 12,882,575 BTC.
I think this should be 12,882,550 BTC (or 12,882,600 BTC if including the genesis block reward). |
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I think that slashdot brought a lot of people to bitcoin.
The first story had a huge impact. The price was about 0.008 USD/BTC when the story came out and it then very quickly rose in value to around 0.05-0.07 USD/BTC. The community were quite excited about the potential of the story; even satoshi was thinking about coming out of beta as a marketing strategy. I wish I had seen it, because I might have taken BTC more seriously.
In 2010, I somehow landed on a really crude little sight selling Bitcon for Paypal for ~5 cents each, and I didn't seriously consider buying any.
That would have been bitcoinmarket.com. This was the last place I ever used PayPal. It was cute how all the trades had to be in multiples of 100 BTC. |
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Certainly, a 71% attack would be quite a lot harder to mount than a 51% attack. However, I don't see how such a "super majority" mechanic could work here. Are you suggesting something like: transactions only get confirmed if they are backed by 70% of the network? If so, couldn't a pool with 40% of the hashing power attack the network by vetoing all transactions?
I have thought about this also. Is it better for double spends to happen and a 51% miner is in charge of everything? Or is it better for a super majority rule to be imposed, implying 70% must agree on transactions. If the 30% keeps vetoing it, this doesn't cause harm to bitcoin because they only hold veto power, not the power to do everything. I say it is better to have a rogue Mining Guild abuse veto power(then people stop using them) than it is for a rogue Mining Guild to have all the power. I say this because having no transactions confirmed is an immediate thing to notice for anyone using it, and is probably a better thing to happen than lots of small scale double spends and obfuscation. Not everyone keeps track of double spending or is interested in it, but everyone is interested in transactions going through. Management by exception, IE if the block chain isn't confirming transactions a whole ton of people will notice within the hour and do something about it. If the Rogue 51% Mining Guild keeps messing around for small amounts or does something not many people will care about, I feel like that will be a lot harder to combat and get enough people to rally behind fighting the 51% Mining Guild. The 71% wouldn't have the power to do everything. They couldn't, for example, increase their block reward, or spend coins they don't own. *A small number of 0-confirmation double-spends sounds plausible, but repeatedly double-spending transactions with 2 or more confirmations will be noticed quickly (depth 2 block re-orgs are very rare). Notice also that 31% could attack with equal subtlety by freezing a small selection of bitcoin accounts. * The mechanics of a protocol change are practically orthogonal to those concerned with hashrate. If some users (users/merchants/wallets/exchanges/pools) want to change the protocol, and other users want no change, then we'll have a hard-fork. It will be as if those that wanted the change created an alt-coin with a pre-mine distributed among all bitcoin holders in proportion to their holdings. If GHash.io wants to create GHash.io-coin and start mining it right away then I expect that many miners there will leave; who would want GHash.io-coins? Such an attack would be roughly equivalent to GHash.io sending all their blocks to /dev/null. |
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Well, technically the number could be anything. Could be 99.9999% of miners have to agree and "blah" happens...
I don't really see the point of it being 50% or higher to begin with, it would be much harder to exact a higher percentage attack, like say a 71% attack(at least right now it would be almost impossible). If people are serious about BTC staying around it needs to have a super majority agree on it like 70% to 80%, no more 50% agreement on things is what I say.
Certainly, a 71% attack would be quite a lot harder to mount than a 51% attack. However, I don't see how such a "super majority" mechanic could work here. Are you suggesting something like: transactions only get confirmed if they are backed by 70% of the network? If so, couldn't a pool with 40% of the hashing power attack the network by vetoing all transactions? |
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I do like the fact that BTC attempts to have a way of dealing with "rogues". my worry is that it will not be enough in the end. Is there a reason it has to be 50%? Why not make the threshold 70% to be able to double spend?
Why 70%? I would turn it up to 110% myself. |
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Because the psychology of numbers influences the perceived value of said good. It's perfectly fine to criticize the word "bits", but I fear those critics are missing the point of this debate: we need to price goods as whole numbers, regardless of the naming convention.
You have it backwards. A study of the comments in this thread will reveal that a good number of the critics are distinguishing the term "bits" from the notion of switching to a different unit to avoid unintuitive decimal prices, and indeed generally support the latter. However, the vast majority of pro-"bits" posts conflate these two ideas. Here are some recent examples: +1 for bits.
Using bitcoin is weird for small transactions like 0.00327
This is an excellent idea. It is a lot easier to wrap your brain around buying 1000 bits instead of a row of zeros following a decimal point.
Why bits? Because people are conditioned since birth to think of prices as whole numbers. There's a reason retailers price their goods and services at $19.99, $24.95, $99, etc.
As you can see, each poster supports "bits" because they dislike fractional prices. They completely fail to see that the dichotomy is false. I love how the assumption is always that people who like the sounds of bits simply aren't clever enough to understand what you're saying. It couldn't possibly be true that they just like the sound of bits and you're still a little disappointed that your preference didn't win, so it makes your ego feel a little less bruised if you work under the assumption that everyone else is stupid. Cry me a river and such. I made no such assumption. I made a single claim and supported it with no less than three very recent quotes from different posters. Could you do this for posts along the lines of: "I voted for 'bits' because I like the sound of the word"? |
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