Is there anyone with an extra car who would be willing to lend it?
It would work out best if you were in western PA, North Carolina, or central Florida.
I'll need it for about 2 months. Nothing too fancy needed, just not falling apart.
I don't know how much visibility this post will get so if you see it and can put me in touch with someone who ends up being able to help I'll throw you a few coins too.
How much would you pay me to drive my car around for 2 months?  http://goo.gl/xMniuI swear to you it is as fun as it sounds! Has two turbos getting put on as well. Are the GTO's FWD? Rear wheel drive The only way to go. |
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We all hopefully realize that the block chain infrastructure is non-scalable to the level of mass retail adoption and that this discussion is academic at best. By the time retail adoption of bitcoin is commonplace, space on the blockchain will have a price, retail purchases will never hit the blockchain, and you will be dealing with a bank that is simply backed in bitcoins and who settles your purchase off the block chain, who will solve this problem the same way Visa debit works.
Yeah, exactly, that's what I was initially writing about. |
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But see, as long as banks are used, they can manipulate the money supply. Fractional reserve, and all of that. If people accept a bank balance as good as coins themselves, then banks can lend out more BTC than they actually have, effectively inflating the BTC supply. And just as easily, they can withdraw their lending to shore up their reserves and deflate the BTC supply.
I think Bitcoin banks could very easily and credibly prove they have the BTC they say they have via the digital signature function. The only slightly more difficult part would be them credibly proving that the amount they have on deposit is accurate. Not impossible though. I propose a simple straightforward way. One way they could do this is to create an anonymous list of all their depositors and put them in some sequence. Example, MtGox could say and sign, "we have 1000000 BTC on deposit", and create an ordered list of balances. Each entry on the list would have a start and end range, for example, the first entry for example 25 BTC would "start" at 0 and "end" at 25, and the second entry for example 100 BTC would "start" at 25 and "end" at 125. Each entry would have a public key published with it, and the entire list would be signed by MtGox. The last item on the list would "end" at 1000000 BTC. Then MtGox would give each depositor a signed statement that "your deposit, acct xyxy is on our list at <start> and <end>", along with the matching private key for that entry. Two depositors who could produce messages both claiming the same entry as their deposit could publicly prove that the bank misrepresented its liabilities. The private and public key scheme included with each line would simply allow the individual depositors to collaborate via some independent registry, so they could anonymously claim ownership of their funds in an effort to look for double allocations without sharing their account numbers or identities at large. (e.g. they would each sign messages saying "These funds are mine, contact me <how> if you think they're yours", where <how> is generally going to be "publish your contact details encrypted with <public key> and proof that the bank signed a message saying these are yours, and I'll find you.") While not every depositor would participate, it would only take one collision to discredit the bank - which would be a strong incentive to keep the bank honest. Makes sense, though it is a rather complex solution to the problem, and I'm not sure many people would understand. I wonder how many people would actually participate in verifying such a list, or how many companies could be forced into releasing one? I mean, look at how many people use MtGox already, despite not knowing whether they actually have enough Bitcoins to cover all of their balances? It might be one of those domino-effect things, where the first company to start regularly releasing such a list might be favored enough by consumers to force other companies to follow suit. But, I have a feeling not enough people would be concerned about the fractional reserve problem to spend any of their own time on ensuring companies are kept accountable. Multisig transactions should solve all the banking problems. Your deposits are with them, but they cannot move them unless you provide the other signature. Double spends can be prevented because the bank will not sign a double spend. The "bank" is basically reduced to a trusted third party that prevents double spends, allowing merchants to trust 0-conf transactions.
Seems reasonable. I have a feeling that banks wouldn't like that much, and many wouldn't use multisigs. Smart people would, of course, use this method, but we all know how smart the general populace can be... Some people might not even want to deal with multisigs either. They like just swiping a card and entering a pin, and unless/until Bitcoin is just as easy (i.e., doesn't require a mobile phone to provide your piece of the multisig), I think many people would be fine with just letting the bank handle the transactions entirely. But, hopefully you're right, and multisigs would keep fractional banking to a minimum. Yeah, exactly waspoza. A merchant would be much more likely to trust a transaction coming directly from a bank than from a consumer standing there with a handheld Bitcoin client in their hand.
The next step, of course, would be bank-to-bank transfers used as payments. So basically, you and the merchant both have a bank account, and you issue a payment from your account to theirs. You and the merchant never actually touch the Bitcoin ledger (and the bank(s) may not have to either), but it's just a balance transfer on paper. It wouldn't be much different than the current credit card/debit card system.
We moved to using credit/debit cards for convenience. Given how inconvenient it is to utilize a Bitcoin client in-person, I can imagine we would move to a similar system with Bitcoins. It's kind of depressing because Bitcoins were made to move away from all of that stuff, but it's reality. If Bitcoin usage became widespread, more convenient methods of making payments cropping up would be inevitable.
The convenience of credit cards comes from the inability to use cash online or by mail and the general dangers/issues of purchasing everything w/ cash. Bitcoin "lack of convenience" is more a technical not fundamental issue. Imagine something like this: 1) you go shopping and cashier rings up the goods. 2) the little checkout display has a button Bitcoin. 3) you click on it and it displays a QR code. 4) you scan the QR code w/ mobile phone and (based upon an agreed upon format) it has the payment address, amount, and a note for your wallet. 5) you hit send. 3-5 seconds later the cashier gets a payment confirmation, prints the receipt and you walk out of the store. But what if you have a custom client on your mobile phone? Your custom client could do mischevious things such as: - Create another transaction right after the first one from the same address to one of your own addresses. It's a crap shoot as to which transaction gets into the block chain at that point. - Ensure that it is a transaction that would require a fee. Then, create the transaction without a fee. It will never go through (or at least, take a long time to go through), but the cashier will see 0-conf. In the meantime, you can send those coins to a different address to ensure that transaction never happens. - Etc, etc, etc. More loopholes will be found, I am certain. It's no worse than the type of fraud that people can commit with written checks, but you can see how most stores view those these days... |
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Is there anyone with an extra car who would be willing to lend it?
It would work out best if you were in western PA, North Carolina, or central Florida.
I'll need it for about 2 months. Nothing too fancy needed, just not falling apart.
I don't know how much visibility this post will get so if you see it and can put me in touch with someone who ends up being able to help I'll throw you a few coins too.
How much would you pay me to drive my car around for 2 months? http://goo.gl/xMniuI swear to you it is as fun as it sounds! Has two turbos getting put on as well. Are the GTO's FWD? |
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But see, as long as banks are used, they can manipulate the money supply. Fractional reserve, and all of that. If people accept a bank balance as good as coins themselves, then banks can lend out more BTC than they actually have, effectively inflating the BTC supply. And just as easily, they can withdraw their lending to shore up their reserves and deflate the BTC supply.
If you don't believe banking will be forced, but rather optional, then face-to-face transactioning needs to be solved before we get to that level of Bitcoin usage. As it is now, you can use a mobile phone to send payments, but again, it can't be trusted at 0-conf, or people will find ways to easily trick the retailers. Aside from green addresses, which would be controlled by banks or bank-like institutions, or bank-account-to-bank-account balance transfers, I just don't see a way to make point of sale payments with Bitcoins. Please do prove me wrong on that front though.
IMO, any transaction for a retailer could be trusted at 1-conf, but no one is going to wait 10 minutes for their payment to go through, which makes it just as useless for POS as 6-conf.
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Yeah, exactly waspoza. A merchant would be much more likely to trust a transaction coming directly from a bank than from a consumer standing there with a handheld Bitcoin client in their hand.
The next step, of course, would be bank-to-bank transfers used as payments. So basically, you and the merchant both have a bank account, and you issue a payment from your account to theirs. You and the merchant never actually touch the Bitcoin ledger (and the bank(s) may not have to either), but it's just a balance transfer on paper. It wouldn't be much different than the current credit card/debit card system.
We moved to using credit/debit cards for convenience. Given how inconvenient it is to utilize a Bitcoin client in-person, I can imagine we would move to a similar system with Bitcoins. It's kind of depressing because Bitcoins were made to move away from all of that stuff, but it's reality. If Bitcoin usage became widespread, more convenient methods of making payments cropping up would be inevitable.
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I never really understood the draw of watercooling myself. If you have a lot of money to burn, I guess. Or other things are more important than simply pure performance at any noise level. If you want max performance at cheapest possible performance then nothing beats air. Crank the fans up so it sounds like an industrial band saw and it can't be beat. I have 4 rigs in the garage running like that. In my office I also have a workstation w/ 4x 5970 in a closed case which is quieter than a desk fan. In the winter in quietly produces 3.1GH and dumps 4000 BTU into the room. In the summer I move the radiator outside (though window) and it dumps the 4000 BTU outside the house. Fair enough. |
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i would rig it similar to current watercooled PC systems. using water as a heatsink, complete with pumps & radiator (or pipe it outside to your hottub)
otherwise you need to fork out huge bucks for the fully submersible oil solution like those guys did with that supercomputer.
If I understand you correctly, you mean pumping oil through a watercooling system? If so, that's a very bad idea. Mineral oil has much worse heat conduction than water. You'd be making a liquid cooling system that is much more expensive than water cooling, and also much less efficient. lol no, just watercooling. which, imo, is an awful lot of mucking around to achieve slightly better cooling than a big heatsink. I have looked into active cooling (peltiers) but there are condensation issues & they also suck alot of power on their own. better really to just underclock until peak mh/$/power efficency & just keep buying more and more of them, rather than pressing one unit harder & harder?? Oh, watercooling, but using a pool as a reservoir then? That would work, so long as you kept your pumps and lines nice and free from algae and such. I never really understood the draw of watercooling myself. If you have a lot of money to burn, I guess. |
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Maybe that is effectively what you are saying, but in that scenario I would see Bitcoin values mostly just continue to rise until the demand for crypto-currencies was saturated. The main Bitcoin transactions would be relatively large transfers swapping backing value between competing crypto-currencies.
Quite possibly. When that problem approaches, some time will be bought, I think, by big players running the only functioning instances of bitcoind (which will all have to be on highly connected servers) I'm suspecting that I'll be operating a few in one cloud or another or some corner of a datacenter. It would be most distasteful to me if/when it comes to this however. I very much like the fact that almost anyone can run the full block-chain almost anywhere, and Bitcoin will be a much less compelling proposition to me when this is no longer the case. , and most users of bitcoin will be using it through electrum-like clients and wallet services. People will have to pay a meaningful fee to create a real block chain transaction, which would be today's equivalent of a bank wire. Everyday people will conduct business through bitcoin "banks", today's equivalent of someone sending BTC from their MtGox account to another MtGox account. (Such a transfer settles privately and never appears on the block chain.)
The presentation by Dan Kaminsky pretty much predicts this same thing, though Kaminsky frames it as us having to go back to the same "banks" Bitcoin was created to free us from. I don't see it so harshly though - because these banks will be propped up by the free market and backed by free market currency, not propped up by the government and backed by a promise that the government will print more money and/or confiscate more wealth from the people to make up for anything that goes wrong.
I don't really see the necessity for banks (though I've got nothing against them as an option and recognize some of the nicities in terms of efficiency and speed.) With a myriad of different kinds of crypto-currencies distributed the load of a fraction of a global economy, it seems to me that people could opt to use crypto-currencies independently of banks as an option. I might choose to run (and possibly mine) PeepCoin and NewNameCoin because they cover my needs, but neglect SilkCoin because drugs are not an interest of mine these days (and if I get an urge to toke out again after 20 years, it's easy to trade some PeepCoin for some SilkCoin on an exchange.) I might also be forced to mine Bitcoin because that is one of the requirements of mining (or just using) PeepCoin. Or I may choose to avoid the hassles and just use a bank. I think using banks is going to become unavoidable, if for no reason other than the confirmations issue. If you have a bank account with Bitcoins in it, and a trusted entity (a bank) promises to pay a merchant on your behalf for goods you want to buy, then there is no need for said merchant to wait for confirmations to process a transaction. All they need to do is receive confirmation from the bank that the bank promises to pay. A debit card for Bitcoins, if you will. A merchant could accept 0-conf transactions as "good enough", which would work for a while, but it wouldn't be long before people came up with all sorts of schemes and softwares to help them rip off the retail stores (i.e. make a transaction appear on the retailer's system, then withdraw it or create another transaction using the same funds). And judging by the number of people who have no ethical problem with pirating copyrighted content, I have no doubt that this sort of activity would be rampant if retailers accepted 0-conf transactions. Anywho, that's my tangent on this thread for the day. ...and then, a government who likes Bitcoin will decide to print notes of exchange for them! They will keep 100% reserves of Bitcoins to match the notes printed, so each person can be certain that each 1 Bitcoin note will be worth exactly 1 Bitcoin, and can exchange them with the government at any time. But then, the government changes the name to "Notes", and doesn't keep a 100% reserve anymore. They continue printing the notes, despite the lack of Bitcoins backing them. Finally, said government withdraws the ability for people to exchange their notes for Bitcoins.
I would hope that this wouldn't happen, but would almost laugh if it did. Fortunately, those of us holding BTC from the start would be the ones in a good place when/if something like that ever went down.
This cycle takes decades. Essentially, they can't start the next round of bait-and-switch until most of the people that lived through the end of the last round are dead. And until they swap some words around in the published and taught history textbooks.  |
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i would rig it similar to current watercooled PC systems. using water as a heatsink, complete with pumps & radiator (or pipe it outside to your hottub)
otherwise you need to fork out huge bucks for the fully submersible oil solution like those guys did with that supercomputer.
If I understand you correctly, you mean pumping oil through a watercooling system? If so, that's a very bad idea. Mineral oil has much worse heat conduction than water. You'd be making a liquid cooling system that is much more expensive than water cooling, and also much less efficient. |
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I do spot a zero sum game, but I think you're overlooking one thing: the real value of Bitcoin itself. Something has to offset that, and that's where the real gain comes from. A technology was created out of nothing but ingenuity.
A zero sum is all the winners minus all the losers. But everyone is "winning" something of real value: a revolutionary technology, a way to bank without banks.
Imagine if we called Apple a zero-sum game: the value of all of the iMacs and iPhones, minus the price people paid for them, equals zero. It ignores the fact that iMacs and iPhones are intrinsically useful.
I didn't mean to imply that bitcoin had no value, far from it. I meant to say that anyone who has a "trading strategy" is a damn fool. In the end (when this new bubble explodes), lots of money will have changed hands, a few lucky guys will have made a nice chunk, the exchange will have profited greatly (bookies always do) and the vast majority of the dumbasses who think they can "beat the market" will have gotten shafted. What I was trying to say is that I don't care what the BTC/USD exchange rate is, as long as it remains either stable, or at the very least, predictable: my bet is that over the last 6 months, the exchange rate stability around $2 has done as much if not more for bitcoin's actual acceptance than all the combined excitement of the first half of 2011. It really doesn't matter what you care about. The market doesn't care. Traders don't care. Lament all you want, but it won't change anything, and it won't help stabilize the price no matter how much you want it. |
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Maybe that is effectively what you are saying, but in that scenario I would see Bitcoin values mostly just continue to rise until the demand for crypto-currencies was saturated. The main Bitcoin transactions would be relatively large transfers swapping backing value between competing crypto-currencies.
Quite possibly. When that problem approaches, some time will be bought, I think, by big players running the only functioning instances of bitcoind (which will all have to be on highly connected servers), and most users of bitcoin will be using it through electrum-like clients and wallet services. People will have to pay a meaningful fee to create a real block chain transaction, which would be today's equivalent of a bank wire. Everyday people will conduct business through bitcoin "banks", today's equivalent of someone sending BTC from their MtGox account to another MtGox account. (Such a transfer settles privately and never appears on the block chain.) The presentation by Dan Kaminsky pretty much predicts this same thing, though Kaminsky frames it as us having to go back to the same "banks" Bitcoin was created to free us from. I don't see it so harshly though - because these banks will be propped up by the free market and backed by free market currency, not propped up by the government and backed by a promise that the government will print more money and/or confiscate more wealth from the people to make up for anything that goes wrong. ...and then, a government who likes Bitcoin will decide to print notes of exchange for them! They will keep 100% reserves of Bitcoins to match the notes printed, so each person can be certain that each 1 Bitcoin note will be worth exactly 1 Bitcoin, and can exchange them with the government at any time. But then, the government changes the name to "Notes", and doesn't keep a 100% reserve anymore. They continue printing the notes, despite the lack of Bitcoins backing them. Finally, said government withdraws the ability for people to exchange their notes for Bitcoins. I would hope that this wouldn't happen, but would almost laugh if it did. Fortunately, those of us holding BTC from the start would be the ones in a good place when/if something like that ever went down. |
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I have actually looked into Oil submersion cases for several years and done some tests with them as well. Ive never had the guts to drop 1200 computer system into a vat of oil, mostly that once you do, it takes ALOT of clean up afterwards and voids about every warranty there is. A good site that has made custom cases for oil cooled systems is: http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.phpThey been doing it for a while and has gone from a modified fish tank to a fully customized case. You can drop anything into the oil except anything that has a physical motor that spins. So Fans, Hard Drives, CD/DVD Drives, etc. You can drop in the motherboard, SSD, CPU, RAM, GPU, even the PSU (the fan is only to cool the heat sinks in the PSU). Plus you wont get shocked. So you could get a big plastic tub, put your system into the tub and start filling the tub with oil and it will keep working. You still need something to circulate the oil or you will get hot spots and the oil will start to heat up. Now you put your rig inside a big aluminum box with fins and that would keep it "cooler". The site above will have some nice videos that may impress you. -elrodvoss Well, I can see why a HDD or CD/DVD drive wouldn't work (HDD needs to be air inside, and there's those holes that say "DO NOT PLUG", and CD/DVD is obvious), but there's no reason you can't have a couple of fans running inside the system, including the one in the PSU. It won't hurt the fans. There's plenty enough oil to keep the fan motors cool, plus free lifetime lubrication! |
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I'm calling it!
did u see that ascending triangle? It is ascending... |
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I call a rally to $20, leading up to CES!
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Glad I bought back in then. The question remains, how much of this rally is simply anticipation of the CES? How much will the price fall again after said conference is over? |
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Yeah I haven't turned my heaters on all winter! My rigs heat my whole apartments LOL
This is when I wish my house was smaller! My living room rig doesn't even seem to make a dent in the heat in there (even though I know it does). I have 2 5830's running in my bedroom though, and that keeps it sufficiently warm (a little too warm if I keep the door completely shut at night). The office is always quite warm with 2 rigs and a server running in it 24/7, and the door shut most of the time to keep the dog out. But the main part of the house, I still need either additional wood heat or electric heat running to keep it comfortable. Anyway, back on topic... I've noticed that the ask depth is dwindling. |
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anyway, it's one more option on the table for those needing an escrow service.
The help page doesn't describe what happens if there is a dispute: - http://thrucoin.com/helpWhich is pretty much the most important part of doing business through an escrow to start with... |
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