I was bored the other day and so I did some calculations to see if it is possible for the Middle East to shut down the Bitcoin network if it wanted to.

So the Middle East has about 1 trillion barrels of oil reserves. However, it only produces about 30 million barrels of oil per day (since not all the oil in the ground is taken out at once).

A single barrel of oil can be harnessed to produce about 1.7 megawatts of electricity. Therefore, 30 million barrels of oil is equal to about 51 terawatts.

A current state-of-the-art miner such as the Antminer S5 uses just 0.51 watts per GH/s. If the Middle East decided to shut down oil exports and consumption for one day and instead dedicated it all towards attacking Bitcoin, 51 terawatts of electricity would be enough to supply a total hashrate of exactly 100 billion terahashes. The current hashrate of the Bitcoin network is roughly about 300,000 terahashes. This would give the Middle East about 99.9997 percent of the total hashrate of the entire network.

You can also do the same calculations for other countries and groups of countries too. See how much electricity they consume and then imagine if they dedicated all of that towards attacking Bitcoin. OK, so maybe not all of the electricity used in one day would be used to attack Bitcoin in a hypothetical attack scenario but even if a medium sized nation decided to dedicate only 10 percent of its typical per-day electrical consumption towards performing an attack, the results are still pretty terrifying.

Could coins with stable values like BitUSD and Nubits end up replacing Bitcoin and other coins? They address one of the most common criticisms of Bitcoin in that the value of a single bitcoin is too volatile and unstable and therefore unsuitable as a true currency for daily use. Yet at the same time, these fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies share many of the same benefits of Bitcoin in the sense that they can leverage the power of the blockchain to allow for trustless, near-instant, and very low-cost transactions.

Just a thought.

Is there a list of all the coins that are based on NXT?

I know a few that are. There is NeXT Horizon (NHZ), NAS, Bilshares (BILS), NXT Fair Distribution (NFD), FIMKrypto (FIMK), and BURST. NHZ and NAS are fairly straightforward NXT clones. Bilshares is probably a Chinese NXT clone and there seems to be very little information about it on the web. FIMKrypto is a NXT clone for Finland. And BURST removes the proof-of-stake features of NXT and replaces it with an unusual proof-of-capacity mining scheme.

Then you have coins like NEM, NODE, and Crypti which seem to have been either inspired by NXT or were originally meant to be NXT forks but their devs changed their mind.

Finally, you have Qora which share a lot of qualities with NXT and was initially suspected of being a NXT clone until it went open source. Even more confusing is Ora which was originally meant to be a fork of Qora in the form of Kora but which later changed its name and became a coin built on top of the NXT monetary system.

Are there any others that I'm missing?

EDIT: I just found another one called STAG although the coin seems to be down at the moment. It looks like there are quite a few more that I've missed.

EDIT 2: Forgot NTX.

Not all of the original investors had the foresight to hodl and dump during the peak though. Some sold part or all of their stake while the prices were still extremely cheap.

For example, in this thread, someone had invested 0.05 BTC (worth $50) into the IPO and later sold it all for 2.5 BTC in total. Had he waited, it would have been worth $250,000:

73 people invested a total of 21 BTC into the NXT IPO. The maximum anyone could invest was 1 BTC. NXT reached a peak market cap of about $100 million in June 2013. Therefore, someone who had invested 1 BTC would have 1/21 of $100 million - or roughly $5 million.

Profit-wise, it was the most successful IPO in crypto history (and probably always will be) and is part of the reason why there are so many IPOs still popping up today trying to emulate its success. Of course, if you had tried to sell your 50 million NXT for BTC or fiat, you definitely wouldn't have gotten anywhere near $5 million since all that selling would have depressed the NXT price significantly.

I don't think it's really possible to know in the earliest stages. Unfortunately, the earliest stages are also when most of the profits are to be made. Think of how lucky the initial investors of NXT were when NXT was launched roughly one year ago. 1 BTC invested into the NXT IPO would have made you worth over $5 million during its peak. Then think of how NXT looked at the time when it was first announced. It had a single shady, paranoid, anonymous dev posting from a newbie account who admitted that he had "little understanding of economics" and who decided to go AWOL weeks into its launch. Not only that but it also had no screenshots, no whitepaper, and not even a working beta.

Hi everyone, Storj newbie here.

How do the intended applications for Storj differ compared to that of Datacoin (DTC)? DTC was the original coin for data storage and while innovative, it is also pretty much dead right now in terms of market cap. Say, for example, I have a draft of a short novel that I'm writing which takes up 1 megabyte of space. In order to permanently back this up into the DTC blockchain, this would cost me 50 DTC or about 50 cents.

What price range should I expect for Storj and will it be permanent too?

Secondly, how does Storj intend to keep the blockchain size small enough for practical use? The Datacoin blockchain is designed to grow at a rate of 500 GB per year which limits the coin's usability and lowers the number of nodes which can take part in the network and thus, lowers network security. Will Storj also feature a bloated blockchain or will there be measures to prevent this?

EDIT: Well there wasn't much information in the OP or the official site but a quick read of the whitepaper suggests that data won't actually be stored in the blockchain but rather on other people's hard drives. How will I know that my data will stay backed up unless every node in the network has a copy of it - i.e. a blockchain? Doesn't this mean that a few computers in the network can be switched off, break down, or their owner(s) might decide to reformat their hard drives and my novel can disappear forever while the network - oblivious to all of this, continues chugging along?

Would there be any interest in a service similar to BitPay but instead of instantly converting bitcoins into fiat, it would instantly convert altcoins to bitcoins?

BitPay allows people with bitcoins to spend their money at places which would otherwise only accept fiat. To do this, it instantly converts the customer's bitcoins to fiat which it then passes onto the merchant. From the merchant's perspective, this allows them to receive the exact amount of fiat that they want and still get the positive publicity that comes with accepting Bitcoin. Since this conversion is instant, it is superior to accepting bitcoin and then converting the coins to fiat manually since it shields the merchant from volatility in the BTC/USD exchange rate.

Now, couldn't the exact same thing work with altcoins and BTC? Using such a service, someone with namecoins or litecoins would be able to spend their coins at a shop that would otherwise only accept BTC. One of the criticisms of altcoins is that there are hardly any merchants who accept them. This service would allow altcoins to be spent wherever bitcoins can be spent. Integrating this service with BitPay itself would allow anyone to spend their altcoins in virtually every shop in the world.

Thoughts? Ideas?

I don't have access to my normal wallet right now but according to Blockchain.info, the last payment arrived on the 15th of December which were for posts 293 to 313. Afterwards, I made another 19/20 posts in the space of two weeks to bring the total post count to 333 (I say 19 because 1 post might have slipped between the gap and thus technically doesn't belong to any week).

http://blockchain.info/address/1PFMGybSCDnoq8bHtzQD2vUfyHohsH8FF5

EDIT: I guess it could be a problem with Blockchain.info. Are you definitely sure you sent it?

Hi redsn0w, can you confirm that the 19 posts I made for the previous two weeks will roll over into this week? It doesn't seem to have been included in the Dec 15 - Dec 27 report but a few other members that were also under the 20 post limit are there. Thanks.

Small mistake there. You wrote "sandykho47" twice. The second one should read "Bizmark13" instead.

Username: Bizmark13
Forum rank: Senior member
Post count: 333
BTC address: 1PFMGybSCDnoq8bHtzQD2vUfyHohsH8FF5

Looks like I'm in! And a bit surprising too considering that I haven't posted that much recently. Glad to see this campaign is still alive. Since I only made 19 posts since my last payment, I take it that it will roll over to next week? My current post count is 332 (excluding this one) and my BTC address is 1PFMGybSCDnoq8bHtzQD2vUfyHohsH8FF5.

Curecoin is the one that first came to mind when I read this thread. There is also a similar coin called Gridcoin. Gridcoin uses BOINC while Curecoin uses Folding@home. There are many BOINC projects, and one of them is called Rosetta@home which also deals with protein folding. In terms of market cap, Curecoin is currently considered to be the more successful coin of the two.

It should be noted however that neither Curecoin nor Gridcoin actually pay you to perform protein structure verification directly. Instead, you submit shares to either BOINC projects or Folding@home, respectively. Then the miner measures your contribution to these projects and in comparison with the average contribution of the whole network, calculates your reward accordingly. Hence the "folding" bit is still centralized (unlike Primecoin and Riecoin where all the algorithms and calculations required to perform research are actually embedded into the protocol itself in a fully decentralized manner).

As a transhumanist and Extropian, I always wondered if it might be possible to decentralize the process of calculations required to perform and verify protein folding and other complex scientific experiments. That would definitely make for an interesting coin.

The principles behind that of ISIS and the cypherpunk movement that gave rise to cryptocurrency are diametrically opposed. Bitcoin and its descendants are founded on the principles of decentralization, openness, transparency, personal and financial freedom and independence (i.e. "be your own bank"), and most importantly the rejection of centralized authorities - i.e. the "State" part of "Islamic State". I wouldn't be surprised if ISIS uses Bitcoin in an opportunistic sense as a means to transfer wealth across borders and away from the prying eyes of governments but to think that they would fully embrace Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency as their national currency is IMHO a step too far.

I'm curious to know how this site works. Most of the gambling sites I've seen were dice sites like Primedice and Just-Dice with a fixed house edge. I am guessing from the picture and a quick look at the site's description that this is a poker site? Isn't poker a skill-based (as opposed to pure luck-based with dice sites) game and thus, it should be possible to overcome the house edge and make a consistent profit if someone is skilled enough?

I only intend to get a few dollars out of this per week. It's not like I'm going to be running a massive mining farm in my bedroom!

A small 5-fin oil heater uses 1000 watts anyway and even the tiniest ones use 500 watts so it's not like the landlord will notice if I replace it with a miner which does the same job (heating) but with an extra income on the side. In fact, our rooms already come with heaters so I could just turn that off and use the miner for heating during winter:




Not a bad idea. I would prefer a quieter machine. I could buy two and have them hash at ~300GH/s and still consume less power than a single non-clocked S1.

Also 0.077 BTC sounds low but it doesn't seem that terrible once you realize it's free money and I could resell the miner anytime. Sure wish it was more though.

And for everyone else, thanks for the suggestions to get more powerful hardware but here in New Zealand, other than the occasional Gridseed or Block Erupter, it seems that 99% of miners are Antminers. See:

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/SearchResults.aspx?searchString=bitcoin

Plus, I'm a poor student so those $40 USD Antminer S1's are my only option other than USB miners which will never ROI. I don't have the thousands to spend on 1TH/s+ equipment (and even if I did, my landlord probably wouldn't be happy about it).

I'm not a regular user of 4chan, but I am familiar with how it and other imageboards work. Basically you have a collection of threads where users can post images, text, and short videos. No accounts are required and everything is anonymous (well not really, more on that later). Perhaps one of the most distinguishing things about imageboards compared with traditional forums is that the threads aren't permanent. A typical thread on 4chan has a lifetime measured in minutes. When a new thread is created, the thread which hasn't been replied to for the longest amount of time drops off the site's catalog and is deleted forever.

This automatic pruning of threads also makes it a prime application for the blockchain. The advantages of having a blockchain include higher resilience and redundancy as it is impervious to hacks, no censorship, superior privacy, and true anonymity. 4chan isn't really anonymous because records of your IP and machine details are stored in centralized servers and when faced with legal action, it would be trivial for governments to gather this information and use it to find out your real identity. The Sarah Palin email hacking incident is an example of where such a thing did actually occur.

The technical problems facing a decentralized imageboard are similar to that of Bitcoin. Resistance to Sybil attacks could be enforced by adoption of a traditional proof-of-work scheme or a proof-of-stake scheme similar to Peercoin. An internal currency of credits could insure that there is some cost to creating a thread or at least insure that the network cannot be attacked by flooding the catalog with thousands of spam or useless threads. Nodes could be rewarded with credits based on their ability to sustain the network, etc. Alternatively, an existing cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Litecoin could also be co-opted for this use.

This is all just an idea and unfortunately, my programming skills are nowhere near as good enough to create something as complex as this. But someone who is skilled at programming and is interested in creating a more open, decentralized Internet where humans can interact and share ideas freely without the threat of persecution by oppressive regimes could create this.

I believe Qora once had a node reward program where you would get about 1,000 QORA for running a node. Not sure if it's still running anymore though.

There are already people doing this right now. Check out Counterparty. It allows people to generate their own user-issued assets on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. There is also Colored Coins (which I haven't heard much from lately) as well as Mastercoin - both of which also use the same Bitcoin blockchain. Then there are also altcoins like NXT, BitShares, Qora, and Peershares (built on top of Peercoin) which also support the same idea but do so in their own unique blockchains.

Namecoin originally began as a project called BitDNS which aimed to see if it was possible to use the blockchain technology to support a decentralized DNS system composed of DNS entries. Satoshi had some input into its development. It was the first altcoin.

What other coins support DNS aliases? I know NXT does (and it happens to be one of my favorite coins too), but NXT is kind of like the Swiss army knife of altcoins. I think BitShares (another coin I like) also tried implementing something similar but I'm not sure what happened there. Namecoin isn't packed with features because it is a coin with a (mostly) single purpose.