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In the Bitcoinstore checkout page there is a statement, "Please do NOT use Coinbase if you wish to receive your order."
What's the deal with that?
I can't think of a reason why there should be a problem when sending from a Coinbase shared eWallet, but whatever the case, the way it's written without any clarification is very unprofessional. It sounds as if Bitcoinstore has some personal beef with Coinbase.
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I'm not sure they're allowed to accept donations this way. And AFAIK this (unlike Bitpay's proxy) doesn't automate conversion to USD, which they need. Also, we want them to officially accept Bitcoin donations. |
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Isn't there actually an Enterprise level bitcoin implementation independently written as well? I forget the name, but it's written by a hungarian guy.
Bits of proof? |
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But test mastercoins were released together with real mastercoins simultaneously. As far as I understand, you can do the same thing with test coins as with real coins. So, if there will be an exchange trading them in the future, they WILL be useful, and you can trade them back to bitcoins or whatever and buy something with it.
Still not different from testnet bitcoins. There are so many other cryptocurrencies with hardly any innovation in them, but still they have some value, because you can exchange them with other currencies.
These alts have people advocating their use, which results in people speculating they have a chance to catch on (and they still capture only a small percentage of Bitcoin's market cap). For test coins you have no such thing. Actually, what you're doing right here is a form of advocacy that testcoins should be used. Keep doing that and you might fulfill your prophecy. I just wanted to mention this possibility, because ultimately, test coins might lower the value of real coins because of more supply. So it might be good to destroy them at some point, before it's too late. And of course let people know early enough about that action. I think this helps, because people can actually treat them as test coins and therefore also 'waste' them for testing purpuses.
Test mastercoins are effectively a clone of mastercoins. If you fear that mastercoins can lose their value due to the existence of a clone, and clones are trivial to create, why do you think mastercoins can have any value at all? |
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I was wondering about what will happen to the test mastercoins... will they be deleted when the protocol is working? Otherwise, it could be that they become valuable as well.
Testnet bitcoins aren't valuable. Everyone knows test mastercoins should not be used for serious purposes, and nobody is promoting their use for serious purposes, so nobody will use them for serious purposes and they will have no value. Testnet bitcoins are running on a separate block chain. Test mastercoins however are on the same block chain as regular mastercoins. And if they basically can do the same things as normal mastercoins, why shouldn't they be used and gain in value? If testnet was merged mined against mainnet, tesetnet bitcoins still wouldn't have value. When something is branded as "testing" the Schelling point is that it will be used for testing (especially when it offers no advantage over something branded as "real"). If test mastercoins would so easily have value, it will be trivial to generate 1000000 different Mastercoin "flavors", each following the same protocol but with a different "version byte" (or whatever there is there). If all flavors will have equal value then mastercoins have no chance to have value to begin with. But if not then mastercoins will have a huge advantage over test mastercoins by virtue of being intended for actual use. |
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Legittttt
Man I really need to learn how to code so I can contribute something to Bitcoin rather than leeching.
Soon.
The King and the Fireman much? Contribute to Bitcoin doing what you do best. If your calling in life was to be a software developer you would have been one already. |
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I was wondering about what will happen to the test mastercoins... will they be deleted when the protocol is working? Otherwise, it could be that they become valuable as well.
Testnet bitcoins aren't valuable. Everyone knows test mastercoins should not be used for serious purposes, and nobody is promoting their use for serious purposes, so nobody will use them for serious purposes and they will have no value. |
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I proposed an idea earlier related to this.
While Satoshi suggests a gentlemans agreement, I suggest a programmed system which ensures all those interested in mining can mine *up to* a specific hashrate and no more.
This would enable everyone a fair share of the mining pie, while also enforcing security in that no one would be allowed to do a 51% attack as they are only allowed a fixed hashrate for mining.
Let me be clear, I am not sure how this system would actually be created and maintained and there are surely issues with it. However I'd be willing to bet that we could band together and figure something out if we all were to work together on it.
It's impossible. There's no way to identify a person in a decentralized digital system, not on the spot and definitely not in historic records. If it was possible, there would be no need for hash-based mining at all, we'd just give each person an equal share of the generated coins and synchronization power. |
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Transactions in a block are ordered so it could use the first transaction.
Or the mastercoins could be destroyed in this case.
How is this order defined; is it defined on the protocol level? If so I was unaware of this. The miner chooses in which order to put the transactions. (If there are dependencies, a tx must come before those that depend on it.) Once he sets the order it is a fixed property of the block, putting the txs in a different order would result in a different Merkle root and thus invalid block hash. |
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I have come across a theoretical problem.
Suppose 'user A' bought 10 coins from Exodus.
After the initial purchase 'user A' creates three simple send transactions for 10 coins to 'user B', 'user C' and 'user D' and relays them over the network. Assuming they all get included in the same block, to whom do the coins go?
Transactions in a block are ordered so it could use the first transaction. Or the mastercoins could be destroyed in this case. |
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Shana Tova!  |
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Isn't the fact that the OP holds roughly 30% of the Mastercoins in circulation a big concern? His course of action (holding or selling) will drive market price.
True. It's like a MASSIVE premine. No altcoin would survive if 30% of ALL coins were premined. It's not really a premine since JR didn't get the mastercoins for free, he got them because he invested 30% of the funds used to develop the project. The fact that he is in full control of the Exodus address does complicate things. And if anything, the fact that the issuing was done over a period of 1 month can be called a premine. |
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I'm unbelievably excited about the money that has been raised. We actually crossed the seemingly impossible threshold I set earlier to be comfortable quitting my job. However, I'm not quitting my job, since my investors and I agree that a huge salary for J.R. is not the most efficient use of project funds.
I disagree and I think many other investors like myself will disagree as well. You have raised a good portion of a million dollars. I think many, if not most, of us would prefer to see you dedicate yourself full time to the mastercoin project. Taking a salary is entirely reasonable, it does not have to be 'huge', but there is nothing wrong with being able to pay your bills. Had you been a regular startup you would have budgeted a salary for yourself as well. Keep the accounting public knowledge and pick some salary number that is considered average for coders in your region/area. It does not have to be 'huge' you are personally invested in Mastercoin as well so if it works out, you will be more the adequately compensated. I don't mean to be tough, but not quitting your job sounds like you are taking the better part of a million dollars to fund a weekend/after work hobby. People put money into this believing it would be serious project, and when you have so much money in your "angel fund" it would be a serious cause for doubt in your seriousness if you didn't quit your job and take the project full time. Indeed, if you won't work full time on mastercoin, I would argue that you should hire developers who will. Sorry to be so tough, but I love the project. EDIT: Maybe I misunderstand- are the funds on the exodus address actually spendable by you, or not? You do have the private key, right? JR says his wife only allows him to quit his job if he gets all the salary and benefits of his current job, which are pretty huge. JR is in full control of the exodus address but has committed to use those funds only for the development of Mastercoin. By "a huge salary for J.R. is not the most efficient use of project funds" he means that a more efficient use is to pay other developers with the money, which is what he plans to do. Not to abandon the project. |
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Whoever is behind buymastercoin.com thinks that MasterCoin values have doubled since the fundraiser. I don't know if the site is legit, but that's pretty cool. Hopefully we'll have that distributed exchange soon, but in the meantime we need a thread for buyers and sellers to find each other, with instructions on how to do it correctly. I'll try to set that up soon.
FWIW, I know the owner of buymastercoin.com personally. (I'm not saying you should use the site or anything.) The reasons that could lead to the displayed pricing have to do with the very weird market conditions that the Mastercoin issuing creates. Mastercoins were issued with a very short time scale (1 month, as opposed to Bitcoin's effective 12 years), so there are people who would want to buy because of all the hype but missed the deadline. On the other hand, there is no new information that could depreciate mastercoins in the eyes of early investors, so they would not be eager to sell; and in general, tools for transacting with Mastercoin are still crude, creating friction. So there could be people willing to pay a premium (compared to the original issuing price) to get their hands on some mastercoins. |
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Miners don't make the rules, users (the economic majority) do. That's another misconception.
Well, last time I checked it's the miners that were hashing, and therefore making the rules. Of course without users the whole thing is pointless, but without the miners have fun forking anything. The users are paying the bills. If miners don't want to mine the fork the users find valuable, the users can find other miners. If the users don't value the fork the miners are mining, the miners are screwed (unless they switch to the valuable fork). "What he can gain" is fixed.
That's exactly where you're oversimplifying, because it isn't. If you 51% attack bitcoin, chances are you're going to hurt confidence in the network and therefore the value, thereby changing your expected gain. You're forgetting an important unknown in this equation. So basically you're chasing a moving target, one for which it's also extremely hard to know whether you're even close to it. The most plausible attack scenario is by an attacker who wishes to damage or destroy Bitcoin. "You're going to hurt confidence in the network" isn't a complicating factor, it's the whole point of the attack. But whatever the motivation of the attacker, I'm not analyzing here the timeline of the attack and how much the attacker gains at any point in time, and how it changes due to changes in the network. I'm abstracting it all away and referring to it, as a whole, as "what the attacker has to gain by performing the attack". It's either more than what the attack will cost or not, even if we (or even the attacker) don't know exactly which. I pointed out that even though the question might have a theoretical answer it's not in our reach and therefore not very interesting to pursue any further. Of course, the more hashrate the best, there simply is no way to accurately declare the network to be "secure", or "insecure" without resorting to wild guesses and approximations that make the whole exercise pointless.
I don't want Bitcoin to fail. There is a real problem which could cause it to fail; so I will pursue it until a satisfactory resolution is found, even if I have to deal with uncertainty. I said multiple times that I don't know what will happen
Good. So we're on the same page, forgive me but I'm not the kind to dig through histories and I didn't happen to encounter this particular string of words in your previous posts in this thread. Here you go: I (honestly) don't understand how the transition from mining-for-bitcoins to mining-for-tx_fees will play out. Sorta' filed it away under "not the time to think about it, will cross that bridge when we get to it." Can anyone walk me through a scenario which results in a responsive & secure network?
Nobody knows exactly how this will happen. But one possibility is that a limit will be placed on the total value that can be transacted per block, and if the resulting network hashrate is perceived to be too low, the limit will be tightened. I am somebody so if nobody knows, I don't know either. Then that "something" is exactly what we need to figure out.
If we need to figure it out, it means I don't know what it is. |
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Bitcoin is whatever people miners say it is.
... What happens next isn't our call, it's the miners call. ... I mean, if you're a miner you'd be tempted to use your voting power to not make too easy to get into a block. ... The day it's harder to get all the pool operators on #bitcoin-dev at the same time you might see that pulling a hardfork might be much harder than what you think. Miners don't make the rules, users (the economic majority) do. That's another misconception. Really needed hashrate = The hashrate below which Bitcoin will be a victim of a >50% attack. We don't know what it is, but it still exists.
You're oversimplifying by forgetting the fact that someone with such hashpower has an incentive not to mess with Bitcoin. You seem to be confused. If X is the network honest hashrate, it will be attacked if the cost for an attacker to obtain X hashrate is less than what he can gain by attacking. "What he can gain" is fixed. The lower X is, the more likely this condition is to hold and for the network to be attacked. If X is too low we have a problem. I have defined what "really needed hashrate" means, an argument for the needed hashrate being low is not really a reply. But basically that's my point, there might be such a value (setting aside the added incentives), but it still makes no sense to talk about the network being "secure" or "insecure" since, as you said yourself, you have no idea and no way to know about the threshold.
So because we can't know something with 100% certainty we're supposed to just bury our heads in the sand and not try to analyze, estimate and improve the system? - the market adapts, eventually
I am a Bitcoin user, promoter, investor, miner and researcher. I am part of the market. Me analyzing the system and trying to come up with solutions is the market adapting. The market doesn't work by everyone closing their eyes and waiting to see what other people will do. You can speak like you know the future as much as you want, I won't join you.
I said multiple times that I don't know what will happen, so this comment marks the point the debate has degraded so much that I don't have much interest in continuing with it. |
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a limit will be placed on the total value that can be transacted per block
As in "magically"? or by a hardfork? The context in which you're answering the question isn't Bitcoin anymore, it's a fork of Bitcoin. Hardfork, of course. Bitcoin is whatever people say it is. Bitcoin has had hard forks but we still call it Bitcoin. And Bitcoin clearly will have more hard forks in the future. There is no "really needed" hashrate threshold that you can compare a subjective appreciation to. The question is flawed in itself.
Really needed hashrate = The hashrate below which Bitcoin will be a victim of a >50% attack. We don't know what it is, but it still exists. No. Without massive protocol changes, the market does not have the tools to adapt to this situation.
That's your opinion. Mine is that miners will decide what is theirs to decide. If a group of "core developers" or the "foundation" wishes to hardfork its their problem. Currently there is a limit of 1MB per block. Do you think this will remain forever? If so, good luck using your outdated version of Bitcoin that cannot scale above 3 transactions per second. (You can use off-chain payments and whatnot but 3 tx/s is still not enough). If not, then a hardfork will be needed, refuting your "Anything with a hardfork is not Bitcoin!" attitude, but more importantly - what will it be replaced by? If nothing at all, good luck using your outdated version of Bitcoin that will have nobody hashing for it and be a constant target for hashrate attacks. If it will be replaced by something... Then that "something" is exactly what we need to figure out. |
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Security is required
No, what you call "security" is a subjective appreciation of the hashrate, compared to a perceived "necessary minimal hashrate" that is by no means "required". The possible gap between perceived and real need doesn't contradict what I said. Can anyone walk me through a scenario which results in a responsive & secure network?
Sure : - the switch to tx-fees-only happens - nothing extremely special happens - the market adapts, eventually - the network is responsive and secure The end. No. Without massive protocol changes, the market does not have the tools to adapt to this situation. There have been lengthy discussions about this. I (honestly) don't understand how the transition from mining-for-bitcoins to mining-for-tx_fees will play out. Sorta' filed it away under "not the time to think about it, will cross that bridge when we get to it." Can anyone walk me through a scenario which results in a responsive & secure network?
Nobody knows exactly how this will happen. But one possibility is that a limit will be placed on the total value that can be transacted per block, and if the resulting network hashrate is perceived to be too low, the limit will be tightened. |
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Your first problem is use of the term "require."
We do not "require" the current hashrate to secure the network. The hashrate is a byproduct of miners wishing to get bitcoins.
This is true now. The current causality is: Inflation schedule set in stone -> Total revenue to be made from mining -> Network hashrate in equilibrium But in the future, when inflation is negligible and we only have tx fees, it will look more like Security is required -> Protocol rules make transactions scarce -> Fees are paid for txs -> Total revenue to be made from mining -> Network hashrate in equilibrium So the need for security will, by one mechanism or another, affect the network energy usage. do you think that we require more hashing power to secure the network simply because there may be more people using bitcoin than we have now, and if so why?
Security means: Honest network hashrate is greater than the hashrate an attacker is expected to be able to muster. If more people use Bitcoin, the economic impact of Bitcoin is greater, more can be gained by attacking it, an attacker could spend more resources in order to attack it, more hashrate is needed to be secure. |
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