Micro-currencies on the rise as crisis swirls

A few paragraphs about halfway down the page:


 - http://www.france24.com/en/20120529-2012-05-29-2049-wb-en-webnews

You can move it.  In the bottom left corner, click the link "move topic".

 - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=movetopic;topic=84428.0

Potential?

Firstly, consider the costs:

Cost for Cluster GPU Instances runs $2.10 per hour, or $1.70 after maximum discount for massive purchase volumes.
 - http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing

Revenue from Bitcoins produced by Cluster Computer Instances runs from $0.02 per hour on down.
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57840.msg716370#msg716370

So economically, that's suicide.

But lets say, for whatever reason to prove this you could spend a half million dollars for the day and Amazon somehow happened to have enough excess capacity (which is unlikely they would).

So what does the ability to do a 51% attack give you?  

Sure, you can refuse to include all transactions and grief bitcoin for a while.  You probably aren't going to have enough excess hashing to be able to go back and rewrite the blockchain even a block much less two.  So anyone with several confirmations is not at risk of any double spend.  And because the network hashing level went up so quickly, anybody doing a transaction is going to be extra cautious ... waiting at least 6 confirmations, maybe more.

Eventually (after a few your hours) your budget runs out, and everyone continued to mine and now extends off of your last block, and life continues.  Included in the next several blocks will be all those transactions you refused to include.

So ya, ... technically bitcoin is at risk of being griefed by a party with massive hashing capacity.     But if it comes, it isn't going to be from Amazon's GPU clusters.

And if you look at this site, you'll see no red ("no fee") transactions that low that confirmed anytime soon -- regardless of age.

 - http://bitcoinstats.org

Very, very nice!


Why only OpenID?

When I try to use my preferred OpenID login:

 http://openid.anonymity.com/YesIPreferToStayAnonymous

I get:

 Error: Cannot retain discovered information; the provider does not contain the required attributes

All I was trying to do was to see how much do I would need to pay to get this arbitrage in real-time?

Please DO MAKE BACKUPS first of your wallet.dat.  Additionally, DO PLAN ON RESTORING from backups after your testing is completed (i.e., don't use new keys from the key pool that aren't in the backup).

Double spends like that don't happen unless you are doing something that causes it to happen (as you have described in your plans) and as a result, the client doesn't accommodate the invalid double spend and will leave it at 0/unconfirmed with no way to clear the problem.

Bookend for this thread ... continued here:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84409.0

So both the Bitcoin client and PyWallet can't encrypt it.   Almost sounds like possibly a corrupt database.

In your previous post, you had mentioned that you were getting a DB_RUNRECOVERY error.  Is that still the case?

You were probably trying to be considerate by posting this in the Off-topic category.  But this is not just On-topic, this exemplifies the very reason Bitcoin must succeed.

This is just like Ubuntu's Bug #1:

Ubuntu Bug: Microsoft has a majority market share
 - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

Though Ubuntu never made much headway against fixing that bug, they did declare success after determining that the Mobile O/S essentially made Ubuntu Bug #1 a "Won't Fix" / "No longer a problem":
 - http://www.muktware.com/news/3571/mark-shuttleworth-ubuntus-bug-1-fixed

So, Bitcoin's "Bug #1" would be:
  "PayPal is still relevant"

Add to the list:

Stomp Romp Guitars in Manchester, NH



- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84285.0

Network effect FTW!

Is the Manchester / Keene / etc parts of NH going the be the first region for Bitcoin to take off locally?

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66832.0

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78985.0

There's no better way to learn about inflation than to experience it first-hand.  Diablo 3 players are seeing 10% or more currency inflation each day.  As a result, the player loses 10% of holdings each day.



 - http://diabloeconomics.com/diablo-3-gold-inflation-how-to-preserve-your-capital

Heh, the last difficulty adjustment was down 8% and halfway through the next it is down about 4%.  So even though difficulty is higher than a month ago, the estimated arrival of block 210,000 (using the target of 144 blocks / day) has been pushed back, to middle of the day, December 9th, 2012.  

 - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHVRMHpqWUJValI1RlZiaEtCT1RrQmc

 - http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png

Bettors are still on the side of a Dec 9th or earlier arrival:
 - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=312

But looks like difficulty finally caught up to the BTC/USD and is stuck around these levels until either more efficient technology (including acquisition cost) arrives or the BTC/USD begins to move.

 - http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin.png

See the following thread:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=75907.0

... And then there were three.



----------------------

Looking over the logos on the teaser page:

Asiacell,
TATA IndiCom,
Vodafone,
Telenor,
Digicel,
Etisalat,
Orange,
Movistar,
...

This is going to be huge!

Not all markets are considered but there is this arb opportunities list:

 - http://nyse-group.de/bitcoin-arbitrage

And if you know about where the currencies cross, you might be able to eyeball opportunities from here:

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/markets

The site shows a contact form:
 - http://bitcoinworldmarket.com/contactus.aspx

But the forum user account used when the site launched hasn't logged in since October:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27231.0

Well, one thing that I'm assuming is that payment cards will always be higher than the bitcoin exchange rate.  They could drop to 2%, let's say, if bitcoin or other systems (e.g., Dwolla or PayPal's wallet-based point of sale system) were to become a threat.   And the difference between 2.0% and 0.6% gets to be less of an incentive.  

And let's compare between Dwolla or Bitcoin, for a $50 purchase.  Dwolla is 0.5% and bitcoin is 0.6%, for example.  So it is cheaper to pay with Dwolla than to buy bitcoins and transact with bitcoins.   So it really is only payment card versus Bitcoin where there is a significant cost difference.

But consider that if a lot of the legitimate, low-risk business starts to use wallet/cash methods for purchases (at Dwolla's $0.25 rate), but nearly 100% of fraudulent purchases remain using VISA/Mastercard, that not only wouldn't allow the merchant rate to be lowered and instead it could potentially force it to go up (at least for "card not present" type of ecommerce transactions).

Here's a related post where I made basically the same argument on the payment network charge arbitrage:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80018.msg887005#msg887005

Might Armory help you do what you are trying to do?

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77650.msg864720#msg86472

Well, addnode will add it to the list but to force it to only connect to a specific node use -connect=

- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin