It's not that BitCoin is unreliable, it's that it is still a currency in its infancy. It cannot be used to value things on its own, yet. No matter how much Bruce would like to have a set price in BTC that stays from the start of ticket sales to the end, it won't change the fact that there is still a good deal of volatility in the value of bitcoins. Volatility = a huge amount of risk when you are talking about playing with money you are borrowing (which is essentially what is happening when you accept payments up front for expenses in the future).
Risk can be kept at a low level while denominating price in BTC with some combination of selling bitcoins in advance, taking loans and buying options. These markets aren't very mature which is a problem, but Bruce could have found a creative solution if he wanted. I think denominating the price in USD is a strong negative signal and he should have spent the effort to avoid it. Even if it means making the price a bit higher - for many people the registration is about 1% of the cost of attendance so this pales in comparison to the signal. Another problem is the bait-and-switch of listing the price in BTC, but then the order form is based on USD. Later he changed the listing to USD. I again implore Bruce to update the agenda and the list of high-profile attendees. PS. The reason I'm saying all this is that I really want to attend the "Bitcoin Conference & Worldwide Expo 2011 NYC", and went to some length to do so. But I don't want it to end up something else (a "meetup" or "LAN party" as some naysayers put it) due to poor organization and foresight, and this includes lack of attendance due to perception of said organization and foresight. Manny's comment that demand is strong is encouraging, but we need more. That would have been practical if demand was a certainty. But with a first-time conference like this, it would be very difficult to know how many people would be attending, thus, you couldn't anticipate the right number of coins to borrow and sell. |
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This "company" is a joke. Tawsix isn't managing the mining rigs. They are going unattended for days on end, losing hashing power and investor money. Dividends are always late. He keeps making promises that he never keeps.
I'm sorry if he's had personal problems, but you know what? He's got a responsibility to the shareholders here. He can't just put that on hold.
Tawsix, find someone else to manage the company and rigs if you can't do it yourself.
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look guys i understand scams. im sorry im new here and dont have "hero member" status. if i was a scammer i wouldnt be talking back. i would be kissing ass. ya sure, i'll do escrow. (ships empty box)
maybe she was being nice and trying to give me advice. i doubt that tho. it really truly sounded like her butt was hurt cause i denied her request and she just wanted the last word. aint that right mouse?
Wow... ok. |
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I think BTCGuild was accused of this recently.
The bottom line is, yes, it is possible, and no, you couldn't detect it if it was well-hidden.
If you use a PPS derivative reward scheme it doesn't matter. Since the operator has only two options, to pay for your submitted shares or get labeled as a scammer PPS fraud would be instantly visible within less than a week, since there is zero variance & multiple miners would be reporting 2-3% less than average earnings suddenly. Maybe if you take 0.1% or a similar amount, it would be brushed off as a normal occurrence. Doesn't sound too profitable though. Bigger pools can already earn enough without risking their entire reputation. Yeah, I do like the PPS model. It's just that pools have to take so much in fees to account for the potential variance that could literally bankrupt them. |
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Alternatively, if you DO know it is there, is it criminal? If anyone did embed something illegal into the blockchain, then released the decryption method to the public, then everyone would know it was there, and anyone could extract it. But whether it is illegal to have such content in the blockchain has yet to be determined.
If I know "something" is there, but don't know what, maybe I'm just paranoid rather than criminal. It's like a whole lot of wiki-leak files that are available but not unlocked - someone knows the key, and someone could find the key, but just because I could access it (locked or unlocked) doesn't turn me into a criminal. If I did access the file in a locked state, but not know it's contents, that would also be a hard point to press. (reference receipt of stolen goods - there is a difference between knowing they are stolen or not) Sorry, in my scenario, I meant to infer that you would also be informed of what was there. |
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A more simple example (and quite made up) is if you apply the correct cyptographic key to this post you will get a defamatory statement (with is illegal). Is this post therefore illegal?
Depends on the jurisdiction and what the court rules. For a defamatory statement it would be worth the risk, but would you want to take the risk of uploading child porn given the life-ruining consequences of even being accused? I think that this is a very real risk to the current system. I just used defamation as an example (and as you say, it depends of jurisdiction). I was more making the point that with the correct key or filter you could make anything look like anything else. And if you don't know it's there and can't extract it, is that criminal? Alternatively, if you DO know it is there, is it criminal? If anyone did embed something illegal into the blockchain, then released the decryption method to the public, then everyone would know it was there, and anyone could extract it. But whether it is illegal to have such content in the blockchain has yet to be determined. |
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I think BTCGuild was accused of this recently.
The bottom line is, yes, it is possible, and no, you couldn't detect it if it was well-hidden.
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it sounded like a smart ass sarcastic comment cause i shot down her escrow proposal. in other words......
ya sure, dont do escrow with me. stick with trying to sell them locally. your going to sit on them forever that way. (stupid nub)
We seriously do need a sarcasm punctuation mark. I can see how you would take it that way, but in my opinion, I think she was being honest, not sarcastic. I even agree - you probably would have better luck selling them locally through craigslist or something, than selling them through the forum with no previous trade reputation. |
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Any net earnings ? 57 GPUs making 0.2 BTC/day each is still 3400$/month.
Your math is pretty accurate. =) ... Plus, they've been running since early June... Ha. Just got my bill. $1,685.88 @ $0.34/kwh.
-EP
Yes. You do win! Are you at all concerned about humidity if you're just using straight outside air?
It's been through a couple of 'rainy days' already. Haven't had any issues with them yet. I do check on them once a week to check for dust build-up, etc. or anything out of the ordinary. All of the components still look brand-new after a quick blast from compressed-air. Cheers, Kermee Nice, good to know, thanks for the reply. |
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SgtSpike, you certainly have raised a very interesting topic. Bitсoin is an experiment. But the experiment is very good and important. Maybe it has some drawbacks which will be future problems. At the heart of bitkoin is not mining and not even trust. At the heart of bitcoin is greed.
point by point:
1) A person at risk. I learned about bitcoin in March 2010. I decided that this is a stupid thing. There were people who simply liked the idea. But there were far-sighted people. They have invested money in the CPU (and later in the GPU). And now they are reaping the benefits. Although they can and lose money.
2) The Psychology of a complicated thing.
2.1) It is possible that the current nominal bitcoin a certain value. A pleasure to hold in their hands a large coin than a little. Although if the coin is too big, then it will not be easy to use.
2.2) If you had said in 1960 that an ounce of gold will give $ 1,800 he would have laughed.
3) Greed is good.
3.1) People buy coins for one reason only. They are hoping that tomorrow they will grow in value. No higher power is not here. Perhaps you think that people buy at the price of farm Mining 20k $ for the idea, but actually it is not. They just want to make a profit on it. Deflation is a good
3.2) Assume all the money in the world to become the bitcoin. And bitсoin continue to grow. (Ie a BTS today = 1 iPhone, one month 1bts= 2 iPhone ). Why do I make iPhone for example, if I can just wait for the higher cost bitcoins? Deflation is bad.
If I know that tomorrow the price will fall to bitсoin I never buy it. Already wrote that in high inflation need to spend money, but nowhere to spend it. Nobody would buy the coins in the hope that in 10 years they will be accept in all world. Even if it's true.With hyperinflation, the price falls. If the price falls do not profit from the purchase of coins. If there is no profit no one buys them.
Underlying profit bitcoin (greed), but not an idea. Capitalism is a profit. Communism is an idea. The question which of them is dead?
P.S thanks to google for google translate=)
If I understand the general sentiment of your thoughts here, you are saying that deflation is necessary for adoption, but inflation (or at least noflation) is necessary for it to be usable. I really agree with you. That's why it would be a challenge to get something like this off the ground. A currency can't be deflationary, or it leads to too much hoarding and too little investment/innovation, but it can't be inflationary, or no one will want to buy it or use it. MarkM - interesting thoughts, but what is your point? Sounds like a lot of centralization for a decentralized project..? |
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Bought it in Canada, 320GB System, It's about a year old. It's fat. Comes with 2 controllers.
Thank you! Though if it is a year old it is most certainly the slim. Yes, the PS3 slim is actually quite fat. Anyhow, Canadian PS3s will not play my EU bluerays, so I'm out. It is slim? I can't tell slim from fat... unless I see both. The slim has a dvd slot, where the fat has a lid that opens for the dvd on the top: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY7u-Imk6J4Lol, totally didn't know I had a slim this whole time...  |
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really? thanks for the tip. i'll be sure to PM you when i need some more advice from you.
you could always drive to chicago if interested.
Sarcastic and rude replies probably isn't the best way to find customers here.  |
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Yes, i won't trick the users, there will be a public beta on a test chain, we'll choose the distribution scheme then launch the official chain.
Sounds like a good way to go about it. |
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security by obscurity is no security at all
Not true. I don't know why people keep throwing this quote around, but it's simply not true. It is easier to steal a file of known filename and location, than it is to steal a file of unknown filename and unknown location. I wouldn't rely solely on security by obscurity, but it is certainly better than "no security at all." It DOES help. OP, great idea. I like it. |
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I'm going to release a new currency in few month and the distribution is a real problem, need to find the perfect balance.
For the moment i choosen to give a reward (near)proportional to the target, maybe i'll give a ~4% per year for 20years instead then decrease slowly if there is enough
early adopters.
The best way would be to find investors to back a bit the currency at launch, but it'll be hard (despite some technical breakthrough done recently) and all need to stay free and open
I'm still working in the shadows and looking the community point of views on this kind of subjects, protocol specifications and implementation (win7/Linux/Mac, iOS/android a bit later once Qt will be stable on these platforms) will be release all at once, the public review will then start and many tweaks will be done
Interesting. Perhaps the most important thing is to make sure you have a very defined schema for distribution before starting the blockchain, and making sure you stick to it. If there's anything that will devalue a currency down to nothing, it's the insecurity in knowing that the distribution rules may be changed, and could mess with the value of your holdings. It is vital to have that decision made before any mining or transactions begin, and equally as vital that it NEVER changes. Just imagine what would happen to Bitcoin's value if we suddenly decided to give out 21 billion coins instead of million? Also, don't make anything arbitrary or up to someone's subjective opinion. You mentioned "then decrease slowly if there is enough early adopters." If that is your plan, then define exactly what makes up "enough", how the number of early adopters will be determined, who will be double-checking the number of early adopters, etc. There could be a lot of financial incentive to NOT have the reward reduced, and people WILL try to fudge the numbers accordingly, so you have to have checks in place to ensure nothing like that happens. But hopefully, you've already thought of all of this, and your statement was only generic in the interest of keeping it concise. |
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The early adopter problem isn't a problem. This has been discussed to death and I suggest you search the forum.
The deflationary spiral problem isn't a problem. This has been discussed to death and I suggest you search the forum.
The psychological barrier to entry problem needs further explanation. It's not obvious what you mean.
The miners dropping out due to lack of transaction fees problem is only a theoretical problem. This has been discussed to death and I suggest you search the forum.
I agree these are mild or non-problems. The real problem is the raising of capital. It is extremely difficult to raise capital with a deflationary currency because the risk of investors is way too high. Most of the time it will be better to just keep your coins in your wallet so it's impossible to reconcile financial markets with deflation, they just don't work together. I'll just give some quick points on why each of them is a problem. Early adopters. Well, if Bitcoins were to replace all currencies worldwide, and only 21 million coins were ever produced, then Satoshi, with his supposed 1.5 million coins, would hold approximately 7% of the world's currency. And you don't see that as a problem? Even if we only consider US money supply, which is around $14T, he would be holding $1T. I know I am not the only person who has a problem with that, and I am sure enough people would have a problem with it to prevent mass adoption of Bitcoins. It's not that I would be upset that he had that much money, it's that I don't want to see anyone with that much power over the currency. Deflationary spiral was shown as a problem during the great depression, when the dollar was based on a gold standard. While it may not have been deflationary, it was certainly less inflationary than the currency we have today. The country entered into a depression, along with many other countries, and each country only recovered when it started printing more money. Also, as you have pointed out, raising capital for new innovations or companies will be extremely difficult while using a deflationary currency because the opportunity costs are so high. Psychological barrier is already a problem - people won't generally want to pay $100 or $1000 for a single coin, just because it is a psychologically "bad deal". This means that Bitcoins are limited as to who will adopt them and to what extent. Miners dropping out WILL happen with the current Bitcoin model, and we will not have enough miners to secure the wealth in the blockchain, unless transaction volume grows by at least 100 fold (1000 fold to reach the current security level after all block rewards have diminished). |
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The early adopter problem isn't a problem. This has been discussed to death and I suggest you search the forum.
The deflationary spiral problem isn't a problem. This has been discussed to death and I suggest you search the forum.
The psychological barrier to entry problem needs further explanation. It's not obvious what you mean.
The miners dropping out due to lack of transaction fees problem is only a theoretical problem. This has been discussed to death and I suggest you search the forum.
I agree these are mild or non-problems. The real problem is the raising of capital. It is extremely difficult to raise capital with a deflationary currency because the risk of investors is way too high. Most of the time it will be better to just keep your coins in your wallet so it's impossible to reconcile financial markets with deflation, they just don't work together. They are problems. But I will revise the deflationary spiral problem to just "problems with a deflationary currency", because there are several problems with it (lack of investment being one). |
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Funny how the first ever bitcoin conference thats been hyped to shit doesnt even sell tickets by bitcoin amount. Instead equivalent to the amount in USD.
well, he did mention the fees were to cover the expenses of the conference, and the expenses are likely fixed in USD, therefore the need to price in USD to maintain a 1:1 costs:fee ratio. That is a very bad sign, if the organizer of the supposed global BitCon won't deal in BitCoins. We've had people make it all the way across the country only on BitCoins and they made it just fine! Organizing a conference around it should at the very least speak to the strength of BitCoin, not the supposed obstacles the promoter is having to endure. I won't accept any other explanation than Bruce is just a speculator and hypes the BitCoin masses while not having the passion to back it up when words meet action. Respectfully, you have no idea what I do for BitCoin, so speculation that someone may have done more than I have is just that - speculation. I'm totally fine with you taking that stance though, as the free market will prove the truth in the end. I know Bruce has his fans and that's fine too, I used to be one of them as well. He has indeed helped spread the word about BitCoin, but I differ in my interpretation of exactly how much this has helped. A lot of very misleading information has been put out there and endorsements for products/services were given without any due diligence. He's promised a lot but hasn't delivered in terms of the network and the show, which amounts to not much more than a man with a laptop giggling at himself on camera anymore. This conference is just being handled terribly and I think that his insistence that everything be handled in USD equivalents is just a sign of his true intentions in the BitCoin market - and that is speculation. That, on the surface, is acceptable but when you run a network around BitCoins and build up BitCoins as the best thing ever, shouldn't you practice what you preach? I just find that very unprofessional. Plus, changing the venue without a word and without any input from the community was a pretty low class thing to do as well. Yes, venues do change, but the way it was done was very misleading and unprofessional. How in the world do you expect a person to run a conference while just accepting fees at a set bitcoin price? They could potentially lose a lot of money doing that. Basing the fee on bitcoins valued in USD is not speculation - it's anti-speculation. Speculation would be setting a rigid, unchanging fee in bitcoins right at the start, in the hope that the price won't drop. What would happen if a conference holder were to set a rigid ticket price in BTC that was just enough to cover the expenses, while Bitcoins were worth $30/each? Suddenly, they're only worth $10 each, people are still buying tickets, and the conference holder has no way to cover the expenses except from his own pocket. And you think this is the right way to go about things? You could say that the conference holder should only be buying from people who sell products/services in bitcoins, so that he doesn't ever need to convert them to USD, but guess what? Those vendors usually convert straight to USD, which means their prices will change according to the current USD/BTC rate. Which means the conference holder would STILL be in the exact same position (of being screwed) if he set the prices according to an earlier valuation, and then the price drops. The only way for him to hedge a potential loss if he was to set rigid prices is to set a ridiculously high price to start with, just in case the price drops. But I'm sure people would rather pay prices that are reasonable, and based on the USD valuation of a BTC at the time of the payment, than pay 10x as much as the conference is worth. Sheesh man, use your head! It's almost as if BitCoin's are still unreliable. Hmm. All that I'm saying is as big of a BitCoin promoter that Bruce is, it's surprising he's still clinging onto the USD when it comes down to it. As much as he trashes the USD (and rightfully so) and hypes BitCoin (completely beyond it's utility at this point), one would think he would be eager to prove how great the currency is. You do know the media will latch onto the fact that 99% of the conference is paid for in USD, as the BTC is too volatile and not widely accepted for it to be used? Just putting it out there. It's not that BitCoin is unreliable, it's that it is still a currency in its infancy. It cannot be used to value things on its own, yet. No matter how much Bruce would like to have a set price in BTC that stays from the start of ticket sales to the end, it won't change the fact that there is still a good deal of volatility in the value of bitcoins. Volatility = a huge amount of risk when you are talking about playing with money you are borrowing (which is essentially what is happening when you accept payments up front for expenses in the future). You keep saying how Bruce has malicious intentions to mislead and speculate, when that simply isn't true. Now, you seem to have backed down to a statement regarding the volatility of Bitcoins, which I think everyone here can agree with. Just don't blame Bruce for Bitcoin's volatility. And yes, I agree, the media probably will latch on to the fact that most things for the conference are being paid for in USD. So? Is there anything that could be done about that? Not really... |
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I ROFL'ed at the top post. But it seems that you're actually serious?
Indeed I am. Please inform me as to why I should not be serious? A block chain like this has been proposed several times before. Each time it has failed to pass the laugh test. And of course, nobody's even bothered to introduce an actual block chain. Laugh all you want. I just don't think Bitcoin is viable in its current form, for the four reasons mentioned above. I like the idea of Bitcoin though. I like it a lot. It's just not quite right. I would do it right this moment if I knew how. The early adopter problem isn't a problem. This has been discussed to death and I suggest you search the forum. The deflationary spiral problem isn't a problem. This has been discussed to death and I suggest you search the forum. The psychological barrier to entry problem needs further explanation. It's not obvious what you mean. The miners dropping out due to lack of transaction fees problem is only a theoretical problem. This has been discussed to death and I suggest you search the forum. Yes, it IS a problem. And I HAVE been in previous discussions on the forum about this subject, with no convincing resolution that it is not a problem. So please, enlighten me how it is not a problem. Yes, it IS a problem. And I HAVE been in previous discussions on the forum about this subject, with no convincing resolution that it is not a problem. So please, enlighten me how it is not a problem. Psychological barrier to entry is simply this: Few people are going to be willing to buy a single bitcoin for $1,000. It's a psychological thing. Having $1,000 in your bank account just "feels" a lot better than having 1 bitcoin, even if they're both worth the same amount and both have the same purchasing power. To a lot of people, buying a handful of bitcoins for a lot more than a handful of dollars feels like they are getting ripped off. Unless the virtual currency can have rough parity with the dollar, it will not ever be fully accepted by the general public. It maybe be only a theoretical problem at this point, but only because we haven't reached the point of no block rewards. Please do point out how my calculations are wrong? Why would we NOT have such a small percentage of miners securing the entire network? Because more people will be sending more transactions? How do you know that that will be the case? The fact of the matter is, unless we have transaction fees that equal 50 BTC for every block, we will have fewer miners compared to the total value of all existing bitcoins. And the more that discrepancy grows, the weaker the bitcoin network becomes, and the threat of a double-spend attack becomes more probable. |
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I ROFL'ed at the top post. But it seems that you're actually serious?
Indeed I am. Please inform me as to why I should not be serious? A block chain like this has been proposed several times before. Each time it has failed to pass the laugh test. And of course, nobody's even bothered to introduce an actual block chain. Laugh all you want. I just don't think Bitcoin is viable in its current form, for the four reasons mentioned above. I like the idea of Bitcoin though. I like it a lot. It's just not quite right. I would do it right this moment if I knew how. |
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