a) Wouldn't the net effect of this sharing work proposal be to synchronise the difficulties of the two block chains?
b) Is that the desired outcome?
I don't think so. "You don't think so" to part a) or part b)? Neither part a nor b. I think the desired outcome is that with just a single hash computation, a miner could potentially generate a valid block on any chain connected in this way. |
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i picture kiba as about 18. if that's roughly right, then by that measure he's been logged into this forum for more than 1% of his life! (as an aside, i sometimes want to test my intuitions about people based on just their posts, because i have the feeling i'm good at it, having studied empirical linguistics and psychology at one point and tied them to other computational research i've done. for example, i'm certain kiba is young, and he's very likely american, with writing patterns that suggest an influence from the american south. he could have immigrated, have immigrant parents, or have experienced some other factor that led to greater strengths in nonlinguistic skills, at least those related to formal english grammar. i don't mean that as an insult, of course! he has some awareness of coding, but not at a systems level like yours or mine; his most proficient language is probably php. i suspect he is ethnically asian. i don't have a good sense of educational background, but i'd guess he completed american high school or is about to do.) I'm pretty sure you're way off on that one. I'm not sure of Kiba's age, but I'm pretty certain he's not from the U.S., and English isn't his first language. Perhaps that is why you get the impression that he is young? I'm curious what your intuition says about me. |
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Wouldn't the net effect of this sharing work proposal be to synchronise the difficulties of the two block chains?
Is that the desired outcome?
I don't think so. perhaps BitCoin can just do what Slushs pool already does and vend work of min(bitcoin difficulty, extra difficulty) then ignore found blocks that don't match BitCoins own difficulty The only thing that I know I don't understand is how you are able to compute only one hash but have the solution be valid for either block chain. |
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I really doubt they will ever accept anything but a distributed pseudonymus currency.
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If somebody wants some more explanations "why Russians are so tend to be evil" i am can give some, - if that will questioned again. You will not like that explanation, but that will not bather me. My completely outsider take on this is purely due to economic hardship. You see the same thing in poor neighborhoods, people turn to crime when they need to survive. There may be some cultural aspect to it, but I doubt it's significant compared to that of economics. |
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Haven't seen any activity here in a while, but I just got contacted for the first time. I'm going to meet with someone tomorrow to exchange a 20 BTC BitBill for cash. Nice!
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I recently found out about Silk Road through an article on Kotaku, which contained quite specific instructions on how to use it...then I realized that this "news" had spread to quite a few other websites. Is anyone else worried about the potential attention this might attract?
Um, no? Ha, ok then. I just figured that something like this wouldn't benefit from a bunch of attention. I think one of the news articles that reposted it mentioned that a DEA agent could potentially post something for sale (or buy?), which wouldn't be good. I figure there's at least someone in the DEA that could figure out how to use it. But, hey, if you aren't worried, then that's a relief. If it can't handle attention then it is not secure enough to trust in the first place. |
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Slight correction... Fox Business. Rather different animals. Written by Stossel no less, very nice! |
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The whole project doesn't have a future, but have fun while it lasts!
You're entitled to your opinion. I'll buy your bitcoins at $5/each before the bubble bursts though. (paging Kiba to the bubble, Kiba to the bubble) |
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Why don't you give your money to a cause that will actually help people, rather than a surveillance state war monger (no better than Bush)?
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The problem for anyone who isn't a libertarian (or at least a classical liberal) is that if bitcoin succeeds, governments will not longer have central banking and debt financing at their disposal. Without that, they have only taxation. But they would need a tax rate approaching 100% to fund anything close to their current activities, and that's not likely to be very successful. The bitcoin-driven black market would crush the tax-laden "white market". So all their wars and social programs are going bye-bye. Bitcoin may not produce a stateless society, but it sure as hell would destroy the modern warfare/welfare state.
Thus why Bitcoin must be  |
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I just got a response from llama to a PM that I sent him a week or two ago. I assume he's still around, perhaps the site is under maintenance or a DoS.
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This is not recommended at all for anything other than browsing. You lose all privacy, as all data sent back from Silk Road as well as all data you enter is transmitted in clear text to the proxy. They would have your name, address, bitcoin address, items purchased, etc. Do not use this if you are buying from Silk Road. |
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What might be interesting is if Silk Road offered its coin tumbling service to the public. This would provider a greater number of coins for use in the mixing process, as well as diluting the association with illegal goods and services.
Hell, perhaps it could even be accessed via a completely separate hidden service or web site with no apparent connection to Silk Road, though I'm undecided on the ethical consequences of doing so...
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Gavins' time is a deflationary asset?!
Can we trade it somewhere?
Announcing a new block chain: GavinCoin, now available to trade on MtGavinGox! |
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For instance, Silk Road has a built in coin mixer. When you add coins to your account, they are sent through a bunch of dummy transactions, split up and recombined with the coins of other people. This would make it much more difficult to associate a specific sale with a Bitcoin transaction and individual identity.
On the other hand if I'm buying stuff in undercover mode, I now have access to addresses of many other clients by tracing where my coins went and then backtracking. With a properly implemented mixer, it would be difficult or impossible to tell which transactions are within the mixer and which are not. |
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I think the main protection layer for SilkRoad is Tor. If I was a cop and wanted to catch people using a known illegal service over Bitcoin, I'd get a list of the addresses used to deposit funds on that service from the block chain, then I'd listen on the network for a node to emit a transaction using those addresses. Pretty sure I'd catch a lot of people like this if it wasn't for the Tor layer.
How do you get the list of addresses used to deposit funds on that service, if every deposit is to a new address? |
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As noted here, serious anonymity takes a lot of work, and is darned near impossible if you are making a "noticeable" impact on the network, with your activity. Analagous to side channel attacks, users can give themselves away in a variety of ways that are not directly related to bitcoin's cryptographic strength. Most of the articles posted a [heavily] edited reply of what I sent. The full version of the correction email, as reproduced by The Atlantic, clearly highlights the wiki Anonymity page, which covers all this in quite a bit of detail. Thanks for the reply. I see that they simplified the matter on both sides. Does your comment regarding deposits apply if you can generate a new address to deposit into each time? |
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And I've been emailing "bitcoin is not 'untraceable'" corrections all over town, thanks to Gawker. I think you are understating the possibility of anonymous transactions with Bitcoin, but I didn't want to derail this thread so I created a new one: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11188 |
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Comment. You should include the actual link to the web site in the post. http://whatsabitco.inAlso, I think you should put the link to the actual Ubitex site in your sig, replacing or in addition to the link to the forum thread. |
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