Sweet. Thankyou for going some way towards answering my question rather than attacking me for practising due diligence  Well that's something I guess. Truth is, I'd love to get rates of >5% weekly on my coins, but I have a long-standing policy that if I'm going to give someone serious cash (Let's say, more than a week's pay) then I need enough information that I can either sue them if it all goes wrong or head over to their house with a cricket bat  While neither of those remedies would work in this case, if I were to offer a PPT or subaccounts, the rates would be much, much lower than those offered by other PPTs. I would only offer insured deposits, which would necessarily incur costs that would have to be taken from the returns. Competing with PPTs offering 7% (so a rising tide lifts all boats) would not be possible. With a tiny bit of actuarial math and market analysis, I'd probably offer terms in the 1%-3% range, possibly rising as the 'premium' covers the principal. Still a fine return, but you can insure yourself just as easily if you're willing to take the "risk" of 7% and pull your initial deposit. Others have floated the idea of less-exposed debt instruments, and that would be where my interests would lie. If you fully insure a PPT at 3% a week starting off, I would invest  |
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Okay, here's a different question:
Has anyone who isn't affiliated with a pirate pass-through of some sort come forward and said that they met him in Vegas?
Cmon dude, he was there. This isn't Oliver Stone's JFK. really honest bob? It seems a relevant question, regardless of whether he was there or not... Not trying to be rude, sorry. But it seems like it's only a relevant question if everyone who says they saw him are actually in a massive conspiracy, and Pirate never showed. Which is not the case. |
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Result: most of transactions spending to the FAT address exhibit a very strong
taint from the closure (from 1% to 28%).
Pirate likes to smoke lots of weed? Texans don't smoke weed. |
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Okay, here's a different question:
Has anyone who isn't affiliated with a pirate pass-through of some sort come forward and said that they met him in Vegas?
Cmon dude, he was there. This isn't Oliver Stone's JFK. |
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@jimbobway
How would that appear any different than more hashing power added to the network? I'm guessing no one will know that it's broken until someone draws up a proof.
Good point. Depending on the strength of the cryptographic attack, let's supposed 100 blocks where solved in an hour. It would raise a lot of suspicion since 100 is a lot. The bitcoin client would then readjust the difficulty level and all other miners would not solve very many blocks. Miners would complain and most likey the bitcoin dev team would change the algorithm. But, if 10 blocks were solved in an hour and then the difficulty adjusted it could have been pure luck and there would be no sure fire way to prove it without mathematical proof. I don't think breaking sha256 is "hacking". It's like a gold miner finding the motherload. However, I think breaking EC would be hacking. I think it would take a lot more than disgruntled miners to cause an algo change  |
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ok thank you! but what will happen with the old coins? they become worthless and need to be replaced with new ones?
no. these new algorithms will be constructed to perpetuate the usage of existing coins. The only problem would be if the fork was poorly organized, and people were still sending their coins around about the time of the fork. I'm scared of a blockchain fork. |
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Every past hash function has failed at some point. It's likely only a matter of time. However, they are usually broken in increments (instead of 256 bits of protection, you only practically get 256 - X bits). Before X reaches 128 bits, I'd expect to see bitcoin (and anything else using SHA256) to move to a newer, more robust algorithm.
Bitcoin won't fail because of this. Even with a partially broken SHA256, difficulty will just go up because miners can use the shortcuts just as easily as attackers. When the time comes, the switch will require a hard fork, but what miner would want to stay with the old, broken algorithm? The biggest threat is if we have two competing algorithms to replace it. However, by the time we get there I would think there would be several companies and individuals in the position (the funds and motivation) to really analyze the options thoroughly and to be able to reach an information based consensus.
Thank you for explaining this to me. So it will more likely follow the demise of MD5, correct? Also, I'm assuming the only way to fix that problem in the future will be a hard fork. (I'd like to see a thread about the problems of an organized fork, I'm headed to the search bar) @jimbobway How would that appear any different than more hashing power added to the network? I'm guessing no one will know that it's broken until someone draws up a proof. |
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SHA256 will definitely be broken eventually, stopping Bitcoin mining completely.
Is this really the case? "Definitely?" If bitcoin's algo's become useless to the point of causing bitcoin to completely fail, I'm not sure people would ever have faith in cryptocurrency again. At least not the public. Hell, I wouldn't. I read time and time again that if catastrophic flaws in SHA256 are discovered, bitcoin is the least of our problems. Not really sure if that is true or not, though. |
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Mining since may 2001 too at around 600 mh/s (2 6870's)
say what now? |
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How does Bitcoinica's alleged lack of legal registration affect their poor security?
Paraipan filed a report against Bitcoinica for possibly violating technical laws. Others recently filed a report against Bitcoinica for failing to compensate owners what they're due, which was not the result of Bitcoinica not releasing where or how they're registered with the government, though that will affect how much users are rewarded if legal action is successful. If Bitcoinica failed to register, the owner/ops are at pretty extreme risk, and the unpaid users in a relatively good position with regards to collecting the full amount they're owed. IANAL, though.
Press came out when they registered in New Zealand, or something |
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Whats the chance all the ponzis will collapse at once ?  It's possible they'll collapse like dominoes and possibly even take down some legitimate funds with them. When one collapses, people might fear that others are going to collapse too and make a large number of simultaneous withdrawals, forcing others (whether Ponzi or legitimate) into an equity or liquidity crisis. I don't think there is any legitimate fund that quotes its interest weekly or monthly. The ones that do that are after those who didn't pay attention to some maths lessons at school and cannot calculate compound interest. It is really laughable, but I guess if pirateat40 had quoted his gains as 3,300% annually, he would have gotten far fewer "investors". whew! another guy that gets it and has a fundamental understanding of economics. the ponzi-defending in this thread was getting absurd. I understand that there is this thread --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=79294.260 about +1'ing the fact that BCST is a ponzi, but it says "probably a ponzi" which is weaksauce and does not address the many, many derivatives and other completely separate ponzi's and partial ponzis and funds that are exposed to ponzi. I feel a deep need to expose scams of any sort that I spot. I am going to ask the users with strong economics backgrounds to please also +1 this thread. Also feel free to assign weight to your thoughts, i.e. for my own perosnal: "I 100% think that BCST is a classic Ponzi scheme and anyone running a pass-through is helping Pirateat40 steal large amounts of BTC" I 87% think it's a Ponzi. So what. Let's talk about something else now. This was only fun to talk about the first 11 times around. I enjoyed the drama, but now I've got other dead horses to beat. Anyone who runs a pass-through doing the community a favor. Whoever wants a slice of that pie should be able to have it. Now, either I am going to be extremely pissed off that I missed out on the investment of a lifetime, or a lot of people are going to be robbed. Everything has been said that can possibly be said about it, now we just have to ride it out. You came to the party about a month too late. It is good to raise your concerns, they are they same as about 40 other people on this forum, including me. But Every single one of your posts is FUD. Suckers will be suckers no matter how much you scream (that said, you and I may be the suckers here). Ponzi Bob |
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Hi. I'm new to the forums but I've been mining at 3gh/s for a long time. To the guy above: Austrian economics is awesome.
it has some neat ideas. |
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I always wondered whether that would work. |
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Parapian's on a streak! First bitcoinica, now TizzyTazzy, what scam will he predict next? I wonder what he thinks about Micon's Ponzi list.
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It seems that many of the posts since my "I've seen a pirate post" claim that I am somehow lying or misleading people on the forums. Here is the simple truth.
I brought my brother-in-law to Vegas to hang out and meet some people related to bitcoin. We've had the opportunity to meet pirateat40, reeses, Goat, copumpkin, pidgeons, Coinabul, Partrick from Intersango, OneFixt and his girlfriend, BurtW and Scared. I've probably missed a few people in the list.
I must say, meeting all of these people has been a pretty awesome experience. Pirate is a nice guy and we had a great time playing craps (BurtW taught pirate, Goat and I how to pay), roulette and 3 card poker. I also got to spend some time in the poker room with OneFixt. We've eaten dinner together, talked bitcoin and it's future and played some games in the casino.
Does this make me an expert in what pirate does? No.
For all of you that claim that because I've met pirateat40 I am now somehow responsible for his actions, well, you're logic is flawed.
Thank you for posting this! I've been waiting to hear something, anything. It was so strange to me that Goat's posts were deleted. I'm glad yall had a blast. |
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Hi. Stumbled across bitcoin this week. I'm amazed. I've been reading these forums, and fooling around with some software. I don't want to speculate or hoard, I want to see bitcoin flourish thru broad acceptance. I'm not an anarchist but this is pretty legit.
Well, I can't believe it, but 500 posts ago I was just discovering bitcoin. This is the first online forum I've ever invested any time in at all, and it's been a great experience. In fact, I only planned on asking a few questions here, and the name "honest bob" was a joke from the start. The first thing I noticed here was the scammery. Turns out, this forum is the most useful place for a newbie to buy bitcoins. Bitcoin largely inspired me to choose computer science as my career; the technology is just that amazing--to think that 1s and 0s can revolutionize the way we think about money is mindblowing. Before I found out about bitcoin, I wasn't really into computers at all. Looking back at my old posts, I am reminded of how patient the senior members here have been with all of my silly questions and half-baked ideas. I do feel I have a pretty solid grasp of Bitcoin now. Because of bitcoin, I have learned/learned about: -SHA, RSA, MD5, etc. -PGP -Tor -VPNs and VPSs -Austrian economics (meh) -Linux (I made the full switch!) -Networking -the word "fungibility" -IRC -Poker -That gambling is not wise after all -day trading (meh) -arbitrage -and some other stuff To you newbies, don't let a few rotten apples ruin an otherwise very helpful, supportive, and friendly community. Don't get discouraged! The learning curve is steep right now, but it will be worth it in the long run. Don't trust anybody (you really can't hear that enough). When you do get scammed, don't give up on bitcoin. Thanks to all of you, Or at least most of you, Honest Bob. |
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can we still link to flaxceed's thread?
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Whats the chance all the ponzis will collapse at once ? 7% ish |
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Your payment has moved. I'll see what I can find out from the blockchain.
According to znort's blockparser code, 1Q6nyjSQ79AAw67xAGHgXxXHRj9erLLqhD is now provably in the same wallet as 24550 other addresses. I used that list to find whether there was any connection between these addresses and the large 1Dky... address. There have been 86701 inputs and outputs to/from these 24k addresses, all since 18th June. It seems the Silk Road wallet must have been reset relatively recently, or we'd see older transactions in the list. Here's your 0.001 BTC being grouped with a few other silkroad addresses: https://blockchain.info/tx-index/13896290Notice that 1AVMrqGmoJ7Jpjh7FdbHnDwK34VBxtBCcC is an input to the same transaction. That means that both your deposit address and 1AVMrqGmoJ7Jpjh7FdbHnDwK34VBxtBCcC are in the same wallet - silk road's wallet. Then look at this transaction: http://blockchain.info/tx-index/11928355It's a big payment to the mystery large address. 1AVMrqGmoJ7Jpjh7FdbHnDwK34VBxtBCcC is one of the contributors. The most recent two deposits into 1Dky... were also from address on the list of 24k silk road addresses obtained using znort's code. I think that's pretty conclusive proof that the large address is related to Silk Road. Wow! Thanks for this post. I'm worried worried for those sending bitcoins to SR, considering the inevitable rise of tools like these. A deterministic wallet would could eliminate a lot of risk by analysis. |
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I pledge $100 to newegg. Not sure what I'll buy yet though.
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