How are the modules actually attached to the controller board?  The Avalon site indicated expansion to 6 modules was possible before scaling it back to 4.  Ia m just wondering if there is any limit ... with sufficient power and large enough chasis would 8 modules be possible, 10?

Sold instead of bought (MtGox layout makes this easier than it should be).  Of course I didn't realize what I had done so I went ahead and did it again.  Double down! 

Likely I was able to unwind for only a token 2% or so educational fee.

+1

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity*.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

*In this case it is more ignorance than stupidity. 

Before this goes way off topic I, earlier I said either an offline key splitting system OR multi-sig would be fine.  I change my opinion to only multi-sig.  There are offline n of m methods to split any secret (including a private key) an example would be Shamir Secret Sharing.  However this wouldn't be ideal in a scenario like this as we would lose accountability.  If the funds were suddenly spent .... whodunit?  There is no way to know for sure.

With n of m multisig and "m" private keys if the funds are moved without authorization it is instantly possible to prove it was the "n" and clear the "m-n".  If I was a partial keyholder I know I won't misuse the funds but I would want the ability to prove my good name and multi-sig gives us that.

The other thing is that the contract should be PGP signed, it shoudl specific the exact terms under which keyholders can authenticate a request to release funds (should be verifiable and provide non-repudiation).  An example would be that release requests are PGP signed.  This ensures keyholders responding to an authenticated request are held blameless.  If theymos wants to get super secure the contract could specify two (or more trustees) which each need to pgp sign a request to transfer funds.

Custodians only respond to an authenticated (by PGP signature) request by y of x trustees.  n of the m custodians need to sign the multi-sig transaction.  This makes custodians merely "guards" and trustees responsible for proper usage.  When custodians gets proper message they act.  If they don't then they don't.  The process can be made more secure by requiring trustees to make a public request and custodians required to wait a certain amount of time (to allow challenge in the event of compromise).

If the entire process is made public it can become a resource to the community for "best practices" if something similar needs to be done in the future.

I bought a Jalapeno not out of any delusions of striking it Bitcoin "rich" but because someday it will be a "classic".  Like the commodore 64 of Bitcoin miners.   In the future when the first datacenter installed petahash scale rack mount mining clusters is available from Dell*, my Gen1 Jalapeno will look quaint sitting on my desk.


* Just kidding (kinda) but that probably is the end game.  A full datacenter rack of 3U or 4U mining chassis connected to a redundant pair of management servers. 

I think you misunderstood.  I believe the funds SHOULD be decentralized I just think there are more than enough people that there is no need to take a risk of <100% reserve, give anyone direct control of the funds, or payout excessive holding fees.

100% reserve in publicly verifiable address.
n of m multisig.
No dubious fee structures (plenty of trusted entities willing to do it to help the forum)*

* Sorry I am all for charging a fair wage but some of the proposals top out at 3% a year.  $3,000 a year just to keep one private key of an n of m multisig address safe?  Of course if theymos wants to payout fees well I got no problem with it. Decentralized and paying fees is better than centralized and $100K disappears if theymos gets hit by a bus.

I don't have any knowledge of if the number is wrong or right but to put it into context FC4B does >$20K per day and BitInstant is a lot larger and older.  Even if inaccurate $100K is certainly a plausible number.  IIRC there was a Forbes article over a year ago which said something (paraphrasing from memory) like "more than $1M a month".  A year is forever in Bitcoin time.  I mean it is over 87,000 blocks.  I think people who assume bitointalk = Bitcoin have no idea how big the system is becoming.  

There isn't arguing semantics.  Legal tender has a specific definition.  One can't have a conversation if for example I think "sky" is the thing above our heads and you think "sky" is an internal organ.  Words have meaning and making up random new meaning to established definitions doesn't aid in communication. "Legal tender" has a very specific meaning under the law.  Note "money", "currency", and "legal tender" are not the same thing. There really is no point in continuing if you are just going to "mint" your own definitions to already defined terms.

I say everyone knows the statute is minted to ohms law based on the gravitational pull of the buoyancy proletariat.   Please provide a counter viewpoint with gates from reputable planks.

Um wouldn't that just highlight the utter waste of time.    I "worked" for 140 hours and racked up a whole $0.21 worth of currency.

I could see something a game like Second Life do this although there would be no "x coins" per server.  People could take or add funds to the game server at will.  The game developer could profit via "BTC sinks" things like land deeds which can only be bought from the developer which pull real money (BTC) out of the game system into the development company coffers.

Close but not exactly.  Bitcoin uses ECDSA specifically curve SECP256K1.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Secp256k1

The private key is a random 256 bit number.  The private key is combined with the SECP256K1 curve to produce the public key.  There is no hashing involved in the generation of the public key.  The public key is a 512 bit value (unless compressed but lets save that for another day) which represents a point (256 bit x value, 256 bit y value) on the SECP256K1 curve.  The math behind Elliptical Curve Cryptography is complex but the strength comes from the fact that if you have the private key and the curve (public knowledge) you can generate the public key easily but if you only have the public key you can't determine the private key because it would be computationally infeasible.

As an extra level of security (and to prevent things like typos) the public key is then double hashed and a checksum generated.  The 8 bits representing the version number (reason most Bitcoin address begin with 1 = version number), the 160 bit hash and 32 bit checksum are concatenated to form public address.  The public address (simply a 200 bit number) is formatted using Base58 to make it more compact.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_Bitcoin_addresses

Private Key - Random 256bit number
Public Key - Produced from Private key using ECC
Public Address - RIPEMD160(SHA256(public key)) combined with version number and checksum



Knowledge of the public address won't give you the public key but even if you have the public key you won't be able to determine the private key due to the one way nature of ECDA keypairs.

Public Key -> Public Address = trivially easy
Public Address -> Public Key = protected by the one way nature of RIPEMD160 & SHA256 hashing functions

Private Key -> Public Key = trivially easy
Public Key -> Private Key = protected by the one way nature of ECC


A transaction consists of multiple inputs and multiple outputs.  Unspent outputs of prior tx become the inputs for new txs.  The tx hash identifies the tx but it doesn't identify which unspent output from that tx is being used.  The index identifies the specific output (first one, second first, 23rd one, etc).

Um.  Not sure if your are serious?  In the US legal tender is established by legal statute. 

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5103

This isn't a matter for debate.  It is an absolute fact.  Gold isn't legal tender, silver isn't legal tender, Disney dollars aren't legal tender, Bitcoin isn't legal tender.

Lying (even by omission) about the legal tender status of something which isn't legal tender can in any way be lawful.   The very definition of the word LEGAL tender meaning established by LAW.  You can't pass something off as legal tender.  It is either legal tender because the law makes it so by decree or it isn't.

Legal tender =/= currency.

Bitcoin could become insanely popular, maybe the most popular alternative currency in the world but that wouldn't make it legal tender in the United States unless Congress (and only Congress) passed laws declaring it so.  One can advocate for alternative currencies taking a right turn into legal dead end.  It does nobody any good to lie or pretend Bitcoin is somehow legal tender.  It absolutely isn't (and probably never will be, at least not in the US).

Of course it is debatable.  It was debated in court and he lost.  A jury believed it was his intent not establish an alternative currency but to counterfeit US currency.  The lesson to take from that (combined with the lack of legal challenges for Ithica dollars or say facebook credits) is to make damn sure you currency won't be mistaken for US currency AND certainly don't do something stupid like pretend it is legal tender when it isn't.

The liberty dollar case is a poor one to draw a larger legal view on alternative currencies.  Liberty dollar was about counterfeiting.  Based on both the actual coins, the defendants own internal docs, and testimony of affiliates the goal was to pass the coins off as legal tender.  It as highly profitable to confuse the public into accepting the coins as US legal tender when making change.  Why was it profitable?  Because the coins were sold to merchants at below face value (sometimes as little as 50% off face value) who then profited everytime a consumer accepting one even in confusion. Ever heard of a currency you can buy "on sale" from the issuer?  Wait why would they sell the coins below face value especially since they were backed by precious metals?  Well depending on when the coin was minted they generally had only 30% to 60% of the face value in precious metals at the time of minting.  i.e. a $10 coin might only have $3 in silver.  The mint marked it up to say $5 to the merchant who then passed it off on a consumer as a $10 in value.  Everyone wins except the consumer who ended up paying $10 for non legal tender worth about $3 spot unless they could find a sucker willing to give them more.



Honestly what is your first reaction when you see these coins.  Imagine someone just handed one to you with your other change or offered a silver ten dollar (ommiting the word liberty) instead of a paper ten dollar.

Names of states, "lady liberty", "in god we trust",

BTW here is a "Liberty Dollar" issued by US Mint in 1922.  Look strangely familiar.


There have been many alternative currencies which didn't face legal challenge.  Ithaca Hours for has printed millions of dollars in notes for over twenty years without legal challenge.  Then again nobody would confuse this ....

with this ...

The begging is worse than the raging.  No seriously.  The raging was at least interesting in a crazy guy on the street kind of way. 

$100,000 on forum software are you guys insane?

What an asinine waste of money.  Sure the forum needs better software, maybe a dedicated server, possibly better database backend etc.  Hopefully SOME of the funds will be used for that in an intelligent and planned fashion over the coming year (not yeah we are rich lets buy a bunch of random expensive crap).  Still you can't possible think this forum needs $100,000 in hardware and software upgrades.  So regardless there is some portion of those funds which the forum couldn't possibly use this year and probably would be based to store securely for the long run.  theymos said something about cold storage of ~2,000 BTC.  Not lock up every penny and never spend anything to improve anything. 

I mean how can that seem like a bad idea to you?

No you can't cause you can't see the off exchange volume.

Anyone who values something by its nominal price doesn't have enough funds to move the market anywhere.  It would be like saying Apple stock is expensive but if Apple did a 100:1 split it would be an amazing buy.  If people say BTC is too expensive try selling them some mBTC.  mBTC are going for the low price of ~$0.20 per mBTC.  They just need to switch their client to mBTC mode in the dropdown to get in on this better value coin.

Hundreds of BTC ... now that is some large action.  If they can't move those coins tell them to contact me.  I need some regulars looking to unload 10K-20K a week and I then I might be able to meet demand without outages.  Probably not smart to mix whiskey with posting but if you aren't thinking on the scale of buyers who can pickup ten thousand coins a week, every week nonstop since June, well you are thinking way too small. Hint: it is happening everyday.  Coins moving from people looking for a quick payday to those making strategic acquisitions.


BTW no insult intended your technical chart and other metrics look about as good as anyone else's I just thought the above quotes were interesting given my somewhat unique view of off-exchange activity.  Also none of this should be taken as a sign the market can't go down.  The market goes where it wants to go and I don't trade just arbitrage.

Energy density matters.  Xbox360 GPU consumed about 100W from a square area the size of your smallest fingernail.  Each of the 80 SHA256 processors consumes about 2W and combined they are spread out over the surface area of a small book.  Comparing the cooling requirements isn't exactly apples to apples.

I don't get where this idea that ASICs means hundred thousand dollar hashing farms?

Avalon makes a $1500 unit.  BFL has 3 different sized ASICs under $1500.  Try building a multi GPU rig for under $1500. Obviously ROIC is based on the capital invested but I don't see how/why a $150,000 ASIC investment is going to have a higher % return than a $1,500 or even $150 one.  Honestly today you aren't going to make more than token few bitcents with anything other than a high end dedicated multi-GPU rig.  My rigs (offline now) are quad 5970, 1250W custom built rigs.  The amount of time, and capital goes way beyond a $1,500 investment.  

Still mining is old and becoming a commodity business.  All hashes are the same, there is no brand differentiation or barriers to entry.  The margins are going to get smaller and smaller and smaller.  It has been done and perfected.  The whole rest of the economy is an almost empty canvas.  All it takes is a little creativity.  Think the inventor of Satoshi's Dice wishes he had spent more time mining a few low margin bitcents out instead of wasting his time building that site which generated a half million in profit in six months?

This absolutely no reason to take the risk with anything less.  multi-key escrow, trusted  keyholders, no fees, 100% public accounting.

Almost.  There is no such thing as signing it to claim the reward.  The unspent output of the coinbase tx is available to the private key holder of coinbase tx once the block is validated* just like any other transaction.  You don't need to claim transactions Bitcoin is a push technology.  If you are the recipient of a tx you have the coins (even if you don't want them).  Remember the blockchain is simply a ledger of the current status and history of the minted coins.  As soon as that history is updated (new block created and validated) all nodes instantly "know" you have the coins.

Take this coinbase tx for example.
http://blockchain.info/tx/1779421745deee5ba44b40a36405e151adcbe64913c0cd617067db28858e653c

25 BTC was generated out of thin air and 0.24561883 BTD in tx fees collected.  The output of the tx (25.24561883 BTC) matches those combined values.  Other nodes will verify that the output of the coinbase matches what is expected (current subsidy + fees).  The 25.24561883 was transfered to the list of addresses you see.  There is nothing to "claim", nothing the receivers need to do.  The owners of those private keys have the coins simply by the existence of this coinbase tx.

Now take the address 13CnZaL3AwZrFwKdyi4TokHbz1VTajpoDa (the first output) for example.  This address received an unspent output worth 0.70738238 BTC.  If the holder of the private key wanted to transfer it (and spending is simply a transfer of ownership) he would create a tx which has this unspent outputs as the input of the new tx, the output would be the intended recipient's addresse(s) and the tx would be signed by the private key for address 13CnZaL3AwZrFwKdyi4TokHbz1VTajpoDa.  

Each address has a corresponding public & private ECDSA keypair .   The address is the checksummed hash of the public key.  It includes the version identifier, the RIPEMD-160 & SHA-256 double hash of the public key and a 32 bit checksum.   To transfer ownership of coins (and spending is merely transfering coins), you sign the unspent output of an address you control with the corresponding private key. Your wallet.dat among other things is a collection of private keys for your addresses which is why it needs to be kept secure.  He who controls the private key controls the coins. 

* Technically newly minted coins can't be spent for 120 blocks.

On edit: Damn Danny is fast, beat me again.

Coinbase tx has a special structure.  There is NO prior output.  The coins are minted from nothing.

Input:
Previous tx: - Null
Index: IIRC it is 0 but it isn't checked.  The tx index value of a null output is kinda irrelevant.
scriptSig: - There is no script sig for coinbase tx.  In its place is the coinbase parameter which is used to store the exta-nonce among other things.  It can contain arbitrary data and isn't parsed by the network.

Since no tx except the coinbase can contain a null prior tx (think the first node in a linked list) the coinbase can be identified by the tx which has no prior tx value.  If more or less than one tx in the block has a null prior tx value then the block is invalid.  A block must contain exactly one coinbase.

The coins don't come from anywhere.  They simply never existed prior to the block and they exist (as unspent outputs at the address(es) in the output of coinbase tx) once the block is added to the blockchain.

There is no pool or account with all of the not yet unminted coins which slowly decrements as miners mint them if that is what you are thinking.   You can't trace back further than the coinbase.  The input tx is simply null.