trying to cross compile bytecoin right now

I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all

PoS security is heavily dependent on timestamping -- you can have lower PoW, you just need to ignore the PoW timestamping in the PoS system.  Of course, this involves more than changing 10 lines of code.

PeerCoin is still pretty mangled, I bought it because it's the first implementation of Proof of Stake and because the reward algorithm constricts inflation when ASICs hit the network.  I predicted this correctly and profited off of it.

PeerCoin isn't breaking because (a) strong Proof of Work still exists and (b) centralized checkpointing.  You're welcome to go through the #bitcoin-wizards logs and read all the statements from people smarter than me tearing PeerCoin's PoS apart.

Doublespending hasn't happened because no one has written a client to do it yet, I suspect.  Additionally, it will be difficulty to doublespend if rat4 and friends are sitting on most of the BlackCoin themselves.

You get a different idea of the valuation of cryptocurrencies reading the commit log on github than you do from the pump and dump squad over in Announcements (Altcoins).  The only proof we have from high trading volume is that BlackCoin is the pump and dump of the month.

Observe case in which cartel using modified client agree to mine a chain in secret alongside the main chain, and to double spend at an agreed time.

For this cartel, there are almost no consequences for a double spend.  In the best case, they get their block reward and can double spend freely.  In the worst case, they perhaps miss their miniscule stake reward which is set at 1% a year, but still get to keep their accumulated coin age.  In the case of BlackCoin, this is even more severe as there is no upper limit to the influence of coinage on the ability to mine a block (whereas PeerCoin sets it to 90 days).

It's a case now of whoever gets to do the first doublespend on the BlackCoin network basically wins all the BTC in the buy orders, and the rest of everyone will be left being bagholders.

Bizarrely, rat4 set about breaking MintCoin which improperly implemented low reward PoW on top of PeerCoin PoS protocol while not bothering to address or fix any of the problems inherent in his own protocol.

Sunny King "fixed" this with centralized checkpointing.

BlackCoin has no real value above PeerCoin, and probably less of a value than even nxt... to be fair it probably made rat4 and friends a fat paycheck though.

1) Direct port from PeerCoin, some of the parameters are tweaked a little (eg timestamps only valid for blocks within 10 min into future rather than 2 h).
2) Yes.
3) No.

rat4 insists the "nothing at stake" problem doesn't exist, which it won't until people start collaborating with each other and double spending.

Well, with (2) it's more like, "you can't see anything that's going on, you just know what your account balance is."  ZeroCash is using zero-knowledge proofs at every step to generate and send coins, so you can't really see anything going on in the network in terms of inputs and outputs -- you can just verify whether or not it's valid.

So you end up with the situation where if someone found some kind of bug to exploit the system, you wouldn't be able to detect it.

With ByteCoin you can have someone's address and still not know at all if coins are being sent to them or sent by them.

I wouldn't say anonymous (users can see where things are going and what amounts) but rather strong privacy -- stealth addressing ensures no address reuse and impossibility of linking addresses to individuals without their private keys, the multisig ring signature scheme makes it difficult to see where transactions originated from.

ZeroCash is totally anonymous, but the downside to that scheme is that people can't observe inflation if there is a bug in the program etc

WTB 12 million BCN for 1 BTC

Just a head's up; no newsletter this week.  Still dealing with irl issues beyond my control.

Should be back on track by the month end or shorter.

Coin reward is halving next year, whereas Bitcoin coin reward isn't.

As Bitcoin price went fairly berserk the year after its reward halved, I wouldn't be surprised if Litecoin did the same thing.

Look at this and set the scale from liner to log (bottom left button): http://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/price-btc-ltc.html

You'll see that Litecoin (and Peercoin) appear to behave in 8 month cycles with sharp increases in price followed by relative price stability,  We're approaching the end of one of these cycles at the end of this summer.

And I wouldn't be surprised... ASICs are coming en masse to restrict supply, plus block reward halving.

I will publish some simple software to calculate capital gains and income from mining soon, for both the US and Canada.  Hopefully it'll help someone, and someone will help me get bugs out of it.

These aren't allowed on ebay

^^ You're right, it's almost 32

2011-06-08 00:00:00   23.9999   31.9099   22.2135   29.6   104925.16   2858820.38   27.25

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

In 2011, after the first major bubble, the price went from $35 to $2.  The corresponding drop from the peak of $1,200 would be $68.57, but it's likely that the trough will be higher this time due to more widespread knowledge of cryptocurrencies.

^^ Yes.  The only people right now who would do this would have to have bought in above the current price to be able to claim losses.

Of course with the US the way it is for capital gains (<12 months held means you pay double taxes because they're short term capital gains), even people who lost substantially will be cautious about selling now if they believe the price will eventually rise, because you reset the capital gains counter on your coins if you do that.

They're not.  Even if you ask for an extension, you still have to pay ALL of your estimated liabilities on the 15th.  If you're found to have overpaid after you formally file later, you'll get refunded.  If you underpay, you need to pay heavy penalties on what you've yet to pay.

You can get an extended payment plan if you've already filed and everything is in order, but as the IRS only just released their notice a month ago probably few people have done so.

If you need money to pay the IRS, it doesn't really matter -- late penalties are worse than what you'll be facing in short/long term capital gains tax.  If you made money in 2013 on capital gains, it needs to be paid to the IRS now.

No surprises here.

US income and capital gains tax is due on Tuesday for individuals.

Anyone buying or selling in 2013 has to pay it -- which means that there's tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money the IRS is waiting for.  Those USD have to come from somewhere, so everyone is liquidating while they still can if they have suspected tax bills coming up.

Probably April 14th or 15th will be the best day to buy Bitcoins in recent history.

ssh isn't vulnerable
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/55076/what-should-a-website-operator-do-about-the-heartbleed-openssl-exploit

but you should maybe regenerate your key pairs in case a server using openssl somehow leaked them