My estimation of probability over a ten year period;

65%    - some large govt makes makes it illegal (eg US, China, EU)
5%      - exploit in protocol (unlikely)
15%    - exploit in deployed code (likely)
75%    - a better (more features) coin appears that makes people switch
50%    - another GOX security breach
80%    - SR gets taken down by the fed
6%      - 51% attack
5%      - coordinated cyberwarfare by funded opponent (governments).
8%    - people finally discover how hard it is to hold on to their coins in face of determined hackers

This is not based on any data and is only my opinion.

Certainty?

If monitor is not working properly on two different computers then I would suggest it is a hardware issue.

I think that last years $31 is very unlikely to be bitcoins all time high. I would expect that it will be surpassed within the next few years.

This site has some info on currently connected nodes;

http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk

Also, this is a good site for info on network activity;

http://www.blockchain.info

There was a news story recently where a bunch of traders were ddos'ing news sites to stop the flow of information and give them an advantage in the market.

Could that be what happen here?

I have been thinking about an idea that is similar to this.

The concept is to have a max chain size that grows according to Moores Law, so that over time the max chain size gets larger.

When a chain reaches the max chain size a chain split occurs, the user is prompted if they wish to maintain both chains or just one of the the sub chains.

The chains exist at the leafs of the tree much in the same way as the proposal you mention.

Transactions occur in two steps, the output phase of the transaction and the input phase. This will facilitate inter-chain transaction.

Each client only receives input out output transaction for the chains they are maintaining.

Mining occurs at the the node junctions and all hashes must be mined to the root node to become a valid part of the tree.

ENTP

You should have a poll.

Hi Meni,

Yep, that's the thread I was referring too.

The first page and a half is talking about the size of the blockchain which I agree there is a solution too. The rest of the thread talk about other potential problems of scaling.

I just tried to change the poll options so that people can change their votes but it wont let me do it.

It's the bandwidth and processing requirements of transactions that's going to be the problem.

I have added a sixth option for you.

In the future the resource requirements of running the full client will be out of reach of the general user.

What's the reason, dad?

This poll is inspired by a debate I had on another thread recently.

As the resource requirements of running the bitcoin client continue to increase, fewer and fewer people will be running a full node. I think that in the future most people will use an online wallet or run a thin client that connects to a third party service.

I personally find that need to use a third party takes away some of the freedom of bitcoin and I long for the development of a scalable protocol.

But, what do you think?

Where's the option for alternative cryptocurrency will supersede bitcoin?

Looks good, I think the computer game industry will be one of the first mainstream sectors to adopt bitcoin. In the near future I think we will see bitcoin integrated into the games themselves.

It's 'btccharts.com' that's down.

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Comboy said it would be back soon, I wouldn't call six months soon but it is nice to see it back. I wounder why he hasn't announced it on the forum yet?