It is just hillarious to see one piece of scammer garbage trying to steal from another piece of scammer garbage.

"Two scammers enter ... one scammer leaves".

Based on the poll choices, no possibility of going down?  Hang on a second let me take out a second mortgage real quick.

er wait you believe 90%+ of coins minted will be lost?  Did you have any historical references to back that up?  I mean has 90%+ of gold been lost?  90%+ of printed currency lost?

On edit:  Ignore.  I can't read.

Well lots of people will buy bonds at negative interest rates.

Say you are a company in China and you send a cargo ship worth of Chinese junk to the US.  You are paid with a $20 million bank wire.  Your choices are leave it in a Chinese bank, convert it to Yuan, and buy Treasury bonds.   There is no FDIC equivelent in China so leaving $20M in a Chinese bank is riskier than T-bonds so if you don't need that capital right now putting it in a T-bond is a safe(r) place to park it.  

Now lets say you have your bank exchange it for Yuan.  No what is the bank going to do with $20M USD.  Due to currency import/export controls in China there is limited access to USD.  So the bank likely will buy T-bonds to "park" the money.   Of course a small bank might exchange it for Yuan with a larger bank who might exchange it at an even larger bank and an even larger bank all the way up to the Central bank of China.  Now what is the Central bank of China going to do with $20M USD?  Request it be delivered in $10 and $20 on a shipping pallet?  Nope they will park it into .... yup T-bonds.

TL/DR:
Think of negative real interest rates as a holding fee.   If you had $20M in Gold and wanted to keep it safe you likely would pay a depository to hold your gold for you.  You might pay 0.5% to 1% per year in order to protect your gold from theft or loss.  For those with LOTS (i.e. tens of millions or billions) of dollars there really is nowhere to "park" it other than in a treasury bond.  So even when the FED drives rates downs these institutional and governmental holders of dollars will still keep buying T-bonds and supply vs demand it will drive interest rates negative.

Lots of uses ...

Doorstop.
Improvised blunt force weapon.
Paperweight.
B Movie sci-fi prop
Space heater

To the OP.  The "Application Specific" part of "Applications Specific Integrated Circuit" means exactly what it sounds like. The chip is designed to do one thing and one thing only.  On one hand that makes it cheaper, faster, and more efficient than using general purpose hardware, on the other hand it means it does one thing and one thing only.

In this case the application is performing a double hash of a block header (fix size binary value) where one part of the value to be hashed is a 32 bit integer and you wish to increment it from 0 to 2^32, locating the inputs which produce a hash smaller than a target value.  If you know anything else that would benefit from that well it could be used to do "that" also.

Um I thought it was common knowledge that GDP numbers are indexed for inflation.  When someone says we project growth to be 3% it is 3% in real (economic use of the word) terms, as in 3% adjusted for inflation/deflation.  Also govt spending is included in GDP however taxes means money the private sector can't spend thus it isn't like you can simply boost GDP by collecting taxes and buying $78,000 toilet seats (as an example).  Without that extra taxes the private sector would have retained the $78,000 and spent it on other goods and services.

The largest contributor to GDP growth is productivity.  GDP measures more than just productivity increases because it also measures efficiency (or inefficiency caused by govt interference) in the economy.  Inefficiency being the economy growing slower than its potential due to as an example high unemployment.  Still productivity is the basis for all wealth and represents the lions share of GDP growth over any large period of time.  We can only do some much labor (both as an individual and collectively as a species) technologies and processes which improve the efficiency of labor produce wealth (collectively).  Everything else merely shifts it around.  Humans are more wealthy (on average) today compared to say 1800 because productivity increases have resulted in the average human being able to produce significantly more from the same amount of labor.

In other assets you either need to show proof of the exact unit being sold or they are treated first in, first out.

Now technically if you didn't use a shared wallet, and only sent funds to MtGox when you intended to sell the entire batch you could (through coin selection) choose which coins to sell and thus pick your basis.  Not sure I would want to be the one trying to explain all that to the IRS for the first time so FIFO is likely your best bet.

FIFO - First In First Out.
Buy 100 BTC @ $5
Buy 100 BTC @ $7
Buy 100 BTC @ $9
Buy 100 BTC @ $11.

Sell 250 BTC for $13. 
The Basis for the 250 BTC is (100*5 + 100*7 + 50*9)/250 = $6.60.
Gain is ($13.00 - $6.60) * 250 BTC = $1,600.

Note in any capital gain scenario good records are required.  In the above example your remaining 150 BTC would be 50 BTC @ $9 and 100 BTC @ $11. You would need to keep a running tally of all purchases, date, and purchase prices, then all the sales and which (in order) basis they used. 

The good news is there is software like gainskeeper which does all this for you in equity txs.   If Bitcoin gets big enough I am sure they will add a BTC module.

It is beyond my needs but interesting that switches are using HDMI as stacking connectivity.  Makes sense as it is a high bandwidth protocol with cheap production costs and easy access to cables.  Better than most proprietary designs.

Been a long time since I did hardware IT but I remember stacking switches using proprietary cables (no two brands used the same ones) which cost $50 to $200 just for a non-standard wire.  Worse suppliers often changed the stacking interconnects every couple years making expansion a nightmare. Things have gotten better.  Suprised Dell was willing to give up the "super duper high speed cable for $200" market though.

Anyways semi OT but it is a free bump.

Well a partnership makes it a lot easier to raise capital.  A small business can be quite a capital sink.  Unless you have the hundreds of thousands of dollars you can personally lose it can be very difficult to expand without either a partnership, LLC, or corporate structure.  Given the success rate of a small biz simply having $100K+ isn't sufficient the startup capital has to be a small enough % of one's net worth that a complete loss (which is probable even likely) won't be damaging.  

There aren't that many people with millions of spare dollars just laying around who suddenly also happen to come up with a great idea, and have the entrepreneurial spirit so they can startup a brand new company hire talent for pure salary only, and keep all ownership and management decisions to themselves.

There is a reason why "joint venture" structures (LLC, Corporations, Partnerships) exist.  Still your larger point is a good one.  Know your partners completely and don't take on more than you absolutely need.  The more owners there are the more complicated it gets.

Given you haven't provided any specs, details, anything it is just rhetorical/academic but please don't provide no worthless mining bonds (which seems to be what you are intended to offer).  I would point out to anyone who may not realize that with a mining bond one doesn't even need the hardware.  Just price them at a point where you guestimate the bond will be worthless long before you paid out more in dividends then you collected on face.  Given global hashpower only rises it is a pretty safe bet.

If you want to run a mining company then run a mining company.  i.e. a registered corporations with officers and directors on file (and subject to real prison for fraud).  Pay your taxes, open books, the whole nine yards.  You know real business.  Come up with a real business plan and at least a prototype which shows you can achieve the hash/$ and hash/J necessary to compete.

Anything less is just a tired scam in a long series of already been done scams.

Assumming Enterpoint is legit and the tech is solid I don't see an issue as long as their share of total hashrate is relatively low (say 10%).  Now if they reach a point where they are >50% of even close (say 38% of network hashrate) that is bearish IMHO.

If Bitcoin grows large enough and mainstream enough it is inevitable that there will be first privately held and then publicly traded professional mining companies.  By professional I mean a registered and licensed business operating very large operations in company owned warehouse with low energy and cooling costs.  Professional as in full time staff, security, insurance, fire supression gear, etc.

Will it be Enterpoint or next year?  Who knows but it will happen eventually.

While some blocks may be 512KB that vast majority aren't.

If the average tx is ~512 bytes then 1 MB = 2000 tx per block.  24 * 6 * 2,000 = 288,000 tx per day.  That is roughly 7x to 8x current volume. 

The purpose of the hard fork is to ensure the network doesn't explode out of control due to a bug, unknown spam vulnerability.  Imagine if someone found a flaw in the spam rules and was able to spam 80 TB of tx.  Ooops.  Sorry new users you need to download 80 TB or you can't join Bitcoin.   Likewise if there was no max block size one could simply mine their own 1 GB blocks and even with only 1% of the network could add one or two of these every single day.  First year blockchain size = 1GB * (24*6*365*1%) = 525 GB (plus real tx volume).

The hard fork will be made in time but it will be a planned transition where miners vote by indicating their support in a flag in the block header.  Once some large (80%?) of miners support the new larger blocks and clients supporting the new blocks have been out a hardcoded date can be added to the client (i.e. 10MB blocks are supported starting in block 400,001).

Not sure the dust constant needs to be changed BUT I do like replacing hard coded literal values with constants.

Thanks.  Updated my post.

My phone was able to read that.

Adress beginning with 1Geb3w......


Looks like an issue with your phone.  Does it scan other QR codes without issue?  Does it have problem with some barcodes?  The library may be incomplete it may have problems with certain QR code versions.

While a currency designed for micro-transactions would have some value Litecoin isn't it.  The number of decimal places isn't a real constraint.  Even if BTC was worth $100,000 USD:BTC it would still have precision down to 1/10th of a US cent.  

Litecoin is an almost direct copy of Bitcoin.  It has a shorter block interval, larger max, and a different hashing algorithm however these aren't material changes.   Nobody will care how/why the network is secure just that it is secure.  The shorter interval only matters on the first confirmation and 2.5 min vs 10.00 min doesn't facilitate realtime transactions.    The different hashing algorithm makes it worse for microtransactions.  Microtransactions implies lower value and thus lower fee value.  Having an independent hashing algorithm makes means the operating cost for the network can't be shared with other chains.

A currency designed from the ground up for micro-transactions could carve out a niche but Litecoin isn't that currency.

Something incorporation the following would be interesting:
a) very short block time (say 30 seconds?  some experimentation and testing would be required)
b) periodic ledger blocks (at say  to allow the tail of the blockchain to be discarded)
c) merged mining (to reduce operating costs)
d) low fixed fee structure
e) flat block reward (subsidy is x coins - fees)

NotHaus did get his due process he was charged, tried, and convicted of counterfeiting US currency but don't let facts get in the way of a good rant.  It was NORFED self described purpose to overthrow the Federal Reserve and IRS by subverting the US money supply through the injection of alternatives using deception and covert means.

While "terrorist" is a stretch in my book it is not very hard to see why he would end up on the FBI and Secret Service radar.

He was never charged with anything related to terrorism.  He was charged with counterfeiting US currency.  Tried and convicted and it was a pretty open and shut case.  It had nothing to do with creating a currency and everything to do with fraud.

So the takeaway is that anyone producing physical bitcoins should be very careful to ensure there is no likeness (intentional or otherwise) with US currency.   The use of $, "dollars",  "US", "In God we trust", and other currency emblems and icons should be avoided.  Things like "lady liberty", the "bald eagle", "stars & stripes", depictions of US landmarks (capital building, lincoln memorial) or persons used in current or out of circulation US currency are likely a foolish risk.

Making a bitcoin which looks like this for example would probably not be a good idea.  Attempting to pass it off as US currency to unsuspecting customers would be an even worse idea.  Nothaus did both.


To date I haven't seen any physical bitcoins (paper or coin) which could possibly be confused with US currency.  That is a good thing.

Well no it is obvious that NotHaus was counterfeiting.  Sales were low so he used similar designs and false marketing in order to move more product.  IIRC in the trial one many of his merchants testified and presented sales docs where NORFED indicated that they could move more coins if they simply gave them as change without explanation.  A significant portion of the consumers would assume they were US currency.  Since merchants could buy the "money" at a discount to face value everyone wins.   Generally speaking if you pass off your currency as US currency it is counterfeiting.    

If NotHaus is your anti-FED hero well you need to pick better heroes.  Did you know the "Liberty Dollars" were inflationary.   They contained less than face value of silver and as the value of silver rose the coins became more and more debased. Greed pure and simple.

The fed being bad doesn't make NotHaus good.

It is an interesting legal situation though.   I guess worse case scenario coins holders would melt them down and get melt value for them.  Then again many paid huge huge premiums to melt value so they would be looking at a large (although not complete) loss.

Wait can those charts be right?

Market cap of PPC is ~4K BTC @ ~0.0004 BTC per PPC.  So roughly 10 million PPC minted?  2 million were minted in one day?  So 20% of the market cap was produced 2 days after the project launched?