OK, I cannot find an explanation of how a decentralized exchange would work in this thread. The OP said it works by magic. lol
Seriously though, I don't really see the need for a decentralized exchange if we have a Pricecoin that monitors price of Bitcoin (and possibly other fungible commodities) and algorithmically analyzes price fluctuations, then exchanges would be used for trading, but not leveraged speculation and HST. I think it would boost price confidence and utility of cryptocurrencies.
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I don't see a big advantage over using an escrow service. There are rules of conduct and dispute resolution that way. Besides you don't have just one point of trust (the fiatcoin issuer) but you must also trust the exchange that is handling two decentralized currencies. That requires twice as much faith because there is plausible deniability on both ends of the transaction. If you mix multiple currencies you could end up with a very messy exchange.
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The network and trading can be completely decentralized but the handling of fiat never can be.
Imagine if a trusted third party issued a coin called USDCoin (likely you wouldn't want to use that name). One USDCoin could be redeemed for $1 USD by the issuer.
Would this hypothetical USDCoin be a cryptocurrency? If so who would peg the value to $1 and how would they do that? Once enough USDCoins were purchased you would have fully digital manifestation of fiat money (technically money substitute).
I follow you so far. You now have some USDCoins. If you wanted to sell coins you could then use the decentralized exchange to trade Bitcoins for USDCoins.
OK so now with your USDCoins you are buying Bitcoins, I think. When you had enough USDCoins you would "cashout" via the originator website (ACH, check, wire transfer, western union, etc) and the USDCoins would be destroyed.
I'm guessing you mean enough Bitcoins instead of USDCoins, or maybe you mean you have extra USDCoins left. Then you go back to fiat currency with those USDCoins. Now in that example there is a single fiat coin but technically the decentralized exchange could handle multiple fiat currency tokens issued by multiple exchanges (which would simply convert USD to USD token and USD tokens back into USD). The same mechanism could be used to trade silver/gold/other metals, even things like SPDR shares, debt/bonds, etc.
Obviously the USD "token" would only be as good as the exchange (maybe moneychanger is better term) that issued it.
I'm not clear of the utility of this procedure? Who is this USDCoin issuer? Is it an exchange? How is this USDCoin different than Dwolla and MtGox? How do we know they will buy back their USDCoins when the person stuck with them in the trade wants to cash them in?
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Ha! I hadn't read it yet because I didn't realize it was Time.com. Nicely written. Provocative and eloquent. The more governments squeeze the Internet in an attempt to control information, the more it will turn to sand around their fingers.
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Right, a 51% attack would only benefit the attacker if someone was dumb enough to trust them with a large transaction. I doubt they would bother with a small transaction. Rather than 'blacklisting' addresses it is simple enough to 'whitelist' or rather 'greenlist' addresses from trusted sources for larger transactions. 51% = 100% control over blockchain. Why try steal 1M BTC when you can steal 100 BTC per transaction over 10,000 transactions? You going to whitelist every transaction big or small from now till the end of time? There's enough variance that an attacker will not be able to sustain an attack indefinitely with only 51%. This has been discussed ad nauseum. Besides, whitelisting can be automated so it may someday become the norm, at least for large transactions. Once again with 51% (or whatever comfortable margin you feel is necessary) whitelisting is useless. Why reverse a single 1M transaction when you can just as easily reverse 10,000 100BTC transactions. With 55% hashing power the attacker has a 99.99% chance of having longest chain after 340 blocks. With 60% hashing power is it only 89 blocks to give the defenders less than 1 in 1000 chance of preventing a reversal. With 52% of hashing power just jumps to 700 blocks and with 51% it is 2411 blocks. Not sure where you get the idea that can attacker couldn't sustain the attack. Most of the cost would be an capital expenditure once spent the ongoing electrical cost would be modest. 340 blocks is <3 days. Even 2411 blocks is <16 days. It will be interesting to see how a 51% attack actually plays out. It's all theory for the moment. It would take a large entity to do this, but there is more than one large entity out there. Probably several. If they were discovered, it's doubtful that their identity would remain unknown and there would be offline repercussions. On that note, Casascius has even shown that Bitcoin can be traded offline entirely if necessary. If there are ever Bitcoin Network wars unleashed by the major superpowers, we may be conscripted to fire up our GPUs to fight.
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Personally, I feel Bitcoin will become the de facto trading currency, whilst gold becomes the dominant "saving" currency. But I could be wrong.
There are so many wonderful uses for gold that will improve the quality of life for mankind. I hope one day we are not still hoarding it like Magpies.
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The country idea is not new......... but the govt dont have to start or support them, they can stand on their own.
bitcoin -- gold crypto litecoin -- silver crypto
rucoin iraqcoin ukcoin chinacoin usacoin francoin etc
I think the OP was talking about an actual real country officially adopting a cryptocurrency. That hasn't happened yet. Otherwise they just Bitcoin wannabees.
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Right, a 51% attack would only benefit the attacker if someone was dumb enough to trust them with a large transaction. I doubt they would bother with a small transaction. Rather than 'blacklisting' addresses it is simple enough to 'whitelist' or rather 'greenlist' addresses from trusted sources for larger transactions. 51% = 100% control over blockchain. Why try steal 1M BTC when you can steal 100 BTC per transaction over 10,000 transactions? You going to whitelist every transaction big or small from now till the end of time? There's enough variance that an attacker will not be able to sustain an attack indefinitely with only 51%. This has been discussed ad nauseum. Besides, whitelisting can be automated so it may someday become the norm, at least for large transactions.
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An anonymous contract? That would be an interesting document to try to take to court. It might work for a business like Silk Road. It might reduce the overhead on dark-nets.
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I'm glad no one is worried about a 51% attack being used to perform a double spend.
Everyone is still worried about a 51% attacked being used as FUD. That brings a question to mind, how would we stop a 90% attack? If we can't then what's the difference in worrying about a 51% attack versus a 90% attack? Other than 39%
Right, a 51% attack would only benefit the attacker if someone was dumb enough to trust them with a large transaction. I doubt they would bother with a small transaction. Rather than 'blacklisting' addresses it is simple enough to 'whitelist' or rather 'greenlist' addresses from trusted sources for larger transactions.
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With a decentralized exchange cryoto-currency, any exchange or client can report data on bitcoin value which will be statistically analyzed.
Lets say Sally trades with Tom her fiat cash for bitcoin. Tom then sends bitcoin to Sally and inputs a "value" field of x AUD. This data is sent to an alternate cryptocurrency well call for the moment pricecoin. Later when Tom wants to sell Bitcoin he can get the current price of Bitcoin or any other commodity or stock that is traded and reported this way for Bitcoin.
The Pricecoind.exe client collects all the data it can from nearby nodes and statistically analyzes the price to find the median price and compares it to the variance of previous blocks to find the new mean price. Each client will be doing this statistically and reporting prices which will cancel extreme highs and lows (unless there is statistical significance to include them). Prices will still fluctuate based on consistent trends rather than a few individual HSTs. This would stabilize Bitcoin immensely.
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If a country started an alternate block chain that is compatible with my system I would join their pool if there was financial incentive for me to do so. If the entire world would support any country willing to use a cyptocurrency, it would create strong alliances among the common people instead of just nations. OTOH, if a country tries to operate a closed system LAN type cryptocurrency, then it will just be a bank based fiat currency.
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If you're going to spend money on something, make it audio. A good lavalier or shotgun mic will make the sound much clearer and the whole video more enjoyable. If you input to your lockdown camera, you'll have a good A source to edit to. Cutaways can be photos, stills, or a second camcorder if you have one.
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does anyone actually think there is a limit to how much each coin could rise?
Theoretically bitcoin could replace all existing currencies. No one really knows how much wealth there is in the world, but Ill take some guesstimate I got off google that puts the total around 2500 trillion dollars (long scale trillion, so 10 18 ). IOW, 21 million bitcoins could be worth that much. That gives around $100 billion (current value) per bitcoin. But Ill settle for just a 1/1000 of that . It could also be adapted by the Solar Federation to be used galaxy-wide. Or maybe not.
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Just wondering how the project is progressing?
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I think Bitcoins will make the world a better place.
It will. One way or the other.
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If every person alive in New York City (8 million) gave you one, and the value of Bitcoin returned to it's record high, you still wouldn't have enough to buy a tall latte.
Innumeracy isn't the issue. It's the public's ignorance of Bitcoin itself.
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will reflect my bias in the articles
Don't make him wear the stupid man suit.
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