What about the integrity angle? I'm thinking along the lines that if the calculation does something useful (i.e. other than cryptographic security), there may be an underlying pattern to the result. If there is a pattern, then it can be reduced, and therefore attacked (someone figuring it out will be able to do a lot more of it than everyone else). This might of course be wonderful (figuring out shortcuts to problems improves general use), or not (attacker keeps it to themselves while abusing it).


It may not be realistic to expect Bitcoin to replace everything else, for those cases where the disadvantages outweigh the advantages it could coexist with other systems, perhaps even Bitcoin like ones with tweaked parameters.

Paste the signature from above to e.g. /tmp/foo.asc
$ gpg /tmp/foo.asc
it asks for the data file (bitcoin client), this will spit out the key ID (2DBF0CA8)
If you plug that into the site you listed, it will complain about it not being in the strong set, but offer you a search (first link):
http://pgp.surfnet.nl:11371/pks/lookup?op=vindex&fingerprint=on&search=0x2DBF0CA8

You can get the public key and trace the web from there.

Heh, I must stop using irony, it seems this forum needs some jokes spelled out. This particular (apparently wasted) attempt tied into bitcoin7 painting themselves victims of racism against Bulgarians. If you seriously thought I think you're a racist you're the idiot. Now I'll STFU.

The payoff could be (much) larger than whatever the business is worth. Maybe you'd do it for the thrill. Maybe you would need a large/quick anonymous sum, which liquidating the business would not fulfill. Maybe you got into an accident that changed your personality. Maybe someone took your family hostage and made you do it. Whatever, there are a ton of reasons why this isn't something I'd bet my life on. And fingerprints can be lifted incredibly easily if you are as easy to find as you say.

Well duh. Quoting M theory would not make a joke, it would just be creepy weird. Maybe you are confusing me with someone?

Silk Road? Ok, maybe 'killed by app'

Mainstream can only mean major merchants adopting it. Not the mom and pop socks, fringe esoteria and undergrad webdesign type peanut markets but a seriously large one like bol.com (Bertelsmann) or Ikea. But I don't think that's very realistic right now.


A persistent economy justifies BTC, but not any price. If 60k traders have on average put $100 into the economy, then that should be the real valuation (6.7 million BTC/6 million USD -> 1 BTC=~0.90 USD). I came to a similar back of a napkin calculation based valuation of the actual economy using Bitcoin (<5 million USD -> <0.8 USD/BTC). Add reasonable speculative margin and it's still not worth anywhere near $15-20. Also factor in 50% inflation from mining this year, 33% next year, I'm pretty sure that kind of growth is not happening on the economy side without a different kind of participation (i.e. I have a feeling the technologically savvy/mental contingent who would accept BTC already do, this market will not grow by 50/33% anymore). If the miners don't cash out, the nominal value diverges from the theoretical one by that amount.

The price must eventually track the size of the economy. Don't make the mistake of extrapolating economy size from all BTC at current price, because most BTC are actually 'worthless' in the sense that they have been mined at near 0 difficulty and aren't participating in the economy (add up the entries in the rich 100 list which haven't moved in blockexplorer). When they suddenly do, at current valuation ($16), the socks and undergrad free time instantly run out, as does exchange liquidity. Which is exactly what you saw in the flash crash, even though that was done with the express intent of driving price down.

You could look at it another way: even though the Mt. Gox attack was dumping ~500k BTC at 0.01, there were still not enough orders to satisfy more than half of it. 260k+ went to an opportunistic 0.01 USD order. If we take the wildly speculative average of 17.5 and 0.01, i.e. 8.75 and multiply that by the ~240k that did go through, we get a liquidity of 2.1 million USD. This is a good indication that the economy cannot be much larger than that (i.e. not orders of magnitudes larger, like a ~200 million USD valuation at a $30 high).

So then you arrive at the speculative value for future expansion of the economy. This simply means that sure, $20 may be reasonable, if you do expect 180 million USD influx within a certain amount of time. The question is, what is this amount of time, and will everyone holding on to BTC keep waiting for this. (the influx itself is possible, there is no $1000 a day limit for putting money in AFAIK, and this limit can be lifted anyway)

Speculative valuation is just that, gambling with the future. Even gamblers have cut off dates by which the gamble has to pay off compared to a traditional investment's return, or a different gamble will be made. When that cutoff date arrives the price must drop and if the gamblers are large enough, it will implode. That will make a large dent in the economy (merchants holding BTC from daily trade will suddenly take a large hit) and many will lose confidence/leave the market, which could end up in a death spiral.

Then there are two other major factors noone seems to take into account: even if speculators hold on and Bitcoin putters on for years without significant leaps, long before then there will be a more or less effective crackdown, and/or preemptive strikes in the form of competing currencies, not to mention the possibility of a protracted smear campaign that will prevent Bitcoin adoption to any significant degree. That eventually means the deathspiral described above.

This danger should offset the speculative optimism and lower the price accordingly, which hasn't happened yet.

BTW, any services around Bitcoin like option markets, banks, podcasts and magazines do NOT constitute a productive economy, they may only enable it. Without agriculture and industry, hairdressers, speechwriters and telephone sanitizers will meet an altogether different fate than they expected

You do realize the irony in your nick though, right? Dig Dug blowing up and popping monsters like a bubble, er, balloon

And I've just been reading this highly entertaining thread thinking that bitbot got cut off in mid sentence until your post The whole ensuing grammar discussion became a kind of fascinating ongoing cognitive dissonance.

Electron orbits are round, not square

Windows: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841290 or http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/hashmyfiles.zip
Linux: $ sha1sum bitcoin-0.3.23-linux.tar.gz

The problem is that there were at least 2 different messages. Most (like you I presume) got the benign one, others (like jgarzik and Bruce Wagner) got one which an ethics officer in a real company would term unethical bribery. The fact that bitcoin7 knowingly made the distinction says enough.

Since you have made a sweeping statement calling everyone who doesn't agree with you a hypocrite, I see no reason to further debate ethics with you.

BTW, hypocrites in this context would be people who bribed others, or said they wouldn't do business with bitcoin7 and did anyway, not anyone who told their girlfriend that her new haircut really looks great.


Hey, raging on Bulgaria again? You racist! QED


Heh, that's like saying "anyone below this line has lost the argument <----->".

I haven't seen a mention of that, but you only add another party to trust to the mix with it. Grandma is better off going to a (Bitcoin) bank and having nothing to do with any of the underlying technology whatsoever. If she needs to pay for something in Bitcoin, banks offer APIs to merchants for integration of the bank's own payment environment with which customers are already familiar (customer only selects bank she uses on the merchant's site). This system has been in use for half a decade, that I know of.


Good, I didn't know that. I presume that means the regular client rejects randomly typed (but well formed) addresses.


Ok, so the customer does the validation by visual comparison of the resulting address and the client rejects the private key with a confidence of 4 billion to 1. That's sufficient. My gripe for this point shrinks to it being too much hassle, still a major point for grandma I think (those with elderly family determined to learn the difference between left and right mouse button know what I'm talking about ).


The likelihood of actually having a compromised system (50%) compared to the possibility of having a compromised system ('100%') is also lower, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Why 100%? The private key relies on security by obscurity, which can by definition never be fully guaranteed. If you're unlucky, some corrupt postal worker might happen upon one of your letters and scan all of your outgoing mail afterwards. This risk is not mitigated by a simple security envelope. Adding any links to the chain means lowering the chain's security.

I guess all foreign currencies are regulated the same way, otherwise you could exchange to another first, maybe on holiday to a neighbouring country. If that's possible Bitcoin is not necessary, you could use any (foreign office of) Western Union or similar.

Otherwise selling intangible services for Bitcoin online is indeed the best option.

This is probably illegal, similar to announcing a reward for shoplifting.

Are you affiliated with a competitor?

Kidding aside, I don't know what an LCB is, and I'm curious

Silly idea You expect grandmas not just to type in 160 bit random case hashes but also private keys (and patch a client). Does the client even validate these against eachother? And what if grandma makes a typo just using an address (before any validation)? Poof, balance gone.

You also replaced a) security of one system by a) security of another, b) the postal network the sheets are sent over and c) trust in a third party. Doesn't sound like an improvement to me.

Maybe it's because they walk and talk like a scam. Tradehill has been much more professional in their communication and behaviour so far. Mt. Gox seems amateur hour, but has experience points now (insert equivalent MTG pun).

Those pesky Lipid Coated Bacteria! Can you enlighten me if it's something else?

I fixed.

Twice a day?