So if that ever happens bitcoin will effectively flash crash?

Since an attacker can double spend his own coins, he gets to print cash until no one uses bitcoin.

If he is "honest" people might accept him like they do today with the fed despite some casual printing.

With the emergence of all the mining pools having considerable percentages of total hashing power this scenario sounds a bit too likely for my tastes...

Haha nice thread.

I doubt there will be that much interstellar trade, most things would be done locally.

Even with inter system trade I think different systems would be used for on-planet and interplanetary trade.

Innovations could always be traded though and while individuals might not live long enough, families and various empires might trade before dying.

Since maintaining the block tree would be so hard on galactic scale, I think they would just trade innovation streams directly though.


Unless we make mini wormholes and manage to communicate or even travel through them of course.

How are things going with this project?

I think its instrumental to the widespread success of BitCoin and its why I joined this forum.


I think I "solved" the "no-display" problem:
1. POS displays debit amount 1$
2. POS sends this amount to the smartcard.
3. Smartcard multiplies this amount with a number only you now, say "5".
4. The result is sent back to the terminal.
5. Terminal displays "checksum" "5" - only you can know whether this number is correct or not. The number may even increment once each time making logging results impossible, you just have to remember slightly correctly to check the checksum.
6. You punch the pin code. If the terminal attempts to post a NEW amount before a pin is given the card locks itself for 10 minutes.
7. Card sends signed transaction to the terminal.
8. Merchant is happy. If there is double-spend, unlikely as it is, he has seen you in person and can call the cops.

I imagine that both card and POS software should be public with checksums for the trusted versions.

New smartcards could be made by anyone with a smartcard programmer so though you would trust that party you would not be bound at all.
It would be as ubiquitous as BTC itself.

Next, the card would be sent in the mail along with the address, private key and pins so that you could back up your card or refill it on your own.
Naturally the card should not be your main storage medium despite all the safety.

Such terminals would cost very little and the cards would be affordable even in third world countries - UNLIKE android wallets!

Merchants would simply link their terminal to their mtgox address and post an immediate and large sell order. At the end of the day fiat currency could be withdrawn from mtgox.

Casascius coins are very cool, but I believe the market has found smartcards to be the most easy to use and we should act on that.

I don't believe that thread really answers my question, perhaps I should clarify:

1. I have read that a miner with 51% control could stop transactions from happening altogether by not including them in the block, is this correct?

2. Is the inclusion of transactions - fitting some specification - in blocks, part of the bitcoin protocol or up to the miners?

I read that "spammy" is defined by an equation using only BTC and byte values.

Does this mean that if I transfer say 24btc after 6 confirmations my transaction will ALWAYS go through free?

And if so, could a government buy a for them small amount of btc, say 24000, and continually send it to themselves to spam the network?


If this is incorrect; are miners then free to ignore ALL transactions and may in the future choose to do so to save power/cpu/whatever?

Looking at blockchain.info there seems to be about 20-120 kb for only 10-100 transactions, is this sustainable in terms of reasonable fees and bandwidth usage going forward?
I mean I would imagine mastercard/visa/paypal combined have maybe a million transactions per 10 min. or more.

Even with my government attack above or just normal use after a bit more adoption that's up toward 500 kb/10 min

If the miners have to become increasingly specialized, won't this in the end cause BTC to become centralized and thus worthless?


I want bitcoin to succeed, but this worries me.

No, I don't think they are.

If they attack they will just do it with the excuse of Iran having nukes and being evil - no matter the facts.


I DO however think the risk of them attacking is disturbingly high.

America today is acting like early Nazi Germany.

Yes and for this reason I cannot wait until they default and the entire world economy crashes - once it does all the corrupt bankers, their politicians and other filth will be carved out of the system.

What will be left is the real economy: The struggling innovator, the hard manual worker, investors investing in real technology and development, the engineers, the farmers and the scientists.

I hope the Germans wake up, see that Merkel is selling them out to Goldman Sachs and kicks her out for some anti-EU politician.

I hope for the same in my country, but Germany is the critical one.

Matthewh3:
There probably would be banks left, but I think they would become so rare there might as well not.

I think in time people will come to trust a backed up and highly encrypted file far more than the banks we have today.

I mean yes trojans exist, but where would you be most likely to loose your money today?

I am investing practically all my money in an industrial wind turbine right now, but when/if I have cash I might well put almost all of it in a BTC wallet.
Greece anyone?


Stephen Gornick:
Of course they can do fractional banking just as it has been done with gold for centuries - However unlike with GOLD, you don't NEED a bank with BTC.
Bitcoin security is easily better than that of many banks, you run no risk of default on your credit, tax grabbing, fees or account freezing.

Further as soon as merchants/workplaces take/pay BTC there will be no reason to even have an account for a credit card.

Why do you use a bank? Me:
1. Money storage (-> BTC wallet)
2. Money transfer (-> BTC transfer with NO fee)
3. Easy use credit card (-> future BTC cards/phone apps)

If using a bank does not give an advantage why should I trust them or even bother to open an account? I am a lazy person after all... and so are most!


Just imagine what will happen to the Swiss slush fund banks when the dictators of the world discover bitcoin and the virtues of a long password.

Lets say you are a bank and the world runs on BTC.

Could you loan out money? Could you even operate?

I'm thinking "no". Everyone would essentially hold their own wallet which they would use even if they had a little in a bank for spending.

This basically means all banks would at all times face a "bank run"-scenario.

Pause for a moment and consider the vastness of this; not only could BTC kill off MasterCard, Visa, WU and Paypal - it could kill off ALL banks.

Since BTC makes money very "real" and finite it is either spent or not spent. The closest to a bank you could run would be an investment firm.

You would have to provide yields above the rate of BTC deflation (I'm guessing 2-6% akin to gold after the adoption period) though.

You could also loan money against collateral - however you could only do so ONCE. Money is no longer just circling around bank databases so you can't loan out the same money 5-10 times as is done today.

However all core bank functions; card payment, ATMs, accounts and transfers would become irrelevant with BTC:

Selfish clients at retailers accept pure BTC cards, ATMs are not necessary as BTC payments can be made even with simple phones, wallets are the new accounts and transfers are as easy and cheap as email.


I'm sure the free market will still make mistakes, but in a BTC future they might well be smaller and much less catastrophic than today.

Obviously along with the anonymity this means BTC could change the entire world structure and I don't think many people fully realize this.
What are your thoughts on this hypothesis?


If I am right and bitcoin does not fail somehow - what will happen when the big banks discover this? Death penalties for any merchants revealed to be accepting BTC?

Will the most productive parts of the economy be using BTC slowly leaving the US, Greece and such behind?

I'm thinking only partially here, it cannot be denied that these places have workforce and natural resources and that BTC trade could to some extent be suppressed locally.

On the other hand it would be easy to hide on the internet even in the US and convert $ to BTC and back - essentially leading to de facto mass abandonment of the $ and thus rapid $ inflation as the market realizes no one wants to hold it and that everyone has the means to achieve just that.

Well my guess is its the guy running Mt.Gox and/or bitcoin.org.

Mt.Gox is Japanese right? Satoshi Nakamoto is a Japanese name. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!


I think its awesome that we live in a world during peak oil, WWIII looming, evil puppet masters manipulating politics like a game and hero geniuses changing the world while no one knows who they are.

Straight out of code geass man - sure we may die and what not, but damn it rocks

Hey I know a little C and might want to help a little with coding on POS projects that can push BTC into the real world and crush it.

I'm doing OrgOS, a framework for creating automated government structures, and wish to interface with BTC currently.
(My bachelors project)

Well I heard about BitCoin before really using Paypal, western union or wire transfers much and thought "Cool, but what for really?".

THEN I heard about it again and realized how easy it made sending money around the world, programming money/banking APIs and the economic advantage over existing methods.

Safe to say I got a lot more interested and here I am a few nights of feverish reading and an annoyed girlfriend later.

Posting to get out of newbie hell and volunteer a little help in developing PoS systems.

As someone who read Tanenbaum (the bible on operating systems) in university I will divulge some knowledge (correct or not) to the satisfaction of my own ego and maybe your paranoia:

1. "Windows is unsafe":
Yes, but there are very real limits to what viruses can do hardcoded into every OS.

Without this they would instantly crash from (even friendly) programs interfering with each other.

2. Wallets stolen from RAM:
You CAN'T do this even if the computer is running nothing BUT bitcoin and malware:

Every program has a ram space, other programs can't touch it.

This means that even assuming data stayed alive in RAM a while (I never heard of such):

The virus would need to allocate almost ALL the computers RAM to itself in order to even get access the residue after the bitcoin client closed THEN it would have to search it.

This would slow the PC to a crawl and be VERY obvious.

3. Secure Wallet creation:
An unlocked wallet with all its default keys could very conceivably be stolen at anytime or at least as soon as the BTC client marked the file "not-in-use".

However if you lock your wallet, restart the BTC client and THEN create the secure keys you want, it should be safe even with malware around.

I mean scan your computer and such, but you should be safe unless the BTC client is VERY badly programmed.

No live usb/cd really needed.

4. The hacker:
Hackers are humans, not gods AND they need to eat at some point.

They have no reason to write code infiltrating the OS drivers themselves, live cds or debugging RAM residue, even if possible, if even 0.1% of people leave their wallet unlocked and easy to steal.

Or when they can hack Mt. Gox, others or set up a scam BTC site.

If they are advanced they may steal encrypted wallets too and bruteforce passwords up to some low strength IF the file is encrypted in a way their automated decrypter script expects - IE standard wallet encryption MAYBE zip/rar.



If you encrypt your wallet with its non-default keys, with good passes and then also put that in an encrypted archive (zip/rar/other), which you store everywhere while writing down the two passes, you have little to fear.

If you like to install toolbars and video players from random porn- and media-sites do not attempt to use BTC at all please - live cd or no.

Hello I'm Realpra, I'm a decent programmer and I'm pretty creative.

I think bitcoin could change the world and I want to help.

Well Ubuntu can be booted from a USB and as such you would be able to use it anywhere - even on computers with no bitcoin client and which do not normally allow the installation of one.

Theoretically this would allow you to use restricted library or university or weird internet bar computers with IPs that can't be tied to you at anytime.

But if you just want to load and go windows is more widespread.
It should be possible to keep a linux BTC client and windows both on the same stick though, although I only think Ubuntu could RUN from the stick.

As for encrypting the wallet and backup this is my plan (only setup one wallet yet, I'll make another soon):
1. Using 0.52 client choose "encrypt wallet".
2. Create NEW keys/addresses during LOCKED mode and use only these henceforth. (Long pass I don't use often of course)
3. Copy wallet and compress it with RAR and choose encrypt with another different password.
4. Put this double secured wallet in email, sugarsync, phone and harddisk.
5. There can apparently be leaks between addresses in a wallet due to optimizations by the client - keep public addresses in one wallet and your private savings addresses in another wallet.

Anonymity:
1. Tor sounds nice, but I would not trust it, not alone anyway.
2. Instead ONLY sign with the private keys from IP addresses that cannot be easily tied to you.
3. Some of your addresses will be publicly tied to you as your mtgox account or what not, do not send directly from these to your savings addresses.
4. The only truly anonymous pattern would be, for example: Mt.Gox BTC -> Pub. addr. -> 1 NEW addr. -> Many new address -> -||- -> STOP.
The money now looks like it was spent, re-spent and got stuck/saved up by someone in the natural market though the "tree branches" should be a bit more irregular/longer in length than this.
(Perhaps have a receive/spend wallet, an intermediary wallet and a secret store wallet for this).
5. Also think about timing here, imagine: X, Y and Z amounts of BTC separately leave your public account J2 on day 1-3 and EXACTLY amounts X, Y and Z end up in accounts A2-G2 the SAME separate days 1-3 without delay.


Many transactions -> some fees.
Complicated -> a few hours.
...
Getting away with tax frauding a bad government -> Priceless.


Eh obfuscator services rerouting/mixing coins a lot also exist, might be better, though I don't know much about them.

Hope that helps anyway; IP, transaction path and transaction timing.