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Bitcoin (the network/protocol) doesn't know or care who you are.  Your wallet.dat contains the private keys for "your" addresses.  Whoever has the private key has control of the funds.   Bitcoin doesn't "know" your address is yours.  It only cares that a tx spending coins from your address is properly signed with the right private key.  Nothing more.  If I have your private key the network will see the tx spending "your coins" from "your address" as equally valid.

Keep your wallet.dat file regularly backed up and secure stored.

I missed that but I still don't see how BitTalk is liable for anything.  If Matt choses to trade some of his liabilities for the equity in BitTalk that is his choice.  If he is insolvent (legal definition) and seeks bankruptcy then the tx could be voided but there is legal consequence.  BitTalk could take a loss (in theory) but the odds of all that happening are essentially nil.

Well both can't be true.   Matt can sell his equity for a fart in a bag if he wants to. 
So either there is a liability recognized by the court(s) or no legal problem will rise from it.

So MtGox will take a change that works against their best interests rather than just use the pre-change code?  Really?

Who do you think is in the driver's seat.  Those with marketshare power of the developers?  Had MtGox or DeepBit refused to accept P2SH we wouldn't have it right now.  Hopefully Bitcoin becomes more democratic over time but the idea that the developers can dictate something against the wishes of the majority of stakeholders is just silly.

Nobody is saying you TECHNICALLY couldn't change Bitcoin.  There is no technical obstacle.  It just won't happen.  There is a huge SOCIETAL obstacle.  Changing the minting rate would undermine confidence in Bitcoin.  Less confidence in Bitcoin is bad for MtGox shareholders.  They aren't going to support something which isn't needed, isn't wanted by a majority of users, and provides no benefit to them.   Even if it personally benefited them one would hope they would be smart enough to realize the disruptions it would cause would damage the Bitcoin brand and thus their company value.

We may see major breaking changes for security flaws, for new transaction types, for post-quantum encryption as a precaution (if ever necessary), for new address types (if ECDSA is partially or full compromised).   The issue isn't technical it is societal (the Bitcoin community/society).  You will never get the consensus necessary for something as controversial as changing the minting rate.  Even the developers (who BTW are not homogeneous in thinking) don't have that kind of influence.

Agreed.  I don't think this will go to court, I don't think this will get a judgement, I don't think anyone would be able to collect much on a judgement even if they got one.

Just pointing out since he never created a legal entity (LLC, Corp) for his business activity the only possible definition of "me" is himself, his assets, his person.  Without a separate legal construct any liabilities incurred by his "business" are no different than non-business liabilities incurred.  

In theory but i don't see how you think it could bankrupt BitTalk.  BitTalk has no liability regardless. At most it could cause a personal loss to Vlad but even that is unlikely.  For those who are interested the concept is called voided debt.  First (at least in the US) only payments made 90 days prior to a bankruptcy petition can be voided.  


Lets say hypothetically Vlad buys up 40K BTC of Matts debt (the risk to the company is lower the more of the debt he owns).  He buys Matt's share of BitTalk for 40K of debt.  Note BitTalk the legal entity isn't a creditor or debtor in the situation.  The sale (if any) would be between Matt & Vlad.  Now hypothetically Matt files bankruptcy in the next 90 days.  Technically other creditors in the bankruptcy could move to void the payment (of equity) between Matt & Vlad.  


I would point out this is a legal longshot and probably not one worth worrying over. One Matt is almost certainly not filing for bankruptcy over this.  No bankruptcy no risk of voided payment.  Two it is very unlikely the courts would see an online gambling debt made by pseudonyms involving a virtual currency on an unregulated forum as a valid creditor in the bankruptcy.  If they don't then they other bettors have no method to petition the payment be voided.

Even if those things happen (and if I was Vlad I would like my odds) the company has no liability this is just a sale of equity between one shareholder and another.  The company neither gains nor loses in that transaction. 

Given the limited loss even if the grossly unrealistic worst case scenario (and honestly I am not recommend anyone hold on to their debt thinking this will happen because it won't) I don't really see there being much of a realistic risk for Vlad.

I guess it all depends on how paranoid you want to be.  Looking at it from a high level there are only two general concepts to prevent a third party from forcing you to give access. The first is to create a setup which requires a second party who isn't on-site (counterpart).  The second is to create a setup where you can cause yourself to intentionally lose access.

Second party:
You could split the private keys (protocol independent m of m).  For example you could XOR two 256 bit numbers (half-keys) to produce the private key.  You keep one list of half keys and your partner keeps the other.  To send funds would require both of you to XOR your half-key to produce the full key and sign a tx.

Another option would be a wallet where it requires two pass-phrases to decrypt and you only have one.  You would need to notify your partner and he (via RPC call or some other method) enters his passphrase.  The "dual missile key option".  

For either method you likely would want some challenge and password type setup to ID the counterpart is not compromised.  Upon hearing a duress codeword the counterpart would refuse access.  If you have the info stored securely in a third location the counterpart could destroy his secret upon hearing the duress word.


Lose Access:
The simplest option would be a wallet where upon duress would send the full balance to an address you don't have direct control over (private key is off-site, bank vault, m of n type setup, etc).

Another option would be a deterministic wallet stored only in memory (say a netbook dedicated as a hardware wallet) and created using two 256 bit seeds.  On setup you and your counterpart would enter the seeds.  The wallet could be operated by you alone but upon duress you kill the power and you couldn't restore the wallet without your counterpart.

The in-memory wallet could be done with one person if you can limit access to the seed and don't routinely keep it on site.  For example setup in-memory wallet and then have seed secure in a safety deposit box.

Obviously the disadvantage of the "lose access" method would be that if you are compromised before the duress action can be taken the wallet will be lost.  One option would be to trigger the lose access method to an alarm system.  Someone breaks in, alarm sounds, and a relay kills power to the in-memory wallet.

Consequences:
So there are a couple different ways of doing it but one thing you may wish to consider is .... do you want to be in a situation where you can't give criminals what they want?  Will they believe you?  Will they accept the truth in a non-violent manner?  Maybe investing in a good monitored alarm system (not ADT), strong doors, secure locks, and firearms is better insurance.

There are roughly 20,000 nodes.  Most aren't miners.  You can't simply change the miners you would need to convince all the nodes to switch.  First that means convincing enough trusted developers to code the changes.  It also requires enough users, exchanges, merchants to implement the new code.  If there are nodes with incompatible codebases on the internet at the same time each will produce their own valid network and reject blocks/tx from the other nodes.  Essentially a permanent hard fork.  If you only convince some of the miners to switch they will simply produce blocks (and coins) that nobody uses.   The users who don't switch will produce tx (and fees) accepted by other users and merchants and exchanges who don't switch.   That means there is economic value for miners who don't switch.  Difficulty will fall and thus the revenue per MH/s will rise simply by not switching. Essentially miners will go where the money is.

While in theory it is possible it is far more complex than just convincing some pools to switch.  Even relatively non-controversial breaking changes have taken a very long time to get accomplished (and involved some spririted debate).  You can't force a change like this.  It has to be accepted willingly by a super majority of all users, developers, merchants, exchanges, and miners. 


Merchants don't need to update if their customers are running the old nodes.  Customers don't need to update if their merchants are running the old nodes.


Clients =/- miners but if the number of miners is small but still a significant fraction of total (say 25%) in time difficulty will fall and the miners who remain on the old fork will see their revenue per MH/s rise.  Miners on the new fork are taking a risk they will simply be mining worthless blocks (and coins) accepted by nobody.


The bitcoin network doesn't know the intended amount of the tx only the sum of the inputs and outputs.  If for example the client chooses a 100 BTC input to pay a 1 BTC tx you would be charged on the 100 BTC.  0.01% is likely too low to produce the revenue necessary to protect the network.  For example PayPal has ~$100 B in transaction volume per year.  At 0.01% that would only produce ~ $10M in revenue for miners.  Also the "cost" of a tx is based on its size not value.  Charging more for higher value but smaller tx and less for lower value but larger tx creates a break between price and cost.

The critical resource of the blockchain is KB.  A 1,000,000 BTC tx is just as easy to process as a 1 BTC tx however a 100 kb tx will require 100x as much storage into perpetuity as a 1 kb tx.

I agree.  It is useful to clarify that the the download package actually contains two clients.  In time it is possible that bitcoind will be offered as a seperate download.  I would prefer the GUI be renamed but that is a battle for another day.

Wait you bought a ~$15K rig and are trying to run it from "XP" a 12 year old obsolete OS.  I can't help you with exactly why cgminer isn't working right but have you considered using a modern OS?  Even if you want to stick with Windows ... Win7?

Not many people run XP anymore which is going to make troubleshooting and support difficult.  Given with mining time = money it seems a prudent investment to use an OS more likely to be used by other miners.

Thanks for remind me why I rarely waste my time responding to you.  I must have forgotten this morning.

Your arrogant attitude is why 10 years from now you will have 20 theoretically superior currencies which don't have a single line of code written and never will.  Accuracy and simplicity is important in a peer to peer network because OTHER PEOPLE will be writing clients.  Those clients could contain bugs not discovered until years later.  The more complex the system the chance there is for errors.  Satoshi couldn't stop, modify, or control Bitcoin now if he wanted to.   There is VALUE in simplicity.  Something you fail to understand and thus lash out like a child.

Feel free to rant on, the ignore button ensures I won't need to listen to it.

I agree.  I think a system which reduced say 1% every difficulty adjustment would be an interesting alt-coin.  Likewise an alt-coin which used the traditional "bitcoin half" but only down to 1.25 BTC then went to a permanent 1 BTC into perpetuity would also be interesting.

I would point out the post above.  Cutting the reward in half (technically a right shift) reduces the chance of errors.  Making one client error proof is hard enough.  Making multiple clients by multiple teams on multiple hardware and using multiple programming languages is more difficult. 

Right shift is "precise".  You can't get it wrong.
Right shifting 11011101011 will always be 01101110101.

Still there are a lot of thing which Satoshi could have done differently.
why 8 digits when the data structure supports 11.  Just make it 11 from the start.
Why 32 bit nonce (and needing all the junk of extra-nonce).  Just make it 64bit.

For the most part we are "stuck" with these quirks.  It would be nice to see some innovation in the alt-coin space though.

I kinda assumed the words "doubled OVER THE NEXT 4 years" implied that price will increase over time.  No intelligent miner looks at 1 day revenue and bases decisions on that.   Sure the network's global hashing rate will change significantly but the network will compensate and life will go on.  Long term the network' hashing rate will be the same regardless of the generation rate.  Daily volatility in the global hashing rate isn't a major concern.  We have seen major changes in difficulty on multiple occasions and none had anything to do with a subsidy change.

Spoken as a non-programmer.  Technically the reward isn't cut in half it is a binary right shift.   There is no issue of implementation bugs. Right shifting a particular binary value will always produce the same binary value.  The OS, underlying hardware, and programing language can't influence that.  The same can't be said about floating point math.  Lots of things to get wrong and in a p2p project there will be multiple clients running on multiple hardware platforms written by multiple teams.   The risk of someone getting it wrong and causing a hard fork is very real.

Sure a periodic reduction in the reward would be better. A ~0.5% reduction in subsidy every difficulty adjustment (2016 blocks) would generate roughly the long term generation rate as a right shift (50%) every 210K blocks with a much smoother curve.  However it would have been error prone.  Incompatible implementations on a p2p network present a real risk.  

To say Satoshi made a mistake is arrogant.  He made a choice.  He chose simplicity and accuracy over a smoother curve.  It remains to be seen if it is a mistake. 

Miner's costs are primarily in USD.  Say x fees are needed to replace a 12.5 BTC reduction assumes a fixed USD:BTC exchange rate.  If USD:BTC exchange rate doubled over the next 4 years miners under 12.5 BTC subsidy could be more profitable than under a 25 BTC subsidy (and current exchange rate).  Yes the day the subsidy changes miner will see their daily profits change but miners will be anticipating it well in advance (not buying new hardware, scrapping obsolete rigs, etc).

Coins scammed or hacked aren't lost.  Criminal buy and sell them.  They remain part of the money supply.

You will NEVER be able to change the minting rate.  Even 99% of miners can't do that. It would require a complete consensus of all users, all nodes, all merchants, all exchanges, and all miners.  Doing it with less will cause a permanent fork in the network and the new fork probably not supported enough to survive.  Say you make BTC generation 12.5 but MtGox accepts coins from the original fork 6.25 BTC rate.  You now have a situation where two entities are calling themselves Bitcoin but they are completely incompatible.  

Given non-miners gain nothing from a higher generation rate why would they update their clients just to make miners richer?  If they don't upgrade their clients well they won't even be able to see the new blocks as valid.  The miners who continue to mine the "old fork" will see tx rise and difficulty fall and become massively profitable.

Best case scenario is they most nodes simply ignore the "hard fork miners" and the fork just goes away.  Worst case scenario is you end up in a situation where both forks have significant support and it likely will very damaging to Bitcoin.  Can you imagine the noob confusion if they send Bitcoin to a merchant's address but the merchant does see them because the merchant is using the "other" Bitcoin?

Note:
The topic is interesting for creation of new alt-coins.  However Bitcoin is probably never going to change.  Not something as fundamental as the minting rate.  Changing it after the fact would be essentially a bait and switch and would lead to a loss of confidence.  If miners can change the rate once they can change it again.  What is to say someday miners won't act like the Fed and determine the appropriate mining rate in order to control economic expansion?   

So what did Vlad do that is wrong?  Matt indicated he had cut including ownership of BitTalk.  Guess that was yet another lie made by Matt. If Vlad uses his defaulted obligations as leverage to boost him from the company before he does anymore damage I don't see a problem with it.

Honestly I am not sure what the problem is?  Matt hasn't repaid the debt because he feels nobody is in a posistion to collect.  Vlad believes he is in a posistion to collect. Selling debt to "stronger hands" happens all the time, everyday, all around the world.   Vlad likely wants Matt far far away from the company he is a part owner.  Can you honestly blame him?  Matt has already done significant damage and if it comes out later that Matt still owns a significant stake that will be another blow to the company.   Obviously depsite his "apology" Matt is looking to play hardball and Vlad see his debt as a method to gain leverage.   It is called "big boy business".


Also Goat  posting PM publicly?  They are called PRIVATE Messages for a reason.  Nobody is saying it is criminal but it is downright scummy.  Your actions indicate you don't care if a conversation is private you are just going to violate that privacy when you feel like it.   Kinda sends a message that nobody should ever do business with you and nobody should ever tell you anything in confidence.

TL/DR:  "snitches get stitches"  j/k

A lot of inefficient miners will turn off their hardware.  The same inefficient miners will turn off their hardware if the price dropped to $5 USD:BTC and stayed there for a couple of weeks.  Miners turning off rigs isn't unexpected.  Those miners who turned off rigs would turn them right back on if USD:BTC went to $20 and stayed there for a couple weeks.

While the halving will affect the community I would point out the FIRST halving will (IMHO already has) have the largest effect.  By the third or fourth halving fees will be significantly more important and the money supply so large relative to generation rate the halving really won't make much of a splash.

Well I don't want to spend too much time on this since a) it didn't happen, and b) Matt is a scammy fuck who wouldn't have done it anyways.

Simple version
1) I write a message with my intent and digitally sign it. I then encrypt it and provide it to a trusted person to act as a notary.
2) Trusted person appends date time information and digitally signs the encrypted message.
3) Either me or the trusted persons publicly posts a copy of the double signed & encrypted message.
3) I include in my bet that I automatically lose unless I reveal the secret message at the end of the bet.

There are lots of ways to make a claim/statement provably true after the fact.  That shouldn't be construed as "the only and definitive way".  Lots of options.  Matt chose none.  IMHO (and due to a lot of other factors) it was because Matt made a legit bet and simply walked out on it.  Nothing more.  Just a scamming fuck.

No just an idiot.  Luckily there is no tag for that.
While you are waiting for Pirate to pay be sure to max out your CC and get those funds into Rusty 3% per week investment.  I mean 3400% might be too risky but "only" 465%? That's easy money!

I think the difference with Bitcoin is you can opt out of all that Fractional Reserve nonsense.  Try opting out of FRNs.  Even if you take your money out of a bank the bank's actions change money supply and thus affect the value of the FRN you hold.  There is no "out".