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Thread title should have been "Ways for Bitcoin to ruin governments" ....
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So if these are the biggest miners, combined total around 100 GHash/s, then interesting that little guys make up more than 500 Ghash/s? (i.e. more than 80% of network strength)
Well, from another viewpoint, the 2 biggest pool operators, slush (180 Ghash/s) and Tycho (160 Ghash/s), effectively control 49% of the global network hashrate (the last 3-day average was ~700 Ghash/s). Based on historical growth, in the near future they will assuredly indirectly control more than half of the global hashrate. If there is collusion between these 2, they can in theory start doing evil things. Of course I trust them today, but a pool duopoly (or monopoly) is not something I am comfortable with in the long term. This is a good point. If one of you big guys would temporarily pipe a portion of your resources via btcmine.com or one of the other small pools it will probably help them grow to an appreciable size bringing players over from slush and [Tycho] (not that I've got anything against either) .... bigger pools attract more players due to less variance ... if we have 3 or more pools taking up that almost 50% we'd be in pretty good shape. |
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edit:removed bad calc. (thnx tom) http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110418006433/en/Book-Reveals-Tax-Laws-Spur-Huge-UndergroundBook Reveals Tax Laws Spur Huge Underground Economy The United States has an “underground economy” – in which no taxes are paid – that already amounts to more than $1 trillion a year and is growing fast, according to a new book, which notes that this underground economy is now greater than the total economies of all but fifteen other countries WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In his book, “Class Tax Mass Tax: America and Its Underground Economy,” author Peter Rush cites example after example of how congressional tax laws discriminate against average, hard-working American families and in favor of loopholes for wealthy individuals, unions and corporations. He notes that this trend has accelerated in recent years as federal and state spending has ballooned. He shows how the convoluted, archaic and unjust tax code has led to increased “tax cheats” and the expansion of the shadow economy. Furthermore, Rush sees a direct connection between this growing underground economy and the current Tea Party movement to the Boston Tea Party protesting British tea taxes in 1773. “By taking a page from our revolutionary past, American taxpayers are taking the problem of over-taxation into their own hands,” he writes. “Working out of sight of the tax collector is a direct and effective way to reduce personal taxes. Penalizing work and thrift makes no sense to the average man – and we are a sensible people.” He urges all Americans to make their voices heard at both the federal and state levels to tame spiraling budgets and irresponsible government spending. Tax avoidance, he argues, is thoroughly understandable and may be expeditious, but it does not address the underlying problems, nor does it contribute to the ultimate cure. If most of the people in the country are breaking the law, isn’t it reasonable to examine the law? |
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I guess this thread is an opportunity to summarize the top miners (>10 Ghash/s) who have publicly discussed their setup: o vladimir: ~40 Ghash/s (source: his comment). Has said publicly he uses a bunch of Radeon HD 5970, hosted in UK datacenter(s). He sells mining contracts. o ArtForz: 38 Ghash/s (source: IRC #bitcoin-dev #bitcoin-mining). Half of his mining power (~19 Ghash/s) is provided by 28 x HD 5970 + few other ATI GPUs. The other half (19.2 Ghash/s) is provided by 96 structured ASICs, from his own design. Claims 200 Mhash/s per chip at about 10W each. Pictures of his GPUs: http://bayimg.com/eABDfaAdd http://bayimg.com/KAAeaaAdpo Myself: 15 Ghash/s: bunch of HD 5970, plus a few HD 6990. Open-air motherboards on rack shelves (kind of like Facebook's OpenCompute servers). Most of my nodes look like this: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=47I don't know who the 4th guy with >10 Ghash/s could be. So if these are the biggest miners, combined total around 100 GHash/s, then interesting that little guys make up more than 500 Ghash/s? (i.e. more than 80% of network strength) |
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No. The kernel computes correctly only the 4 first bytes. It's confusing, because there is a code in BitcoinMiner.cl BelowOrEquals() which checks 8 bytes - this produces better assembler for some reason, at least in my setup. It can be replaced with 'if (H == 0)' (but it was slower). That's exactly why the targets are hard coded to difficulty of 1 (00000000 FFFF0000).
If you mean that this: #ifdef VECTORS
if (belowOrEquals(H.x, targetH, G.x, targetG))
{
output[OUTPUT_SIZE] = output[nonce.x & OUTPUT_MASK] = nonce.x;
}
else if (belowOrEquals(H.y, targetH, G.y, targetG))
{
output[OUTPUT_SIZE] = output[nonce.y & OUTPUT_MASK] = nonce.y;
}
#else
if (belowOrEquals(H, targetH, G, targetG))
{
output[OUTPUT_SIZE] = output[nonce & OUTPUT_MASK] = nonce;
}
#endif
} is faster than this: #ifdef VECTORS
if (H.x == 0)
{
output[OUTPUT_SIZE] = output[nonce.x & OUTPUT_MASK] = nonce.x;
}
else if (H.y == 0)
{
output[OUTPUT_SIZE] = output[nonce.y & OUTPUT_MASK] = nonce.y;
}
#else
if (H == 0)
{
output[OUTPUT_SIZE] = output[nonce & OUTPUT_MASK] = nonce;
}
#endif
then I got very different results in my tests on Windows 7 x64 & HD5850. With belowEquals I get ~270Mhps With the H == 0 version I get ~275Mhps That's a 1.8% speed increase. Actually you are right, but in a different way - because of this I should use hard coded kernel target of 00000000 FFFFFFFF in order to not lose 1 thousandth of a percent of all valid difficulty=1 candidates. I'll do this with the next release.
I'd just stop the target from being sent to the GPU and do that H==0 thing. I see no logical reason that it would be slower. There might be illogical reasons, though :-) Why you check for 'lower' with a 'greater than' operator? Where did the '0x80000000' came from?
I guess I didn't explain that part that well. I chose 0x80000000 to make it easy to determine if bytes 4-7 were actually calculated correctly. I edited BitcoinMiner.cl to only accept hashes below 0x80000000. In the Python code, "> 0x80000000" (should've been >= though) is checking if that part of the hash is over 0x80000000 and warns the user if it is, i.e. if the GPU calculated the hash wrong. But none of that matters since it wasn't even supposed to calculate bytes 4-7 right. mOmchill, Is this H==0 mod. going to go into official version of poclbm miner on github ? Cheers. |
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Guys be polite please. The request is a very sensible one. A "Get BitCoins" button that opened a web page with some helpful guidance would be a great feature to have.
Better download pages on the website could also help. Like a ... "now you have the software, go here to get some coins" type page.
Just a simple link "Get BitCoins" button on the client to here as a rough first cut maybe .... ? https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Currency_exchange |
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Limited edition high quality printings may well continue to have numismatic value even after the BTC represented are redeemed.
Just think of first edition superman comics .... first ever anything that does not die out only gains in value, enhanced by rarity over time. It's all money in the end.
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How does it deal with deleted copies of unencrypted wallet left on the disk after an encryption? e.g. does it shred or otherwise wipe the unencrypted wallet.dat files?
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Bytecoin gets it...
Since new users often miss obvious things, it's important to make features clear and simple.
Currently, in the app there no way to, nor help on, converting my funds into usable bitcoins.
There must be some current best way to do that, what is it?
If the app can do it, it should, otherwise do the next best thing, or at least give me, mr. clueless, a clue how to go do it.
As I said, toss me to a web page, or a directory of bitcoin conversion services or whatever you are using now.
And I certainly am not asking what card validation service works best with the bitcoin api. New users won't be writing their own clients.
Presumably, the current bitcoin client I have been running is there to provide me some sort of bitcoin utility, maybe that is my mistake...
If I can't put cash in, then probably no one else can. Eventually someone may send me another nickel, and then I might give someone a dime.
Possibly they could accrue into a large usable pile before monetary inflation and hard drive failures evaporate them...
Here's some links http://www.bitcoin.orgclick on the link to the Wiki/Help |
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You wanna play, you gotta pay ... stop all the whining and start doing some reading lazy bastards.
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moa, I followed your link and read, but I don't see the connection to what we're talking about. The real bill doctrine seems to be that, if a note is in principle payable on demand, then its issuer can issue as many notes as it wants as long as those notes are balanced by assets accrued.
An example would be if Big Bank Inc. promised to redeem its notes in bitcoin, and perhaps even kept some bitcoins on hand for redemption purposes, but also disbursed loans in note form without holding enough bitcoins to cover them. The bank would then book the loan itself as an asset. In case of a run, the bank would either call in accounts early, liquidate assets, or borrow against its accounts receivable.
This system works, sort of, but becomes unstable when the note/reserve ratio grows too high. The danger is simply that assets can be lost, particularly assets that are only accrued and not yet received. In the above example, some debtors will default and their loans will be written off, reducing the bank's assets while leaving its liabilities untouched. Charging interest on loans provides some protection against this, but given enough time the bank is quite likely to have a long run of bad luck and become insolvent.
Anyway, that's not the sort of thing I was planning. I'm interested in a 100% reserve kept safe by multiple offsite backups and strong encryption---the most mucking about I'd allow for is a sort of very short-term bond system wherein the bank might issue notes payable at the end of the month, and secure the bitcoins before then, in the interest of fixing very short-term liquidity problems. As long as this was stated up front on the notes I don't think it would be a serious problem.
As for expiration dates, you people are far more accepting of the idea than I would have guessed. Of course they'd have to be both prominently written and easy to predict---perhaps notes could be released in batches that expire at the end of a calendar year, with "VOID AFTER DECEMBER 2013" written in large print on the reverse. The revenue from unredeemed notes would easily make up the printing costs--if we assume each note costs 0.1 BTC to print, a single unredeemed 50 BTC note would cover the cost of 500 notes printed. Given the amount of cash destroyed in every year, not to mention the number of people who can't manage to mail in a $100 rebate form, issuing cash could be very profitable indeed.
Yes, it is not clear from the Wiki how Real Bills would be related to this ... here is a better link. There was a big controversy in academic economic circles about it .... credit money, like BTC, lends itself naturally to true real bills of exchange. http://www.thedailybell.com/1237/Real-Bills-Revisited.html |
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Plastic casino chip like tokens would work well too, and could use RFID tags inbedded into the plastic to hold the public key. And even the private key could be micro-etched onto a thin piece of metal imbedded into the plastic, so that the holder of the plastic token could tear it apart to get at the private key. Or like those scratch and win Instant Lotto cards or some mobile recharge cars ... underneath is the address that contains the denomination of BTC printed on the front. While the scratch is intact it is tradeable. |
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Xf2, when you say the government "can do anything," they cannot, or at least not legally. Your phrasing really implies you believe the US government to be a dictatorship.
Oh, you noticed too did you? |
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Kind of interesting. Maybe current laws will make BTC truly the money of the little people ... since there is no way the big guys can get in and out of it at $1,000 per day. Hoisted on their own petard?
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Yes. Exactly. We care VERY much that Bitcoin become accepted, understood, and used... by the average Joe. ....AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. In the end, its common usage by everyone may be the only thing that saves it... from big governments and the big banks that own them. http://www.documentsecurity.com/sp_documents.phpHere's what I'm thinking..... for a paper currency... Printed on it could be.... what? Besides a Bitcoin denomination --- like BTC 1, BTC 5, BTC 10, BTC 20, BTC 100. A verifiable public key & owner.... so that anyone could verify that this key was still owned by this owner.... as long as this paper was in circulation ...? To help prevent counterfeiting, there could be a predetermined expiration date... by which time it must be redeemed...? At that time, old bills could be replaced with the newest bills, with improved anti-counterfeiting features. Obviously, real Bitcoin is superior to anything paper... However ... Paper Bitcoin is just a stepping stone for ordinary people to play with, handle, look at, and even shop with... on a small scale. Bruce, what you describe, with bills of credit expiring after a set date are very, very similar to an old concept known as "real bills" or "real bills of exchange", scroogle that ... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_bills_doctrineThey were common when the gold standard was widespread and met there end around the same time the Federal Reserve system of banks was established. They worked well for many years before the centralised, mildly inflationary disease took over the minds of the intellectuals. This may help in your thinking for the details of how your bills would work ... it may have all been done before already for you. |
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Price vs. the 'long' term trend shows a standard deviation of about .36, which means it is not improbable that it may drop back below $1 based on the available statistical universe.
If you believe that trend it could still be years before we see $10/BTC, but it is a fair certainty that we will eventually see those levels and much higher IMO. As it has been mentioned, how fast that happens really depends on the growth of demand.
You need to take into account that the reward for finding a block is going to be divided by two in ~2 years. This will certainly change the trend. Yes, it has been troubling me, because I don't really have much of a clue about how that would affect the market other than to force it up. But by how much? Twice the rate? I don't know. For the sake of having numbers to look at that's what I have plugged in, but I have a feeling it could be a lot higher. I'm kind of considering like an afterburner type of effect for now .... widespread awareness will be getting near to a peak, or saturation, and if it is still alive most of the bigger threats will have been taken on imo. Jan 2013 and the neat fuel gets dumped into the exhaust when bitcoin entering circulation halves, it could create chaotic scenes if demand is still powerful (growth continued at current exponential rates) and weakened state currencies, bonds and credit markets are sensing a disruptive force. |
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Maybe that guy who wanted to buy 100k BTC at 2 USD started buying.
I think there maybe more than one, looks to me like we just went through a mini bidding war ... taking a breather for now though. |
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Hmmm, a quant who wants in on bitcoin action gets nasty.
Bitcoin could be devasting for the quants. those fair-headed, glory-boyz straight out of the best tech. colleges in the world to pimp themselves programming for Wall St., just in time to for biggest credit crunch in history ... could suck big to miss the biggest Phoenix ride from the Ashes of all time.
Get mining quants, it's where it at!!!!! ... digital gold, sweat from your brow.
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I see, that was not explicit. So Bitcoin users are acting lawfully as long as none of their transactions exceed $1000 per day? Or is this referring to the entire p2p network?
My understanding: I guess the guy who was transferring BTC 94,000 chunks ten or more times today missed your memo. US laws are only applicable on US soil last time I looked so any outlawing you want to do may actually be shooting the US economy in the foot (aka economic terrorism or treachery) more than allowing Bitcoin commerce to flourish within the US ... comparative advantages and all that for the lawyering economics types .... Bitcoin commerce will move where it is welcome not where the lawyers say. |
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Actually, Kenya was one of my picks for widespread adoption. They already use SMS text credits as a form of tradeable currency. Not far from there to bitcoin, conceptually they are ahead of the rest of the world ... they just need to hook into BitcoinJ client or a similar SMS app.
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