Berlin is more easily accessible than London for non-EU citizens like me. My French titre de séjour grants me passage through Germany and the entire Schengen zone, but not UK. I would need to go through immigration, and others may even need visas, which are a big barrier IMHO.

I haven't read all the argumentation for both cities, but you should pay attention on costs. I found it really cool that we could stay on that nice hotel for that price. I don't expect the same level of prices neither in London nor in Berlin, but if Berlin is indeed cheaper than London, I'd say that's another strong point in favor of Berlin.

Satellites are not the only option if you are not nomadic. By keeping a roughly fixed position you can also add options like infrared, submarine cables, floating wireless routers etc. I don't know what's the best, but the people behind Blueseed are doing some research on this topic since they'll need fast internet access.

I haven't managed to read the entire discussion, only OP, so sorry if I repeat something here.

First, shouldn't this topic be taken to TSI's forum? http://seasteading.org/community/forums

Now, about OP, I don't like the nomadic nature of the proposition. Not having a fixed place makes many things too complicated. The main advantage I see is that you may try to run away from bad weather, but that also probably means that eventually you'll have to enter protected, territorial waters for that reason, and then your independence is gone.
It's better if you can resist bad weather, even on the deep ocean. But that's not for small ships. Even big ships shake as hell during a storm. As far as I've read on TSI's forum only semi-submersible or fully submersible structures can endure huge waves "calmly". Semi-submersibles (platforms) are very expensive, and submersibles are not... "conventional", but many people support it as the best way to go for seasteading: http://seasteading.org/interact/forums/research/engineering/permanently-submerged-concrete-structures-living-space-bubble-c

Not to the chain of course but perhaps sending requests to the p2p network of miners instead... the answers could be in the blocks. The message structure doesn't need to be precisely identical, only "compatible" so that centralized tokens could be exchanged by tokens issued on this chain, and also that issuers could migrate their tokens from a server to the chain and vice-verse.

I don't even know if it's feasible, but I was imagining a blockchain implementation that would do pretty much the same task an OT server does. This way, such chain could be seen as another OT server by OT clients. This would make everything more flexible, adding competition and interoperability. Do you see what I mean? Actually, do you understand the OT protocol well enough to say if what I'm imagining is even feasible?

Are you sure of that? Miners would want their fees. There's also the harder to measure costs of waiting for confirmations, as well as the probability of double-spends.

Anyway, we can't really know for sure what would be better, I guess both have its uses. I'm just saying that I think it would be more productive if we would focus on improving what's already there for OT, instead of working on this new chain right now. The OT protocol seems promising. I myself should read more about it and eventually contribute, I believe I saw there's a Java client for it or something...

But of course, an OT-blockchain, compatible with the OT protocol, would only bring extra choices and thus improvements.

That's the ideal, of course, but there's no way we can do that with technology only. That doesn't mean strong reputation systems can't arise. If everything you've got are "gentlemen agreements", we can at least try to better identify who are the gentlemen and who are not. That's not as good as enforceable contracts, but still, I believe such a thing could bring some competition into an over regulated and consequently too concentrated market.

The OT protocol is pretty much global too. And I must insist: this chain solution would not manage to decentralize the most important aspect of this problem, which is the trust on the issuer. This problem is inherently centralized. The chain would only decentralize double-spend checks, which IMHO are a minor issue in this context (if your issuer is serious, he won't allow double-spending, if he's not, that's the least of your worries).

Anyway, if you are really wanting to go by this chain solution, I'd suggest researching the viability of making this chain fully compatible with OT, in the sense that the chain itself, in what concerns the OT protocol, could be seen as just an extra server. This would bring more flexibility, interaction and competition.


I definitely agree with that as well.

But this problem is inherently centralized. You'll only decentralize the double-spending checks with such blockchain, but the main trust problem - if the issuer of the token will keep up to his "words" - remains centralized on the issuer.

Shouldn't we be looking toward something like Open Transactions instead? The protocol is already there, and as far as I understood, it suits precisely these kind of "token issuing" use cases.

Tu abandonnes 85 BTC, comme ça? Ce n'est pas des pièces jaunes ça...

Essayes d’exécuter les commandes dans le prompt DOS, à la place de la boite Windows+R. Tu ouvres le prompt DOS, fais "cd C:\Program Files\Bitcoin\bin\32" et après tu exécute les commandes au dessous.
Essayes la commande validateaddress suggérée par davout et poste ici le résultat. S'il y a une erreur en particulière, cette erreur sera affichée dans ta fenêtre DOS.

Ou alors, il y a personne à qui tu fais confiance et qui puisse t'aider? Tu pourrais lui passer ton wallet.dat pour qu'il te renvoi le montant à ton compte MtGox.

"Not yet redeemed" veut juste dire que l'adresse en question n'a pas été dépensé. Normal si c'est l'adresse où tu as reçu les bitcoins, si tu ne les as pas encore envoyé qlq part d'autre.

Si tu as mis ton ancien wallet.dat dans une installation nouvelle, il faut au moins une fois démarrer ton bitcoin par ligne de commande avec le switch -rescan, pour qu'il se rend compte des transactions passées.

De tout façon, ton plus grand problème maintenant n'est pas voir ton historique, mais avoir ton compte MtGox crédité. D'ailleurs, tu n'avais pas besoin d'utiliser MtGox comme backup pour tes bitcoins, mais bon...

As-tu déjà vérifié si la transaction que tu as envoyé à MtGox est dans la blockchain? Tu peux le confirmer ici: http://blockchain.info
Si elle n'y est pas encore, regardes plutôt si elle n'est pas en attente. Tu peux voir la liste de transactions en attente ici: http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/ Si ta transaction se trouve dans cette liste, tu n'as qu'à attendre. (Théoriquement c'est possible d'y ajouter des frais pour qu'elle soit prise en compte plus vite, mais je ne connais aucun logiciel que te permet de faire ça)

J'ai oublié la possibilité des espaces... essayes de mettre le chemin du programme entre guillemets, et juste pour être sûr, mettons .exe

Je vois.

Bon, je vais essayer.
Je suppose que tu es en Windows, et que tu as la dernière version de bitcoin. Et je suppose que tu sais où est installé ton bitcoin. Disons que ton installation de bitcoin est sur  C:\RepertoireBitcoin\

• Arrêtes le programme bitcoin s'il exécute.
• Appuies sur la touche "Windows" plus la touche R, cela va t'ouvrir une fenêtre pour exécuter une commande (des utilisateurs des version récentes de Windows me corrigent si je dis des bêtises).
• Dans cette fenêtre tu vas exécuter:
  C:\RepertoireBitcoin\bin\32\bitcoin-qt -rescan
  En remplaçant C:\RepertoireBitcoin par le vrai chemin.

Et attends qu'il finis de charger.


Maintenant, je me sens obligé de te donner un conseil. Je ne pense pas que tu devrais estoquer une quantité sensible de bitcoins à ton ordinateur. Tu risques de chopper un trojan qui va te les voler. Je ne te dis pas de rien estoquer, mais n'y garde pas plus de ce que tu accepterais de perdre, car la chance est considérable.
Si tu veux avoir une quantité de bitcoins que tu n'accepterais pas de perdre, donc je te conseille de les estoquer aux e-wallets plus réputés. MtGox et Tradehill semblent sérieux, et ce nouveau Crypto X Change aussi. Tu pourrais les distribuer, un peu dans chaque. Mais évites ton ordinateur, considères-le un "environnement potentiellement compromis". Moi je n'estoque pratiquement rien dans l'ordinateur que j'utilise quotidiennement pour accéder le web et tout... mais je suis informaticien et je sais comment me créer un environnement plus sécurisé.
Peut-être bientôt tu pourras t’acheter un des dispositifs présentés par Clemens Cap dans la conférence à Prague, là tu pourrais estoquer tes bitcoins toi même en toute sécurité.

C'est une ligne de commande. Tu vas jusqu'à ton répertoire d'installation de bitcoin, puis bin/32 si je me rappelle bien, et là tu exécutes la commande au dessus, en remplacent ADRESSE par ton adresse bien sûr.
À partir de la 0.5 l’exécutable s'appelle bitcoin-qt je crois, pas bitcoin tout court.

Tu demarres bitcoin par la ligne de commande:



Si l'adresse auquel les bitcoin ont été transférés est bien dans ce wallet.dat, c'est correct.

Oh but mining will be a professional thing regardless. Actually, it already is, if we consider only those who mine solo or operate pools, they are quite few.
I wouldn't compare that to a centralized solution though. Anyone with the skills and resources can enter the market, and most importantly, pool operators don't own the resources that they use to mine. Even if a pool operator is shut down by force, the actual miners, those who own the cards, can just switch to another pool or start mining solo. Somebody may also try to create a new pool to gather all those pool-less miners. Anyway, it's not comparable to a centralized solution where you kill everything by killing the servers.


Don't you think that's the political way of solving problems? We're more likely to create new problems than solving the existent one.


Please, keep in mind that there's nothing we can do to prevent such kind of "cartel boycott" from happening right now. I'd argue that not even CPU-friendly proof-of-work algorithms prevent that, since in the end there would be big pools anyway (and while they don't prevent cartels, they create new vulnerabilities).

And I don't think transaction fees will ever be draconian, for the reason you also note:


The fact that it's not that difficult to transact outside of the blockchain already prevents miners from abusing. And they are competing with someone else: they are competing with other miners, with e-wallets which take transactions out of the chain, with offline means of payment like casacius coins and bitbills etc.

 
I didn't understand this. I'm not making such assumption.


I'm not sure if I follow. You think the "miner consensus" would artificially create huge blocks with fake transactions in it, just to kick out those who do not have the resources to handle it? Because otherwise, if they are not faking anything and the blocks are big, that's the bitcoin network itself who's kicking them out.
I don't think it is clever for pool operators to try to fake large blocks.


That's not a change in the protocol, other than eventually eliminating the 1MB limit - what will have to be done anyway.
Miners are the only ones that should concern with huge blocks, so why not let them work that out?

Yes, I guess it was Mike Hearn the first to come by with this insurance idea a while ago, but at the time maybe I didn't pay the deserved attention to it, or I just didn't think it through well enough, don't remember.

I can't obviously "explain exactly how will this work" since I have no crystal ball. But I tend to trust more on spontaneous order than centrally planned order, particularly when it comes to economic incentives. And that's what Stefan made me see with those talks: by arguing for an arbitrary formula to set up a moving block size limit, I was in a sense arguing for central planning instead of spontaneous order.

I will just give a grasp on the idea of these insurances for those who haven't heard about it yet. Basically, people interested in not being the target of double-spends, as well as being capable of spending at all (the "freezing the network" attack scenario), could hire insurances for that. Say, for example, some organization wants to freeze bitcoin's network with a >50% attack. If that happens, insurers would have to pay a huge amount to their clients. They have a financial interest to rent enough processing power to outcome such attack as quick as possible. (actually, I would expect most bitcoin users to collaborate... not only for ideological reasons, but simply to be able to spend their money again)
If you want a more "discussed" scenario which can be compared to bitcoin's "transaction fee tragedy of the commons" scenario, I'd suggest the one of stateless defense. It's obviously not exactly the same thing, but I think it's the closest one on economic literature. For example, half of the The Chaos Theory book, from Bob Murphy, is about stateless defense.


It's not "my solution". And, what do you mean with "nobody having a clear idea what they need to do to have their blocks accepted"? Nothing needs to be done on secret, actually pool operators would better announce everything they do pretty clearly since they are using other people's resources after all.
And, also, what did I lose?