The interesting thing about building on top of the bitcoin protocol is that it doesn't really matter if it is a good idea or not - there's really no way to prevent it from happening. Therefore, it will happen if someone is willing to pay the tiny price of having their experiment encoded in the bitcoin block chain.

Also, my paper is not about colored coins, although the same arguments apply.

Can we put a time limit on it, and a default action? Maybe randomly choose one of them to steal from everyone

What's the status? I'm strangely eager to find out how this goes.

Also, from what you've described, the best way to game this system is to run lots and lots of nodes. Botnet operators will LOVE this . . . unless you've found a solution to that problem?

Very interesting proposal. I definitely want to try this. Thanks for innovating!

I'm playing this round. I sent a PM with my strategy to myrkul, so nobody should have to wait on me to close a round.

Whether LTC will "make it" isn't very interesting to me. What is interesting to me is whether an alt-coin will ever overtake bitcoin. That's why this bet is coming soon to betsofbitco.in:


Once approved, the link to this bet will be: http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=1630

This is extremely interesting. Somebody is going to figure out the best way to get a stabilized decentralized currency which tracks external values like USD and gold, and that person and their investors will be very, very rich.

bytemaster, I also wrote a whitepaper with another way to do this (see my signature). I think you might find it interesting. If you see anything there which you like, feel free to steal it.

You are the first person I have seen offering to collect bitcoins now to fund future development of a cool new protocol like a kickstarter project, with backers getting a cut of the new protocol. I wish more people would do that - its a great way to invest in innovation!

As it stands, I would probably be a small investor, just to see where this goes. Like many others here, I am skeptical that your price discovery model will work, but I don't see many opportunities to invest in this space, so I am hopeful that if your idea doesn't work, you will evolve it into something which does work.

If you wanted me (and perhaps others) to be a major investor, your proposal would have to be amended as follows:

• Build on top of bitcoin as a new protocol layer rather than starting your own alt-chain
• Do price discovery by having multiple data sources who publish a "ticker" into the block-chain. Crypto-USD holders then vote on which ticker (or group of tickers) they are using

I look forward to seeing what comes of this.

I disagree strongly. There's nothing about this proposal which requires an alt coin. Also, the consensus of the community is rapidly converging on something like this, and even if the majority never agree with Croesus, everything described here can be built right on top of bitcoin, no hard-forks required. Consensus is not required to build on top of bitcoin.

I am a little worried that the proposal may be relying on advanced scripting features which may not be well-supported by the bitcoin network in the future. I hope Croesus will do something a bit more future-proof in a completely new protocol layer rather than trying to leverage advanced bitcoin features. Then he can sell us the "coins" of the new protocol layer we could all be investors!

But maybe that's just me trying to influence him to implement MY idea instead of his idea

Please close this bet:
http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=1205

The decision happened. Gay scouts are allowed, but gay scout leaders are not allowed, so statement evaluates to false.
http://news.yahoo.com/boy-scouts-allow-gay-scouts-leave-ban-gay-001631810.html

Thanks!

I thought about that, but that requires centralization. AI problems can be deterministically procedurally generated based on the most recent transaction hash, so AI research needs no central server to coordinate things like SETI has.

Imagine: Decentralized AI research!

I'm imagining millions of computers randomly mutating scripts, creating better and better "generic problem solvers" that can be multiplied like neurons.

Probably totally impossible, but maybe not?

Citation needed!

We've got the biggest supercomputer on the planet, and I think maybe we could use one like it for creating a rapidly evolving artificial intelligence.

What if the proof of work could include a random set of AI problems? A quick hash of the transactions would randomize a problem set generator which creates a bunch of random machine learning, pattern matching, and similar problems. The node which releases the most efficient script for solving all of the problems in that random set wins the coins for that block.

Difficulty would increase by creating ever-harder AI problems rather than ever-harder hash targets.

Solution propagation would be interesting, since you're looking for the most efficient solution rather than a solution better than a certain threshold, and testing a proposed solution would take a lot longer than testing a hash. I think maybe each node would have to broadcast its best solution generated or received, and after 10 minutes, the best solution would be frozen and work would start on the next block. Everyone who helped propagate the winning solution would also get a small reward.

Once a solution was accepted, the network would test a random selection of previously-accepted scripts and give an additional reward to the one which happened to do well on this problem set, rewarding flexibility.

Since every script would be public, there would be fierce competition to build on previous best solutions and rapidly evolve solutions to very difficult AI problems. "Efficiency" could be judged in such a way that allows multiple copies of a candidate script to run and interact with copies of itself. Whoever does the best job of creating a basic unit of intelligence would get the rewards - a race to "build a better neuron".

This is probably unworkable in some way that is not clear to me at the moment, but it sure would be cool if it worked. On the other hand, maybe creating something like this is a bad idea even if it does work

I completely agree. Something like this is going to make someone implausibly rich someday.

Oh wow.

I'm still absorbing this thread, but I have to post some encouragement. After my speaking on "Bitcoin in the Future" on a panel at the San Jose bitcoin conference, somebody came up to me and pointed me to this thread.

I wrote a whitepaper about something very similar. Have you read it? (see my signature).

It sounds like you are one of the few people in the world who see the enormous potential of using escrow and speculators to stabilize a token, which can then track the value of any currency or commodity desired.

As far as I can tell, the biggest difference between my proposal and yours is that I tried to provide a mechanism for a "kickstarter" type fundraiser to get things rolling on a new layer of coins running on top of bitcoin, which also lets people invest in the success of the idea and profit if it works.

You and I need to talk

Transaction complete. Sold 45000 XRP for 4.5 BTC.

Thanks!

I am starting a transaction now with mah87 selling XRP for BTC. Will post again when we are all done.

What we talked about will almost certainly be summed up by the little quote on the front about MasterCoin

Update: I have the cards!


If you're at the conference, don't be surprised if I try to give you one!