exactly, the current estimate of the next difficulty change is:

• 48 hours
• 6% increase in difficulty

and there were exactly 144 blocks yesterday during the supposed 40% hashrate drop


The people who panic sold will be feeling really, really angry/stupid once this is over. They only have themselves to blame

FUD

let the records state: you fell for FUD



all these websites will soon be reporting "oops, we all accidentally, spookily made the precise same mistake, how could that happen "

make of it what you will

Don't take this as tax advice or anything () but it's very difficult to prove exactly how long you've really been holding the money for. The blockchain is not an accurate record for length of possession, only for when transactions happened. Think about that

BIP158 essentially is Neutrino (Neutrino is one implementation of it)


Sounds interesting, although I'd be most curious to know whether these filters can be used to check for zero-confirm announcements (which BIP37 can do, but BIP158 cannot)

Only one problem guys:


what

fucking

flash-crash?



The hashrate dipped a tiny little bit yesterday, just a little bit. I suppose if you measure the inferred hashrate  (because it can't be measured directly) 1 nano-second before a new block drops, after a really long wait for that new block, you could calculate a 40% drop.

But there's no point in using such an erratic measurement (the average change over 1 unusually long block interval ), unless you're going to make a news story out of it to try to manipulate the market, of course


Cointelegraph, Zerohedge, Coindance, and Marie Whoever, shame on you people

https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/bitcoin-network-hash-rate-mysteriously-flash-crashes-40

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-network-hash-rate-mysteriously-flash-crashes-by-40

https://coin.dance/blocks/hashrate/linear


Authored by Marie Huillet via CoinTelegraph.com,

Bitcoin’s network hash rate dipped a record 40% yesterday, Sept. 23, in a sudden shock for the network.

Data from Coin.dance - corroborated by other sources - indicates that the network’s hash rate plummeted yesterday from over 98,000,000 TH/S to 57,700,000 TH/s.
Mystery flash crash remains unexplained

The flash drop remains unexplained as of press time and is all the more striking given the Bitcoin network’s record-breaking string of new all-time high hash rates throughout summer.

Just five days ago, Cointelegraph had reported that Bitcoin’s hash rate had passed a record 102 quintillion hashes in a historic milestone.

As previously noted, the hash rate of a cryptocurrency  sometimes referred to as hashing or computing power  is a parameter that gives the measure of the number of calculations that a given network can perform each second.

A higher hash rate means greater competition among miners to validate new blocks; it also increases the number of resources needed for performing a 51% attack, making the network more secure.

By press time, Bitcoin’s hash rate has somewhat recovered back to almost 88,300,000 TH/s  yet remains well below its earlier records.

Throughout summer, cryptocurrency analysts had argued that the network’s record-breaking streak of all-time hash rate highs was a bullish indicator for the top coin’s price performance.

In a tweet posted this August, Bitcoin investor Max Keiser had claimed that:



Back in November 2017, Bitcoin had seen a sudden hash rate downturn of almost 50%, accompanied by slowed transaction processing times, a price dip, and even miners’ short-lived switch over to the forked network, Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

read the post, therein lies the answers ye seeketh

(tl;dr Hong Kong small with big economy, closed loop BTC-based economy easy)

indeed. very few workloads can actually make use of the sequential maximum speed, most are either random reads, or a mixture of random reads and writes. Not least Bitcoin, the blockchain is written sequentially, but you cannot possibly hope to verify the data at 120MB/s, lol (the Bitcoin devs have said that they've tested Bitcoin in "ideal" conditions with high end hardware, and cannot get blocks to verify faster than 50MB/s, although that was maybe 1 year ago).

The major disk performance bottleneck is computing the chainstate, which is a much more random workload than the blockchain, and what slows down anything that's RAM or disk speed restrained (such as a rasPi). Bitcoin chainstate (i.e. UTXO set) is constantly doing short burst of reads from the blocks and writes to the chainstate database. SSDs are best for that kind of usage pattern.

---

Make the chainstate (and the whole blockchain syncing) go faster thusly:

• set dbcache= to at least 1GB (default is 450MB if you don't set it)
• put your chainstate folder on an SSD, make a symlink to it in your .bitcoin directory (use the ln -s command)
• put your swapfile on an SSD, make it equal or double your RAM, then disable the swapfile on the SD card (only if you're running from an SD card, of course)

you can even put the whole /dev/mmcblk0p2 partition (i.e. root partition) on the SSD, and leave /boot (i.e. /dev/mmcblk0p1 partition) on the SD card. But the biggest performance gains will come from the 3 steps above.

there's been an issue with the way key servers work discovered just a few months ago, a DoS style problem.


It shouldn't stop you from just downloading goatpig's (or anyone's) key, but it's possible that ubuntu have decided to change the way their keyserver works, and you're trying during some downtime or an issue they can't fix, etc etc. Some people shut their keyserver and are exclusively using openpgp.org as a keyserver, possibly some people kept their keyservers up, don't know exactly how the dust settled tbh

go to https://github.com/goatpig, have a little look through the folders and you'll find goatpig's key somewhere there (I just don't remember where exactly it is, probably in the Armory repo though). This is no more and no less secure a way of obtaining goatpig's key than using a keyserver.

right. meritocracy FTW  



You should.

The collapsed banks and investment funds from 2008 onwards have demonstrated that banks don't behave responsibly with your money, and that you don't get any information about how risky their behavior was until after they've already lost everything they owe you.

Be your own bank.

no

what you're talking about is when there's also proof that someone is breaking the law, and proof that money made from law-breaking was spent on the assets that are confiscated. That's been going on for 30+ years in the Western world.


what I'm talking about is something new:

the UK authorities now claim the right to confiscate property even when they have no evidence that criminality funded asset purchases. As long as there is any doubt as to how the money used in property purchases was earned (which is why foreign owners are easily targeted by this new law), then the property is confiscated without reimbursement


the London property market in particular could be badly weakened by this, the percentage of foreign buyers (who may or may not be earning money from criminality) is very high in London.

that problem takes care of itself, really


Any coin not backed with sufficient hashrate and accumulated proof of work isn't resistant to gangsters stealing people's money. No demand for that kind of money, unsuprisingly.

So businesses who think it's easy to start a cryptocurrency simply don't yet understand this tech and this market. Which means you'd be unwise to shop with them anyway, why reward or encourage behavior that's not smart?

I simply avoid everything I can, and evade when it's smart to do so.

• find people growing food, and buy directly from them. there's a high chance it will be healthier, as they will have an actual conscience
• find independent businesses that sell other stuff for your home. try to get things from people outside your local gangster turf, it's harder for them to track the paper trail, so the people you buy from are more likely to use it as an opportunity to evade taxes themselves
• don't use the postal system for any of this, as the postal system is subsumed into your local gang's tax reporting

In most of these cases, it's not possible to stop people you trade with from paying some taxes, it's hard to be a business and avoid scrutiny of your finances. But the world's a big place, you can find businesses who trade outside of scrutinizers, if you just look for them

I personally think the Hong Kong situation has the potential to make the biggest difference. It's a shame that it takes such a critical situation as a catalyst, but hey, gangsters gotta gangsterize

Hopefully though, things could unfold (long term) in the following fashion:

• Small businesses all over Hong Kong start taking BTC, and convert any HKD they take immediately to BTC
• Continuing turmoil causes HKD to become riskier, tourists begin to use BTC in Hong Kong
• Someone comes along and starts up an alternative Hong Kong stockmarket, priced in BTC

As soon as step 3 happens, that could be the tipping point for a worldwide domino effect. And it may eventually sound like an attractive proposition to market traders in Hong Kong and everywhere else; central bank mismanagement is gradually rendering the currencies they're mismanaging an increasingly bad option, while Bitcoin's management is slowly but surely demonstrating it's longevity in competence. Stock and contracts are almost always worth something, whereas (centrally managed) currencies are purely notional in value: you can give people the notion just as fast & easily as they can discard it

I'd look into this carefully if I were you.


The rental business: no problem. If someone else owns the property, that's their hot potato. You take the BTC, landlord gets their money, client gets a rental property; it's hard to get bitten in that configuration.

But anyone who wants to use an agency like yours to buy a property in the UK is taking an additional and significant risk, it's your responsibility (and theirs) to understand this risk and make everyone aware, there's a possibility that those who were not sufficiently informed could discover this thread if you do not


UK property market could take a big hit from this sort of thing. As someone who could be a potential buyer, my perspective is: too risky, no chance. Watch while the demand sinks, and the prices along with it.

^^^^


you see, you guys literally need flat-earthers to support your argument, this is clever stuff



Carlton: 3 + 1 = 4
climate doomsday breathing tax people: no no no, 3 + 1 = 33% 33% 33% !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Carlton: 3 + 1 still equals 4, unfortunately
flat-earther: why that's right, 3 + 1 = 4! The earth is flat


laaaame

there's a risk you would not be able to keep a UK property bought with BTC, there's a new British law (since a few years ago) that allows the state to repossess property bought with cash/barter instruments if the buyer cannot prove the cash/cash alternative money used to buy was legally theirs (targeted mainly against foreign owners, apparently). Capitalism in the property market is more or less entirely illegal in England now (the Labour party leader is making suggestions that the government will decide the "fair" price in certain property sales. if this sort of thing continues, the price will drop without government help ).


UK housing market is likely to be hurt eventually, although the rest of the political uncertainty will play an equal part in that.


Edit: I checked this, and in fact it's not cash transactions that are targeted, but any transaction used to buy UK property. Couldn't find information as to how far back in time this can be applied, but this could essentially be a blank cheque for UK government administrators to repossess almost any UK real estate/property, as the further into the past this law gets applied, the easier it could be to cast doubt on the source of money used to buy.

you'd be nuts to either buy or hold UK property under such circumstances

that's not against the law, therefore it's not possible that it's a conspiracy



it's not illegal, it cannot therefore be a conspiracy



a theory that people are targeting users with malicious post reports is not a conspiracy, because abusing internet forums like that is not illegal, and therefore not possible to conspire about



giving people merits to manipulate an internet message board (or making a joke about doing that) is not illegal, and therefore cannot be part of a conspiracy

furthermore, if you commit a crime on your own, without planning it with others, it is also not a conspiracy, that is referred to instead as pre-meditated merit-milking (which is still not yet illegal)



a conspirator is the perpetrator of the planning of a crime not someone who accuses others of engaging in a conspiracy.

 


I am literally begging you all, please learn what the word "conspiracy" really means

right

that's why I'm dedicating alot of effort to getting my Lightning node as well managed as possible now, long before any spike in transactions occurs again.

Once enough people are running Lightning, it becomes increasingly less likely that transaction spikes on-chain will last long, or that they'll even be as intense as they were in 2017.

There's another reason to get Lightning in the best shape we can: it mitigates DDoS of the on-chain network. So a well subscribed, liquid, and operationally reliable lightning (or another 2nd layer) is actually vital for Bitcoin's overall robustness.

---

It's kind of beautiful really. all that could be achieved from an attack against miners or nodes would be:

• strengthen Lightning
• reduce the effectiveness of attacks against Lightning (assuming Eltoo hasn't yet been deployed in this scenario)
• increase BTC value (as there would be an inevitable reduction in BTC supply)

oh and 1 important thing:


if you're running Bitcoin on your rasPi, you should:

• either open port 8333 on your router
• or run Bitcoin through a VPN and use their port forwarding to open port 8333
• or run Bitcoin through Tor (which will forward port 8333)

this is so you're not a leech, lol


if you're not forwarding port 8333 to other Bitcoin nodes, then they can't receive blocks from you. This makes you a leech! You're not really adding capacity to the network, you're using up the available capacity.