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1  Other / Politics & Society / Bitcoin Confiscation on: March 27, 2013, 05:35:49 AM
"One [could] not merely confiscate bitcoins", gloats a forum member regarding the Cypris bank crisis. Bitcoin is great, but it's not immune to 'powers that be' corruption.

Governments could legislate1 a 'buy back'. Corporations could seize assets via heavy handed legal action. ISPs or agencies could subjugate the network via technical (ISP/Backbone) level filtering, man-in-the-middle attacks, denial of service.

What could be done to the bitcoin network to prevent - say a government, corporation - from network/developer/miner coercion? How resilient would Bitcoin be to any of these 'social engineering' scenarios?

At the technical level, consider ISP port filtering (ala Bitorrent) (I have not read the whitepaper as to how much thought was given to this). Bitcoin Network Monitor, Bitcoin address <=> IP monitor, ISP subpoena, etc. If BTC nodes end up requiring services similar to TOR to survive, what chance does legitimate BTC usage have? 

Offline, deposit only 'cold' wallets could protect against technical efforts. Pre-existing software security solutions might help when applied to BTC (i.e. randomize Bitcoin port, bundle Bitcoin-QT with TOR, one click cold wallets...)

Hoarding physical cash might prevent 'bank' level manipulation from effecting you, similar to cold bitcoin wallets. Think of physical fiat as a cold wallet, and electronic fiat as online wallets.

The benefits of 'running your own bank' might not seem significant if you can't connect to the network (i.e. you can't process transactions).

/TheEndIsNighRant

1 1933 Emergency Banking Act
Quote
authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to order any individual or organization in the United States to deliver any gold that they possess or have custody of to the Treasury in return for "any other form of coin or currency coined or issued under the laws of the United States - http://tucnak.fsv.cuni.cz/~calda/Documents/1930s/EmergBank_1933.html
2  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / [OSX] GoxSaver.app - Mt. Gox Market Stats Display on: June 15, 2011, 12:25:33 PM
Proof of concept by Metonymous Online. Run it on a secondary monitor and feel like you mean business.

OS X? Download yourself the GoxSaver Mt. Gox Stats Visualiser (ZIP contains an app).

Feature requests? Show me the BTC. Serious enquiries email admin@metonymous.com.

3  Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / blkmond lite on: May 18, 2011, 03:27:59 PM
hey all, I couldn't grok blkmond, or seemingly get it working. it runs and sits there... doing nothing even when a block turns up. Anyway;

from that engineering "do it yourself" mentality I wrote a substitute that operates in possibly the least efficient way possible, it just polls bitcoind over RPC ever 0.1 of a second. Huzzah! Anyway it works, and it's a "fixed cost" work, it won't increase usage if you increase pool size.

I jokingly called it pollpokepush.py (it's even fun to say!),

To get it working:
Code:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from jsonrpc.authproxy import AuthServiceProxy
import sys
import os

access = AuthServiceProxy("http://RPCUSER:RPCPASS@127.0.0.1:8332")
blockcount = access.getblockcount()
from time import sleep
while(True):
        newcount = access.getblockcount()
        if newcount > blockcount:
                os.system("killall -s SIGUSR1 pushpoold")
                sys.stdout.write("B")
                sys.stdout.flush()
                blockcount = newcount
                sleep(1)
        else:
                sleep(0.1)

4  Bitcoin / Mining / OSX CPU Miner on: May 10, 2011, 06:51:46 PM
OSX CPU Miner

Possibly only 32bit intel binary, if it is, you can compile it yourself from source.

Donations welcome @ 1MBBi4ZXrRaLZWFNrfHSSfTA8S9ZUBeUFD

As my CPU (Core DUO, MacBook Pro) is 32bit, I get best performance with cryptopp_32asm algorithm, ymmv.
5  Bitcoin / Mining / Why to NOT consider AWS GPU cluster mining [summary analysis] on: May 08, 2011, 02:08:31 PM
I cleaned up my posted review / analysis of AWS GPU cluster farming and posted it on my blog.

Cost Defective Mining with Amazon Web Services GPU Clusters (EDIT: dead link)

I hope you find my post informative!

I hope self promotion/pseudo-reposting is not too frowned upon. For the concerned, other justifications to repost: the title of my previous thread was extremely ambiguous; the content was spread between the posts; as the creator of the content I have the right to post it elsewhere, but am open to discussion of whether I should repost it here.

Thank you to bernd & error for their posts in the thread. Your input was appreciated.
6  Bitcoin / Mining / Cost Defecting Mining on: May 06, 2011, 11:09:08 AM
- or - How to Lose Money Whilst Really Really Trying

Howdy folks. Against the better judgement and superior mathematics of my Bitcoin brethren, I decided to venture into the land of rental GPU power. Burnt myself the better part of 24 hours, as well as a hole in my pocket.

Enter Amazon EC2 Cluster GPU Instances

The stats they give:
  • 2 x Intel Xeon X5570, quad-core “Nehalem” architecture
  • 2 x NVIDIA Tesla “Fermi” M2050 GPUs
  • 64-bit platform
  • USD$2.10 per hour
  • Up to 8 instances

The stats I got:
  • 8 CPU threads x 3200 khs-1 = 25.6 Mhs-1
  • 2 GPU CUDA threads x 90 Mhs-1 = 180 Mhs-1
  • 64-bit binaries
  • $2.10 hour-1 x 8 instances = $403.20 day-1

The stats that matter:
  • 25.6 Mhs-1 + 180 Mhs-1 = 205.6 Mhs-1 x 8 instances
  • 1.64 Ghs-1 @ $403.20 day-1
  • 1.64 Ghs-1 now= 1 block every ~3.4 days
  • 1 block = 50 BTC @ USD$3.47 = $173.50 / 3.4 days = $51 day-1

Permit me a LOL

The experiment did yield spoils, however: in the form of 64bit Linux binaries. Any and all donations are appreciated.

NOTE: These are built against the Amazon 64 Bit Linux AMI's, so YMMV. Debian/Ubuntu users should get TuxSoul's Debian packages instead.


I also built binaries for running your own pool; but they are horribly inefficient.


I can't say I didn't expect financial loss with this experiment; but If I've saved you any time or effort with this post, donations are most welcome. If I never have to see a makefile again it will be too soon.

 - Metonymous -
162Dw2KSJpAJrpVQ5Ert5427GMpnsSLPmb.
7  Economy / Marketplace / Borderlands on Steam 5 BTC (worth USD$30) on: May 02, 2011, 10:01:11 AM
As per subject:

Borderlands on Steam 5 BTC (worth USD$29.25, non-GOTY version)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/8980/
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