testnet testing was announced a few weeks ago.
It has a database as the ledger, and a blockchain with a max length (old blocks are just dropped b/c the info is in the database).

I wanted to read more and help test it but lost the tab in my browser

Thx!

Let's talk about what's driving the action.  I think that the last few weeks have been all about whales getting in (and the few bitcointalk traders that were still short).  Whales and institutions have longer memories; they've been watching the situation since the last bubble.  I think that the general public has yet to move... not enough news stories to trigger the fever.

WRT recent action, that at 665 after a 4 hour run from 630 was NOT positioned for short term gains.  And it was way too close to the action to be an attempt to bolster the price.  Those coins are going into someone's cold wallet... it may have encouraged some subsequent selling action but the trend is that we are chomping thru supply, whether by buying ask walls or luring the sellers into a bid.

The following article has some description of a coming US bank withholding requirement for transfers to foreign banks.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-will-unleash-the-irs-on-russian-banks-in-july-2014-5#!KdEkB

How will this affect transfers from the US to foreign exchanges? 

Also, slightly off-topic, does anybody know how you'll go about paying someone (wiring them $) with these rules in place?

Let us centralize and clarify discussion on bitcoin sidechains.  

The basic idea has been around since at least mid-2012 (any earlier references?) and is to allow value to be moved from the bitcoin network into a separate blockchain and back.  But a possible implementation has only emerged relatively recently (gmaxwell).

First, if both blockchains "see" each other then side chains are easy.  Let's say you want to move value from chain A to chain B.  The owner spends bitcoins on chain A from any address (say 1Me) into a well-known unspendable address (let's pretend the address prefix is 1chainBxfer).  Nodes on chain "B" are watching chain A, perhaps only as a SPV node to see txouts going to 1chainBxfer.  When a suitable transaction is found and sufficiently confirmed, a coinbase txn is allowed on chain B that grants coins to the same addresses as the txins on chain A (1Me).

And you can spend back from B to A in the same way.

Basically, a similar technique was used to fund mastercoins, except that the mastercoin bitcoin address IS spendable (which therefore inflates the TOTAL crypto-currency (MC+bitcoin) supply) and the transfer was a one-time "kickoff" deal.


The real question is how to spend in both directions (2-peg is what people have been saying) when chain A is not aware of chain B?  I think that the general consensus is that this is impossible which is why the sidechain idea languished for 2 years.  

However, the real question is "what is the MINIMUM amount of information that chain B requires and how can that be provided to B with the smallest, safest API changes to B?"

The first requirement is to ensure that the total number of bitcoins will never exceed the amount mined, regardless of errors or antagonistic players on the side chains.  This ensures that errors on a side chain will never inflate the total number of bitcoins on the bitcoin blockchain.  This is easily solved by requiring only allowing "reanimations" of coins on the bitcoin blockchain.  That is, an output transaction was created to an "unspendable" address in the bitcoin blockchain to transfer the coin to chain B.  To transfer value back to the bitcoin blockchain, this txo must be "spent".  It probably does not matter which TXO gets spent to reanimate a coin (in fact choosing a random one will help anonymity), it only matter that the size of the "reanimating" txins = the spending txo's (miner's fees will need to come from a normal txin).

Now, the worst case scenario is that someone will be able "reanimate" all the coins transferred to another chain, stealing them.  This could cause the sum of the spendable "bitcoins" on the bitcoin blockchain and the sidechain to exceed 21M.  But the 21M limit is not broken, on the bitcoin blockchain (presumably the other chain dies a horrible gox-like death at this point :-( because its coins are no longer "backed")...


To stop that, we need to prove ownership of a off-chain coin to the bitcoin blockchain...

BRB :-)

[exchange]

I'm wondering what the core devs' opinion is of adding multiple units of account, atomic transfers etc to Bitcoin?  Think Colored Coins+. 

This is what I think:

It seems like the greatest risk of an alt-coin replacing bitcoin is that bitcoin does not handle different units-of-account.  This seems to be a key feature of most if not all of the non-copycat alt-coins.  The foundation of economic behavior and contract law is exchange, not transfer and so bitcoin seems very deficient.  To truly capture economic activity, and live up to its "electronic cash" moniker, Bitcoin needs atomic exchange between different units-of-account. 

The ongoing (and recent) failures of centralized exchanges have shown the difficulty of centralized approaches.  And even without failure, they had significant issues in terms of choice (can't exchange any pairs), price-and-time efficiency, and regulatory load.  This is why bitcoin was decentralized in the first place.

I understand the reluctance to make changes that would cause a fork in clients that have not updated, but this can be and has been managed.  It will be especially manageable when it becomes generally understood that the real question is not "to fork or not to fork", but whether the fork that brings the promise of digital currencies to full fruition is Bitcoin v0.9.5 or SomeOtherCoin v0.1.0.  I think that we should be confronting this today.  Once an alt-coin has made significant strides, IT will have the network-effect advantage, not Bitcoin.


Yes I know all about colored coins.  Its a good start but the key feature is exchange, not coloring.  Colored coins do not really support anonymous atomic exchange.

1. We need colored coins+ natively in the Bitcoin core wallet (satoshi client) to send the message that this concept is officially supported.
2. We need EVERY wallet to at least respect (and not touch the coins of) colored designations.
3. We need 1 satoshi transfers.  Either make an exception for color designated coins, or use the size of the txn fee to decide to relay.  The txn fee is the "right", market based way, if I'm willing to spend 1000 Satoshis to transfer 1 Satoshi, why should miners deny me?
4. We need colored annotation on every txout.  Today, wallets can operate on just the txout set.  They don't need the entire blockchain history.  We need to keep it that way or even make it simpler to help hardware wallets.
5. We need script primitives that support atomic exchange and a colored spend fee (like a miner's fee, but to the colored coin creator).  These details are better described in a full spec.

With these features companies could issue their stocks, bonds, etc natively on the blockchain.  Other companies could "back" crpyto-<thing> with real <thing>, and receive a small fee for their service. 

With these features, Bitcoin can actually DO everything the pundits have been promising...

Yes trust is still involved, but it is significantly reduced.  This is ok.  Trust is intrinsically involved for many units-of-account.  For example, holders of a mortgage instrument are trusting that the owner won't trash the house.  There is no way to avoid this.  In fact, its hard to argue that bitcoin-the-currency won't out-compete every trustless (and therefore unbacked) colored coin.  What do these other coins have that bitcoin does not?  So I think that bitcoin & coins based on some degree of trust will be the only ones with economic significance on the bitcoin blockchain.

BUT basic exchanges become places where buyers and sellers meet; they actually never touch the money.  At the same time, there is still a niche for centralized, high frequency trading.  This mirrors what is good about our economic system today.  I CAN exchange stock by hand with a random person on the street, but a centralized exchange makes it more convenient.

This is not an overlay network that is a parasite on bitcoin-the-network at the expense of Bitcoin-the-currency.  Bitcoin remains the fundamental digital crypto-currency facilitating the exchange of special-purpose units-of-account. 

http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/07/technology/bitcoin-denial/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Includes sub-stories "what is bitcoin", "Bitcoin market files for bankruptcy"

Google trends high, start your CCMF countdown timer... 

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Brecht/2014-02-28-Gold-Ain-t-No-Bitcoin-And-Thank-Goodness.html

The Gox debacle is showing the system is working.  No bailouts.  No TARP deal with the fed the prints $ for those who apply, devaluing everybody else.  The faulty part is removed from the BTC engine and replaced by better functioning and more diverse solutions.  Bitstamp, coinbase, bitfinex, ATMs.  Outside of BTC-land, the company gets bailed out and the people in charge remain to poison and drain the system of vitality forever. 

When the engine hiccups some people get burned, and I am very sorry if you are one of them. 

But bitcoin technology cannot help us if we don't USE it.  WHEN are we going to insist that BTC balances are held by exchanges in individual, blockchain-verifiable accounts?  Or even use multi-sig for greater security?  To stop every trade from appearing on the blockchain, these accounts could be "renormalized" daily or even weekly.

This thread documents the chilling effect.  The invisible pressure to discredit Bitcoin.  Please put on your tinfoil hat and add items here.  Either first person testimonials or verifiable web links.

The first item is the top return if you google "Ben Bernanke letter bitcoin":

Ben Bernanke’s letter to Congress: Bitcoin and other virtual currencies “may hold long-term promise”:
http://qz.com/148399/ben-bernanke-bitcoin-may-hold-long-term-promise/

The article says "Here’s the full text of Bernanke’s letter…" but the link now points to a DHS report on money laundering using virtual currencies:  https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/835843-virtual-currency-hearings.html.

Deliberate or accidental?  You decide...

(to the tune of: Passenger let her go:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufEejvMEP64)

Well you only sold when it was trading low
And missed one thousand when it started to go  ( better ending?)
Only know you loved them when you let them go

Only know it is high cause you sold them low
Only hate the rise cause you spent 'em on blo' 
Only know you loved them when you let them go
And you let them go

Staring at the bottom of a crash
Hoping one day you'll make a buck last ( better something about selling at top)
But coins start low and they rise so fast

You see them when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Everytime you trade you surely cry

But you only sell bitcoins when they are trading low
You're only in cash when they start to float
Only know you loved them when you let them go

Only know they were high cause you sold them low
Only hate the rise when you spent 'em on blo'
Only know you loved them when you let them go

Staring at the screen in the dark
Same old empty feeling in your wallet
'Cause pages refresh slow and it goes so fast

Well you see them when you fall asleep
But never to touch and never to keep
'Cause you bought too much
And it dived too deep

But you only sell bitcoins when they are trading low
You're only in cash when they start to float
Only know you loved them when you let them go

Only know they were high cause you sold them low
Only hate the rise when you spent 'em on blo'
Only know you loved them when you let them go

And you let them go (oh, oh, ooh, oh no)
And you let them go (oh, oh, ooh, oh no)
Will you let bitcoins go?

But you only sell bitcoins when they are trading low
You're only in cash when they start to float
Only know you loved them when you let them go

Only know they were high cause you sold them low
Only hate the rise when you spent 'em on blo'
Only know you loved them when you let them go

And you let the coins go

 

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/08/14/bitcoins-are-a-buy-at-50-richard-bove-says/?mod=MW_story_latest_news

its showing up in the "latest news" section (in the header) on the front page of marketwatch... click and drive it higher :-)

http://live.wsj.com/video/five-bubbles-investors-need-to-watch/3A31FA17-FEA2-4FB0-812C-E9E54A53DE4E.html?mod=WSJ_article_outbrain&obref=obnetwork#!3A31FA17-FEA2-4FB0-812C-E9E54A53DE4E

bitcoin is #4.  Just says it went from 20 to over 200, now at 100 may go down.

But its interesting that its thrown in there with more traditional investment vehicles.

I'll start it off!  Just checking out grooveshark channels and:
http://grooveshark.com/#!/emmagician/broadcast

Doesn't what's happening now look a LOT like the beginning of a cup & handle? Esp. in log scale:
chart

Discuss this and other TA that you really don't trust!  

By "corner", I mean to hold enough to have a significant effect on the price by creating scarcity.

The marginal utility (as a value transfer network) is unaffected by the price and the fundamentals are strong.  So this seems like an obvious investment plan... buy millions of USD in coins during these dumps and then slowly sell into the scarcity you've created for long term steady profits.

total cost = active coins*corner percentage*cost per coin

Given the kind of fiat we've seen interested in the market, it seems like someone would make this move far before we hit the kind of price-per-coin that we saw just a year or 2 ago ($2-5).

As you might expect, Google trends in english is massively skewed to english speaking countries:  http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=buy%20bitcoins&date=1%2F2011%2029m&cmpt=q

[EDIT]
Here's the graph with all terms.  Strange, I thought there was a lot of activity in Europe right now but search volume does not seem to reflect it:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=buy%20bitcoins%2C%20Osta%20bitcoin%2C%20Bitcoin%20ostaminen%2C%20acheter%20bitcoin%2C%20k%C3%B6pa%20bitcoins&date=1%2F2011%2029m&cmpt=q

You may now commence your panic buys...

013-03-19 10:32:14.667683:
  3735 bids of 49859911 btc (8002029.00) above   0.     273 bids of  10729 btc (551568.00) above  50. 
   199 asks of  14200 btc (824433.00) below  60.     519 asks of  45354 btc (3226925.00) below 100. 

I'm trying to chase down an issue in the mt gox streaming API (or my code) where I see double transactions.  These seem to happen during big buys or dumps but not during normal processing.  Anyone else seen this?

To debug this, I threw in some code that eliminates trades with the same 'tid'.  However, I started seeing repeated transactions across different currencies like this:

{'origin': 'broadcast', 'trade': {'price_currency': 'USD', 'trade_type': 'bid', 'price_int': '1424999', 'price': 14.24999, 'primary': 'N', 'item': 'BTC', 'amount': 29.0911, 'tid': '1358271672595895', 'amount_int': '2909110000', 'date': 1358271672.0, 'type': 'trade', 'properties': 'market,mixed_currency'}, 'private': 'trade', 'channel': 'dbf1dee9-4f2e-4a08-8cb7-748919a71b21', 'op': 'private'}

{'origin': 'broadcast', 'trade': {'price_currency': 'EUR', 'trade_type': 'bid', 'price_int': '1094838', 'price': 10.94838, 'primary': 'Y', 'item': 'BTC', 'amount': 29.0911, 'tid': '1358271672595895', 'amount_int': '2909110000', 'date': 1358271672.0, 'type': 'trade', 'properties': 'market,mixed_currency'}, 'private': 'trade', 'channel': 'dbf1dee9-4f2e-4a08-8cb7-748919a71b21', 'op': 'private'}

Are these both valid (as the same trade) and indicative of some kind of automatic currency translation that Mt. Gox is doing?

Thanks!

I get the invalid cert warning:

campbx.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is only valid for the following names:
  ssl2627.cloudflare.com , target-prize.net , vincentdavid.com , yaluandmike.com , *.bluechinese.com , *.nosh.co.nz , *.nutriculamagazine.com , *.ratgeberzentrale.de , *.saocarlosagora.com.br , *.sexoamador.net , *.target-prize.net , *.vincentdavid.com , *.yaluandmike.com , *.eslipcovers.com , *.healthshare.com.au , mmoga.co.uk , bluechinese.com , *.redeemia.com , redeemia.com , *.mmoga.de , *.mmoga.co.uk , *.aulafacil.com , *.axzmdesign.com , *.businessprofiles.com , *.importbestbuys.com , av8d.tv , mmoga.de , nosh.co.nz , nutriculamagazine.com , ratgeberzentrale.de , saocarlosagora.com.br , sexoamador.net , adobestor.com , aulafacil.com , axzmdesign.com , businessprofiles.com , eslipcovers.com , healthshare.com.au , importbestbuys.com , *.excitingwallpapers.com , excitingwallpapers.com , *.adobestor.com , *.av8d.tv  

(Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)


could someone actually be trying to do a MIM attack?

and its back!  Fascinating...