[We are launching the Satoshi's Bitcoin project to create a full fork branch from Bitcoin with both larger blocks sizes and CPU mining,]

We are launching the Satoshi's Bitcoin project to create a full fork branch from Bitcoin with both larger blocks sizes and CPU mining, for Bitcoin uses who prefer to use a version of Bitcoin that scales to larger block sizes and who are tired of waiting.

All development work is complete & several test forks have been successfully completed. The public trial fork is scheduled for this Sunday at around noon eastern time US (block 403562 specifically). The actual launch will follow this test and activate mid-April. This will provide several weeks for anyone who would like to participate in the fork to setup clients.

To participate you only need to compile and start the trial client, everything has been setup to automatically run from there.

• Download and compile the public test branch “0.11.2_PublicTest_At403562” from github. The build environment is identical to Classic 0.11.2(link below).
• Backup your datadir, after the fork the datadir may not be compatible with the core client anymore
• Run bitcoind or bitcoin-qt

The project is a direct fork from Classic 0.11.2 and is on github here:
https://github.com/satoshisbitcoin/satoshisbitcoin/tree/0.11.2_PublicTest_At403562

You can compare all code changes from Classic 0.11.2 here:
https://github.com/bitcoinclassic/bitcoinclassic/compare/0.11.2...satoshisbitcoin:0.11.2_PublicTest_At403562

There is zero risk to participate and you are able to run a true full node that mines blocks at home again for fun. If the project does not take off there is nothing lost, but if it does you have the chance to mine early adopter blocks. The main thread for the project is here:
https://bitco.in/forum/threads/announcement-bitcoin-project-to-full-fork-to-flexible-blocksizes.933/

This full fork provides an option for Bitcoin users who want to follow Satoshi’s vision of a global peer-to-peer currency that is accessible and usable by everyone. Currently a large number of Bitcoin users want to use a version of Bitcoin that scales as originally intended, but have no option to do. The project is opt-in and only users who want to follow this new branch will do so, users who prefer to stay on the current branch will not be affected.

Why a full fork?

Bitcoin was designed by Satoshi as a global peer-to-peer currency accessible and usable by everyone with instantaneous low cost transactions. This vision was clearly laid out in the Bitcoin white paper, widely understood and agreed by all users and advertised as the vision on the bitcoin.org website and all Bitcoin related forums and websites since 2009.

Despite this clear vision, Bitcoin is now being artificially constrained to low transaction throughputs well below what the Bitcoin network is capable of supporting. User demand has now reached these artificial constrains and many Bitcoin users are no longer able to use the network and are being denied access.

This artificial change is best described by one of the primary early Bitcoin developers since 2010 in the link below. The reasons are complex but revolve around centralized control. A single company who’s business model develops off-chain solutions now controls Bitcoin development and due to electricity cost advantages mining is no longer performed by the broad user community but by a small number of individuals. As a result, despite the fact that a large majority of Bitcoin users clearly want to scale Bitcoin, those who have taken control refuse to do so. https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7

However the strength of Satoshi’s design is users are in control of the system. Any individual user or group of users are able to decide for themselves what Bitcoin should be and which set of rules reflect their preferences. Because of this it is impossible for Bitcoin to ever be centrally controlled, as long as users are able to define for themselves which version of Bitcoin is optimal.

Additionally, it is hoped that this effort will demonstrate how users are in control of Bitcoin and kick-start multiple different full fork options that offer different multiple options for users and the market to choose from, and that the best option will win in time. In doing so Bitcoin benefits from its open nature and will follow user preferences based on market demand.

What is the full fork and what is being changed?

The full fork will change the set of rules that define the block chain on a fixed date. After this date a new branch will be created that follows a set of rules that more closely follow Satoshi’s vision. At this point there will be two separate branches of the blockchain and two separate Bitcoins. One branch will follow the existing rules and a new branch will follow the new rules. Each individual user will be able to decide for themselves which branch to follow. The transaction history and BTC owned will be common on both branches up through the fork date, and after that diverge.

The base client used is Bitcoin Classic version 0.11.2. On top of this version the following rule changes will activate at block height 407232, which is the difficulty adjustment scheduled for mid-April 2016.

• The block size limit will be removed and replaced with a 2MB limit following Classic, and scale from there
• The POW algorithm will changed to re-enable CPU mining

I don't want to fork, will this affect me?

No. The fork is fully opt-in and people who do not opt-in will not be effected. To use the fork you have to switch your client from an existing client to the Satoshi's Bitcoin client. Only users who switch clients will follow the fork and use the new branch.

If you continue to use your existing client, you will continue to use the existing blockchain branch and this fork will not affect you in any manner.

Is this client ready?

Yes! Intial coding work is complete and several tests have been performed to demonstrate that the client can run on the main net, fork at a specific height, and start to build a new chain using a new block height and POW. Additional development to create a new seed peer list is needed and described below, but all the core functionality needed has been completed.

Further details are available in the github readme.
https://github.com/satoshisbitcoin/satoshisbitcoin

Title says it all, will the upcoming fork be supported by Armory? Do we need to upgrade? When will the software be available?

Thanks!

Title says it all. Have no idea what the price will be in 8 hours but am sure it will either be up a lot or have crashed further. Which is it?

Dropping from $500 to $380 saves an auction bidder who wants to buy the whole 44K BTC lot $5.2 million dollars.

It took a lot less than 44K or $5.2M to tank the price.

This is whales preparing for the auction people.

Most runs over the past 12-18 months have stalled out after only a moderate increase in price. One reason for this is the selling pressure created by traders. After a 20% or 40% increase in price most traders sell their positions to buy back lower. This means that every run faces significant selling pressure early in the run, and this selling pressure is what eventually stalls the run.

In this run we are about to break through that selling pressure from traders. Most traders sold part of their positions close to $300 and the rest likely by $350. After that price selling pressure from traders is largely removed. Most of the remaining positions are long term positions. The result is a steady increase in price with larger and larger steps each day.

The previous major runs in 2013 and 2011 behaved like this. Once they broke through the initial levels of resistance where traders exited, those runs then had room for steady and continuous increases.

The current run looks just like this, steady and continuous increases now that we've broken through the ranges where traders sell. Just as I was typing this coinbase just ran through $350 to $358. The traders have largely exited their trading positions, who is left to sell?

For over 3 years I regularly followed the Gold Collapsing, Bitcoin UP thread, and it was a major component of my bitcoin fix.

Now that thermos locked it down because people were obviously going to discuss [REDACTED] and thermos did not like the results of the poll on [REDACTED], I am feeling lost. I need my Gold Collapsing, Bitcoin UP fix and just can't find it anywhere else.

The defense outright accused Mark Karpeles of being DPR and presented evidence that the Government believed he was DPR until Mark gave them Ross's name in return for immunity. 

What do you think?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2skgcr/i_was_at_the_ross_ulbricht_silk_road_trial_day_3/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2sjuvu/defense_in_silk_road_trial_arguing_mark_karpeles/

Ulbricht’s lead attorney, Joshua Dratel, said that Karpeles was the man pulling the strings behind Silk Road from 2011 until 2013, and that his associate Ashley Barr, a Canadian computer scientist, became the famously libertarian voice of Dread Pirate Roberts.
“Lots of little things added up to [Karpeles],” Der-Yeghiayan testified.

In a meeting with other Homeland Security agents, Der-Yeghiayan recalled saying that “we have built up quite a large amount of information that leads to this.”

Der-Yeghiayan, however, was convinced that the investigation still had further to go before making an arrest and taking Karpeles to court. He advised other law enforcement agents against speaking to Karpeles about Silk Road, so as to not tip him off.
At the time, there were investigations into several potential crimes that Karpeles had committed.

Instead, other Homeland Security investigations into Karpeles, for separate and related crimes, led investigators to seize $2 million from Karpeles in May 2013, thus tipping Karpeles off that he was on the radar of the United States government.

Although he was “upset” about the premature law enforcement contact, Der-Yeghiayan said he continued his investigation into Karpeles.
“You believed him to be the mastermind behind Silk Road, keeping it secure and operating?” Ulbricht defense attorney Dratel asked Der-Yeghiayan.

“I did,” Der-Yeghiayan testified.

As the argument was unveiled, Ulbricht let out a rare beaming smile and turned to his parents. They nodded at one another, marking the most electric moment in the trial so far.

Der-Yeghiayan testified that his own investigation had found that Mutum Sigilum, a Karpeles holding company, had registered silkroadmarket.org as a means to publicize the site further.

The Homeland Security agent’s theory was that Karpeles, as owner of Mt. Gox, held an enormous amount of Bitcoin. He used Silk Road to leverage that price and raise it, which it did by several hundred times over during the course of Silk Road’s lifespan. Bitcoin was worth around $2 at Silk Road's launch and hit as high as $290 by 2013.

In the summer of 2013, a separate Baltimore-based Homeland Security investigation into Karpeles went to meet with the Karpeles's lawyers, explicitly against Der-Yeghiayan’s wishes. At this meeting, Karpeles’s lawyers brought up Silk Road and said that Karpeles was willing to give up the person he thought to be running Silk Road in order to gain immunity from other charges pending against him.

Der-Yeghiayan said he was “upset” about the contact and says he wrote a lengthy memo about the problems in the investigation.

Dratel says that it was only after this happened that Ulbricht was lured back into Silk Road, an entity he allegedly left behind two years prior, in order to be the “fall guy” who would ultimately take the charges that could leave him in prison for life.

I use Coinbase for all of my BTC purchases, and starting this year made a few (small number) of sales, and so obviously need to figure out how to report the sales. Overall I am well familiar with capital gains taxes. I understand people here can not offer "legal advise", but figure many people here are also dealing with this issue so it would be nice to have a discussion.

The IRS plans to use the FIFO method, and it seems the Coinbase "Cost Basis for Taxes" uses this FIFO method for calculating coin basis for both sales and transfers to your own wallet.

In my scenario I typically purchase coins, then transfer all of them to my own wallet at xxx address, then purchase more coins and transfer those to my own wallet at yyy address, and so on. Sometimes I've left coins on coinbase and then sold them a little bit later, and sometimes I transferred coins from a specific address back to coinbase and sold them.

1) I'd assume it is safest to use the coinbase calculated basis for both sales and transfers to external wallets.
-> This means that when I transfer coins to xxx wallet address, the basis of those coins is now what coinbase determined them to be.

2) The tricky part comes when I transferred coins back to coinbase to sell.
- For example, in the above example lets say I had coins at xxx address at basis xBasis, and coins at yyy address at basis yBasis. Using the FIFO a sale should match to your latest buy, i.e. the yyy address coins. But in my case I transferred coins from xxx address to coinbase, so it seems the "correct" thing to do is use xBasis.

Basically by transferred coins out of Coinbase to specific addresses, I can control and verify to the IRS which coins I later transferred back and sold.

What do you guys think, is this right?

After using bitcoin-qt successfully for the past couple of years, I've tried unsuccessfully to use Armory for the past week.

Unfortunately I cannot get the program to sync correctly. I've set Armory to let me manage the bitcoin-qt myself, and bitcoin-qt runs perfectly fine in the background while Armory has issues at the same time. I've tried clearing out the Armory directory and re-installing several times and keep receiving the same errors as below. I've also tried clearling the bitcoin-qt directories and re-downloading the whole chain, but that does not help.

This is a clean install of Armory 0.90 on a Win 7 64-bit machine (clean install) with bitcoind 0.8.6

After Armory syncs with bitcoin-qt, the gui become unresponsive. The armorylog.txt file show the following, the set of error messages repeats indefinitely while Armory consumes 100% of a CPU core.

Any thoughts on what this could be. Again my setup is as basic and standard as you can get.

Code:

2014-02-10 23:52 (INFO) -- armoryengine.pyc:12479 - Reading blockchain, pct complete: 99.0
2014-02-10 23:52 (INFO) -- armoryengine.pyc:12479 - Reading blockchain, pct complete: 99.3
2014-02-10 23:52 (INFO) -- armoryengine.pyc:12479 - Reading blockchain, pct complete: 99.5
2014-02-10 23:53 (INFO) -- armoryengine.pyc:12479 - Reading blockchain, pct complete: 0.0
2014-02-10 23:53 (INFO) -- armoryengine.pyc:12479 - Reading blockchain, pct complete: 0.0
----- Repeats for about 50 lines -----------------
2014-02-10 23:53 (INFO) -- armoryengine.pyc:12479 - Reading blockchain, pct complete: 0.0
2014-02-10 23:53 (INFO) -- armoryengine.pyc:12479 - Reading blockchain, pct complete: 0.0
2014-02-10 23:53 (INFO) -- ArmoryQt.py:4465 - Dashboard switched to fully-online mode
2014-02-10 23:53 (INFO) -- ArmoryQt.py:3838 - Switching Armory state text to Mgmt:User, State:OnlineFull1
2014-02-10 23:53 (INFO) -- ArmoryQt.py:3780 - Switching Armory functional mode to "Online"
2014-02-10 23:53 (INFO) -- ArmoryQt.py:3838 - Switching Armory state text to Mgmt:User, State:OnlineFull2
2014-02-10 23:54 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12346 - BDM was not ready for your request!  Waited 20 sec.
2014-02-10 23:54 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12347 -   getattr   name: enableZeroConf
2014-02-10 23:54 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12348 - BDM currently doing: Passthrough (32941810)
2014-02-10 23:54 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12349 - Waiting for completion: ID= 32941810
2014-02-10 23:54 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12350 - Direct traceback
2014-02-10 23:54 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12353 - Traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "armoryengine.pyc", line 12343, in passthruFunc
  File "Queue.pyc", line 176, in get
Empty
2014-02-10 23:54 (INFO) -- ArmoryQt.py:1913 - Syncing wallet: sT1cYPFu
2014-02-10 23:55 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12346 - BDM was not ready for your request!  Waited 20 sec.
2014-02-10 23:55 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12347 -   getattr   name: scanRegisteredTxForWallet
2014-02-10 23:55 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12348 - BDM currently doing: Passthrough (32941810)
2014-02-10 23:55 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12349 - Waiting for completion: ID= 22735314
2014-02-10 23:55 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12350 - Direct traceback
2014-02-10 23:55 (ERROR) -- armoryengine.pyc:12353 - Traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "armoryengine.pyc", line 12343, in passthruFunc
  File "Queue.pyc", line 176, in get
Empty

[Sanitizing Bitcoin: This Company Wants To Track 'Clean' Bitcoin Accounts]

My head just exploded reading this.

Sanitizing Bitcoin: This Company Wants To Track 'Clean' Bitcoin Accounts
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/13/sanitizing-bitcoin-coin-validation/

After causing several million in losses for those who ordered chips (both delays and loss of assembly funds), Yifu is now working with old money bankers to start a firm who purpose is to create a system to help government track ownership of bitcoin addresses.

"Their plan is to compile a database of the known identities associated with Bitcoin addresses in the hope that Coin Validation will become the one-stop-identity shop for law enforcement when trying to find out who’s doing something nefarious with Bitcoin, while providing a red-flag system for businesses who have customers trying to use Bitcoin that’s associated with illicit use."

You can see where this would go, after being "opt-in" for a while, it will be legistlated that to use bitcoin in the US you have to validate all your addresses.

I'll let you decide for yourself if you think Yifu is continuing to support the bitcoin community and project.

Apparently RIAA thinks bitcoin should be shut down.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/next-on-the-recording-industry-hit-list-bitcoin

This should be good for another move up tomorrow as people learn they can use bitcoin to piss off RIAA. I didn't know torrent sites took btc donations, but just might buy a few coins now to donate to them if it makes RIAA unhappy.

Title says it all.

Now that a BFL FPGA single only breaks even with electiricty costs (depending on your rate, in CA it's negative now), what are people doing with their old BFL singles?

Each single generates roughly 0.002 BTC today, hardly worth it to keep the things on.

Slowly moving mainstream 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-10/bitcoin-now-officially-schrodinger-currency

Quick poll on when people think the first Avalon chip batch will arrive to a customer. This is for when a chip batch will be finally delivered to a customer and successfully picked up, not for when a chip batch initially ships.

There are practically no BTC offers above $110.

Now if this was fiat FED funny money, the FED would increase the amount of funny money to create "stability" (and give it to bankers and polititins in the process). And if this was gold the FED would "lend" it out in mass quantities (effectively creating fractional gold out of thin air)

But since the supply of BTC is FIXED, I guess we will finally get to see what happens when an item is in high demand, but supply is forced to behave by well defined rules....

Yesterday after sending coins, I checked the transactions in block explorer and saw strange behavior I don't understand. Below is what happened. If anyone understands this I'd really appreciate an explaination.

I have a wallet that only receives coins to a single address. Over time this wallet has accumulated coins from many smaller transactions, but since only one address is used to receive them this one address has grown and has all my coins.

So, as of yesterday: a) the total number of coins in block explorer for that address = b) the number of coins in my wallet.

Yesterday I sent coins for the first time (played a few small rounds of SatoshiDice). I then checked blockexplorer to see the transactions, but the values listed in blockexplorer did not match the BTC sent. Here is what block explorer showed. (Values/addresses provided for example only, not actual)

Transaction 1 - 1 BTC total - 1 BTC sent to 1dice7W2AicHosf5EL3GFDUVga7TgtPFn ( the actual transaction )
Transaction 2 - 1 BTC total - 1 BTC sent to 1dice7W2AicHosf5EL3GFDUVga7TgtPFn ( the actual transaction )
Transaction 3 - 3 BTC total - 1 BTC sent to 1dice7W2AicHosf5EL3GFDUVga7TgtPFn ( the actual transaction )
                                        - 2 BTC sent to [some other address  ] ( extra coins sent, I don't know why )
Transaction 2 - 2 BTC total - 1 BTC sent to 1dice7W2AicHosf5EL3GFDUVga7TgtPFn ( the actual transaction )
                                        - 1 BTC sent to [some other address  ] ( extra coins sent, I don't know why )

After this, I now see the following:
a) Block explorer shows my address as having 3 BTC less than it should (i.e. instead of starting value - 4BTC sent, it has starting value - 7BTC)
b) My bitcoin client transactions do not match block explorer (i.e. the 3rd transaction shows -1BTC in the bitcoin client but -3BTC in block explorer)
c) However, my bitcoin client shows the correct transaction amounts and correct total coins...

My guess is when I sent the coins, instead of just sending coins out to the given address, the bitcoin client created 2 new address for my wallet and sent a random number of coins to those addresses as well. This explains why my wallet in the client still shows the correct number of coins, I'm guessing those new extra addresses are part of my wallet now, it is the only way the numbers add up.

Is this correct? If so why does this happen? Or is something seriously screwed up?

I'm using the standard wallet 0.6.3beta if that helps.

Thanks for any comments/thoughts

When I first started mining, it was with my laptop GPU to just try out the environment. I signed up for pooled mining because that seemed easiest (with deepbit).

Within my first day deepbit marked my account as having found a block, with a 6MHash/s rate and BTC payout of <0.01. Ah well.

So this is post #2 of 5 so my newbie account can reply to another post elsewhere. Not sure what my other 3 posts should be.....