I'm skeptical if this is actually a problem because of higher orphans rates for larger blocks. The idea is this: What if a miner was guaranteed block after block after block ? What transactions would they include? In theory they would find an optimal minimum fee to include in their blocks. People who guessed below this fee would not be included in the block. In the next block, since their demand for their transaction still exists.. they would raise their fee in theory. This may then meet the minimum threshold to be included.

The point is this: Since a miner is not guaranteed block after block an individual miner may undercut his fellow miner by including every transaction that had a fee for maximum profit by making his block large as possible. What incentive is there for him to create a minimum fee if there is no guarantee that the next miner will not follow it?


solution: if a miner detects that a transaction is under the minimum he can not include the transaction. The next block, if the transaction is an RBF transaction then a part of the fee for that transaction (which would be higher) would be split between the miner of the last block and the current miner.

problem: this wouldn't work for non RBF transactions. Is the fee enough to be split and make it economically incentivized?. Is this possible to split an RBF fee in this manner through a soft fork or only hard? would you have to incentivize RBF transactions somehow since it doesn't work for non RBF ones? Can the coinbase transaction pay out to the old miner as well using the last payout address or would that be too complicated?

I tried to create two transactions tonight and each one was rejected. As soon as I tried to broadcast it the bitcoinqt said it disconnected and then I got a message from armory saying that it failed somehow. Help?
I could try installing the newest armory software but I don't want to redownload the whole blockchain again. Is it possible to update armory separately? Is that what I should do here? I am a bit worried.

To anyone concerned

Mark Karpeles
Representative Director
MtGox Co., Ltd.
Shibuya 2-11-5

Shibuya-ku, Tokyo

ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING AN APPLICATION FOR COMMENCEMENT OF A PROCEDURE OF CIVIL REHABILITATION

An overview of the situation should be published here shortly (probably on March 3, 2014 (Japan time)).

Contact information

A call center has been established to respond to all inquiries. The call center is planned to start on March 3, 2014. All inquiries to MtGox Co., Ltd. should be made to the following telephone number:

Telephone number   +81 3-4588-3921
Working hours    Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm (Japan time)

Please refrain from contacting the office of the supervisor/investigator.

but this would be the worst case scenario for bitcoin. If Mark stole the bitcoins...... that is bad. If he gave them away because of poor programming that is also bad. But if the government of the US can come and confiscate cold wallets of exchanges because some funds sent to that exchange were from crime........ then it sets a precedent for bitcoin that is terrible. It means that exchanges could no longer trust funds sent to them and they would voluntarily start going on "coin validation" schemes which would destroy fungibility.  If it is true it is also terribly unfair because cash goes into banks all the time that is from crime in some form or another and they never go into banks and confiscate everyones money because of it.

No such thing as bad publicity?  There are almost 10k people online in there........

from the leaked document

I guess the real question is were 744k coins really stolen or not. If not then it might make sense to buy on bitbuilder. But if that is true then wouldn't it be a bad idea?

If you assume that report is true it said that they hope to pay account holders back but put in withdrawal limits.

interesting coincidence eh? If this is fud they certainly timed things well

1800 @ .299

It's one thing if mt gox gets hacked and loses some bitcoins and may not be able to cover deposits. But if they are still allowing fiat deposits to buy bitcoins are they going to ROB these people basically by selling them fake bitcoins? Or perhaps there are enough bitcoins?

why in the world would they not say anything about how many bitcoins were stolen? What about transparency?

In other words if mt gox was insolvent somehow I doubt that they would continue allowing fiat deposits.

would certain people use that to try to bring the general sentiment against bitcoin as if it was the cause of the collapse?

What I am getting at here is that there should be no restriction on the flow of information. Information itself is neither good or bad. It makes no sense to restrict information and in doing so for whatever excuse some may come up with can only hurt humankind. This includes things like software patents. Software is just math and all software patents do is arm patent troll companies with weapons to kill real innovation. Child pornography is gross but so is the evidence of any crime. If you saw pictures of a murder scene that is gross too. If you saw a village being bombed by some american drone with body parts all over the place that is probably a crime (or not?) and just as gross. But it should not be a reason to restrict the vital flow of information. State secrets and wikileaks is another example. At the crux of the matter is that the most dangerous thing to peoples freedom across the world are governments. You can't let a government operate in secret from it's people. If you do bad shit is guaranteed to happen and freedom will be lost.

Since bitcoin is essentially a programmable money we need ways to embed programs that will last a long time and don't require trust. Is that possible?

with deep enough markets though it should still be pretty stable.

[For instance they could reward users who find bug reports with bitcoin (that they got from the people paying)]

What I mean by this is that if pc games had a beta test it would be cool if the first round was limited to those willing to pay like 25-50 cents or something in bitcoin. it would be extremely easy to implement this and the reason why it would be good is because someone willing to pay a small amount to enter beta is likely to be more willing to actually play the game since they now have an "investment" in the game. Now that they are invested they will probably play more than someone who got in the game for free. Also on the plus side the company could use those bitcoin somehow. For instance they could reward users who find bug reports with bitcoin (that they got from the people paying) . All the sudden bitcoin opens up a new kind of payment model for beta testers and their relationship with companies.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1wqxbk/it_would_be_interesting_if_mainstream_pc_games/

One argument I heard against bitcoin is that in a post apocalyptic world where the internet is destroyed it is useless... but gold isn't. I disagree that gold would have much if any value. In a post apocalyptic world the struggle for survival would be great and things that would have great value would be goods like guns and ammo. Gold would probably be worthless because it doesn't help you survive at all. It only lets you trade it for something else. I think 10-30 years after a post apocalyptic world when civilization started to reogranize then gold would start gaining value again but in the immediate aftermath of something cataclysmic it would be useless.

It looks like the bank that was working with campbx has chosen to stop working with them.

I just came across something that might be of interest to you. It is a
paper by a "Dr. Frank Greening" here:
http://www.911myths.com/WTCREPORT.pdf

In it, he attempts to calculate the feasibility of the collapse of the
towers but I believe I have found an error.

Here he states:

                                         

we have an initial mass nmf
falling onto the
floor below and becoming mass (n+1)mf. This new, enlarged, block of
floors descends
with velocity v2 = {n/(n+1)}v1 through a distance hf at which point it
strikes the floor
below and becomes mass (n+2)mf moving at velocity {n/(n+2)}v2, and so on

The problem is, in a hypothetical tower collapse, the only thing that
would change is the velocity of any mass above the collapse points. The
total mass would not change. If he
wants to add the mass of each floor to the upper mass with each
collapse, that is fine but he also has to then subtract the same mass
from
the lower floors.

The price of bitcoin matters for several reasons. A higher price means that the the price itself is more stable. Price is also linked to volume so the amount of value flowing through bitcoin would be higher. This makes it easier to do things like buy a car for instance. Imagine if you used litecoin and tried to buy a 300k lamborghini and the dealership accepted litecoin with a processor like bitpay. There isn't enough volume to lock in a good deal so you would  be forced to pay a price far below what the going rate is.  A higher price means more market depth which means the spread between the bid price and the ask price is small. That is actually very important because it makes bitcoin cheaper to use. Want to do remittance from one currency > bitcoin > another currency? Then the price matters. A higher price will ultimately make things cheaper. Want to pay for porn but not give up private info? Then it would actually be cheaper to do if bitcoin was 10k vs 1k because the market depth would be greater and the spread between the bid price and ask price would be less. You would save value.  Gold has really deep markets and the spread between the bid price and ask price is small.... so if you bought gold and could turn right around and electronically spend it somewhere then you wouldn't lose much at all.

There are also other benefits to a higher price.... it means it would be even more attractive to instiutional investors (who would not bother with something that is too small). It also would mean the ecosystem is larger because of potential profits so there would be more competition between exchanges and atms... which means there would be lower fees for using them.

One common thread I often see is "why should your average consumer purchase with bitcoins rather than with a credit card?"

There are some valid reasons often cited but one point I don't see ever made is: "because you already have bitcoins".

If you already have bitcoins then it would be cumbersome to convert them to cash on an exchange and then wire the money around to then use a more traditional payment method *if* you could just purchase the item directly with bitcoin.

So the question then becomes "why would people already have bitcoins?"

Here is why it might happen.... from the standpoint of a merchant it is a clear advantage to accept bitcoin. By accepting it you automatically increase the possible size of your user base. If you are an online website, for instance, someone from another side of the world could pay you easily.  You get your money faster than with credit cards (typically one day rather than a week or more) . Fraud is impossible so there aren't any chargebacks to worry about.  And the cost of implementing bitcoin acceptance is usually negligible. At the most basic level you could do what pirate bay did and simply paste a public address on your site. Or you could do it through other ways..... for instance shopify has bitcoin integration.

The point is that as more and more merchants accept bitcoin because of clear advantages they will seek to take advantage even more... by paying employees in bitcoin. They can typically save an additional amount if they do not have to convert all of their bitcoins into dollars with payment processors like bitpay. If employees accept such offers to be partially paid in bitcoins then "they will already have bitcoins". Which relates to my first point. So now the question becomes why would employees accept to be paid in bitcoins? Here are a couple of reasons.... if the price is eventually stable enough, and bitcoin is accepted widely enough then it might be a good idea to have part of your salary in bitcoins because some of that cost that is saved on the merchants side could be passed on to you. Or it would be advantageous because you know that by having bitcoins and it was widely accepted you could spend them while travelling or while later retiring to another part of the world and therefore not have to convert to another currency. Or it could be that the price was stable but also enticing because it did not lose value like dollars do on a longer term basis.