Consider this post an appeal to Mt. Gox to reveal whether they are fractional reserve or not. Given the current lending rates, it is likely that everyone holding a significant amount of BTC is lending some of it out. What are Mt. Gox (and other entities, but let's start with the biggest) doing with clients' money? (USD + BTC) Do Mt. Gox invest a certain fraction of customer funds? What fraction? On what investments? If you agree that at least the fraction of the invested vs liquid funds should be exposed, show your support by voting. (If Mt. Gox ever commented about this issue, feel free to redirect this post to that comment) |
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http://v1.ripper234.com/p/why-i-trust-patrick-harnett/Since Patrick is now in default, and got a scammer tag, this thread is now defunct (renamed). For what it's worth, I believe Patrick wasn't an intentional scammer, just made some bad decisions in a bad situation ... but I don't really know. I've been out of touch with the lending scene in the last few months. |
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Please see this proposal for Shardcoin. I didn't post it here because it's not really an alternate currency, more of a concept at this point, with zero protocol changes over Bitcoin. |
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When I saw this question about sharding, my initial reaction was "No, the blockchain can't be split into shards". But, on second and third thought - the major problem that I see is that you have to be able to send funds between the different shards. What if you could just trade, via an easy API, coins from one shards into coins of another shard, and then send those to the recipient? Let's call this hypothetical concept Shardcoin. We would launch 10,000 new blockchains, and miners could choose randomly which chain they want to work on at any given time, reducing their bandwidth/memory footprint by a factor of 10,000. Now, each of these miners, and other players in the market, would create exchanges between the different chains. I'm suggesting miners may double as exchanges because they're always-on servers ... no reason not to bundle an exchange there too (it won't be obligatory of course). In order to send money: - Suppose I have 100 coins on Shard 17, and I want to send them to some address on Shard 9971. - I generate a new address for myself on Shard 9971. - Suppose the current exchange rate between these shards is 1 Shard17Coin = 0.8 Shard9971Coin. - I find someone willing to trade, and in one atomic tx, send him my 100 Shard17Coins, in exchange for 80 Shard9971Coins, minus his commision. Again, this is done atomically, so I don't really need to trust him to "hold my money" or anything like that. - I now am the proud owner of 79 Shard9971Coins, which I can send to my original target. I'm not following the other scalability suggestions, so this all might be redundant if a better solution is proposed & implemented. But at least as a thought experiment, I rather like it. I see two major issues: - Fluctuation in the relative values of the different ShardCoins. - Adoption/network effect. Since there is effectively zero change Bitcoin will be dropped in favor of ShardCoin, this will never pick up enough steam to be successful. Bitcoin is already Too Big to Fail IMO. A major point that's important to get across is that this is 100% compatible with the Bitcoin protocol - no changes whatsoever are needed. In fact, this proposal can work across crypto-currencies - so we could have p2p exchanges of Bitcoin, Litecoin & ShardCoins all working seamlessly together. |
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It's currently broken for me due to a bug, but as soon as it's fixed I'm going to send 0.2 BTC to the first 10 friends of mine who comment on a wall post I'll make about it. I think it's a nice way to show to your friends that Bitcoin is real, and get them to open their mind. Will this be the way to make Bitcoin viral? See the technical details here. |
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https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin-Powered_DatabaseI would imagine that the above was discussed here before, but I'm not sure ... if so, please point me towards that discussion (in fact, I vaguely recall posting about it myself in the past, but I'm not really sure). As far I know, the Bitcoin blockchain is pretty much the only data structure that is both global and tamper-proof. global - There is one global instance of the blockchain (up to forks ... which are then resolved). tamper-proof - If a block enters the blockchain, after 6+ confirmations this block can't be feasible faked or altered. A Bitcoin-powered database would be an API over the blockchain, that would expose a subset of the usual CRUD database operations. In fact, it would be an append-only data structure, because nothing can ever be really deleted from the blockchain - so only CREATE and READ operations will be implemented. Object Versioning will be used to emulate updates and deletions. One major use case for this would an Undeletedable, Auditable Asset Ledger. It bothers me greatly that GLBSE, Mt. Gox, and other trading websites only use an internal database to record assets. As the recent Bitcoinica incident has shown, such records can be tampered with or even completely deleted. A BPD can serve as a verifiable copy of the asset records, that can't be deleted.
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Let me present this weekend's project: BTCtoX.org. It gives a quick calculator to convert BTC to and from other currencies. Features: - Supports 159 currencies - You can bookmark a quick link to convert and [url=http://btctox.org/tobtc#ILS]to from your favorite currency - Supports mobile, sort of (the page doesn't look completely crappy on mobile, only moderately crappy) - API - Open SourcePlease submit bugs and feature requests on github. |
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It's always bothered me that the "official" wiki is at en.bitcoin.it.
Can we move it to wiki.bitcoin.org?
Who owns bitcoin.org?
Who owns bitcoin.it?
Could we get them to agree to this?
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Ripple is a system where friends can lend each other money, via a chain/web of trust (A lends to B lends to C, because A trusts B trusts C). I was thinking of a problem I have - I would like to invest in an interest-baring investment, but all the Bitcoin investments I've seen so far seem risky to me. Pirate bonds, Pass-through pirate bonds, mining contracts ... since I'm not knowledgable about the people issuing these loans, or the mining profitability charts, I can't effectively calculate the risk of investing in them. Enters Ripple (or a Ripple-like system) What if I could use the market knowledge of people I trust, and invest through them? They will choose investments they trust, invest my money, and earn a commission for their services. There can be an arbitrarily long "investment path" - I trust A, A trusts B, B trusts C... This is a way to safely turn scary investments into safe ones, using only local knowledge and reputation. As long as each link of the chain trusts the next link, the entire chain is safe. If some link in the chain defaults, then it is the obligation of the previous link to absorb this default, because his own reputation is on the line ("My sub-investment defaulted" is not a valid excuse - I invested with you, not your next link). Someone can of course disperse the risk and split the investment between multiple channels, the chain doesn't have to be linear. I believe this is different than the core Ripple, which AFAIk is not designed for interest bearing investments but rather for zero-interest loans. Thoughts?
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I'd like to take this chance to gift them with Bitcoin.
Of course, they haven't "converted" to Bitcoin yet, so there's a decent chance they'll be pissed if they just get Bitcoin instead of "real money".
So, I am looking for something like this:
1. A website where I deposit BTC for them in an account they can claim.
2. And have a nice "For Dummies" greeting waiting for them on this page (customizable and nice looking), together with a short explanation of wtf is Bitcoin, and why is it good for.
3. They will have two options:
A) Very simple instructions on how to withdraw the BTC to some wallet (let's say an online wallet to keep it dead simple), along with links to security instructions and "How not to lose your wallet/password"
B) A very simple way to "withdraw Bitcoins into Paypal" ... an exit path. If they are turned off by the entire idea, I don't want them to feel cheated, and I want them to be able to easily get the BTC converted to their Paypal account.
It all has to be secure, of course. Ideally, I'd like to buy a physical greeting card with a Bitcoin icon, personalized URL & QR code. The physical greeting card should not have a hard coded amount of Bitcoin, but it should just be a pointer into the personal webpage I described above. I most likely will decide on the last minute how much money to upload into each greeting card / personalized website.
I am willing to pay a fee for the above service. Does it exist? Will someone build it for me?
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http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3775/how-exactly-does-mywallets-android-client-workWhen I create an account via my desktop browser, I am assured that the password only exists on my browser, and is not saved. So, if I "pair" an Android device with MyWallet, can or can't I send BTC without entering the password? How does this work with/without a secondary password? What if I first installed the Android app, and only then created a secondary password? Are the files on my Android device / Dropbox encrypted with my first password? My second password? Both?
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Odds are this was discussed, but I don't remember seeing it. It should work with Mt. Gox / MyBitcoin API. Usage: 1. Go have a good dinner with friends. 2. Get the check. 3. Scan it with you smartphone (or input a total sum in USD) 4. Input N = number of people in the table besides you 5. Broadcast to them via NFC / bluetooth / QR whatever that you request a Bitcoin transaction. 6. You pay the check with your credit card / cash 7. They pay you back instantly via BTC This is possible today with MyBitcoin smartphone client, but requires you to convert USD to BTC, divide by N, and then have everyone scan the QR code you generate. This would save all these steps and just split the bill instantly. |
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After upgrading to 0.6, my interface language changed to Hebrew all of a sudden. We need a preference menu that lets you select the language of your choice. On StackExchange as well. |
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A friend of mine just called Bitcoin "monopoly money". After a comeback from me, he admitted that the comparison isn't really fair, and a better comparison is junk bonds. I think that's a somewhat decent comparison. Obviously they're not really the same thing, and are very different technically and capabilities wise, but putting technical differences aside, both are investment instruments that are traded at relatively "low valuations", with high risk of "defaulting" and in contrast high yields. Of course with Bitcoin nobody can "default" on you, because a Bitcoin is not an obligation to pay, but it can crash to zero tomorrow. ... Maybe we should pitch Bitcoin as an alternative investment for junk bond traders?  |
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I already announced this on two medium-long threads, but I figured why not announce it here as well. Even if you don't agree with it, it's an interesting alternative/complement to Proof of Work, and worth reading about. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake |
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Bitcoin & Tragedy of the CommonsThis is perhaps the biggest risk to Bitcoin's future. Does anyone have a convincing argument why this won't happen, or proposals on how to combat it?
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