Tech-savvy Venezuelans looking to bypass dysfunctional economic controls are turning to the bitcoin virtual currency to obtain dollars, make Internet purchases -- and launch a little subversion.
[...]
Due to currency controls introduced by late president Hugo Chavez a decade ago, acquiring hard currency now means either requesting it from the state, which struggles to satisfy demand, or tapping a shadowy black market. Even small dollar transactions are out of the question for most Venezuelans.
While President Nicolas Maduro makes frequent tirades against black market traders, whom he sees as part of the "economic war" on his government and the reason for inflation and shortages, he has never said anything about bitcoin. The government declined to comment on bitcoin policy.
[...]In Venezuela, using bitcoins can carry a scent of subversion.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/08/us-venezuela-bitcoin-idUSKCN0HX11O20141008?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews |
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Can anyone recommend me any good cafés within walking distance of Amsterdam Central?
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http://rt.com/uk/178900-hsbc-syrian-laundering-closed/Banking giant HSBC has been accused of “shamelessly profiling” its customers after it closed bank accounts belonging to Syrian refugees and students in the UK.
The banks continue to do themselves and their customers no favours...
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Aljazeera's program Witness had an item on international remittances last night on UK TV covering services such as Western Union. Sadly they did not cover the elephant in the room: Bitcoin. But it did delve into corruption within the industry. A very interesting document, especially when you look at the new 'innovative' services that are being launched in this space. You can see the episode here: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/ |
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Looking to list some mining equipment on eBay but I understand that there was an issue with this as PayPal were not allowing the transactions and freezing accounts.
Does anyone know if this is still an issue and if they have recently sold any mining equipment on eBay via PayPal?
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Am I correct in thinking that the Bitcoin difficulty adjustment algorithm which dictates the target hash's difficulty value for blocks, where difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks, purely adjusts itself based on the current hashing power on the network?
Am I also therefore correct in guessing it does this so as to avoid having to use any external dependencies and thus any potentially centralised resources which could also be an attack vector such as referring to an external time server?
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I understand that there are a few tool kits out there for coloured coins which run off of the Bitcoin blockchain, for example, coloured coins, mastercoin and counterparty.
Although I understand that the underlying mechanisms for each are different I am looking to find out more about the variety of custom blockchains and transaction validation rules that can be created with each.
For example:
1. Could an altcurrency be created using any of these which uses demurrage in the same way that Freicoin does?
2. Could an altcurrency be created using any of these which destroys coins in the same way that PPC does per transaction?
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I had an idea a while back and can’t see any major flaws with it from a technical perspective it so thought I’d get feedback here.
In an attempt to reduce blockchain size would it be possible to introduce ‘keyframe’ blocks to a blockchain which summarise the blockchain’s current valid transactions all in one block?
This block would have different validation rules to normal blocks, but in essence it summarise all the currently valid transactions across the entire blockchain.
So to pick a number – every 500 blocks a keyframe block is generated (about 3.4 days for BTC).
This means nodes only concerned with the current transaction balances need only store at most 500 blocks back to the last keyframe block. Nodes which wish to see the entire transaction history store the entire blockchain.
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This question has been asked before but I cannot find a solution to my specific problem.
I have created shortcuts for both bitcoin-qt and litecoin-qt and pointed them at their respective data folders which I have copied from their original locations. However they wallet software run from the shortcuts is using the original locations for the blockchain data.
Original locations:
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Litecoin\
Copied them to:
G:\Bitcoin
G:\Litecoin
Under Properties>Target for each shortcut I have then specified:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe" –datadir=G:\Bitcoin
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Litecoin\litecoin-qt.exe" –datadir=G:\Litecoin
However when the shortcuts are run the wallets launch and the original directory locations are still being used. I know this because I cannot move or edit the original directories when the application is running. If I exit, move the originals directories and restart the shortcuts the wallets try to re-download the entire blockchain.
I am using windows 7.
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I thought that one could optionally send a short message (40 bytes) to be written to the blockchain with a valid transaction.
If it's possible how do I do this?
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Could someone explain to me how the system of counterparty and coloured coins are different? From my limited understanding of both they seem pretty similar.
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I'm trying to understand different Proof of Stake (PoS) implementations as they exist in NXT and PPC. I've given an overview of what I've managed to find online so far, but have lots of gaps in my knowledge, can anyone help answer the questions below. NXTThis uses a 100% PoS mining process so the likelihood of being selected as the next node to mine a block is dictated by how many coins a user has in their unlocked wallet divided by all the other coins in all the other unlocked wallets on the network. I understand each NXT block is every 60 seconds – how is this enforced by the network? PPCThis uses a PoS/SHA-256 hybrid, where the reliance on SHA-256 will degrade at a predetermined rate with time. How is SHA-256 combined with PoS in PPC to generate blocks? The likelihood of mining a block, for a given unlocked wallet, is dictated by the coin-age of the coins for that wallet, as long as the coins are over 30 days old (not sure how many blocks this is). How is a specific wallet selected to mine the next block from all the wallets able to use their coin-age? What is the average block time for PPC and how is this enforced? With the gradual decrease in reliance on SHA-256 over time how will this affect block generation times? The bottom post here makes mention of some bugs relating to spending PPC coin age. Can anyone elaborate on what it was? http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/20007/how-does-proof-of-stake-mining-work
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Do the windows and Linux versions of bitcoinQT use the same wallet.dat file; i.e. can I move the wallet.dat file from a windows machine to a Linux one and have bitcoinQT work with that wallet?
Same question for the directories and files containing the blockchain data; i.e. can I move all the directories and files from the associated bitcoinQT directory which has an up to date version of the blockcahin on a windows hot wallet to the associated bitcoinQT directory for a Linux cold wallet to get that wallet to see the latest view of the blockchain?
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http://www.coindesk.com/thinktank-uk-privatise-pound-embrace-cryptocurrency/The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has today released a report stating that the UK should privatise the pound and replace it with cryptocurrencies.
Founded in 1955, the London institute was described as the “most influential thinktank” in modern British history by journalist Andrew Marr. Its impact on public policy should not be underestimated.
The institute believes bitcoin will “open the floodgates to a tidal wave of private money,” but points out that digital currencies are quite a bit different than previous examples of private money. For example, due to its decentralised nature bitcoin cannot be easily shut down, so the institute thinks it is here to stay.
And further to this item: http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/new-private-monies-can-outcompete-government-monetary-systems
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So I have the following set-up: a litecoin cold wallet on a machine not connected to any form of network and another LTC hot wallet on a machine on the internet.
I'm trying to spend some funds from the cold wallet.
Is there any way to broadcast a transaction from the cold wallet e.g. via the hot wallet? I know for example one can do this for BTC using Armory.
What I'm trying to avoid is having to import the cold wallet to the hot wallet and then having to create a new cold wallet, which I will if I have to but am not keen on the idea as it is logistically more complicated based on my set-up and backups procedure.
Suggestions welcome.
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Trying to find this info is proving rather difficult. I have a mental note that at least 5 exchanges have gone bust, frozen users funds, or forced them to take a haircut this year alone. So my question is can anyone name any exchanges or finance services that have lost users coins. So far off the top of my head I have: |
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I'm trying to find out what test networks exsist for altcoins, like the bitcoin test net.
I'm particularly interested in test nets for LTC and PPC, but would also like to know of others that may exist.
Any information people could provide would be very useful.
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Can I sped a sub set of the outputs of an existing transaction with a presigned lock_time transaction that is valid for that transaction at a future time, but some of the outputs have already been spent.
To give an example:
Party A and Party B agree to lock up some funds as a deposit – Party A creates the deposit transaction and spends 6 bitcoins to a transaction that has outputs of 1BTC, 2BTC and 3BTC and broadcasts this to the network. This deposit transaction is then mined into a block. At the same time Party A sends Party B a signed lock_time transaction valid to redeem all three outputs from the 6BTC deposit transaction they just made. The lock_time transaction is valid at 100 blocks in the future, so if A and B never communicate again B can claim all three outputs at 100 blocks in the future.
However before Party B can collect his bitcoins, Party A then spends 2BTC output from the deposit transaction to another transaction.
Is Party B then still able to claim the remaining funds in that transaction? I.e. is each input on the lock_time transaction he holds singed separately or signed across all the inputs by Party A? Is there any way Party B can separate these out to generate a new lock_time transaction and get the funds?
Please let me know if I’ve got the above correct or misunderstood anything.
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