Yeah, this seems to be called "bridge" in OpenMAMA and it would be great if that code would actually be implemented in their repository - just imagine having a bitcoind connector right next to the Bloomberg API connector!  |
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http://www.openmama.org/Great presentation about the idea behind it (watch it!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTPkXu_lTa8Just looking at the various APIs from Bitcoin services (exchanges, bitcoind itself, charts...) it seems like a big mess that tries to re-invent the wheel constantly. OpenMAMA tries to be one of the first real initiatives (and it is driven by the NYSE, hosted at the Linux foundation!) to allow a kind of "plug + play" style middleware that can talk to each and any of these services rather than having to re-implement everyone's API in every single chart page or trading bot you do. Just imagine you being able to plug a Bitcoin trading bot to the NYSE data and see how it would do there, or displaying FooExchange data in your everyday forex software right next to IB and Bloomberg! I'd like to know if you think this is something that would be interesting for bitcoind too, as this might also be used to do actual trades (or in bitcoind's case rather transfers) and seems to me one of the first proper initiatives of implementing an industry wide standard after FIX. Bitcoin still is partly in a niche I think because we have to rely on it to be integrated elsewhere instead of offering easier ways to plug it into existing systems. To break this chicken-egg situation, interoperability might be needed and Bitcoin could do a better job at that. Also it might push forward a few more Open Source finance applications, the current ones I found are poor excuses for what any proprietory service offers out of the box. If there is a standard used by Bitcoin, this might actually send a message out there that at least to interoperate with the Bitcoin ecosystem you just need to adopt this new open source standard that also allows interoperability with much larger players in the future. This could create a nice bottom-up approach instead of the current top-down one ("let's just wait until we are relevant enough so they have to pay the price to code a custom connector to the bitcoin APIs").
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CONDITIONS
1. Open source
2. No third-party trust required (no third party escrow, server, website, etc..)
3. No commissions (except for network fees)
4. No need for identity verification. No need for reputation.
5. Include a mechanism that ensures that transactions, once initiated, are completed.
6. Allows users to exchange $ € ¥ <--> BTC within hours. 1. Is a given one 2. THIS is the most difficult (if not impossible?) part - you can try to limit this as much as possible, but in the end there is no way to transact fiat money without third party trust, as it is transacting on a different system than BTC. 3. clear 4. Might be quite difficult - if 2 was in place of course you don't need it anyways (you don't need it for BTC). If 2 were possible somehow thoug, there would be no need for BTC in the first place! 5. slightly difficult, fees should be low on one hand but prevent spamming and overloading on the other. I'd rewrite it to "once initiated, you quickly (within seconds) get a decision if it will be completed" 6. That's one of the main points I guess, it makes the other parts (especially 2 and 4) very hard if not impossible. Trading BTC for LTC and others is easy, because these altcoins fulfill #2. USD doesn't. In order to clarify, these should be the requirements to win the bounty proposed by @flix: 1 - The software must provide a automatic way to exchange BTC by fiat money. The user just provide the price/BTC and the amount to buy or to sell. 2 - The software must not require any personal information about the user, just run and use the program. 3 - The software must be decentralized, it must not use any server, tracker or infrastructure, it must be P2P, for example as the Gnutella Protocol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella
4 - It must not use any third party services (as social networks), reputation methods (as LocalBitcoins, etc) or support from others users in the P2P network to ensure the exchange safety. It must use Game Theory to ensure the safety. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory5 - The software can uses third party services APIs (as banks, etc) to move FIAT money automatically between users, but the bank activity of these kind of services should not be related to the exchange activity. 6 - The software must allow to exchange money and BTC to users from anywhere in the world. For example, users from USA must be able to exchange money or BTC with users from EU. 7 - The software must be safe and opensource. 1 - Where would each user send the money to and how? There must be no third party involved, so the only way this is possible (well, the only third party is the FED then) is when you have a physical dollar bill in your hand and the seller has e.g. 1 BTC on a private key only he knows. The transaction then needs to happen in a way that none of the two can shy away and also that they don't know or care about each other. 2 - of course!  3 - Must not even use any infrastructure?! Even Gnutella runs nodes and supernodes, which both act as servers and clients at the same time. I'm not too sure you mean what you just wrote the way it looks like to me - I think you mean something along the lines of "anyone with a fairly decent computer + internet connection can run a server and participate in the network" 4 - That looks more like the NashX approach - Game Theory only works if you have rational market participants (and look at current BTCUSD markets and tell me again that the participants there are acting rationally!) 5 - Which ones are "banks APIs" exactly by the way? I am currently checking out quite a few of them and the API part in the international finance community seems to be an utter and complete MESS beyond any imagination. Also you wrote about no infrastructure and no 3rd party risk, now we are allowed to use bank wires?! Nice, I'll open an account in Cyprus right away! 6 -Must they also be able to receive BTC and pay someone in North Korea? Kuba? Iran? 7 - of course, though "safe" is a bit weakly defined and I think you are talking about free software, not just open source. There is already an exchange that fulfills nearly all the points you mention here by the way and it is live + trading as we speak. |
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Why the hell do you trade on a platform that is in the process of being upgraded and might go down for maintenance any second?!  |
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Was soll er/sie sonst machen? Billiger anbieten als die Coins wert sind? eBay verlangt ja auch noch Gebühren obendrauf...
Außerdem kann man das pauschal NICHT sagen, wie viel in 12 Stunden rauskommt - das hängt vom verwendeten Pool und auch einfach Glück ab. Im Schnitt lohnt es sich nicht, im Einzelfall könnte es sich eventuell lohnen.
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Gratulations, hopefully you open up soon for Austria too! (didn't try yet, maybe you already are?)
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Immerhin mit Addresse - wenn also jemand Lust auf einen Miner hat und eine Brechstange im Gepäck... viel Erfolg!
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The BTC price on china exchange now worth more than 800 usd per coin.
As soon as some of them wake up, they will use up all the money on bitfinex and withdraw the coin to sell on china exchange. Well, this arbitrage opportunity exists for quite some time now already... I also wonder why so few people seem to use it (or with so little money - well, there are few early adopters with lots of play money from bitcoin in China I guess) |
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While yes I could hope that the whole world just uses bitcoin, I could also send Euro's to my friend in Europe while holding USD myself just by sending it in bitcoin no? I put BTC in at one exchange and they take euro out at another exchange.
Then you have currency risk while the money is in bitcoins. You could also get a gold bar, FedEx it to "Europe" and your friend from there sells it locally. Even if you imagine you have a teleporting device that takes only 1 hour to transfer the gold bar, this still is not very handy if you just want Euros. With Ripple transactions are atomic (and irreversible after ~10 seconds), so your friend knows exactly how many Euros will arrive. Just imagine you paying at Amazon - they will not be happy with receiving "roughly" 50 USD! Likely they won't even be happy if you overpay, because then they need to pay you back. By the way, the thing you describe carries the same counterparty risk and "money is debt/IOUs are evil" mentality that so many seem to criticise about Ripple. You didn't bring up that point, so i just write it for the others. While I hope that there will be other/better infrastructure to send and automatically convert funds to native currencies from bitcoins, I'd say Ripple is definitely one of them. The reason might simply be that they have ~25 people working paid and full time on both development of software and business relations, so they are more likely to come across and talk to regulators than members of the Bitcoin foundation.[\quote]
Also the regulations to being a gateway are likely easier to fulfill than being a money exchanger (something that a bitcoin exchange likely would be licensed as) - and you can leave the trading and exchanging to your customers. That's the part I'm particularly skeptical about. There are lots of companies on the edge of new and exotic frontiers of the law yet they don't get airtime infront of the senate. Bitcoin has a $5 billion market cap with hundreds of thousands if not more users worldwide, but ripple? They seem just like a startup, albeit with some more favorable treatment. As for the regulatiosn of being a gateway being likely easier to fulfill, I think thats their agenda- to promote this idea. That Ripple is somehow more "legal". Serious question, no boasting or cynism intended: Which Bitcoin focussed companies have more than 20 full time employees (and not just customer support but in business and software development)? Ripple Labs still IS fairly bitcoin focussed (which even might be a limiting factor for them actually - maybe they would have been better off approaching banks first before approaching this community?). Most of the work, money and time in Bitcoin seems to be spent on actually getting rid of them again on exchanges, either directly or indirectly through merchant solutions that pay out USD and that offer a consolidated (sell) order book towards users. Whom would you rather have seen in front of the senate (well it would have been already cool to have Chris there instead of this failure of a lawyer lady)? I agree that they might push for the idea that it is less hassle to become a gateway than to become a fully licensed independent exchange, it is their business model and value proposition after all. Again I don't think that this threatens Bitcoin as such, more exchanges who want to be able to operate their own order book with all positive and negative parts of it (look at the spread between MtGox and Bitstamp for weeks now for example). I personally don't care if I sell my Bitcoins on Ripple and get my Euros from a gateway or if I sell them on an exchange and get the Euros from them (well, the exchange might have worse rates due to lower competition) and vice versa, as long as it is easier for me to move between fiat and BTC. Edit: Gotta listen very hard to my pillow for a few hours with closed eyes - I'll be back later and thanks for keeping the discussion civilized so far! |
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Tip. Funds lent at rates above 365% are not used to fill orders for users who borrow automatically, through the Margin trading page. Offers of less than 365% are taken far more often. Since when is this part of the page?! Another mechanism to screw lenders over!  |
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Ripple is a decentralized exchange platform which also contains XRP, a digital asset that can be used as currency. A major part of Ripple trading volume is also done in BTC (mainly against USD but also CNY, LTC and XRP) at the moment.
A lot of Ripple users are also bitcoiners and I highly doubt that they want to see them go away or having barriers built around them.
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You seem to confuse XRP with Ripple again... XRP are a centralized asset useable as currency amongst other things (issued by/to OpenCoin/RippleLabs), the software isn't. You can run rippled right now (after you compile it from the MIT licensed source code...) and choose to build your own network or join the existing one. This is very similar to Bitcoin, where you can start from a new genesis block or use the Satoshi chain. If you only run Bitcoin, you also don't get any coins - you need to mine them (or buy from someone who mines, or buy from someone who buys from someone who mines etc.). You can use Ripple perfectly fine with 100 XRP (that you could get for free on this forum, that you can buy from Bitstamp or otherwise) and very likely cover all your transaction fees you'll ever have to pay from that. Beyond that you don't need to deal with them at all and can for example treat it like a web wallet (where funds are held at Bitstamp, if you use their BTC IOUs). The difference is that you can pay other people in currencies they want while holding currencies you want. Since bitcoin transfers are irreversible, Ripple could in the future likely also be used similar to BitPay or Coinbase - then you wouldn't even need an account there and just pay to an address that is generated by a gateway service and the merchant at the other end receives their USD or EUR or whatever 10 seconds after your transaction is on the block chain. If you want it to be faster, you'd have to use it as webwallet. I personally am rather happy that it is Ripple Labs that is working in regulation - at first glance it looks easier to get a hold of for regulators and they probably like the fact that they have a rather central contact point registered as company in the US than some network of various people. It could be much worse btw. - imagine Bruce Wagner sitting there!  The reason might simply be that they have ~25 people working paid and full time on both development of software and business relations, so they are more likely to come across and talk to regulators than members of the Bitcoin foundation. Also the regulations to being a gateway are likely easier to fulfill than being a money exchanger (something that a bitcoin exchange likely would be licensed as) - and you can leave the trading and exchanging to your customers. Ripple surely has its flaws and problems, being perceived as danger to Bitcoin might be one of them. In my opionion they are a far greater danger to Bitcoin exchanges than to Bitcoin itself. |
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So what does make Ripple more dangerous to Bitcoin than e.g. PayPal or Amazon? That Ripple Labs invented their own (shitty) currency instead of implementing only balances in USD and BTC?
Ripple is a decentralized exchange and market, not a currency - XRP are and as you said, they are easy to get.
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I just thought she ended up sounding like completely uneducated and unprepared to talk on the topic.
My guess is that she came on short notice instead of Chris Larsen (the CEO of RippleLabs) who would also have attended as witness and she likely works as RippleLabs' lawyer. Most likely she got carried away with "customer loyalty" and is anyways probably not too much into cryptocurrencies (otherwise she wouldn't have called Ripple a currency...). They likely got into the panel because they are probably one of the largest companies in the US working with Bitcoins right now (~30 employees) and most likely quite busy with business development and regulation work rather than advertising end-user solutions. |
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Hello everyone,
First of, it's seems money is not credited on Bitstamp on Monday, which is why no deposits arrived there (and maybe why their price lag behind even BTC-E?).
However tomorrow the problem should be solved for good, as we have been very aggressive this time (and will finally get ahead of the "race" for deposits).
As announced, margin trading is now off, because of the volatility and at least until we get our upgrade done.
We don't like performing an upgrade with such a turmoil, but I believe we don't have a choice, as you are probably realising now.
Thank you all and have a good day
Raphael
Bitfinex team
(emphasis mine) Date: November 18th, which is either yesterday or the day before yesterday depending on your time zone. The announcement was done... |
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[...]are you connected to Bitbet in any way? Well, bitbet is owned and operated by Mircea Popescu, the self proclaimed mastermind of all that is Bitcoin and prowd owner overlord employer of MPOE-PR.  |
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However you can generate a set of instructions which describe how to grow the seed and where to find the hex code that you need within the seemingly random hashes, to reconstruct the original file from those instructions. After writing some code and experimenting with this a bit I found that it is possible, however it takes a huge amount of computing power just to compress even a small file with a reasonable degree of compression. It might very likely take more space to store the reconstruction instructions than the actual file itself. One could "mine" for suitable seeds + offsets by generating a large number of tables and choosing the smallest set of instructions that leads to the desired result... What's nice about this is that it might be possible to re-use these tables for other data AND that it would probably work quite well on already traditionally compressed data. It seems kinda similar to "Pi compression" - since the number Pi is infinite and every possible sequence has to come up at some point, you could compress data by just saying "take the 12345th digit of pi until the 50123th and divide by two - that's your data!" you can also make this as easy or complex as you want, in the end all you need to share is the "recipe" of how to manipulate what to get back your original data. (edit: check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey%E2%80%93Borwein%E2%80%93Plouffe_formula by the way!) If you want to be really impressed what's possible with compression, check out the .kkrieger game - less than 100 000 bytes (your average iPhone farting app is multiple times larger!) and a fully featured 3d shooter. Edit: [...]and that is why I'm unable to provide the source code for this algorithm until I can be sure about the laws regarding encryption algorithms, because I know they are tough. I doubt that there are any limitations to use SHA256 and newly invented algorithms are anyways not restricted afaik. The US gave up on restrictions regarding crypto int he end of the 90s thankfully, they probably rather break into servers than waste electricity and time on breaking the actual crypto. |
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If you are so hooked that you can't pause for a day, you might be trading emotionally and irrationally - yes, I am serious that you should better take a break than hit F5 and get all worked up.
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What else should they do?! As long as a transaction is not in a block, it could be double spent away. I agree that it is not a nice way to deal with this issue, but you are free to use their "service". I sure didn't and I know why.
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You might consider reading the existing topics before starting a new one - the official one AND another one "is bitfinex down?" are both on this very first page!
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