Centralized systems requiring trust are You are presenting a false choice. The choice is not "centralized systems" OR "everything in Bitcoin". There are many options to build non-centralized ways of settling payment on a decentralized Bitcoin— ilpirata79 linked to one such approach. A lack of care into the operating costs of Bitcoin nodes may result in Bitcoin itself becoming effectively centralized, which is an outcome which would make building a non-centeralized payment method on top of Bitcoin pointless or impossible. The fear of bitcoin becoming centralized because of "heavy" nodes is imho completely unnecessary. The traffic and storage technology can be maintained by small groups, it is not like there will be "one big government node" in every country. It is more like having a node in every town. Any system that requires a system on top of bitcoin for payments is a threat for bitcoin and it is not necessary. The basic, existing system of bitcoin allows to replace visa if it is adapted to a bigger volume. Anything else will make Bitcoin complicated and I know I am repeating this, but one huge factor of bitcoin is, that I don't need an intermediary. Keep Bitcoin simple, complicating systems unnecessarily has never been wise. A node in every town is risky because it is easy to take down. Who is going to administer such nodes? The idea is that the max block size is going to increase, but slowly. Maybe a x10 multiplication of the soft and hard block sizes could be a good start (maybe even risky). At the same time, to be on the safe side, it is good to develop safe and cheap distributed tecniques to handle micro transactions in order to avoid the unnecessary inflation of the block chain. Like the one I posted and that invite you to read. It is not an unnecessary complication. Other crypto currencies may arise that handle things better because are better designed and more sofisticated/complicated. Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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Off-chain transactions for small or micro payments does not forbid you to send money to a friend of yours directly (through the blockchain - you may just have to pay a relatively high fee). Yes and one of Bitcoins big advantages are the small fees. A cheap, fast payment system without the need of intermediaries, that is one huge part of bitcoin imho. The problem is that one thing if what we want, another thing is what we actually CAN have. World is made of constraints. You just cannot record everything, but in any case why would you do that? I don't care if my coffee transaction does not get into the block chain (as a single transaction). Intermediares that lower the required fees and speed up transaction times are just good. We can have bitcoins without intermediaries. I care if I depended on an intermediary. I don't want companies between me and my money or the money transfer system. I can have that already, it's called a credit card  . There is no problem with recording everything. Disk space is already very cheap and it gets cheaper and cheaper. If you have concerns about your privacy, I can guarantee you, that these intermediaries will be obligated to track everything, so you might have less privacy than with the existing system, which gives you enough room for anonymity if you really care. Intermediaries make the system unnecessary complicated. And they are absolutely not needed. Consider that such intermediares (that I call payment gateways) could even increase user privacy, by aggregating several small transactions into a big one where the information about the component transactions is lost. PayPal can be called payment gateway as well. For example, if we installed some kind of "no small transactions" system, there is a big chance, that companies like Ebay become these intermediaries. And as I stated above, there will be no privacy as soon as there is some kind of controllable intermediary. I'm not saying I have the perfect solution, but there are some test-worthy ideas out there and there is no technical reason to limit transactions on the blockchain. I don't have time to completely argument, however, in brief: 1) No problem with credit cards or debit card: I already use them. I could just as easily use them with bitcoins. The issue is the fees that should be low. 2) Paypal is not a payment gateway, but a payment processor. It handles each transaction entirely. Both sender and receiver need to be registered on it. I propose instead a network of interoperable payment gateways where each user can choose its gateway (the cheaper or faster or trustworthy, even if the trust needed if almost zero). To have a transaction among two people, they do not need to use the same gateway. 3) If you want privacy, you can just choose a payment gateway in a country where there is no need to record transactions. A payment gateway could even be located into TOR. The bandwidth and the storage space issues have already been discussed. You cannot get away with it by just saying that storage is cheap... We must abandon this kind of religious thinking where we just hope that storage will get cheaper and network speed bigger just as much as we need. Off course there are going to be advancements but the pace of such advancements is not goint to allow to cope with the huge increase of the number of transactions. In any case, as I said before, you can still use direct transactions (but fees are going to be higher). Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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I hope -and I'm relatively certain- that I will be (still!) able to do that in the future and imho any solution away from allowing a lot of cheap and fast transactions on the blockchain will be a major threat to bitcoins integrity. I know that "off the chain" transactions are hip these days, but imho this takes away a huge and major feature of bitcoin, NO intermediaries. This point can not be stressed enough. Taking away any kind of intermediary between people is one of the big pluses of bitcoin.
I don't want bitcoin companies between me and the bitcoin network, I want to participate in the network itself. I could just keeping my credit cards then.
Imho off the chain transactions are no solution at all, they are a way of complicating things.
Off-chain transactions for small or micro payments does not forbid you to send money to a friend of yours directly (through the blockchain - you may just have to pay a relatively high fee). The problem is that one thing if what we want, another thing is what we actually CAN have. World is made of constraints. You just cannot record everything, but in any case why would you do that? I don't care if my coffee transaction does not get into the block chain (as a single transaction). Intermediares that lower the required fees and speed up transaction times are just good. Consider that such intermediares (that I call payment gateways) could even increase user privacy, by aggregating several small transactions into a big one where the information about the component transactions is lost. Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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I think you will never be able to pay coffee with bitcoins, when (and if) people really start using it (which is what we want). Unless you are willing to pay very high fees. I think you should be careful to distinguish Bitcoin the currency and Bitcoin the payment network when you speak because on this matter what you can "never" do is quite different depending on which you're speaking of— I know you know this but the language makes it unclear. Off-course, I meant that the coffee transaction does not end up being written into the block-chain, but you *still* are paying with bitcoins (through other means). After all, the block chain is just a distributed time stamp server. There is no need to put everything in there. So, if you can achieve the same goal (pay) through more efficient means, it is ok. Thanks anyhow for the clarification you made which is very useful. Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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and we can easily support more TPS than PayPal.
Off course, but that comes at a cost. I think Paypal is a good target because it's about internet payments that does not require very rapid confirmations. We could aim for a little more than paypal and choose, for instance, a max block size that allows 1.2 or 1.5 of the paypal tps (so 12 or 15 mB). On the other hand, I think that we should just forget about being able to address the same number and types of transactions visa or mastercard do. Such kind of transactions (super-market, bar, etc.) have to be made off-chain. First because they require rapid confirmations. Second, because it is useless to register everything into the blockchain (I don't want to have even the coffee I buy registered into the blockchain. In fact, the less transactions inside the block chain, the better). Best regards, ilpirata79 That is imho the worst approach. It takes one of bitcoins key features away, being a very simple and clear system. Imho, you have to be able to pay your coffee without any intermediaries to keep bitcoin alive and to have a real impact on the world. Cutting out intermediaries and making transactions cheap and fast, that was the approach described in the paper and I think this should stay bitcoins goal. Allowing the same number of transactions as visa should be the midterm goal imho. I started using bitcoin quite regularly as shops start to accept it more and more and I definitely don't want this trend to stop. This is the real value growth of bitcoin, not some overheated numbers caused by speculation. I think you will never be able to pay coffee with bitcoins, when (and if) people really start using it (which is what we want). Unless you are willing to pay very high fees. For this kind of (micro) payments we could follow the approach I described here, which leverages micro-payment channels in course of development: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=344267.0. Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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and we can easily support more TPS than PayPal.
Off course, but that comes at a cost. I think Paypal is a good target because it's about internet payments that does not require very rapid confirmations. We could aim for a little more than paypal and choose, for instance, a max block size that allows 1.2 or 1.5 of the paypal tps (so 12 or 15 mB). On the other hand, I think that we should just forget about being able to address the same number and types of transactions visa and mastercard do. Such kinds of transactions (super-market, bar, etc.) have to be made off-chain. First because they require rapid confirmations. Second, because it is useless to register everything into the blockchain (I don't want to have even the coffee I buy registered into the blockchain. In fact, the less transactions inside the block chain, the better). Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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Why not a dynamic blocksize?
I think that an automatic dinamic block size is difficulty to design and implement and could lead to disparities among peers. The community should be in charge of deciding what the max block size should look like through planned increases. Best regards, Ilpirata79 Badly typed on my iPad |
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Hi guys,
My opinion is that we should schedule a change to the max block size to be 10mB in a year or two,
So we match the tps of paypal. Would the world fall If we made such a change? In any case miners could be free to set a lower threshold If they believe it's appropriate.
Micro translations though, would still be Made off-chain, using a network a micro payment channels, as they require fast confirmation.
Best regards,
Ilpirata7
Badly typed on my iPad
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Hi everyone,
can you suggest the most easy and secure way to import into mtgox or bitstamp.net a paper wallet key encrypted with bip38 (generated on bitaddress.org).
Thanks and best regards,
ilpirata79
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If you aren't already, you should stick a NMC address in at Eligius to make a little extra BTC. I don't have a NMC wallet so I just generated one at BTC-E and they all get sent there. I exchange them for BTC then withdraw. Worth it?
I agree. We should mine nmc as well as it's for free. Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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A network of micropayment channels * seems to me like a good way to go. Though as Mike Hearn said somewhere on the forum, it's a lot of work, and they're still working on getting single micropayment channels right. * https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244656.0I think the handling of such off-the-blockchain micro-payments is the last missing piece to make bitcoin globally accepted. Once the micro payment channel is done (I don't think it will take a lot), it just remains to do the implementation of the interface between the consumers/merchants and the payment gateways. Off course also the payment gateway service needs to be implemented, but it is just a small layer on top of the micro payment channels. It is not a lot of work in my opinion. I would do it myself if I had time. A good idea would be that someone willing to work on that make a step forward and other people can support him/her through donations. What do you think? Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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Ǵet more free space the blockchain needs 12 Gigabytes of more.
The fact is that most of the block chain is already downloaded, but I will try nonetheless. Thanks, ilpirata79 |
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subject is you ?
your sister. Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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Hi everyone,
my bitcoin-qt client has been stuck for several days on block:
265691.
The strange think is that it is the second time it gets stuck (I previously erased all .bitcoin directory), and, if I am not wrong, on more or less the same block.
I have 2,4Gb free on my hard disk.
The version is v0.8.5.0-gef14a26-beta.
Any suggestion?
ilpirata79
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Can you confirm that the "subject" is right?
Thanks,
ilpirata79
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That was what inputs.io was... before the "hack". It has been done before, and will be done again.
The problem of trust to such 3parties could be worked out by requiring the transactions among them to be co-signed by the original owners of bitcoins and we could even use contracts so the money loaded into the services gets back to the owners should they disappear. Such services could be called payment gateways. Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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Just as a note, now everyone has to trust Paypal/Visa/mastercard or whatever to perform their transactions.
With the method I described there would be many different societies that interoperate on the basis of a protocol (e.g. the micro-payment channel). They would fight to lower the fees and attract customers.
Unfortunately trusting 3rd parties, at least temporarily and for small amounts, is the only thing you can do to make off-chain transactions.
Otherwise you can decide to make blocks 1G big so everything can happen in the block chain. Doing so, unfortunately, would still result in you having to trust a few entities, the ones that can manage such a big block chain and have such a high bandwidth.
Best regards,
ilpirata79
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What do you think? Are there different/better solutions?
U could always keep these coins in 3rd party services... And call such services "banks"... Mmm... you won't use those services to store your savings but just as intermidiaries. With bitpay, for instance, you can get directly bitcoins into your wallet. So they are not really "banks"... Best regards, ilpirata79 |
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