Even using a relatively expensive tattoo removal clinic, it shouldn't cost more than $5k to remove the tattoo once paid. $50k for some pain and photos? Sign me up!

Unless I'm missing why "Magic: The Gox" makes sense, then logically, it can only be M.T.G.O.X. or Mt. Gox.... unless you're looking to make a fantastic, subtle jab at 'em. I guess it could be like SATA.... m'tgahcks.

Safe to assume you can get 720W out of 12V line (12*75*.8 | .8 is for "safe" guesstimating). 280 will consume 250-300W. BE Cube will consume 200-280W. Total draw on 12V line will be ~700-880W.

So... maybe. Wouldn't count on it being reliable if it works. With other components (hard drive, CPU, USB gadgets, motherboard components, RAM), there's a good chance you're over 900W overall.

I'm in dire need of someone to stare at a wall for me. I need you to not move (so figure out a way to eat, drink, pee, poo without moving) and have three videocameras pointed at your face for 40 years. I think it'd be cool to do an ultra-high-fps 20-minute time-lapse. It pays 10BTC at date of completion (you don't get paid if you die before completion) or .15BTC/year. For every second your face is not in all three videocamera frames, you will be penalized .05BTC. You cannot move the videocameras once in place.

Coming soon (these items will be posted here when ready):

Standardized purchase agreement forms, one for goods, one for services. This should help reduce confusion and reduce the incidents of malicious buyers giving fake escrow addresses. ETA: 2-14 days Complete.

Coin control is coming back! (Armory .91 will be used as soon as it's out) ETA: "soon" (within two months) ETA2: .9x is still unusable for me...

Public agreement to "Escrow Provider 'Best Practices'" guidelines. Still working on writing up a final draft. Collaborative project of a few top escrow providers. ETA: 2-4 weeks ETA2: another couple months

Bad, ignorant jokes. Episodes where they pull the comedians all from one group (this time, was people involved with a show called "Community") always seem significantly less funny. Middle woman may have known what bitcoins were because she said it was a way of buying drugs without seeing your dealer (host mentioned it was drug money in the prompt, so that may've been why she wrote that).

I think the host (Chris) may've been familiar. The comedians were "making it rain bitcoin" and the host said something like "no, that's what bitcoin actually looks like -- you can't see it."

I'm guessing Kieran's work will have to be given to someone else. I'm retranscribing one from scratch, which I wasn't expecting... takes more time than I have to give while still making regular progress. I'll talk to qwk about it. Really only need someone to clear out the current queue and then we're done with 48h+ backlogs.

MtGox surely has some assets. Their landlord hasn't kicked them out (... or maybe that's why they moved, heh). Insolvency on Gox's part would obviously include account balances being counted as a liability. It'd be almost impossible to manage to lose everyone's account balances. (I'm unsure of how payout prioritization is handled specifically in Japan, but I'd guess debt-holders come second to client funds they have temporary custody over)

Worse than people having false hope is people having false despair where they do nothing about it. I don't doubt some percentage of funds will be returned to customers, but it could take years with a significant haircut and significant work required. A friend only just had his Full Tilt Poker balance returned yesterday... it was taken in April of 2011.

It's not 100% for sure. Gox isn't saying much, so there's very little certainty. I can't imagine any reason not to formally deny widespread charges of insolvency and imminent liquidation (especially by competitors, which seems a bit unprofessional, but I understand why), so at this point, I'd be thinking there's a decent chance of a formal liquidation and haircut, but probably not 100% loss. Might be worth joining a lawsuit to recover funds, even if just to be kept better in the loop.

Gosh, that list almost seems targeted at something. Thanks. Easy to forget what all's been done when things move so quickly.

@p2p exchange -- I didn't mean to conflate p2p and ATM solutions, because I think the ATM solution will be relatively centralized. I don't see any of the really ambitious p2p exchange ideas ever taking off -- those decentralized protocol layer schemes. Maybe I lack vision. Instead, I think p2p will mostly stick to listing sites like LocalBitcoins.

ATMs are going to have a really complicated, capital-sucking time ahead of them long-term, I think, because I think we'll find we can't trust the exchanges in existence to not ruin businesses with slow turnaround time or by "accidentally" blacklisting ATM accounts (as recently happened with Bitstamp and the Vancouver ATM). I think, instead, ATM operators will bite the bullet and form their own exchanges (especially since many are forced to comply with horrible MSB crap already and already require large operating floats) which will have local, regional, or national markets depending on how laws work in a particular area -- I think we'll see "exchange disunification" for a while, where people generally don't use one global exchange to transfer multiple fiat currencies in and out for BTC. Lot of ways it could play out. Someone will definitely want to be arbing, so maybe there will be a quiet venture launched by Robocoin, Lamassu, or an ATM operator federation which makes giant stacks of cash by forming a "backbone" exchange which arbs with all the local, regional, and national ATM exchanges to ensure a relatively stable price across the world whenever there's deviation.


I really don't see tx fees being a big deal because altcoins have basically already solved it with relatively sucky networks, and I think just shoving more, cheaper transactions into blocks is just kicking the can down the road. Devs have never (AFAIK) pushed Bitcoin as a micropayments platform, and if usage continues exploding faster than tech can keep up, it won't go back to being one. It would be very expensive as far as resources for full nodes... kind of like an ultra-progressive tax where we let the wealthy first-worlders generously (or maliciously) control our nodes, and to a lesser extent, this is how Bitcoin is right now -- you need uncapped DSL+ (preferably cable+), you need a modern PC, and you have to want to run it enough to sacrifice hard drive speed, CPU processing time, and bandwidth to it (or pay for VPS/dedicated). In my case, where I rely on a mobile data connection, I'm counted as a full node by the node crawlers, but I'm really not because I started running my node selfishly by explicitly limiting Bitcoin's bandwidth to a point where it's not really contributing anything, only leeching.

In almost all instances, transactions cost significantly more to store and pass around than are paid in fees, so smart fees (unless they significantly increase fees on average) seems low priority and potentially detrimental compared to shrinking the blockchain and decentralized protocol layers which allow the combination of transactions to cut down on overhead. CoinJoin, for example, has major benefits both in reducing blockchain size, improving pseudonymity, and in cutting down tx fees dramatically. It's a major objective improvement to just about every aspect of Bitcoin, so that's what I'm really looking forward to. I think, to maintain Bitcoin's very strong network, there's also a need to figure out how to subsidize node costs (such as by a foundation mailing out copies of the blockchain on USB drives) and somehow figure out a fair payment mechanism for them (maybe just a foundation giving monitored full nodes a kind of salary, or paying universities). I worry about a trend toward capping Internet bandwidth consumption in more Western countries like is already seen by many less-developed nations (and some Western nations). The precedent set with the recent Comcast/Netflix blackmail is worrying, too -- "Bitcoin" won't be able to pay Comcast $400M to "fix" Bitcoin traffic, but it's too soon to tell if Comcast and other ISPs will be empowered to start really cracking down on "low-priority" (non-subsidized) traffic they can't adequately serve due to infrastructure inadequacies and severe over-selling on the ISPs' parts.

I think alt-coins like LTC and FTC (or Quark... whatever the new Feathercoin is) will have a more accepted and well-defined niche... they'll be relatively insecure, and it's where you what you want to keep your short-term spending money in due to the lower fees which come from insecurity (and lack of lite node wallet clients!). Weaker networks are where you want to do micro-payments; TANSTAAFL. With multi-coin wallet clients, I think that transition will be major and fast if major improvements to BTC like CoinJoin aren't widely implemented, but I have no idea when it will happen outside "within the next year." If we do see a major transition like that with BTC in its current state, I think it could make the VCs leave Bitcoin and either run away back to the sidelines or start wider-scope cryptocurrency businesses rather than narrow-scope Bitcoin businesses.

Very easy to use. Wife can monitor and restart as needed on laptop while I'm asleep or away in uncommon cases where CGRemote and CGWatcher don't ideally restart the miner or PC (it sometimes records a phantom GPU which messes its scripts). Recommend it to everyone with a farm, small or large.

Sure, why not?

1) Multi-coin wallet clients will finally be released into the wild, though they may be more centralized approaches than would be ideal for security and privacy. Alt-coin prices will soar.

2) Exchanges will largely be replaced by p2p and ATMs. ATMs will run their own federated exchanges, solely using current market price. Various trading options may still exist to speculate, but I see them becoming toys for the ultra-wealthy only.

3) Bitcoin-like networks will see significant, though maybe not widespread, use as a notary system, competing with email and un-notarized paper as the de facto way to record mundane p2p contracts.

4) Node centralization will become a major concern, both due to bandwidth/connection bottlenecks and security and privacy risks, and we'll probably be trying to figure out a solution to this well after negative events occur due to the issue. The Bitcoin Foundation or similar may be sending out free physical blockchain copies to anyone who asks.

5) Widespread, explicit discounts by companies for users paying in BTC. 3-5%, at least.

6) Bitpay will eat everyone's breakfast, possibly becoming The Crypto Company if the payment processing space isn't adequately competed in. Bitpay will have the money to finally implement some of the more ambitious ideas like hybrid crypto-fiat debit cards. Bitpay will be largely responsible for the crypto revolution, I believe.

7) Increased skepticism and outright opposition by government officials, and lobbyists for existing infrastructure explicitly attempting to undermine cryptocurrency. We'll see more major markets ban bitcoin transactions and exchanges outright.

8 ) Fracturing of QT project, and eventual decay into irrelevancy as developers move on to other clients and are not competently replaced. Formal organization of protocol development which will look like various protocol alliances we see in other industries... for better or worse, the protocol's fate will be in the hands of relevant corporations. This may end up being a defining moment, possibly causing exodus from Bitcoin itself into other coins with separate protocols.

9) Heavy development in the mixing/anonymization sector of cryptocurrency. All major clients will support cheaper, heavily-mixed transactions.

10) BTC price = $2500-6000 (nobody will use "bitcoin" to price bitcoin, with ksat being the most common unit of measurement)
10a) $10-1000 if major fracturing occurs due to ideological dispute over protocol development

In Libertarian utopia land, nobody has friends because they all live in their basement and order beef jerky and freeze-dried "astronaut food" off Amazon for sustenance. In reality, Bitcoin's big enough now where newcomers should be able to easily find a friend who has experience with BTC. I actually shouted at one person who, after I walked them through the buying process, said they were going to buy on Gox. This was months ago, and I've been warning against it for at least a year since fiat withdrawals were near-frozen. Actually, everyone who I've walked through the buying process immediately goes to Gox, without exception, if I'm remembering correctly... maybe one exception.

Maybe we need a newcomer-vet buddy pairing program when someone decides they want to learn about BTC. I'll definitely double the call for local crypto<->fiat transfers. You can do it pretty much anywhere in any =<$10k amount... I'm in the middle of nowhere and it's just an hour or two drive in most directions if I want someone to meet with me for an exchange. Central exchanges are convenient, but it's very critical to have a good p2p exchange user base in place if the corporations should fall apart (said as part owner of a bitcoin vending machine).

Oh, I see - the loading screen. Yeah, I got that, too - didn't even think about it. At first, I thought it might be me, so I checked with a VM machine using Firefox instead of Chrome "with some urgency." Heh, sorry about the scare.

DNS attack shouldn't be able to adequately forge SSL certificate in most reasonable scenarios (though it's happened outside cert keys just being stolen/compromised - google comodo attack, allegedly done by a single guy). DNS attacker who was really specific (targeting crypto users, maybe) would probably just self-sign certificates for fake crypto websites and hope you click through the browser warnings (so to answer your question - no - or at least "no, I don't think so."). Idunno SSL cert mechanics well enough to fully answer you, though.

In all seriousness, there's a fair chance your web requests are being redirected by malware or a malicious DNS server if you're not seeing that. What are you seeing? It has the SSL certification icon when you connect? (my troll hat's genuinely off)

Oh. Maybe Gox has found some new acquaintances they'd like to introduce. Maybe Browbeat, Floggem & Harassem.  ...Horribly long word... good to keep in mind for Scrabble, now that it's mentioned. (quaint->acquaint->acquaintance->acquaintances->acquaintanceship->acquaintanceships )

Huh. Confirmed. Idunno many words which start with "acq." Acquisition comes to mind. (Oh - maybe just acquisition of gox.com)


<html>
   <head>
      <title>MtGox.com</title>
   </head>
   <body>
      <!-- put announce for mtgox acq here -->
   </body>
</html>

MtGox PR is stellar.

It'd be pretty cool to see a Ver Foundation and a Voorhees Foundation competing with each other to kick the most ass. Maybe Ver and Voorhees each provide the same level of funding to the organization but aren't allowed to interact with it outside providing that base monthly funding (maybe $10k) and to hire employees. To attract donors, Foundation employees publish quarterly reports trying to quantify the benefits of their actions. Maybe they have specific quarterly contests with each other; who can overturn the most government bans on bitcoin transactions?; who can get the most governments to explicitly permit bitcoin transactions?; who can bring on the most multi-million dollar companies into the crypto fold?; who can bring the largest number of individuals to a crypto conference?

You should probably look into CGWatcher. I'd guesstimate its value to a 5MH/s farm at about $50/mo, and it's free. CGRemote's awesome, too, but actually costs (a negligible amount of) money.