Well, I suppose that's true. If you're feeling lucky, I'll bet you $20,000 (would be more, but I'm poor) that you won't roll a 1 on a 9,000,000,000,000,000,000-sided die. Technically, you have a 0.00000000000000000011111111111111111111111111111111% chance of winning... As far as significant numbers go, you would have 0% chance of winning.

So, yes, it's possible, but any rational person would be more than willing to bet a ton of money on those odds.

ETA: By bet, I mean I'll pay out $20k if I lose. If you lose, you don't have to pay anything out. This would be more in line with trusting an address not to be "stumbled upon" with DSV-like software.

Assuming 500K addresses which either have funds or will have funds within next three months,
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000034211388289180104270598866779539% chance per check.

Assuming average computer can do 250 optimized DSV-like checks per second,
0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000085528470722950260676497166948848% chance per second.

Assuming a "theft pool" is formed, and 500 of these computers averaging the above click/s,
0.00000000000000000000000000000000000042764235361475130338248583474424% chance per second.

Assuming each theft pool is one botnet, and 20 botnets, exactly the same, exist in these theft pools,
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000085528470722950260676497166948848% chance per second.

Per minute,
0.00000000000000000000000000000000051317082433770156405898300169309%

Per hour,
0.000000000000000000000000000000030790249460262093843538980101585%

Per day,
0.00000000000000000000000000000073896598704629025224493552243804%

Per month (30D),
0.000000000000000000000000000022168979611388707567348065673141%

Per year,
0.00000000000000000000000000026972258527189594206940146568988%


Assume worst-case scenario, DSV-like software can check 5000 addresses (10M of which are funded or will be funded within 6 months) per second, and 100 botnets of 50,000 computers each...
Per day,
0.000000000000000000000000014779319740925805044898710448761%

Per month,
0.00000000000000000000000044337959222777415134696131346283%

Per year,
0.0000000000000000000000053944517054379188413880293137978%

Per century,
0.00000000000000000000053944517054379188413880293137978%


Are we done, now?


ETA: Worse-than-worst case scenario. NSA can check 1T addresses per second, 1T addresses are funded.
Per century,
0.0000000000000021577806821751675365552117255191%

Per billion centuries,
0.0000021577806821751675365552117255191%

He allegedly demanded a $1m ransom in BTC from Mitt Romney in exchange for not releasing his tax returns.

After raiding his house and handcuffing him and his wife, they determined he didn't have the tax returns. Authorities' smoking gun in the case are images of cats recovered on a USB drive, which they claim match a nearby woman's cats whose computer he worked on. The SS previously raided his house, which makes him extra-suspicious...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6825.msg2583493#msg2583493

Fucking awesome.

Meh. Recommend you pirate it, then decide if you want it. I uninstalled it after a few hours of play.

Good. Yahtzee did a fine review of it.

Skipped Machine for Pigs. Reviews have it pegged as being pretty horrible. Frictional "outsourced" to the people who did Dear Esthar (HL2 mod), and allegedly, it came out as Dear Esthar, but using Frictional's game engine. Some compared it to a bad story mod for Amnesia: TDD. There are actually a bunch of story mods (overhauls, in a way -- it's a "different game") for TDD, maybe worth trying instead of Machine for Pigs.


I've been playing Eador:Genesis recently from an Extra Credits recommendation. Not near the end, I don't think -- there's a "microgame" which is RTS and takes 1-5 hours each, and a macrogame which contains all the different microgames. Winning microgames ("shards") progresses you on the macrogame, and it isn't linear (I don't think, but maybe -- that moralfag wizard really hates me no matter how nice I try to be toward peasants) -- this isn't unique, but it's implemented well enough and very fun. Microgames are old-style HOMM, hex-style. Everywhere you can move, you can conquer. It has a kind of dungeoncrawler feel to it (RPG elements, similar to HOMM), and the music reminds me oddly of Everquest. Idunno if it was the same guy or not, but maybe nostalgia is clouding my vision. Anyway, it's pretty fun. There's a lot of content, and it's actually difficult, which is nice to see anymore. There's a newer Eador... Masters of a Broken World, I think. I haven't had time to play that one. I have a feeling the original will take me at least a month to finish.

Well, that'd be new and fascinating information on the case. Have a source?

Mining difficulty does not cause change in BTC price. Price causes change in mining difficulty (in the form of increasing hashrate - though technological improvements are obviously a far stronger cause of mining difficulty change).

While mining subsidies/fees are inflationary pressure, it's decreasing in significance (~.0000327% inflation/day). At the next block halving in 2-3 years, the inflationary pressure will be trivial. Assuming BTC adoption (rather the amount of "value stored in BTC") is increasing more than .0000327%/day, Bitcoin value would rise. If that isn't true, then value would fall.

Though... talking fundamentals is pointless when price (or, "value stored in BTC" as determined by use of fiat to buy BTC through exchanges) is determined by speculators.

I missed your thread and was operating on bad guesses. Sorry.

Though - if 1TH/s = ~$140 retail after chip, PSU, shipping, cables, and whatever else - and it consumes, say 500W (this assumes it's significantly more efficient than babyjet2s, which I don't think an unreasonable assumption. It'll probably be much more efficient than my grim guess) - 6-12 months out (6-8 months out might be okay), and it's hard to justify the cost even if electricity's dirt-cheap (say, $.05/KWh after taxes/fees) - especially if everyone else is going to be mass-ordering these chips, too. At the end of the day, we're all chasing a piece of a 3.6kBTC/day pie (+~100BTC in fees) until the next halving, which is probably significantly less than three years away with the rapid increase of hashpower put on the network. We may not even have much more than two years if upfront costs drop dramatically and the pre-order hysteria keeps up.

-So what do you see in, say, 18 months? Near-complete mining centralization in a small handful of geographic locations with sub-$.05/KWh electricity?

That's great if they're older. Mine's two, so being able to put it with someone like John would be a great fail-safe if I die sooner than expected, I think. That kind of demand, too, is never going to dry up, because there'll always be people in similar positions as me. My wife would know what to do, but there's a decent chance we'll die together in our age group.

Remain dormant, dissolve, or make something else - maybe hardware wallets or possibly even altcoin ASICs. They're not going to operate at a loss, though - same as miners. Hardware prices, so far, haven't been able to come down to a price where it is at all safe to purchase (everything on the market right now, will, if lucky, come a bit below breaking even on investment by the time they arrive at your doorstep), and maybe that's because others are way more risk-tolerant - or just stupid, because now, there isn't a high reward potential unless you decide that factoring in a bullish BTC position is legitimate when you could just buy BTC and enjoy the same rise without the extra risk. When I was still doing larger-scale loans, GPU mining loans were no problem - but even then when FPGAs were still considered a reasonable investment - when the situation looked more rosy, I wouldn't touch anything ASIC. It's always been extremely high-risk, but now the reward potential is consistently, and rapidly, dropping.

ASIC manufacturers don't have a sustainable business model if they're just planning on producing Bitcoin ASICs for years. Unless ASIC prices can come down by 50-75%, or BTC rises 150-250% (or some equalizing combination of the two), ASIC manufacturers are dead in the water unless they have good contingency plans to deal with an over-saturated mining market. I remember - I think it was BitFury or KNC - something like that (RedFury? I can't keep track of all the goofy names) -- they released a USB ASIC at the lowest price-point they could manage while breaking even, and there was very little interest (they claimed they had orders to fill out the first batch, but that just made me assume it was a scammy operation). -Now a smaller-scale USB miner's of course going to have a much lower cost-efficiency than some of these larger, clunky-looking ASICs which're produced in relatively large volume - but I don't think it paints a very favorable picture, as far as ASIC prices being able to come down to a place where it's reasonable to purchase them as an investment without dramatic BTC price appreciation.

I don't think that argument holds up with modern laptops. Most of them have "hotswap" ports, where you just slide a HDD in. You can alternately simply connect an external HDD either via USB, or maybe even wirelessly via BT (not sure if those exist, yet).

Mining as a profitable venture you can get into now is dead. There's no justification for the mining network to add new participants right now. If BTC price soars in the future, maybe this will change, but if it doesn't increase to, say, $250 by the time of the next halving, the ASICs pre-ordered now may be the same ASICs making up the majority of the hashrate share five years down the road. It's a very possible situation to have no ASIC manufacturers still outputting in a year or two. It'd be like the Cuban automobile situation.

I was actually thinking recently - this would be an interesting place for John K to branch out, and maybe finally form a proper company, since he already holds so much in escrow and has trust established unlike any other member of the community. Since he's quite knowledgeable in Bitcoin, he can offer a Q&A session with family, whereas a letter can't do that and you need to have everything either fully explained to them while you and they are both alive, or a pretty darn good (long) explanation in text.

You would pay someone like John to both hold a key fragment and explain to the beneficiaries what Bitcoin is and what their options are. Of course, if you don't go through someone like John, you might not expect them to realize the massive death taxes they'd be liable for in most countries.

Ouch. It sure would be nice to see some lawsuits demanding FMV back on those coins. I'd imagine they had them in the tens or hundreds as pocket change in those days.

Reddit's kicking our ass. 

I think Valve is making out particularly well because it isn't difficult to sell TF2 items.

When they're selling these keys, what they're really doing is selling lottery tickets. In reality, Valve operates in TF2 as a casino (whether they admit it or not, everything tradeable in their game has an easily-redeemable FMV) and has cleverly managed to evade regulation for doing so.

That said, I also don't think TF2 is really f2p-p2w, because the useful upgraded weapons are so easy to come by, they're more like how BF2 does level-unlocks on weapons, where the rare ones don't do much more than look cool (similar to hats). The collectibles aspect can be completely ignored. This is in contrast to the vast majority of f2p-p2w games, and Popcaps recent PvZ2 even has a BS purchasable item which simply completes the game.

In EVE Online, there was a big scuffle over their $500 (or whatever it was) in-game monocle. This monocle did nothing, it was purely cosmetic. People purchased it, and as I see it, it's because they wanted to support the developers and maybe get a little recognition for doing so. It's basically the same as having a "Bitcoin Foundation Gold Member" avatar, but we'd never say that's a "pay-to-win" item.... well - maybe -- I guess it can lend a lot of credibility wherever you plaster it. Really, though, I like the cosmetic-donation model - and giving users an easy way to do so in-game, with cosmetic upgrades, I think's a fantastic way of subsidizing the poor or initially-skeptical until they can fall in love with the game, rather than putting up a paywall. Even if you skip the ability to quickly-easily donate in-game, Dwarf Fortress for example, an indie ASICII game, is able to support two workers full-time on a pure donation model. They bring in anywhere from $2k-$6k per month, but that's after years of them developing while still having to work somewhere else for living expenses. What's especially cool about how DF's worked out, is that it's almost a milestone-model, where they'll see a huge uptick in donations when new major updates are pushed. They can keep developing their baby for the rest of their lives and almost certainly live comfortably for the entirety, and that's not something so guaranteed anywhere else I can think of.

It was those damned Reddit users...  http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1hktc6/

I'm guessing you saw the UK "Honest Beef" company taking BTC? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=297146.0

I'd be interested, but I'm in MidWest farming/ranching/dairy territory with multiple ranchers taking cash within a 1 mile radius.

-moron troll from the most despicable race of beast to ever exist 

Charred toddler   

As a semi-regular Bitcoin evangelist, I today emailed a musician/composer I'm fond of, in hopes he'd accept BTC donations.

To my surprise and embarrassment, he pointed out he already does! (though it's not listed on the main page donation box)

https://www.ronaldjenkees.com/donate/

Ronald Jenkees is a fantastic electronic-styled keyboard composer [example song]. He occasionally does something like rap, too.  

Entrepreneurial spirit here is high. I don't think you'll have trouble finding trustworthy, competent coders. I think you'll have trouble finding trustworthy, competent coders not already devoted to their own projects.