I'm still of the opinion that someone is doing it because it's profitable.

And if it's profitable, they won't stop.  Ever.

Aw, come on.  It's an altcoin.  How can it not be a scam?

I just bought a pizza for a bit under ten thousand satoshi.  9776 satoshi, to be exact.   

Actually, all I did was win a bet about how long it would take for someone to figure out how to pick up that tiny txout at a profit and get around to actually doing it.  Then I posted "want a tiny scrap of dust?" and gave its privkey.  55 minutes later it vanished, and someone I'd made a bet with owed me a pizza. 

I really didn't expect it to be that close.  5 more minutes, and I'd have paid a whole lot more for my pizza.

That is a signature proving that he has the private key to the output created by that transaction. 

In other words, he got my 9776 Satoshi (among a bunch of other stuff), and he's proving cryptographic proof that he can spend the output.

That's odd.  My bitcoin-qt wallet is claiming I have one satoshi.  I didn't have a transaction ID yet, so I thought it was real. 

And it got into the block chain immediately!  WooHoo!

It now has 3 confirmations.   

Oh yeah.  Much more than 9776 satoshis.

It has come full circle.  Laszlo bought a pizza for ten thousand bitcoin;  I just bought a pizza for a bit under ten thousand satoshi.

Of course, it's worth more on the fair market....

This really is hilarious.  Whoever did it has a sense of humor.

I can tell because they sent one satoshi back to me as change at the address I have in my signature.

And there it goes.  55 minutes.

I won a bet (under an hour) but I really didn't expect it to be so close. 

Right.  The transaction has to be tiny (few inputs - any amount of BTC) to stay under the 1-kilobyte threshold so it doesn't cost extra fees.  If you're making a transaction that already uses four inputs or more, then it'll be over that kilobyte and the extra input will cost according to its size. 

If spent by itself, it won't be profitable.  You can't get it, profitably, by sending it to your own wallet.  Besides, most nodes won't relay a transaction that transfers a single scrap of dust.

What you have to do to make it profitable is include it in a transaction that you're sending to someone else - where you'd be paying the transaction fee anyway, and the extra input makes no extra fee.

edited after the fact: I changed the title from 'want a tiny scrap of dust?'  to the above.

I have a tiny scrap of dust that someone can have.

It is 9776 Satoshi.  It belongs to the first person who includes it as an input in a transaction.  

Its private key is KwTYixPQ6AdhdYzmQfNouZtGoFsXNkFn313N4DQgYg3yqtd3hDDb .

I want to see how long it takes to disappear after posting this.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1125214

The fees will increase until legitimate traffic is less than half the block size.

Anyone paying less fees will see transaction times that SUCK as you say. 

This is because someone is executing a Golden Ratio Attack.  They are making a profit on the so-called "Stress Test" and will continue it forever.  I have no idea how to stop it. This is serious.

nothing to see here, move along.

I can't delete topics in this board.

If you let the wallet construct that transaction, it will do exactly that (send different coins). 

You would need to construct a transaction by hand to do this.

Normal is an odd word.  

Yes, miners are processing transactions normally.

That said, as I write this there's a 112 Megabyte backlog of about 42K transactions, because someone thinks it's fun to spam the bitcoin network with tiny transactions.  112 Megabytes would take 4 and a half days to clear, even if miners made full blocks all the time, which they don't, and even if no new transactions come in, which they do - especially since whoever it is is still spamming the block chain with new transactions.  Our only consolation is that they are at least real, fee-paying transactions; he or she has spent over $50K on this spam so far.  Presumably it will stop when he or she runs out of money or accomplishes his or her purpose, or gives up.

So your transaction is probably still waiting for space in a block. If you want it to go through in a timely way, construct a new transaction to the same payee and spending the same coins, but with an extra penny or so in fees.  It'll cut line ahead of your old transaction (and all the spam) and go through pretty much immediately.  And then your old transaction will be invalid, so you won't pay twice.

It's possible.  If the password was generated, for example, on an Android client before they fixed their system Random Number Generator. 

Otherwise, it's technically possible but a bit less likely than Pluto turning out to be made of antimatter.

Hello.  Cutting back on available energy will be hard on the poor.  Not cutting back on available energy - at least if we're talking solely about energy from fossil fuels - will be harder on the poor.  And running out of fossil fuels will happen eventually (and probably at a time that won't be that much different) regardless of AGW or doing anything about it.

Unless we get smart enough to develop some other sources of energy, the poor are effing screwed.  So let's get with the damn program and try something else already.

Um.  Perhaps we have miscommunicated here.  If you are not talking about ducks, then what the heck do you mean when you use the word 'canard'?

WTF are you talking about?  An extreme environment would in fact be hardest on the poorest people. 

I am specifically hoping for an outcome that doesn't involve creating an extreme environment.  IOW, I would like an outcome that saves a lot of people, not just the rich people. 

It's the ones who don't give a crap about our influence on the environment, or don't believe we're powerful enough to cause an influence, who are setting up a future where only the wealthy survive.