To clarify: a full node stores (and verifies) the entire block-chain (now around 30GB).

This is better explanation of the "web of trust".

Cryptographically proving who you are is how it is possible to do remote trades off-exchange.

I think his assertion that everything of importance is decided in #bitcoin-assets is a little presumptuous myself.

If we want to prove we can to better, we need better organization. That will prove difficult without some sort of Trust (or ability to ignore toxic people).

If you have more than $10,000 in your account from smaller payments, that is considered structuring. I don't understand how you can accumulate such a sum by spending more than you earn.

ASIC miners are generally not nodes at all. With the invention of "pooled" mining, it became possible to separate hash-power from the actual maintenance of the network.

This has some important security implications. If you don't monitor what your hash-power is doing, it can be used to attack the network without your knowledge. Luke-JR invented the "Get block template" protocol to allow pools to disclose the block being worked on to the miner. Luke-JR is also the one who used his pool's resources to attack a nascent alt-coin.

There exists a distributed Pool called P2Pool. This takes a fairly beefy computer to run (At least 1Ghz, 2GB RAM). Most hashers make do with much less.

Edit: running a full node uses more bandwidth as well: mostly depending on how many connections you allow. My node with up to 64 connections and P2Pool (16 connections) (and namecoin) was using about 100GB/month.

I agree with this point. It is about the "war on drugs", not something that happened 40 years ago.

I logged in to ignore the OP, only to find I had them ignored already

In the United States, making frequent transactions under reporting thresholds is considered "structuring", and illegal.

Your bank account can be seized just for spending less than you earn over 10 years.
Luckily, not all countries are that insane.

In Canada, it is merely suspicious (but not illegal).

I think I like the original post more than the other "real" Bitcoin foundation.
http://thebitcoin.foundation/

On the plus side, the other Bitcoin foundation appears to be getting some actual work done.

I don't know the details of the case, but the math seems a little messed up.

2015-1975=40years

57Years old-40=17years old at the time of the offense.

They must have tried him as a adult.

Apparently IXC is trying to follow the Bitcoin 0.8.x release. That will have the same block-size limit unless they changed it (I have not checked the source-code). I also believe that any coin with a faster emission curve than Bitcoin should be considered a possible scamcoin.

Merged mining costs 400-1500MB of RAM (namecoin is 495MB on my node) and ~2-20GB of disk (namecoin uses 2.9GiB on my node) to run another *coin instance. Other than that, it does not really take any more resources. Some mining hardware does not like frequent restarts; which happen more often with merged-mining. Note: My node goes down tomorrow due to lack of funds. (I am firmly in "little people" territory.)


I am torn whether we should simply ignore  Mircea Popescu (and his supporters), or try to continue to teach them the error in their ways on this issue.

I think I read somewhere that he is still on one of the 0.4.x clients. He distrusts a lot of the new features introduced since then. He believes that Bitcoin core should not have a wallet built-in at all. (0.9.x does let you disable the wallet).

I don't think he trusts the Obelisk effort either. Without a detailed spec, forks are likely if alternate Bitcoin node software is not bug-for-bug compatible. This was recently illustrated with recent versions of OpenSSL not being bug-for bug compatible (and causing a fork).

Yes I have. All "headers first" does is save bandwidth on re-transmission. In order for other nodes to build upon your block in a trust-free manner, they still need the whole block. Edit: there is some provision for blindly trusting the header, then banning mis-behaving hosts later.

Upon review, I did make one error: when mentioning "orphan" blocks above, I was actually referring to "stale" blocks (orphan blocks have no parent that you know about).

I am starting to see a lot of people going on about "bag holders" on the forum. As if they are all reading from the same script.

My theory: most bought last December-January, and are upset Bitcoin lost over 70% of its' value.

I still think it will go over $10,000 per coin. No idea if it will be anytime soon though.

I may be a silly socialist, but asking for the block-size to be increased is hardly asking for a "free ride".

First, Bitcoin is still new. Coins are still being distributed through the block-subsidy. As has been pointed out, transaction fees are currently insignificant compared to the block subsidy. Artificially inflating fees to match the currentl block subsidy will only discourage Bitcoin usage (which would make the block-chain smaller).

Second, even with an "infinite" block-size, there are still practical limits to the size of blocks. For example, my full node (with idle token hash-power) is currently set to broadcast 500kB blocks. The reason is that my (ADSL) Bandwidth is limited to 5Mbps up. If I want to send a newly found block to 16 hosts at once, we are talking a delay of about 12.8 Seconds. With a 600 second block-time, that corresponds to an orphan rate of at least 2.1% (one hop). If I had a 1Gbps connection, and wanted to limit my orphan rate to 5%: 600x.05=30 seconds. 1Gbps*30s/(say)64 connections*8bits/byte=58.6MB Block-size (again assuming one hop). At about 300 bytes per transaction (many transactions are larger), that works out to about 195 thousand transactions per block.

Third, Bitcoin can not even replace the SWIFT network with a block-size of 1MB.
- Monthly FIN traffic evolution

Taking the yearly average: 5.6 Billion messages/(365.25 days/year)/(24 hours/day)/(3600 seconds/hour)= 177 messages per second.
I am not completely sure if 1 FIN message==1 Bitcoin transaction, but 177 sounds a lot higher than the common 7tps figure thrown around.

(195k transactions/block)/(600 seconds/block)= 325 Transactions/second for the 56MB block figure.
For the 20MB block being debated: (20MB/block)/(300Bytes/transaction)/(600 seconds/block)= 111 Transactions/second.

So, even with the proposed larger block-size, Bitcoin would still not be able to match the SWIFT network. If Bitcoin even attempted it, the value per coin would be so high that even 100µBTC fees would be comparable to SWIFT transaction costs. In other words, people will naturally stop using Bitcoin to buy snacks/coffee.

Edit: Fees with different block-sizes (assuming 100µBTC/kB)
1MB=100mBTC
20MB=2BTC
56MB=5.6BTC

Those figures imply the fees won't be be significant until the block reward drops to 12.5 or 6.25 BTC/block. Note that the 2BTC figure is almost 10% at the current block subsidy (but the block-size is limited).

One of the scam-coins actually innovated with something called "ring signatures" and built-in coinjoin-like privacy.

Blowing the lid off the CryptoNote/Bytecoin 80% pre-mine scam.

Monero is the community fork of that scam. I have not been able to play with it yet, but it is on my short-list (In addition to Friecoin and namecoin).

Bitcoin ATM and local Gold dealer. (First time I bought Bitcoin, I bought from somebody directly.... took a week)


CAVirtex. They insist on a bank statement (or utility bill I assume) as "proof of address" for some reason (specifically mentioning they do not accept credit card statements). I do not pay utilities, and had most my mail directed to another address. They used to say a (poorly defined) "bank letter" was preferred. They did not accept a letter from my bank saying my account was closed, or Pre-authorized debit forms as "proof-of-address". This was after getting around to actually changing my Driver's License to actually match my current residence.

My concern with both utility bills and bank statements is that they "leak" information other than my current residence. Information such as my day-to day expenses, or my room-mate's name.

PS: LaudaM, you are on my ignore list due to obnoxious signature spam. I temporarily unignored you because you often have something constructive to say.

I think I have to agree with the OP. The last two times I bought Bitcoin, I paid a ~12% premium over the spot price. Verification with the exchange (which would involve a smaller premium) took months. That said, Bitcoin pays you a nice bonus when the price is rising (more than 1.5% sometimes).

Also, if Bitcoin gains mass-adoption, it will not be cheap to send Bitcoin anymore. At $400,000 per coin, that 0.1mBTC transaction fee will cost $40 (about the same as a wire transfer: only faster and more reliable).

And to put not too fine a point on it, gender disphoria occurs independently from homosexuality.

Discussions like this remind me that I am a veteran around here.

The metric you are looking for is called Bitcoin Days Destroyed.

It discounts frequently moved coins. That way it is harder to game than the raw transaction per day metric. Ironically, a sudden spike in that metric can be a sign of trouble since old cold-storage wallets are suddenly being touched.

There was even a bounty for this calculation.

Because averaging my cost per Bitcoin by buying cheap does not double my risk factor. It only increases it by about 50%; since the price of Bitcoin can only go down to 0. I can still liquidate my previously purchased Bitcoin at a 50% loss.

The year previous, I bought at $100, and sold at an average price of about $500 (missed selling at the peak by a month or so). Waiting for the price to rise again is just asking to buy high, sell low. I prefer to buy low, sell high. The difficulty of course is that nobody knows which way the price will swing at any given moment.

That usually happens with nuclear power plants providing base-load. In Ontario (Canada) the price even went negative for a time. (In Alberta the price is only allowed to go to 0 by fiat. (No nuclear power plants though).)