@ffssixtynine

I see you like government involvement, or at the very least - you think that there's no use in resisting it. With your little crafted example of Bin retard, for instance. Fear as a tactic? Its working for the DHS rather well, isn't it? So naturally you adopt this stance and say "Well, look - we can catch bad people if we do X, Y and Z" without stopping for one second and looking at the principles being violated.

Personal freedom and financial freedom are worthwhile, no matter how many horrible counter-examples you can give. For every system there are positives and negatives, and I'm not going to give up this fight just because someone is scared the "bad guys" will abuse it.

As for the "Bitcoin Foundation", all they've done is raise Bitcoin's visibility towards the very forces that can cause us harm (Depending on where you live, I guess.). Thanks a load, guys, you're really pals. Entertaining or "just discussing" these issues with government aren't helping anyone, at all.

All they'll end up achieving is crippling U.S. involvement with Bitcoin, and then other countries will take the torch and leave them in the dust.

This is simply idiocy.

We don't need them to do anything. There are world-wide opportunities that will open up because of Bitcoin. If the USA wants to handicap themselves in this area, they'll pay the price - by becoming a third-world power. Somehow I don't think this is such a bad thing, they've needed some humility for a long time.

China will likely lead the charge, followed by other countries when they realize that Bitcoin is the means to end the US Dollar world reserve currency status. Mark my words, the next paranoid delusion from US Government won't be regulation, they'll smear Bitcoin for being a tool of "Those commies in China" next.

Apple is a restrictive "captive computing" environment. You don't notice the walls as much if you don't develop for the platform, but if you ever make the leap - it will frustrate the living hell out of you. You need to sign every app in XCode with no less than THREE certificates, if any single one is wrong or revoked, you can't submit to the store or compile your application.

Android is miles easier, you can sign your app if you WANT TO, but otherwise you compile an .apk and can send it to ANYONE, no restrictions. No wonder Android is eating Apple's lunch on marketshare.

Sure, no problem.

They've devised a scheme where they are using Bitcoin as their hashing-power mule, because they know on their own they'd have to do real work to build another network with miners. This an exploitation of the hashing power of the Bitcoin network, because unlike other alt-coins, they've decided to attach themselves to ours.

What this means is, there is no opt-out for any user in the Bitcoin ecosphere. You'll be processing their disastercoin-stuffed blocks, as a full node or as a miner, unless there is a specific way to exclude them - which may appear in the future if they burden the system too much.

I'd prefer that they stop acting out the "Tragedy of the Commons" right in front of us, and start their own chain. After all, if the idea has MERIT, it should succeed regardless, right? But no, they won't, because the money-blinders are fully in place, and they're congratulating themselves in exploiting every user of Bitcoin towards their own ends. (ie., their threads are full of future claims of getting rich, etc...)


This isn't about a "protcol", its about an ego-driven mob that is abusing every user in the Bitcoin network.

Well, it finally happened - I had a post deleted from this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=333487 - "I predict a lot of strain on the Bitcoin network soon due to Mastercoin"

In the midst of their hearty round of backslapping and deer-eyed surprise at their "protocol" potentially straining the Bitcoin network, to wit:


Oh my, isn't that just wonderful.

ripper234 couldn't take the following post from myself, as it is a little too close to home:


Am I enraged at their stance towards the blockchain? You're damned right I am. Here we have some ostensibly "intelligent" people who are trying their best to turn each block into an overstuffed pressure chamber, primed to explode. (Metaphorically, as it were.)

So as they make their plans to soon create a system that has no opt-in when it comes to sharing the burden, I just want you guys to remember this point in time - the point where they couldn't - and wouldn't - face up to the real injustice happening here, the exploitation of everyone's resources.

May Satoshi save us - or at the very least, some sane people in the Bitcoin technosphere.

adam3us - I know you'll be flooded with replies, but I just wanted to say THANK YOU. You have perfectly encapsulated why Coin Verification is a bad idea, and I'll do my best to protest this and boycott the individuals and their associated businesses.

Mike Hearn, Yifu, etc.. you should be ashamed of yourselves for trying to undermine the core tenet of Bitcoin - FREEDOM.

The fundamental fact is if you treat a SINGLE coin differently on the network, you're interfering with the underlying tenet of freedom that Bitcoin provides.

All bitcoins must be treated EQUALLY or they are no longer fungible. Of course, an empty-suit MBA has backstabbed us, what a surprise.

These idiots would probably have an article titled "The Big Bitcoin Blowup" and "Bitcoin Dominates, But At What Cost?" in the same day.

For a second I thought they actually meant physically spiriting away the ATM from its installation point. NO, of course not - this is all about the usual "I'm a newbie and 51% is Bitcoin's HUGE FLAW, LISTEN TO ME GUYS GUYS GUYS... Where are you going?"

Hell, who gave this person the assignment, and second, doesn't anyone fact-check anymore? Being above 5.1 Petahashes/sec is not a trivial thing to get 51% of, I don't care how deep your pockets are.

The only thing I'm going to let them identify is my middle finger. Nothing good can come from identity regulation from a government agency. They're not doing such a hot job right now over the things they're supposed to be regulating, like markets and banks, are they?

They're right though, if the USA does anything to stifle Bitcoin overtly, then China is going to take an even larger lead. In a way, I almost hope they do something that stupid. It would just accelerate the trend.

Its okay, they're the "Razorfish" of bitcoin startups.

Don't know who "Razorfish" is? That's okay, because they got millions in funding before the big 2000 tech rally popped. They no longer exist.

Hah, when I posted my guess it was only 13 days away from hitting 10. Even after the Pirate debacle, in September it was still above 10.

Nice.

Don't let the title put you off, this is written rather well and goes into a few key concepts that I agree with.

First, hyper-monetization is used as a term to describe the flow of fiat into Bitcoin. I'd go a bit further and say that this kind of influx will only continue, which is why we get increasingly shorter periods of time between the last parabolic rally and the next.

Second, he does a good job comparing the 2013 run-up to what is happening now, but stumbles a bit thinking that any retrace means a similar conclusion to the move. I disagree, in fact, I'd say that the periodic declines we've had that haven't matched the severity of the April 2013 fall mean we're in a larger parabolic move than we realize.

Finally, its really all about how the network effects of Bitcoin come into play and the associated services that participate. It seems to be a rather pro-Bitcoin piece in general, even though you may think the title means he's out to bash it.

Well, since I'm not an ego-obsessed developer, I'd rather not try to stuff the blockchain with an inferior alt-coin implementation pretending to NOT be a get-rich-quick-scheme. Some people, however, aren't able to restrain themselves, and I'll gleefully point out every single flaw as this clusterfuck-alt-coin progresses.

I can't wait to see what they put out in the future to undermine their own efforts. The centralization of contract verification is a sweet, sweet dessert though, I may need a bit of a nap to digest that succulent pastry of failure.

In the Mastercoin dev thread, it is being admitted that the more order types there are, the harder it is to differentiate them. This is what I call a protocol-stuffing problem, and it results from trying to piggyback on Bitcoin.

So, the brilliant solution? You guessed it, they want to have an API that is a WEBSITE call, to differentiate transactions. Is that the smell of becoming CENTRALIZED I sniff? Oh my, it certainly is.

When you have to TRUST a CENTRAL server to tell you what your TRANSACTIONS are, you're pretty much boned. A+ for effort, though.

.

Here's the body text:


By Robin Sidel

Nov. 5, 2013 6:59 p.m. ET

The price of bitcoin isn't the only thing about the virtual currency that is going through the roof.

Mining costs, industry parlance for the investments in sophisticated technology required to create bitcoin, are soaring as companies and people race to build ever-more-powerful computers to jump into the market.

In the mining process, bitcoin enthusiasts, technology experts and fledgling firms essentially generate units of the currency by solving complicated math problems with their computers.

The growing popularity and rising prices of bitcoin are causing a mad dash for the powerful computing power needed to generate the virtual currency, leading to profit pressure for companies and individual enthusiasts working to create their own stashes.

The speed at which such operations take place is now 40 times faster than in January, according to the Genesis Block, a New York research and data firm that tracks the bitcoin industry. In addition, hardware companies are hustling to keep up with orders for new equipment.

"The dollars that have been invested in this space are being reinvested into computational power," says Greg Schvey, head of research at the company.

There is a finite supply of 21 million bitcoin that can be created. There are roughly 12 million currently in existence.

The furor surrounding bitcoin production was referenced last week in a lawsuit filed against two bitcoin companies in which a New York-based investment firm contends bitcoin startup CoinLab Inc. and its mining unit violated a bitcoin-production contract.

The suit, filed by Bitvestment Partners LLC, contends that CoinLab reneged on a pact to produce nearly 8,000 bitcoin.

The lawsuit was a contributing factor in last week's bankruptcy filing of the CoinLab mining unit, Alydian Inc.

"Due to the lawsuit and the dramatic increase in mining speed in the Bitcoin network (lowering returns for all Bitcoin miners, including Alydian), Alydian felt that its duty was to ensure that Alydian's customers, creditors and investors maximize their possible returns through Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection," Peter Vessenes, CoinLab's chief executive, said in an emailed statement Tuesday. He said the lawsuit was baseless.

A lawyer representing Bitvestment declined to comment on Mr. Vessenes's statement. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. district court for the New York's Southern district.

The lawsuit and bankruptcy are the latest scramble around bitcoin, a fast-growing virtual currency that has seen roller-coaster trading and fueled a modern-day gold rush.

Bitcoin's increased popularity also has brought more scrutiny. A pair of Senate committees will hold hearings on the policy issues raised by virtual currencies in the coming weeks, according to Senate aides, a development that comes amid growing attention from government regulators on digital forms of money.

Bitcoin is a four-year-old virtual currency that isn't backed by a central bank and can be traded on a number of exchanges or swapped privately. A growing number of merchants also accept bitcoin as payment for goods and services, because the transaction costs associated with the currency are generally cheaper than those with credit cards or debit cards.

Bitcoin traded at record highs Tuesday, rising to $252.61 on the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox exchange. That gives those 8,000 disputed bitcoin a value of roughly $2 million.

But the rising prices have brought an increased push by so-called miners to use the speediest computers to get more bitcoin.

"There is an arms race for customized hardware that is more and more powerful and can process transactions faster and faster. But it is making it difficult to get a return on investment," says Jeremy Allaire, a technology entrepreneur who last week announced a new bitcoin-related company that received $9 million in venture-capital funding.

The power and speed at which the computers attempt to solve the problems and accumulate more bitcoin is measured in the so-called hashrate. Recently, the measure has soared and is now tracked in "petahash," bitcoin experts say.

Alydian's bankruptcy filing surprised many observers, because CoinLab is one of the best-known names in the virtual-currency industry, describing itself as a "bitcoin business incubator." Silicon Valley's venture-capital firm Draper Associates pumped $500,000 into CoinLab last year.

Mr. Vessenes also is the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit trade group that promotes the use of bitcoin.

The process of producing bitcoin is being further complicated by arrangements in which some mining companies essentially agreed to sell bitcoin to investors in exchange for cash to fund equipment needs, according to people who track the industry. With bitcoin prices rising, it is now more expensive for the miners to deliver that currency to their investors.

"Mining has gotten hypercompetitive very quickly," says Alex Ferrara, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, who is assessing investment opportunities in the bitcoin industry.

I guess this was just a fancy "Bitcoin is Dead" headline that we've all come to know and love. (As we continue to exist and shrug off these alarmist hype stories.)

I feel things too, but mostly disgust at how much of an amateur clusterfuck Mt. Gox is.

Still no dedicated PR to clean up their image? Sporadic and contradictory communications? Zero insight on core problems?

Yep, its allllll Gox.