Sad to see this campaign end. I was one of the first few who signed up. I might come back if it reopens though. Anyway, here are my stats:

Final post count: 508
User: Bizmark13
Status: Senior member

I will be removing my personal message and signature now.

I saw the same error as well. There's more information in this thread:

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=932315

Basically, the hardware (or more specifically the hard disks) that the site was hosted on had some problems and some data was lost. After recovering the site data from a backup, theymos has been tweaking and fixing a few things so some downtime over the next few days is to be expected:

Forum was down for several hours, went back up, and then went down again for a couple hours earlier today.


I'm not 100% sure but I think the first one after the initial downtime was a bit longer. Then again, I slept through most of it so maybe my timing is a bit off.


I'm the opposite of you. I've always preferred to use "site:bitcointalk.org" on Google for searching the forums.

Yeah, I forgot to say that it should be possible to mine CPU and GPU mineable altcoins and then convert them to BTC using an altcoin exchange such as Cryptsy. You wouldn't be mining Bitcoin directly, but you'd earn much more BTC this way. Here is a list of CPU mineable coins:

http://www.cpucoinlist.com/

And here is a site where you can compare the profitability of mining different coins:

http://www.coinwarz.com/

Don't bother mining any coins that use SHA-256 (e.g. Bitcoin, Peercoin) or Scrypt (e.g. Litecoin, Dogecoin) since these are dominated by specialized ASIC hardware.

Not sure.


I did put my email address in but since the site hasn't launched yet, I'm don't know what the catch is. Like most people here, I agree that simply getting $20 for free without any strings attached sounds a bit too good to be true. Perhaps they will make it so that the money can only be withdrawn if you deposit a minimum amount or make a minimum number of trades or something. Or perhaps they will force you to take convoluted steps to verify your ID. Again, I'm not sure.


11 days and 19 hours from now so that would be... Friday, February 13 at 00:00:00 UTC?

Definitely not worth it today. It used to be that CPU mining was worth it, but that was back in 2009 and 2010. By late 2010, CPU mining became obsolete because GPU mining was developed. Then in 2013, ASICs were developed which made even high-end GPUs obsolete.

To put it into perspective, your CPU would be capable of ~6 MH/s while consuming 80W of power. A single USB Block Erupter which can be bought for $8 used on eBay can achieve 333 MH/s while consuming 2.5W of power. Even so, that Block Erupter would only earn you ~150,000 satoshis per year (worth about 30 cents) assuming that the difficulty doesn't increase.

I can easily imagine that if someone had been one of the very early adopters, they would have reason to view Satoshi Nakamoto as their "God". Perhaps not the God who created the Universe, but a personal god that fulfills many of the desired attributes of a deity worthy of worship nonetheless.

One can think of being financially rich as the closest earthly equivalent of "heaven" - and indeed perhaps the only possible "heaven" for someone who does not believe in an afterlife. Thus, Satoshi Nakamoto - via his invention of Bitcoin, allowed a few lucky individuals (i.e. his followers) to attain this plane of existence in exchange for their faith in his creation - the Blockchain.

The fact that Satoshi is completely anonymous and no longer interacts with the community which he created makes it much more likely that some form of Satoshi-worship will develop in the future - especially if Bitcoin is to become mainstream. Normal humans have flaws which are bound to be uncovered over time but by permanently leaving, our conception of Satoshi is now set in stone, and we can only gain an inference of his character from the writings and code he has left behind. And these writings and code portray a picture of a infallible, almost god-like being. A genius mind shrouded in mystery. In reality, he could very much be a flawed human being. He may even be a murderer or a con-man, but of course we will never know.

There are many examples of societies where human beings were elevated to the status of gods. The people of Ancient Egypt considered the Pharaoh to be half-man, half-god. Many Roman emperors were declared gods by the Roman Senate (generally after their death). Rastafarians believe that Haile Selassie I, emperor of Ethiopia was God.

If Bitcoin is to become mainstream then we must accept the likelihood that various groups will attempt to deify Satoshi. If Bitcoin is to replace fiat currencies and become the primary vehicle for all economic activity worldwide then we must accept the likelihood that some form of Satoshi-worship will emerge a major force within the religious and political landscape of the future. Currently the people who are most likely to start or join such a religion are the early adopters who have gained the most benefit from Satoshi's creation. Hence this is why I ask this question. After all, I wouldn't be surprised if there are early adopters today who may already possess the "prototype" of this future religion.

You mean an avatar? Those were disabled following the big hack which happened in 2013 hence why only the older accounts have them. They might become available again when/if theymos upgrades the forum software.

Libertarians were overrepresented among Bitcoiners especially in its early days and I suspect this is still true today. Libertarians tend to be right wing on economic issues and left wing on social issues so a poll with only "left wing" and "right wing" as the options might not accurately reflect the actual political leanings of the community.

Maybe it's more like paint than light?


Asia is a massive continent so it depends what area you're talking about. Many people in southern India look as dark as Africans. Northern Indians and East Asians tend to be more pale. Green eyes are common in Pakistan. Assad has blue eyes and white skin, etc. There is a lot of variation.

Has anyone heard of this? Not to be confused with Nick Szabo's BitGold or BitShares' BitGold, BitGold.com is a website that will be opening in 13 days. Supposedly you will get $20 worth of gold for free if you register your email before the launch. Its business model looks almost exactly the same as E-gold which also let users own and transact online payments denominated in grams of gold. However, that site was shut down a few years ago by the US government so it's interesting to see another company attempting the same idea:


Link: http://www.bitgold.com/

Thoughts? Opinions? Here is an article about them on CoinDesk.

But today, the supply of gold is higher and the demand is lower. Yet even adjusted for inflation, gold is worth more today than it was 100 years ago.


So the demand from this small percentage of society was enough to make up for the bakers, farmers, and teachers who no longer demanded gold as payment for their goods and services?

Well this is a bit sad. You managed the sig campaign I'm currently in and I reckon you did a great job. I guess there's no harm in taking a break.

If you're still holding any BTC then it might be a good idea to put it all in cold storage and forget about it for a couple of years. The Bitcoin world can get crazy sometimes and it seems that every month there is some new drama unfolding. I think it makes sense to sometimes take a step back and focus on life's other priorities once in a while.

I understand that my first post might not be very clear so here's another way of looking at it:

The population of the United States was 75 million in 1900. Now let's imagine there was a total supply of 8,000 tons of gold (I have no idea if this is correct or not but it's not important). So you have the whole 75 million people (i.e. a large demand) chasing 8,000 tons of gold (i.e. a small supply). When there is large demand for a small supply, you would expect to see the price at very high levels.

Today, the population of the United States is 300 million. Now let's imagine that the supply of gold is unchanged but the demand for gold is much lower than before. As I mentioned previously, bakers, farmers, and teachers don't want gold anymore. They want paper. Only a small segment of society wants gold (e.g. investors, jewelers, tech companies, etc.). Perhaps this number is as low as several hundred thousand individuals. When there is such small demand and the supply is unchanged, you would expect to see the price at much lower levels.

(However, according to this graph, US gold production has increased by 2-3 times since 1900 so with even more gold in the market and less people who want it, we should be seeing even lower gold prices that that.)

If increased Bitcoin adoption results in higher Bitcoin prices then why didn't gold prices plummet when we decided to stop using gold as a currency (i.e. gold adoption fell)?



It used to be that currencies represented a specific quantity of gold. The value of these currencies were pegged to that of gold and could be converted to physical gold if desired. Hence, it could be said that gold was very much in demand. Bakers sold their bread for gold. Farmers sold their crops for gold. Teachers taught their students for gold. Of course, people preferred to transact in paper representations of gold for the convenience.

This was true until the Great Depression when societies began to leave the gold standard. Suddenly it was realized that gold was no longer attractive as a currency as it was hindered by its inflexible supply. No longer did the baker demand gold for his bread. No longer did the farmer demand gold for his crops. No longer did the teacher demand gold for her teaching.

And yet despite discovery of this flaw and subsequent mass abandonment of the usage of gold as a currency, gold prices didn't fall but instead they doubled during this period.

While leaving the gold standard meant that currencies were no longer paper representations of gold, they were still backed by a reserve of physical gold and it was still possible to redeem US dollars for gold until 1971. After 1971, it was decided that a currency without any ties to gold whatsoever would make a better medium of exchanging value. Yet despite this, the price of gold still rose.

Why is this so? Isn't decreased adoption synonymous with decreased demand? When people decide to abandon a currency - whether it be cowrie shells or gold in lieu of another currency (in this case, paper), would we not expect to see the value of the old currency drop as demand for the new currency increases?

Java dev here (although my skills are a bit rusty). Now that Qora is open source, it isn't the end of the world if the dev doesn't respond. I've been going through the source code on GitHub. I'm only familiar with coins based on Bitcoin/Litecoin so none of it looks familiar to me at first glance but I can understand parts of it.

Probably. The other account I have which only holds NXT and no assets hasn't received any assets at all. Perhaps they only target active accounts and an address that has only received a single deposit months ago isn't considered to be active enough. In contrast, an account which contains a lot of dividend-generating assets will be regularly receiving many small transactions.

I've never published my NXT address anywhere online although searching for it on Google reveals links to NXTblocks and NXTreporting and others have included it in lists when paying out dividends. The account itself holds 27 assets and a couple hundred NXT so that's probably why.

I have a NXT account and I've received three random assets so far including RGDO, FIMventure, and nxtegregor. RGDO seems to be a real business based in China called RigidLube that manufactures and sells automotive oils and lubricants. nxtegregor has sent me assets five times in batches of varying quantity and occasionally pays a small dividend and FIMventure regularly sends out dividends (usually ~2 NXT per week).

I also received a small payment from a NXT account called "VULTMINING" despite never owning any of their assets.

I have a few jl777 assets too including SuperNET and NXTventure which generate dividends in the form of other jl777 assets but the above three assets have no relation to jl777.

I am guessing the reason behind this is marketing? Has anyone else received assets that they did not ask for? Did you keep them? Sell them? Buy more of them?

I think he was referring to Bitcoin although some parts of it are true for all four coins. Just out of interest, I decided to do a comparison (I own all four coins in varying amounts):

Bitcoin
Anonymous developer has left (true since satoshi left in 2010-2011)
account got hacked (true although it's not really relevant)
Community takeover now, which always fails. (true... I guess)
Development stalled (false - see my previous post).
Price declining steadily (true).

NXT
Anonymous developer has left (true since BCNext left in 2013)
account got hacked (false)
Community takeover now, which always fails. (similar to Bitcoin)
Development stalled (false).
Price declining steadily (true).

NEM
Anonymous developer has left (true since utopianfuture* resigned under pressure)
account got hacked (false)
Community takeover now, which always fails. (similar to Bitcoin)
Development stalled (false but launch is delayed).
Price declining steadily (true in fiat terms but stable when compared with NXT).

I don't know much about Monero so my answers for this are unsure...

XMR
Anonymous developer has left (true since thankful_for_today was kicked out of the project)
account got hacked (no idea)
Community takeover now, which always fails. (similar to Bitcoin?)
Development stalled (likely false).
Price declining steadily (true).

*Founded the currency but recruited others to do most of the dev work.