... I am interested in learning more about the rapidly growing subject of posting data on the blockchain via the OP_RETURN function, but I have been unable to find much information (even less that non-programmer OROBTC can understand). I also understand that using OP_RETURN is controversial due to concerns about "blockchain bloat", and that the blockchain is mainly used for posting financial transactions. Thank you and much obliged for any info (links) for us beginners!  |
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... I am going to guess, GUESS!, that using a mixer, whether via TOR or just in the open, protects almost any user from almost any threat to tracking their BTC. Except for protection from the Big Rhino (US government), my guess is they have TOR (etc.) all figured out. Using the mixers in the clear is enough protection for me. I have used both bitmixer.io (highly recommended) and sharedcoin.com (latter for blockchain.info wallets only I believe) many times each. |
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... simonbtc Diagrams are a good thing! That is a dense one. I will go look at you new paper. IIRC, I am seeing a fair number of documents at coinsecrets.org that look a lot like something you are involved with (I could not link this directly, formatting not working here either)): 345272 26 Feb 2015 17:53 GMT bd00238f7e9531dcff8c6425a3e3ce45c36ec8f3fd093a959265992ba974f107 SPK g?? V\?? \? t?? \ ? tuBW)?? " (CoinSpark) U1BLZwEAVlyNjlzrdA32XI2uuYZ0dUKF9rJXKZq7IhX/G4oJnvYXnA== (base64) 6a2853504b670100565c8d8e5ceb740df65c8daeb98674754285f6b257299abb2215ff1b8a099ef 6179c Big-endian width 16 pixels Small-endian width 16 pixels Big-endian width 20 pixels Small-endian width 20 pixels (I am not at a level where I can interpret the above curiosities there at coinsecrets)* * * You might even choose to simplify further, walk (in detail, step-by-step) through a couple of simple transactions. |
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... Here is another data-on-the-blockchain company: https://bitproof.io/I just put up the same document as I did the other day via proofofexistence.com. I also am waiting to hear back from them with a couple of questions I had. EDIT: I see that cakir beat me to it (bitproof). |
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My guess is that while growth will be frustratingly slow, Bitcoin will indeed grow. And become BIG in time.
Merchant acceptance is slow (but there are four companies you can buy gold bullion coins from). Each such company, and each transaction, just increases the momentum of Bitcoin acceptance. More wallets is more proof that BTC is gaining ground.
An increase in Bitcoin price in due course seems likely too. If it made it up to some $1200 in the last bubble, it will likely get there again.
Sometime........
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... cakir, Guido Great thread! I put up a hashed document on the blockchain using proofofexistence.com. It cost me about $1.50 (in BTC of course). My original document was hashed using their SHA256 service, then put up. I can now prove that I put up that hashed message by putting in my original message, and having the hash done again, it will match the original. The process is relatively simple to use. I asked the owner of the site to consider making it even easier to use by allowing a "Cut & Paste" message to be hashed as well. * * * A new company factom.org is looking into putting hashed documents (like property title records, etc.) on the blockchain. Their website explains it much better than I can. |
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Awesome and wonderful thread, Mitchełł. Thank you for having started it and finding a way for those of us to be paid something while talking about Bitcoin.
I am going to presume that the advertisers are served well by this as well. If they were NOT getting a return on their campaigns, they probably would not offer payments to bitcointalk members... And at some point, many members will likely take a look at advertised sites.
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franckuestein
That was a very interesting link re bitmixer.io, thanks for posting it. It does not surprise me at all that their service is popular. I have used their mixing service many times to get my incremental BTC purchases into cold storage.
I have not used their TOR option (and I am not sure I want to spend the time to learn TOR and expose myself to any of the risks there). But the fact that bitmixer.io has such an option means they are serving those customers as well.
I am very impressed by what their team has accomplished.
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Greece cannot and will not pay back its debt to the rest of Europe. "What cannot be paid back, WILL NOT be paid back."
My *guess* is that the can just will keep on getting kicked down the road until it can no longer. Once that no longer works, I am not sure that it really does not make much difference exactly which road Greece then chooses: default, "Grexit", more debt, etc. Whatever should happen then, it will likely be bad...
Unless they cosy-up to Russia and/or China. <--- THAT would have real-world repercussions, and would make the Black Swans more likely to drop by... But, Russia does not seem to have much extra money to spend (and on Greece?). Or would China even want a base in Europe that they have to pay for?
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LOL and touche' countryfree! I think you have that about right.
But, I think that Greece adopting Bitcoin is just an academic-only topic: ain't gonna happen.
If anything, it would not surprise me if the neo-Marxists there to eventually crack down on Bitcoin, no revenue for the state, etc... Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela seem to show the future of a "free currency" in distressed (Marxist) countries.
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I have both a Trezor and a Ledger Nano. Both work just fine, I have not worked enough with them to intelligently say which is "better". But, I like them both.
I do not require advanced features, so I may pass on downloading the new Trezor firmware. I just want a secure and easy-to-use way to keep my Bitcoin in cold storage.
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... iamback discussed a very astute idea here recently (discussed last page). I saw for myself what automation can do in Korea some three years ago in their ball bearing plants. Not too long ago, ball bearing components were made/processed in a "one man, one machine" way. Each bearing must go through many (50 - 100) steps before becoming a finished product. Iljin of Korea has way-upped the stakes: I saw myself a "one woman, 20 machines" paradigm in a provincial city. OK, yes, the Japanese have been doing this for sometime, but KOREA was the first time I had ever seen such an advanced bearing factory. Robots and all. This will help keep costs down for them. CHINA is a real threat to the cost-basis of Korean products (and China is taking automation too). I noticed something kind of similar with bitmixer.io, the guys I advertise for. That service is highly automated, the payments are made automatically, I would think that their team has the mixing service running like a Tesla... Further, I would speculate that writing software that helps make such tasks run automatically would be very useful, and very lucrative. You already know that, iamback, but I had not much thought about this ideal until now. Cross-posting from the Skycoin thread... The increase in technology, knowledge, productivity, machinery is constantly pushing the cost to do things down. A person could operate one lathe by hand, now a technician can operate a thousand CNC controlled lathes. Soon a technician with robots will be able to operate an infinite series of lathes and shuffle work units between lathes and CNC machines in a factory anywhere on earth, from a laptop.
A single person will be able to design a thing, have millions of pieces machined out and then assembled into a structure. The physical world will increasingly look like a game of Minecraft being played by robots. The same robot on earth that can build a castle or pyramid in an Africa desert over the internet, can build the same structure on the moon or mars, from the same laptop on the same beach.
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... CoinCube, iamback, picolo I should drop by this thread more often, a lot of good comments and subjects. I have added Martin Armstrong to my daily reading. At a minimum, he is a font of ideas. * * * Thanks iamback and CoinCube for the information on Norway. They *seem* so secure to casual observers, I never knew that they face real longer-term weaknesses unless they get to work now to fix their finances. Noe would be a good time for them to start. Will they start soon? I don't know, but usually no country starts doing anything until pushed hard.* * * Civil forfeiture and related (red light cameras, etc.) are a b!tch. All of these nasty .gov initiatives mean that each of us has to learn and practice financial jiu-jitsu just to protect what we have (not to mention what we may or not may be able to accumulate). These risks of seizure of our assets (even if completely innocent of anything) mean having quiet assets (gold, even Bitcoin) is more important than the usual arguments. Having BTC100 in a Ledger Nano, for example, means a certain freedom in that the +/- $23,000 would be easy to get past TSA en-route to "Plan B". That's one of Bitcoin's greatest features: easy capital mobility. * * * Greece looks like will be in the news for quite some time into the future. Greece also looks like will be instructive to those of us willing to pay attention (Cyprus was instructive). Yet, I do not think it will matter much exactly what happens to Greece if/when things get worse. Greece cannot pay off its debts. My guess is that NO ONE will loan them much money in the coming years. The Greek people will suffer for their government's corruption (but electing those governments is at least in part their own fault too). "Economic Devastation" is indeed an idea to keep thinking about. + 1, CoinCube, for starting such a long-lasting thread. |
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... CoinCube must be a banker with Goldman-Sachs, look, his reply number is 666... I have seen various figures for debt in China and Japan, it is hard to know which figures are "best" for examining their financial situation, so I will not go into that here. Similarly for capital controls, a topic which I must leave for another rainy day. * * * The whole issue of "Plan B countries" is very complex, at least for Americans. There are a slew of factors to be taken into account, and these factors have to be judged for each individual. 1) Plan B countries among the "developed countries"? Well, ahh, I don't know. ALL of them have arguably MOAR problems than the USA. Canada? Europe? Japan? Australia/NZ? None are convincing candidates for me. Lots of debt, risk of authoritarian governments as bad or worse than the USA. The weather in Canada and most of Europe is unattractive to me. 2a) Rest of Asia? Well, not for me. The only candidate that comes to mind for me would be Singapore. Reasonably free but disciplined. Wealthy country that seems to be governed reasonably well with good .gov attitudes. But, I have not been to Singapore. I have been to Japan (twice), S. Korea and China. I would feel very alien in any of those three countries. I do not speak their languages (knowing the local language is almost required to live happily in any country IMO). 2b) How about other places in Asia? Author Robert Kaplan recently (2014) a book on geopolitics there in East Asia: Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific. Highly recommended. He discusses (a chapter each, and yes, he went there) most of the major players there in E. Asia (not S. Korea and not Indonesia). He liked Singapore and Malaysia. He somewhat liked Vietnam and Taiwan. He did not like the Philippines. Re the Philippines, he did not like the excess corruption and poverty there that leave it so far behind their neighbors. He did not much discuss China (other than their threat to "annex" the S. China Sea, which he discussed at length, the point of the book) but did mention some of their problems (pollution, Communism <--- which struck me as a big problem (for me) when I went, and their own Debt Bubble). The fact that you must be connected to succeed in China is a big drawback for me (iamback). * * * So where would an OROBTC go? Europe and all/most of Asia are not attractive. Most of the developing world is not so great either (forget Africa, S. Asia, the Middle East and Central Asia). Most "niche" countries would not work either (Iceland, Liechtenstein). The Caribbean? No. For me, that leaves Latin America. I speak Spanish, so there is some choice (but I do not speak Portuguese, so Brazil is out for me). We have our company in Peru (as well as nice in-laws there), so Peru wins by default in my case. Other places in LatAm might work: Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Uruguay and even Paraguay might be OK. Note that each person's likes & dislikes are very much a part of the complicated equation! iamback referred to the relatively violent nature sometimes seen in LatAm society, and yes that too is a factor (especially street crime). Also corruption. Also the fact that a country today might seem just fine, but in 10 years not (Venezuela and Argentina are great lessons). |
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The record of the exchanges holding other people's Bitcoin is, ahh, not so good.
I would recommend HODLing BTC in a hardware wallet, both Trezor and Ledger are working well for me. And if I can figure out how to use them (with my limited technical abilities) then anyone else here can too. The Ledger is very economically priced at about 29 Euro (pay by BTC). MUCH cheaper than having a problem with BTC in peril at an exchange.
Even a web wallet like blockchain.info's would be better than at an exchange.
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I received my first payment. All in order.
Thank you.
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I have bought from both Provident and Amagi, paying with Bitcoin.
ONCE from Amagi (their shipment was very slow in my case: almost two weeks).
Twice from Provident. Fast & professional, with nice low prices.
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The future, at least short-term, does not look good under any scenario for Greece. Greece produces very few things that people in other countries want or need. Adding value is the key to gaining wealth: if you do not produce something (or otherwise add value), no one else will pay you.
I do not see how Greece resolves this either by going further into debt (troika's solution) or by "Grexiting" and starting over with the Drachma. Greece's problems are structural, and will take a long time to resolve even if they choose wise policies (which they may not).
A Bitcoin currency does not resolve Greece.
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Warren Buffett usually and typically "talks his book." For him, what's good for Warren is good for the rest of us.
Of course, he does not talk about what he is interested in buying. He surprised Wall Street when he snapped up the BNSF railroad, probably the best long-haul railroad company in the USA. I did not get that memo beforehand.
He is a great stock-picker.
He poo-poos Bitcoin and gold because he does not own any (or much). But he did have a huge position in physical silver for awhile (which he lost money on IIRC). WB is also very "Establishment", pro-banks (Goldman-Sachs), pro-Wall Street, pro-Obama.
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slaveforanunnak1
Very nice, thank you for the link!
redsn0w
When I learn to mess with OP_RETURN, I'll give that a try. Beginner here, NONE of my friends are into any of this.
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