|
1161
|
Alternate cryptocurrencies / Altcoin Discussion / Re: Multicoin, Namecoin, Goldcoin, Silvercoin, OilCoin, 1971coin, backed by bitcoin!
|
on: August 08, 2011, 06:17:17 PM
|
I have decided that I like morpheus' idea better than my own, so I am locking my threads about this stuff, and I encourage anyone interested in concepts like this to check out his thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=29135.0 |
|
|
|
|
1164
|
Bitcoin / Project Development / Re: Goldcoin and Stablecoin proposals
|
on: August 08, 2011, 05:38:59 PM
|
The way to have a stable currency without the need for either a price index or a steward of the currency holding the value constant, is to target a fixed ratio between the size of the stablecoin economy and the total number of stablecoins extant. It is not really important what value that ratio produces, the important thing is that the ratio can be kept stable with only internal inputs.
. . .
Could that work?
It might work technically, but I don't think it would work from a marketing perspective. That is, holding coins denominated in gold, oil, or 1971 dollars is a very simple and appealing concept. Morpheus, I've been thinking and thinking about your proposal, and I am now completely convinced that your way is the best way. It is simple to explain and seems reasonably straightforward to implement. The biggest programming challenge is not deciding the rules of the new currency, nor is it importing public data on inflation, the price of gold, etc. The biggest problem is determining the current market value of the coins in circulation. Once there are dozens of exchanges running which trade your new coins, this gets a lot easier, as it is just another public data source that the miners import, and any client can reject a block that doesn't have the right exchange rates encoded. But until then, figuring out how many new coins to distribute in a new block in a way that all the clients can agree on is a tricky problem. There are a couple ways I see that the network can get this data in its infancy: 1) Launch an exchange for your coins at the same time you launch your new client 2) Build in a distributed exchange between your block-chains and the bitcoin block chain into your software, then you know the ratio of prices between your coins and bitcoins, and the price of bitcoins is of course public data. I'm not sure which option is harder to implement, but I note that the first option is a single point of failure while your coins are new. I also like the second option because it allows bitcoins to still have a role in this new (much bigger) economy, at least for awhile. I assume you are planning on riding along on the bitcoin block-chain using merged mining? |
|
|
|
|
1165
|
Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Trust No One
|
on: August 05, 2011, 04:59:48 PM
|
Obvious
Ofcourse
Is this how newbies build up their post count so they can get out of this section? I feel kind of sorry for them . . . |
|
|
|
|
1166
|
Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: Tradehil referrals: How much have you earned?
|
on: August 05, 2011, 03:05:34 PM
|
I see you and your stupid monkey avatar on every single bitcoin article I ever read spamming your TH referal code and it pisses me off.
Glad to hear I am having an impact! Seriously though, every article has the potential to introduce new people to bitcoin, and I want them to have a good experience if they try to buy some coins. Right now, it seems to me that TradeHill offers the best experience. |
|
|
|
|
1167
|
Bitcoin / Project Development / Re: Goldcoin and Stablecoin proposals
|
on: August 05, 2011, 02:58:14 PM
|
I'm especially worried about the scenario where somebody writes a client which stores your coins in hundreds of little wallets, and sends and receives wallets instead of coins, completely bypassing the transaction fees and coin destruction. If everybody switched to that method, including the exchanges, then no coins would ever be transferred through the protocol, nor would they ever be destroyed. And people would definitely have a big incentive to move in that direction, even if it didn't get that extreme.
That's not going to happen. When you transfer a wallet you can keep a copy of it. The recipient must move them through the block chain or trust you. And if they need to trust you, you've lost the main advantage of scarce moneys. Now people have to trust each other and not be completely anonymous: people probably prefer Ripple for that. You can denominate IOUs in stablecoins, but again you need the decentralized price index system. The destruction of money through transaction fees has other problems: Is the transaction fee voluntary? Why would the merchants include a transaction with a big fee sooner than one with a small one? I think you need demurrage for this system even if you don't like it. You are quite right that only trusted transactions would skip the fees and/or coin destruction. I hadn't thought that through all the way. So buying coins from a trusted exchange could potentially be free, but selling coins to the exchange would definitely require paying the fee since the exchange doesn't trust you. If you want widespread adoption, there's a huge marketing advantage to getting rid of demurrage. I think morpheus' transfer fee idea has all the advantages of demurrage without the drawbacks. When the price of coins is at or above the target, there would be no fees or penalties of any kind. |
|
|
|
|
1168
|
Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: "BlitCoin": "unmasks one or both ends of a BitCoin transaction"?
|
on: August 04, 2011, 11:45:28 PM
|
For the even lazier: ---BEGIN TRIBUTE---
#./BitLen
:::::::::::::::::::
:::::::.::.::.:.:::
:.: :.' ' ' ' ' : :
:.:'' ,,xiW,"4x, ''
: ,dWWWXXXXi,4WX,
' dWWWXXX7" `X,
lWWWXX7 __ _ X
:WWWXX7 ,xXX7' "^^X
lWWWX7, _.+,, _.+.,
:WWW7,. `^"-" ,^-'
WW",X: X,
"7^^Xl. _(_x7'
l ( :X: __ _
`. " XX ,xxWWWWX7
)X- "" 4X" .___.
,W X :Xi _,,_
WW X 4XiyXWWXd
"" ,, 4XWWWWXX
, R7X, "^447^
R, "4RXk, _, ,
TWk "4RXXi, X',x
lTWk, "4RRR7' 4 XH
:lWWWk, ^" `4
::TTXWWi,_ Xll :..
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
LEN "rabbi" SASSAMA
1980-2011
Len was our friend.
A brilliant mind,
a kind soul, and
a devious schemer;
husband to Meredith
brother to Calvin,
son to Jim and
Dana Hartshorn,
coauthor and
cofounder and
Shmoo and so much
more. We dedicate
this silly hack to
Len, who would have
found it absolutely
hilarious.
--Dan Kaminsky,
Travis Goodspeed
P.S. My apologies,
BitCoin people. He
also would have
LOL'd at BitCoin's
new dependency upon
ASCII BERNANKE
:'::.:::::.:::.::.:
: :.: ' ' ' ' : :':
:.: _.__ '.:
: _,^" "^x, :
' x7' `4,
XX7 4XX
XX XX
Xl ,xxx, ,xxx,XX
( ' _,+o, | ,o+,"
4 "-^' X "^-'" 7
l, ( )) ,X
:Xx,_ ,xXXXxx,_,XX
4XXiX'-___-`XXXX'
4XXi,_ _iXX7'
, `4XXXXXXXXX^ _,
Xx, ""^^^XX7,xX
W,"4WWx,_ _,XxWWX7'
Xwi, "4WW7""4WW7',W
TXXWw, ^7 Xk 47 ,WH
:TXXXWw,_ "), ,wWT:
::TTXXWWW lXl WWT:
----END TRIBUTE----
I read a bit about him. Definitely seems like the sort of person who should be in the block chain. Could even be Satoshi himself. I wonder what he couldn't live with . . . Edit: It was depression ( http://boingboing.net/2011/07/04/rip-len-sassaman-cyp.html) and he probably wasn't Satoshi since he wasn't too impressed with bitcoin ( https://twitter.com/#!/lensassaman/status/82754572958961664). Interesting that there were several days of twitter silence before his death ( https://twitter.com/#!/lensassaman). I think I've been hanging around some of you conspiracy theorists for too long. |
|
|
|
|
1169
|
Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: "BlitCoin": "unmasks one or both ends of a BitCoin transaction"?
|
on: August 04, 2011, 10:56:42 PM
|
Also, is Dan claiming he put text in the genesis block? Maybe I don't understand correctly, or maybe it was a joke . . .
Not the genesis block, a more recent block. He embedded some text in the blockchain, an ASCII-art tribute to a hacker who recently committed suicide, as well as Ben Bernanke, the terrorist who controls the world economy. Somebody paste it please. I'm lazy/busy/not running linux, but I want to see the tribute to the hacker who became "an hero". |
|
|
|
|
1170
|
Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: "BlitCoin": "unmasks one or both ends of a BitCoin transaction"?
|
on: August 04, 2011, 10:41:26 PM
|
From newbie: Hi! I was trying to respond to https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34383.0 , but as a newbie I can't. So, maybe someone can quote this (or even move this) to that thread. I'm Dan Kaminsky. I'm the reason there's ASCII text that's returned if you run: strings --bytes=20 .bitcoin/blk0001.dat As reported, I've got a BitCoin deanonymization mechanism. It's not complicated. Connect to every node in the cloud, discoverable via sweeping/IRC/get_peers messages. The first IP to consistently relay transactions for a given identity, is the given identity. Of course the entire BitCoin cloud doesn't allow inbound connections (although you can do rather evil stuff with UPNP to force that open too). But this isn't a problem -- there's only about 3000 to 8000 IPs that are BitCoin nodes that accept inbound connections. Since everyone else depends on them, you just need to create your own mass cluster of IPs that are a decent chunk of the P2P network. Nodes on average have seven outbound connections, so it should take only a few hundred unique to be one of the first-hop peers even for the outbound-only set. Now that I think about it, it might even be possible to do this from a single IP, with lots of ports. I remember seeing some code in there to try to distribute peers across Class B's though so this can be interesting bug #9 that BitCoin manages to smush. (As a note, I have a tremendous amount of respect for BitCoin; I count it in the top five most interesting security projects of the decade. Entire classes of bugs are missing. But it's just not an anonymous solution, and the devs will say as much.) So "deanonymize" means "associate transaction with IP address"? If so, that does seem like it would work. I recall seeing somewhere that bitcoin can run over TOR, but I doubt very many people do that. I guess if you are using silk road you should! Unfortunately, it won't help anybody investigating past crimes, since you would have to be monitoring the network in this way when the crime happened. Also, is Dan claiming he put text in the genesis block? Maybe I don't understand correctly, or maybe it was a joke . . . Hopefully a mod can whitelist Dan so he can chat in this thread. |
|
|
|
|
1171
|
Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Shout outs from Seattle
|
on: August 04, 2011, 09:39:02 PM
|
Shout out from Buckley? Do I count? About an hour away from Seattle, but still in Western Washington.
Sure sir cuddles (that name is both hilarious and disturbing) |
|
|
|
|
1174
|
Other / Off-topic / Re: Child Pornographers: I hope they die in agony [news article]
|
on: August 04, 2011, 08:14:08 PM
|
A couple of bits of the bible that I am curious how you feel about. The first is Acts 5, the second is Mathew 5:39
They both seem to be in contradiction to the Conservative approach, Acts 5 to the materialist approach that is opposed to taxes and Matt 5:39 to the harsh punishments approach.
I'm not Christian myself, but I am curious how someone who is very Christian reconciles these with Conservative beliefs.
I've been kind of silly in this thread, and have been admittedly talking about my controversial (but real) beliefs to get a rise out of people because it amuses me (trolling), but I'll try to give you a serious answer to this question. Acts 5: I'm not sure that this is the chapter of the Bible I would use against materialism, but there are plenty of others. I'd probably go with I Timothy 6:10. Regardless, materialism is a nasty cancer in the church or anywhere else. As for taxes, Mark 12:13-17 makes it clear that Christians are to pay them, which is why I intend to pay taxes on my bitcoins as close to what the law says as possible. I do however vote for smaller government any time I'm given the chance. As for Matt 5:39, a lot of Christians are pacifists, citing this verse. Others believe it is a prohibition against avenging ourselves for wrongs done against us, and should not be considered a prohibition against self-defense or the execution of justice. I'm in the latter camp, but certainly respect anyone who takes the former view. |
|
|
|
|
1175
|
Bitcoin / Project Development / Re: Goldcoin and Stablecoin proposals
|
on: August 04, 2011, 06:57:45 PM
|
I don't have a great answer for this problem, but...
If someone wanted to sell 100 Stablecoin this way, they would have to create a new wallet and put 100 Stablecoin in it. If they did this while the price of Stablecoin is low, then they would have to pay the higher transaction fee. Thus solving the problem in this case. If they moved the coin while the price was high, they wouldn't have to pay the transaction fee, but they could just sell the coin for a profit instead. The only way this would work is if they bought the coin when the price is low, then moved the coin into separate wallets when the price is high, then sold the wallets when the price is low again. Not only is this complicated and risky, but the initial purchase would pay the high transaction fee.
An alternative to the above is if someone bought a bunch of Stablecoin at some point and doesn't care about selling exactly 100 coins. They could sell their entire wallet at once with some random number of coins inside. The problem with that is, the receiver couldn't pull the coins out of the wallet without paying the high transaction fees. The receiver would have an incentive to hold the wallet until the prices come back up. He could then sell the coins at a profit and may not have to worry about the transaction fee. Again this encourages hoarding which would drive the price of Stablecoin back up.
The big issue is an exchange like Mt Gox. If there were an exchange like Mt Gox which held all of its Stablecoin in a wallet and let people buy and sell on its open market, then the price of Stablecoin would be independent of transaction fees. Of course, anyone who bought a bunch of Stablecoin while the price is low would not be able to pull it out of the market without paying the transaction fee. This again would encourage hoarding which would drive price back up to the fair market value.
There may be issues in practice, and the transaction fee/miner reward may have to be adjusted at times. I still think it could work and I'm slowly working on an implementation.
If anyone has any info on creating your own bitcoin chain, let me know. I'm looking for a tutorial if one exists. Or maybe a tutorial could be added to the bitcoin wiki.
I'm especially worried about the scenario where somebody writes a client which stores your coins in hundreds of little wallets, and sends and receives wallets instead of coins, completely bypassing the transaction fees and coin destruction. If everybody switched to that method, including the exchanges, then no coins would ever be transferred through the protocol, nor would they ever be destroyed. And people would definitely have a big incentive to move in that direction, even if it didn't get that extreme. |
|
|
|
|
1176
|
Other / Off-topic / Re: Child Pornographers: I hope they die in agony [news article]
|
on: August 04, 2011, 06:16:07 PM
|
Yeah. But then again you live in the only ass-backwards country in the industrialized
world where anyone not in a weird minority fringe still pays attention to the issue, so
there's not much to worry about there.
All, in all, my forecast is : either you're trolling, which is always entertaining, or you're
actually serious and my forecast is : you're unlikely to make many friends around here.
A little of both, actually. I hope you'll reconsider. Won't you please be my friend? I so lonely . . . |
|
|
|
|
1177
|
Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Shout outs from Seattle
|
on: August 04, 2011, 06:10:50 PM
|
Sorry, busy with church stuff until about 5pm on Sundays. (three church services, then lunch, then a men's accountability group). However, on Sundays when my men's accountability group gets cancelled, I might be able to drop in sometime. Hey, maybe YOU GUYS could fill in for my accountability group on those days. We could talk about bitcoin AND our struggles with temptation.  For me, Jesus > Family > Bitcoin (which is why my appearances at any meetups will be rare, no matter when they are). I'm sure that the suggested time and place will work fine for most other people. |
|
|
|
|
1178
|
Other / Off-topic / Re: Child Pornographers: I hope they die in agony [news article]
|
on: August 04, 2011, 05:31:51 PM
|
Here's to hoping this was a tongue-in-cheek comment, but just in case it wasn't: you are free to think/believe
what you will however weird this may make you look to folks around you. There's actual entertainment value
in it.
The moment your opinions about what is right and what isn't start to translate into actions (e.g. the nutcases
in the US who try to "save babies") and infringe on other people's right to do what they damn want with their
life by imposing your weird holier-than-thou way of looking at the world, you'll find that the kind of extremist
thinking you describe is very likely going to trigger a similarly intense reaction at the other end of the spectrum.
I definitely want to save me some babies - I love babies! If I knew of a way to stop an abortion beyond voting (but short of murdering abortionists), I would totally do it. |
|
|
|
|
1179
|
Other / Off-topic / Re: Child Pornographers: I hope they die in agony [news article]
|
on: August 04, 2011, 04:46:36 PM
|
Voting is opinion casting, not an action on itself. Unless you vote alone and don't want others to vote against you.
I think the person who votes alone and doesn't want others voting against them is called a dictator. Trust me, you don't want to see how I would use that power. Then why the hell are you even associating with us infidels here?  Bitcoin is just really darn interesting - it's like a combination of every interesting project I've ever had. Also, Jesus was always getting in hot water for associating with sinners and infidels of every kind, even prostitutes. Trying to be like him should not involve cutting yourself off from people who think differently. . . . I'd change my avatar picture to Ned Flanders if I didn't like this one so much. |
|
|
|
|
1180
|
Other / Off-topic / Re: Child Pornographers: I hope they die in agony [news article]
|
on: August 04, 2011, 04:20:56 PM
|
As long as those remain as your opinions and not your acts...
One shall be judge by what he does, not by what he thinks.
I vote. That is an action. Not sure if srs...
OK, I don't actually miss the pesticides and hormones, but I REALLY like cheap food ("cheap" is my second-favorite seasoning, my favorite seasoning is "free"). Otherwise, it's a fairly accurate description of me. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
