Thanks:-) The rest was just... depressing LOL


Check out Rework by 37 Signals, pretty much the best book for anyone starting a business. Best business book I ever read.


Bitcoin is actually not suitable for traditional porn membership sites. With competitive affiliate percentages a lot of sites don't actually get in the black on a new member in the first month.

The bread and butter of membership sites- the absolute lifeblood is recurring billing. Without all those guys who signup, then forget to cancel most sites would not be profitable. With Bitcoins low adoption rate, dropping it in as a payment option for a little buzz and SE traffic is fine- but if it ever caught on and became a significant portion of signups it would cannibalize recurring charges and bankrupt the site. It would really only be practical setting it as Bitcoin for three month membership- we do that with money orders, but it's a tough sell.

Sites that allow you to purchase a single video clip (clips4sale) still have a following- but mostly for hard to find fetish footage you can't get for free. Static content is a very, very tough market to break into these days and not one I'd recommend.

There are certianly opportunities with crypto-currency, but they will probably be realized by people who work within their existing skill set.

FM,
     We don't see timestamps of individual deposit transactions.  There is a much more elegant solution planned that will take some time to implement.

Hope this makes sense,
     Keyur

Holliday,
    Yes, we are implementing fund movement history later this week for following three transactions:

1) Bitcoin Withdrawals
2) USD Deposits
3) USD Withdrawals

We will not be able to show Bitcoin deposits, because it requires an un-elegant technical solution.  This seemingly simple feature will have to wait for a mod to the core Bitcoin client.

Thank you,
     Keyur

good. then calculate the likelihood of something like that happening in your lifetime, and there is your risk for gold.

The Mt.gox event was just on the dutch radio.
Some times I think Mt.gox did this intentionally to get tons of publicity.

There getting what they want if this is true.
damn..

it's only a matter of time until there is a bitcoin prostitution story all over cable news.

The attack on the Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchanged involved an attempt convert 400,000 Bitcoin credits to $9 million "real money" (the exchange value at the time). That suspiciously large transaction caused Mt. Gox to take itself offline to investigate, and the resulting panic caused Bitcoin's real money value dramatically.

This is a very powerful argument. The problem is that many people may not even realise they are stealing. A single corrupt individual releases a new android app that attempts a double spend 2 minutes after every transaction. This spend targets 50% of the value at miners 25% to the author and 25% back to the originator. This gets pitched as a "loyalty program" where you would occasionally win 25% cashback on transactions. Initially people don't even know they are stealing, so this gets real popular real quick.. Then retailers make a noise and most people know, but suddenly it looks more like a morally gray area.

Also most people won't steal from a mom & pop shop after looking the shopkeeper in the eye. But many have far less of a problem ripping off Wallmart or pretty much any giant faceless corporation. How many people point it out when they are given too much change at a till?
 

Problem is, if many people are doing it, the total bribe quickly adds up. If it works, more people start doing it, more miners become corruptible and the vicious cycle fuels itself. Even a 0.01 BTC bribe may be enough if the block was going to get invalidated anyway due to other unrelated bribes.
 

+1

The press is getting addicted to the bitcoin drama, there's no turning back. The story has it all: money, drugs, technology, hackers, politicians. It keeps getting better and better.

But this does make one doubt the oft-repeated statement that a retailer does not need to wait for confirmations when selling goods of small value. I could buy a cup of coffee and broadcast a new version of the transaction into the network offering half of the price as tx fee. If 10% of miners are maximising transaction fees then there's a 10% chance I get a 50% discount on my coffee. If everyone does this the retailer sees a 10% loss. Suddenly makes Mastercard and VISA look good.

As far as confirmed transactions are concerned, one can easily calculate for a miner with a give percentage of total network hash power that coldly maximises profit, how large the tx fee would have to be to attempt to overturn something X blocks back in the chain (assuming that none of the other miners are bribeable and he needs to do it alone). The figures look good for solo mining, but for pooled mining and especially 0% fee pooled mining, the situation quickly changes since the pool owner (who will make the decision) will keep all of the bribe if he attempts the heist and is successful, but keep 0% (or a very small %) of the coinbase reward if he chooses to keep to the straight and narrow.

Once miners know that other miners may be corruptible the figures change dramatically and a vicious cycle may be born. Also, a large bribe on large tx is not necessarily required, many small bribes on many small txs can add up to the same effect. All in all, I'm a little worried. Please tell me why this won't happen.

Other than BTC(as well as all related exchanges and accounts) not being insured, backed(neither by an economy nor central bank or any other instance whatsoever) or regulated by anything and thus being worth as much as a seashell, it's a perfectly fine system!

By the way, that's "price is capable of going to 0.01 within minutes", thanks to literally no real depth or liquidity existing in the market, not days.

We've just done that exercise, it's no longer a thought experiment.

How this has not shown people what's what is truly, truly amazing.

Maybe I just can't spot a bad bitcoin article anymore because I've read so many crappy opinion pieces that anything remotely resembling journalistic research appears amazing by comparison, even if their timeline is screwed up and they have the common problem of being unable to explain bitcoin.

Wow. Although there are some annoying things in that article, it's really nice to see a news article on the crash that actually interviews someone relevant.

It's sometimes amazing when you get that flash of memory of back when news outlets used to impartially report details and quote other people's opinions rather than just wing it with the author's interpretation presented as fact.