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Infact, there's really very little motivation to 'hijack' a new user.. all you can really do is prevent them from communicating with other bitcoin users.. you can't steal their money or intercept their transactions.. all you could do it stop them from connecting to the network.. which they would probably notice and be able to work around. I guess you could force them to work on your block chain, but since mining is now disabled in the main client anyway that is no-longer true either.
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Couldn't you in theory hijack almost the entire network?
No, it wouldn't make much difference if the IRC network was compromised. It is just used to get a list of hostnames to try to connect to, but you only need to connect to one real node in order to be able to receive the majority block chain. It is just one of many methods used to find other nodes - the address messages broadcast on the bitcoin network are the primary means, and once you've been connected to the network the client keeps a local cache of the addresses it has seen. The ones it sees on IRC are just added to the list. You'd still be able to hijack new users That would be true of any bootstrapping mechanism you can think of. At least with IRC it's somewhat transparent in that people can log in and see what's going on.. I don't really see any way around this though.. Also, users would probably notice that they weren't on the 'real' bitcoin network since they wouldn't be receiving any payments made to them or be able to send payments and also if they ever connect to a single real node by any of the bootstrapping mechanisms then they'd 'break out' of the illusion. |
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Presumably you would cache the 'latest' state for every coin.
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I understand that the bitcoin network has already become the biggest and fastest supercomputer ever built.
Corporations, universities and govt do pay for the use of this kind of supercomputers everyday.
Surely, there must be different options to run paid jobs over the network, in order to make investments less risky, and help the bitcoin value go up, too.
Any ideas ?
bitcoin doesn't lend itself to doing any other kind of work.. what could happen is that governments, corporations or universities could approach the big mining pools and ask them to run their own software instead for a higher return.. so yea.. could happen, but it has nothing to do with bitcoin really. |
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I want to get this out in the open because it is the kind of thing that will generate conspiracy theories: I'm going to give a presentation about Bitcoin at CIA headquarters in June at an emerging technologies conference for the US intelligence community.
I accepted the invitation to speak because the fact that I was invited means Bitcoin is already on their radar, and I think it might be a good chance to talk about why I think Bitcoin will make the world a better place. I think the goals of this project are to create a better currency, create a more competitive and efficient international payment system, and give people more direct control over their finances. And I don't think any of those goals are incompatible with the goals of government.
I'm only very slightly worried that talking about bitcoin at the CIA will increase the chances they'll try to do something we don't want them to do. I think accepting their invitation and being open about exactly what bitcoin is will make it less likely they'll see it as a threat.
PS: Full disclosure: I'll be paid a one-time fee of $3,000 to cover expenses and pay me for my time. I don't want any "Gavin is on the CIA's payroll" rumors to get started, either...
As always, comments and questions and discussion welcome. I'd really rather not hear any conspiracy theories about how they'll secretly implant a mind-control chip in my head while I'm there, though....
Makes sense.. one of the main uses of bitcoin will probably be to pay for illegal drugs.. the CIA are the world's largest drug dealers. |
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Hello. I'd like to sell my bitcoins quickly and effortlessly for Canadian dollars. I see no easy way to do that currently. I sent this message to themadhatter@i2pmail.org so lets see if he responds. In the meanwhile could anyone help me please? I have 350 bitcoins mined so far and I'll gladly sell them for CAD $500 cash. Basically I want to get back the money I invested in my graphics cards which makes them free after electricity costs and from now on in all bitcoins will be pure profit! YAY!  I don't really need anonymity so I can give you lots of information for you to verify who I am and that I am not a scammer, etc. I will accept payment by 1) PayPal (in Canadian dollars only because PayPal is a ripoff for currency conversions) and as a personal payment type other so there are no fees to receive. 2) Direct deposit into my Royal Bank of Canada account. Is there a bitcoin escrow service that we could use? Please let me know if anyone is interested. Thanks, datathe1st Hi, I would be happy to pay you $500 via direct bank transfer for the 350 BTC. |
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Cash exists. It's anonymous. Decentralised (not issueing, but existence, as it is dispatched everywhere). And yet the government seems Ok with it.
So they could use bitcoin to issue "electronic cash".
Basically they would modify the bitcoin source code, and make a new block chain with all the 21 millions "FEDcoins" generated all at once, in the genesis block. They could also make it so that a special private key could generate any number of new coins anytime they want.
And then they would guarantee the convertibiliy between FEDcoins and Federal Reserve Notes.
FEDcoins would be just like FDR notes, except that they are designed to be exchanged on the net, and not in person-to-person physical exchange.
That would cost them almost nothing.
They already have this, it's called FedWIRE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedwire |
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Stock is only useful if honored by the company management. If you have to trust them (which you do) they might as well just maintain the share register (which is exactly how it currently works, although most companies outsource the maintenance of the database).
There's no point in using a complicated proof-of-work system to maintain a simple spreadsheet when at the end of the day you're effectively just going to print off a copy and hand it to someone and just trust that they do whatever it says. They might as well maintain it centrally as it's much simpler. There's no value add for this huge p2p network crunching thousands of Ghash/s when at the end of the day someone can just ignore it.
And? At the end of the day, a human can ignore my bitcoins. At the end of the day, a company can ignore my Charles Schwab stock purchase. All they are are ones and zeroes in a computer, just like those dollars my bank claims I possess. A distributed, notarized database of digital tokens has a large number of uses that may extend directly into real world goods. It is readily apparent that value exists in a neutral, distributed entity maintaining a database rather than a single entity (== single point of failure). The only reason the bitcoin network works for bitcoins is there are no external trust dependencies. That won't be true in the case of any of the physical goods trading you described.
Not true at all. Bitcoins would have zero value, if you could not trade them for real-world goods, services and currencies. People trust that the value of their bitcoins will be there tomorrow. That is the mother of all external trust dependencies. And you miss the point yet again. I think I've explained what I meant fairly well already so I'll probably just give up now. A human could ignore your bitcoins.. for example they could buy some from you and then not do anythin with them. I think you'll agree that isn't really your problem. If you buy something from them using bitcoins and they ignore your request for goods and keep the bitcoins then they're a dishonest trader, and you lose out - but that doesn't affect the rest of the market. There are other honest traders out there that you can deal with. The difference is, in that situation it's just a bad trader, in the other situation the entire market has to be cleared by a central authority - the corn dealer or company management. If they turn out to be a bad trader the entire market is invalid and it doesn't matter what system you used to record who owns what, because nobody owns anything because the guy that's supposed to ultimately give it to everyone has ripped you all off. Similarly if the guy is honest, it doesn't matter how he records who he owes what too. It could be a block chain, but it could just be a free spreadsheet in google apps. There probably are some other uses of proof-of-work distributed block databases, just not the ones that you've presented so far. |
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If you want things in the block chain to represent shares (ie: you want the management to count your vote come agm time or pay you a dividend) or you want some farmer to deliver you some corn then they (the management or the farmer) becomes the point of failure. You're relying on them.. the fact that there's a block chain that says they should do something is completely irrelevant. They might as well just keep their shares/corn orders in a very ordinary spreadsheet.
That's true for corn, yes, but not stock, which can be traded electronically, automatically and securely. And for corn, that is analagous to selling a coffee or a car for bitcoins. You are relying on an external point of failure. So what if the corn (or coffee) is never delivered. Having one element outside the scope of the project does not eliminate the utility of the bitcoin approach. No, you're still missing the point. Stock is only useful if honored by the company management. If you have to trust them (which you do) they might as well just maintain the share register (which is exactly how it currently works, although most companies outsource the maintenance of the database). There's no point in using a complicated proof-of-work system to maintain a simple spreadsheet when at the end of the day you're effectively just going to print off a copy and hand it to someone and just trust that they do whatever it says. They might as well maintain it centrally as it's much simpler. There's no value add for this huge p2p network crunching thousands of Ghash/s when at the end of the day someone can just ignore it. The only reason the bitcoin network works for bitcoins is there are no external trust dependencies. That won't be true in the case of any of the physical goods trading you described. BitDNS could be done that way, but it could also be done a much simpler way without proofs of work. |
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yes, but having each company start their own chain[...]
Who said anything about each company starting their own chain? That's not distributed, nor decentralized. The future of satoshi's proof-of-work technology is a chain marketplace. Multiple chains will exist for different purposes (bitcoin, BitDNS, BitX). Multiple chains will exist in the same competitive space (bitcoins, jgarzik-coins). Wall Street firms may cooperate on a single "Wall Street NASDAQ chain", where all NASDAQ stocks are traded, for example. That would be cooperative and super-strong, yet secure against double-spending (aka naked shorting, etc.) The thing that you're missing is that with bitcoins the bitcoin is the deliverable. It doesn't represent anything at all and that's what allows it to be settled electronically. If you want things in the block chain to represent shares (ie: you want the management to count your vote come agm time or pay you a dividend) or you want some farmer to deliver you some corn then they (the management or the farmer) becomes the point of failure. You're relying on them.. the fact that there's a block chain that says they should do something is completely irrelevant. They might as well just keep their shares/corn orders in a very ordinary spreadsheet. BitDNS is a different matter.. with DNS there is something that can be delivered electronically where the thing itself is stored in the blockchain. This would work.. but you don't really need the whole proof of work thing. If all you want is a first-come-first-served name grabbing model that is basically just a simple distributed database where the p2p swarm stores the zonefile and accepts updates from keyholders and allows new registrations where the name doesn't already exist. I don't see a role for proof-of-works here. Double spending doesn't really exist.. I guess the analogy would be if you tried to transfer (sign away to a new controlling private key) the same domain name to two different new owners.. how much of a problem would that be? Is it really worth doing proofs of work to stop it? Maybe.. but I'm not really convinced. With coins you can doublespend them to anyone.. with a domain name you'd have to find two people who wanted to buy the exact same domain from you at the same time. The motivation for fraud is significantly lower. |
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[snip]
Idea #1: Suppose a company can issue its own version of the bitcoin concept as "stocks" (bitstock?). I know this has been talked about on other threads as well. What would be the implications of high-frequency trading on the infrastructure borrowed from bitcoin? For example, we trade thousands of stocks at a rate of thousands of messages per second (i.e. not all messages result in trades). We deal in terabytes of data per day. Is it even reasonable to consider a proof-of-work blockchain in this context? How would this disrupt the trust mechanism for resolving conflicting claims (e.g. could I send some "bitstock" shares to one person, but then change my mind an instant later by sending the same bitstock to another recipient, and then trying to convince the rest of the network that the second transaction was the valid one)?
I don't currently see any benefit in having stocks in a bitcoin like system. It's probably better to just have companies subcontract out their shareholder registry management to a company specialized in doing that sort of thing (exactly how they do now infact). Ultimately the investors are required to trust the company they invest in - if they don't there are a million ways things will go wrong and having the shareholder registry in a block chain won't stop that. With bitcoin as a currency there is now no single point of failure, with company stocks there is always a singe point of failure - the company. Having the company manage it's shareholder registry (or more likely subcontract it out to a register management firm) doesn't make any difference. If people want to invest in totally black companies that aren't registered with any government the same thing applies - the black company can still manage the shareholder registry with no additional risk. You're just trusting the management.. but you have no other option.
Idea #2: What if bitcoins could be used as an internal tip system to help associates track performance? When one associate wants to thank another one anonymously, the first could drop bitcoins in the second's tip jar. At the end of the bonus period, tips are amplified by actual group performance and bonuses paid out. Since there are no transaction costs, everyone wins and individual performance gets a little bit of measurement. Is there any reason we should consider a point-based system rather than use bitcoin?
bitcoin is already being used for anonymous tipping quite extensively.
Idea #3: What if our company could provide a "forex" marketplace for BTC/USD? This has certainly been done already (MtGox, etc.), however it seems there is still a lot of barrier to entry for many participants. How might a big player help? Would it hinder bitcoin's progress in any way?
It would probably be a good thing. There still is a problem depositing money into the exchanges. Paypal and liberty reserve and even wire transfers don't cut it.. people need to be able to log into their online banking and transfer money directly without incurring large fees. If they have to call the bank and organize a wire transfer it is a barrier to entry as well.. in the UK there is the 'fast payments' system that allows transferring money between UK bank accounts at zero cost and in under two hours. In Canada there is hyperwallet which seems to work quite fast well and in the US I believe there are various ACH schemes that people can operate from their online banking, or if the exchange could be setup to actually debit accounts from within the exchange (ie: users register their bank account and then the market can debit it -- much like paypal does).
Idea #4: Does bitcoin need a market maker in its exchange markets? Market makers usually help narrow the spread between the "bid price" and "ask price" by taking some of the risk in moments when there are no natural market participants (e.g. if you want to sell, but at this moment no one is willing to buy, you either have to lower your price to gain attention, or wait a while for more buyers to show up). My sense is that bitcoin is too young to need a market maker, and perhaps does not yet have enough volume to make the role worthwhile. What are your thoughts?
I would say yes, it does. However, making a market across the existing bitcoin markets basically means moving money through Liberty Reserve, Webmoney and Paypal.. there are margins, but the fees for converting these other digital currencies are high and the process tedious so it's perhaps not surprising that there isn't a whole lot of arbitrage going on at the moment.
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There are some pretty serious buy orders on #bitcoin-otc at the moment. chaord 100000.0 btc 0.5 USD MacRohard 25000.0 btc 0.41 USD lyspooner 500000.0 btc 0.3 USD Total US$ 210250.00 in bids.. all well below the current mtgox prices though. :/ |
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Nobody has the slightest clue what the real value of a BitCoin is.
Speak for yourself, Vandroiy: The "real" value of 1 bitcoin is given by mtgox. The "real" value of 1million bitcoins is less clear, but i bet it's not 50% away from mtgox. for instance, i will pay 0.40 USD/BTC for 500k BTC. Are you serious, will you give 40 cents on the BTC for 500K? Onetime dark-pool trade. IRL contact? That is $200,000 USD, if you want to come to an agreement in writing, I think I can make that happen. visit #bitcoin-otc. see you there! If someone is actually contemplating selling 500k BTC I would urge them to at least sell as many on the market as to bring the price down to 0.40. More money for the seller - and everyone gets a chance to buy  |
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Ok, I'll give them a try lowered to $120 USD.
I'll give you $120 for them. |
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I agree, and take it one step further: the market can be manipulated with far fewer amounts than $millions!
With $6000 in BTC, I can make this 5 million USD economy into a 3 million USD economy. Doesn't something seem wrong with that?
You sure couldn't do it for very long. Well hopefully when I do it, it will be to make this 50 million USD economy into a 30 million one. Then, with all my profit, I will maybe go buy a new house for myself on the backs of other Bitcoin users. I am glad nobody sees anything wrong with that. So do it. I don't think you'd be successful as I (and others) would probably buy up some of your BTC and not give them back. I've noticed that there are far fewer large blocks forsale than there used to be. If you take out all the buy orders there are still only a few sell orders on the market, all above your sell price. You can't buy those at a profit, so you're going to have to wait for other sellers to come onto the market. Would there be any? Probably not enough to get your coins back. |
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Heh. The support guy is telling off the CEO for answering a question? |
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I was thinking about that too but won't someone who essentially never solves a block have a near 0 effect on the network?
I'd guess that if you solve a block every 6 months on average (or worse) you won't speed it up / affect other miners you'll just waste energy. Is there any benefit to it at all? Assuming you're not in a pool of course.
If the idea spreads that mining helps the Bitcoin network, then tens of thousands of people might turn on generation. Many of these people won't ever win a block, but if some do, then the network will be affected. Every time an unprofitable miner wins a block (or whenever they contribute to a pool), the difficulty will go up. When the difficulty goes up, the least efficient miners are pushed out of the market unless they are volunteers. Volunteers therefore take up a greater and greater portion of the network's total CPU. This is bad for at least two reasons: - The network becomes less efficient, using more energy than it needs to.
- "Amateur" miners are not able to respond to threats as quickly as professional miners. They're probably not running the most recent version of Bitcoin, and even if they are, professional miners can make changes to Bitcoin without a new release. The situation is better when the amateur miner is part of a pool, but if the pool goes rogue, the amateur miner will probably not know about it.
It's also really going to irritate me if I see propaganda saying, "Do your part: mine Bitcoins!" or something like that, when the network is perfectly capable of running without volunteers. I don't mine at all myself as I don't like the extra noise from my GPU fan.. not worth it for the profits I could receive from mining. If anyone asks I'd tell them not to bother too.. however, I do find your position troubling. You seem to be making up bogus reasons to justify taking an action that *is* detrimental to the integrity of the network for the sake of protecting the profits of professional miners. If not profits.. you at least want to concentrate control over the network in the hands of a smaller subset of the participants.. I'm not sure that's a good thing. It allows flexibility, but that cuts two ways. A large number of unconnected and uninterested parties contributing to the network seems better as they would be much harder for somebody with an agenda to influence than a small (much much smaller - hundreds instead of thousands of participants) cabal of professional miners and mining pool bosses. |
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It should be removed, but Bitcoin should continue to provide getwork, and a reference miner should become part of the project. People will get used to the fact that mining requires downloading another program.
The thing I'm most worried about is that people will start mining just because they think they're helping the network, and this unprofitable mining will push more efficient and competent miners out of the market.
That doesn't make any sense. Surely all hash/s help the network.. why should anyone be concerned about pushing other miners out of the market? Infact.. I think the network would actually be better served by hashing power being as widely distributed as possible - not concenrated in the hands of a small number of miners. |
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It should be removed, but Bitcoin should continue to provide getwork, and a reference miner should become part of the project. People will get used to the fact that mining requires downloading another program.
The thing I'm most worried about is that people will start mining just because they think they're helping the network, and this unprofitable mining will push more efficient and competent miners out of the market.
That doesn't make any sense. Surely all hash/s help the network.. why should anyone be concerned about pushing other miners out of the market? |
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So I got email today from a merchant asking the most-frequently-asked question: if I just put a bitcoin address on my "pay me" page, how do I know who paid me?
Which got me to wondering... can we do better than answer "run a bitcoin daemon and ask it for a new address for every order" or "use a shopping cart interface from your online wallet provider" ?
Ideally, the web software could generate a payment URI without talking to bitcoind, and copying/pasting or clicking on the URI would generate a transaction tagged with the right order ID.
Adding another transaction type that allows (say) an extra, arbitrary 512 bytes of data mostly solves the problem; the web software could encrypt or hash the order ID and generate a transaction that is the store's public bitcoin address and the encrypted/hashed order ID (or customer number or whatever).
Can we do better? It would be nice if it was impossible to tell how many orders the merchant was getting...
Well.. it's already possible to see who paid you using the block navigator... as long as they paid from a 'known' address... How about we have single use sending accounts.. you could assemble the funds for making payment into a temporary local account from your other accounts and then send it on to the merchant's public bitcoin address. You can then prove it was you that sent it by sending the merchant the private key for this temporary wallet address. The wallet nolonger contains any coins as you already sent them to the merchant's public address but they can see that this wallet is where the coins came from. You'd want to serialize these temporary wallet files into some format that could easily be pasted into an email. Large merchants probably would want to use single use receiving addresses as it's easier to automate but single use source addresses could be made to work for small merchants that have static html websites and take orders through email - which may well be our best bet for growing the bitcoin market.. small businesses that can start taking bitcoin payments simply by adding a bitcoin address to their website may just do it to see if they get any orders. |
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