The descending triangle is normally a bearish pattern. The question now is will the bears follow through?

It is a tough call.

Descending triangles are normally considered a bearish pattern more likely to break out on the downside, on the other hand they can break out on the upside and when they do it can be sharp and sudden. I find the changes in the order book also very interesting. Most of the buy orders that have been removed are from below 0.002. This would indicate that these buyers have given up on purchasing XMR below 0.002, have removed their bids in the hope of driving the price down or both. I see also two possible "Swords of Damocles" hanging over the bears in the short term. 1) The database being released. 2) Dash breaking 0.01 on the downside.

This setup is starting to look like a sharp move is coming, the question remains which way.

Happy Birthday Monero.

... and many more to come.

Bullrun is a perfect example as to why one must never trust anything that is propriety when it comes to protecting Privacy and Liberty.

If the owner of the device owns all the keys up to root, then this is not DRM. It is simply a well secured device or computer. The whole point of DRM is to attempt to secure content where the owner of the computer or device is treated as the adversary.

Edit: It is very easy to secure a computer. Use GNU/Linux and encrypt the home partition or the whole drive. Then do not run as root for day to day operations.

If one is using propriety DRM infected, locked down, systems it will happen. if one is not then it will not happen. The biggest threat to freedom coming out of the USA is not the NSA, it is the MPAA and any organization that uses DRM to "protect" its "premium" content. Understanding the real threat is the first step to dealing with it.

A very good of thumb. If your device supports DRM at the operating system level in any way then any and all information on said device is accessible to the NSA.  

Edit: Android is a perfect example. If one roots the device, a must to protect one's Liberty and Privacy, then the DRM on the device no longer "protects" the content providers. One simply cannot expect a computer or device to have two masters. The choice is DRM or Liberty and Privacy but not both.

I did not find the article scary. The crucial part is If source code is protected speech under the US First Amendment then using Free LIbre Open Source Software solutions, and staying well away from propriety software from companies like Microsoft and Apple is the answer. For server based products use only zero knowledge solutions. Furthermore one avoids using a "provider"  large or small, that has propriety systems that can be compromised. I fail to see the problem.

OK here is another scenario. You fund an account to make an off chain point of sale transaction. A 5 min wait time is acceptable while a 30 min wait time is not. There is a tradeoff here and we need to find the optimal solution.

Ideally yes. But the issue of orphan blocks raised by smooth is very valid. My take is getting a handle on the number of orphan blocks by monitoring the current network at various points may provide valuable data that can be used to make an informed decision. There is a tradeoff here.

Edit: While I was posting this a just showed up on my XMR node.

There are a host of scenarios where a 1 min block time can be very advantageous over a two min block time. We must keep in mind that were are dealing with the outlier event of say a 5 min confirmation vs a 10 min confirmation here also.  XMR.TO is a perfect case. With a 1 min blocktime on the XMR side there is a very high probability of meeting the 15 min transaction time set by XBT processors, with a 2 min blocktime on the XMR side this is no longer the case since there is a significant chance of an outlier 10 -12 min XMR confirmation that not allow for the 15min overall time limit.

Restaurant and bars are another example. Ever being out with a group of say 10 people and 8 of them pay by debit card or credit card? By the time the debit machine reaches the last person easily 10 min or more has elapsed. XMR or XBT transactions can be processed in parallel rather than in series for example by scanning a QR code printed on the bill with a smartphone. In this scenario XMR with a 1 min blocktime would beat debit while XBT with a 10 min blocktime would not. The target here is an average wait of 5 min with debit.

There may well be a very good case to increase the blocktime in XMR to say 2min; however if this is done it should be done promptly before more services that are dependent upon the 1 min blocktime are built on top of the network. We simply cannot predict what will be built on top of XMR. By the way XMR with 1 min blocktime is getting close to the theoretical limit, and I suspect that Vitalik's 12 sec confirmation could easily run afoul of the law of special relativity.

Edit: I will take a look at Vitalik's paper.

If I understand this correctly one can count the number of events on bitmonero.log vs the number of blocks that have elapsed to get measure of the orphan rate that one sees. If a representative sample of nodes monitor this then one should be able to get a handle on the orphan rate.

Bytecoin.org robots.txt

The incriminating User-agent: ia_archiver. This file can speak for itself

I am trying to find some statistics on the current orphan rate for Monero.

I am taking a look at the article. It does raise the question of where we expect network latency to go in the future, so a confirmation time that is sub optimal today could become optimal in the future.

The key is that the faster confirmation of 1 min allows for a finer grade of security in the confirmation of transactions. So with 1 minute block a merchant can choose between 0min 0 (confirmations) 1 min (1 confirmation 2 min (2 confirmations0 etc while with a two minute block the merchant only has the choice of 0min (0 confirmations)  2 min (1 confirmation (Edit:close to) equivalent to the previous 2 confirmations) etc. This can be critical for certain applications such as XMR.TO. The trade off is orphan blocks, which depends to a large degree on network speed and latency.

So the tail emission is now defined in the code and protected by the proof of work. I was concerned about this but alas no more concern. Excellent!!

0.0028 I see as a very strong support, then resistance and now support again, so I don't have an issue with the lower part of the trading range. I just do not see anything that special at 0.0045 in the charts. My take is that 0.0050 - 0.0058 range is a more likely place for the bears to make a stand. Furthermore the drop in XBT/USD, XBT/EUR etc since last summer would also tend to bias the trading range upwards.

I do not see a 0.0028 to 0.0045 trading range, rather I see an upwards trendline channel with very strong support at 0.0028 with two scenarios. 1) Continuation of the trendline channel with a test of 0.0050 and a possible test of 0.0058. A break of the upward trendline would be very bullish and could lead to a test of 0.010. 2) My second choice is a breakdown of the bottom trendline and possibly a break below 0.0028.  

So if the attacker controlling 80% of the coins also conducts 80% of the transactions among wallets under the attacker's control then the attack will work.

IANAL. In these situations legal advice is strongly recommended.

The critical difference here is that a wage garnishment is typically limited to 20%-30% of the take home pay while a bank account garnishment can go up to 100% of the funds on deposit. So if the employer pays in Bitcoin or Cash the creditors are limited to the 20%-30%; however if the employer deposits the wage into a bank the creditors can get 100% of the wages by a bank account garnishment. The other thing to keep in mind is that collection agencies typically go after the easy assets and that one of the purposes of collection calls is to try to get the debtor to reveal information about his or her assets or sources of income.
 
For this reason anyone who is afraid of creditors would avoid the banking system and stick to cash and crypto-currency unless they go into bankruptcy or some kind of creditor proposal. There is a reason for the popularity of cheque cashing stores.

There is also the question of practicality it is way cheaper for a creditor to get a bank account garnishment than to get the courts to force a debtor to reveal a Bitcoin private key.

One of the advantages of having some XBT in this kind of situation is that the XBT can be used to pay for legal advice, particularly as is often the case when collection agencies step on the wrong side of the law.


Edit: The choice between Bitcoin and a bank account in this situation could easily be between the creditors getting 30% of take home pay or the creditors getting 100% of take home pay.