|
Edit: There are alternatives.
|
|
|
|
The app looks great. I would want that for my iPhone. Do you know if he plans to release that as well?
iPhone support will likely have to wait because of Apple's censorship of applications. People need to understand that their choice in operating systems has consequences. For example: I was busy buying XBT in late 2011 and 2012 in the 2 USD to 6 USD range. If one waited to purchase XBT for approval from the Apple censorship board the price is more in the 450 - 650 USD range. iPhone users that waited for Apple's permission are now able to purchase XBT at a 10000% mark-up from GNU/Linux and Android/Linux users such as myself.  |
|
|
|
Actually coins that are mined with ASICS and FPGAS are not vulnerable since these devices run GNU/Linux. http://www.wired.com/2014/08/isp-bitcoin-theft/Enough devices were redirected to mine ~$83,000 worth of coins. GNU/Linux is FLOSS and also has enough GPLv3 code deep inside the OS to ensure that the owner of the has to be provided with root access. So much wrong. There is no GPLv3-only code 'deep inside the OS', because Linux is licensed under GPLv2. And there are millions of linux based devices out there for which the owner has not been provided with root access. This is a case where the distinction between GNU/Linux the operating system and Linux the kernel is critical. The advent of Android as an alternative to GNU has made the old Stallman/Torvalds polemic highly relevant here. Linux the kernel is GPL v2, but a host of critical OS components in GNU/Linux starting with parts of the GNU toolchain are GPL v3. Android combined with certain BSD tools can be used to create operating systems using the Linux kernel that are subject to tivoization by avoiding the GPL v3 components. If one loosely refers to both kinds of operating systems as "Linux" then confusion will occur. One should also keep in mind that old versions of GNU/Linux 2007 and earlier that preceded the GPL v3 are of course also subject to tivoization. The latter is the reason why Amazon moved from GNU/Linux to Android/Linux for the Kindle after the release of the GPL v3. DRM infections in order to delete works such as George Orwell's 1984 do not work on recent versions of GNU/Linux and Amazon wished to keep the option to control and manipulate its customers. The Canadian ISP hack attack is a different issue. There again the choice of an ISP is critical. The article does not identify the ISP culprit. The one thing I know here is that avoiding Rogers as an ISP is the prudent thing to do. We recently saw a Canadian Bitcoin exchange hacked because of the incompetence of Rogers at the data centre level. |
|
|
|
I am going to focus on the botnet issue because it is the only valid criticism I have seen of XMR among pages and pages of anti XMR posts. As fluffypony has correctly pointed out above virtually every POW coin and all POS coins are vulnerable to this. The notable exceptions at this point is XBT, and coins such as NMC that are merged mined with XBT because of ASIC mining. To understand and deal with this issue we must go to the root cause and recognize a fundamental flaw in distributed crypto currency models: The solution here is to move the functions critical to the security of a coin away from DRM infected propriety operating systems such as Microsoft Windows to FLOSS operating systems such as GNU/Linux. In particular with a POW coin this means mining. This can be accomplished in a CPU / GPU coin by developing, releasing and supporting mining software only on GNU/Linux, and even going as far as avoiding cross platform development tools for the mining components. Making the mining software highly optimized for GNU/Linux. Targeting the ARM platform for mining is also a possibility. The idea is to make mining the coin far more efficient on GNU/Linux than on Microsoft Windows thereby putting botnets at a significant disadvantage.
This excludes that vast majority including over 98% of desktop / laptop computers running propriety Microsoft Windows or OS X
Since when do people not get root access on OSX or have control of their system? Sure Apple has a walled garden with gatekeeper and AMFI by default, a user can override this if they wish. It's not really DRM as much as it is codesigning enforcement. All coins are of course vulnerable to botnet mining, CPU coins especially so. The largest XMR miner on minergate, botnet also. There are numerous ones mining XMR, and more will come for sure as the coin increases in value & exposure. I the don't see it as huge issue personally, botherder tend to dump regularly instead of hoard. In some cases the market will feel no impact, because smart accumulator comes along with some webmoney to speak with, for all he knows is a AWS miner. Trying (and failing) to relegate CPU/GPU PoW on 'gnu/linux' than windows won't fix anything in long-term and it simply creates an uneven playing field and diminishes the user base Actually coins that are mined with ASICS and FPGAS are not vulnerable since these devices run GNU/Linux. To have control of one's computing devices one needs both root (obviously) and a FLOSS OS since a propriety OS involves trusting the OS vendor typically a large corporation that there a no "malicious features" in the OS. If furthermore the OS is infected with DRM security analysis of the OS becomes illegal because of anti-circumvention laws. This discourages the good guys but not the bad guys. The bottom line here is that an OS vendor can either make the security and privacy of the end user paramount or the security and greed of organizations such as the MPAA, NFL etc paramount, but not both. One simply cannot serve two masters and no matter hard Microsoft or Apple tries they will fail to protect the end user. GNU/Linux is FLOSS and also has enough GPLv3 code deep inside the OS to ensure that the owner of the has to be provided with root access. OS X comes close for historical reasons; since it does have a fair amount of FLOSS in the OS and the "owner" of a Apple PC is still granted access to root by Apple. The problem here is that Apple has built a hugely successful business around DRM infected locked down devices in IOS. Furthermore code signing is how DRM is enforced in IOS, and it is a gatekeeper "upgrade" away in OS X. In the meantime any GNU/Linux optimized code can easily be ported to OS X. Microsoft Windows is another matter. The operating system source code is a closely guarded secret when it comes to individuals and small business but it is provided on a regular basis to "trusted" partners such as the NSA (United States), the FSB (Russia) the PLA (China), and a host of other governments and large corporations. Microsoft is also a founding member of PRISM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29. If you are a Microsoft Windows user I suggest reading the EULA in particular the section on "malicious software" Who determines if software is malicious? If one clicks "I agree" on the EULA one has given permission to Microsoft to remove crypto-currency software including files such as wallet.dat, wallet.bin etc., should a crypto-currency be deemed "malicious" by a government or by Microsoft itself. When it comes to POW coins it is very important to recognize that most users do not need to be securing the network. All that is needed for this task is a widely distributed group of individuals that have complete control over their computing devices. It is for this reason that when it comes to mining the use of GNU/Linux must be encouraged and the use of Microsoft Windows discouraged. The objective here is to create a strong enough network of secure computers mining on GNU/Linux rather than to try to prevent mining on Microsoft Windows. Regular users should of course be able to use Microsoft Windows, just as they should be able to provide their private keys to the NSA, the FSB, the PLA, etc. if they should also choose. Edit: Windows botnets are really a symptom of a much worse problem. |
|
|
|
I am going to focus on the botnet issue because it is the only valid criticism I have seen of XMR among pages and pages of anti XMR posts. As fluffypony has correctly pointed out above virtually every POW coin and all POS coins are vulnerable to this. The notable exceptions at this point is XBT, and coins such as NMC that are merged mined with XBT because of ASIC mining. To understand and deal with this issue we must go to the root cause and recognize a fundamental flaw in distributed crypto currency models: The false assumption that most people particularly consumers actually control their computing devices The only people that have real control are those who run a FLOSS operating system such as GNU/Linux or Android/Linux and have root access to their computer or device. This excludes that vast majority including over 98% of desktop / laptop computers running propriety Microsoft Windows or OS X and almost all mobile devices with the exception of rooted Android or some GNU/Linux based devices. There are two kinds of attacks here: 1) DRM based attacks. In this scenario the operating system vendor uses the DRM built into a propriety operating system to attack the coin. Since all popular propriety operating systems are infected with DRM this kind of attack can happen any time, either by the OS vendor on their own accord or at the request of a government actor. The best example of this is the attack by Apple on XBT since XBT's inception in 2009 until earlier this year on the Apple IOS platform. 2) Malware / botnet based attacks. These are most common on Microsoft Windows since this OS is particularly vulnerable to malware. The reasons behind this are beyond this discussion. The solution here is to move the functions critical to the security of a coin away from DRM infected propriety operating systems such as Microsoft Windows to FLOSS operating systems such as GNU/Linux. In particular with a POW coin this means mining. This can be accomplished in a CPU / GPU coin by developing, releasing and supporting mining software only on GNU/Linux, and even going as far as avoiding cross platform development tools for the mining components. Making the mining software highly optimized for GNU/Linux. Targeting the ARM platform for mining is also a possibility. The idea is to make mining the coin far more efficient on GNU/Linux than on Microsoft Windows thereby putting botnets at a significant disadvantage. |
|
|
|
...
The escrow would auto-close the positions, and could hold some of the aggregate escrowed BTC in the exchange. (Auto-closing would happen in exchange, not OTC). If the auto-close does not happen as expected, the loss would be on the escrow who failed it. They are naturally getting compensated for their service, so it is not an all-lose proposition.
I believe it can be done with mature and liquid coins such as XMR and LTC, quite easily. With volatile coins, the BTC guarantee just needs to be that much higher.
The escrowed XBT are kept in the exchange where a market order to buy XMR is triggered when 115% is reached. If the slippage plus commission is less than 15% then it would work. This also assumes the exchange does not temporarily stop trading as a "circuit breaker" on the market. Black Monday in stocks, October 19, 1987, comes to mind here. A sharp fall or rise triggered by a cascade of margin calls. More recently this type of spike has been seen with XBT on BTC-E for the same reason. Some risk to the lender still remains. This risk can be mitigated, but not eliminated entirely. Yes, you are right. A short (theoretically) has unlimited downside, and it is of course not possible to have unlimited guarantees. This can be mitigated with higher guarantees when the coin has a history or anticipated future of quick upside moves. Also it is possible to just vest some of the risk to the lender, such as a stipulation that if the coin moves up more than 50% in 24 hours, then the excess gains are kept by the service. It also explains why you are interested in shorting BTSX. After spending time studying the BTSX wiki http://bitshares-x.info/ it becomes clear to me that a sharp drop in the price of BTSX relative to the price weighted average of the secured assets bitUSD, bitXBT. bitEUR, bitXAU, etc. can cause a cascade of margin calls leading to a complete loss of confidence in the BTSX system. Depending on the overall percentage of BTSX that are securing other assets something in the order of a 50% drop could be enough to set off a cascading panic starting like the October 19, 1987 stock market crash only to become far worse. |
|
|
|
...
The escrow would auto-close the positions, and could hold some of the aggregate escrowed BTC in the exchange. (Auto-closing would happen in exchange, not OTC). If the auto-close does not happen as expected, the loss would be on the escrow who failed it. They are naturally getting compensated for their service, so it is not an all-lose proposition.
I believe it can be done with mature and liquid coins such as XMR and LTC, quite easily. With volatile coins, the BTC guarantee just needs to be that much higher.
The escrowed XBT are kept in the exchange where a market order to buy XMR is triggered when 115% is reached. If the slippage plus commission is less than 15% then it would work. This also assumes the exchange does not temporarily stop trading as a "circuit breaker" on the market. Black Monday in stocks, October 19, 1987, comes to mind here. A sharp fall or rise triggered by a cascade of margin calls. More recently this type of spike has been seen with XBT on BTC-E for the same reason. Some risk to the lender still remains. This risk can be mitigated, but not eliminated entirely. |
|
|
|
I am not so sure. If XMR/XBT decides to spike during a XBT/USD bull market that way that LTC, NMC and even PPC spiked in the past this kind of thing can blow up real fast, not just for the short seller / borrower but also for the lender. I would be more the buyer of the shorted XMR who then takes delivery and waits for the whole short position to blow up.
Edit: Something about this reminds me of early 2012 when I was buying and taking delivery of XBT, while pirateat40 was busy building his massive XBT short position.
What do you think is problematic in the following scheme: - OTC market where people can list bids and asks for altcoin loans (maturity; sum; interest) - When match is made, the escrow takes full guarantee (typically 150% of the loan in BTC) - The altcoin is transferred from the lender's wallet to the borrower (that typically sells it) - Margin call when margin is less than 30%, forced liquidation at 15% (by the escrow) - At maturity, the borrower must have bought back the altcoin, return it with interest, and gets the escrowed BTC back. With say margin call at 130%. In a sharply rising market first finding a willing seller of XMR and then even transferring the XBT to the seller before the position drops to 100% then 90%, 80% etc. In short the lender of the XMR could end up having to panic buy ending up with the position closed at a loss in XMR and an un-collectible debt. The logistics of this can also be significant. For example even waiting for the required XBT confirmations in a fast moving market. |
|
|
|
...
Overall, I would venture to guess that BTSX has more short-term upside than e.g. XMR, and much, much less long-term upside. I am more confident of the latter than I am of the former, so I'm not playing it.
I wish there were a vehicle for shorting it (BTSX). But I wish that about almost every alt blockchain token. It should be possible to identify some of the large holders and negotiate with them a loan of BTSX. Then you just sell them to the market and hope to be buying back lower when the term expires. Sure there are practical issues with the interest rate and guarantee. I'd think that if this market would be structured around a central (or distributed) escrow that takes the full number of BTC as a guarantee from the borrower (short-seller), then the lender would be at peace that he is not being defaulted upon. The variable interest rate would make sure that there can be no collusion between the altcoin owners (" we don't participate in this activity"). Actually this is a sweet idea, properly done. I'd like to loan out my XMR against interest to the uninformed people that believe it will fall. I am not so sure. If XMR/XBT decides to spike during a XBT/USD bull market that way that LTC, NMC and even PPC spiked in the past this kind of thing can blow up real fast, not just for the short seller / borrower but also for the lender. I would be more the buyer of the shorted XMR who then takes delivery and waits for the whole short position to blow up. Edit: Something about this reminds me of early 2012 when I was buying and taking delivery of XBT, while pirateat40 was busy building his massive XBT short position. |
|
|
|
|
I have made an additional donation of 534.80 XMR, and sent to PM fluffypony with copy to cAPSLOCK.
|
|
|
|
After replacing the linux binaries and running I get Illegal instruction (core dumped) Operating System, Ubuntu 12.04 64bit Monero was originally installed using the compilation script http://www.monero.cc/blog/new-version-installation-script-now-cpuminer-installation-support-ubuntu-12-04/index.html on 2014-07-13 Edit1: Should I rerun the script and recompile? Edit2: I renamed bitmonero to bitmoneroback, ran (to recompile from source) git clone git://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero && cd bitmonero && make and then copied wallet.bin, and wallet.bin.keys, to ~/bitmonero/build/release/src and now everything works fine. |
|
|
|
...
This is not the case for bitcoin or any alts derived from the bitcoin codebase. All transactions are publicly viewable. In paralell to the cash analogy for Monero, you can think of using Bitcoin is like credit card transactions that have been recorded and can be reviewed by other people.
A better analogy is comparing XBT to cash where the serial number on each bill offered for tender and those received in change is recorded in a public database, with the additional provision that anyone can print new bills with the requirement that an equivalent amount of existing bills are destroyed. |
|
|
|
|
The most simple explanation for XMR replacing LTC on Poloniex: Trading volume of LTC and XMR on Poloniex
|
|
|
|
...
Some will probably get processed by non-updated mining nodes. If there are too many and they don't get confirmed within 24 hours they will get dropped and need to be resent.
Thank you |
|
|
|
Monero is currently under attack with a spam attack, while no other CN coin seems to be. The attacker is spamming tx with random, large mixins (initially only mixin 101 was used, until I called them out on it in the official thread).
And what is the problem with these txs? Are they invalid? Does it take too much effort to decide their validity? If so, couldn't you require that all tx come with a small and instantly verifiable proof-of-work, whose difficulty scales with tx validity checking effort? They are perfectly legitimate, perfectly valid transactions. But because we have an unusually low transaction fee the attacker is spamming the blockchain with dumb tx's. The solution is to bump the fee temporarily (in github, mandatory update, new binaries on the way), and to prioritise per-kb tx fees, which were previously on a 2-4 week start date. What then happens to unconfirmed transactions when the upgrade occurs? |
|
|
|
The correct date for one year from start of emission should be 17.04.2015 not 22.08.2015 17.04.2015 7,276,274 15,361 0.21% 10.667361 |
|
|
|
- Adaptive limits. No artificial 1MB blocksize limit
- Fast 60 second block confirmations
|
|
|
|
Have you tried downloading the client? Everything is clunky and slow. I'm not really big on Cryptonote, but I tried Boolberry, just to see if the problem was endemic to Cryptonote, and it isn't. Boolberry was basically one click, fast and everything worked. Using Monero gave me the perception that it was put together by incompetents. These people are holding up a pile of shit and claiming that it's gold. The community is literally full of megalomaniac delusionals. At least put some effort into usability!
I'm sorry, but what you see as the difference between "hard to use" and "easy to use" is completely nuanced. You're like a fandroid arguing that sideloading with adb is much easier in 2.3, and everyone should just use 2.3. Usability is not an overnight exercise. Are BBR's binary builds significantly easier to use for the handful of somewhat technically capable cryptonerds on this forum? Absolutely. Why is Monero not matching those? Because we're exceedingly busy overhauling the core of Monero: https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/tree/development to make room for improved usability. To wit: our next tagged release will include static compilation, but will not include a GUI. Why? Because a good GUI is not thrown together in a vague attempt to be "first". A GUI requires pragmatism, forethought, and careful planning. Here's an example of how that process works: http://imgur.com/a/ERheRI for one prefer to see resources at this point invested in a solid foundation rather than a pretty exterior, which is why I have chosen to invest in and support Monero. A quality GUI will come in time, that is a risk I have chosen to take at this time. For those for whom a quality GUI is a must before investing, the proper course of action is to wait for the GUI to come out, review it, and then decide if to invest in and support Monero. |
|
|
|
I voted 0.25 USD a day since this is a reasonable cost of a VPN. Nevertheless one needs to be convinced that is setup provides a level of anonymity at least equal to that of TOR with much better performance. Essentially a paid version of TOR. By the way I hold XMR as an investment and no DRK so this is strictly from the point of view of a comparison with TOR.
It cant, tor is only resonable secure because of its sheer amount of users. Not to mention that every exitnode can sniff traffic and tor itself makes more sense for internal onion browsing and not as a bridge to the www. then u need a browserbundle which is perfectly tight at security. And tons of tordir and bridgeservers, middlenodes etc. And the legal problems... makes sense to earn 20 cent a day and risk jail for that. And if u think you can make that better than a million funded and 10 year old project with a shitton of security experts you must be totally insane. Those selling the product need to make the case that the privacy and anonymity is at least equivalent to that of TOR. Furthermore the fact that the US Government has contributed to the development of a Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Project is irrelevant since by the very nature of FLOSS the source code is publicly available and subject to independent third party audit and review. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
