A few years ago, blockchain.info scraped bitcointalk signatures for addresses and then generated tags for all the addresses they found. I don't know if they still do that.

After they refused to remove my tag, I removed the address from my signature and sent all the funds at that address through a mixer somewhere else.

Sorry, your proof is insufficient. I was active for a year before I registered an account at Bitcointalk. They could have also been active without registering accounts.

I agree. I'm pointing out that the marginal cost of the orphan risk could be very low. The result would be low miner revenue and thus insufficient deterrence of a 51% attack.

Also, note that artificially limiting the size of the blocks does not eliminate this risk because transactions can move to cheaper off-chain systems such as LN with the same result.

Nobody controls the transaction fee amounts. It is up to each individual miner to decide whether they want to include a transaction or not, and up to each node whether they want to relay a transaction or not.

So, there are no arguments to discuss.

Are you instead looking for predictions on the future of transaction fees? I think DannyHamilton provided a decent analysis. However, it is not clear that assumption #1 is a good assumption.


It is possible that economic incentive for miners to limit the number of transactions in their blocks is very low, and that could mean very low transaction fees if there is no artificial limit to the block size. As a result, mining revenue may not be sufficient to pay for maintaining the integrity of the block chain as the subsidy decreases.

Very nice summary. I never feel motivated enough to do such a thorough analysis every time someone asks, "should I mine bitcoins?", so I applaud your work.

Bitcoin value does not work like the values of stocks, oil, or gold.

Stocks have underlying value because companies produce things of value. Bitcoin does not.
Oil is consumed. If production goes to 0, so does the supply. Bitcoins are not consumed (except for lost coins).
Gold production depends on the price of gold. Bitcoin production is fixed.

Another word for "self perpetuating snowball effect" is "bubble". Bubbles pop.

I'm puzzled by all this talk about "the halving price". The halving itself has no effect on the price other than reducing the downward pressure of an ever-increasing supply.

Miners are free to include or exclude any transactions for any reason (as long as the included transactions are valid).

Since I am suspicious of BitClub, I am suspicious of the whole episode.

It is possible for Bitclub to have inserted the transaction into their block (without transmitting over the network to other miners).

It would have cost them nothing, and they could gain a favorable opinion by returning the bitcoins to themselves.


Danny, I'm curious why you write that the "from" address is just a guess. The transaction inputs all refer to ouputs in standard pay-to-pubkey-hash transactions with an address of 1QgT...agbh

So TA tells us that at some point the price will either go up, go down, or stay the same. Very insightful.

Here is one way of estimating the value: Assume 100% adoption means that all the money in the world is replaced by bitcoins. The base money supply is about $14 trillion. If that were replaced by the 15 million bitcoins in circulation, each bitcoin would be worth about $900,000. Take that number with a grain of salt. There are other significant factors.

The separate 2 and 3 BTC amounts would be combined when sent normally, but it is possible to do it differently, as Shorena pointed out.

Articles about reddit posts are stupid. Here is the post if you are really interested in the story: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4g6u85/1btcxe_ripped_me_off/

I hope the majority don't believe that the price depends on the difficulty because that is a misconception. The price depends on supply and demand and the difficulty has no bearing on supply or demand.

Consider these two scenarios:

1. You spend 4 hours a day 5 days a week clicking of faucets and spamming the forums. By the end of each week your earn 0.02 to 0.1 BTC.
2. You spend 4 hours a day 5 days a week working for minimum wage (in the U.S.). By the end of each week, you earn $150 and buy 0.3 BTC.

You say you prefer #1, but that seems like a poor choice to me.

The fastest, easiest, and most convenient way to obtain bitcoins is to buy them.

Here is the part mentioning Bitcoin:

Don't bother. Barely even a mention of Bitcoin in the article.

Miners will stop mining because if it currently costs them 15 BTC to mine a block (for example) and the subsidy drops to 12.5 BTC, then they will turn off the least efficient equipment until the cost drops below 12.5 BTC per block.