No. If there is a breaking change then BitcoinA won't see blocks from BitcoinB as valid and vice versa. They both would exist independently until one chain is completely abandoned (a 100% consensus event).
It is possible that one chain might accept blocks from the other. For example, suppose some people start running an enhanced client that subdivides satoshis into tenths, but still accepts previously well-formed blocks. Then you might have a situation where the new BitcoinB accepts its own customized chain for awhile, then suddenly rejects itself when the work in BitcoinA is greater than the work in BitcoinB. It might oscillate for awhile generating blocks, then rejecting them, then building out the chain a little more. |
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Except that the cryptocurrency microcosm at the moment is a finite relatively small number of people and generally when people choose an altchain they are doing it at the expense of supporting the bitcoin ecosystem (on whatever level you consider them "supporting" it).
Thought question: I played with testnet last night. Did that come at the expense of supporting the bitcoin ecosystem? |
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How easy was it to mine when Bitcoin just came out? I just arrived at this scene. Heard about it years ago and feel really bad I didn't jump in sooner. Oh well, it's still young. It should be a good investment for the next couple of years.
Unless you have an advantage for mining or already have an investment in mining, I think the most profitable thing you can do for bitcoin and for yourself is to run a business in the bitcoin economy and make it profitable. What good or service can you sell to bitcoiners? Start thinking about that, and you'll probably be able to do better than you would mining. |
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Thanks! It looks like the testnet faucet worked, as well.
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Also where can I buy bitcoins in stupidly small amounts like £1 (GBP), £5 etc? Does a service for this exist yet? You might try coinbase.com or bitinstant.com. For coinbase, you will need a US bank account. From the GBP symbol, I'm betting that's probably out for you. |
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Fantastic! Will you be able to handle carry out orders at some point?
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Is this currently working? I tried to do a transfer, and it said it sent one testnet BTC, but the total amount it says it has didn't go down. If somebody could send a testnet coin or two to muc6ULwWdAPAHtETQGLFbXJM9xp4xJEqhi, I'd be grateful and would return back to the sending address or wherever you specify. |
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Fantastic! Can you handle carryout orders as well?
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Fixed! Thank you, theymos and other forum admins!
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 I got into the RSS feed, but can't figure out how you are able to reply to posts. I can't view posts directly to reply. |
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When I try to click threads from the "show unread posts since last visit" page tonight, I get this error: " Template Parse Error! It seems something has gone sour on the forum with the template system. This problem should only be temporary, so please come back later and try again. If you continue to see this message, please contact the administrator. You can also try refreshing this page. " The URLs off of that page look like this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=138924.0;topicseenIt wasn't doing this a couple hours ago. Not sure if there's performance issues or what. |
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At least this action will shut up the idiots starting "We'll never get to < insert price > ever again."
Amazing to behold.
We are never going to be certain again about what prices we will never reach again. |
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. . . 100% of the network would have to agree to allow you to transfer a smaller precision than currently allowed . . .
I assume you are talking about changing the protocol. In which case I FTFY. As I understand it, it depends on the change. If the old blocks will continue to be valid in the new protocol, then you will need 51+% so that the chain with the more precision is longer. If the old blocks will be invalid, then any percentage will work because you've basically just created a new cryptocurrency. If the new blocks are not valid under the old protocol, then the blockchain will fork . . . And eventually all of that will get sorted out, as the market will develop mechanisms for dealing with those uncertainties and people make their own personal decisions about which blockchain or blockchains they want to stay with. Exactly, but unless/until the new protocol has 100% of the hash rate, the old protocol will still exist. It isn't enough for 51% of the network to agree to change the protocol. Any protocol change requires a consensus (100%), otherwise the blockchain forks. Now it is possible for the blockchain to fork for a while, and then eventually for everyone to abandon one fork or the other, but until one of the forks is abandoned, you have 2 separate cryptocurrencies. Right, and that may sort out by one version winning, or it might sort out by both versions coexisting indefinitely, or for a very long time. This could happen even if less than 50% adopts a new protocol. |
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I agree with all of this, but if there are people willing to take the risk and pay for batch #2 now, why should the buyers or Avalon wait? If nobody is willing to take that risk, Avalon will have to do as you suggest. But if sufficient numbers of people are willing to pay for batch #2 now, then Avalon can go ahead and people who want to be safer will just have to wait for batch #3 or later, right? People who want to bungie jump without a tested cord shouldn't be told they have to wait until the cord is tested for people who want to be safer, IMO.
That's kind of my thinking as well... Avalon can post batch #2 for sale whenever they want, and people can order if they believe they are legitimate. Anyone who wants to wait to see more proof can wait to see more proof. It's a free market. The problem is that if they are a scam, this just proves that BTC people in general tend to be gullible and naive, swayed by the blindfolds of promised profits. There have been some pretty large scams in the past, and we don't need another giant one. It just hurts the Bitcoin economy in the end. Some people will pay dearly for this education. Others will obtain it for free. Hopefully the end result will be a better educated bitcoin economy. |
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. . . 100% of the network would have to agree to allow you to transfer a smaller precision than currently allowed . . .
I assume you are talking about changing the protocol. In which case I FTFY. As I understand it, it depends on the change. If the old blocks will continue to be valid in the new protocol, then you will need 51+% so that the chain with the more precision is longer. If the old blocks will be invalid, then any percentage will work because you've basically just created a new cryptocurrency. If the new blocks are not valid under the old protocol, then the blockchain will fork. There will be 2 blockchains that share the same blocks up to the point where it forks. Then those miners and users that run the new protocol will see only new protocol blocks added from that point, and miners and users that continue with the old protocol will continue to see old protocol blocks added from that point. If the new blocks are valid under the old protocol, then you haven't really changed the protocol (since the protocol is what defines what is valid). If even one miner continues to mine using the old protocol, then the "original" bitcoin protocol will continue to exist, and anyone who runs the new protocol will be running something different than bitcoin that the users happens to be trying to call bitcoin. If any significant number of miners and users stay on the old protocol you will end up with two separate systems both trying to call themselves the "real" bitcoin. There will be a period of uncertainty when you won't know if the payment you are making on "your" bitcoin will be received on the "receivers" bitcoin unless you first determine which protocol they are using. A user of the old protocol who still has unspent outputs in the blockchain from before the split will be able to "double spend" their bitcoins, sending them once to someone on the new protocol (which nobody on the old protocol will see), and then again to somebody on the old protocol (since they will appear to be unspent there). And eventually all of that will get sorted out, as the market will develop mechanisms for dealing with those uncertainties and people make their own personal decisions about which blockchain or blockchains they want to stay with. |
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Bitcoin otoh is not shiny at all outside of the context of bitcoin. So without the network actually functioning it is just a pile of bits and not shiny at all. The network functioned for 503 days before somebody bought a pizza with bitcoins, so the bitcoins were quite shiny by then and promised to continue to be shiny for the foreseeable future. |
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I think this is very shiny: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdfIt is the first thing I read and I was hooked. Haven't been able to get enough since, but then again I've got a degree in Math and Computer Science, and most people would laugh at me for being turned on by a whitepaper. I know exactly what you mean!! |
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In case of gold you are left with a shiny metal that you can look at.
In the case of bitcoin you have a blob of data. Yes, but for people interested in cryptography, it's a scintillating blob! |
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