Until there is a better solution, waste is relative. It's quite easy to suggest that the Bitcoin network is wasteful. Designing and implementing a less wasteful solution to achieve the same ends, on the other hand, probably isn't as easy. I'm not sure anyone was suggesting the current implementation is the only imaginable solution, but perhaps they were.

As it stands, the Bitcoin network is a working solution. I hope you don't mind if I use such a terribly wasteful solution while I wait for some bright fellow to implement a less wasteful solution?

Or making mining as expensive and complicated as possible by using a BigBang Marshall? 

If we have easy credit to allow for growth like we had in the last century, I hope you are prepared for the obvious outcome.

Maybe it's time to rethink how we live our lives and start to focus on saving (resources and money) instead of spending and excessive consumption.

There was indeed a noticeable effect when deepbit first went down to the DDOS.

In the hour after the attack the network only solved 2 blocks. It improved from that point on, but it still wasn't great. That certainly isn't desirable or what I would call healthy.

127555    2201f7d916...    2011-05-29 22:41:30    43    1472.65095723    21.143
127554    15fa32c760...    2011-05-29 22:13:38    37    877.09812426    23.145
127553    1de06a4a0a...    2011-05-29 21:46:22    47    2052.27689526    17.552

Miners are slow to notice, slow to react, and I suspect some didn't bother switching at all.

I wonder how many miners would even bother (or are capable) to set up back-up solo mining if a coordinated attack was able to shut down 4-5 major pools.

This instead of the halving block rewards? Is this from the fear that fees won't provide enough incentive to mine?

Suggesting that Bitcoins are not worth what they are currently fetching in the open market (which is exactly what you are doing in the quoted text) is as dishonest as suggesting they are worth more than what they are currently fetching in the open market.

By suggesting that it is unethical to sell at the moment, you clearly demonstrate that you feel the price is too high. After all, there would be no conflict with your ethics if the price was too low (or just right), regardless of how they were promoted.

Also, by holding your Bitcoins you are effectively limiting the supply on the market, which will increase the price.

Finally, you can sell your Bitcoins for any price you wish, regardless of what the market suggests.

If you were being honest about your reasons for not selling (which you had to make a point about), you would make an offer at the price you feel is fair, and sell your coins to anyone who meets your offer.

 

I've always mined at a loss (in relation to other currencies).

So, I have a hard time with this poll.

How many BTC for that house? 1/5th of all BTC in existence (at current exchange rates)? 

Doh! Thanks for fixing my error.

http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000839a8e6886ab5951d76f411475428afc90947ee320161bbf18eb6048

Edit: Wrong Block.

The motives are as endless as the human imagination. Profit does not necessarily have to be at the top of the list. Look at the amount of people who come into the forums and complain about Bitcoin.

Since we are speculating.

It's more likely that people will ignore "Plus" because it was never bootstrapped, and probably wouldn't have bootstrapped at all because of the massive amount of inflation that would have had to occur to make the early Bitcoins worth less, and is only attempting to ride on the coattails of Bitcoin while pretending that bootstrapping a new currency is not worth anything.

But you should really make it anyway. 

Hmm... interesting.


Oh, now I see.

The work is essential to securing Bitcoin transactions, and thus Bitcoin itself. It has to be lots of easily verifiable busy work so that someone who wants to cheat the system has to match the entire system's strength worth of busy work to even attempt to break the system. Read up on it, interesting stuff.

Of course, I realize this.

"So you are attempting to retroactively change the rules that bootstrapped the current BTC economy."

Attempting means you are going to promote switching to a new chain that for all practical purposes had massive inflation during the bootstrapping process. But you are skipping the bootstrapping process, piggybacking off Bitcoin's bootstrapping success with it's rule set, and hoping people will switch.

It's a bit different then just starting a new chain with massive inflation during the bootstrapping.

You don't understand variance. That's OK, some do.

You use less power which in turn saves you money.

All this amounts to is increasing the block reward with hashing power. And you get to determine when the block reward stops inflating.

Low difficulty coins are worth less (50 BTC mined at the start are 1 BTP now)
High difficulty coins are worth more (50 BTC mined now are 50 BTP)

Low difficulty reward 1 BTP
High difficulty reward 50 BTP

Low difficulty = Less hashing power
High difficulty = More hashing power

So you are attempting to retroactively change the rules that bootstrapped the current BTC economy.

It's a bit sneakier than starting a new block chain and and increasing the block reward with the difficulty (which is massive inflation).

It will be interesting to see how it works out. I wonder how many miners you will get when they realize you can simply introduce Bitcoin Plus Plus in two years and turn their efforts to dust.  After all, it will be unfair to the people joining in two years that we are able to mine so easily now.

I wonder if any BTC will get destroyed in the process. Such a risk to take when it will increase the value of all other BTC in existence.

Here I'll give you guys a hand. This guy will work on your project with you. http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9487.0

I just realized, this could be valuable information. 

There is a patch cable you can buy to serve those purposes. I've never used it so I can't direct you to a site. Perhaps someone else can.

Are you on drugs?