I think a simpler explanation is that journalists love a human interest angle that can turn an otherwise dry story about finance and technology into something more exciting (ooooh criminals! oooh price swings!). And the mining part is just the usual thing you see when trying to compress a hugely complicated topic down into a couple of sentences. I've seen much worse attempts.
I also wrote a longer piece for them which should be going live today. It focuses on Bitcoin's innovation vs the lack of it from the banking sector.
Saw the quote of yours about banks moving fiat by steamboat, or gold by camels in Mongolia.  Exactly the message they need to illustrate that we have a 19th century banking system in a 21st century world. |
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Possibly. Assume Bitcoin gets to $3000. Would they leave $22 million unsearched for? Fence off the whole area, shift by hand the top 2 meters of rubbish (portable conveyor to pile it aside?) The disk could be found and the coins recovered. |
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The OP is overlooking the power of the mining network. 5,000 Thash and ramping up further means the Bitcoin blockchain is very secure. This will keep a floor under the BTC value. It would not be surprising to see some major firms get into ASIC production now that $1000 is breached.
Most alt-coins use scrypt, so they compete with LTC directly. LTC also has a major test coming up as an ASIC is in development. Whoever gets there first might have a real window to take over 50% of the LTC hashpower. This will make people nervous for a while.
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How many GH per watt do ASICMiner et al get?
It's quite variable, based upon the stats in the main chart ("Complete ASIC Hardware") http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/ASICminer (blade) is 7 Watts/GH, Avalon 10, BFL 6, BitFury & KnC 1-1.5 So, the mining power consumption has broadly been in 3 levels: 650 W/GH until end-Feb 8 W/GH March through June 2 W/GH Since July but will drop below 1 early next year. Rough numbers, but perhaps usable |
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That article is about as negative as it is possible to be while reporting good news. I bet they were gushing all over Google when its share price topped $1,000.
They are incapable of trying to understand Bitcoin properly, because it is so revolutionary.
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Be cheerful guys, we just came out from a parabolic growth phase unharmed and without a bear market following a pop. On the contrary, we resumed a healthy upswing at a sustainable pace.
Now we need the infrastructure to catch up. Bitstamp and Gox cannot manage world exposure. I never thought I would say this, but best thing would be a big player buying Gox to build a serious and solid exchange.
Calling WU. |
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Great blog post to clear the fog of disinformation.
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Awesome. Now that you mention it, I do remember it hitting $1000 in Chinese exchanges, but this is way more exciting to follow.
Thanks for answering!
During that mania someone paid $3,600 per btc, which must be the world record so far. |
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It's about time to switch to displaying mBTC...
I think this needs to be done in a more sophisticated manner via the user configurable options and, ideally, a fx-rate feed from a source like bitcoinaverage. Perhaps Armory users could select either BTC or mBTC, and choose their favorite fiat as a reference so that a converted value can also be displayed as the blockchain.info wallet does. It all helps users avoid mistakes like overpaying amounts or fees. |
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Still nothing from my June and July withdrawal. I think I'm about to suck it up, take my cash, and buy in at $800 at essentially 1/8 my original Bitcoins sold. Lesson learned, never use Gox again.
Check again, $960 on Gox now. They have inadvertently crucified their customers who accepted the TwoWeeks TM mantra. |
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So you're on btc forum betting on btc price, but the bet is in fiat? Countdown update: less than 3 1/2 days to 1000. $50 away No. 4 days ago I told everyone that judging by the correction in March, that this correction would break out and hit $1000 by Friday night. And I've just been reminding people to get on the north train ever since. We are going to FLY through $1000 like butter. Wake me up at $1300-1400. (then again, I might just be getting overconfident) Looking at this daily vol is 3x normal levels. Expecting a sell-off of old coins once $1,000 is consistently breached. Profit-taking mostly and some weak hands. Total Output Volume 3,943,461.85419935 BTC https://blockchain.info/statsMight be choppy for a while, but that $800 level the medium-term floor. |
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 Courtesy of WilliamBanzai7 Bitcoin as sound money penetrates rebellious art. |
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Well, I see healthy profit taking and weak hands shaken. I wouldn't bet a significant amount on it going down significantly, but maybe I'm biased and just euphoric  Blitz, say with me: no 2011 ever again In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony central bank's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence. "I am enlightened by my intelligence." This ^^ on a BTC T-shirt. |
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Has any of the merchants ever complained about this supposed risk?  As a merchant I find the risk waywaywaywayway smaller than the variable percent of physical shoplifting. This is a good question. Has any of the btc accepting shops in Berlin, or the various cafes around the world complained about a successful double-spend against them? |
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What are the practical chances of getting screwed if one accepts a zeroconf transaction with Bitcoin (ie. Blockchain.info shows it)?
I'm guessing that also the thrust of the OP is that faster blocks allow for faster transactions at a point of sale, especially physical shops where the customer walks out of the store immediately after paying. Last month I did my first wave-and-pay transaction on my Visa card, which does not even require require a pin number for small amounts. It took 1 second and was done. There is no way a decentralized cryptocurrency will ever compete with that in terms of waiting for block confirmations. This is why Litecoin's 2.5 minute block time is not a significant benefit. The solution for immediate sales (zero confirmations) must lie elsewhere. Merchants can accept the double-spend risk as a cost of doing business just as they accept the risk of forged currency or stolen credit cards today. In the future there might be insurance available against double-spends for an annual premium. 3rd-party applications which run on top of the Bitcoin protocol can enable instant confirmations if the customer and merchant both use the same 3rd-party service (this is probably a future role for the CC companies). |
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But what if so few people start storing the full block chain, that somebody can mass install a fake one with fake info, thus ruining bitcoin? I'm not sure this is the greatest thing int he world, sorta compromises a system like bitcoin... It will just cause fewer people to own the complete blockchain... Am I wrong on this?
"mass install a fake one with fake info" Please read up about proof of work. The existing blockchain can't be faked without an improbable amount of computing power. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_work
As the OP has famously said, Bitcoin could run just fine if only 4 or 5 copies of the blockchain existed. Presumably it would be large entities who hold these copies and run the 'supernodes' required to process the incoming data and datasets. He is probably right about this due to the way Bitcoin is designed, and it would certainly make it a lot easier to deploy 'red-listing' or whatever the preferred marketing term is these days.
This is not the evolutionary path I would like to see Bitcoin go down, but I'm just an ordinary user and enthusiast.
This is gloom and doom. The evidence is that the increasing unit value of bitcoin is increasing the number of nodes. Whether they will be persistent for long periods is not known yet, but this uptick (likely driven by the rise from $120 to $800) is very encouraging. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345258.0 |
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