The first wave of alts were simple clones, it was almost a given that network effects would hold them back here. However the next wave of alts are going to
a) come with real innovations and then
b) come with government sanctioned force
i think a) and b) are oxymorons. force precludes the need to innovate. thus Bitcoin will always have that advantage. we've already seen the failure of MintChip due to just this dynamic. Yes, I was saying they are different coins and different attempts. The first wave were the clones (which we've already had), the next wave a) will have some level of actual innovation, and the wave after that b) would be government attempts to resist Bitcoin and regain control. the creation of USDCoin would be a tacit admission by the govt that Bitcoin has merit and, paradoxically to their wishes, money will always flow to that platform which treats it best. that can't happen with an inflationary, violent coin.
It would be an admission by the government that Bitcoin has merit. It would also be sold to the public as having all the benefits of Bitcoin with all the security of government money. Given the history of money, this has worked. It did for the FED in the 1930's. it did back then. but i highly doubt that type of deception is really working today with the Internet. look at consumer sentiment surveys and low investment levels in the stock mkt. ppl know something isn't quite right and its reflected in their stagnating paychecks. |
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if you hadn't noticed this great new podcast by Trace Mayer. Trace is someone who can talk and think at the same time which is rare in the Bitcoin podcast world. it's now my default and i'm crossing the others off my list. here Trace talks with Miles Cowen another attorney about integrating speculative assets into the blockchain. he agrees with me that this will be messy. for me, it's clear that these features won't be practical or in demand until Bitcoin can establish itself as a major global, secure, sound money in Forex markets with its own trading symbol. no one will layer or risk any trillion dollar market on a $5B Bitcoin platform. we probably need to get to $500B in Bitcoin market cap before these strategies will be consider with more certainty by established actors. http://podcast.runtogold.com/2014/11/btck-111-2014-11-27/ |
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i didn't say "this", i said "a". |
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The first wave of alts were simple clones, it was almost a given that network effects would hold them back here. However the next wave of alts are going to
a) come with real innovations and then
b) come with government sanctioned force
i think a) and b) are oxymorons. force precludes the need to innovate. thus Bitcoin will always have that advantage. we've already seen the failure of MintChip due to just this dynamic. the creation of USDCoin would be a tacit admission by the govt that Bitcoin has merit and, paradoxically to their wishes, money will always flow to that platform which treats it best. that can't happen with an inflationary, violent coin. |
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hold on. this should mean that fiat will be diverted to the price:  |
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can someone direct me to a source where i can practice constructing a multi-sig tx with the equivalent of a "createrawtransaction" using bitcoind and JSON-RPC?
you could try sx: https://sx.dyne.org/I used bitcoind and json simply for reasons of consistency. Why use sx or pybtctools? Easier, no need for blockchain, diversity, curiosity? I guess it's like learning another language. Literally, I suppose. Its always insightful and fascinating for me to find out what drives all you smart people. |
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that was a pain in the ass. but well worth the time:  |
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can someone direct me to a source where i can practice constructing a multi-sig tx with the equivalent of a "createrawtransaction" using bitcoind and JSON-RPC?
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One single coin to rule them all is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Can you imagine the complete and utter disaster that would occur if the entire world only used the metric system? did Heartbleed kill Linux? no. |
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grinding higher. i love it. i'll take this over a huge green candle any day. i love to torture bears:  |
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i would prefer NOT to see the spvp implemented, period, for all the reasons i've already made ad nauseum. let them experiment on federated servers.
i'm not even sure how you'd bring an altcoin into a SC with spvp since the monetary properties of such altcoins are usually so divergent and non-sensical to most Bitcoiners it wouldn't be worth anyone's time or effort.
If Side Chains run adequately on say LTC for long enough to see some of the tail risks play out, and we figure out how to handle those, then I would see that as a beneficial outcome. On the other hand, some of the pernicious effects may take a very long time to work out, but we'd see them on LTC well before we'd see them on BTC. (Or even better some new coin designed with this as its purpose.) That's the problem with tail risks. How do you know what is a "long enough time?" This is why the catastrophic failure issue suggests there shouldn't really be one coin after all, and trying to maximize "network effect" may be over-fitting. Monoculture is fragile. There absolutely should be one coin/ledger but is it imperative that there be one protocol/chain to update it? Maybe multiple chains could allow us to manage the risk of one failed blockchain bringing its coin down with it? And what if the coin itself fails, perhaps for economic rather than technical reasons? Or if having multiple blockchains (or other such technologies) too tightly interconnected by a single coin allows for contagion type effects? This is not unprecedented. We don't have a single currency in the world today, and not even a single reserve currency (where presumably the network effect of liquidity could reign supreme, unfettered by legal tender laws, etc.). I doubt in the history of civilization we ever really have, except perhaps in some isolated simple economies. If the dollar fails, then we can turn to sterling, or bitcoin, or renminbi, or gold. The world has a way of recognizing fragile over-optimization and avoiding it, though sometimes this process takes the form of going to far and having a catastrophic failure first. One single coin to rule them all is a catastrophe waiting to happen. I doubt that happens though. People recognize the risk and avoid it, which is likely why something like LTC has any value at all (though LTC isn't really the best for this and will likely be overtaken). It isn't for features or even marketing. there are huge advantages and efficiencies to developing a one world currency that is apolitical and controlled by the will of the majority of ppl. we can't imagine it from a digital standpoint except in the context of physical gold which actually worked pretty well for centuries. but to deny that it is possible is to deny the revolution of open source coding which is a grassroots concept. as Gavin says, if there is a problem, we'll fix it. |
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Employing a monetary model with endogenous search and random consumption preferences, we
find that the government’s refusal to accept bitcoin is not typically sufficient to prevent their acceptance
in equilibrium. The government must be of a particular size to prevent the circulation of bitcoin and
the size threshold depends crucially on the fraction of agents willing to accept currency. Interestingly,
our work suggests that bitcoin might continue on as a niche money, even if the government proactively
discourages its use, so long as some individuals are sufficiently committed to accepting bitcoin.http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2531518
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What's unfamiliar to me is how the device gets mobile internet access, in over 60 countries, without roaming or monthly fees:
Amazon does something similar for Kindle readers (they claim 100 countries). I don't know who is being paid or what the payment model looks like. wow, seems ripe for exploitation. |
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Yes, that's very cool! What's unfamiliar to me is how the device gets mobile internet access, in over 60 countries, without roaming or monthly fees: The device doesn’t piggy back off your phone for Internet access. It has a dedicated GSM chip and a multi-IMSI embedded SIM card that allows us to hop from carrier to carrier without roaming fees. Bitcoin is a global currency so it seemed silly to have a wallet that didn’t work globally as well. At launch, Case will work in over 60 countries without any monthly fees so you can use it to execute unlimited transactions around the world for the life of the device.
Does the hardware manufacturer somehow pay the carriers so that the devices "just work"? Here's some literature on multi-IMSI SIM cards: http://www.racowireless.com/multi-imsi-sim/i'm interested in the signature scheme. i know that Trezor was delayed for all that time since they decided, at the last minute, to convert to the HMAC deterministic nonce generation scheme. i think this was stimulated by the Android hack of non-random PRNG. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6979 |
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i'm also going to claim that it's being driven by the commoditization of hardware as indicated by the leveling off of the hashrate. prices have plunged 10-fold allowing more and more smaller pools into the game. this was predicted here long ago:
The leveling off of the hash rate is almost certainly due to the 70% drop in price. You had huge investment pouring into mining, now you don't. What new gear is going into service is being balanced out by older unprofitable gear coming out of service. That may in turn have some effect on pool concentration, but the effect is not clear to me, other than the obvious of say ghash not spending a lot on expanding the in house cloud mining right now. I agree with Greg Maxwell as quoted in that tweet. The issues of mining decentralization have not been solved, as far as I can tell. I don't understand what you are talking about in terms of nash equilibrium so maybe you could expand on that so I can learn something. yes, you're absolutely right about the price drop also plateauing mining HR along with commoditization. i don't agree with Maxwell or the other doomers about mining centralization. here's where i talk about Nash: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.10175;wap2 |
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for those assets, what are the advantages of decentralization?
Lots of advantages in reliability and assurances. More fundamentally it obsoletes some functions of auditing and government along with the associated costs to society. It automates many of the administrivia of corporation management. If you have ever run a public company, the advantages are more immediately apparent. the pt that i was getting at is that until Bitcoin fulfills Satoshi's visions as a generally accepted and large enough form of currency or money, there will be no such trust or confidence given by the masses or larger financial institutions to embed asset derivatives into the blockchain as the "legal" ledger. what will drive Bitcoins growth is a maintenance of its Sound Money function along with transactional growth which we are fortunately beginning to see w/o a doubt. once it becomes a generally accepted global and apolitical public good as money, then it might be used to embed more riskier assets within the blockchain as with CP. otoh, the blockchain may only ever be applicable to Bitcoin as Money. in which case, all those speculative assets may just be bought and sold with BTC as they will become denominated as such with the records continuing to be maintained by those organizations responsible for enforcing those contracts. if we use Bitcoin to win the Money Game, we win Everything. that is where the problem lies. Yes Yes... This is why I would like to see SPV side chains implemented on some altcoins. In matters such as these, it is not as important to see how things work, as it is to see how they fail and under what circumstances. i would prefer NOT to see the spvp implemented, period, for all the reasons i've already made ad nauseum. let them experiment on federated servers. i'm not even sure how you'd bring an altcoin into a SC with spvp since the monetary properties of such altcoins are usually so divergent and non-sensical to most Bitcoiners it wouldn't be worth anyone's time or effort. |
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