Great to meet you Fuzzy, what a great day

Feel free to come up and pester me on the day.  I expect I'll be hanging around near the Peercoin banners for much of the day.

Just seen some pics of the banners for the London conf they look ace.  I'll have to remember to point to them from the stage when I'm up there!

Would love to see PPC/USD on BTC-e.  It's the third largest coin and I see there is markets for much smaller coins like NVC on BTC-e at the moment.   It's getting great coverage of late in WSJ, CNBC and the like and the last week has seen it really shoot up compared to even Bitcoin.  I think you can infer from the volume of BTC/PPC transactions[1] that there would be an appetite for this market as well.

[1] http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/period-charts.php?period=alltime&resolution=day&pair=ppc-btc&market=btc-e

So lets say we are currently at block 240,000.  If I were to say I will use the hash of block 240,010 as the seed to a random number generator (or some number of bits from the hash) for a number guessing game, would this be a secure mechanism for seeding the RNG?

The only attack I can think of is someone with an interest in the outcome of the RNG who has enough computing power to solve block 240,010, check if the result favours them, if so submit it to the network, otherwise discard it.

Is this a feasible attack?  Is there any other issues?

In the general case yes you are right, however Bitcoin derives it's value like any currency from the ability to trade it, i.e. that other people are willing to accept it in exchange for something else.  When there are so few bitcoins left in circulation that it no longer has value as a mechanism for trade it loses it's value entirely.

Take the extreme case of where there is only a single Satoshi left in circulation, at that point the currency will no longer be accepted in any transaction as it is of no use to anyone.  In fact, take it one step further, what happens when all BTCs are lost?

I propose that the number of bitcoins in active circulation will ultimately reach zero.  This is not going to happen anytime soon, but it will happen eventually - might be 1 year, 100 years or might be 1000 years I don't know.  The reason I believe it will happen is a combination of three factors.

1) It is impossible to access the coins of a properly secured wallet
2) There will only ever be a finite number of bitcoins (21M)
3) Humans do not live indefinitely

This means that as people who hold bitcoins in a completely secured manner pass away (i.e. no one else has access to their coins) or simply lose their wallets, their coins are removed from active circulation or effectively destroyed.  I'm pretty sure there is a considerable number of coins which were mined in the beginning which are now lost (I know I personally had some when they were being exchanged for about 25 cents which I lost)

Compare this to traditional currencies, where my money is stored in a bank, stuffed under my mattress or stored somewhere that noone can find.  There is a few things that can happen when I die, either
a) The executor for my estate will find the money wherever it is stashed and gain control of it (if it is in the bank or mattress). 
b) If an executor doesn't find it then it will go to the government if it is accessible (e.g. bank account with no will/executor to claim the money).
c) If the money does get completely lost then the money will ultimately get replaced by the printing of new money.

That's why a traditional currency is not susceptible to this while bitcoin is.  Because of this, at some point the scarcity of bitcoin will reach such a point that they loose all their value as so few people will have them that they have no value for exchange.

Hi,

I would like to get whitelisted so I can ask the below topic for discussion on the economics forum, I have not met the 4 hour requirement yet.  I think the post sufficiently explains that I know more about bitcoin than your average newbie, and I think posting it in the newbie forum is a waste.


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I propose that the number of bitcoins in active circulation will ultimately reach zero.  This is not going to happen anytime soon, but it will happen eventually - might be 100 years, might be 1000 years I don't know.  The reason I believe it will happen is a combination of three factors.

1) It is impossible to access the coins of a properly secured wallet
2) There will only ever be a finite number of bitcoins (21M)
3) Humans do not live indefinitely

This means that as people who hold bitcoins in a completely secured manner pass away (i.e. no one else has access to their coins) or simply lose their wallets, their coins are removed from active circulation or effectively destroyed.  I'm pretty sure there is a considerable number of coins which were mined in the beginning which are now lost (I know I personally had some when they were being exchanged for about 25 cents which I lost)

Compare this to traditional currencies, where my money is stored in a bank, stuffed under my mattress or stored somewhere that noone can find.  There is a few things that can happen when I die either
The executor for my estate will find the money wherever it is stashed and gain control of it (if it is in the bank or mattress). 
If an executor doesn't find it then it will go to the government if it is accessible (e.g. bank account with no will/executor to claim the money).
If the money does get completely lost then the money will ultimately get replaced by the printing of new money.

That's why a traditional currency is not susceptible to this while bitcoin is.  Because of this, at some point the scarcity of bitcoin will reach such a point that they loose all their value as so few people will have them that they have no value for exchange.
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I used them on Thursday last week with no issues.  Admittedly I didn't do a cash withdrawal I withdrew my balance in bitcoins.

Can you post a link or the text of the article?

At current prices it would take $2M to get it past $250 on MTGOX.  You would then have to maintain it at that price for 2 months which is likely to require a considerable amount of capital as people try and lock in some profit on their side.  Equally I'd image there are some sort of limits on the spread betting site as to how much they'd accept on this market.

Hey,

New comer here

So lets say I backup my wallet.dat file today (Let's assume it's done securely and only I will be able to access it).  And then disappear for 5 years.  When I come back can I simply point a bitcoin client at my wallet and wait for it to sync with the blockchain and my coins are still present?

Is there any risk with doing this?  i.e. Could there be some code change or anything else that might happen in that time period which would mean my wallet is incompatible with the bitcoin network?