So, I was wondering if instead of building more complicated protocols we could just find a natural source of random numbers that would be suitable for cryptocurrency mining? What I mean by that is: something that would not be predictable, but could serve as a source of consensus between multiple participants that do not trust each another.
I don't think provable non-partisan randomness alone can make a consensus algorithm. For PoW it's irrelevant, as there is no problem with the randomness of how blocks are found (apart from the issue of variance, which is a different matter). That is, the results of cryptographic hashes as used by PoW are already both unpredictable and easily verifiable. The way I understand PoS and its derivatives it also seems to be more a question of variance, rather than unpredictability vs verifiability. However I'm not too familiar with PoS so that's all I dare say. As far as globally witnessable sources of randomness are concerned -- How about solar activity? |
|
|
|
I'm sorry to hear if that's the case in the Netherlands. It definitely isn't the case for every European country. Germany and Austria for example has many companies dealing in crypto, partially well connected to the classical Banking system (eg. the publicy traded Bitcoin Group in Germany), partially well connected to other established infrastructure from the old guard (eg. BitPanda cooperating with the Austrian postal service). Ledger in France and SatoshiLabs in the Czech Republic seem to be flourishing, but to be fair they don't have to deal with finance directly.
Worrying developments in the Netherlands regardless and hopefully not the shape of things to come.
On the contrary, they allow a few well established players to continue with often exclusive deals with certain banks. This make our market less competitive and stifles real growth. It's small business that is being denied, we can't afford the legal teams some of the big players have. Like I said, we're like the canary in the coal mine, the level of suppression hasn't hurt the big players, it's killing the small ones though. Thank you both for your comments, I hope we can get more in the community interested in standing up for their rights. Bitcoin.de [1], Coinfinity [2] and SatoshiLabs [3][4] have less than 30 employees each. That's far from being "big players". Established, yes, but due to being early birds in the market, not due to their size and raw market capital. Ledger with its more than 100 employes [5] is quite sizeable and BitPanda with its more than 70 employees is nothing to scoff at either [6], but still, you don't have to be huge to make it in this market. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin.de[2] https://coinfinity.co/about-en/[3] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/satoshilabs[4] https://trezor.io/team/[5] https://www.ledger.fr/the-people-behind-ledger/[6] http://klanschek.com/ |
|
|
|
that doesn't make any sense! why would the price drop because it is stable?!!!!
if anything the price should rise up because it is currently stable. in other words right now this current state looks more like an accumulation rather than anything else, specially since the volume is huge! and as accumulations go, they always lead to a rise.
Not because it's stable it doesn't mean it should rise up. Yes, we might get a big move after all these price stability, but it could go either way. There's zero guarantee for the prices to go up. Especially if people are still expecting prices to go up after phases of stability. There's still too much hope around here. The market has yet to capitulate. |
|
|
|
[...] if Bitcoin isn't a payment system or currency, banks are not behaving anti-competitively.They are simply refusing to do business with a high risk asset, and you have no legal recourse to challenge them. This would be also true if Bitcoin were to be treated as a foreign currency, for example. To some extend banks can choose which currency they deal with and with which payment system they integrate. Obviously they have to accept the legal tender of their respective countries and follow standards such as SEPA. However nothing would make it obligatory for banks to deal in Bitcoin, even if it were globally legally recognized as a currency. Just like European banks don't have to deal in USD and US banks don't have to deal in EUR. In Europe, every small business that deals with cryptocurrency is being locked out of finance. I'm sorry to hear if that's the case in the Netherlands. It definitely isn't the case for every European country. Germany and Austria for example has many companies dealing in crypto, partially well connected to the classical Banking system (eg. the publicy traded Bitcoin Group in Germany), partially well connected to other established infrastructure from the old guard (eg. BitPanda cooperating with the Austrian postal service). Ledger in France and SatoshiLabs in the Czech Republic seem to be flourishing, but to be fair they don't have to deal with finance directly. Worrying developments in the Netherlands regardless and hopefully not the shape of things to come. [...] Furthermore, the current environment in the Netherlands is even more frightening. Under Klaas Knot, cash services are being more and more restricted. Now many Dutch businesses have been forced to go debit card only (pin). This forces all consumers to use a bank, since banks decide who you can do business with, this strengthens Klaas Knot's economic authority. None of this was decided democratically. Anti-money laundering policy is being used as a weapon to suppress legal business instead of being used to prevent money laundering. After all, it's the United States that keeps catching Dutch banks in the act of laundering money for cartels and terrorists, not the Netherlands. The war on cash is definitely a worrying one. To add insult to injury it's being sold as a matter of transparency, security and accountability while none of these values appear to be meaningfully applied to large scale money laundering and tax "optimization". It is worth noting though that the war on cash appears to come in part from the private (non-finance) sector as well. At least to my understanding there seems to be a trend where some shops and chains in the US don't accept cash anymore and only credit or debit cards. So much for legal tender. As you see, we the most vulnerable, are the canary in the coal mine. Our duty is to warn the people of the rising toxicity. We do this by testing the legal system and symptomatically exposing corruption and anti-constitutional policies. [...]
I will be keeping an eye on this thread. |
|
|
|
[...]
I propise to celebrate both the August and October dates not with a "bank holiday"
but a "bitcoin holiday" and then for January 3rd "bitcoin day" ... Every year!
Banks are closed on bank holidays though, so should all miners shut down their hardware twice a year?  In all seriousness though, BrewMaster put it so perfectly that there's little to add. The registration of bitcoin.org is a rather arbitrary date and the date of the whitepaper release, while important, is not quite Bitcoin's birthday. So remember: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks |
|
|
|
|
Supply and demand. Everything beyond that is mere speculation or retrospective rationalization ("oh, the price must have fallen because x") which is neither all that helpful for future predictions nor necessarily accurate in their retrospective interpretation of events (ie. who knows if x really was the reason for recent market movements).
|
|
|
|
What does this have to do with the majority of SegWit addresses being P2SH? For example Trezor doesn't support P2WSH yet [1], but is providing SegWit as P2WPKH-in-P2SH just fine. We're back at the old argument of equating a lack of Bech32 support to a lack of SegWit adoption, only this time we're talking about P2WSH instead of Bech32. That's just silly. [1] https://wiki.trezor.io/P2WSHbut even so still aint 40%
and even then the addresses dont mean % of user adoption. as that can be just a few exchanges hoard(if i was to play the presumptions game that laughably get played..)
As mentioned above: Either way, without digressing further: Seeing how apparently ~16.6% of all bitcoins are stored in SegWit addresses (ignoring ~6.5% of bitcoins that haven't been moved for 3+ years of which part is likely forever lost [1]) we do get a different picture from purely tracking SegWit transactions -- tracked at a range of 30% to 50% [2], which is still the correct way to track SegWit transactions, whatever that may mean for adoption.
However no matter how you look at it we're also beyond the mere 10% as quoted in OP.
That is to say: But what does SegWit adoption even mean? eg. SegWit transactions weighted by input ratio, percentage of blockweight taken up by SegWit transactions, count of used SegWit addresses, bitcoins stored in SegWit addresses...? I guess you'd have to use a mixture of multiple metrics to get a clearer picture. The conclusions would still be a question of interpretation though.
So yes, merely looking at SegWit transaction count, coins stored in SegWit addresses, etc will give you an incomplete picture. Even moreso does merely looking at Bech32 support and P2WSH addresses however. Of course one could argue that it's not "true SegWit" unless it's just Bech32 addresses or unless a transaction only includes SegWit inputs and outputs only. But that would be an incredibly useless argument to make as it dismisses most of the data, and worse still, the way SegWit is actually being used in the real world. |
|
|
|
Why dont you purchase commercial certificate for $40 that stays for a year instead of deadling with let's encrypt renewals?
In some setups dealing with commercial certificates can be actually more cumbersome than running a simple letsencrypt script. More interesting would be to know why they haven't automated the letsencrypt renewal (says the guy that has to regularly SSH into his own server to manually run letsencrypt scripts before the certs run out) |
|
|
|
X% of segwit tx, X% of segwit utxo, does not mean X% of btc coins. X transactions do not equal X coins
It does not. But I'm also neither referring to SegWit transaction, nor SegWit UTXOs but rather the raw percentage of coins stored in P2SH addresses as indicated by the stats above: https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/p2sh-statistics?orgId=1&from=now-2y&to=nowThe one on top, "BTC stored", which is a rather clear-cut metric. also P2SH tx's are not 100% segwit. they also include legacy multisig. thus again cause abstraction of real data by fooling people that combining legacy and segwit =segwit
Hence the baseline of ~12.5% which can be discounted as legacy multisig addresses: The amount of bitcoins stored in P2SH addresses has remained rather static until the end of August 2017 (ie. the SegWit activation date). From thereon the amount of bitcoins stored in P2SH addresses continuously grew from a baseline of ~12.5% (ie. P2SH addresses that are likely unrelated to SegWit and can thus be discounted) to ~28.3% today (ie. ~15.8% of bitcoins are likely stored in SegWit P2SH addresses, assuming other usage of P2SH addresses didn't change significantly)
At the time of SegWit activation ~12.5% of bitcoins were stored in legacy multisig addresses. Looking back at a timeframe from August 2016 to August 2017 you see little to no growth as far as bitcoins stored in legacy multisig addresses are concerned. As such it stands to reason that the majority of coins stored in P2SH addresses since SegWit activation are most likely stored in SegWit P2SH addresses rather than legacy multisig P2SH addresses. |
|
|
|
Ignoring P2SH addresses when discussing SegWit is rather deceptive, especially knowing that the majority of SegWit transactions still rely on P2SH addresses. Even moreso when one equates the lack of Bech32 adoption with a lack of SegWit adoption, which is apparently what is happening here. The amount of bitcoins stored in P2SH addresses has remained rather static until the end of August 2017 (ie. the SegWit activation date). From thereon the amount of bitcoins stored in P2SH addresses continuously grew from a baseline of ~12.5% (ie. P2SH addresses that are likely unrelated to SegWit and can thus be discounted) to ~28.3% today (ie. ~15.8% of bitcoins are likely stored in SegWit P2SH addresses, assuming other usage of P2SH addresses didn't change significantly): https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/p2sh-statistics?orgId=1&from=now-2y&to=nowMeanwhile Bech32 has been dicking about at storing only ~0.8% of all bitcoins: https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/bech32-statistics?orgId=1&from=now-1y&to=now...which comes to little suprise with the major hardware wallets not supporting Bech32 out of the box and many large exchanges not allowing withdrawal to Bech32: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bech32_adoptionSo that whole Bech32 situation is a mess but not necessarily reflecting the attitude towards SegWit itself. Either way, without digressing further: Seeing how apparently ~16.6% of all bitcoins are stored in SegWit addresses (ignoring ~6.5% of bitcoins that haven't been moved for 3+ years of which part is likely forever lost [1]) we do get a different picture from purely tracking SegWit transactions -- tracked at a range of 30% to 50% [2], which is still the correct way to track SegWit transactions, whatever that may mean for adoption. However no matter how you look at it we're also beyond the mere 10% as quoted in OP. [1] https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-dormant_3y-bitcoin-addresses.html[2] https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/segwit-usage?orgId=1&from=now-1y&to=now |
|
|
|
There are a few scandals in the banking industry, HSBC, BNP, are a few stories related to money laundering. The drama is popular for 3 months and then people move on.
I can think about Panama Papers, see how people moved on to the next and don't talk about it anymore.
3 months? 3 days maybe, if they even care in the first place. To make matters worse, people have died for nothing over this shit [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist |
|
|
|
[...]
Guilty parties would appear to be JP Morgan, Bank of America, Deutsch Bank and Citigroup.
[...]
And it's likely just the tip of the iceberg. Banks laundering money at scale appears to be one of the largest and dirtiest open secret in finance. It's a farce how the general populace is under general suspicion with tighter and tighter restriction on cash transactions and anonymous payments (eg. EUR 1,000,- limit for cash transactions in France [1], tightening regulation on anonymous prepaid options) while banks continue laundering money in the billions, effectively laundering money as a service for anyone with deep enough pockets (because obviously laws only apply to the common people). [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-security-financing/france-steps-up-monitoring-of-cash-payments-to-fight-low-cost-terrorism-idUSKBN0ME14720150318 |
|
|
|
[...]
On the face of this, you can't accept the investment. Simply changing his mode of transfer doesn't change the fact that he/she is a US-based entity. The legal workaway is if the person uses a third-party entity to transfer the funds in the name of that 3rd entity. Typically, an offshore business or fund. Still, the transfer of USD and purpose and eventual destination all matter.
Exactly. Obviously ETH transactions can not be as easily linked to private individuals as bank transfers, but for the sake of staying on the legal side of things the mode of transfer is irrelevant. If you already go through the extra measure of not selling those tokens to US / Chinese residents despite being "only" utility tokens rather than tokens that could be interpreted as securities you shouldn't put the legal status of your ICO at stake like that. Also USD 100k,- can not that easily "disappear" and "re-appear" without turning a few heads, unless you do some money laundering in which case you'd open a whole different can of worms. |
|
|
|
[...]
I could care less if you use LN, but don't lie and say it's transaction fees are cheaper than altcoins when they are not.
You also totally missed the fact that using litecoin or groestlcoin would most likely be cheaper than using bitcoin with LN.
The fact that LN hubs can work with any coin that activated segwit seems to elude you.
"LN is cheaper than any decentralized altcoin that sees some actual usage" There. It's easy to keep transaction fees low if either a) the coin sees very little to no transactions, b) currency issuance and consensus is centrally controlled or c) decentralization is being sacrificed to blockchain bloat. |
|
|
|
If you're just getting started with crypto, I'd recommend sticking with one of the centralized exchanges for starters (as recommended by many posters above). Trusted ones include Coinbase.com, Blockchain.com, Kraken.com, Bitstamp.net. A more extensive list is to be found here: https://bitcoin.org/en/exchangesDon't bother with p2p trades until you have a proper handle on crypto (how to use, how to keep it safe, knowing what watch-only wallets are, etc), otherwise you'll fall for the simplest of scams. |
|
|
|
That's correct. I have never claimed that /dev/urandom is truly random. I just wanted to clear out the 'how to be sure that dice rolls are truly random' question. More precisely my statement was: This is way more random than your brain or any dice rolls can ever be.
Fair enough. And that's still my opinion. Humans tend to throw the dice in a similar motion each time. Especially with hundreds of rolls.
The outcome will be less random. And the brain being one of the worst sources of entropy should be commonly known, at least if you really need a random number and are ready to spend a few minutes to read into this subject.
I have my doubts about the first -- at least when someone tries to properly roll the dice and not just fake it -- but I absolutely agree with the brain being one of the worst sources of entropy (and real world attacks seem to support that claim). |
|
|
|
Funny how the most-merited German thread is just the German version of WO. [...] I'm sure that in addition to those who write regularly on there, thousands of others use it as an important source of news and memes in real-time. [...]
Can confirm, am using the WO thread as my go-to source for the hottest crypto memes in real-time. |
|
|
|
The suggestion that I've been given by many people has been Trezor, pretty exclusively Trezor. I've been told that ledger is just a cheaper, less secure version of a Trezor; if you are looking for a storage solution similar to a ledger, but better, than simply opt for the Trezor. Look at their security model, and more information about them on their website. https://trezor.io/They support tons of coins and offer more protection than any other hardware wallet that I know of. I personally prefer Trezor over Ledger as well, but from what I've gathered so far both seem to be en par in terms of security. They both have a good track record in fixing vulnerabilities in a timely manner and as far as I'm aware of neither has had blatant design flaws in terms of security. For what it's worth Ledger Nano S supports longer passphrases than both Trezor versions (100 ASCII characters vs 50 ASCII characters) however this only becomes relevant once you accidentally make your seed phrase available to the public, in which case you should move your coins anyway. TLDR; both Trezor and Ledger are fine, as long as you purchase them from the producers directly: https://trezor.io/https://www.ledger.com/products/ledger-nano-sThe rest is up to personal preference in terms of coins supported and usability. AFAIK you can only run a limited number of wallet apps on Ledger at a time while Trezor supports all coins it supports straight out-of-the-box, so keep that one in mind. On a sidenote, there's also KeepKey which seems to be fairly trusted but rarely used. Other than that there have been a couple of new hardware wallets on the block lately, with no track records and little to show for except for flashy designs and product descriptions full of cryptobabble. I'd stay as far away from those as possible. |
|
|
|
Dice rolls are never random.
If you knew all necessary information (exact surface conditions, air resistance, rotating speed, ..) you could predict each roll with your dice. That's far away from being 'truly random'.
That's an extreme statement. You could say the same thing about Brownian motion. In the end, it doesn't really matter if it is truly random or not. The end justifies the means when it comes to an RNG. Precisely. You could also say the same about: If you want to create the private key yourself (without any wallet), i'd suggest to boot up a live linux, let it run a few minutes, open and close random programs, and then use /dev/urandom to generate a private key: openssl ecparam -genkey -name secp256k1 -rand /dev/urandom
Both are deterministic in the end, as long as you dig deep enough (but not so deep as to enter the quantum realm). The latter being obviously more practical than throwing dice. As long as the result looks random to an outside observer, ie. does not show any bias towards certain numbers, you're golden. That is, as long as an adversary is unable to acquire the input required to (re)create the pseudo-random output. Which can be reasonably assumed for both physical dice and /dev/urandom. |
|
|
|
When using photographs from Flickr make sure to double-check the license though. Most photographs are copyrighted, all rights reserved. Some are released as public domain or under a creative common license. Those are the ones you are looking for (short of contacting the respective photographers directly and asking them for their permission to use the picture material). Here's an overview of the licenses as used by Flickr photographers: https://help.flickr.com/en_us/change-your-photo's-license-in-flickr-B1SxTmjkX |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
