Bitcoin Project will be making a major announcement in September

[barbarousrelic]

I hope the block reward will keep the same, so that BTC will provide continuous incentive for new adopters, and reduce the deflation nature in BTC economy

The continuously reducing supply in protocol make it a perfect place for speculation, and the wild price swing will discourage business users

If you want inflationnary monopoly money, take a look at euros or dollars they might interest you.

Easy there. If the block reward stayed at 50 forever, Bitcoin would still be the hardest money in existence and the inflation rate would approach 0 over time.

[Piper67]

I hope the block reward will keep the same, so that BTC will provide continuous incentive for new adopters, and reduce the deflation nature in BTC economy

The continuously reducing supply in protocol make it a perfect place for speculation, and the wild price swing will discourage business users

If you want inflationnary monopoly money, take a look at euros or dollars they might interest you.

Easy there. If the block reward stayed at 50 forever, Bitcoin would still be the hardest money in existence and the inflation rate would approach 0 over time.

It's irrelevant, though. It would be trite to create a cryptocurrency based on Bitcoin with a 50 coin reward in perpetuity. You don't need to change Bitcoin for that.

[unclescrooge]

I hope the block reward will keep the same, so that BTC will provide continuous incentive for new adopters, and reduce the deflation nature in BTC economy

The continuously reducing supply in protocol make it a perfect place for speculation, and the wild price swing will discourage business users

If you want inflationnary monopoly money, take a look at euros or dollars they might interest you.

Easy there. If the block reward stayed at 50 forever, Bitcoin would still be the hardest money in existence and the inflation rate would approach 0 over time.

That's right. But reward drop is already priced in, if you change it, you're basically saying you will dilute others savings (no matter of how few).

No, I don't think a change in protocole (that would require a fork) is in question here.

[markm]

Minting the same number of coins per block has already been done, not only by GRouPcoin which is otherwise basically a clone of bitcoin, but also by DeVCoin which also incorporates some other innovations such as mining 1,000 times as many coins (to avoid having to move the decimal point so soon, as bitcoin looked to be climbing in value rapidly when DeVCoin was initially created) and distributing coins to developers of open source software, hardware, firmware, music, literature, art etc.

So no need to screw up bitcoin by messing with its block reward schedule, those who want inflatacoin already have GRouPcoin and DeVCoin for that.

-MarkM-

[jgarzik]

Given that the exchange rate is free-floating (as it should be), changing the block reward from halving every 210,000 blocks to a constant 50 would probably not cause much difference at all.

But the speculation is moot... nobody's changing that part of bitcoin.

[Ente]

Given that the exchange rate is free-floating (as it should be), changing the block reward from halving every 210,000 blocks to a constant 50 would probably not cause much difference at all.

But the speculation is moot... nobody's changing that part of bitcoin.

I didn't waste much thought about the mystery announcement before.
But now, you devs posting here are killing me! :-)

I wonder when the first betsofbitco.in bets show up!

Ente

[dissipate]

]

One under-appreciated aspect about alt-chains is that they can always to used to show skeptics (who were probably indoctrinated with ideas that a flexible money supply is essential, even though they usually can't explain why) that under a Bitcoin system, the money supply limits can be overridden if there's ever a real need for it. One common objection that I hear is that Bitcoin will have trouble scaling. As soon as millions of people try to pile onto the system, "there won't be enough coins to go round", or the network will overload or something else will break.

But let's think about it for a minute: if there's ever a massive burst of interest in Bitcoin (that might theoretically break something), some of that interest inevitably gets diverted into forks, clones, and new currencies! That's where the new money comes from. Sure, purists might argue that it wrecks the idea of hard, sound money, but that is wrong. New adopters knowingly buy-in to the new currencies, and no-one is forced to exchange their superior Bitcoins for those other, lesser currencies if they don't want to. Furthermore, this currency "eco-system" enables something that the Fractional Reserve system fails to do when it should, which is to reduce the money supply in a timely manner in response to real economic pressures. For example, if there's a contraction or loss of confidence, floating exchange rates will dynamically shrink the amount of money in the system. No intervention required!

There would no doubt be some interest in alternate cryptocurrencies, but i don't think any of them would really take off. Maybe 1 or 2 other cryptocurrencies would gain some traction, but I imagine the cost of maintaining a separate software, financial and user base ecosystem would keep their user base limited (not to mention the network effect).

The scaling issues will probably be solved by cloud based wallets and light clients.

[markm]

There would no doubt be some interest in different nations using different currencies, but i don't think any of them would really take off. Maybe 1 or 2 other nation's currencies would gain some traction, but I imagine the cost of maintaining a separate software, financial and user base ecosystem would keep their user base limited (not to mention the network effect).

-MarkM-

[FuzzyBear]

My guess is simply that Greece will now be adopting BTC as their sole currency... a long shot perhaps... but one i'd like to see

[Ente]

My guess is simply that Greece will now be adopting BTC as their sole currency... a long shot perhaps... but one i'd like to see

Bitcoin is not inflatory enough for this use. :-P
Something coming from Island, though, could be possible and be awesome news!

Ente

[markm]

They won't be printing money as it suits them, they will be minting tokens and then going out into the marketplace looking for ways to trade some of their tokens for some bitcoins, oops, I mean, for some money.

Thus in effect they will be creating more things people can spend bitcoins on, things that are easy to buy with bitcoins; plus, in order to try to make their tokens seem to be worth something they will create things for their tokens to be spent on, and since bitcoins are so very compatibile with their own tokens it will be easy for those things to also, or instead, be sold for bitcoins. So overall, in addition to promoting the bitcoin codebase and the bitcoin blockchain concept and the general idea of cryptocurrencies of which bitcoin is the shining crown achievement, they will be bringing users closer to having the skills, knowledge, and understanding to use bitcoins. All of which should help bitcoin adoption.

-MarkM-

[Ente]

One of the things I half expect to see is countries, businesses, games and many others issuing their own blockchains as a method of keeping internal accounts while making use of the system but if they don't link directly to bitcoin as a central currency it could all get very messy with alt chains printing money as it suits them and exchange rates up in the air. Hopefully Canada will consider that with their own digital currency and not stay stuck in the rut of the current fiat system.

Could work. As long as they "connect" to the Bitcoin blockchain (aka merge-mining compatible) to make use of the high difficulty.. If they started their completely independent own chain, they would need dramatic investments into mining to secure the new network, or have it run over quickly.

Interesting ideas!

Ente

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

My guess is simply that Greece will now be adopting BTC as their sole currency... a long shot perhaps... but one i'd like to see

That would be a game changer, and BTC rate would skyrocket 10-100 times in matter of a week.
But nothing like this is going to happen.

[waspoza]

My guess is simply that Greece will now be adopting BTC as their sole currency... a long shot perhaps... but one i'd like to see

That would be a game changer, and BTC rate would skyrocket 10-100 times in matter of a week.
But nothing like this is going to happen.

Ofc not. They need to print their own monies to buy back bonds. Cannot print bitcoins, so its not for them.

[giszmo]

My guess is simply that Greece will now be adopting BTC as their sole currency... a long shot perhaps... but one i'd like to see

That would be a game changer, and BTC rate would skyrocket 10-100 times in matter of a week.
But nothing like this is going to happen.

Ofc not. They need to print their own monies to buy back bonds. Cannot print bitcoins, so its not for them.

Oh, if you want to introduce Bitcoin in Greez, it could even work. I see you could easily snap some 250k cheap coins right now at MtGox for a pocket money, then announce this step and watch the price settle. After a year and hopefully some other countries taking this step, you could invest one of your bitcoins to print some paper money backed by bitcoin. Greece would be a huge test balloon for such a move but the first mover would have a massive advantage.[/dreaming]

[Ente]

While I remain forever hopeful, I'm not counting on any national acceptance any time soon. The banks just won't let it happen. If Iceland were to unveil some kind of "roadmap" that involves Bitcoin, perhaps as a trial first, then as a second official currency, or perhaps they were to declare a safe-haven for bitcoin rights, the response could range anywhere from suicide bombings to submarines drilling nukes into the bedrock to blast the island out of the water...

Just look at what's going on around the world today. Remember when that guy, what's his name, Julian Assange was considered a hero all over the world for embarrassing the US gov't with Cablegate and whatnot? They got angry and even arrested some kid for doing the leaks, but Assange was basically untouchable. But then he announced some upcoming leaks regarding a "prominent US bank", and BAM! Rape allegations, "code red" alerts, Interpol investigations, international arrest warrants, the UK threatening to invade Ecuadorian soil... I guess that'll teach people to wear condoms!... And that was just ONE guy running a <$1million activist organisation, threatening just the ONE bank.

</rant>

I didn't see the events around wikileaks/assange from that direction yet. Really some food for thought.

However:
What does Wikileaks and Bitcoin have in common? -You can't kill an idea!
Decentralized *leaks are coming, and, well, Bitcoin is decentralized to begin with.
But yes, getting the whole WL/BTC process as rough and illegal as possible does/will slow it down.

Ente

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Today August 9th, at 22:10 JST, a serious glitch on MtGox caused all ask orders to be flushed from the system. It is now 00:40 JST at the time of this writing.

As the cause was not determined immediately, the MtGox trading engine was halted and an investigation in the situation initiated. We found that this issue was due to a glitch linked to a new feature. A fix has been placed and failsafes have been installed to make sure such an event will not occur again.


We have determined that this issue was caused by a bug in the trading engine due to a new feature planned for release in September. While this new feature should not have any impact on trades not using it, a specific set of conditions could trigger this feature in a way that should not happen, which in turn caused the trade engine to believe that the order matched in the order book was actually invalid and should be removed.
Because of this, all the open ask orders were flushed out of the system, and one trade executed as an overly high amount (this trade was later cancelled).

The bug has been identified and the issue has been solved. We will also make sure to create unit test capable to reproduce cases such as the conditions required for this bug to happen.

To trigger this bug the following conditions had to be met:

• Place a market order in currency other than USD to buy bitcoins for a larger amount that can be afforded
• Have a very low balance of that currency
• Have configured to take fee for bitcoin purchase from currency and not BTC
• Do not have the order to complete in a single match (ie. cause more than one trade)

The issue has been resolved, and different kinds of failsafes have been added to ensure an order can not cause a large part of the order book to vanish.

Due to the fact that the latest backup could possibly include asks that were cancelled by users, we have not restored the order book from backups. Users are invited to place sell orders again.


Please contact our support team should you have any question.


Mark Karpeles, MtGox Co. Ltd.

[hannesnaude]

We have determined that this issue was caused by a bug in the trading engine due to a new feature planned for release in September.

Good catch. Dark pool trading then? Iceberg orders and the like. That fits the bill and should certainly contribute to stability.

[hannesnaude]

Nope. Cause it doesn't fit with this :

I'm not gonna say what the announcement is....but I will say that you are all wrong and no one is even close lol (Well...some of you were kinda close)

-Charlie

You mentioned something once before I think, about a surprise that will change what people think the government thinks of bitcoins... so I'll guess its some sort of basis for bitcoin being protected legally

Ok, I take it back. Your the closest. Nuff said, Im gonna get shot for saying this much.

Unless Charlie is screwing with us.  . This is driving me crazy.

[labestiol]

Margin trading ?
Anyway not sure it's what Gavin was talking about, MtGox != Bitcoin Project