New here, brief introduction and some questions

[Levi Porter]

Hi there,

I ran across a Bit Coin auction on Ebay and got intrigued. I love the premise of a new currency. Ironically, some of the best information and excitement I got about BC came from the ECB document.

I am pretty smart and have somewhat above average computer skills, but I have yet to figure out the safest and most comfortable way to get Bit Coins. I am leaning towards the Armory or possible the unfunded physical forms. I still have to research more.

Anyway, thanks in advance for taking a look at these questions.

ECB Article Pg 26 stated that approximately 6.5 million BC's in circulation and approximately 10,000 users /members,.....where or how did they get the 10,000 number from?

Could a google or facebook or paypal get a competing digital currency going, then use their computing power to wipe out BC value with 51% computing power?

Could the open source aspect of BC at a later date choose to increase BC supply?

When USPTO goes first to file, could someone patent the source code? Under the First to Invent system, public disclosure sets a 12 month time clock to file before forfeiting proprietary rights and rendering technology public domain. Also, my understanding of existing patent law, is that anyone that contributes materially to an invention has equal rights to claim ownership of proprietary rights, meaning that anyone that contributed to the source code could file a patent. I don't know how the new First to File will change public disclosure laws.

If someone could obtain a patent, how could they stop infringement?

Thanks again,

Levi

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[CIYAM]

Could a google or facebook or paypal get a competing digital currency going, then use their computing power to wipe out BC value with 51% computing power?

The so called 51% attack (which is actually the >50% attack) doesn't require a competing currency (just the hardware hashing power) - what such an attack potentially can do is either "undo" some tx's or refuse any new tx's (the latter being perhaps of more concern). In either case if such an attack were to be carried out it certainly would be an issue for Bitcoin (please also note the that Bitcoin is one word not two) although not necessarily fatal (ideas such as "proof of stake" are already being trialled in other alts). Also note that the cost (in terms of hardware) to carry out such an attack would be rather high.

Could the open source aspect of BC at a later date choose to increase BC supply?

It is a trivial change in terms of source code but without 100% of current users agreeing to migrate to the same new software it would result in a "hard fork" (which would turn Bitcoin into effectively 2 currencies at the point that the new software was used).

When USPTO goes first to file, could someone patent the source code? Under the First to Invent system, public disclosure sets a 12 month time clock to file before forfeiting proprietary rights and rendering technology public domain. Also, my understanding of existing patent law, is that anyone that contributes materially to an invention has equal rights to claim ownership of proprietary rights, meaning that anyone that contributed to the source code could file a patent. I don't know how the new First to File will change public disclosure laws.

Although IANAL the software was initially released in 2009 (and contains "Copyright (c) 2010 Satoshi Nakamoto" comments in the source code) so unless a patent was filed in 2010 I think it would not be possible to do so now.


Cheers,

Ian.

[molecular]

Hi there,

I ran across a Bit Coin auction on Ebay and got intrigued. I love the premise of a new currency. Ironically, some of the best information and excitement I got about BC came from the ECB document.

haha, that's pretty awesome: the ECB helping us out with generating new users.

I am pretty smart and have somewhat above average computer skills, but I have yet to figure out the safest and most comfortable way to get Bit Coins. I am leaning towards the Armory or possible the unfunded physical forms. I still have to research more.

I prefer electrum as a wallet myself. It's a light client that makes use of servers to provide blockchain-related info and inject transactions into the network, so it has a very low resource footprint. (I halso have other types of wallet: a brainwallet for my savings, for example. I also run the default satoshi client as long as my lowly computer can cope with the blockchain and I use BitcoinSpinner on the phone)

You didn't really put the question of how to best acquire bitcoins, but let me suggest one pretty cool way: go to localbitcoins.com and find a local trader that will sell BTC to you for cash. It's a good no-paper-trail way to get coins, plus as an added bonus you get to meet a bitcoiner

[Foxpup]

Could a google or facebook or paypal get a competing digital currency going, then use their computing power to wipe out BC value with 51% computing power?

The so called 51% attack (which is actually the >50% attack) doesn't require a competing currency (just the hardware hashing power) - what such an attack potentially can do is either "undo" some tx's or refuse any new tx's (the latter being perhaps of more concern). In either case if such an attack were to be carried out it certainly would be an issue for Bitcoin (please also note the that Bitcoin is one word not two) although not necessarily fatal (ideas such as "proof of stake" are already being trialled in other alts). Also note that the cost (in terms of hardware) to carry out such an attack would be rather high.

There is one more thing to note about a 51% attack. Specifically, no company (not even Bitcoin's competitors) has any logical reason to do any such thing. Assuming they did have sufficient computing power (which is a big if), they wouldn't need to attack Bitcoin, as they could use their computing power to produce more bitcoins than everyone else entirely legitimately. Remember, companies are all about profit, and they're not going to invest in a huge amount of computing power to pull of a crazy (and highly public) attack against their competitors when they could just as easily use that computing power to make a buttload of money legally. The incentive structure of Bitcoin is specifically designed so that anyone who has the power to attack Bitcoin will find it far more profitable not to do so.

Any attack will come not from a large company, but from an extremely well-funded entity that is willing to throw away huge amounts of money just to make a point. Like a government, for example.

[Levi Porter]

Thanks for the reply Ian,

The so called 51% attack (which is actually the >50% attack) doesn't require a competing currency (just the hardware hashing power) - what such an attack potentially can do is either "undo" some tx's or refuse any new tx's (the latter being perhaps of more concern). In either case if such an attack were to be carried out it certainly would be an issue for Bitcoin (please also note the that Bitcoin is one word not two) although not necessarily fatal (ideas such as "proof of stake" are already being trialled in other alts). Also note that the cost (in terms of hardware) to carry out such an attack would be rather high.

The reason I mentioned a competing currency, is that their value could hypothetically increase if they could reuse new tx's (double spend?) Bitcoin's value to zero.

Thanks for the heads up about Bitcoin being one word.

Could the open source aspect of BC at a later date choose to increase BC supply?

It is a trivial change in terms of source code but without 100% of current users agreeing to migrate to the same new software it would result in a "hard fork" (which would turn Bitcoin into effectively 2 currencies at the point that the new software was used).

Wouldn't this likely cause a loss of value for Bitcoin?

Although IANAL the software was initially released in 2009 (and contains "Copyright (c) 2010 Satoshi Nakamoto" comments in the source code) so unless a patent was filed in 2010 I think it would not be possible to do so now.

In the U.S., I believe that Copyright is somewhat irrelevant in regards to protecting inventions.  I also read somewhere that you can patent software without including the source code.

I don't think this would happen, but even if the 2010 Copyright was in public domain and not patentable, if further variations to the source code became novel and unique beyond the scope of obviousness or the natural evolution to the 2009 publication, then someone could file a patent claim. If they were granted one, it would present some interesting circumstances I would imagine.

This is all fascinating to me. Learning and trying to figure out the best way to start with Bitcoin and assess it's future seems like a daunting task.

Thanks again,

Levi

[Levi Porter]

haha, that's pretty awesome: the ECB helping us out with generating new users.

I thought that was pretty cool too

I prefer electrum as a wallet myself. It's a light client that makes use of servers to provide blockchain-related info and inject transactions into the network, so it has a very low resource footprint. (I halso have other types of wallet: a brainwallet for my savings, for example. I also run the default satoshi client as long as my lowly computer can cope with the blockchain and I use BitcoinSpinner on the phone)

You didn't really put the question of how to best acquire bitcoins, but let me suggest one pretty cool way: go to localbitcoins.com and find a local trader that will sell BTC to you for cash. It's a good no-paper-trail way to get coins, plus as an added bonus you get to meet a bitcoiner

Thanks for this info   I like the localbitcoins.com

[Levi Porter]

There is one more thing to note about a 51% attack. Specifically, no company (not even Bitcoin's competitors) has any logical reason to do any such thing. Assuming they did have sufficient computing power (which is a big if), they wouldn't need to attack Bitcoin, as they could use their computing power to produce more bitcoins than everyone else entirely legitimately. Remember, companies are all about profit, and they're not going to invest in a huge amount of computing power to pull of a crazy (and highly public) attack against their competitors when they could just as easily use that computing power to make a buttload of money legally. The incentive structure of Bitcoin is specifically designed so that anyone who has the power to attack Bitcoin will find it far more profitable not to do so.

Any attack will come not from a large company, but from an extremely well-funded entity that is willing to throw away huge amounts of money just to make a point. Like a government, for example.

I guess I was trying to hypothesize about a hypothetical greedy large corporation that takes notice to Bitcoin's success, and wants to dominate the digital currency market.

Couldn't they start out as an innocent looking alternative or little brother currency, while actually using their massive computing power, employees, and locations to lure people into buying in to their new currency?

If they could pull it off, they could dictate value, distribution networks, and double spend any new prospective currency out of existence.

Maybe I am thinking to maniacal or overly concerned of corporate / globalist take over.

[CIYAM]

Couldn't they start out as an innocent looking alternative or little brother currency, while actually using their massive computing power, employees, and locations to lure people into buying in to their new currency?

If they could pull it off, they could dictate value, distribution networks, and double spend any new prospective currency out of existence.

Certainly anyone can start their own alt coin (or a fork if they really want to) but to keep up continual > 50% attacks would become prohibitively expensive for any organisation when it costs zero to start up another coin (which you would also have to attack if you want a monopoly and if someone does start trying this then I'd expect hundreds of new alt coins to suddenly start appearing).

Also understand that > 50% does not mean you can "double spend" it merely means that you can invalidate (some slightly) older transactions by replacing them with new ones (meaning also that you can't steal other peoples coins with such an attack but you could "respend" some of your own).