A Interplanetary Currency

[Rassah]

Earth will stay inhabitable for about five hundred million years.  That's a lot.  IMHO, humanity as we know it will almost certainly NOT exist in ten thousand years.  Or if it still exists, it won't matter much because it won't be the most intelligent life form anymore.   Humans will be over-powered by machines, who might just keep them as pets or something.  And for a machine, the concept of being "inhabitable" is much different than for a human.

I think the most likely scenario is the one that has already been happening: humans will keep using technology as a tool to improve their lives. Meaning that any advances in memory recall, AI, or communication will be used as a tool, first through devices we carry, and eventually through devices we wear, implant, and possibly even grow within us. I'm of the "continued self-guided human evolution through technology" camp, as opposed to "we're all going to die through a Terminator scenario" camp. Though I guess we won't really be the same humans once that all happens.

[Gabi]

Also, space is cold! Your cooling problems are solved.

This is so retarded. Who is the idiot who posted that?

[BlackBison]

Whenever I see these threads I always think of this for some reason:

http://m.youtube.com/results?q=intergalactic#/watch?v=Nrbc_0Pf10Q

 

[Herodes]

Whenever I see these threads I always think of this for some reason:

http://m.youtube.com/results?q=intergalactic#/watch?v=Nrbc_0Pf10Q

 

Anyone know how the general population ever responded to the following claims, before they were ever done?

- It is possible to fly an airplane with many people accross the atlantic sea!
- It is possible to see live images of what's happening on another continent.
- It's possible to land a man on the moon!

The people who made things possible, were those who believed, the visionaries. Some would've called them dreamers.

It's in human nature to not believe anything until it's actually happened. Humans are exploring space, and this will escalate in the future.

[Rassah]

On a serious note, though, since it will be impossible to mine the same blockchain on both Earth and Mars, the only two options would be to either keep Earth as the central mining point, and let Mars deal with the huge latency of broadcasting and confirming transactions (which people there really won't like), or fork their own local chain. The same would happen if Bitcoin got stuck behind some country's firewall. Anyone know how something like that would work? I figure it would be similar to trying to bootstrap another Bitcoin from scratch, including setting up its own miners. Would that even be possible any more?

[justusranvier]

so we could inhabitate other planets later on.

There are no other planets.   And extra-solar is just too far away.

... with the currently known physics.

Not really. Extrasolar planets are accessible for colonization with 1960s technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29#Interstellar_missions

[Rassah]

so we could inhabitate other planets later on.

There are no other planets.   And extra-solar is just too far away.

Venus, Mercury, plenty of very large moons.

[grondilu]

since it will be impossible to mine the same blockchain on both Earth and Mars,

I'm not sure it's so obvious.

Light takes a few minutes to travel from mars to earth.  It's the same order of magnitude than the target delay between bitcoin blocks.  Does that mean earth and mars could not mine the same blockchain?  Not so sure.

Time delay would not be an issue for each planet, providing they don't wait for confirmation from one another before starting mining the new  block found locally.  And that's pretty much how the current protocol already work, isn't?

Surely it would increase the amount of chain forking, and it might take more time for them to resolve, but nothing would be very different from how bitcoin currently works.

Well, I think so anyway.

[grondilu]

so we could inhabitate other planets later on.

There are no other planets.   And extra-solar is just too far away.

Venus, Mercury, plenty of very large moons.

I obviously meant "no other planets we might consider colonizing"

[grondilu]

I'm of the "continued self-guided human evolution through technology" camp, as opposed to "we're all going to die through a Terminator scenario" camp. Though I guess we won't really be the same humans once that all happens.

That's what I meant.  Humans as an organic species will probably disappear but human culture will survive through the machines and AI it will have created.  Transition will happen more or less peacefully, not in a man-vs-machine war.

[MatthewLM]

The latency between Earth and Mars would be a few minutes to over 20 minutes and communications would probably come at a premium. You are better off having a separate block-chain and call it MarsCoin or something.

[Rassah]

^^^ That. It takes 10 to 20 minutes for a signal to go from earth to Mars. It takes 10 minutes on average to mine a block. This means unless earth and mars take turns mining a block, each waiting for the other to finish, they will each be in a permanent state of forking each other (each will take 10 minutes to mine it's own block, only to receive a competing block from the other planet 5 minutes later). I guess the dispute could get settled with whoever mines the highest difficulty block, but it would make confirmations and mining rewards way too chaotic.

Edit:

Plus you also need to be able to check for and correct any transmission errors.

Oh god, I forgot about this. That likely blocks any chance of using Bitcoin between two planets with anything other than sending it at a few batches at a time over a span of a few hours. Send with error checks, receive confirmation, re-send whatever was errored, wait for block confirmation, and receive confirmation of the block could take as long as 20+20+20+10+20=90 minutes. Just for one Bitcoin transaction.

[bitcoinbetas]

The whole concept is just plain cool IMHO.

[AlexanderSpamilton]

i could see it working with international space station and the moon if economies there were big enough i guess.

[J-Norm]

Double spends may be an issue. You would want to wait for 60 confirmation instead of 6.

[J-Norm]

Bitcoin on Mars? Mars is worse than living on Antarctica so I doubt there will be much economy there for a long time. Maybe one day they would have their own chain though.

Even people in the arctic need to pay for internet porn and send their earnings to family members. Of course people on Mars will want to do business with people on Earth. All of those spice miners will want to send profits to their families back on free Earth. Not to mention buying your freedom for the Earth masters.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Introducing the Interplanetary Bitcoin Exchange (IBEX). I've put a thought into this. All I need is a logo to resemble the following image.



Fuck me! Why the hell did it have to look like a goat?

Here's my backup plan: The Interplanetary...

[Phinnaeus Gage]

http://motionnet.blogspot.com/2012/08/interplanetary-internet-ipn.html

[phatsphere]

I think there is actually no big problem with using Bitcoin on Mars. It just needs a bit of additional work:

• it's not always possible to communicate directly with mars. there is this big thing called "sun" inbetween! i.e. for a permanent mars base, we need additional relay satellites.
• i could envision a central server at mars, that acts as a clearing station for all transactions.
• double spends on mars and in parallel on earth are possible, but would be detected in less than half an hour.
• for the entire lifespan of bitcoin, the mining power on earth will very likely be  much higher than on mars. so, mining over there won't make much sense in the first place.

[grondilu]

I think there is actually no big problem with using Bitcoin on Mars. It just needs a bit of additional work:

• it's not always possible to communicate directly with mars. there is this big thing called "sun" inbetween! i.e. for a permanent mars base, we need additional relay satellites.
• i could envision a central server at mars, that acts as a clearing station for all transactions.
• double spends on mars and in parallel on earth are possible, but would be detected in less than half an hour.
• for the entire lifespan of bitcoin, the mining power on earth will very likely be  much higher than on mars. so, mining over there won't make much sense in the first place.

Agreed.