Bitcoin 2013: The Future of Payments - San Jose, CA - May 17-19, 2013

[Seth Otterstad]

I thought it was absolutely ridiculous that it was cheaper to buy admission with a credit card at the door.  I'm sure the organizers of the NY and Vienna bitcoin conferences will not have such a retarded system in place.

Bitcoin price:  3btc
Credit Card price:  $350

Peter Vessenes is clearly incompetent.  Mtgox gets booted out of the conference because of his stupid lawsuit, and then it's more expensive to pay admission with bitcoin.  How is this acceptable?  What has coinlab done for bitcoin anyway?

You might have noticed that the BTC rate has fluctuated a lot lately, and keeping things simple means whole numbers on admission prices. $350/3 or $116.67 is a pretty reasonable approximation of the average value of one BTC in the week up to and including the conference.  

It is inexcusable to create an incentive to pay with a credit card at a bitcoin conference.  They could easily have changed the rate to 2.9 or 2.8 bitcoins depending on the current exchange rate.

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[solex]

I thought it was absolutely ridiculous that it was cheaper to buy admission with a credit card at the door.  I'm sure the organizers of the NY and Vienna bitcoin conferences will not have such a retarded system in place.

Bitcoin price:  3btc
Credit Card price:  $350

Peter Vessenes is clearly incompetent.  Mtgox gets booted out of the conference because of his stupid lawsuit, and then it's more expensive to pay admission with bitcoin.  How is this acceptable?  What has coinlab done for bitcoin anyway?

You might have noticed that the BTC rate has fluctuated a lot lately, and keeping things simple means whole numbers on admission prices. $350/3 or $116.67 is a pretty reasonable approximation of the average value of one BTC in the week up to and including the conference.  

It is inexcusable to create an incentive to pay with a credit card at a bitcoin conference.  They could easily have changed the rate to 2.9 or 2.8 bitcoins depending on the current exchange rate.

I am looking at the rate during the conference and $116.67 per BTC seems fair considering it needs to be set once really.
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg10zig6-hourzczsg2013-05-16zeg2013-05-17ztgSzm1g10zm2g25
As it was a Bitcoin conference perhaps it can be argued the $350 should have been $345 or $340 depending on the rate. The difference is really only the price of a coffee and a sandwich!  

[blockgenesis]

... Satoshi himself mentioned that eventually we'll likely end up with just a few copies of the blockchain in gigantic data centers, with almost everyone running SPV clients that, ...

I'm not necessarily doubting that he said that, but I've never run across it.  Can you provide a pointer?

The closest thing I've seen to such a statement is Mike Hearn staying that the system could operate with 6 or so copies of the full block chain owned by large entities.  Maybe he didn't state who owned them though, and I am not going to put words into his mouth by claiming that he thought it was a good idea.  He can speak to that himself if he's so inclined.

Of course if bandwidth and storage cannot scale, that is likely to be the case I guess. But that being said, only 6 datacenters storing the entire blockchain might not be a real problem as long as all full nodes continue to run based on snapshots of the blockchain at a given date to reduce its size. Though I don't know all details surrounding this question, and I couldn't go at the conference this year (sadly!).

[Melbustus]

...
My only regret was that I couldn't be in all four rooms at the same time!
...

No kidding! I would've gone to just about everything if I could've. On one of the panels I was at, Peter noted that they're thinking the next one will be a couple days longer, so hopefully the schedule won't be so tight.

[BCB]

And then there where Lightening sessions going on as well. 

When one of the session got boring I cut out an hit up a lighting session on statistical analysis if btc price sings and that was on of the better sessions I attended and it was not even on my radar.

[Seth Otterstad]

I just skipped almost all the talks and talked to as many people as I could.  I figured I will always be able to watch recordings later.

[BCB]

I just skipped almost all the talks and talked to as many people as I could.  I figured I will always be able to watch recordings later.

ya that was a good plan as well.  So many smart, interesting people with some really terrific projects and idea.

[caveden]

No I didn't. This was discussed after the whitepaper, too. I just don't have time to look for it.

Hmmm.  I see...

Here http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09964.html

Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe
for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section to check for
double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or
about 12KB per day.  Only people trying to create new coins would need to run
network nodes.  At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the
network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to
specialists with server farms of specialized hardware.  A server farm would
only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with
that one node.

[Seth Otterstad]

There was a recent article in Bitcoin Magazine that analysed the blockchain size, but most of their articles are not available online. The main point is that the blockchain size will increase linearly, while the capacity of hard drives and internet speed increases exponentially (although right now the blockchain appears to increase faster because the block size limit hasn't been hit yet). The article looked at some worst case scenarios, and even using really conservative estimates, 20 years from now people will easily be able to store the whole blockchain on their phone and download the whole thing in a few hours.

[maaku]

There was a recent article in Bitcoin Magazine that analysed the blockchain size, but most of their articles are not available online. The main point is that the blockchain size will increase linearly, while the capacity of hard drives and internet speed increases exponentially (although right now the blockchain appears to increase faster because the block size limit hasn't been hit yet). The article looked at some worst case scenarios, and even using really conservative estimates, 20 years from now people will easily be able to store the whole blockchain on their phone and download the whole thing in a few hours.

That does not hold true once the blocksize limit is removed, which will happen eventually.

[Seth Otterstad]

There was a recent article in Bitcoin Magazine that analysed the blockchain size, but most of their articles are not available online. The main point is that the blockchain size will increase linearly, while the capacity of hard drives and internet speed increases exponentially (although right now the blockchain appears to increase faster because the block size limit hasn't been hit yet). The article looked at some worst case scenarios, and even using really conservative estimates, 20 years from now people will easily be able to store the whole blockchain on their phone and download the whole thing in a few hours.

That does not hold true once the blocksize limit is removed, which will happen eventually.

Unless I am mistaken, removing the blocksize limit will still result in a linear blockchain growth once bitcoin adoption levels off.  The exponential growth of storage capacity and internet speed will always pass it.  Great to meet you at the conference!

[Rassah]

I just skipped almost all the talks and talked to as many people as I could.  I figured I will always be able to watch recordings later.

Hey Seth! Thanks for stopping by the expert's table. I definitely remember your name, cause it has "otter" in it, and those things are frikin cute!  
Also, thanks for teaching me a bit about geography, in that there are two Rica's in the Caribbean. Still a bit embarrassed about that *o.o*

[Piper67]

I just skipped almost all the talks and talked to as many people as I could.  I figured I will always be able to watch recordings later.

Hey Seth! Thanks for stopping by the expert's table. I definitely remember your name, cause it has "otter" in it, and those things are frikin cute!  
Also, thanks for teaching me a bit about geography, in that there are two Rica's in the Caribbean. Still a bit embarrassed about that *o.o*

If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, there's a Rica and and Rico 

[Rassah]

No I didn't. This was discussed after the whitepaper, too. I just don't have time to look for it.

Hmmm.  I see...

Here http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09964.html

Thank you!  

There was a recent article in Bitcoin Magazine that analysed the blockchain size, but most of their articles are not available online. The main point is that the blockchain size will increase linearly, while the capacity of hard drives and internet speed increases exponentially (although right now the blockchain appears to increase faster because the block size limit hasn't been hit yet). The article looked at some worst case scenarios, and even using really conservative estimates, 20 years from now people will easily be able to store the whole blockchain on their phone and download the whole thing in a few hours.

That does not hold true once the blocksize limit is removed, which will happen eventually.

I doubt it. Rather, even if/when the software-coded blocksize limit is removed, it is still in the miner's best interest to keep a block size limit in place. It would help keep the transaction fees up, as opposed to everyone just sending everything for free all the time, and it would allow them to continue earning enough to cover storage costs. So, I guess as with mining, there will eventually be a free market competition for who can store and transmit the blockchain most efficiently while getting the maximum amount of fees out of it. So, just as mining costs tend to approach mining profits, storage expenses, I.e. blockchain growth, will tend to approach storage revenues. Thought I think Seth is right in that it will likely lag behind tech quite a bit. I mean, the full blockchain is 8 gigs, while you can buy 1,000 gigs for under $100 now.

[jgarzik]

That does not hold true once the blocksize limit is removed, which will happen eventually.

There is insufficient consensus to make that prediction.

[maaku]

I was responding to: "the blockchain size will increase linearly".

I don't think there is sufficient consensus as to what will happen once the blocksize limit is removed. However the odds are very slim that it will remain a straight line.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

it is still in the miner's best interest to keep a block size limit in place.

Miners are not a monolithic entity. If miners try to keep a grassroots size limit, every individual miner has an incentive to mine a bigger block and scoop up all those floating transaction fees. This is a classical tragedy of the commons scenario.

There needs to be a good tx fee mechanism that properly sponsors both the amortized cost of hashing and the marginal cost of processing (storage, verification, communication). To sponsor hashing you need to limit (or charge for) the total value sent in a block; to sponsor storage and communication you need to limit the block data size; to sponsor verification you need to limit the total script complexity.

[tvbcof]

No I didn't. This was discussed after the whitepaper, too. I just don't have time to look for it.

Hmmm.  I see...

Here http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09964.html

Thank you!  

Ah, you are right.  It's a small wonder that it is a bit cumbersome to dig up and not exactly front page on the Bitcoin marketing literature.

As I read this, it reminds me that I actually have seen it before (which is probably why something in the back of my mind kept me from denying it outright as impossible.)  I probably read it shortly before I went on my tirade about it being a fucking lie to call Bitcoin 'p2p', or at least will be.

It also probably corresponds to the time when I started suspecting Bitcoin of emitting some whiffs of Ponzi-tiveity and looking out of the corner of my eye for the location to the doorway.

[Minor Miner]

it is still in the miner's best interest to keep a block size limit in place.

Miners are not a monolithic entity. If miners try to keep a grassroots size limit, every individual miner has an incentive to mine a bigger block and scoop up all those floating transaction fees. This is a classical tragedy of the commons scenario.

There needs to be a good tx fee mechanism that properly sponsors both the amortized cost of hashing and the marginal cost of processing (storage, verification, communication). To sponsor hashing you need to limit (or charge for) the total value sent in a block; to sponsor storage and communication you need to limit the block data size; to sponsor verification you need to limit the total script complexity.

Can you tell me where I can research various entities and see if they pay fees?   I wanted to see how much people like dice and gox pay back into the system since they are the largest users of capacity.  I am not familiar enough with everything to know how to do this.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

it is still in the miner's best interest to keep a block size limit in place.

Miners are not a monolithic entity. If miners try to keep a grassroots size limit, every individual miner has an incentive to mine a bigger block and scoop up all those floating transaction fees. This is a classical tragedy of the commons scenario.

There needs to be a good tx fee mechanism that properly sponsors both the amortized cost of hashing and the marginal cost of processing (storage, verification, communication). To sponsor hashing you need to limit (or charge for) the total value sent in a block; to sponsor storage and communication you need to limit the block data size; to sponsor verification you need to limit the total script complexity.

Can you tell me where I can research various entities and see if they pay fees?   I wanted to see how much people like dice and gox pay back into the system since they are the largest users of capacity.  I am not familiar enough with everything to know how to do this.

SatoshiDice is easy - their addresses are constant and public, and you can look them up. In fact if you go to the blockchain.info homepage you'll see that almost half the transactions are SD, and labelled as such. AFAICT they always pay a fee.

For Mtgox it's a bit harder.