rpietila public diary

[rpietila]

We set up an order matching software, which will process the net dealer orderbooks of the BDA members

Is it true that this particular matching mechanism avoids the need for exchange-local trading accounts?

This is an ingenious mechanism, which achieves the following objectives:

- No central point of failure; the central software cannot mathematically cheat, since if it clears the market according to the orders of each of the members, it will have been cleared it according to all of them.

- About 30% of the bitcoins of the world will be able to be part of the price finding mechanism without need to physically move them or even know the exact owners and whereabouts of them. Quite many of them will be owned by the members at that point, and some non-members will certainly know of the members who act as their brokers. Dealers do not need to divulge their local order book (amounts, personal info) to anyone, the amounts will be sent to the blackbox encrypted, the customer info stored locally.

- Any local dealer can serve any Prince Harry who wants to purchase 10 million worth of bitcoins, which is impossible in the current exchange model (prepayment) and the Web-Of-Mistrust model (nobody would trust you for more than you have been doing before, which is childish if we are talking about actual business).

- Yes, as the end-user customer, there is no need to store your cash or bitcoins anywhere in particular. Only the dealers will need to abide by the following conditions->

If the following conditions are met:

- All (= every one of) the members are professionals, to make it smooth enough to have a delayed 84 hour settlement with an assigned counterparty.

- Members post a bail to cover their total outstanding orders limit, or any lesser amount if it is considered stupid enough to scam all the other members of the network prorated.

[rpietila]

Why did this get moved to Off-topic?

It should be in main. If not, at least a main post on the Summit, as well as one on reddit, seems in order.

I think that it was because of smoothie's presence. But now he has his own un-selfmoderated parody thread, and he is not welcome to spam this one any more.

I asked this to be moved back to speculation, or anywhere else than off-topic for that matter. Well, that's the moderators' call now.

[rpietila]

Ahh, oldie but goodie. I want to relay to you my first post in this forum:

A miner would do well to base his calculations on profitability solely on BTC value. Many miners confuse their anticipation of BTC/fiat exchange rate appreciation with the profitability of mining.

Let's assume BFL ASIC is not a scam, and it will ship exactly the same time as the block reward is halved. From then on, the next year will see approximately 1,500M mBTC generated. (The figure would be 1,300M mBTC without the lag in difficulty adjustments, which causes more coins to be generated).

Some sources say that in ASIC preorders alone, more than 500M mBTC has been spent. This is a lot, considering that:
- the preordered capacity is unlikely to represent more than half of the hashrate, 2-3 months after launch.
- there is the electricity cost, which grows proportionally bigger the bigger the network grows.
- the more BTC price rises, the quicker is the network growth.

If the preorder figure is correct, an investment of 500M needs to be amortized during a period that does not generate more than approximately 300M. Clearly this is not possible, regardless of other factors.

So if you anticipate BTC appreciation, you should buy BTC. The more BTC appreciates, the worse bet mining is, because difficulty increases. If it stayed the same, mining would be proportional to direct holding of BTC. To add insult to injury, it does not even scale the other way round making mining better if the BTC fiat price dropped - in this event the hashrate declines only slowly, making it punitive to sell BTC to cover the cost of electricity. In any event, the ASIC manufacturers would likely lower their prices for existing equipment, and develop more power efficient technology.

TL;DR If you consider mining, forget about BTC price and its future. You need to amortize your BTC investment in 2 months with the BTC you generate by mining, taking into account the ever-increasing difficulty. If this does not pay off, you better purchase BTC and forget mining.

Edited for mBTC.

[rpietila]

from wall thread as a motivation to join the summit:

http://youtu.be/59uTUpO8Dzw?t=19m14s (listen for about 1.5 minutes)

"This is the time when people should be trying really big, crazy things"

Would you come if he comes? 

[zeroday]

I've just paid for virtual admission. See you at the Summit   

[rpietila]

Workshop: REAL BILLS AND CLEARINGHOUSE

This workshop will be held in I Bitcoin Supernode Summit Finland 9.-12. May 2013.

MISSION STATEMENT:

[tbd]


TECHNICAL:

[tbd]

[molecular]

from wall thread as a motivation to join the summit:

http://youtu.be/59uTUpO8Dzw?t=19m14s (listen for about 1.5 minutes)

"This is the time when people should be trying really big, crazy things"

Would you come if he comes? 

I would come without him coming if I could.

I will not participate online, either, btw.

[casascius]

I appreciate the invitation.  I'd love to go to Finland.  One day I will make it.  I can't make it on such short notice.

The immodest emphasis on conspicuous luxury is something I find alienating and leads me to question the premise of the gathering.  If I'm going to be invited to spend a $7,000 fee to attend a meeting, I'm accustomed to high-quality well-thought-out appeals for me to attend, which concentrate on the business development case for attendance more so than the exclusivity of the gathering and the luxurious luxuries that will be enjoyed there, the blackness of the German car I'll be picked up in, and the hotness of the 30 girls that will be passing out bitcoins.  The way that this is presented, I feel like by going I'd be starring in a Bitcoin version of "Oppan Gang-nam Style" and that has a negative appeal to me.  THis is not why I am involved in Bitcoin.  This sort of meeting Should Not Take Place at a venue that requires an outlay like that per participant, with one exception: if the money were going to fund some well-defined and well-planned project to fund the common good.

[rpietila]

I appreciate the invitation.  I'd love to go to Finland.  One day I will make it.  I can't make it on such short notice.

The immodest emphasis on conspicuous luxury is something I find alienating and leads me to question the premise of the gathering.  If I'm going to be invited to spend a $7,000 fee to attend a meeting, I'm accustomed to high-quality well-thought-out appeals for me to attend, which concentrate on the business development case for attendance more so than the exclusivity of the gathering and the luxurious luxuries that will be enjoyed there, the blackness of the German car I'll be picked up in, and the hotness of the 30 girls that will be passing out bitcoins.  The way that this is presented, I feel like by going I'd be starring in a Bitcoin version of "Oppan Gang-nam Style" and that has a negative appeal to me.  THis is not why I am involved in Bitcoin.  This sort of meeting Should Not Take Place at a venue that requires an outlay like that per participant, with one exception: if the money were going to fund some well-defined and well-planned project to fund the common good.

Thank you for your reply, I appreciate it.

I realize that astute bitcoin people are very busy, and therefore cannot easily read the fine print, which in this case says that the tickets will be sold at progressively higher prices. The first one was BTC1, and currently you would be able to reserve yours at BTC8, which, despite the fact that it is $1000+, will still net me a loss and cannot be considered excessive.

The level of people, targeted with this summit, is so high, that their opportunity cost of time easily runs in $thousands per day, so this is why I care about their physical well-being (and not so much care how much it will cost to me or them). It is realistically a $5-$10k investment for you or anyone from the U.S. to attend this (ticket+flight+time), so you don't want to have substandard living conditions. There is already another conference targeting a wider audience, and there is no point for me to reinvent the wheel.

As for the workshops, I have currently outlined three most critical developments in the bitcoinworld, which do need to be accomplished with the utmost speed and determination, namely:

- The Dealer Network, to stabilize the price during its appreciation phase and remove the single point of failure (Mt.Gox)
- The Supernode, to strengthen the socio-economic network, develop local power centers, and tie Bitcoin to the real world existing networks
- The Real Bill, to enable such a stable price in the long run that bitcoin can be used as a unit of account in production of goods and services

If you think there is anything more urgent and important to be done in this world than these, please post it here. Since I am pretty serious with this conference and consider it the culmination of my short career in bitcoin.

If you just see the blackness of the cars and hotness of the girls, you are myopic. This all needs to be there but the real content is in the workshops.

Thank you for the Casascius coins, they are beautiful, and a lasting testimony to your foresight.

[casascius]

I am not saying the gathering doesn't have merit.  It probably does.

Here is how the mental evaluation process worked for me:  I got an invitation with 2 links, one is "1st Bitcoin Supernode Summit"., and the other is "The theory behind the urgent need for meetup (self-moderated 30 minute read)".

I clicked the second one first, and saw an incoherent thread speculating about "crashes" and the BTC price, arbitrage, you broadcasting how much money you have made, and, well, instantly concluded "tl;dr - this meeting is probably not within my sphere of interest"

It's not that I can't read the fine print, and it's not that I don't have 30 minutes to read the theory.  And it's not that I haven't made money being involved in Bitcoin, and it's not that I think it's wrong to share.  It's that I won't read the fine print, and won't spend 30 minutes to read the theory to form my initial assessment of interest.  Rather, I depend on a fairly reliable heuristic that goes something like this: someone willing to put this much effort into organizing a sophisticated meeting like this and who would potentially accept a fee like this should be able to communicate the gist of the business case for going in 30 seconds.  In 30 seconds of skimming, I was only able to gather absolute-luxury, German cars, girls passing out bitcoins, a meeting for people with the means to go.  Oh, and a conference planned on such short notice so as to leave very little room for preparation for the real content I'd be going to such a meeting for.  Gut conclusion - oppan gangnam style!

Like I mentioned, I"m not saying the gathering doesn't have merit.  I have no objection to spending $7,000 or $17,000 to attend a good meeting, but I need to be persuaded that there's some possible serious value and planning behind it, and that persuasion needs to begin within the first 30 seconds of my attention span.  I simply can't fathom being asked to spend 30 minutes to determine that, all while being bombarded with references to lavish living that another subconscious "heuristic" of mine strongly associates with manipulative MLM (multi-level-marketing) recruitment efforts targeted at the demographic of those with a poor understanding of finance.

So if anything... I would be highly interested if a) it were not ~10 days from now, and b) I could make a clear, fast correlation as to whether my potential interest in going is compatible with what I can expect to find there.  tl;dr: more planning, less emphasis on luxury (it can be luxurious, just let it be a pleasant surprise for when we get there)

[Qoheleth]

Qoheleth

First, thank you for the personal invitation. I'm flattered.

For all that I post here about Bitcoin, my own activities about it, and where I see it going in the future, at the moment I am still truly small potatoes. 50k minicoins - the theoretical price of one ticket if I take too long to decide - is a large portion of my total Bitcoin holdings.

What's more, I've got no passport at the moment; even if my personal situation was such that I could drop a six-day journey into it on ten days' notice, the ponderous weight of the Department of State simply can't issue me my papers on a timetable short enough for me to leave the country.

If I attend at all, it would have to be via teleconference, and I shall have to do some thinking as to what it's worth to me to attend. I have serious thoughts on the topics of the three proposed workshops, but even the current 3k minicoin price to attend virtually is, in real terms, half a ton of rice and beans - it's a price I can afford, but large enough that I must consider seriously the upsides and downsides.

I'll carefully consider, and hopefully, come to a quick decision.

[Qoheleth]

Please take no offense but a lot of people seem to have enough problems with using the metric system and SI standards as it is so I am going to correct you. mBTC is milli-Bitcoin, (not mini). Sorry for seeming
presumptuous and hopefully you won't interpret it as such

No, I realize that. "Milli-bitcoins" is certainly the right thing to call 10^5 Satoshis from an SI point of view. I just use "minicoins" out of a personal impression that "milli" in currency is too associated with "million" (the wrong direction) for "milli-bitcoins" to catch on in everyday usage.

For any other unit - kilocoins, microcoins, nanocoins (if we ever expand divisibility), I'd happily use the SI prefix.

[rpietila]

Thank you all for the curious interest. This is truly like running a race in front of the world More criticism than praise, although I think I am doing pretty good considering that I only do this 24/7, and also earn my living in the process.

Today I did the following:

- Some summit members have taken on tasks to practically organize matters. Expect zeroday to start a new thread and keep it in even better order than this one is. We will also have a private forum in 48 hours max, for the delegates and people in the process.

- I scoured the city for new and ritzier offices for my supernode. So far did not find anything of interest. My problem is that I want quite large (200+ sqm), best location (only a few blocks are good enough for me), good condition (4 meter ceiling is the target, <3 disqualified), and available (so that we can move in now and not in 2 months)

- We will go to Haikko on Thursday with a 4-ppl delegation, to discuss the practicalities of the Summit with the staff of the Manor House

- Chatted over skype with a Greek delegate

- Some people want to order Casascius coins from me, I have quoted 1,800mBTC / 2,200mBTC / 5,500mBTC for 2013/2012/2011 BTC1 coins incl dlwy.

- Goat sold me 700,000mBTC for 2.65M THB yesterday. I have now spent about 4 hours with the bank, and currently they have promised to send the money to him on Thursday. I need to pay anything between $1k-$3k in different fees to the bank (closer to $1k now since I phoned directly to the currency broker desk to exchange EUR->THB; but I have happily paid 1.55% fees on USD->EUR automatic conversion just because I did not specify the sender to use my USD account). LOL when Goat sees the money clear, his part is done in 15 seconds. [Do you realistically think that BTC will not go to $300/mBTC, just because of the fact that using banks for anything is such a pain?]

- We are celebrating the 3rd most important annual festival in Finland, only Midsummer and Christmas (in this order) are more important

- I have almost contracted a team of 3 bright and beautiful young women to help with the organising of the summit (+ being The Summit Secretariat during the event, if ever we reach 30 participants - which I doubt but will employ them anyway)


All delegates - If you need something very important before Thursday May 2nd, 16:00 UTC, PM me. Otherwise I will have the staff and the rooms etc. ready by then and will contact everyone personally.

Since the best rooms are in short supply, please decide for yourself now, if you would like to have:

A) a suite (Manor House 2nd and highest floor apartment with bedroom, living area, bath, and large balcony facing the sea - visible in the photo in the summit invitation) with butler service for 10,000mBTC; OR

B) a single room in Manor House 1st floor with bath / single room in the conference wing (same price) for 3,000mBTC; OR

C) shared room with another delegate with bath (included).

[Brushan]

So you're telling me that the goal here is that there will be 3M BTC (30% of all bitcoins!) deposited to an account which you control? Man if this happens i'm getting out of this game.

[Qoheleth]

4 meter ceiling is the target, <3 disqualified

Curiosity question: what's the purpose of this particular criterion? I understand wanting your premises to be in "good conditiohn", but >10ft clearance seems like a non sequitur.

[notme]

I am not saying the gathering doesn't have merit.  It probably does.

Here is how the mental evaluation process worked for me:  I got an invitation with 2 links, one is "1st Bitcoin Supernode Summit"., and the other is "The theory behind the urgent need for meetup (self-moderated 30 minute read)".

I clicked the second one first, and saw an incoherent thread speculating about "crashes" and the BTC price, arbitrage, you broadcasting how much money you have made, and, well, instantly concluded "tl;dr - this meeting is probably not within my sphere of interest"

It's not that I can't read the fine print, and it's not that I don't have 30 minutes to read the theory.  And it's not that I haven't made money being involved in Bitcoin, and it's not that I think it's wrong to share.  It's that I won't read the fine print, and won't spend 30 minutes to read the theory to form my initial assessment of interest.  Rather, I depend on a fairly reliable heuristic that goes something like this: someone willing to put this much effort into organizing a sophisticated meeting like this and who would potentially accept a fee like this should be able to communicate the gist of the business case for going in 30 seconds.  In 30 seconds of skimming, I was only able to gather absolute-luxury, German cars, girls passing out bitcoins, a meeting for people with the means to go.  Oh, and a conference planned on such short notice so as to leave very little room for preparation for the real content I'd be going to such a meeting for.  Gut conclusion - oppan gangnam style!

Like I mentioned, I"m not saying the gathering doesn't have merit.  I have no objection to spending $7,000 or $17,000 to attend a good meeting, but I need to be persuaded that there's some possible serious value and planning behind it, and that persuasion needs to begin within the first 30 seconds of my attention span.  I simply can't fathom being asked to spend 30 minutes to determine that, all while being bombarded with references to lavish living that another subconscious "heuristic" of mine strongly associates with manipulative MLM (multi-level-marketing) recruitment efforts targeted at the demographic of those with a poor understanding of finance.

So if anything... I would be highly interested if a) it were not ~10 days from now, and b) I could make a clear, fast correlation as to whether my potential interest in going is compatible with what I can expect to find there.  tl;dr: more planning, less emphasis on luxury (it can be luxurious, just let it be a pleasant surprise for when we get there)

+1

What's the "elevator pitch"?

[zeroday]

To make the discussion more convenient, I've created a separate topic dedicated solely to Bitcoin Supernode Summit.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192008

I ask everyone to share their ideas relating the summit on the new thread linked above.

[Qoheleth]

Please correct me if I am putting inaccurate words in anyone's mouth.

+1

What's the "elevator pitch"?

Bitcoin is growing. Bitcoin is becoming better-known, and the price is going up, and it seems these sorts of growth are dramatically outpacing growth and maturation of the infrastructure. I speak here, not of development of the software itself (issues such as block size, UTXO pruning, &c), but rather of the ecosystem, the stuff that makes it usable as a real replacement for the currencies in which people transact.

We need to talk about the future of this infrastructure, the future of the vital organs of the Bitcoin economy (just as the blockchain is its bones). We need to talk about what infrastructure needs to be in place for Bitcoin to become honest-to-goodness current money, and moreover, how to implement these things quickly and well. It is especially important, as much as it's feasible, for the big stakeholders - the people who are already doing a lot of stuff in Bitcoin and are invested in its success - to be parties to this conversation.

As far as I can tell, that's the point of this conference.

Edit: Elevator pitches of the problems that the three proposed "workshops" seem to be trying to address.

Exchanges exist, and provide a vital service. But of the ones that exist, we have a powerhouse that is unreliable and awkward to use (taking over a week to get your money in and out), plus several cottage exchanges that are badly illiquid, run by amateurs, and at best somewhat less awkward. Is this holding back stabilization and adoption? How can we build a system for exchanging between BTC and national currency which is simple, trustworthy, and reliable? Here's one proposal.

The devteam and mining pools exist, and they do good work. But should the prominent developers and pool operators get hit by a bus (or, heaven forfend, a bullet), what will become of Bitcoin? How can we make sure that there will be people ready to step in and fill the gap? Here's one proposal.

Bitcoin's economic properties are much similar to gold. But when gold was the money of the world, there were all sorts of financial instruments orbiting it. Are "naked BTC" sufficient on their own, or do we need to resurrect some of those instruments - and if so, how do we go about doing it? Here's one proposal.

[rpietila]

There is time to brag and there is time to speak plain words. Now, some of the latter kind:


To the "PTB of bitcoin":

You understand that what I am talking is true, but are afraid that it will somehow ruin your plans. It won't. The most important thing for you to understand is that you cannot destroy bitcoin, and I cannot destroy it. Therefore it will not be destroyed. Either of us can keep it going indefinitely. Any supernode can do it. MP can do it, alone, if you and I both fail.

You currently have a lot of bitcoins and there is nothing in this world that can take them away from you. Taking them from you is not even my intention. I have rather few bitcoins actually, compared to many of you. But even I have enough, the bulk of my bitcoins I plan to never spend. There is hardly a day, when I don't make more bitcoins, despite the great level of spending that I have.

This is because of the fact that I am cool, and most of you are not. If I spend bitcoins, the universe is busy giving them back to me. If you spend, they are gone. Or at least you are afraid that they would be (try it - you may be wrong ).

I don't believe it needs to stay this way - coolness is a trait that one can develop. One of the ways to develop it, is to spend time with cool people, such as me. I personally invited many of you to my summit, and I plan to have a good time there. If you would send 2-3 delegates, I believe the reality would hit you not nearly as hard, as it will, if none of the big names is present to relay the information to the current powers.

TL; DR: You will continue to have the bulk of the bitcoins, but it does not do much if you cannot spend them in a way that it brings good to all of mankind + replenishes your stack. The word "miser" is derived from "misery" for a reason.



To MP:

I cannot understand why you continue to bully your inferiors and not speak kindly (as I do), towards all who want to understand. You only posted me a proof this week that you actually have a PR lady, until that I had thought you are a schizophrenic. Your PR is not doing a good job, if I were you I would think again how to present yourself to the world. I do not believe your business is worth 700,000,000mBTC and mine is only 400,000mBTC. As I speak the truth in kindness, and you don't, the valuation of your business will decline and mine will increase. You understand all this, so I await for a change in strategy or the continued decline of your importance.


To the enthusiastic public:

Buy bitcoins with all the spare cash that you have, NOW, and continue reading this thread. It is more important to buy now, than it is to buy with a lot of cash. If you have $1, go to work and earn $10, and then buy bitcoins. If you have $100, do not go to work but buy bitcoins now. Then go to work, earn $1000 and buy bitcoins with that.

Before the year is over, wonderful things will have happened. In 1998 I was in senior high school, and we started the school year with two people in my class having a mobile phone. They called each other and the rest were quietly ridiculing them. After 9 short months, everybody except two (of the class of 36 people) had bought theirs, and only two were still considering. Bitcoin will do the same, and since there are certain things in the universe that cannot be altered, it will develop a price bubble:

When the actual adoption of Bitcoin (which is currently between 1-5 million users) hits 100 million users, bitcoin price will have risen a lot, and by "a lot" I mean that it goes to several million dollars per bitcoin. It will happen before Christmas, this year. No, not in 2016. The rate of the adoption of new ideas has constantly shortened, and bitcoin has a trait that most of the cool new stuff don't have, it makes everyone who enters in, before the mass adoption threshold of about 2% of the active population, stinking rich. This alone would fulfill the phophecy to its brim - and it is just a bonus, since the bitcoin technology is a world class invention even without that property.

Do not buy any bitcoins over and above your immediate transactional needs, after it hits its long-term sustainable value of $300/mBTC in current dollars. Or prepare to sell them at the bubble top at least.


To the doubters:

Read what I wrote to the "enthusiastic public" and decide accordingly.


To the bears:

You may think it is cool to spread FUD, trying to delay the mass adoption and enrich yourself in the process. You are wrong. It is not cool, but the opposite (lame). Also you are not really getting richer, and you know it. The ones, who are now actually getting richer by lying, are competent enough to get richer while speaking the truth, and they have enough bitcoins, and time in their hands to come to my summit and learn how to do it.


To the delegates:

After this post, I will concentrate on developing your capabilities on running a supernode of your own, and not so much talk in public or troll in this forum. Expect a change in my priorities, effective some time during the next 96 hours. And decide your service level according to my previous post, I will soon get back regarding that.


To the potential delegates:

I can easily imagine that the summit is worth your time and ticket price. If you don't, then don't attend! A certain level of imagination is required, and if you don't have it, you're wasting your time.

If you do, the tickets are still available below cost, and we are going to have a good time there*, so why wait!

*) Actually "here" since I moved my presence to Haikko already today. The Manor House (pictured) is undergoing the largest renovation in its history, and we will be the first guests there when it opens next week with its butler service. I am currently staying in the conference wing suite, which satisfies all my conditions except the height of the ceiling.)


Thank you for your time

[DeaDTerra]

DeaDTerra

Thank you for the invitation, I am honored.
I would love to go unfortunately, it is a bit to close to San Jose for me.
As I have already booked everything for San Jose and I quite busy at the moment, I have to decline.
I could possible connect virtually, but that is probably sub optimal.
//DeaDTerra