Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[JayJuanGee]

C'mon people.  Quoting Mervyn_Pumpkinhead is really destroying this thread.  Cut that out.

A much better quoting policy

Seen a few articles lately from localised news sources about relatively small businesses being held to ransom with bitcoin and my tinfoil hat tells me its the start of a smear campaign. Probably just perfectly normal paranoia but just in case...

This a real phenomenon that is going to need to be dealt with or addressed in some various ways... I certainly do NOT know the solution... except maybe there are some multi-sig solutions... but those seem to create problems as well...

people robbed banks in the wild wild west b/c that is where the money was....

greed can be very powerful... and taking from someone else (or attempts at such) can be somewhat direct with bitcoin...

I've not really spent a whole lot of time studying them but what make me suspicious is their timing wasn't far apart and they seemed fairly similar yet they where a long distance apart from each other. That suggests an organisation rather than individuals and they focus on the single aspect of bitcoin that puts it ahead of cash for criminals, no need for any physical exchange. I'd guess the best course of action for anyone receiving threats is to notify law enforcement (or load up on shells)  and refuse to pay but if anything is paid then the transaction must be made public so it can be tracked. Things like this will likely only serve to promote coin tracking features which will in turn create black and white bitcoin economies (or increase the utility of more anonymous systems such as darkcoin).

Really though, if someone is holding you... and saying, "your bitcoins or your life", which one would you prefer to keep? 

Solutions:

reversibility?

multisig?

tracking?  (that's not gonna happen is it?)

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[Cassius]

....
This makes sense but I'm not familiar enough with the protocol to know whether including certain features would make building particular applications easier or more effective. It seems inelegant, for example, to build an application to enable instant transactions and real-time trading on top of the bitcoin protocol, due to the 10-minute block time. I'm still on the fence on this one, though in practice I suspect people will use the option that works out-of-the-box. There's the friction that occurs within the protocol/system itself and the friction that occurs between user and protocol.

Your sig quote is one of my favourites, but sadly it's not one of mine. I've no idea where it comes from - couldn't find an original source.

The sig was part of a discussion a you had with aminorex (iirc) a few weeks ago, I C&P'd it straight from the post but I'll change it shortly if its a problem. I quoted it as soon as I read it but there was some much better stuff in that post, very informative and much appreciated.

We're only scratching the surface of what can be achieved with the protocol so far and I wouldn't be surprised if the trustless verification leaves the use as a currency far behind sometime. The ten minute blocks seems like a problem but essentially it means you only have to trust any system that transfers ownership for ten minutes, be that stock exchanges, car dealerships, estate agents or anything else that requires a trusted third party to verify transfer.

EDIT: Got it:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.msg7132970#msg7132970

EDIT2: Doh, I get it now. Thanks for quoting an excellent piece from an unfortunately unknown source

No worries on the sig. You know you've arrived on these boards when someone quotes you in their sig Just didn't want to look like I was trying to take credit for someone else's words. When I do that I always make sure I won't get found out.

[empowering]

Just going to pop this here:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-26/nirp-strikes-spain-create-tax-bank-deposits

[aminorex]

You aren't going to improve chopsticks. You aren't going to improve the core function of liquidity - just make it efficiently usable.  Any " innovation" that makes it less efficiently usable is a SCAM.

If you create a platform for a digital economy and cash transfer happens to be one of the features that is leveraged for that ends, why is that a Bad Thing?

It's not a bad thing.  I agree.  But its never going to be a threat to Bitcoin in competition for the natural monopoly of liquidity.

My expression was bad, because I inferred that every coin with features was a scam.  It's not.  My apologies for such an ill-considered utterance.  But it's not a candidate in the race for liquidity leadership.

[Raystonn]

C'mon people.  Quoting Mervyn_Pumpkinhead is really destroying this thread.  Cut that out.

A much better quoting policy

Seen a few articles lately from localised news sources about relatively small businesses being held to ransom with bitcoin and my tinfoil hat tells me its the start of a smear campaign. Probably just perfectly normal paranoia but just in case...

This a real phenomenon that is going to need to be dealt with or addressed in some various ways... I certainly do NOT know the solution... except maybe there are some multi-sig solutions... but those seem to create problems as well...

people robbed banks in the wild wild west b/c that is where the money was....

greed can be very powerful... and taking from someone else (or attempts at such) can be somewhat direct with bitcoin...

I've not really spent a whole lot of time studying them but what make me suspicious is their timing wasn't far apart and they seemed fairly similar yet they where a long distance apart from each other. That suggests an organisation rather than individuals and they focus on the single aspect of bitcoin that puts it ahead of cash for criminals, no need for any physical exchange. I'd guess the best course of action for anyone receiving threats is to notify law enforcement (or load up on shells)  and refuse to pay but if anything is paid then the transaction must be made public so it can be tracked. Things like this will likely only serve to promote coin tracking features which will in turn create black and white bitcoin economies (or increase the utility of more anonymous systems such as darkcoin).

Really though, if someone is holding you... and saying, "your bitcoins or your life", which one would you prefer to keep? 

Solutions:

reversibility?

multisig?

tracking?  (that's not gonna happen is it?)

Insurance.

[Miz4r]

they wish that the world would be as static as their own intellectual development.

Hey, you're the one that wants a mechanism to keep the price stable (an idea that attempts to buck the market and is used in the real world to transfer wealth to the wealthy and powerful no less)

Yeah his doublespeak is quite interesting. According to mervyn if you support Bitcoin you support a static world without progress and intellectual development. It's not like Bitcoin is disruptive or anything...

[empowering]

they wish that the world would be as static as their own intellectual development.

Hey, you're the one that wants a mechanism to keep the price stable (an idea that attempts to buck the market and is used in the real world to transfer wealth to the wealthy and powerful no less)

Yeah his doublespeak is quite interesting. According to mervyn if you support Bitcoin you support a static world without progress and intellectual development. It's not like Bitcoin is disruptive or anything...

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”


“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

― George Orwell, 1984

[Raystonn]

I've been doing some analysis on the latest craze, Proof of Stake coins like NXT.  On the surface they look like a good deal, with innovation and some great ideas.  But they appear to suffer from one very fatal flaw.  Proof of Work coins are backed by energy.  Those providing the Proof (miners here) must choose one coin on which to spend their energy to provide it.  Proof of Stake coins have no such protection.

You cannot double-spend your energy and use it to mine multiple Proof of Work coins (e.g. X Bitcoin and Y Litecoin mined with the same energy expenditure as mining just X Bitcoin or just Y Litecoin).  New coins may pop up, but they must fight over the limited supply of miners/energy.  This fight over a limited resource ensures you will not see an infinite number of Proof of Work coins pop up running in parallel.  This backing by energy ensures we will not see inflation through endless chains of PoW coins.

Proof of Stake coins do not have this protection.  Those providing the Proof of Stake, the holders of coins, can freely hold an unlimited number of different PoS currencies, rather than being forced to choose to mine only one with each unit of electricity.  Each PoS coin causes no pressure on the others.  Thus, an infinite number of PoS coins can flood the market.  With no limited resource (miners/energy) being competed for by all the PoS coins, the value that investors look to store in such coins will be diluted more and more over time as new PoS coins are created.  This makes PoS coins worthless as a store of value, regardless of the individual characteristics of any particular PoS coin.

In short, Satoshi was clearly thinking long-term with Bitcoin, or he got very, very lucky.  Either way, we are all very much in his debt for getting it so right on the first go.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[Torque]

We are right back to a completely manipulated $599.99 wall holding pattern, just like where we were from June 20-23.  This whole rise smells of pure whale crud.

If we don't solidly break $600 within the next 12 hours, I predict we are definitely going back down.

Quoting myself. 

[windjc]

Most of the bitcoin faboys don't care about technological developments in the field of finance. All they're interested in is wealth redistribution. To switch places with the current elite that is earning with interest, so they themselves could earn with deflation. They can't see that the endgame is about making the financial system more transparent, not about making it more anonymous. Anonymity is helping the crooks while transparency would help the society in general.

That is the reaso why I dispise the majority of bitcoin fanboys. A bunch of lazy and hypocritical crooks if you ask me.
It doesn't apply to everyone, but the majority is what it is.

No one really cares about you Mervin.

[herzmeister]

Satoshi was long term thinking but here it's more based on the circumstances. POS can't bootstrap itself, it's always based directly or indirectly on a POW bootstrapping

[Raystonn]

I've been doing some analysis on the latest craze, Proof of Stake coins like NXT.  On the surface they look like a good deal, with innovation and some great ideas.  But they appear to suffer from one very fatal flaw.  Proof of Work coins are backed by energy.  Those providing the Proof (miners here) must choose one coin on which to spend their energy to provide it.  Proof of Stake coins have no such protection.

You cannot double-spend your energy and use it to mine multiple Proof of Work coins (e.g. X Bitcoin and Y Litecoin mined with the same energy expenditure as mining just X Bitcoin or just Y Litecoin).  New coins may pop up, but they must fight over the limited supply of miners/energy.  This fight over a limited resource ensures you will not see an infinite number of Proof of Work coins pop up running in parallel.  This backing by energy ensures we will not see inflation through endless chains of PoW coins.

Proof of Stake coins do not have this protection.  Those providing the Proof of Stake, the holders of coins, can freely hold an unlimited number of different PoS currencies, rather than being forced to choose to mine only one with each unit of electricity.  Each PoS coin causes no pressure on the others.  Thus, an infinite number of PoS coins can flood the market.  With no limited resource (miners/energy) being competed for by all the PoS coins, the value that investors look to store in such coins will be diluted more and more over time as new PoS coins are created.  This makes PoS coins worthless as a store of value, regardless of the individual characteristics of any particular PoS coin.

In short, Satoshi was clearly thinking long-term with Bitcoin, or he got very, very lucky.  Either way, we are all very much in his debt for getting it so right on the first go.

Satoshi was long term thinking but here it's more based on the circumstances. POS can't bootstrap itself, it's always based directly or indirectly on a POW bootstrapping

I'm not talking about the bootstrapping.  I'm talking about any coin that enters a purely PoS phase with nothing else required to confirm transactions.  An infinite number of coins can enter such a phase, diluting any value stored in them to the point of worthlessness.  All PoS coins (any coin that enters a pure PoS phase) will trend to $0 because of this, as more PoS coins come into existence.

PoW coins do not suffer from this problem as they all compete for limited mining resources.  Thus PoW coins actually do provide a good store of value.

[vleroybrown]

I've been doing some analysis on the latest craze, Proof of Stake coins like NXT.  On the surface they look like a good deal, with innovation and some great ideas.  But they appear to suffer from one very fatal flaw.  Proof of Work coins are backed by energy.  Those providing the Proof (miners here) must choose one coin on which to spend their energy to provide it.  Proof of Stake coins have no such protection.

You cannot double-spend your energy and use it to mine multiple Proof of Work coins (e.g. X Bitcoin and Y Litecoin mined with the same energy expenditure as mining just X Bitcoin or just Y Litecoin).  New coins may pop up, but they must fight over the limited supply of miners/energy.  This fight over a limited resource ensures you will not see an infinite number of Proof of Work coins pop up running in parallel.  This backing by energy ensures we will not see inflation through endless chains of PoW coins.

Proof of Stake coins do not have this protection.  Those providing the Proof of Stake, the holders of coins, can freely hold an unlimited number of different PoS currencies, rather than being forced to choose to mine only one with each unit of electricity.  Each PoS coin causes no pressure on the others.  Thus, an infinite number of PoS coins can flood the market.  With no limited resource (miners/energy) being competed for by all the PoS coins, the value that investors look to store in such coins will be diluted more and more over time as new PoS coins are created.  This makes PoS coins worthless as a store of value, regardless of the individual characteristics of any particular PoS coin.

In short, Satoshi was clearly thinking long-term with Bitcoin, or he got very, very lucky.  Either way, we are all very much in his debt for getting it so right on the first go.

Interesting analysis, I have to mention merged mining if you have not already heard of this it is a function within POW coin systems.  I have an idea of how you may solve the issue you are describing, but just know that it exist in POW coins as well.

[JustBetweenUs]

I've been doing some analysis on the latest craze, Proof of Stake coins like NXT.  On the surface they look like a good deal, with innovation and some great ideas.  But they appear to suffer from one very fatal flaw.  Proof of Work coins are backed by energy.  Those providing the Proof (miners here) must choose one coin on which to spend their energy to provide it.  Proof of Stake coins have no such protection.

You cannot double-spend your energy and use it to mine multiple Proof of Work coins (e.g. X Bitcoin and Y Litecoin mined with the same energy expenditure as mining just X Bitcoin or just Y Litecoin).  New coins may pop up, but they must fight over the limited supply of miners/energy.  This fight over a limited resource ensures you will not see an infinite number of Proof of Work coins pop up running in parallel.  This backing by energy ensures we will not see inflation through endless chains of PoW coins.

Proof of Stake coins do not have this protection.  Those providing the Proof of Stake, the holders of coins, can freely hold an unlimited number of different PoS currencies, rather than being forced to choose to mine only one with each unit of electricity.  Each PoS coin causes no pressure on the others.  Thus, an infinite number of PoS coins can flood the market.  With no limited resource (miners/energy) being competed for by all the PoS coins, the value that investors look to store in such coins will be diluted more and more over time as new PoS coins are created.  This makes PoS coins worthless as a store of value, regardless of the individual characteristics of any particular PoS coin.

In short, Satoshi was clearly thinking long-term with Bitcoin, or he got very, very lucky.  Either way, we are all very much in his debt for getting it so right on the first go.

Well if you're talking about NXT in particular it's aimed to be more of a platform than a currency, so if it reaches his potential no other "coin" can just popup and steal market cap from NXT like that, since at his peak its value will lie from his network. Take for example facebook, everyone could potentially replace them, yet no one will.

But I get your point. Satoshi's PoW was brillant.

[raid_n]

Satoshi was long term thinking but here it's more based on the circumstances. POS can't bootstrap itself, it's always based directly or indirectly on a POW bootstrapping

Proof of Work is ideal for what satoshi wanted because together with the blockchain it provides probabilistic agreement with anonymous participants and the reward for participating is bitcoins.

Most forms of consensus would work for a public ledger where ECDSA is used to prove ownership of whatever is written in there.
The functionality of the blockchain can easily be covered by a bunch of distributed servers reaching agreement (i.e more or less what ripple does) however you need trust in such a setup. Trust requirements are extremely lessened in a PoW system. (no miner owns a majority, large numbers of miners stop mining at once etc.)

PoS is less anonymous than PoW because you have to reveal your stake so the coins minted are tied to you. Of course you can augment this situation with some form of coin mixing or zero knowledge proof but thats beyond what I want to say. For PoS it is harder to find a way of distributing coins. PoW provides rewards for participating and those are then spread. PoS requires initial coins to generate rewards.
You could implement some form of lottery in a PoS system to initially try and spread coins to make it more fair.

[raid_n]

I'm not talking about the bootstrapping.  I'm talking about any coin that enters a purely PoS phase with nothing else required to confirm transactions.  An infinite number of coins can enter such a phase, diluting any value stored in them to the point of worthlessness.  All PoS coins (any coin that enters a pure PoS phase) will trend to $0 because of this, as more PoS coins come into existence.

PoW coins do not suffer from this problem as they all compete for limited mining resources.  Thus PoW coins actually do provide a good store of value.

I'm not a fan of PoS but I disagree. It is like taking off the restrictions for fractions of bitcoins making them infinitely divisible and then saying that will make them worthless. You can have intricate rules for any coin on how much a block will reward providing infinite possibilities for altcoins.

The value of coins is the trust in the system technology wise, its current utility and how it will develop in the future.

[kodtycoon]

I've been doing some analysis on the latest craze, Proof of Stake coins like NXT.  On the surface they look like a good deal, with innovation and some great ideas.  But they appear to suffer from one very fatal flaw.  Proof of Work coins are backed by energy.  Those providing the Proof (miners here) must choose one coin on which to spend their energy to provide it.  Proof of Stake coins have no such protection.

You cannot double-spend your energy and use it to mine multiple Proof of Work coins (e.g. X Bitcoin and Y Litecoin mined with the same energy expenditure as mining just X Bitcoin or just Y Litecoin).  New coins may pop up, but they must fight over the limited supply of miners/energy.  This fight over a limited resource ensures you will not see an infinite number of Proof of Work coins pop up running in parallel.  This backing by energy ensures we will not see inflation through endless chains of PoW coins.

Proof of Stake coins do not have this protection.  Those providing the Proof of Stake, the holders of coins, can freely hold an unlimited number of different PoS currencies, rather than being forced to choose to mine only one with each unit of electricity.  Each PoS coin causes no pressure on the others.  Thus, an infinite number of PoS coins can flood the market.  With no limited resource (miners/energy) being competed for by all the PoS coins, the value that investors look to store in such coins will be diluted more and more over time as new PoS coins are created.  This makes PoS coins worthless as a store of value, regardless of the individual characteristics of any particular PoS coin.

In short, Satoshi was clearly thinking long-term with Bitcoin, or he got very, very lucky.  Either way, we are all very much in his debt for getting it so right on the first go.

pure and utter nonsense!

[BTCfan1]

Looking at the 600 wall on stamp, it's about half as big as it was last night, so at this rate, we should break 600 by tomorrow morning (?)

[JorgeStolfi]

The price in China suddenly stabilized and was flat for 45 minutes straight, and volume fell to very low levels -- even though trade is usually still strong at this hour. And now trade is picking up again.

How strange. Does anyone know of some phenomenon that lasts almost exactly 45 minutes?