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

[adamstgBit]

unnecessary political actions ... seemingly aimed at causing and/or exacerbating political divisiveness within the bitcoin space.

this was my gut reaction to his latest blog posts too...

he's only human, and one of us "big blockers" going apeshit as we watch fees climb and TX times get longer as price suffers while we should be in a glorious bull market.

he using his company's status as added weight to his argument, hard to blame him.. but not exactly professional...

[ZyclonRacerX]

I just bought a rug on Overstock. Paid a 4 cent fee, transaction went right through. Turns out bitcoin works! Who knew

Enjoy your rug. If you bought it with a CC, you could have done it faster, sans 4c fee, & with all the perks CC offer

you can't put a price on the good feeling you get using bitcoin, silly nub.

Dwugz and kiddy pr0nz, yes. For everything else, there's MasterCard.

>but not exactly professional...
If it was, it wouldn't be Bitcoin, n00by n00b.

[adamstgBit]

I just bought a rug on Overstock. Paid a 4 cent fee, transaction went right through. Turns out bitcoin works! Who knew

Enjoy your rug. If you bought it with a CC, you could have done it faster, sans 4c fee, & with all the perks CC offer

you can't put a price on the good feeling you get using bitcoin, silly nub.

Dwugz and kiddy pr0nz, yes. For everything else, there's MasterCard.

>but not exactly professional...
If it was, it wouldn't be Bitcoin, n00by n00b.

[billyjoeallen]

These smallblocker arguments are demostrably stupid. If You were a malicious spammer, your goal would be to cause the most amount of damage, to achieve the most amount of service disruption for your buck, right?
So why the hell would it matter if you paid 10,000 1 cent fees or 5,000 two cent fees?  If anything 5,000 two cent fees would be slightly easier and that's what you need to do with small blocks.  Effectively there is no difference in the cost to disrupt service.  

The simple fact is that it's easier to disrupt a network that is already running close to capacity than one that has more excess capacity. That should be intuitively obvious to anyone without a mental handicap. Think about it: would it be easier to cause a traffic jam during rush hour or at 3 AM?

If your goal is to make the chain so bloated that nodes drop off, your challenge is to cause more damage than it cost to do it, but hard drive space is really cheap and getting cheaper, so it's always gonna cost you more to harm the network than the damage you produce.  So bloat the chain, morons. You're making us money.

So what WOULD discourage a malicious spammer? Only one thing I can think of: make the network so shitty and unreliable, so pathetic that it's not worth the effort to harm.  This is apparently the Core dev's strategy.

There is no cryptographically sound way to distinguish between spam and legitimate transactions. You cannot discourage one without also discouraging the other. Spam is just a cost of doing business.  The sooner we learn to live with it, the sooner we can get on to real problems that need to be addressed and CAN be fixed.

Problems like:
1.Mining being overwhelmingly concentrated in a single communist country.
2.Faulty code that actually gives those miners a selfish mining advantage for having limited bandwidth behind the Great Firewall.
3.Developer governance rules that give any small group effective veto power over any upgrades
4.Emerging altcoin competition that has applied the lessons learned from Bitcoin's problems to develop superior cryptocurrencies.

[adamstgBit]

The simple fact is that it's easier to disrupt a network that is already running close to capacity than one that has more excess capacity. That should be intuitively obvious to anyone without a mental handicap.

LOL well put.
I'm going to keep that one in my back pocket.

[jertsy]

Currently, I'm considering removing a large majority of my coins from Coinbase, because of their various recent stances in the blocksize limit debate that seem to purposeful attempts at disrupting and dividing the bitcoin community (to the extent that there is such a community).  

lol nice,

my advice to you is JUST DO IT

I have coins on their exchange and coins in the regular wallet and coins in the vault.

As you likely realize, with many things related to bitcoin, I like to brainstorm about my actions and my contemplated actions (especially when I am making fairly significant changes), and that's part of the explanation why I have a 5800+ post count on this forum.

I will probably leave a few coins in coinbase in each of the three locations (wallet, vault and exchange); however, I am in the process of removing some coins from the vault (apparently, it takes 48 hours), and thereafter I will transfer about 90% of my holdings out of there.  I may change the amount later, but 90% is my initial projection.  Upon reflection, this becomes a bit troubling for me, because I had accumulated most of my coins through Coinbase, and until now, they have held the most coins for me than any other location.  I have my coins distributed, but still at this point Coinbase still has about 50% of all my coins.  After this move (probably two transactions on the blockchain), they will have less than 10% of all my coins.

Also, it is a bit ironic that I have been a bitcoin user for more than 2 years, and it surely does take a long time to learn about bitcoin and to create a number of wallets and even now, I am trying to consider other wallet solutions (and some of them just seem too technical and complicated and somewhat filled with one kind of risk or another - whether that be 3rd party risk or the risk of me screwing it up, somehow).

bitaddress.org

you need to save this html page,
remove internet wire ( or reboot with a linux live cd or usb )
print out the paper wallet
reboot.
cut the private in half ( use scissors ), hide one half of the key in your ass and the other in a bank vault.

this will give you the most secure / simplest wallet solution i can think of.

sounds like you needed to take out a good % off BTC of the exchange for a while now...
exchanges can implode anytime.
MtGox wasn't the first and it wont be the last.

Isn't there a cryptographic attack that makes it possible to guess a private key if you have access to half of it? I'm sure it says somewhere that a private key can be considered compromised if an attacker gets a proportion of it. If an attacker gets hold of the half key in your ass you lose, or if a corrupt bank clerk gets the half in the bank vault you also lose.

[AlexGR]

Correct. That's why he's telling you that you can't compare not_a_business to a_business, it don't work.

If I want to move money around, why do I care what it is, since it does my job quickly and cheaply.

Western union and paypal base their fees on the amount of money moved. Bitcoin bases its fees on size of actual transactions in data terms. Very different business models. Pretending that you can directly compare them is fraudulent.

Bitcoin is not a business.

It is to miners. And speculators. And investors.

Yes, well, gold is not a business either. It's an element: [Au] 79.

Sure, it can be business for miners, speculators, investors, but that doesn't mean it is a business.

Matching Visa levels of transactions per second with $0.01 fees per transaction would generate more in fees than the current block reward.  

The required size of each block to achieve this could be dealt with with competition for the increased fee income.

Constrain growth to increase fees is something technology nerds would do. Business people would drive growth instead.

Why should economic decisions be in the hands of tech nerds?  That's the key question.

Right now, we cannot have blocksizes that can do VISA-level txs - not in any decentralized way. Some day we will. This is not an economic decision. It's a technical one that arises from the differences of how VISA is set up (centralized / efficient) and how bitcoin is set up (decentralized / inefficient).

And even if one thinks that BTC's tech nerds are idiots, then is there any other cryptocurrency that can do what Bitcoin can not and scale to VISA levels, and do so in a decentralized manner? The answer is no.

[adamstgBit]

Currently, I'm considering removing a large majority of my coins from Coinbase, because of their various recent stances in the blocksize limit debate that seem to purposeful attempts at disrupting and dividing the bitcoin community (to the extent that there is such a community).  

lol nice,

my advice to you is JUST DO IT

I have coins on their exchange and coins in the regular wallet and coins in the vault.

As you likely realize, with many things related to bitcoin, I like to brainstorm about my actions and my contemplated actions (especially when I am making fairly significant changes), and that's part of the explanation why I have a 5800+ post count on this forum.

I will probably leave a few coins in coinbase in each of the three locations (wallet, vault and exchange); however, I am in the process of removing some coins from the vault (apparently, it takes 48 hours), and thereafter I will transfer about 90% of my holdings out of there.  I may change the amount later, but 90% is my initial projection.  Upon reflection, this becomes a bit troubling for me, because I had accumulated most of my coins through Coinbase, and until now, they have held the most coins for me than any other location.  I have my coins distributed, but still at this point Coinbase still has about 50% of all my coins.  After this move (probably two transactions on the blockchain), they will have less than 10% of all my coins.

Also, it is a bit ironic that I have been a bitcoin user for more than 2 years, and it surely does take a long time to learn about bitcoin and to create a number of wallets and even now, I am trying to consider other wallet solutions (and some of them just seem too technical and complicated and somewhat filled with one kind of risk or another - whether that be 3rd party risk or the risk of me screwing it up, somehow).

bitaddress.org

you need to save this html page,
remove internet wire ( or reboot with a linux live cd or usb )
print out the paper wallet
reboot.
cut the private in half ( use scissors ), hide one half of the key in your ass and the other in a bank vault.

this will give you the most secure / simplest wallet solution i can think of.

sounds like you needed to take out a good % off BTC of the exchange for a while now...
exchanges can implode anytime.
MtGox wasn't the first and it wont be the last.

Isn't there a cryptographic attack that makes it possible to guess a private key if you have access to half of it? I'm sure it says somewhere that a private key can be considered compromised if an attacker gets a proportion of it. If an attacker gets hold of the half key in your ass you lose, or if a corrupt bank clerk gets the half in the bank vault you also lose.

fine, dont cut it in half and stuff the whole thing up your ass.

I have no idea how hard it would be to guess the other half, thats 32 fairly random bytes to guess, and its not like there is a C++ function called GuessOtherHalfOfPrivateKey();

[JayJuanGee]

I did not read all of your rewriting of my sentences because it seems like a complete waste of time because it really boils down to a childish form of an ad hominem attack.  

Don't you have better things to do with your time?  

O.k.. yep, the job of a troller is to attack and to distract with non-sense, and I suppose in that regard you are attempting to earn your money with such efforts?  

And, since you are getting paid for these kinds of trolling efforts (hopefully you get paid well, maybe ?? I hope.  Is it by the post or by the hour or a salary?  

I imagine you are getting paid by the post (in BTC how ironic), maybe .01 or more BTC per post? or some other rate,... I'm kind of guessing the rate.  The best paying signature campaigns receive around .0015 per posts, yet the best paying ones explicitly require that posters do not spam or troll, and even the best paying signature campaigns are not going to bring anywhere near enough money to live (maybe .2BTC or so per month).  Even if you live in some very cheap place, you need to be able to make 1 BTC per month or so to live, no?  I suppose it could be a supplemental income too, even with all your creative efforts?

Since you are getting paid for your distracting efforts, then I suppose, there is some kind of value.  In this regard, you get paid and your employer gets some of the value of your efforts as part of the troll/shill team.  I hope that you are making at least a couple of BTC per month for your attempts (before you get banned).

So trying to get you to post like a human being is not merely an exerciser in futility, it also makes me a paid shill?
I suppose i shouldn't mention all








the





fucking

blank lines either. Might turn me into a witch, so I won't.

You are a newbie, and amongst some of the evidence of you being a troll or paid shill: 1) you coming into the conversation as if you know everyone (and I don't give a shit about your supposed cover story that you have been reading the forum for years, blah blah blah), 2) you are attempting to provoke and denigrate more senior members (that is me) 3) you are engaging in time-consuming and non-substantive efforts of revising the post of others (me) which rise to the level of ad hominem attacks and 4) look at your stupid-ass user name, as well.

O.k.  well you have 54 posts under your belt, so maybe you can attempt to stay under the radar long enough in order to decrease your chances of getting banned, and maybe you could try to post somewhat constructively could be helpful too... in order that you can continue to get paid under the same user name before you have to create another account.

If you want to attempt to prove yourself as a non-shill or a non troll, then maybe if you attempt to engage me on the substance of that last post that you edited, then I would give you more benefit of the doubt?  Ever think of that? 

You could also go through any of my recent posts of the past week or so and attempt to engage me on the substance of any one of those posts, and let's see if you have any abilities in that regard to engage in any kind of meaningful and substantive dialogue (rather than blowing irrelevant and distracting smoke).. good luck.   

[BitUsher]

The simple fact is that it's easier to disrupt a network that is already running close to capacity than one that has more excess capacity. That should be intuitively obvious to anyone without a mental handicap.

LOL well put.
I'm going to keep that one in my back pocket.

It is only disruptive to wallets that don't have Dynamic transaction fee estimation built in. If the blocksize limit was 2MB than an attacker would be allowed to spend more money and create even larger blocks instead of spending more money to merely out-price the other pre-existing "spam" without imposing upon the network immediate centralization pressures and a permanent scar in the form of blockchain bloat.

This being said, 2 MB is fine with the right protections in place and Core appears to have the right solutions to make this happen rather than indirect and hacky limitations like Gavin's sigop restrictions.

This being said , it is a fair criticism against Core devs in general to not better warn users of wallets that don't accurately use dynamic fee estimates like blockchain.info, it is rather sad their development is so slow* , but I still see a lack of clear communication about the wallets and better testing there. Core needs some help in this department.


* Feb 2016  estimatepriority and estimatefee were available in 0.10.0 released in feb 2015

[AlexGR]

The simple fact is that it's easier to disrupt a network that is already running close to capacity than one that has more excess capacity. That should be intuitively obvious to anyone without a mental handicap.

LOL well put.
I'm going to keep that one in my back pocket.

He forgot the bloat part which is achieved with less cost when the network has ample capacity.

If normal use, is, say, 500-700kb and the rest is spam that goes in for cheap, then instead of a spammer filling 300-500kb of spam for free/near free, he gets to increase that to 1300-1500, which is 3-4x.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[adamstgBit]

The simple fact is that it's easier to disrupt a network that is already running close to capacity than one that has more excess capacity. That should be intuitively obvious to anyone without a mental handicap.

LOL well put.
I'm going to keep that one in my back pocket.

He forgot the bloat part which is achieved with less cost when the network has ample capacity.

If normal use, is, say, 500-700kb and the rest is spam that goes in for cheap, then instead of a spammer filling 300-500kb of spam for free/near free, he gets to increase that to 1300-1500, which is 3-4x.

i need ammo FOR block size increase not against it...

[JayJuanGee]

unnecessary political actions ... seemingly aimed at causing and/or exacerbating political divisiveness within the bitcoin space.

this was my gut reaction to his latest blog posts too...

he's only human, and one of us "big blockers" going apeshit as we watch fees climb and TX times get longer as price suffers while we should be in a glorious bull market.

he using his company's status as added weight to his argument, hard to blame him.. but not exactly professional...

O.k... take for example, when a few months ago, he said that Coinbase was going to support Classic XT etc... or whatever that was... o.k... fine.. that's within the business decisions to announce such, but after several interventions and strongly worded advocating posts and publications, it seems that Armstrong has been going much beyond his business to really act like a bit of a bully. 

It's just getting to be a bit too much for me, and maybe I am not correct in how I am reacting by removing most of my coins from Coinbase, but it seems that removing some money from Coinbase would be a reasonable way for me to act as an individual in order to exercise my indirect personal speech. 

My proclaiming my stance and my intended action in this thread is also a way for others to consider the matter from my point of view as well, and I am certainly only a small impact compared with him, but when I describe what I am doing, then others can consider whether they are inclined to do something similar as me (or maybe the opposite)... which causes a bit of a bigger reaction beyond the impact of my own individual action... I can continue to post on the matter in other bitcoin forums, too, and I can inform my real world friends as well.

[coins101]

....
i need ammo FOR block size increase not against it...

Pretty much all the major miners use SPVs.

The orphan rates and great fire wall of china excuse is just that...an excuse.

[billyjoeallen]

The simple fact is that it's easier to disrupt a network that is already running close to capacity than one that has more excess capacity. That should be intuitively obvious to anyone without a mental handicap.

LOL well put.
I'm going to keep that one in my back pocket.

He forgot the bloat part which is achieved with less cost when the network has ample capacity.

If normal use, is, say, 500-700kb and the rest is spam that goes in for cheap, then instead of a spammer filling 300-500kb of spam for free/near free, he gets to increase that to 1300-1500, which is 3-4x.

I did not forget the bloat cost. I addressed that.  Hard drive space is so cheap and getting cheaper that any damage caused by bloat will cost the attacker more than the network.  It currently costs ~ $5,000 in fees to bloat the blockchain by 1 GB.  Harddrive space is about 30 cents a GB (and getting cheaper), so with 10,000 nodes, it costs $3,000.  It costs 5 grand to cause less than 3 grand worth of damage. This may not be satisfactory to some, but it makes this kind of attack a much smaller worry than other problems that we need to be dealing with.

[BitUsher]

It's just getting to be a bit too much for me, and maybe I am not correct in how I am reacting by removing most of my coins from Coinbase, but it seems that removing some money from Coinbase would be a reasonable way for me to act as an individual in order to exercise my indirect personal speech. 

Unless you are a daytrader, you shouldn't store any of your coins on an exchange or online wallet anyways. Even if you assume trust in Coinbase itself (questionable), you cannot trust all the other ways to lose money by storing bitcoins in coinbase-

1) 10-28% theft from capital gains taxes that
2) Theft from a exwife, expartner mandated by a judge
3) theft from asset forfeiture

[BitconAssociation]

I did not read all of your rewriting of my sentences because it seems like a complete waste of time because it really boils down to a childish form of an ad hominem attack.  

Don't you have better things to do with your time?  

O.k.. yep, the job of a troller is to attack and to distract with non-sense, and I suppose in that regard you are attempting to earn your money with such efforts?  

And, since you are getting paid for these kinds of trolling efforts (hopefully you get paid well, maybe ?? I hope.  Is it by the post or by the hour or a salary?  

I imagine you are getting paid by the post (in BTC how ironic), maybe .01 or more BTC per post? or some other rate,... I'm kind of guessing the rate.  The best paying signature campaigns receive around .0015 per posts, yet the best paying ones explicitly require that posters do not spam or troll, and even the best paying signature campaigns are not going to bring anywhere near enough money to live (maybe .2BTC or so per month).  Even if you live in some very cheap place, you need to be able to make 1 BTC per month or so to live, no?  I suppose it could be a supplemental income too, even with all your creative efforts?

Since you are getting paid for your distracting efforts, then I suppose, there is some kind of value.  In this regard, you get paid and your employer gets some of the value of your efforts as part of the troll/shill team.  I hope that you are making at least a couple of BTC per month for your attempts (before you get banned).

So trying to get you to post like a human being is not merely an exerciser in futility, it also makes me a paid shill?
I suppose i shouldn't mention all








the





fucking

blank lines either. Might turn me into a witch, so I won't.

You are a newbie, and amongst some of the evidence of you being a troll or paid shill: 1) you coming into the conversation as if you know everyone (and I don't give a shit about your supposed cover story that you have been reading the forum for years, blah blah blah), < snip >

I don't know.   You seem to be attempting to attempt to attribute a claim to me that I am not attempting to make, and/or have attempted to make in the past or am in the process of currently making.  Had i have attempted to make such claim, which you are attempting to attribute to me, to wit that we will need greater transaction capacity in the foreseeable future, which as stated previously, I have not attempted to make, nor am likely to make in the foreseeable future, my line of argument would be quite unlike the one to be pursued below, i.e the one i find fitting to pursue in light of your nasty and manipulative misinterpretation of my intended claim, which, as I believe I have conclusively conveyed, was not the claim that i have attempted to make.

Most people, including myself, i.e. I and many, though not all, people who are not myself, or, in layman's terms "the others," of whom there are more than one or several, and, implicitly, significantly more than one, that is up to as many as all, though I'm not attempting to imply that all the people concur with the claim which I have not made, thou such a claim would be justifiable, nay, almost begging, though make a claim such as one which you are currently attempting to attribute to me I have not, even though experts tend to concur on your being a blithering buffoon.

[Fatman3001]

I did not read all of your rewriting of my sentences because it seems like a complete waste of time because it really boils down to a childish form of an ad hominem attack.  

Don't you have better things to do with your time?  

O.k.. yep, the job of a troller is to attack and to distract with non-sense, and I suppose in that regard you are attempting to earn your money with such efforts?  

And, since you are getting paid for these kinds of trolling efforts (hopefully you get paid well, maybe ?? I hope.  Is it by the post or by the hour or a salary?  

I imagine you are getting paid by the post (in BTC how ironic), maybe .01 or more BTC per post? or some other rate,... I'm kind of guessing the rate.  The best paying signature campaigns receive around .0015 per posts, yet the best paying ones explicitly require that posters do not spam or troll, and even the best paying signature campaigns are not going to bring anywhere near enough money to live (maybe .2BTC or so per month).  Even if you live in some very cheap place, you need to be able to make 1 BTC per month or so to live, no?  I suppose it could be a supplemental income too, even with all your creative efforts?

Since you are getting paid for your distracting efforts, then I suppose, there is some kind of value.  In this regard, you get paid and your employer gets some of the value of your efforts as part of the troll/shill team.  I hope that you are making at least a couple of BTC per month for your attempts (before you get banned).

So trying to get you to post like a human being is not merely an exerciser in futility, it also makes me a paid shill?
I suppose i shouldn't mention all








the





fucking

blank lines either. Might turn me into a witch, so I won't.

You are a newbie, and amongst some of the evidence of you being a troll or paid shill: 1) you coming into the conversation as if you know everyone (and I don't give a shit about your supposed cover story that you have been reading the forum for years, blah blah blah), < snip >

I don't know.   You seem to be attempting to attempt to attribute a claim to me that I am not attempting to make, and/or have attempted to make in the past or am in the process of currently making.  Had i have attempted to make such claim, which you are attempting to attribute to me, to wit that we will need greater transaction capacity in the foreseeable future, which as stated previously, I have not attempted to make, nor am likely to make in the foreseeable future, my line of argument would be quite unlike the one to be pursued below, i.e the one i find fitting to pursue in light of your nasty and manipulative misinterpretation of my intended claim, which, as I believe I have conclusively conveyed, was not the claim that i have attempted to make.

Most people, including myself, i.e. I and many, though not all, people who are not myself, or, in layman's terms "the others," of whom there are more than one or several, and, implicitly, significantly more than one, that is up to as many as all, though I'm not attempting to imply that all the people concur with the claim which I have not made, thou such a claim would be justifiable, nay, almost begging, though make such a claim which you are attempting to attribute to me I have not made, seem to believe that you're a blithering buffoon.

It's really difficult to make it sufficiently incoherent.

Your brain just won't allow it.

[AlexGR]

The simple fact is that it's easier to disrupt a network that is already running close to capacity than one that has more excess capacity. That should be intuitively obvious to anyone without a mental handicap.

LOL well put.
I'm going to keep that one in my back pocket.

He forgot the bloat part which is achieved with less cost when the network has ample capacity.

If normal use, is, say, 500-700kb and the rest is spam that goes in for cheap, then instead of a spammer filling 300-500kb of spam for free/near free, he gets to increase that to 1300-1500, which is 3-4x.

I did not forget the bloat cost. I addressed that.  Hard drive space is so cheap and getting cheaper that any damage caused by bloat will cost the attacker more than the network.  It currently costs ~ $5,000 in fees to bloat the blockchain by 1 GB.  Harddrive space is about 30 cents a GB (and getting cheaper), so with 10,000 nodes, it costs $3,000.  It costs 5 grand to cause less than 3 grand worth of damage. This may not be satisfactory to some, but it makes this kind of attack a much smaller worry than other problems that we need to be dealing with.

The bloat cost creates

1) storage costs
2) bandwidth costs (as this 1gb or 10gb or 100gb must be downloaded and served over and over in the network - for decades)
3) processing costs / power costs (for decades)
4) I/O slowdowns (if the blockchain can't fit anymore in an affordable SSD you'll have to rely on a mechanical disk which is slow)
5) centralization cost as nodes have to drop out, increasing costs to the fewer nodes that remain. It's a vicious cycle where the less you have, the more the costs, plus you now become an easier target for DDOSing (more costs)

As for the problems that we may need to worry, these are what exactly? That txs without a few cents in fees won't go in in the next block? That's all there is to it.