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

[shizuska]

A different question, now: how do you invest in precious metals? Do you actually buy silver and gold ingots to store, or do you purchase ETFs? I would like to include some general silver indexes in my portfolio.

It's 100% pointless to purchase metals if you don't buy physical.  All the unallocated metals are rehypothecated so there's 500+ owners per ounce.  They're just meaningless derivative contracts.  When the Comex blows up, or when the govt has to revalue gold and silver exponentially higher to extinguish the debt bubble, you will either receive $0 for your contract, or they will cash out your contract at $20 an ounce of silver right before revaluing it to hundreds of dollars an ounce.  In other words, paper owners miss out entirely on the once in a lifetime avalanche of profits.

What is the purpose of this paper hedge then?  Nothing!  It's an insurance policy that doesn't pay out.  Paper metals are worthless.  As for allocated metals instead of the unallocated variety, maybe you will get lucky, maybe not.  If the organization has any type of serious weight like that Texas bullion depository, the govt will probably try to seize it.  Things like the ETFs have a good chance of being seized, but I doubt they will attempt seizing private holder's metals again.

For one, they know zero people will give them up since nobody trusts the govt now.  Secondly, they've already done a stealth confiscation by rigging the markets 10x more than usual post-2008 and having entities like JP Morgan take delivery of the physical as an agent of the US govt at the suppressed price.  The only type of paper metals worth bothering with would be miners, but I have a feeling the govt will nationalize all assets in the ground as "deep storage" and leave anyone holding shares holding the bag.

TLDR:  Buy either Canadian Maple Leafs, 10 oz Sunshine mint bars, or kilo bars

As a large holder of silver (about same ammont as crypto) i do not agree with your point of view. I looked into buying physical silver and compared the prices, even if i had bough a decent amount i would have paid about 7-8% extra and i live in a country where there is no VAT associated with buying silver as an investment. Other problem is that total ammount in kgs would have been around 300kg, so storing would have not been easy aswell.
 
Instead i chose to buy SIVR ETF which gives investors direct and pure exposure to silver by holding the physical metal in HSBC vaults. It has tracked the spot price of silver perfectly at a low cost for the precious metals segment.

I pay around 0.3% per year maintenance fee and could not be happier (well 40 $ pound would make me happier ), i would have paid around 25 years of fees if i had bought physical.

HSBC?  Good to have it stored with a trustworthy organization.  I'm sure all is as it should be.

Well the ETF is audite annualy and all of my lawyers are sure if something radical happens with economy i can sue and get the physical silver as it is backed.
Anyway silver is around 10% of my portfolio and i see it being a great way to make some profit when next crises hits in 2-3 years or so.

[d_eddie]

This is why GPU/CPU mining is a lot better than ASICs i think.

GPU companies have to build&sell GPUs no matter what because gamers need to game. CPU manufacturers have to build&sell CPUs no matter what because there will be a demand whether people mine crypto or not. Nvidia/AMD/Intel will be making hardware no matter what. They can't be deceived by evil crypto criminals.

But ASICs? This is cancer.

There is no way Nvidia/Intel build HW and mine Bitcoin without getting noticed but Bitmain can. Because that's their only job. Nvidia and the others can't run a 2 businesses at once. They are making GPU/CPU's and we are exploiting their business. Good for us.

Maybe Cobra is right. Better late than ever.

My opinion is that preparing for a soft PoW change would be a good thing. Keywords: preparing and soft.

A monopoly on mining is an evil thing. It keeps decentralization from really taking place. However, changing PoW drastically without a grace period would only alienate the "good" miners - probably ruin them, and piss them off enough to turn them (rightfully) bad.

One way could be to have a PoW that alternates between a few different hash functions - some of which hard to implement on ASICs, probably because of insane RAM requirements although there are alternatives. The alternance should be based on past history; the percentage of SHA-256 blocks could be dynamic, so "good" miners are incentivized to keep their percentage high by maintaining good demeanor. Or there could be a multiple PoW in each block, so that both a SHA-256 proof and some other proof(s) are necessary for validation. Each PoW function should maintain a different difficulty scale, and the difficulties could be combined into some overall metric. Such a system would be highly tweakable, and adapt dynamically.

(EDIT - about "softness". The initial conditions could be 100% ASIC-based, 0% others, as it is now. Then in times of mempool storms, or fork FUD, or whatever, the "others" might be gently pushed up until the situation gets back to normal.)

Any working solution should be designed with game theory in mind, not only the obvious complexity theory. A long check on testnet would be necessary, to figure out at least the complexity part, if not the game theory part.

(Inb4 - Bitcoin is a scam designed to centralize because no digital money can ever blah blah the Joos blah blah gold and silver.)

[xhomerx10]

[PRE-SALE][ICO] Petro $PTR - Oil backed crypto currency launched by Venezuela
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3006037.0

The Petro thread is being run by a commie bureaucrat and it is all very sad...

...

• If you like McDonalds or Burger King, you can find them in Caracas.
• You can actually find any other major multinational brand and, among them, many US companies operating in Venezuela.

...
Therefore Venezuela is definitely not a "communist dictatorship", not even close.
Venezuela is a liberal democracy with elected governments that the US have tried to overthrow (undemocratically) for 20 years....

...needs some of you good political arguers to respond

It is very difficult to argue with the truth, sir. US is constantly meddling in Venezuala elections for the last 20 years.

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."[/list]

Predominately US but a hegemony of deep state actors through all western government pushing coups and invading countries in the name of democracy, security and safety.

The actors include banking cabal, business monopolies, family dynasties, policy control departments in government.

Using secret services (Britain, Australia, US) as their military arm to conduct foreign and domestic operations to further centralization and globalization of money and business.


Proof in points.

1) There is no cure
2) No voting on foreign policy - domestic only
3) Who owns your reserve bank - do you really know
4) Less and less people do not own their own home
5) You are constantly getting less for your dollar
6) ISIS disappeared in 12 months - been around for over 8 years - boom just like that
7) Really - just watch CNN and FOX for a week or 2 - then it gets crazy
Bitcoin


these are so weird these points

only answer is they certainly are not helping their citizens - dumb policies that just compound more and more each year

other points

a) What countries do we bomb - Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya
    Where does immigration and refugees come from - stop bombing the F$%CKING countries then

 Can you expand on point 4?  Maybe cite some evidence.  There have never been more homes for people to own and pretty much every new home must be bought on time with bank loans.  How is it that less and less do not own their own home?  

[d_eddie]

I'd posted my reply about PoW change before reading the posts by Icygreen, flipperish, flynn and others.

I, too, would like the full nodes to have a say in the relative distribution of hash functions, but full nodes are too easy to sybyl attack. PoS vote is also dangerous, because established miners have huge availability they could employ to crush GPU- or CPU- friendly functions. That's why we will eventually need to figure out more game theory to have a stable solution.

[Icygreen]

I think it's an English mistake. I read it as "less and less people own homes". Which is true.

[d_eddie]

Also, if I'm allowed to dream wildly on future Bitcoin technology development, I would love some kind of blockchain checkpointing to be implemented. This allows ultra-light nodes to have no trust (or very little) when first syncing.

[conspirosphere.tk]

One way could be to have a PoW that alternates between a few different hash functions

There are already multi-algo PoW coins from a long time (myriad and digibyte for ex.). They can be mined with anything concurrently. But imho at the moment the risks of a PoW change seems higher than the risks of staying the course. But having a Plan B ready is always a good idea.

[Spaceman_Spiff_Original]

I'd posted my reply about PoW change before reading the posts by Icygreen, flipperish, flynn and others.

I, too, would like the full nodes to have a say in the relative distribution of hash functions, but full nodes are too easy to sybyl attack. PoS vote is also dangerous, because established miners have huge availability they could employ to crush GPU- or CPU- friendly functions. That's why we will eventually need to figure out more game theory to have a stable solution.

Could you elaborate on the bold part? I didn't quite understand.

[d_eddie]

I'd posted my reply about PoW change before reading the posts by Icygreen, flipperish, flynn and others.

I, too, would like the full nodes to have a say in the relative distribution of hash functions, but full nodes are too easy to sybyl attack. PoS vote is also dangerous, because established miners have huge availability they could employ to crush GPU- or CPU- friendly functions. That's why we will eventually need to figure out more game theory to have a stable solution.

Could you elaborate on the bold part?

PoS - Those who can prove ownership of coin get more votes.

Short: An established miner has (or can quickly have) lots of coin lying around, so he can steer the voting result more easily than a few hodlers with the same total stake (read: stash).

Longer: Giving each satoshi the same voting weight is a hard problem, possibly unsolvable. What is needed is a hypothetical system of incentives that makes GPU- and CPU- miner owned satoshis as heavy as ASIC-miner owned ones. Is such a system practical to implement? Does it ever exist? I doubt it. That's why PoS is dangerous.

[conspirosphere.tk]

I, too, would like the full nodes to have a say in the relative distribution of hash functions

I would like an option for semi-full nodes, where they can store fractions of the blockchain bittorrent-like, and above all incentives for them and the full nodes, like a small fraction of the fees.

[d_eddie]

I, too, would like the full nodes to have a say in the relative distribution of hash functions

I would like an option for semi-full nodes, where they can store fractions of the blockchain bittorrent-like, and above all incentives for them and the full nodes, like a small fraction of the fees.

A kind of distributed checkpointing? That would be nice, I agree.

However, Bittorrent as a protocol has a lot of back-and-forth chatter, more so if it's trackerless and decentralized (DHT). That's why it just won't play nice with mesh networks like TOR. I don't know anything about the technicals of checkpointing, though. There might be some alternative solutions, but their efficiency needs to be accurately evaluated.

[Icygreen]

 I've been considering running a mining rig simply for the education it would offer but I'm on the fence knowing that it may not be profitable and also realizing it will likely change drastically in the short term future. I also don't want to buy from jihan with bcash some overpriced, outdated box.
I mean, I seed my torrents properly and I'd prefer to contribute to BTC pools but where to start today?

[d_eddie]

I've been considering running a mining rig simply for the education it would offer but I'm on the fence knowing that it may not be profitable and also realizing it will likely change drastically in the short term future. I also don't want to buy from jihan with bcash some overpriced, outdated box.
I mean, I seed my torrents properly and I'd prefer to contribute to BTC pools but where to start today?

We're in the same position. Mining has become a hardcore game for big players. It's financially risky and you are subjected to the whims and abuses of people like Jihan. Not to mention the policies of governments. They can't stop bitcoin, but they can stop miners fairly easily, giving the minimum mining farm size of today.

That's another reason why I would love some real decentralization by soft PoW modulation.

[Ibian]

People who can't compete always want to change the rules of the game.

I don't care if there is only one shovel maker. Good for them for being successful at what they do.

[STT]

I'd posted my reply about PoW change before reading the posts by Icygreen, flipperish, flynn and others.

I, too, would like the full nodes to have a say in the relative distribution of hash functions, but full nodes are too easy to sybyl attack. PoS vote is also dangerous, because established miners have huge availability they could employ to crush GPU- or CPU- friendly functions. That's why we will eventually need to figure out more game theory to have a stable solution.

Could you elaborate on the bold part?

PoS - Those who can prove ownership of coin get more votes.

Short: An established miner has (or can quickly have) lots of coin lying around, so he can steer the voting result more easily than a few hodlers with the same total stake (read: stash).

Longer: Giving each satoshi the same voting weight is a hard problem, possibly unsolvable. What is needed is a hypothetical system of incentives that makes GPU- and CPU- miner owned satoshis as heavy as ASIC-miner owned ones. Is such a system practical to implement? Does it ever exist? I doubt it. That's why PoS is dangerous.

Proof of Stake has coin age to consider, any participant has to first be fully upto date and part of a network for some time in order to then be part of the staking process which even then is randomised not on demand.    Theres only some average rate at which a large holder will stake not that they can force participation.   POS is dangerous if the majority of a crypto currency is liquid on an exchange perhaps, its unlikely to be especially cheap to undermine in this way

I do imagine Proof of stake is going to be part of Ethereum this year as they move to make their transactions cheaper, faster and more efficient.   Vitalik Buterin seems quite focused on avoiding the problems bitcoin transactions had with mining fees and POS is the most viable route ?   I even see BTC could move to a more efficient model, I dont expect them to switch but its possible.  Some speculation there is no choice and energy consumption by the network means it must happen for BTC to stay competitive.   I'm very positive on POS since 2014, I might be biased  I'd like to see it tested by mainstream traffic loads alot more.


BTC price I had drifting below the upper channel.    If you take the overall trend as bullish, its in a value area.  Speculators will likely try to buy it on the lower channel in greater numbers.  Perhaps a return to early Feb prices, 8617 say.

https://stopthefud.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/georgia-bitcoin-taxes/
With a weak dollar still not in an uptrend I see overall BTC prospects quite positive medium term

[mindrust]

I've been considering running a mining rig simply for the education it would offer but I'm on the fence knowing that it may not be profitable and also realizing it will likely change drastically in the short term future. I also don't want to buy from jihan with bcash some overpriced, outdated box.
I mean, I seed my torrents properly and I'd prefer to contribute to BTC pools but where to start today?

I recently started mining with 24tb HDDs and 1 gtx1070. The profits are too low but I don't care much. I'll extend my GPU rig up to 6 cards and then I'll stop.

What I do now is instead of going to the banks, making bank transactions to exchanges; my mining rig gets me bitcoins automatically.

My rig will be a 6GPU-50tb HDD rig when it is finished. Since I was already buying bitcoins with my cash every month to diversify my investments and I am a holder with no intentions to sell any coins, thanks to this rig I basically generate bitcoins without needing anybody else. I consume electricity and in return they give me bitcoins. I can even mine at a loss because I won't be running a huge mining operation and I can afford to pay for the bills unlike the big miners who dump away their coins to pay their bills.

That's a great deal. Plus; GPU's will keep their value like 2 years at least and HDD's will keep it forever as long as they work.

If you are able to mine, you should mine. But never go all in on one thing. I am holding FIAT, crypto, mining equipment and gold. That's what I do.

[itod]

My opinion is that preparing for a soft PoW change would be a good thing. Keywords: preparing and soft.

A monopoly on mining is an evil thing. It keeps decentralization from really taking place. However, changing PoW drastically without a grace period would only alienate the "good" miners - probably ruin them, and piss them off enough to turn them (rightfully) bad.

One way could be to have a PoW that alternates between a few different hash functions - some of which hard to implement on ASICs, probably because of insane RAM requirements although there are alternatives. The alternance should be based on past history; the percentage of SHA-256 blocks could be dynamic, so "good" miners are incentivized to keep their percentage high by maintaining good demeanor. Or there could be a multiple PoW in each block, so that both a SHA-256 proof and some other proof(s) are necessary for validation. Each PoW function should maintain a different difficulty scale, and the difficulties could be combined into some overall metric. Such a system would be highly tweakable, and adapt dynamically.

(EDIT - about "softness". The initial conditions could be 100% ASIC-based, 0% others, as it is now. Then in times of mempool storms, or fork FUD, or whatever, the "others" might be gently pushed up until the situation gets back to normal.)

Any working solution should be designed with game theory in mind, not only the obvious complexity theory. A long check on testnet would be necessary, to figure out at least the complexity part, if not the game theory part.

(Inb4 - Bitcoin is a scam designed to centralize because no digital money can ever blah blah the Joos blah blah gold and silver.)

There can not be soft fork PoW change, it's the hardest of all hard forks. As much as most of us hate Bitmain, PoW change can not be justified because someone has market dominance and is in position to attack the blockchain.

There are PoW algos that are ASIC resistant (Cuckoo Cycle), but this is not a technical question at all.

Keep in mind that no one would more encourage such a change than Jihan Wu. If such thing happen, he will have a ground to a claim BCash is the real Bitcoin, and he knows that claim is false in current situation. I'm afraid he may even really attack Bitcoin just to make some more incentive for PoW change.

IMHO the only thing that can justify PoW change is Quantum computing attack on SHA2, and Cuckoo Cycle is Quantum resistant btw. Doing it now is jumping in the abyss just for the sake of change.

[Ibian]

Also fuck quantum clowns. We would be using them to mine if they were ever to become more than a nerdish fantasy.

(your quantum waifu does not love you)

[mindrust]

IMHO the only thing that can justify PoW change is Quantum computing attack on SHA2, and Cuckoo Cycle is Quantum resistant btw. Doing it now is jumping in the abyss just for the sake of change.

Core devs can come out and say "We upgrading the btc protocol to keep it safe against Quantum computers so a PoW change is necessary".

Bitmain will have no ground against this. 

[itod]

Also fuck quantum clowns. We would be using them to mine if they were ever to become more than a nerdish fantasy.

You can not do it mate, if Quantum breaks SHA256 it will be useless. It's not an option. I don't believe it's realistic, but big boys are pouring a lot of money into it and you never know what the results will be.