AMA: Ask a Veteran of Bitcoin

[gweedo]

Ask me any bitcoin questions you have.

Things I will not answer is how many bitcoins, bitcoin related stock, or investments I have. But everything else is fair game so if you wanted to know about security, how to handle certain situations, even technical questions ask away.

[1714792881]

1714792881

[1714792881]

1714792881

[HeroC]

Back when bitcoin was starting, were faucets giving out tens of hundreds of coins?

[01BTC10]

How did you find about Bitcoin?

-.-

[btceic]

Are you concerned about the recent developments with FinCen, IRS and the multitude of services that have been shutdown or effectively nuttered?

[gweedo]

How did you find about Bitcoin?

-.-

I saw Gavin and Amir on TWIST (This week in startups) and I was looking for an easy way to handle payments for a site I was making. I research it and at that point I was into bitcoins, but I was more into that at some point it would make me rich. I thought of it as more of a savings. Then it hit $10 per coin, and I was like I need to put more time into then that is when I went extremely crazy with bitcoins, and was like I need earn more of these things.

[macintosh]

Back when bitcoin was starting, were faucets giving out tens of hundreds of coins?

Yes at one point Gavin (the lead developer of bitcoin and developed the first faucet) had a full balance of about ~15,000 Coins. People were able to get about 5 coins. Cause coins were worth very little at that time.

I remember those days.. Oh god the agony.

[edd]

What's Satoshi really like?

[gweedo]

Back when bitcoin was starting, were faucets giving out tens of hundreds of coins?

Yes at one point Gavin (the lead developer of bitcoin and developed the first faucet) had a full balance of about ~15,000 Coins. People were able to get about 5 coins. Cause coins were worth very little at that time.

I remember those days.. Oh god the agony.

The great days!

[btceic]

Now that you have seen BTC breach a 1 billion $ market cap and beyond and the multitude of services, businesses and eco-system spring to life, what are your expectations going forward for 2014, 2015 and beyond.

[gweedo]

Now that you have seen BTC breach a 1 billion $ market cap and beyond and the multitude of services, businesses and eco-system spring to life, what are your expectations going forward for 2014, 2015 and beyond.

I feel the eco-system is still very small, but I feel it is over crowed in two areas, gambling and merchant processing. I think going forward we are going to see more bitcoin sites disrupting areas that are screwing content creators, I would go into more detail but that is where my next company is focusing so I rather not so stay tuned

2015 I will call it now $2 billion market cap.

[btceic]

Now that you have seen BTC breach a 1 billion $ market cap and beyond and the multitude of services, businesses and eco-system spring to life, what are your expectations going forward for 2014, 2015 and beyond.

I feel the eco-system is still very small, but I feel it is over crowed in two areas, gambling and merchant processing. I think going forward we are going to see more bitcoin sites disrupting areas that are screwing content creators, I would go into more detail but that is where my next company is focusing so I rather not so stay tuned

2015 I will call it now $2 billion market cap.

Interesting that you only see a 100% growth rate in 2 years.

[freedomno1]

Back in the days of CPU mining what was your initial start difficulty when you joined bitcoin 

[gweedo]

Back in the days of CPU mining what was your initial start difficulty when you joined bitcoin 

I never did CPU mining cause I have a macbook and macs aren't design to handle that intense CPU power. So I never really mined, but I did try and develop a mining application as one of my first applications, and I never finished it actually.

[01BTC10]

Did you invest with pireateat40 or GLBSE?

Did you lose any money with any Bitcoin fiasco?

[ShoopDaWhoop]

Have you ever played SatoshiDice?

[FreddyFender]

Are you satisfied that the beginning of a protocol as being implemented with libBitcoin and bitcoinj? Standards are not being applied yet to the Bitcoin-QT client, although it is not Gavin's job. You have been fierce in the past and I was wondering if you had mellowed or have a different view?

FF

[gweedo]

Have you ever played SatoshiDice?

No gambling, is a no win situation in my eyes.

[gweedo]

Thanks to the mod that removed those spammers.

[freedomno1]

Thanks to the mod that removed those spammers.

Got peaceful probably related to the buying account thread too
Lets see another question
What is the best idea to occur to you since using bitcoin

[Garr255]

I've been around about as long as gweedo, and I found out about bitcoin in November of 2010 by going to the website http://c.cc/

Unfortunately I just said to myself "ohh that's cool" and didn't take any action on it until the next year when bitcoin got some more publicity. I'm glad I've been around as long as I have It's been a great time and I can't wait to see where bitcoin goes from here!

[freedomno1]

Thanks to the mod that removed those spammers.

Got peaceful probably related to the buying account thread too
Lets see another question
What is the best idea to occur to you since using bitcoin

My best idea, was not leaving bitcoins after getting taken for a ride by pirate. But in general I have so many ideas for bitcoin, I have an evernote notebook filled with them, I give you a whacky one.

So I thought a good thing for bitcoin would have been like and RSS feed reader that would allow you to pay per subscription like $1 or something (I would have calculated it based on users and subscriptions and how many servers you need) or something like that. But I think the market would have never taken to it, so it stays in my notebook.

Starting to get a nice list myself can see how being here long enough you can fill a notebook with ideas for bitcoin
Should let someone else have a turn but lets see opens this to Garr too
Who is the most amusing person in your opinion when browsing the forums on a daily basis (Quite a few goodies so the challenge is picking one)

[gweedo]

Who is the most amusing person in your opinion when browsing the forums on a daily basis (Quite a few goodies so the challenge is picking one)

Who ever wants to join in can the more the merrier.  Either Dank or when matthew and goat fight that is amusing LOL

[Garr255]

I enjoy posts by Matthew and Atlas. (Atlas may have been an alternate account of Matthew's, but nobody has proved it either way.)

The most recent thing between Goat and Matthew regarding the Avalon share is hilarious

[freedomno1]

I'd go with Gage and Smoothie since I have been watching those two recently and since you covered the others
I enjoyed Gages scammer accusation and Inaba ^^

Goes with a more technical question
Of the current proposed projects such as the Ultimate Blockchain Compression, Freicoin, Cvtokens, Protocol Layer Built On-Top of Bitcoin
Or applications Klondike firmware, Colored Coins etc
Which project if any of the above mentioned but not exclusive to those projects or applications do you find the most interesting and why  
You can make notes on more than one if you find it useful or developing bitcoin  
http://utxo.tumblr.com/

[bigdude]

1. What do you see as critical for mass adoption of bitcoin?

2. Imagine its the future, 2016, what do you think is being done with bitcoin? ie. not storing wealth, but using bitcoin

[gweedo]

Of the current proposed projects such as the Ultimate Blockchain Compression, Freicoin, Cvtokens, Protocol Layer Built On-Top of Bitcoin
Or applications Klondike firmware, Colored Coins etc
Which project if any of the above mentioned but not exclusive to those projects or applications do you find the most interesting and why 
You can make notes on more than one if you find it useful or developing bitcoin 

I like seeing prototypes than just reading about proposals. But blockchain compression is always a good one, and hope someone figures it out.

[bigdude]

1) When the eco-system can disrupt areas where content creators will get paid better.

Can you elaborate on this one .... not sure what you mean?

[gweedo]

1) When the eco-system can disrupt areas where content creators will get paid better.

Can you elaborate on this one .... not sure what you mean?

So think about it, to accept money from someone and to send it to someone else, which is what content sites do. They are middle men, so any site that is a middle man like that, rack up a lot of fees. Bitcoin can come in their make it so content creators get more, cause our payments don't have these huge fees, we don't have to worry about chargebacks, which is something most companies like that have to actually budget it in. I am close to releasing a site like this, so it hard without examples but hopefully I answered your question.

[Obama]

Is a 51% attack possible?

[freedomno1]

Combo
Most ridiculous post on the forum/ Best post you have seen so far

[freedomno1]

Combo
Most ridiculous post on the forum/ Best post you have seen so far

I don't know about ridiculous seen so many. Best post, probably Hal's post, it always gets me.

Can you source that don't think I have read that one yet

[freedomno1]

Combo
Most ridiculous post on the forum/ Best post you have seen so far

I don't know about ridiculous seen so many. Best post, probably Hal's post, it always gets me.

Can you source that don't think I have read that one yet

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#msg1643833 it is very inspiring and always gets my heart strings. You should know his name kinda a big deal in Computer Science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(cypherpunk) Read about who he is then the the post.

Now that's cool stuff makes me wonder what skill-set a lot of the original members have and how popular was that cryptography mailing list
Also it makes me think, if someday we can use pure processing power of quantum scales to research diseases think Seti@home with ASIC's we might be able to combat diseases from another angle.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/23/technology/enterprise/bitcoin-supercomputers/
That was a good one thanks

[freedomno1]

Wonder if that mailing list still works sees a cache wonder if I can apply to a cache ha-ha maybe it was owned by Satoshi
The skills of those original members has made bitcoin go far.

Given you came after the era of satoshi wonder if any veterans have a guess
Why did Satoshi leave in your opinion (Wikileaks etc)

If that one is to general
Is Mtgox turning into a legacy system or will it keep being important to bitcoin and be difficult to replace
(As a joke would a Wizard be a better operator ^^)

One more
In your opinion will bitcoin theoretically by itself become an exchange through colored coins if a layered protocol was built onto of it
(A truly decentralized exchange)
Related to this whitepaper
https://bitcoil.co.il/BitcoinX.pdf
Or something else (State alternative here such as the Status Quo)
That paper states quite a few options in itself but just in case 

[freedomno1]

Last set for today feels like I'm grilling a Friedcat already  

That and I think I scare the newbies away with these tough questions on a thread where they should all be aiming for 5 posts to be free!!!
So posts some easy ones as well

Regarding this campaign I have read its FUD but can you explain what makes it FUD or not
Been pondering it myself
http://keepbitcoinfree.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cZp7UGgBR0I

General questions
Have you ever played notpron if so how far did you get
Favorite Movie (Genre doesn't matter could be Pi)
Will bitcoin hash on the cloud

Thanks
Free for now  

[freedomno1]

Regarding this campaign I have read its FUD but can you explain what makes it FUD or not
Been pondering it myself
http://keepbitcoinfree.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cZp7UGgBR0I

That does make a lot of things true, sound scary. I wouldn't say FUD, but at some point will be faced with issues, like described in the video. Would I worry about it now, probably not. This is like future FUD, cause who knows what we will be dealing with when this is a critical issue.

What do you mean by future FUD and how far down a timeline in the future.
Also what does make a lot of things true???

Will bitcoin hash on the cloud

What you mean hash on the cloud? If you mean mining pools, not really cause you need intense CPU power, so I think cloud computing isn't designed for that.

Was thinking a botnet type design using coordinated computers to mine think it's happened on a minor scale before
Basically a cloud network that instead of listing IP addresses and hunting them down just does coordinated mining instead that's not part of a pool or network sort of like BTCguild I guess. Or a Cloud Client for bitcoin
http://www.sophos.com/en-us/medialibrary/Gated%20Assets/white%20papers/sophosbotnetswpna.pdf

That's a bit of a weird one so maybe I'm thinking a bit odd there
Need to mull it over cellphone networks coordinating mining
(Just write that off as musings of a madman)

[freedomno1]

Regarding this campaign I have read its FUD but can you explain what makes it FUD or not
Been pondering it myself
http://keepbitcoinfree.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cZp7UGgBR0I

That does make a lot of things true, sound scary. I wouldn't say FUD, but at some point will be faced with issues, like described in the video. Would I worry about it now, probably not. This is like future FUD, cause who knows what we will be dealing with when this is a critical issue.

What do you mean by future FUD and how far down a timeline in the future.
Also what does make a lot of things true???

Sorry put the previous question in a quote wasn't sure what you meant there

True enough a lot of GPU power would be needed to make a decent attack since ASIC's are specialized just pondering it
Still am impressed that they got mining before from TF2 so was just imagining a bunch of these running Amok lol
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/050113-bitcoin-hijacking-269312.html

[gweedo]

Regarding this campaign I have read its FUD but can you explain what makes it FUD or not
Been pondering it myself
http://keepbitcoinfree.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cZp7UGgBR0I

That does make a lot of things true, sound scary. I wouldn't say FUD, but at some point will be faced with issues, like described in the video. Would I worry about it now, probably not. This is like future FUD, cause who knows what we will be dealing with when this is a critical issue.

What do you mean by future FUD and how far down a timeline in the future.
Also what does make a lot of things true???

Sorry put the previous question in a quote wasn't sure what you meant there

True enough a lot of GPU power would be needed to make a decent attack since ASIC's are specialized just pondering it
Still am impressed that they got mining before from TF2 so was just imagining a bunch of these running Amok lol
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/050113-bitcoin-hijacking-269312.html

I don't know when in the future, it may even get solved by then. But the blockchain is growing and a lot faster than, we expected, so off chain transactions would entirely be possible. But this is a ways off like maybe 10-15yrs and that is just me pulling numbers out.

You would need thousands if not hundreds of thousands of GPUs.

[freedomno1]

Regarding this campaign I have read its FUD but can you explain what makes it FUD or not
Been pondering it myself
http://keepbitcoinfree.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cZp7UGgBR0I

That does make a lot of things true, sound scary. I wouldn't say FUD, but at some point will be faced with issues, like described in the video. Would I worry about it now, probably not. This is like future FUD, cause who knows what we will be dealing with when this is a critical issue.

What do you mean by future FUD and how far down a timeline in the future.
Also what does make a lot of things true???

Sorry put the previous question in a quote wasn't sure what you meant there

True enough a lot of GPU power would be needed to make a decent attack since ASIC's are specialized just pondering it
Still am impressed that they got mining before from TF2 so was just imagining a bunch of these running Amok lol
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/050113-bitcoin-hijacking-269312.html

I don't know when in the future, it may even get solved by then. But the blockchain is growing and a lot faster than, we expected, so off chain transactions would entirely be possible. But this is a ways off like maybe 10-15yrs and that is just me pulling numbers out.

You would need thousands if not hundreds of thousands of GPUs.

Blizzard installs bitcoin client onto WOW just kidding your right that would take too many computers even accounting for Moore's Law and was curious about that other question 10-15 years even as a guess seems like a decent warning time to figure it out.

That question went a bit longer than I meant it to so leaves this to the newbies and other members to ask a few questions

Thanks for all the replys 

[sam765]

Q:  If you had to start today from scratch, but having all that knowledge.
1) would you mine
2) if so, mine with what? (considering vendors ASIC queues), difficulty, etc from a budget of few hundreds.
3) if all the above is positive, it it important to invest more to get better return?