Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

Felten:

"Mr. President, when it comes to my best assessment of Bitcoin, I'd say that within the next 5 yrs it's quite possible that ................"

[1714203313]

1714203313

[Natalia_AnatolioPAMM]

Gold is tangible asset. Hard to convince older generation to hold bitcoin.

its impossible 

[Peter R]

Russian Finance Minister:

Mr. Putin, the Americans have a cryptocurrency expert advising the White House.  

Vladimir Putin:

Is this significant?

Russian Finance Minister:

I'm not sure.  The Ministry's initial research suggested this new currency "bitcoin" was a passing fad--just a harmless toy.  We're no longer convinced that's the case.

Vladimir Putin:

We need to learn more about this "bitcoin" and what might be the plans of the Americans...

[TPTB_need_war]

you're a whack job.

I hope those readers who lamented that I (even if occasionally) exhibit technical acumen but lack couth, will now understand that rather I am an astute judge of personality and attitude.

Is a character assassination all you have as a retort? Any meritorious points?

[TPTB_need_war]

Russian Finance Minister:

Mr. Putin, the Americans have a cryptocurrency expert advising the White House.  

Vladimir Putin:

Is this significant?

Russian Finance Minister:

I'm not sure.  The Ministry's initial research suggested this new currency "bitcoin" was a passing fad--just a harmless toy.  We're no longer convinced that's the case.

Vladimir Putin:

We need to learn more about this "bitcoin" and what might be the plans of the Americans...

Peter R, seriously don't you see that Putin vs. Obama is a scripted show for the masses to drool over. The global elite are pulling the strings, the same as they did with the Bolsheviks and then handing power to the oligarchs after the fall of the Communism they created. Some homework for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sah_Xni-gtg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY

The elite in every country are aligned with the current move towards a global Technocracy.

Being ignorant (Cypherdoc) of these facts doesn't impress me. Not any more than I would be impressed that someone doesn't know all the facts surrounding 9/11 such as the letter from the SEC to Martin Armstrong confirming that all the tapes he had recorded of the malfeasance of the banksters had been held of the WTC and destroyed. Climb down the rabbit hole and study the facts, not the diversionary bullshit about UFOs, etc..

[Peter R]

Peter R, seriously don't you see that Putin vs. Obama is a scripted show for the masses to drool over.

I don't know what I think. 

But I'm just having fun here…we need a bitcoin movie!

[TPTB_need_war]

Peter R, seriously don't you see that Putin vs. Obama is a scripted show for the masses to drool over.

I don't know what I think.  

But I'm just having fun here…we need a bitcoin movie!

Okay I understand. Blowing off steam and hacker humor. Apologies.

Edit: it is difficult to form a rational judgement on these matters. I agree. Lacking independently verifiable data. My conclusion is based on a holistic assessment, correlating much information, but it is possible I have a confirmation bias.

[farting_shot]

Peter R, seriously don't you see that Putin vs. Obama is a scripted show for the masses to drool over.

I don't know what I think.  

But I'm just having fun here…we need a bitcoin movie!

Okay I understand. Blowing off steam and hacker humor. Apologies.

Edit: it is difficult to form a rational judgement on these matters. I agree. Lacking independently verifiable data. My conclusion is based on a holistic assessment, correlating much information, but it is possible I have a confirmation bias.

TPTB, you're my hero! Brothers, listen to this guy! Sisters, bare your breasts and bottoms to this guy!

[worth]

Gold is tangible asset. Hard to convince older generation to hold bitcoin.

My Dad will be 86 in weeks and he holds some Bitcoin. Yes, I took care of the technical stuff, but he's enthusiastic about it and calls me up to tell me about what he read about it in the Times. 

[bambou]

Russian Finance Minister:

Mr. Putin, the Americans have a cryptocurrency expert advising the White House.  

Vladimir Putin:

Is this significant?

Russian Finance Minister:

I'm not sure.  The Ministry's initial research suggested this new currency "bitcoin" was a passing fad--just a harmless toy.  We're no longer convinced that's the case.

Vladimir Putin:

We need to learn more about this "bitcoin" and what might be the plans of the Americans...

Peter R, seriously don't you see that Putin vs. Obama is a scripted show for the masses to drool over. The global elite are pulling the strings, the same as they did with the Bolsheviks and then handing power to the oligarchs after the fall of the Communism they created. Some homework for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sah_Xni-gtg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY

The elite in every country are aligned with the current move towards a global Technocracy.

Being ignorant (Cypherdoc) of these facts doesn't impress me. Not any more than I would be impressed that someone doesn't know all the facts surrounding 9/11 such as the letter from the SEC to Martin Armstrong confirming that all the tapes he had recorded of the malfeasance of the banksters had been held of the WTC and destroyed. Climb down the rabbit hole and study the facts, not the diversionary bullshit about UFOs, etc..

Secret services everywhere. Putin is one of them, that is.. no secret. Same goes for Gavin tho.
In a world where banks and govs are now waging a war against cash and any other taxfree payment ledger for their QEs and extravagances are starting to thumble, would you reckon they'll leave Bitcoin be that easily? Nope, try again.. Why not just employ/fund/support them bitcoiners wackos lead dev and drive whats left of the whole libertarian technology down with US. Maybe they could catch a branch and enslave you for 50 more years before the final curtain too. But but 7Billion^TM people wont use Bitcoin if we dont have infinite rainbow blocksize!  

This is not a Technocracy, but a Secretocracy. Technology is just a tool. OTOH ignorance is bliss.

On a positive note: "The poor in spirit are blessed, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs." - Matthew 5:3


Time to go back to TV or sum neat Hollywood blockbuster folks, you are not helping here. #YOLO

[NewLiberty]

Gold is tangible asset. Hard to convince older generation to hold bitcoin.

its impossible  

I resemble that remark.  But then I was convinced long before you'd even heard of it.

[TPTB_need_war]

I have one question for goldbugs. Have you ever tested your theory that there will always be a physical blackmarket? I mean have ever really tried to sell some of your gold not at a dealer.

France has already cracked down on gold, cash, and crypto. Eventually the governments can force all the dealers to report all transactions and expropriate there.

So where do you sell your gold?

And if we are in a severe economic collapse meaning most of the people are suffering economically, selling some gold to someone who is not an established dealer will risk:

1. It is a setup to mug you.
2. It is a government sting to entrap you.
3. Gossip spreads you have gold and marks you as a man/household to mug frequently.

Fantasizing about barter is loony. The youth will grab crypto and their smartphone before contemplating inefficient barter. Currency is a convenience (over barter). People only move to barter if there is no other choice. Ferfal confirms this from experience in Argentina's collapse.

The powers that be are going to leave Bitcoin pretty much open to nefarious activities until it is already adopted as the alternative to barter during this era of financial repression. Once it is too well established as the only crypto that is widely accepted by merchants, then they can start to use the public ledger to expropriate without fear that we nerds can leave en masse. At that point they can close the loopholes we currently use to obtain anonymity on Bitcoin, such as eliminating all unregistered connections to the internet, e.g. no more unregistered WiFi connections and no more unregistered 3G USB dongles. I have been observing the moves they are making to eliminate these options. For example here in the Philippines where we do have unregistered 3G USB dongles, there is a proposed law to make that illegal and also one of the 3 telcom networks (Globe) recently stopped selling simcards with a preset #. Now you have to registered the sim to get a # (so far the registration is over the wire and no name required yet I see this as preparatory step).

If we are going to develop an alternative to Bitcoin which can be anonymous in spite of anything the authorities can do, then we need to do it now because we have to build use value in that coin before it is too late to.

Monero has onchain mixing which is one aspect of anonymity we need. But it doesn't have IP obfuscation and I assert Tor/I2P are compromised because they are low-latency designs, limited number of onion layer hops, and because they have exit nodes (and some other reasons especially around hidden services). The authorities were able to unmask 100s of Tor hidden services. So once the authorities close the loopholes I mentioned above, then we no longer have a way to propagate data anonymously. This must be fixed pronto. Tor needs to be replaced with something that is more suited to the absolute anonymity we need. All crypto-coins will benefit. Also I relayed to smooth and others that I am concerned about  combinatorial attack on the ring sigs in Monero, because the mixing is not adequately structured. I have not followed all issues since relaying that, so I can't make any definitive statement now (perhaps I raise a non-issue and I have no desire to propagate FUD against Monero so pleeeassseee), but I will dig back into that aspect eventually.

Also afaics (correct me if I am wrong) Monero's primary use case at this time is (as always speculation in an altcoin and) as a decentralized mixer and then back to Bitcoin again. I don't think it has any widespread adoption as a currency.

If we are going to get any use as currency for an altcoin that is not Bitcoin, then it needs to have a compelling currency use case that Bitcoin can't do. I have an idea. I already wrote about it publicly on this forum under one of my other user names. I am not going to mention it again, because I might be moving into implementation mode and I'd prefer it to be somewhat dubious (plausible deniability) as to what if any thing I was a developer on.

I am interested to consider the tradeoffs of working with Monero but afaik their business model was not to retain any coins to incentivize developers. Their business model appears to me be Communist. They wanted in their marketing to state that it is the most fair coin because there is no premine nor any ongoing minting to pay developers. So I assume the devs either bought the coin out of their own savings (and suffered for it so far) or they had the early dibs on mining (for example I've read that the guy who optimized the PoW hash code apparently netted himself $100,000 due to having an advantage on mining for a short period of time?). How does someone work with Monero and earn a good ROI?

I'd prefer to be upfront and transparent about the funding of the creators and ongoing development, than leave people wondering. I understand there is an unofficial Monero foundation of sorts formed where donations could be aggregated and parceled out for funding development, marketing, etc.. Who wants to be at the mercy of donations? Not me. That is politics, ripe for corruption, political cat fighting, the need to compromise leadership to least common denominator of groupthink, etc..

[mrhelpful]

you wouldnt have to convince an older generation to hold bitcoin, if those twins actually passed their ETF or whatever.

it`ll look like any other traditional symbol on the stock market, so they would consider it as .dot com history on what they observed back then.

[TPTB_need_war]

Welcome to the NWO fascism...

@ORO ... 6. All your IP are belong to us ...

http://nationalcan.ning.com/video/paypal-assert-copyright-ownership-of-all-intellectual-property

And automobile companies want cars "sold" as software ...

the list just keeps getting longer :-(

[smooth]

that's kind of a weird chart b/c it is denominated in BTC.  even Meni says so:

These values should be taken with a grain of salt, because of the many modeling assumptions made

"value" will vary greatly depending on whether 1BTC buys you a loaf of bread vs an island.

It being denominated in BTC is not one of the modeling assumptions. That's because both the gain and loss from such an attack are measured in BTC. So it is correct to consider the numbers as BTC quantities, whatever those happen to be worth.

The modeling assumptions are primarily how much resale etc. value the attacker recovers from the unpaid purchase and how many attacks can be pulled off simultaneously. The latter is probably the riskier assumption.

@rocks, the chart already assumes rewards of 25 BTC/block. It will, however, need to be adjusted (down) when we hit 12.5 BTC/block.

[TPTB_need_war]

smooth I am not following that discussion but what about rented hardware attacks? Doesn't that involve the BTC exchange value or does the network hashrate scaling to BTC value negate? (sorry didn't think this out)

[rocks]

@rocks, the chart already assumes rewards of 25 BTC/block. It will, however, need to be adjusted (down) when we hit 12.5 BTC/block.

Yeah, saw that after skimming the paper this afternoon. Am curious to re-run the numbers if I have time in a bit to see how the results look with a 12.5 BTC/block reward and other future expected rewards. If I get around to that will post back.

[thebenjamincode]

i think gold will be going back up again if it falls down. just like what happened to BTC when mtgox went down

[smooth]

smooth I am not following that discussion but what about rented hardware attacks? Doesn't that involve the BTC exchange value or does the network hashrate scaling to BTC value negate? (sorry didn't think this out)

Well if you are dead set on attacking (for non-economic reasons), you can rent hardware to attack, but it will cost you more (up to the limits on the chart with the model parameters given) than renting the hardware and using it to mine honestly. The difference between the two is what is shown in that chart.

Attacks on the coin itself (which rely on a lowered exchange rate, for example by shorting or having some kind of natural short exposure) are different from using attacks within the coin to make money.

EDIT: I guess a case worth considering is using rented hashrate by an attacker to "promote" up the chart (closer to 50% or over). Not considered by Meni's analysis. I don't know if the real world economics make that significant.

[TPTB_need_war]

Here was my comment on IBLT:

https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/e20c3b5a1d4b97f79ac2#comment-1324639

My thought is it appears to me to be pie-in-the-sky in sense of hoping that parties will avoid the increasing probability of failure as the compression rate increases. In short, the system will need be highly centralized in order to cope with that loss of entropy.