Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[TPTB_need_war]

It seems reasonable, and afair TPTB have cracked down on exchanges for game currencies because they do realize this threat.

Is Monero ready to resist such crackdowns? Does it have decentralized exchanges? Can the authorities not track down IP addresses and make examples to discourage others from subverting a ban?

Might work.

My idea is an area that is more targeted to the market of those who need anonymity and thus might be more willing to fight. Not sure if game players want to pick an unnecessary fight with the government.

I like your posts but IPs is one of the least worries for privacy in a coin, the "worst" they could ascertain is that you made a transaction to... somewhere, a Monero crackdown would only Straisant effect it, they can't even block torrents, how would a ban take place? They can't ban it everywhere in the world at same time.

I may have forgotten the specific details of the unlinkability (been away from that for some months) but afair the IP address can be associated with a total payment amount and the output addresses. The unlinkability only creates a new address for each payee for each payment, but doesn't hide this new address. Thus on the next spend of the change, the input to the ring it likely known. It is these sort of combinatorial attacks (other variations) that I think might breakdown Monero's anonymity. Smooth please do correct me if my recollection has failed me.

It does hide every new address (in the sense that it is just a random number), and the change is blinded just like any other payee. You can't tell by monitoring at the network level which outputs are change and which are not. You also can't tell by monitoring at the network level which outputs are being spent, so you can't ever be sure that change is being spent.

Wallets do have to be careful how they select coins to avoid skewing probabilities. The best is probably to spend a change output by itself without combining with other outputs (this could be spent back to yourself, but at that point it no longer can be identified as change). It's probably still okay to spend it with other outputs of yours that don't share a near ancestor.

But my point was that if the IP is the same (or different IP correlated to the same individual) for transaction that created outputs and that spends any of those outputs (without needing to know which is the change), then analysis can presume the output(s) being spent in the ring are those which match the correlated IP address.

Note I am presuming the NSA can obtain the records from your ISP to ascertain it was you on shared IP address and not another user of the same ISP.

[rocks]

Zerocoin is an example of a true innovation as I see it. Zerocoin does not rely on mixing as Monero does, but implements true removal of all history.  This is something that neither Bitcoin nor Monero can do. If someone made this, I'd seriously consider it.

http://zerocash-project.org

https://github.com/scipr-lab/libsnark

http://www.scipr-lab.org/

How are Zerocash transactions checked for correctness?

For a mint transaction, the commitment cointained therein is constructed so that that anyone can verify that the committed coin has the claimed value.

For a pour transaction, anyone can verify that the zero-knowledge proof contained therein is valid (and that a few other simple invariants hold). For efficiency, however, Zerocash does not use "any" zero-knowledge proof, but leverages zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive ARguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARK) systems, which are zero-knowledge proofs that are particularly short and easy to verify. Specifically, Zerocash uses zk-SNARKs constructed by SCIPR Lab described in BCTV13; such proofs are less than 300 bytes long and can be verified in only a few milliseconds.

If I recall correctly, the Bitcoin dev team was really excited about Zerocoin, until they saw that computational overhead which rightfully scared them away.

Now a zerocoin sidechain that is merged mined with Bitcoin and only lives off of it's own transaction fees, would enable people to fully clean any coin they have for a modest fee.

[phoenix1]

And this is a critical point. If you can move the worlds CPUs into your coin decentralized, you can beat Bitcoin because you can move more hardware value into your coin. Especially if you can give the mined morsels to be so small that no one sells and they instead circulate those morsels on a use-case that Bitcoin can't do.

+1

This is exactly what 21 Inc. will be doing…adding bitcoin miners to devices like cellphones, thereby giving "mined morsels" to potentially millions of new devices.  I'm very excited to see how this plays out!

yeah, i thought of that too.

i think it's going to be a huge win.

Ok, perhaps you can help me understand, as I am really stuck on this one. Is it possible for a toaster/phone + mining chip to be as/more efficient than the best ASIC's on the market, and if it is not, how can this be a cost-efficient way to mine? I get that the network effect of so many devices mining would be hugely beneficial for BTC, and the 'free BTC' could be a PR/adoption coup, but is there a 'sleight of hand' going on here? Will consumers be receiving what they perceive as 'free BTC' through their toasters or phones, but in reality end up paying more than the market rate for BTC due to the higher electricity costs of running/charging these devices? Surely a toaster-miner has to be more expensive to use than a regular toaster, even if only at the margin, where it is not noticed as a small increase in the electricity bill.
In a market economy the most cost-efficient mining ought to win out, but this seems like a possible (intentional) way to 'distort' that.
Apologies if I am missing something completely obvious

EDIT: Also, as I understand it, a percentage of these mined morsels will go directly to 21Inc, making them yet more expensive for Joe Public.
It almost seems like a legal mining bot-net

[rpietila]

Note I am presuming the NSA can obtain the records from your ISP to ascertain it was you on shared IP address and not another user of the same ISP.

It is irrelevant.

They do not gain the popular acceptance to collect information and enforce stuff based on it on such a high level without a civil war. And if you are not careful, they will round you up in the early stage, just as they did in Russia starting 1917 (see, 100 years!). So they either have the technology but not the means to legally use it against you, and you are safe. Or there is a war and you are dead. Or you move away and don't care shit.

Sorry to bother the other readers but it really gets on my nerves that an intelligent guy bothers himself with the government so much. It is their job to bother you, not yours to bother yourself with them.

The battle is not technical (although it helps). If the aim is that people forsake government, it is accomplished by forsaking government, not by developing stuff while caring about government.

[TPTB_need_war]

And this is a critical point. If you can move the worlds CPUs into your coin decentralized, you can beat Bitcoin because you can move more hardware value into your coin. Especially if you can give the mined morsels to be so small that no one sells and they instead circulate those morsels on a use-case that Bitcoin can't do.

+1

This is exactly what 21 Inc. will be doing…adding bitcoin miners to devices like cellphones, thereby giving "mined morsels" to potentially millions of new devices.  I'm very excited to see how this plays out!

yeah, i thought of that too.

i think it's going to be a huge win.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05/18/bitcoin-startup-21-unveils-product-plan-embeddable-mining-chips/?mod=rss_Technology

Larry Summers, former U.S. treasury secretary, has joined the advisory board of bitcoin startup 21. Bloomberg News

The plan is to have users pay for their phones and/or services by contributing their electricity. This is a way embedding usury into the masses' digital life. And it is a way of implementing the 666 system. Larry Summers who is leading the way towards a cashless, NWO is onboard.

Smooth, as I told you we are losing network effects race. You all over at Monero need stop fucking around with delusion about complacency and get serious.

[phoenix1]

<snip>
The plan is to have users pay for their phones and/or services by contributing their electricity. This is a way embedding usury into the masses' digital life.

This is exactly what I am asking about
'Contributing their electricity' seems a polite way of phrasing it

Whilst the cost of running any electrical device ought to fall over time, any device with embedded mining will be relatively more expensive to run and less efficient, no ?

[TPTB_need_war]

I think you are misunderstanding the paradigm being used now is a slowburn. By the time the frogs realize they are boiling, they are already dead.

Note I am presuming the NSA can obtain the records from your ISP to ascertain it was you on shared IP address and not another user of the same ISP.

It is irrelevant.

They do not gain the popular acceptance to collect information and enforce stuff based on it on such a high level without a civil war.

Apparently they are doing it already. And I don't see any civil war. How do you explain this discrepancy?

I don't understand why you are angry at me when I am doing everything I can think of to devise a technological and marketing coup to this battle which is nearly lost for certain.

And if you are not careful, they will round you up in the early stage, just as they did in Russia starting 1917 (see, 100 years!). So they either have the technology but not the means to legally use it against you, and you are safe. Or there is a war and you are dead. Or you move away and don't care shit.

Or they have the means and have strategically decided to store it all up now and begin the war in a few years from now when their timing is ripe, so as to prevent premature adoption and network effects development of technological counter measures.

OPEC observed that raising oil prices led to increase conservation and efficiencies. Markets do react. TPTB are surely aware they must maximize the concentration of their collapse and war.

Sorry to bother the other readers but it really gets on my nerves that an intelligent guy bothers himself with the government so much. It is their job to bother you, not yours to bother yourself with them.

Why does it bother you that I want to want fight technologically and marketing-wise to attempt to provide a frontier for more people versus what I perceive to be their plans, strengths, and weaknesses. I am playing chess. What is wrong with that?

The battle is not technical (although it helps). If the aim is that people forsake government, it is accomplished by forsaking government, not by developing stuff while caring about government.

The majority are not going to forsake the government. Thus you give up? I refuse to give up and instead hope that with a technological solution, a segment of the population can be emboldened to resist the will of the majority.

[smooth]

Ok, perhaps you can help me understand, as I am really stuck on this one. Is it possible for a toaster/phone + mining chip to be as/more efficient than the best ASIC's on the market ?

Absolutely yes. Phone, maybe not. That's more of monetization play, and a long shot on creating a distribution vehicle for micro-BTC that could be used for micro-payments.

But for any device that produces heat (toaster, portable heater, hair dryer, clothes dryer, towel warmer, dishwasher dry cycle, etc.), the efficiency of mining is infinite.

[TPTB_need_war]

<snip>
The plan is to have users pay for their phones and/or services by contributing their electricity. This is a way embedding usury into the masses' digital life.

This is exactly what I am asking about
'Contributing their electricity' seems a polite way of phrasing it

People in the developing world have no concept of what makes their electricity bill change every month. They will ignorantly feel they are getting something for free, when in fact they are being enslaved yet again. These banksters are very clever.

[TPTB_need_war]

But for any device that producesrequires heat (toaster, portable heater, hair dryer, clothes dryer, towel warmer, dishwasher dry cycle, etc.), the efficiency of mining is infinitemitigated.

The efficiency isn't going to be perfect because the nature of the heat may not be fully fungible with the original source of the heat in such devices.

Phone absolutely not.

Thus (unless they don't really expect to scale this into mobile phones) I think it is more of a play on the fact that small changes in electricity bill are uncorrelated in the minds of the users.

[smooth]

But for any device that producesrequires heat (toaster, portable heater, hair dryer, clothes dryer, towel warmer, dishwasher dry cycle, etc.), the efficiency of mining is infinitemitigated.

The efficiency isn't going to be perfect because the nature of the heat may not be fully fungible with the original source of the heat in such devices.

It certainly will for some of these devices. A portable room heater being one example. That is absolutely 100% efficiency. There is nowhere else for the heat to go. In most of the others the device can be designed in such a way that the efficiency approaches or reaches 100%. For example, in the case of a hair dryer you can put the mining chip at the air intake before the coils and reduce the power to the coils by the same amount. You get the same output as before. Clothes dryer, etc. is quite similar.

On the mobile/IoT side I think they are looking more at the distribution aspect and less at the efficiency of mining being significant.

EDIT: okay sure, there are RF emissions, and the deliberate power output for WiFi or mobile, but that is negligible compared to even 10 W of actual mining power. There is still no question this far exceeds the efficiency of dedicated mining.

[justusranvier]

I don't agree with Justus's suggestion that altcoin investors are attempting to subvert the basis of money.

Not all of them.

Some of them, and they do as much as they can to encourage others.

Many of the others could be considered unwitting participants.

I want to expand on this a bit.

Consider the modus operandi of David Johnston's Bitangels/Mastercoin mafia.

They rope in mostly young and inexperienced developers via their hackathons that promise (contracts worth up to) large sums of money, then make sure any vaguely interesting idea that emerges gets bolted on to a otherwise-useless appcoin.

They then spend a considerable amount of time promoting the resulting pump and dump. After all possible value has been extracted from the idea they simply move on like a plague of locusts to the next idea. (when was the last time you heard a progress update from APICoin?)

This process generates a large number of accomplices of varying degrees of culpability:

• The developers who get pulled into the system now have their reputations invested in the viability of the appcoin, not to mention the sunk costs of spending so much time on the projects
• The aspiring Bitcoin journalists who helped to promote the appcoins and who accepted advertisement money don't want to admit they participated in something shady without doing any due diligence
• The conference organizers who accepted money from the appcoin project don't want to admit that there are too many Bitcoin conferences to only accept clean money
• The people who bought into the IPO and didn't get out soon enough don't want to admit their money is gone
• The businesses who court outside investment know that some of the investors can't tell the difference between legitimate opportunities and P&D scams, and that many of the investors they court get involved in some of those schemes. They don't want the investors to become spooked and leave the space entirely.

I know of at least two different employees of Bitcoin companies who were required to censor their personal social media accounts on pain of termination because they were being publicly critical of scammy startups. In both cases, their employers cited common investors between the two companies as the reason why criticism could not be allowed.

I also heard one episode of a popular Bitcoin podcast where one of the hosts expressed some regret for accepting work from a project that turned out to be a scam and both other hosts immediately leaped into action to stop her attempt to assume some accountability (lest her example illuminate their lack of assuming similar accountability, presumably).

These bad ideas spread like viruses, and it's increasingly difficult to find somebody who isn't infected to some degree or another.

[Erdogan]

And this is a critical point. If you can move the worlds CPUs into your coin decentralized, you can beat Bitcoin because you can move more hardware value into your coin. Especially if you can give the mined morsels to be so small that no one sells and they instead circulate those morsels on a use-case that Bitcoin can't do.

+1

This is exactly what 21 Inc. will be doing…adding bitcoin miners to devices like cellphones, thereby giving "mined morsels" to potentially millions of new devices.  I'm very excited to see how this plays out!

yeah, i thought of that too.

i think it's going to be a huge win.

Ok, perhaps you can help me understand, as I am really stuck on this one. Is it possible for a toaster/phone + mining chip to be as/more efficient than the best ASIC's on the market, and if it is not, how can this be a cost-efficient way to mine? I get that the network effect of so many devices mining would be hugely beneficial for BTC, and the 'free BTC' could be a PR/adoption coup, but is there a 'sleight of hand' going on here? Will consumers be receiving what they perceive as 'free BTC' through their toasters or phones, but in reality end up paying more than the market rate for BTC due to the higher electricity costs of running/charging these devices? Surely a toaster-miner has to be more expensive to use than a regular toaster, even if only at the margin, where it is not noticed as a small increase in the electricity bill.
In a market economy the most cost-efficient mining ought to win out, but this seems like a possible (intentional) way to 'distort' that.
Apologies if I am missing something completely obvious

EDIT: Also, as I understand it, a percentage of these mined morsels will go directly to 21Inc, making them yet more expensive for Joe Public.
It almost seems like a legal mining bot-net

This can not work economically. What can, work, and what they can gravitate into, is a market for services between the devices, for instance payment for wifi as a first attempt, but other markets can be discovered.

[kazuki49]

I know of at least two different employees of Bitcoin companies who were required to censor their personal social media accounts on pain of termination because they were being publicly critical of scammy startups. In both cases, their employers cited common investors between the two companies as the reason why criticism could not be allowed.

I also heard one episode of a popular Bitcoin podcast where one of the hosts expressed some regret for accepting work from a project that turned out to be a scam and both other hosts immediately leaped into action to stop her attempt to assume some accountability (lest her example illuminate their lack of assuming similar accountability, presumably).

I got my twitter account suspended because I called out shadowcash little bot that auto-report "undesirable" posters, I self-terminated my account later. I didn't even had an influential voice but the system has no backbone.

[TPTB_need_war]

There is nowhere else for the heat to go.

Aren't you forgetting that the efficiency of a thermodynamic process is proportional the ratio of the differences in temperature and the ambient. If the Bitcoin mining chip is not as hot as the coils, then it will not be as efficient as the coils were. Also for example a hair dyer needs all the heat transfered within a short period of time, and if the heat transfer is slow not all of the heat may be extracted to the hair and instead wasted to the ambient. So somewhat less than free mining.

[phoenix1]

Ok, perhaps you can help me understand, as I am really stuck on this one. Is it possible for a toaster/phone + mining chip to be as/more efficient than the best ASIC's on the market ?

Absolutely yes. Phone, maybe not. That's more of monetization play, and a long shot on creating a distribution vehicle for micro-BTC that could be used for micro-payments.

But for any device that produces heat (toaster, portable heater, hair dryer, clothes dryer, towel warmer, dishwasher dry cycle, etc.), the efficiency of mining is infinite.

So, you are saying that any device that has an inbuilt fan/other heat transfer mechanism, and is ordinarily used for heating/drying purposes can utilise the heat created by the mining chip for its usual purpose, as opposed to blowing it out of the building in a mining farm (smart), and that there is a synergy here. I see that. To a point. There still has to be a crossover point re the efficiency of the chip that can be installed in such devices, the effiiciency of the heat transfer, and also the upgrade cycle for these domestic appliances. Mining rigs need to be upgraded much more frequently than your average domestic appliance in order to stay competivive.

[smooth]

Ok, perhaps you can help me understand, as I am really stuck on this one. Is it possible for a toaster/phone + mining chip to be as/more efficient than the best ASIC's on the market ?

Absolutely yes. Phone, maybe not. That's more of monetization play, and a long shot on creating a distribution vehicle for micro-BTC that could be used for micro-payments.

But for any device that produces heat (toaster, portable heater, hair dryer, clothes dryer, towel warmer, dishwasher dry cycle, etc.), the efficiency of mining is infinite.

So, you are saying that any device that has an inbuilt fan/other heat transfer mechanism, and is ordinarily used for heating/drying purposes can utilise the heat created by the mining chip for its usual purpose, as opposed to blowing it out of the building in a mining farm (smart), and that there is a synergy here. I see that. To a point.

No not to a point. Very nearly completely. The electricity at that point is literally free, and the only concern wrt efficiency is the cost of the chips themselves. With extreme mass production that may also be driven down below the cost of dedicated mining chips, especially if the latter is more concerned with operational efficiency. Or even if not, the expectation is that the cost of electricity dominates the cost of chips.

[smooth]

There is nowhere else for the heat to go.

Aren't you forgetting that the efficiency of a thermodynamic process is proportional the ratio of the differences in temperature and the ambient. If the Bitcoin mining chip is not as hot as the coils, then it will not be as efficient as the coils were. Also for example a hair dyer needs all the heat transfered within a short period of time, and if the heat transfer is slow not all of the heat may be extracted to the hair and instead wasted to the ambient. So somewhat less than free mining.

No. Work out the actual transfer equations if you like, but it ends up being an equivalence. Energy in = heat out. Or the device self destructs. Certainly true for a room heater. True in practice for a hair dryer, water heater, etc. I'm not so sure about a toaster. That may be a bad application for it.
 

[TPTB_need_war]

There is nowhere else for the heat to go.

Aren't you forgetting that the efficiency of a thermodynamic process is proportional the ratio of the differences in temperature and the ambient. If the Bitcoin mining chip is not as hot as the coils, then it will not be as efficient as the coils were. Also for example a hair dyer needs all the heat transfered within a short period of time, and if the heat transfer is slow not all of the heat may be extracted to the hair and instead wasted to the ambient. So somewhat less than free mining.

No. Work out the actual transfer equations if you like, but it ends up being an equivalence. Energy in = heat out. Or the device self destructs.

I am speaking about the efficiency of transfer on the time domain. Of course if there is no time involved, all heat reaches equilibrium. Thermal processes are uninteresting if there is no time domain.

How is it that my hair dyer dries my hair after i turn it off but my mining chip is still hot? You've got have a large heat sink in order to move the heat efficiently in time.

Device doesn't self-destruct if the duty cycle is not greater than what the heat transfer sink can deliver.

Heat sinks are often the most expensive part of the entire design. And there is a diminishing return. The heat of a mining chip is I believe very concentrated into a few mm² versus coils which cheaply spread out their heat over a large surface area of air flow.

[smooth]

There is nowhere else for the heat to go.

Aren't you forgetting that the efficiency of a thermodynamic process is proportional the ratio of the differences in temperature and the ambient. If the Bitcoin mining chip is not as hot as the coils, then it will not be as efficient as the coils were. Also for example a hair dyer needs all the heat transfered within a short period of time, and if the heat transfer is slow not all of the heat may be extracted to the hair and instead wasted to the ambient. So somewhat less than free mining.

No. Work out the actual transfer equations if you like, but it ends up being an equivalence. Energy in = heat out. Or the device self destructs.

I am speaking about the efficiency of transfer on the time domain.

How is it that my hair dyer dries my hair after i turn it off but my mining chip is still hot? You've got have a large heat sink in order to move the heat efficiently in time.

Device doesn't self-destruct if the duty cycle is not greater than what the heat transfer sink can deliver.

Well work out the numbers if you like. The amount of energy stored in the mining chip will be negligible due to its small mass. Or you can use other tricks, like run the chip for a shorter period of time than the typical hair drying cycle (so the chip is usually idle and being cooled before the hair drier is turned off).

The heating chip will be kept relatively cool because first of all it is small and has a low mass, and second of all because it is being cooled by room air at the intake. The latter I can tell you from experience working with air cooled chips. A hair dryer has plenty of airflow to keep even a high power chip cool via air cooling. Worst case you downgrade the chip power if necessary to keep it cool (unlikely), so you get less output. Still (effectively) 100% efficiency, just less output, but that's not the play here.

These are engineering problems and I'm quite certain it won't be hard to dominate dedicated miners in terms of efficiency here. I'm far less confident in 21's investors getting a positive return on their investment, but that's a different story.

Heat sinks are often the most expensive part of the entire design. And there is a diminishing return. The heat of a mining chip is I believe very concentrated into a few mm2 versus coils which cheaply spread out their heat over a large surface area of air flow.

Just downgrade the chip power. You can air cool it easily without any kind of exotic heat sink, or maybe none at all.