Bitcoin Forum
March 19, 2024, 07:54:24 AM *
News: Latest Bitcoin Core release: 26.0 [Torrent]
 
   Home   Help Search Login Register More  
Poll
Question: Will you support Gavin's new block size limit hard fork of 8MB by January 1, 2016 then doubling every 2 years?
1.  yes
2.  no

Pages: « 1 ... 607 608 609 610 611 612 613 614 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623 624 625 626 627 628 629 630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637 638 639 640 641 642 643 644 645 646 647 648 649 650 651 652 653 654 655 656 [657] 658 659 660 661 662 663 664 665 666 667 668 669 670 671 672 673 674 675 676 677 678 679 680 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691 692 693 694 695 696 697 698 699 700 701 702 703 704 705 706 707 ... 1557 »
  Print  
Author Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.  (Read 2032123 times)
Zarathustra
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1162
Merit: 1004



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 10:27:51 AM
 #13121

Most people I know believe money can only be defined by a government and only functions if it is "managed" by a central body with the power to "expand supply to grow with the economy". (Nevermind this is never actually implemented in practice.) And so refuse to trust in anything else.
Most people know more about how electricity works than they understand how money works (this includes the people who issue and control the money).

We know that electricity works in spite of how few people understand it.

Bitcoin will be the same. It will be adopted because it works long before people really understand how and why it works.

Yes. Most people believe that money is a 'thing'. But it isn't. Money is debt and never had been something different. Gold and Gold 2.0 are more or less liquid commodities.

A second major argument of the book is that, contrary to standard accounts of the history of money, debt is likely the oldest means of trade, with cash and barter transactions being later developments. Debt, the book argues, has typically retained its primacy, with cash and barter usually limited to situations of low trust involving strangers or those not considered credit-worthy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
1710834864
Hero Member
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 1710834864

View Profile Personal Message (Offline)

Ignore
1710834864
Reply with quote  #2

1710834864
Report to moderator
Unlike traditional banking where clients have only a few account numbers, with Bitcoin people can create an unlimited number of accounts (addresses). This can be used to easily track payments, and it improves anonymity.
Advertised sites are not endorsed by the Bitcoin Forum. They may be unsafe, untrustworthy, or illegal in your jurisdiction.
1710834864
Hero Member
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 1710834864

View Profile Personal Message (Offline)

Ignore
1710834864
Reply with quote  #2

1710834864
Report to moderator
1710834864
Hero Member
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 1710834864

View Profile Personal Message (Offline)

Ignore
1710834864
Reply with quote  #2

1710834864
Report to moderator
1710834864
Hero Member
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 1710834864

View Profile Personal Message (Offline)

Ignore
1710834864
Reply with quote  #2

1710834864
Report to moderator
Dusty
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Activity: 731
Merit: 503


Libertas a calumnia


View Profile WWW
October 02, 2014, 10:32:54 AM
 #13122

That could be a very interesting service: Netagio launches his exchange between Gold, GBP and Bitcoin.

http://www.netagio.com/

The British Bitcoin industry is entering a phase of innovation and Netagio is proud to be a driver of change in the industry. This summer, in July, we successfully launched the first British peer-to-peer exchange that  allows both retail customers and institutional investors to trade gold, Bitcoins and GBP on the same platform.

Articoli bitcoin: Il portico dipinto
cypherdoc (OP)
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 03:11:26 PM
 #13123

Dow down again.  for sure we'll get a weekly sell signal by the end of tomorrow unless something gets done quick.

VIX on the rise yet again and looking to break out.  fear is on the rise.

sounds simple enough, but diversify out of some risk assets and into something non-correlated:

thezerg
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1246
Merit: 1010


View Profile
October 02, 2014, 03:31:22 PM
 #13124


Given that we know the BGP is mathematically unsolvable

i've heard this a few times already.

can u give a simple layman's description to why this is?

Allright I took fischer's provability class so I'll give it a go:

First of all whether BGP is solvable or not depends on the "powers" given to the honest vs. lying generals.  Can the honest generals "broadcast" a message to everyone else?  Can lying generals "intercept" and rewrite messages?  Do you have a mostly-synchronized clock, or even a local sense of time?  So papers basically define these "powers" and then prove a yes or no result based on them.

Let me try to couch why BGP is sometimes unsolvable in what you are familiar with: bitcoin.  Let's just say we choose one node to grab all txns and add them to the blockchain.  That node can't steal $ because it can't sign the txns.  But it could insist that there are no txns, or disappear.  If it insists there are no txns (but there are) then no progress is made (algorithm is halted).  If it disappears, can you just choose another?  No because you can't prove that it is really gone vs just slow.  That is, it could seem to disappear causing the rest of the network to pick another "issuer".  Then both nodes post a block at the exact same moment resulting in half the nodes using block A and the other half B [1].  Could you then get the network to "settle" on one of the 2 blocks?  Well, doing so is equivalent to solving the original problem (picking a block in the first place), so the above strategy made zero progress solving this problem.  

But note that if you had some relatively consistent sense of elapsed time (an additional "power"), say all nodes have time accuracy within an interval E (say 5 min), you could do something like:  the announcer has until time X to announce a block, at time X+E, we choose another announcer [2].  Ok that works but it requires a synchronized clock.  No clock is ever synchronized perfectly.  So in practice it solves 99.99% of the problem, but what happens if the announcer issues the block exactly at time X+E.  So half of the nodes will think that it is valid, the other half will reject.  So now we have to decide whether to accept the proposed block or not.  Doing so is equivalent to the original problem.  We have made no progress.

How about you use a "fitness function" to choose the best block?  Perhaps use the longest block (most txns in it).  This doesn't work because at any time someone could add a few more txns to a very old block and reissue it, wiping out the blockchain up to that point.  That is, an uncooperative node could cause the algorithm to never make progress.  Ok so let's say once the block is issued it can't be "unissued".  But what if 2 nodes "issue" conflicting blocks simultaneously.  We have to pick one.  Oops, we are back to square one!  (and what does "issued" mean anyway -- in fact it is not definable in a p2p network).

Bitcoin itself does not even solve the problem.  At any time, someone could show up with an alternate blockchain that is full of empty blocks since 2009 (say he's secretly been racing with the public chain) and all clients would switch to that chain where no transactions have happened.  So in fact from a theoretical perspective the algorithm can be proved to never make progress.  However, from a practical perspective this is unlikely to happen, and if it did, I as a community we could throw in some kind of hard coded change (essentially a centralized decision hard-coded in a new client) that forces "our" chain to be chosen.  

So what's cool about Bitcoin is if it breaks down it can essentially "devolve" into (worst case) a centralized scheme.  No worse then we had before Bitcoin (and actually a whole lot better in other metrics).


[1] http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/arvind/cs425/doc/fischer.pdf
[2] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/reaching.pdf
cypherdoc (OP)
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 03:38:13 PM
 #13125

Dow -109
cypherdoc (OP)
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 03:46:56 PM
 #13126

RUT & oil have clearly busted major support levels:



cypherdoc (OP)
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 04:21:08 PM
 #13127

So in practice it solves 99.99% of the problem

by "it", do you mean the timeclock?
cypherdoc (OP)
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 04:38:42 PM
 #13128

excellent interview:

We have no tradition in this country of holding our intelligence community officials legally responsible for law-breaking.

https://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/pull-back-to-reveal/
NewLiberty
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1204
Merit: 1002


Gresham's Lawyer


View Profile WWW
October 02, 2014, 04:40:52 PM
 #13129


Given that we know the BGP is mathematically unsolvable

i've heard this a few times already.

can u give a simple layman's description to why this is?

Allright I took fischer's provability class so I'll give it a go:

First of all whether BGP is solvable or not depends on the "powers" given to the honest vs. lying generals.  Can the honest generals "broadcast" a message to everyone else?  Can lying generals "intercept" and rewrite messages?  Do you have a mostly-synchronized clock, or even a local sense of time?  So papers basically define these "powers" and then prove a yes or no result based on them.

Let me try to couch why BGP is sometimes unsolvable in what you are familiar with: bitcoin.  Let's just say we choose one node to grab all txns and add them to the blockchain.  That node can't steal $ because it can't sign the txns.  But it could insist that there are no txns, or disappear.  If it insists there are no txns (but there are) then no progress is made (algorithm is halted).  If it disappears, can you just choose another?  No because you can't prove that it is really gone vs just slow.  That is, it could seem to disappear causing the rest of the network to pick another "issuer".  Then both nodes post a block at the exact same moment resulting in half the nodes using block A and the other half B [1].  Could you then get the network to "settle" on one of the 2 blocks?  Well, doing so is equivalent to solving the original problem (picking a block in the first place), so the above strategy made zero progress solving this problem.  

But note that if you had some relatively consistent sense of elapsed time (an additional "power"), say all nodes have time accuracy within an interval E (say 5 min), you could do something like:  the announcer has until time X to announce a block, at time X+E, we choose another announcer [2].  Ok that works but it requires a synchronized clock.  No clock is ever synchronized perfectly.  So in practice it solves 99.99% of the problem, but what happens if the announcer issues the block exactly at time X+E.  So half of the nodes will think that it is valid, the other half will reject.  So now we have to decide whether to accept the proposed block or not.  Doing so is equivalent to the original problem.  We have made no progress.

How about you use a "fitness function" to choose the best block?  Perhaps use the longest block (most txns in it).  This doesn't work because at any time someone could add a few more txns to a very old block and reissue it, wiping out the blockchain up to that point.  That is, an uncooperative node could cause the algorithm to never make progress.  Ok so let's say once the block is issued it can't be "unissued".  But what if 2 nodes "issue" conflicting blocks simultaneously.  We have to pick one.  Oops, we are back to square one!  (and what does "issued" mean anyway -- in fact it is not definable in a p2p network).

Bitcoin itself does not even solve the problem.  At any time, someone could show up with an alternate blockchain that is full of empty blocks since 2009 (say he's secretly been racing with the public chain) and all clients would switch to that chain where no transactions have happened.  So in fact from a theoretical perspective the algorithm can be proved to never make progress.  However, from a practical perspective this is unlikely to happen, and if it did, I as a community we could throw in some kind of hard coded change (essentially a centralized decision hard-coded in a new client) that forces "our" chain to be chosen.  

So what's cool about Bitcoin is if it breaks down it can essentially "devolve" into (worst case) a centralized scheme.  No worse then we had before Bitcoin (and actually a whole lot better in other metrics).


[1] http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/arvind/cs425/doc/fischer.pdf
[2] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/reaching.pdf


Quoted For Truth
...
In the smaller chains of the alt coin world, these concerns are dealt with more commonly.  Some of them show promise as ways to deal with what might happen if Bitcoin faced existential threats from major powers.  Some of these innovations ultimately do matriculate into Bitcoin.

By way of example, A week or two ago such an existential threat materialized in one of the up and coming alt coins with savvy devloper team, (Monero), in which an issued threat of a hostile fork using massive hashpower (and maybe some clever hacks against clocks) was met with an innovative solution.  That solution decentralized the chain-fork choice with the option of individual manual interventions, allowing miners/generals to swiftly select a chain without requiring (but still allowing for) the devolution to a centralized scheme.

In effect, this raises the hostility-cost in the battle to be the issuing miner/general, by allowing the other miner/generals an easy tool to select an alliance if the need arises, without waiting for a recompiled code from their HQ to resolve it.  This innovation expands individual liberty in time of crisis.  It lets the miner/generals act in response to threat if they are cut off from HQ.  It also serves to increase the confidence that these crypto currencies are truly 'antifragile' and cleave true to Wei Dai's cypherpunk entreaty to make "the threat of violence impossible because violence is impossible..."  

FREE MONEY1 Bitcoin for Silver and Gold NewLibertyDollar.com and now BITCOIN SPECIE (silver 1 ozt) shows value by QR
Bulk premiums as low as .0012 BTC "BETTER, MORE COLLECTIBLE, AND CHEAPER THAN SILVER EAGLES" 1Free of Government
_mr_e
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 817
Merit: 1000



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 04:40:58 PM
 #13130

Oh man, what a joker: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-02/extended-interview-with-jeffrey-robinson/5787140
cypherdoc (OP)
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 05:27:21 PM
 #13131


that was bad.

another layman who's swallowed the "blockchain is great, the currency is bad" meme of Andreas, et al.

they are inextricably linked.
thezerg
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1246
Merit: 1010


View Profile
October 02, 2014, 05:50:10 PM
Last edit: October 02, 2014, 06:02:47 PM by thezerg
 #13132

So in practice it solves 99.99% of the problem

by "it", do you mean the timeclock?

Yes.  A semi-reliable time allows a bunch of entities to collectively decide that another entity is "dead".  This makes non-Byzantine distributed consensus easy (by non-Byzantine, I mean it handles "normal" failures -- node death, network split -- but not pathological cases where a node is deliberately trying to break the election).  This is all that is needed for distributed consensus in most tightly coupled distributed systems.

EDIT: I want to say one more thing about this which is about physics. 

The BGP and Bitcoin's solution problem is fascinating because there are parallels with quantum mechanics which is also incapable of making a decision.  Particles are modeled as probability fields until that is collapsed by observation.  Block/txn validity is probabilistic and collapsed by work (building on the chain).   

But another way to think of that collapse is simply that you have been incorporated into a specific case in the probability field but an outside observer is now unaware of your state (schrodinger's cat).  From the outside observer's case, the probability field still exists; you are just now part of it.

So the universe only has state because it observes itself.  Bitcoin is the same... it only has state (validated txns) in the eyes of observers within the system.

oda.krell
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1470
Merit: 1007



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 06:06:01 PM
 #13133

So in practice it solves 99.99% of the problem

by "it", do you mean the timeclock?

Yes.  A semi-reliable time allows a bunch of entities to collectively decide that another entity is "dead".  This makes non-Byzantine distributed consensus easy (by non-Byzantine, I mean it handles "normal" failures -- node death, network split -- but not pathological cases where a node is deliberately trying to break the election).  This is all that is needed for distributed consensus in most tightly coupled distributed systems.

Very interesting post.

Question: would the problem of the time interval case you describe (with an imprecise time signal) possibly be solvable by having the clients decide on a time to accept the block in the form of a probability distribution, peaking around the agreed upon time point? that way, assuming a majority of clients would use that rule, we could assume a majority of clients would accept the block issued *around* time E, even if it is not issued at the *exact* time.

Not sure which Bitcoin wallet you should use? Get Electrum!
Electrum is an open-source lightweight client: fast, user friendly, and 100% secure.
Download the source or executables for Windows/OSX/Linux/Android from, and only from, the official Electrum homepage.
justusranvier
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1400
Merit: 1006



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 06:07:18 PM
 #13134

This is all that is needed for distributed consensus in most tightly coupled distributed systems.
Maybe this would be better written as: "This is all that is needed for consensus in systems where one entity exercises control over all portions of the distributed system."

When Amazon builds a distributed system where they own all the pieces, that's one problem.

When a group of independent actors are trying to build a distributed system to agree on something, when anyone is free to join or depart at any time, and no actors may be treated as privileged or trusted, the problem is just a little bit harder.
iCEBREAKER
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 2156
Merit: 1070


Crypto is the separation of Power and State.


View Profile WWW
October 02, 2014, 09:36:00 PM
 #13135

Quote
BREAKING: JPMorgan says data breach affects 76 million households, 7 million businesses



██████████
█████████████████
██████████████████████
█████████████████████████
████████████████████████████
████
████████████████████████
█████
███████████████████████████
█████
███████████████████████████
██████
████████████████████████████
██████
████████████████████████████
██████
████████████████████████████
██████
███████████████████████████
██████
██████████████████████████
█████
███████████████████████████
█████████████
██████████████
████████████████████████████
█████████████████████████
██████████████████████
█████████████████
██████████

Monero
"The difference between bad and well-developed digital cash will determine
whether we have a dictatorship or a real democracy." 
David Chaum 1996
"Fungibility provides privacy as a side effect."  Adam Back 2014
Buy and sell XMR near you
P2P Exchange Network
Buy XMR with fiat
Is Dash a scam?
cypherdoc (OP)
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 09:46:30 PM
 #13136

forming a base...
statdude
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1498
Merit: 1000


View Profile
October 02, 2014, 10:00:49 PM
 #13137

Anyone have any good links to Metcalfs law vs btc price?

What is the downride risk of a decrease in adoption transactions?

▄█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▄
█ ███████████████████████ █
█ █████     █ ▀██████████ █
█ █████     █   ▀████████ █
█ █████  ██ █     ▀██████ █

█ █████  ▀▀ █▄▄▄▄▄▄▄█████ █
█ █████  ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  █████ █
█ █████  ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  █████ █
█ █████  ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  █████ █
█ █████  ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  █████ █
█ █████             █████ █
█ ███████████████████████ █
▀█▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄█▀
  Website
    Twitter
      Gitlab
      Reddit
    Telegram
Whitepaper
  ▄█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▄
█ ███████████████████████ █
█ ███████████████████████ █
█ ███▄    ███████▀   ▄███ █
█ ████▌    █████▀    ████ █
█ ████▌     ███▀     ████ █
█ ████▌▐█    █▀ █    ████ █
█ ████▌▐██     ██    ████ █
█ ████▌▐███   ███    ████ █
█ ███▀  ▀███ ███▀    ▀███ █
█ ███████████████████████ █
█ ███████████████████████ █
▀█▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄█▀
Peter R
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1162
Merit: 1007



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 10:08:36 PM
 #13138

Anyone have any good links to Metcalfs law vs btc price?

What is the downride risk of a decrease in adoption transactions?

Here's the latest graphs (just made now).




Run Bitcoin Unlimited (www.bitcoinunlimited.info)
cypherdoc (OP)
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 10:42:56 PM
 #13139

Bitcoin is exciting because it shows how cheap it can be. Bitcoin is better than currency in that you don’t have to be physically in the same place and of course for large transactions currency can get pretty inconvenient. The customers we’re talking about aren’t trying to be anonymous. You know they’re willing to be known so the Bitcoin technology is key and you could add to it or you could build a similar technology where there’s enough attribution that people feel comfortable this is nothing to do with terrorism or any type of money laundering.

don't hold your breath Bill.  part of the reason Bitcoin has such a large mining/security contingent is b/c of the privacy or pseudonymity it offers:

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/bill-gates-bitcoin-is-exciting-because-it-s-cheap-dQ4qHV4~TLSnUIuIRfZBVA.html
Odalv
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1400
Merit: 1000



View Profile
October 02, 2014, 11:00:43 PM
 #13140

Bitcoin is exciting because it shows how cheap it can be. Bitcoin is better than currency in that you don’t have to be physically in the same place and of course for large transactions currency can get pretty inconvenient. The customers we’re talking about aren’t trying to be anonymous. You know they’re willing to be known so the Bitcoin technology is key and you could add to it or you could build a similar technology where there’s enough attribution that people feel comfortable this is nothing to do with terrorism or any type of money laundering.

don't hold your breath Bill.  part of the reason Bitcoin has such a large mining/security contingent is b/c of the privacy or pseudonymity it offers:

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/bill-gates-bitcoin-is-exciting-because-it-s-cheap-dQ4qHV4~TLSnUIuIRfZBVA.html

I'm sure he is bitcoin supporter.
Pages: « 1 ... 607 608 609 610 611 612 613 614 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623 624 625 626 627 628 629 630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637 638 639 640 641 642 643 644 645 646 647 648 649 650 651 652 653 654 655 656 [657] 658 659 660 661 662 663 664 665 666 667 668 669 670 671 672 673 674 675 676 677 678 679 680 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691 692 693 694 695 696 697 698 699 700 701 702 703 704 705 706 707 ... 1557 »
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.19 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple Machines Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!