Weeks or months?? We're in the 21st century now, we don't use mechanical Visa machines with carbon paper anymore...
Since you're such an expert on how electronic payments work, you can describe the process of what happens when you swipe your card and how those various steps map onto the same process in Bitcoin, right? 
Topic: Bitcoin - we have a problem. - page 5. (Read 14570 times)
Tell me how I'm supposed to do any transaction in person if we have to wait 2 hours for confirmations?
Entire consumer economies function based on a payment method (charge card) which has confirmation times measured in weeks or months and yet merchants still somehow find a way to make it work..Weeks or months?? We're in the 21st century now, we don't use mechanical Visa machines with carbon paper anymore...
LOL spot on man
While ASICminer certainly has a large chunk of the network they do have a profit motive to maintain their hashing power or sell that equipment. That generally will keep their contribution to the network fairly constant.
I think the biggest worry when it comes to ASICminer and centralization is the threat of their operation being shut down by the Chinese government. If they become aware of Bitcoin they would likely see it as an obvious weakness to attack. If ASICminer was shut down all at once there would definitely be big problems for Bitcoin.
I've read from a Chinese person who posted here that even though state TV mentioned Bitcoin they really are not aware of it yet. That might change as it becomes a bigger deal and more people use it.
I think the biggest worry when it comes to ASICminer and centralization is the threat of their operation being shut down by the Chinese government. If they become aware of Bitcoin they would likely see it as an obvious weakness to attack. If ASICminer was shut down all at once there would definitely be big problems for Bitcoin.
I've read from a Chinese person who posted here that even though state TV mentioned Bitcoin they really are not aware of it yet. That might change as it becomes a bigger deal and more people use it.
They have a motive to maximise their profit without any resilience is the issue.
I can guarantee they have no disaster recovery site as I doubt they would have a second data centre full of ASIC's just sitting around not mining in the event the primary centre goes down.
To me this is a price they should have to pay - it is their duty to ensure they do not disrupt the network and the transaction times considering they are profiting so heavily. Not doing this is a disservice to the rest of the community.
Basically they should not be so f**king greedy - they are behaving in the exact manner bitcoins were meant to stop. I find it amazing how tolerant everyone is of this behaviour.
Tell me how I'm supposed to do any transaction in person if we have to wait 2 hours for confirmations?
Entire consumer economies function based on a payment method (charge card) which has confirmation times measured in weeks or months and yet merchants still somehow find a way to make it work..Weeks or months?? We're in the 21st century now, we don't use mechanical Visa machines with carbon paper anymore...
While ASICminer certainly has a large chunk of the network they do have a profit motive to maintain their hashing power or sell that equipment. That generally will keep their contribution to the network fairly constant.
I think the biggest worry when it comes to ASICminer and centralization is the threat of their operation being shut down by the Chinese government. If they become aware of Bitcoin they would likely see it as an obvious weakness to attack. If ASICminer was shut down all at once there would definitely be big problems for Bitcoin.
I've read from a Chinese person who posted here that even though state TV mentioned Bitcoin they really are not aware of it yet. That might change as it becomes a bigger deal and more people use it.
I think the biggest worry when it comes to ASICminer and centralization is the threat of their operation being shut down by the Chinese government. If they become aware of Bitcoin they would likely see it as an obvious weakness to attack. If ASICminer was shut down all at once there would definitely be big problems for Bitcoin.
I've read from a Chinese person who posted here that even though state TV mentioned Bitcoin they really are not aware of it yet. That might change as it becomes a bigger deal and more people use it.
Tell me how I'm supposed to do any transaction in person if we have to wait 2 hours for confirmations? They'll have to start putting movie theaters on every corner to help pass the time. And if you have to pay for breakfast and buy gas on your way to work, you won't get there until it's lunchtime.
I don't think bitcoin is the best solution for every transaction scenario. Just like I don't think Linux is the best operating system for every computing scenario.
With respect to paying for things in person, for small value items there's a certain amount of trust. You trust that the person isn't going to reverse the transaction and if they do, you either eat the cost (happens a lot in business now) or you file a police report.
For things like buying gas, I expect a layer between bitcoin and the gas pump if that ever takes off. As in once a week, I pay coins to my gas card and once they are credited, I can use the gas card at the gas pump.
Infrastructure will be built on top of bitcoins to deal with a lot of that, very profitable infrastructure.
Tell me how I'm supposed to do any transaction in person if we have to wait 2 hours for confirmations?
Entire consumer economies function based on a payment method (charge card) which has confirmation times measured in weeks or months and yet merchants still somehow find a way to make it work.. It takes days for a wire transfer or a check to clear with massive fees 
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
Wire transfers are almost instant now - and cheques are being phased out.
You need quick confirmation times otherwise you will never be able to purchase items in shops - if someone is trying to pay at the checkout and they have to wait a few hours before they can take their goods - it is not going to work
There are green addresses that can alleviate some of that, though I personally don't care if bitcoin ever makes it into the local walk-in market. I just want to use it in the digital world.
You might not personally care - but for Bitcoin to be a success issues like this need to be resolved.
Your response sums up quite nicely how most of the bitcoin community behaves. I am ok Jack but screw the rest of you.
The more time I spend on this forum the greater my concerns are about the long term viability of this project.
There may as well never have been a whitepaper because so few people understand why Bitcoins were created.
I don't think so, I don't think bitcoin needs instant transactions to be successful.
And there are green addresses that allow that for those who do really need it so the problem is just ignorance of those who need it but don't know about green addresses.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Green_address
Tell me how I'm supposed to do any transaction in person if we have to wait 2 hours for confirmations? They'll have to start putting movie theaters on every corner to help pass the time. And if you have to pay for breakfast and buy gas on your way to work, you won't get there until it's lunchtime.
If half of the network goes down, it would take 4 weeks to adjust the rate. But on the other hand bfl and avalon has started shipping more of the pre ordered units so it could still compensate to some extent. If we successfully touch the next difficulty change whether higher or lower, it is a new life to start with. so i guess i m not that much bothered if one or few mining farms goes offline - more over this will be an incentive for new ones to take birth
It takes days for a wire transfer or a check to clear with massive fees
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
Wire transfers are almost instant now - and cheques are being phased out.
You need quick confirmation times otherwise you will never be able to purchase items in shops - if someone is trying to pay at the checkout and they have to wait a few hours before they can take their goods - it is not going to work
There are green addresses that can alleviate some of that, though I personally don't care if bitcoin ever makes it into the local walk-in market. I just want to use it in the digital world.
You might not personally care - but for Bitcoin to be a success issues like this need to be resolved.
Your response sums up quite nicely how most of the bitcoin community behaves. I am ok Jack but screw the rest of you.
The more time I spend on this forum the greater my concerns are about the long term viability of this project.
There may as well never have been a whitepaper because so few people understand why Bitcoins were created.
I don't think so, I don't think bitcoin needs instant transactions to be successful.
And there are green addresses that allow that for those who do really need it so the problem is just ignorance of those who need it but don't know about green addresses.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Green_address
This thread is full of uneducated people. 
I don't understand when they developed it why they did not make the difficulty fixed and vary the reward to maintain the steady creation of coins. This way you can mine solo.
Nice idea. The problem is that then the block creation rate would increase out of control, you'd have way too much orphaning and block chain bloat. Take a closer look at Liquidcoin experiment.
And to the OP, there are a couple solutions. One, is that miners have a bit more control over which pools they mine for than say, citizenry can decide which country to live in. If a pool does get out of control and start messing with fee structures and TX insertion, people can move without totally abandoning their life. Two, is that centralized massive pools still won't be able to keep the money supply hidden and create new coins like the central banks have done. That will be for the next payment layer on top of bitcoin
Thank you for explaining the difficulty / coin value issue - it is like trying to get blood out of a stone round here for informative information
Lol, I hear you there. Extensive filtering, skimming skills required around here after the huge increase in posts over the last 6 months. Unfortunately a lot of the really knowledgeable posters are harder to find these days, which is why you have to settle for my answer
Can anyone talk about the feasibility of creating a "Pool" whos sole purpose is to equally distribute its hashing power among existing actual pools? This could be just some sort of accounting method where you create an account, even perhaps choose a list of requested pools, then receive payments based on your contribution. The "middle" pool structure could then be responsible for automatically adjusting if/when one or more of the actual pools "go down".
I feel that this could *HELP* resolve some of the panic mode responses to pool issues. Not sure if it would actually help bitcoin in the long run.
Thoughts?
I feel that this could *HELP* resolve some of the panic mode responses to pool issues. Not sure if it would actually help bitcoin in the long run.
Thoughts?
That is a nice idea - but the pool responsible for distributing the hashing would then be the point of centralisation.
Someone else mentioned the P2P pool - I read the link but I will be honest it made little sense.
Can anyone talk about the feasibility of creating a "Pool" whos sole purpose is to equally distribute its hashing power among existing actual pools? This could be just some sort of accounting method where you create an account, even perhaps choose a list of requested pools, then receive payments based on your contribution. The "middle" pool structure could then be responsible for automatically adjusting if/when one or more of the actual pools "go down".
I feel that this could *HELP* resolve some of the panic mode responses to pool issues. Not sure if it would actually help bitcoin in the long run.
Thoughts?
I feel that this could *HELP* resolve some of the panic mode responses to pool issues. Not sure if it would actually help bitcoin in the long run.
Thoughts?
Everyone who can should run a USB ASIC miner (or more) that would help a little with decentralising. It's a shame they're priced a bit high though.
Just because it's an ASIC doesn't mean it's more efficient than a GPU. Those will have to be a lot cheaper before they really make any difference.
Agreed, but it does open it up mining to a wider group of people with, e.g. a notebook, or a MAC, etc. that aren't running GPUs.
I know it's not brilliant, but it's a step in the right direction. And I see a new pool being setup which is also needed - diversity in equipment and pools.
I'd love to get a 28nm ASIC setup but realistically can't expect a large percentage of users to buy these. So the centralization looks set to continue...
And that is the problem man - nothing will stop centralisation at this rate. When the difficulty reaches 1 billion there will only be a few pools with enough hashing power to solve anything.
It will be so far out of reach of the ordinary man they might as well be a central bank
It takes days for a wire transfer or a check to clear with massive fees
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
Wire transfers are almost instant now - and cheques are being phased out.
You need quick confirmation times otherwise you will never be able to purchase items in shops - if someone is trying to pay at the checkout and they have to wait a few hours before they can take their goods - it is not going to work
There are green addresses that can alleviate some of that, though I personally don't care if bitcoin ever makes it into the local walk-in market. I just want to use it in the digital world.
You might not personally care - but for Bitcoin to be a success issues like this need to be resolved.
Your response sums up quite nicely how most of the bitcoin community behaves. I am ok Jack but screw the rest of you.
The more time I spend on this forum the greater my concerns are about the long term viability of this project.
There may as well never have been a whitepaper because so few people understand why Bitcoins were created.
It takes days for a wire transfer or a check to clear with massive fees
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
Wire transfers are almost instant now - and cheques are being phased out.
You need quick confirmation times otherwise you will never be able to purchase items in shops - if someone is trying to pay at the checkout and they have to wait a few hours before they can take their goods - it is not going to work
There are green addresses that can alleviate some of that, though I personally don't care if bitcoin ever makes it into the local walk-in market. I just want to use it in the digital world.
It takes days for a wire transfer or a check to clear with massive fees
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
Wire transfers are almost instant now - and cheques are being phased out.
You need quick confirmation times otherwise you will never be able to purchase items in shops - if someone is trying to pay at the checkout and they have to wait a few hours before they can take their goods - it is not going to work
what about mining insurance company?
you have X mining capacity, and a company buys all of your capacity in return they pay you a steady rate of bitcoin minus some fees.
that would allow solo mining right?
you have X mining capacity, and a company buys all of your capacity in return they pay you a steady rate of bitcoin minus some fees.
that would allow solo mining right?
It takes days for a wire transfer or a check to clear with massive fees
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.
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