Topic: Does bitcoin have an expiry date? What do you think? (Read 3429 times)

Looks like 2 more to me.  Might want to work on your counting skills.


The fee is received in the new block when it is solved.


That question doesn't make any sense.  That's a bit like asking, "Is every color a motorcycle, or how many colors does a motorcycle take?"

A hash is a digest.  It is a number that represents some information.  Transactions are identified in bitcoin with hashes, bitcoin addresses are created using hashes, and blocks are also identified with hashes.

When mining, the miner calculates a single hash of the header of the block they are working on.  If the value of that hash is lower than a target difficulty, then the block is solved and they can publish he block to the blockchain.  If the hash is not low enough, then the miner alters a piece of information in the header and tries hashing the header again.  The miner repeats this process over and over until they either find a hash with a value lower than the target difficulty, or they receive a block relayed by a peer that has a hash with a value lower than the target difficulty.  Then they create a new block with whatever transactions they want to include and start all over again.

Yes.


Absolutely.


That depends on your technical ability and the wallet you are using.  Some wallets make it very easy, others make it rather complicated.


You have that backwards.  You choose the fee that you are willing to pay.  Then the miners (or mining pools) choose whether or not they want to include your transaction.  The higher fee you pay, the more miners that will want to include your transaction, and therefore the more likely you are to have your transaction confirmed in the next block.

I am willing to spend a lot of time finding answers to questions.  I do it for free.  I expect, however, that you will do at least as much work as I do.  My sense is that you have not read the links that people have asked you to read.  I, and others, spent a long time reading so that we could understand the system.  I am willing to answer stream of consciousness questions.  I am even willing to call on the phone and give custom tutoring.  For that service, however, I also charge a custom fee.

Your choice, as I see it, is to get free help if you work diligently yourself, or pay substantially for help.

makes you wonder...

mayber 2015 or 2017
or neverend

Oh, and one more question. Is the fee you set received when a block is discovered or is received whenever a transaction is processed?
And one last question is every hash a transaction or how many hashes/kH/MH/GH does a transaction take?
Once again thanks for the info

You can set fees? Really? How can you do that?
And how can you determine wether or not you wish to pay the transaction fee that has been set by a miner?
Thanks for the info

Transaction fees are set by the miners. If miners want to charge a percentage fee instead of the flat fees they charge now, they're free to do so, though there's no reason for it: transaction fees are meant to cover the cost of mining, and each transaction costs the same amount to mine regardless of value. It simply doesn't make any sense to charge a lower fee for low-value transactions when they still cost just as much to mine. In fact, at the moment, high-value transactions may be sent for free if certain conditions are met, on the theory that a large number of low-value transactions are harder to deal with than a small number of high-value transactions, so we should try to encourage people to do the latter whenever practical. It is very likely that low-value transactions will always be more expensive (relatively speaking) than high-value transactions (Bitcoin was never meant for microtransactions).

Well this thread got off topic quickly

I know (now) that transaction fees have always been applies. What I am suggesting and defending is that those fees should increase tho a percentage of the transaction.
Otherwise, we have a very real possibility that mining will stop being profitable, no matter what kind of mining hardware you have. And if that happens, then I don't see either mining or bitcoin surviving for very long.
Another option would be to only allow miners to perform transaction (that way, if you want to use bitcoin, you have to mine), but I believe that would be a lot harder (if not impossible) to implement. That and it would also shrink the user base which is the opposite of what should be happening.

The joke is that this idea is already implemented, and always has been. That's how time travel works. A basic principle of time travel is that once an event in the past is changed, everything in the present will change as result, in the same way that events in the present change the future. Included in these changes is everyone's memories of events: people no longer remember the "original" history of event, because as far as their timeline is concerned, it never happened. Nobody here remembers a time when transaction fees weren't a normal and expected part of the mining incentive. The only record we have of the original history is your forum post, which survived because telecommunications devices behave, well, differently when it comes to time travel, for reasons which are still unclear. That's why Professor Reg could never get his telephone to work.

Yes, it looks very grim after the next 2 months or so due to the accelerating rate of difficulty increase. What I found is that in that mining calculator (which is very useful because it maps out each month's projected difficulty rate) is that you would have to increase the computing power of the mining hardware well into the multi-terahash range and beyond before any substantial mining revenue can be realized for any mining equipment purchased in and started within early 2014. It seems that even KNC units shipped in October are pretty screwed in terms of revenue, especially those shipping in late October, which would mean that October 2013 is essentially a lost month and factoring in any possible technical delays in the user setting up, November 2013 would not be an inconceivable month for late October shipped KNC units to actually start mining. Well, you can change the starting mining date in the calculator and see the results, which will show a drastically reduced profit compared to a start mining date in September 2013. I saw some mining hardware manufacturers (or was it ASIC chip manufacturers) have month based pricing which means they take into account the massive loss of mining revenue even with just a single passing month. I'm not hopeful that mining equipment could improve in computing power by 10 to 15 fold by early spring 2014, and if not, there's not enough power to even break even for all the trouble involved, unless the value of BTC suddenly doubles and holds at the $200 range or higher - not holding my breath on that one. In reality, it seems the ones that really cashed in big time with ASIC technology are those 900 buyers of Avalon batch one and two, and that hardware at about 60 MH/s is already almost too weak at the present level of difficulty being at 37M.

The amount of bitcoins increases by a decelllerating rate to almost 0 at 21 million bitcoins So no

To all the time travelling replies, I actually thought that the idea could be implemented, I thought fixes could be made to the network in case bugs were found, and I thought my suggestion, if it could be implemented, was actually a good idea.
As for quellerdrive's reply, that is indeed a very serious concern. If the calculations are correct, it seems that no hardware shipping from november onward will even be able to break even. Either the hardware's price drops steeply or we could be looking at the death of bitcoin in the very near future. Either that or the price of bitcoins has to start rising A LOT in order to make it worthwhile for people to keep mining. Even KnC's Jupiter is set to start costing more than it's making as of June 2014

I'm sure what you said is right, and indeed in reviewing past history of difficulty level, I did notice some drop of difficulty some time back (before 2013), but it really didn't drop too much. I did some simulations / calculations with this great calculator below (which by the way, currently is inserting an incorrect difficulty of about 26, and you'll have to manually type in 37 as the correct current difficulty):

http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/

Using one of the most cost effective available ASIC hardware for instance, at 400 GH/s, there is a huge difference (i.e. drop) in mining profitability for each of the months from August to November in 2013, once you punch in all the correct numbers but just varying the starting date of mining. It seems that essentially by November 2013, there is no existing announced (even if unshipped) hardware that will be available to breakeven and/or produce a substantial worthwhile mining subsidy profit. The situation looks very grim on that front. Unless I have plugged in my numbers incorrectly or missed something, any (ASIC) mining starting around early to spring 2014 will require at least a 10 to 15 fold increase in computing power / hashing speed to restore profitiability to any substantially worthwhile level (over the operation of the equipment at least for a stretch of several months). Meanwhile, it seems that there's this mad rush for everyone to get on ASIC equipment (as well as the huge back log of orders from some manufacturers yet to be shipped) and the network will continue to be flooded with them for at least the next while, keeping difficulty level high and mining revenues minimal to non-existent (after deducting operating expenses).

Time travel is like that.  Only the traveler remembers both realities.

Wow!  That was so seamless I don't even remember a time when it wasn't true!

I agree with you, but I think we should make the percentage voluntary.  Those users who want their transactions in the very next block can voluntarily pay a higher percentage.  Those who are willing to wait until later blocks can voluntarily pay a lower percentage.  I'll grab my time machine, travel back to 2008 and suggest it to Mr. Nakamoto.  I'll be right back...

Ok, I'm back, did it work?  Did he implement a system that allows users to voluntarily pay a percentage of their transaction to the miner/miners that confirm the transaction?

Considering the hashrate of ASICs being produced right now I find it difficult to believe that enough GPU and low end ASICs will be shut down in order to make an actual difference. I believe a better way to provide an incentive to mining would be to charge a small percentage of each transaction (say 1% or 0,5%) that would be credited to the miner/miners that confirmed the transaction. This could really make the network bloom and would provide an incentive for even the lowest of hasrahte miners to stay online. Someone should suggest that to Satoshi Nakamoto...

If mining difficulty gets too high to be profitable, then some miners will shut off their mining equipment. If enough miners shut their equipment off, then difficulty will drop. Eventually it will drop far enough for mining to be profitable, and miners will start turning equipment back on. An equilibrium will be reached where difficulty allows only the most efficient miners to remain profitable.

This is the intentional design to maximize the security:cost ratio.