Early speculator's reward antidote - page 2.

mewantsbitcoins

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Quote from: ?? on ??

Quote from: stic.man on June 04, 2011, 08:05:55 AM

in my opinion this system can yoyo from near zero to where it is now multiple times and it would still be a solid long-term investment if it becomes an accepted means of exchange. It's not going anywhere, it just needs to be utilized. The system will be resilient, resiliency has been built-in.

edit: Of course this is assuming this is the client that catches on

I don't think the system will be as resilient as you think when no one can convert BTC to cash.

If enough people are in possession of BTCs, they will just start trading in BTC even if exchanges go down

stic.man

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why wouldn't you be able to convert it into cash? Better yet why would you?

stic.man

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in my opinion this system can yoyo from near zero to where it is now multiple times and it would still be a solid long-term investment if it becomes an accepted means of exchange. It's not going anywhere, it just needs to be utilized. The system will be resilient, resiliency has been built-in.

edit: Of course this is assuming this is the client that catches on

sortedmush

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You lost me at

Quote from: casascius on May 30, 2011, 09:51:25 PM

problem of the early speculators profiting disproportionately

unclescrooge

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Quote from: casascius on May 30, 2011, 09:51:25 PM

This is how I would solve the problem of the early speculators profiting disproportionately at the expense of newer comers.

How is this a problem? Early speculators are those who take the more risks. Big profit is their justified reward

*if only i bought btc when they were worth 1 usd*

stic.man

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it does no good to sell off all your coins when the market is only so deep and at the end you'd be giving away coins for free eventually. Right now if that guy with 370,000 coins sold he would only be able to sell 9500 of them for about 185,000 bucks (not including dark pool orders that may exist)

the best thing for everyone including early adopters is to slowly sell their coins, maybe a few hundred at a time, so that more people can get involved while at the same time allowing for maximum "value" to be obtained.

Then again as has been mentioned before a lot of early adopters are involved with this project to see it come to fruition as a currency. There is not a whole lot in it for them to "crash" the system. Then again if they did sell off everything and prices plummeted back to near nothing I am sure there are plenty of people with offers on mtgox for like 10,000 coins at 10 cents per just waiting to get back into it/reinvest

BitterTea

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Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on June 01, 2011, 10:46:28 PM

Gavins' time is a deflationary asset?!

Can we trade it somewhere?

Announcing a new block chain: GavinCoin, now available to trade on MtGavinGox!

marcus_of_augustus

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Eadem mutata resurgo

Quote from: casascius on June 01, 2011, 01:23:12 PM

Quote from: BitterTea on June 01, 2011, 09:29:59 AM

If it's so fucking easy to fix, why don't you do it? Alternatively, you could pay Gavin to quit his job and develop the client full time. I mean, you've got all that money sitting around that you didn't actually earn, you owe it to the community to give back.

Somehow I suspect Gavin has more BTC than me and is unlikely to need my contribution. I am willing to bet his most limited resource is time.

Gavins' time is a deflationary asset?!

Can we trade it somewhere?

kjj

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Quote from: ene on June 01, 2011, 08:35:52 AM

Quote from: kjj on June 01, 2011, 07:21:19 AM

Ignore him.

Dollar bills have dates and serial numbers on them. In theory some kook could start a movement to reject old bills.

Dollars are legal tender, which means if you are already indebted to somebody, they have to accept the dollars at at least face value, although they can accept older notes at above face value if they really want to. Roll Eyes

(And it's the same for other currencies in other countries)

Exactly. They could offer a premium. No difference.

casascius

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The Casascius 1oz 10BTC Silver Round (w/ Gold B)

Quote from: BitterTea on June 01, 2011, 09:29:59 AM

If it's so fucking easy to fix, why don't you do it? Alternatively, you could pay Gavin to quit his job and develop the client full time. I mean, you've got all that money sitting around that you didn't actually earn, you owe it to the community to give back.

Somehow I suspect Gavin has more BTC than me and is unlikely to need my contribution. I am willing to bet his most limited resource is time.

Jaime Frontero

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Quote from: Steve on June 01, 2011, 09:38:17 AM

Btw, has anyone stopped to consider that those early adopters might need a substantial amount of wealth to be successful in lobbying the politicians to prevent bitcoin from being banned and chased into the shadows for years to come?

yes.

that was gates' mistake, wasn't it?

anisoptera

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If someone with an "agenda" is fixing bugs in the public client, their fixes will be inspected. If their "fixes" also include major changes to how Bitcoin or the client function, then those fixes will either be rejected ("Break this into individual patches") or put to the community for a consensus.

It isn't like developers are wizards who can magically subvert software in which their code is used.

Steve

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Btw, has anyone stopped to consider that those early adopters might need a substantial amount of wealth to be successful in lobbying the politicians to prevent bitcoin from being banned and chased into the shadows for years to come?

BitterTea

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Quote from: casascius on June 01, 2011, 09:20:20 AM

If you want to look at this as an attack or a vulnerability, the real attack vector (if it can be called that) is how non intuitive, user unfriendly, and buggy the client is and how it is being improved so incrementally slowly. I have had to redownload the block chain a dozen times because there are so many ways for the database files to lose sync with the wallet it is outrageous. I certainly don't want to poo on the whole cryptocurrency concept, which I believe is truly novel, but the app is proof-of-concept quality at best. Many serious problems exist (scalability an elephant size one) that haven't even begun to be addressed.

The fact is, the first person to show up with a vastly improved client gets a ripe opportunity to dictate how it is going to work, especially if it remains backward compatible with the classic ruleset and becomes a worthy upgrade even for those with no interest in the changed rules.

If you want to do something about it, work on the UI and fix the bugs before someone with an agenda does it for you.

Works fine for me, but there are other clients in the works as well.

If it's so fucking easy to fix, why don't you do it? Alternatively, you could pay Gavin to quit his job and develop the client full time. I mean, you've got all that money sitting around that you didn't actually earn, you owe it to the community to give back.

LOL @ the "someone with an agenda fixing bugs". It's open source software. PLEASE make a better client "with an agenda". As long as I or someone I trust can audit the code, nothing will make me happier.

casascius

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The Casascius 1oz 10BTC Silver Round (w/ Gold B)

If you want to look at this as an attack or a vulnerability, the real attack vector (if it can be called that) is how non intuitive, user unfriendly, and buggy the client is and how it is being improved so incrementally slowly. I have had to redownload the block chain a dozen times because there are so many ways for the database files to lose sync with the wallet it is outrageous. I certainly don't want to poo on the whole cryptocurrency concept, which I believe is truly novel, but the app is proof-of-concept quality at best. Many serious problems exist (scalability an elephant size one) that haven't even begun to be addressed.

The fact is, the first person to show up with a vastly improved client gets a ripe opportunity to dictate how it is going to work, especially if it remains backward compatible with the classic ruleset/blockchain and becomes a worthy upgrade even for those with no interest in the changed rules.

If you want to do something about it, work on the UI and fix the bugs before someone with an agenda does it for you.

ene

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Quote from: kjj on June 01, 2011, 07:21:19 AM

Ignore him.

Dollar bills have dates and serial numbers on them. In theory some kook could start a movement to reject old bills.

Dollars are legal tender, which means if you are already indebted to somebody, they have to accept the dollars at at least face value, although they can accept older notes at above face value if they really want to. Roll Eyes

(And it's the same for other currencies in other countries)

BitterTea

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Activity: 294

Merit: 252

It's not an attack.

If someone wants to value certain coins over others, that's their choice.

Gold in raw form is not widely used as currency, and you could discriminate based on a shape instead of minting date or design.

It really doesn't even matter at all. As Cusipzzz said, if this became widespread, coin mixing services could become more widely used.

marcus_of_augustus

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Eadem mutata resurgo

Gold is highly fungible, down to the atom. Bitcoin is not, neither are cash notes.

What if there is a way to make digital cash have higher fungiblilty from the outset? The "early coin devalue" attack would not have even been proposed, and others thwarted too. Higher quality money has higher fungibility.

Might be worth considering, but I agree there are bigger problems right now ... like the chaotic state of the mining network.

Cusipzzz

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Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on June 01, 2011, 07:03:56 AM

casascius's proposition is exploiting is what is, in my opinion, a weakness in bitcoin as a currency, that they are not truly fungible. (And it is related to the fact that they haven't got true anonymity either.)

His proposal is to selectively value bitcoins generated from different difficulty eras at different rates for conversion to the new system. If bitcoins were truly fungible each would be indistinguishable from the other and this process would not be possible. There would be no question about devaluing the early adopters gold because gold would just be gold, wherever and whenever it was found. After it is all melted down in a big pot there is no new gold and old gold.

As a currency, quasi-fungibility is a weakness and he is proposing an exploit, what are we going to do about it?

Coin mixing services will be more popular if anyone other than crazy people start taking this 'treat some coins differently that others' seriously.

It's not a weakness as it's a ridiculous idea.

kjj

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Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on June 01, 2011, 07:03:56 AM

casascius's proposition is exploiting is what is, in my opinion, a weakness in bitcoin as a currency, that they are not truly fungible. (And it is related to the fact that they haven't got true anonymity either.)

His proposal is to selectively value bitcoins generated from different difficulty eras at different rates for conversion to the new system. If bitcoins were truly fungible each would be indistinguishable from the other and this process would not be possible. There would be no question about devaluing the early adopters gold because gold would just be gold, wherever and whenever it was found. After it is all melted down in a big pot there is no new gold and old gold.

As a currency, quasi-fungibility is a weakness and he is proposing an exploit, what are we going to do about it?

Ignore him.

Dollar bills have dates and serial numbers on them. In theory some kook could start a movement to reject old bills.

Topic: Early speculator's reward antidote - page 2. (Read 22161 times)