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Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 556. (Read 2032291 times)

donator
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1014
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
January 13, 2015, 05:25:39 AM

Firstly, Adam cast some pearls that I'm afraid went over most people's heads which is a shame.  He is not talking about exactly what I want to mention here, but the same principles apply:

...
Its a little risky to play steganography arms race though because they could bypass that (at the limit steganography wins)  by replacing
...

Right. So Bitcoin adapts.

So, here's the deal:

Something can act as a reserve if it is rock solid in all circumstances.  Gold is a classic example.

Try buying something from Amazon with a gold bar.

If in the future things are as they are now from a regulatory point of view, there are all kinds of instruments which could serve my purposes.  I've long said that Bitcoin is a fun little toy in today's world and hardly anything more.  In a world where it is really needed there is nearly no chance that it won't be viciously attacked by those who are threatened.
ZOMG! ZOMBIE TERRORISTS!

The attacks possible (and likely in my opinion) against Bitcoin will drastically shrink the available bandwidth and the reliability the network.  I don't give two shits what the capacity of todays or tomorrows 'consumer grade' bandwidth may be.  It's an irrelevance in a situation where it matters.  And even in situations where it does not (mainstream monetary systems are working fine) there is a high likelihood that the global internet will become more restrictive and less free for other reasons.

Because all the bandwidthtonium gets used up. OK, Mr. 640K.


Bitcoin really only has value to me if I can have some confidence that it will be supportable under vigorous attacks.

It has so far.

 I suspect there are many others who feel similarly and enough to result in some pretty high valuations.  

Argumentum ad populum

If Bitcoin can succeed here then that success will be (potentially) available to solutions which use Bitcoin as a backing.
You have to trust someone to do the backing and thus lose security.

Sidechains would be a good example, and by their nature they are quickly adaptable and a whack-a-mole headache to attackers.

VAPORWARE

It is this potential to possibly succeed which give Bitcoin it's value.  Fortunately for Bitcoin, most of the alts are not really vying for this market-space since the very thought of a hostile global internet is widely considered to be some sort of crazed conspiricy theory...and it's no fun to restrict ones code anyway.

They are listed on trading markets. They are trying very hard to find market space.

As I've mentioned ad-nauseam recently
You do have a habit of repeating unsubstantiated or disproven claims.

it does not matter how big or small the transaction rate, fees, or coinbase.  Bitcoin is economically doomed relying on the normally assumed rewards.  This because the hashing power grows at a rate proportional to the reward so it relatively quickly becomes unprofitable no matter what the reward.  
It's called competition. Some people are better at things than others. Did you go to one of those private schools that gives everyone 'A's?

Hashing gear is durable however, so it does not shrink.  Maybe it can find something else to do or maybe not.

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out what to do with my Betamax.

Sidechains could help resolve this economic dilemma because they must support Bitcoin at a loss if need be...they cannot afford to let native Bitcoin be unhealthy.


UNICORNS!

The above para means that nothing good economically can be achieved by increasing the block size.  
You failed to even make a point, let alone a good argument.

The only thing doing so could achieve would be to make the solution more bloated and thus more easy to attack.  To add insult to injury, the piss-ant 10x or 20x size increases would chase out another big tranche of enthusiast class infrastructure providers and not come close to supporting even a mid-sized exchange economy anyway.  At least by my seat-of-the-pants estimation.
It would give Bitcoin half the capacity of PayPal without the fees and restrictions. Not a bad start.

---

Just a brief word about Bitcoin's competitiveness as an 'exchange currency'.  It sucks.  The system is a marvel of inefficiency because it was architecture to be resistant to some aspect of the kind of nightmare attack scenarios that I allude to.  Just look at the real cost of providing a transaction...it's laughably high.  Also there is no reason to suspect that mainstream systems are ever going to become more secure to the Joe Sixpack class user so he'll always be struggling with secret keys.  And, of course, there is the block latency which requires various shortcuts, workarounds, and throwing out of some of the security features that Bitcoin crows about in the first place.  Bitcoin is also just (barely) subversive enough to create all kinds of legal-ish and regulatory-ish hassles that make it a real bitch to use, and I don't see that changing.  If it does change then Bitcoin loses almost any reason to be used.  The list goes on.


And yet you pump an imaginary vaporware solution.
hero member
Activity: 544
Merit: 500
January 13, 2015, 04:46:35 AM
Breaking news.

Quote
UK consumer price inflation fell sharply to 0.5% in December, down from 1% in November, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said.

December's rate is the joint lowest on record, easing pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates.

Many economists had forecast a rate of about 0.7% because of the slide in global oil prices.


deflation everywhere
legendary
Activity: 4760
Merit: 1283
January 13, 2015, 03:33:12 AM

Bitcoin has clearly failed in an 'exchange' role as evidenced by still not needing to fiddle with the 7 tps transaction rate (1MB block size) and not being on a trajectory to need to do so any time soon.  The reason for this is abundantly clear and I've been saying so for years:  Bitcoin is simply not competitive in this role.
...

I don't fully get where you're coming from on this one. Does it all boil down to your assertion that blocksize increase would have to outrun Nielsen's law in order to sustain significant transaction throughput?

Forgive me for neglecting to answer your other questions, but I like to try to keep things tight, and this is important.

Firstly, Adam cast some pearls that I'm afraid went over most people's heads which is a shame.  He is not talking about exactly what I want to mention here, but the same principles apply:

...
Its a little risky to play steganography arms race though because they could bypass that (at the limit steganography wins)  by replacing
...

So, here's the deal:

Something can act as a reserve if it is rock solid in all circumstances.  Gold is a classic example.

If in the future things are as they are now from a regulatory point of view, there are all kinds of instruments which could serve my purposes.  I've long said that Bitcoin is a fun little toy in today's world and hardly anything more.  In a world where it is really needed there is nearly no chance that it won't be viciously attacked by those who are threatened.

The attacks possible (and likely in my opinion) against Bitcoin will drastically shrink the available bandwidth and the reliability the network.  I don't give two shits what the capacity of todays or tomorrows 'consumer grade' bandwidth may be.  It's an irrelevance in a situation where it matters.  And even in situations where it does not (mainstream monetary systems are working fine) there is a high likelihood that the global internet will become more restrictive and less free for other reasons.

Bitcoin really only has value to me if I can have some confidence that it will be supportable under vigorous attacks.  I suspect there are many others who feel similarly and enough to result in some pretty high valuations.  If Bitcoin can succeed here then that success will be (potentially) available to solutions which use Bitcoin as a backing.  Sidechains would be a good example, and by their nature they are quickly adaptable and a whack-a-mole headache to attackers.

It is this potential to possibly succeed which give Bitcoin it's value.  Fortunately for Bitcoin, most of the alts are not really vying for this market-space since the very thought of a hostile global internet is widely considered to be some sort of crazed conspiricy theory...and it's no fun to restrict ones code anyway.

As I've mentioned ad-nauseam recently it does not matter how big or small the transaction rate, fees, or coinbase.  Bitcoin is economically doomed relying on the normally assumed rewards.  This because the hashing power grows at a rate proportional to the reward so it relatively quickly becomes unprofitable no matter what the reward.  Hashing gear is durable however, so it does not shrink.  Maybe it can find something else to do or maybe not.  Sidechains could help resolve this economic dilemma because they must support Bitcoin at a loss if need be...they cannot afford to let native Bitcoin be unhealthy.

The above para means that nothing good economically can be achieved by increasing the block size.  The only thing doing so could achieve would be to make the solution more bloated and thus more easy to attack.  To add insult to injury, the piss-ant 10x or 20x size increases would chase out another big tranche of enthusiast class infrastructure providers and not come close to supporting even a mid-sized exchange economy anyway.  At least by my seat-of-the-pants estimation.

---

Just a brief word about Bitcoin's competitiveness as an 'exchange currency'.  It sucks.  The system is a marvel of inefficiency because it was architecture to be resistant to some aspect of the kind of nightmare attack scenarios that I allude to.  Just look at the real cost of providing a transaction...it's laughably high.  Also there is no reason to suspect that mainstream systems are ever going to become more secure to the Joe Sixpack class user so he'll always be struggling with secret keys.  And, of course, there is the block latency which requires various shortcuts, workarounds, and throwing out of some of the security features that Bitcoin crows about in the first place.  Bitcoin is also just (barely) subversive enough to create all kinds of legal-ish and regulatory-ish hassles that make it a real bitch to use, and I don't see that changing.  If it does change then Bitcoin loses almost any reason to be used.  The list goes on.

legendary
Activity: 961
Merit: 1000
January 13, 2015, 02:26:06 AM
Returning to the origin of this thread... this is probably a good time to sell gold and buy btc, isn't it?
I'm calling bottom. This was a panic. The percentage increases the lower you drop.

Tonight certainly was panicked. And circumstantially, the number of bear threads is growing quickly. Bottom? I dunno, I think there is a concerted push to destroy all confidence and morale.
legendary
Activity: 961
Merit: 1000
January 13, 2015, 02:23:11 AM
Returning to the origin of this thread... this is probably a good time to sell gold and buy btc, isn't it?

1. If you believe in bitcoin mid-long term

2. Especially if your local currency has depreciated v USD (ie gold price has risen despite price drop in USD)

donator
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1014
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
January 13, 2015, 02:21:31 AM
Returning to the origin of this thread... this is probably a good time to sell gold and buy btc, isn't it?
I'm calling bottom. This was a panic. The percentage increases the lower you drop.
legendary
Activity: 1652
Merit: 1000
January 13, 2015, 02:13:57 AM
Returning to the origin of this thread... this is probably a good time to sell gold and buy btc, isn't it?
legendary
Activity: 4760
Merit: 1283
January 13, 2015, 02:05:26 AM
...
the problem here is that when the price doesn't conform to ppl's expectations, low level thinkers like tvbcof & even high level thinkers like Adam ...

Say, I was just thinking, wasn't it about a year ago I was moving some of my position out of Bitcoin and into USD and gold if I could figure out an expedient and cheap way to do it and telling everyone about my plans?

Why don't you be a sport, cyph, and tell everyone here how my ass tastes?


Link please.

The first I found was this, but there are probably more:

  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3727919

Would you like to tell the boys and girls how my ass tastes?

People who listened to me (and cypherdoc) in the last half of 2011 were happy for it.  People who listened to me a year ago, same;  Cypherdip not so much.  As I say, he's a broken clock that is right by chance sometimes.  The big difference between me and cypherdoc is that I know full well how much luck is associated with my good calls.  A lot.  Cyph gives his brilliance the credit for all his calls that happened to work out and totally banishes those which didn't to his own personal memory hole.  Unfortunately for him not everyone does so so probably half of the traffic on 'his' thread here are people who get a kick out of seeing his bozo-the-clown act.

legendary
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1004
January 12, 2015, 09:39:28 PM

Bitcoin has clearly failed in an 'exchange' role as evidenced by still not needing to fiddle with the 7 tps transaction rate (1MB block size) and not being on a trajectory to need to do so any time soon.  The reason for this is abundantly clear and I've been saying so for years:  Bitcoin is simply not competitive in this role.
...


I don't fully get where you're coming from on this one. Does it all boil down to your assertion that blocksize increase would have to outrun Nielsen's law in order to sustain significant transaction throughput?



Lemme just follow up on that briefly for the benefit of those here who are not so mentally adroit (e.g., cypherdoc, justusranvier, etc.)

I wrote that after reading about the BitPay layoffs.  This is an indicator that it's starting to dawn on the VC types that they've been shucked by us geeks (and the last half year of charts indicates something similar.)  It's probably not monetary loss which stings as much as being ridiculed by their peers.

Anyway, I read this as a strong alignment of the tea leaves showing that we may be in for more hard times for a while. 


It's really not uncommon for startups for lay people off. Up to half of staff is well within normalcy....not that it's good, of course, but I wouldn't read too much into letting 9 ppl out of 60 go (aside from maybe they need to hire slower/smarter).

That said, I do think a shakeout in the VC-funded side of the ecosystem is inevitable. Something like 500+ companies were founded, most probably seed/angel stage, and most are not going to get an A round. While it's going to be annoying from a headlines perspective, it's a fairly natural stage in the evolution of a hot industry, and in this case, is most certainly necessary to rebalance expectations, especially in terms of the timeframe across which mass adoption can happen.

At least Marc A. is on-point with the latter; specifically his quote that things like ApplePay will make the most fin-tech impact over the next 2-3 years, but Bitcoin will make the most impact over the next 20 years.



The low hanging fruit has been plucked. It was fun, but now it's time to knuckle down and let Bitcoin build on it's true strength as a solid reserve currency.  I just hope it's still possible.  If it is it will be a monster pay-day for us hodlers.  If it's not, oh well...it was a fun ride.



Whether reserve currency only forever or reserve with the subsequent addition of exchange, it's necessary to re-focus on the investment side for a while. Investors and speculators need to drive market-cap and hodling so that entrepreneurs have something to work with. The folks thinking that this was going to be like Facebook; ie, pegged exponential for 5 or 6 years until >1B users were doomed to be disappointed. It takes a lot more depth to reform humanity's ideas of finance and money than it does to build a gossip-sharing platform with a high virality coefficient.

legendary
Activity: 2492
Merit: 1491
LEALANA Bitcoin Grim Reaper
January 12, 2015, 09:23:17 PM
...
the problem here is that when the price doesn't conform to ppl's expectations, low level thinkers like tvbcof & even high level thinkers like Adam ...

Say, I was just thinking, wasn't it about a year ago I was moving some of my position out of Bitcoin and into USD and gold if I could figure out an expedient and cheap way to do it and telling everyone about my plans?

Why don't you be a sport, cyph, and tell everyone here how my ass tastes?



Link please.
legendary
Activity: 4760
Merit: 1283
January 12, 2015, 09:22:33 PM
Just saw this RT'd on Twitter.

Bryce Weiner ‏@BryceWeiner  Jan 11
It hasn't been announced yet, but it's pretty clear that @Blockstream is going to take over core development from the @BTCFoundation


Considering Blockstream consist of the most trusted and skilled of the core developers I already considered that to be basically the case, and would even if the Bitcoin Foundation were not a septic pit.  Not sure that I would consider any particular organization to be 'over' core development per se, but the since the core developers agragate there, if they want to carve out some space on the domain it would be my go to place for information.  Until and unless they failed and lost my trust at least.

legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1116
January 12, 2015, 09:21:17 PM
Bitcoin $250.

Over 1 year bear market.

I did not expect this but I did expect a strong correction.

Permabulls like cypherdoc and Justus Ranvier, you suck.

 Sad
newbie
Activity: 37
Merit: 0
January 12, 2015, 09:19:44 PM
Bitcoin $250.

Over 1 year bear market.

I did not expect this but I did expect a strong correction.

Permabulls like cypherdoc and Justus Ranvier, you suck.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
January 12, 2015, 09:07:58 PM
Just saw this RT'd on Twitter.

Bryce Weiner ‏@BryceWeiner  Jan 11
It hasn't been announced yet, but it's pretty clear that @Blockstream is going to take over core development from the @BTCFoundation



Yeah, i saw that bullshit earlier. 
legendary
Activity: 961
Merit: 1000
January 12, 2015, 09:03:10 PM
Just saw this RT'd on Twitter.

Bryce Weiner ‏@BryceWeiner  Jan 11
It hasn't been announced yet, but it's pretty clear that @Blockstream is going to take over core development from the @BTCFoundation

legendary
Activity: 4760
Merit: 1283
January 12, 2015, 07:36:01 PM

So it's confirmed,  your just crazy (or I am).  I have only ever lost coins when I was playing around with multiple wallets and trying to learn a little bash scripting when I should have been using the testnet. It's crazy to think about testing with a wallet with a few coins in it a few years ago when it was only 10 USD  total.  When I realized I had copied over the wallet file and had no backup I thought well that was a good lesson glad I didn't have more coins in that wallet.


Way to insecure for us purists.

  I know not what path others may choose, but for me, give me bourne shell or give me death.*

(*) ok, ok.  Almquist shell.

legendary
Activity: 1372
Merit: 1000
January 12, 2015, 07:28:29 PM
http://www.druva.com/blog/next-decade-storage/

Looks like storage isn't likely the biggest problem to overcome, seems there is room for innovation.

Quote from:  from the link above
Robin Harris, a.k.a. StorageMojo, peers into his crystal ball to predict what storage will be like in 2025. And, he says, the next 10 years will be the most exciting and explosive in the history of data storage.
staff
Activity: 4326
Merit: 8951
January 12, 2015, 07:10:56 PM
I am completely shocked that you of all people are making this claim gmaxwell. Reusing a K value is against the DSA signing algorithm's specifications. Reusing a K value is an incompetent implementation by definition. There have been multiple instances where BTC were lost because bitcoin client software reused the same K value for different signatures on the same address. If you do so you're guaranteed to find that address emptied fairly quickly, based on past instances it seems there there network monitors actively watching for this exact situation.
Maybe when you find yourself shocked you should take that as a signal that perhaps you misunderstood and should read again.

"is an incompetent implementation by definition" Exactly. And if you are using an incompetent implementation you are in extreme peril no matter how many layers of cargo-cult buzzword security theatre it's author has dressed it up in.

Insecure nonce generation isn't something that happens by chance-- not for the size of the numbers involved here, it is not some random fault, not some cosmic ray event. (Okay, sure, anything can happen, but that isn't whats has actually happened).  The faults you're talking about are real but they are exclusively the result of dangerously incompetent software which would not (and in some cases did not) pass even the most straight forward review, if it were ever reviewed at all.  In most (though not quite all) cases _same_ software would still be insecure, even using derandomized DSA, because it also use the same faulty procedures to generate the private keys; which have just as strong of a requirement for randomness but have no way around it.

AFAIK, I was the first or at least one of the first persons to suggest that implementations in this space probably ought to be using derandomization, e.g. http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/31306213/ (and many times previously on IRC and directly to implementers). I went and nagged several of the early hardware wallet vendors to go change their approach, etc.

Quote
because bitcoin client software
What you should say is dangerous, incompetent software, which likely would have (or actually did) lost the users funds in several different other ways as well.

The question I was responding to, if you can find the context in this huge thread, was on the relative priority of sidechannel resistance and derandomization in Bitcoin Core. The person I was responding to thought sidechannel attack resistance was unimportant and that randomization was important (or at least more important). I responded that relatively speaking I consider sidechannel resistance more important there: the signature randomness story isn't not a disaster in Bitcoin core, and if it were the private key generation would be just as broken or worse. This isn't the same for all applications, in some applications it matters more than others. And derandomization is prudent just out of principle, so we use it for Bitcoin Core... but comparatively speaking, given the above considerations of the two I don't consider it the more important one.
legendary
Activity: 4760
Merit: 1283
January 12, 2015, 06:42:03 PM
...
the problem here is that when the price doesn't conform to ppl's expectations, low level thinkers like tvbcof & even high level thinkers like Adam ...

Say, I was just thinking, wasn't it about a year ago I was moving some of my position out of Bitcoin and into USD and gold if I could figure out an expedient and cheap way to do it and telling everyone about my plans?

Why don't you be a sport, cyph, and tell everyone here how my ass tastes?

jr. member
Activity: 34
Merit: 1
January 12, 2015, 06:33:43 PM
...
address reused endless 5 times ... and this address holds "Final Balance 125,056.91900661" BTC !!!

Mother of God!  Any address controlling more than 100 BTC keeps me up at night.  And I only got lazy and bumped things up to that value because BTC got into the single digit $/BTC.  It's not the crypto that bothers me as much as other more course failure modes and the desirability of distribution.

 edits - slight adjustments.


So I guess my android tablet running http://wallet.schildbach.de  with around 50 btc would give you palpitations and drive you to drink?

ofuckyeah!  My mail on an android tablet does this (which is why I don't even do real mail on Android or Windows.)



So it's confirmed,  your just crazy (or I am).  I have only ever lost coins when I was playing around with multiple wallets and trying to learn a little bash scripting when I should have been using the testnet. It's crazy to think about testing with a wallet with a few coins in it a few years ago when it was only 10 USD  total.  When I realized I had copied over the wallet file and had no backup I thought well that was a good lesson glad I didn't have more coins in that wallet.
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