Author

Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 561. (Read 2032291 times)

legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1116
January 10, 2015, 12:34:00 PM

A complicated analysis, too long to read, but does not seem to give due relevance to one main factor:

Unlike its Latin American neighbors,  Venezuela has little domestic production of anything but oil.  Almost everyhing, inclding food, is imported with revenue from oil exports. The socialistoid regime of Chavez and Maduro redistributed that revenue, but did not change this fact.  With oil  prices down 50% or more, no fiscal or monetary policy will avoid the crunch in their standard of living.

As happened in Greece, Italy, and Spain, the "austerity measures" that bankers (and banker magazines) want to see applied would mean diverting a larger portion of the people's wealth and revenue to bankers, to ensure that they would contunue to profit while the rest of the country gets even worse.


Let the people buy gold.
hero member
Activity: 910
Merit: 1003
January 10, 2015, 12:31:41 PM

A complicated analysis, too long to read, but does not seem to give due relevance to one main factor:

Unlike its Latin American neighbors,  Venezuela has little domestic production of anything but oil.  Almost everyhing, inclding food, is imported with revenue from oil exports. The socialistoid regime of Chavez and Maduro redistributed that revenue, but did not change this fact.  With oil  prices down 50% or more, no fiscal or monetary policy will avoid the crunch in their standard of living.

As happened in Greece, Italy, and Spain, the "austerity measures" that bankers (and banker magazines) want to see applied would mean diverting a larger portion of the people's wealth and revenue to bankers, to ensure that they would contunue to profit while the rest of the country gets even worse.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
January 10, 2015, 12:05:37 PM

good read.

it ends with the suggestion that this is not a wholly latin american story, pointing to greece.

yeah, i like how it went thru the process/stages of financial destruction.  i fail to see how Bitcoin could not help that situation esp when all the corruption is coming from the top.

btw, thx for your contributions to the IBLT discussion over on Reddit.  insightful.  feel free to share them here to help us all understand better as we go forward.
donator
Activity: 2772
Merit: 1019
January 10, 2015, 10:40:31 AM

good read.

it ends with the suggestion that this is not a wholly latin american story, pointing to greece.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1008
January 09, 2015, 04:21:38 AM

(answer to "what is constant time?")

A countermeasure against

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_attack

?

Although I can't think of a practical scenario where a typical user would ever be exposed to this, yes, the concern is side-channel attacks (e.g., a timing attack):

( ... cut a lot of helpful links, quote and explanations ... )

I think deterministic signatures are much more important than constant-time signatures (there's been a non-trivial amount of funds lost due to the repeat k-value problem but I doubt a single satoshi has ever been lost due to a genuine side-channel attack).  Someone like gmaxwell could comment better on the practical risks here…

I concur with all you said. I think that Pieter Wuille took a chance to snap in this "constant time" thing while writing libsecp256k1. What seems weird to me is that they don't mention the main advantage of replacing OpenSSL with such "custom made" signing tool: speed.

Quoting a gmaxwell's email to the bitocoin-development mailing list (related to the headers-first sync feature):

Quote from: gmaxwell
(I'm using 295k as the target here because after that point ecdsa
dominates, and then your 6+x faster libsecp256k makes more of a
difference)
(bold is mine)


about that matter, this is an interesting post on reddit by gmaxwell (aka nullc):

Quote from: nullc
On why 0.10's release notes say "we have reason to believe that libsecp256k1 is better tested and more thoroughly reviewed than the implementation in OpenSSL"
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rrxq7/on_why_010s_release_notes_say_we_have_reason_to/

to make a long story short: while working on this new libsecp256k1 Pieter Wuille and Greg Maxwell found a new OpenSSL flaw (CVE-2014-3570).

@cypher, this quote could be interesting to you:

Quote from: gmaxwell
This library is part of what Pieter and I are working on at Blockstream.
donator
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1014
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
January 09, 2015, 01:01:10 AM
Hmm. It was nice imagining that higher btc volumes would come from replacing fiat payments in real-world b2c and b2b flows. Perhaps not from a monkey swinging between palm trees:

5,000 transactions in 1 day
https://blockchain.info/address/17ZgzoQUAiCrCgSieYfGhAvToW9kn6uaLt



Apple Inches towards Bitcoin, Approves a retro-styled iOS game that tips players in Real Bitcoin
By Forexminute - Deepak Tiwari | Bitcoin | Jan 9, 2015 3:36AM GMT

There is a lot of scope for Bitcoin in gaming industry; however, this has not yet been explored. The step from Apple to approve a retro-styled iOS game that tips players in real Bitcoin, recently releasing it onto the iTunes store, is going to encourage others in the fray. A lot of game lovers have appreciated the measure from Apple.
According to the sources the game, SaruTobi, lets users swing a monkey from a vine, building up momentum before releasing him to collect power-ups and Bitcoin tokens as he frolics though the air. Developer Christian Moss told the media professionals that SaruTobi is literally Japanese for ‘Monkey Fly’, and this is pretty much the premise of the game.
He says that the user flings him across an 8-bit jungle collecting floating Bitcoin along the way. According to him he was in the process of adding typical Super Mario-style coins into the game when it occurred to him to use Bitcoin instead. He admits that he thought it would be a nice way to introduce Bitcoin to people who are not familiar with it yet.
The approval from Apple is also an indication that somewhere people at the organization think that the digital world can truly be Bitcoin’s natural environment. The iOS game has three main aims – attaining the greatest distance, collecting Bitcoin tokens to be spent on in-app items, and collecting the letters ‘SARUTOBI’ to unlock a Bitcoin ‘boost’ to spend on in-game items.
A Long Way to Go Says Christian Moss, the Developer
Developer Christian Moss says that the Bitcoin tips come from the game’s shared Bitcoin wallet, called a ‘pot’, revenue generated by the game (from in-app purchases and ads) is converted into Bitcoin and added to the pot. He informs that after the user has played the game for a certain amount of time, the game will reward the user by sending them a Bitcoin tip.
Moss is of the view that though he has come across a few concept games that use Bitcoin micro-transactions, nothing on the iOS app store he believes having a popular iOS app that incorporates Bitcoin can go a long way to helping it become mainstream. He further says that he is currently working on a new Bitcoin mining game.
He concludes and says that it is still in the early stages of development; however, the player will be able to dig, similar to Minecraft, and collect real Bitcoin."


I hope the game will become popular. This could potentially introduce bitcoin to millions of people. Perhaps, kids will adopt bitcoin and become 'native' users. I could easily see kids earning tiny amounts of bitcoin in these kind of games and then using those bitcoins to buy stuff from each other or from some internet site.
I would have thought Zynga would have done this long ago. I hope they become the next Zynga.
legendary
Activity: 1281
Merit: 1000
☑ ♟ ☐ ♚
January 09, 2015, 12:51:16 AM
Hmm. It was nice imagining that higher btc volumes would come from replacing fiat payments in real-world b2c and b2b flows. Perhaps not from a monkey swinging between palm trees:

5,000 transactions in 1 day
https://blockchain.info/address/17ZgzoQUAiCrCgSieYfGhAvToW9kn6uaLt



Apple Inches towards Bitcoin, Approves a retro-styled iOS game that tips players in Real Bitcoin
By Forexminute - Deepak Tiwari | Bitcoin | Jan 9, 2015 3:36AM GMT

There is a lot of scope for Bitcoin in gaming industry; however, this has not yet been explored. The step from Apple to approve a retro-styled iOS game that tips players in real Bitcoin, recently releasing it onto the iTunes store, is going to encourage others in the fray. A lot of game lovers have appreciated the measure from Apple.
According to the sources the game, SaruTobi, lets users swing a monkey from a vine, building up momentum before releasing him to collect power-ups and Bitcoin tokens as he frolics though the air. Developer Christian Moss told the media professionals that SaruTobi is literally Japanese for ‘Monkey Fly’, and this is pretty much the premise of the game.
He says that the user flings him across an 8-bit jungle collecting floating Bitcoin along the way. According to him he was in the process of adding typical Super Mario-style coins into the game when it occurred to him to use Bitcoin instead. He admits that he thought it would be a nice way to introduce Bitcoin to people who are not familiar with it yet.
The approval from Apple is also an indication that somewhere people at the organization think that the digital world can truly be Bitcoin’s natural environment. The iOS game has three main aims – attaining the greatest distance, collecting Bitcoin tokens to be spent on in-app items, and collecting the letters ‘SARUTOBI’ to unlock a Bitcoin ‘boost’ to spend on in-game items.
A Long Way to Go Says Christian Moss, the Developer
Developer Christian Moss says that the Bitcoin tips come from the game’s shared Bitcoin wallet, called a ‘pot’, revenue generated by the game (from in-app purchases and ads) is converted into Bitcoin and added to the pot. He informs that after the user has played the game for a certain amount of time, the game will reward the user by sending them a Bitcoin tip.
Moss is of the view that though he has come across a few concept games that use Bitcoin micro-transactions, nothing on the iOS app store he believes having a popular iOS app that incorporates Bitcoin can go a long way to helping it become mainstream. He further says that he is currently working on a new Bitcoin mining game.
He concludes and says that it is still in the early stages of development; however, the player will be able to dig, similar to Minecraft, and collect real Bitcoin."


I hope the game will become popular. This could potentially introduce bitcoin to millions of people. Perhaps, kids will adopt bitcoin and become 'native' users. I could easily see kids earning tiny amounts of bitcoin in these kind of games and then using those bitcoins to buy stuff from each other or from some internet site.
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1006
100 satoshis -> ISO code
January 09, 2015, 12:27:47 AM
Hmm. It was nice imagining that higher btc volumes would come from replacing fiat payments in real-world b2c and b2b flows. Perhaps not from a monkey swinging between palm trees:

5,000 transactions in 1 day
https://blockchain.info/address/17ZgzoQUAiCrCgSieYfGhAvToW9kn6uaLt



Apple Inches towards Bitcoin, Approves a retro-styled iOS game that tips players in Real Bitcoin
By Forexminute - Deepak Tiwari | Bitcoin | Jan 9, 2015 3:36AM GMT

There is a lot of scope for Bitcoin in gaming industry; however, this has not yet been explored. The step from Apple to approve a retro-styled iOS game that tips players in real Bitcoin, recently releasing it onto the iTunes store, is going to encourage others in the fray. A lot of game lovers have appreciated the measure from Apple.
According to the sources the game, SaruTobi, lets users swing a monkey from a vine, building up momentum before releasing him to collect power-ups and Bitcoin tokens as he frolics though the air. Developer Christian Moss told the media professionals that SaruTobi is literally Japanese for ‘Monkey Fly’, and this is pretty much the premise of the game.
He says that the user flings him across an 8-bit jungle collecting floating Bitcoin along the way. According to him he was in the process of adding typical Super Mario-style coins into the game when it occurred to him to use Bitcoin instead. He admits that he thought it would be a nice way to introduce Bitcoin to people who are not familiar with it yet.
The approval from Apple is also an indication that somewhere people at the organization think that the digital world can truly be Bitcoin’s natural environment. The iOS game has three main aims – attaining the greatest distance, collecting Bitcoin tokens to be spent on in-app items, and collecting the letters ‘SARUTOBI’ to unlock a Bitcoin ‘boost’ to spend on in-game items.
A Long Way to Go Says Christian Moss, the Developer
Developer Christian Moss says that the Bitcoin tips come from the game’s shared Bitcoin wallet, called a ‘pot’, revenue generated by the game (from in-app purchases and ads) is converted into Bitcoin and added to the pot. He informs that after the user has played the game for a certain amount of time, the game will reward the user by sending them a Bitcoin tip.
Moss is of the view that though he has come across a few concept games that use Bitcoin micro-transactions, nothing on the iOS app store he believes having a popular iOS app that incorporates Bitcoin can go a long way to helping it become mainstream. He further says that he is currently working on a new Bitcoin mining game.
He concludes and says that it is still in the early stages of development; however, the player will be able to dig, similar to Minecraft, and collect real Bitcoin."
legendary
Activity: 2044
Merit: 1005
January 08, 2015, 11:30:57 PM
Us equities are new gold

Scrape a little at that gilt and see the dull grey of lead and tungsten.
It is till its not
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1006
100 satoshis -> ISO code
January 08, 2015, 10:30:19 PM
Us equities are new gold

Scrape a little at that gilt and see the dull grey of lead and tungsten.
legendary
Activity: 2044
Merit: 1005
January 08, 2015, 10:27:44 PM
Us equities are new gold
legendary
Activity: 1153
Merit: 1000
January 08, 2015, 09:00:41 PM
Yes, and what I'm saying is there is no cartel. A cartel implies there is some barrier to entry (for example by limited capacity of equipment). There is none here; everyone can mine, and in a protocol that hasn't reached the stage of specialized hardware, the startup costs are low and entry is very rapid. A huge amount of mining would come online within a day or two, and remember your proposal is for all this to be announced a month ahead, so plenty of time to get ready.

You are making a valiant effort smooth, but it is not one you are going to win with this one. He make the same argument with me, in that a mining cartel could "block" all transactions they want. He refused to acknowledge that a non-conforming cartel would simply be removed from the pool, and the network would continue with the remain honest miners. He refuses to understand that the network will continue as long as there are some remaining honest miners to generate blocks.

I refuse to believe that he can not understand this, and instead believe he is simply trying out and testing new FUD against bitcoin here. Some FUD is easily refuted, other FUD requires more discussion and understanding. He has already said that he is working with his government on educating the public on the scam that is bitcoin.

I also get the impression that we are writing a paper for him, that discredits his imagined dystopia.

Sure it could happen, it would just take a massive preponderance of stupidity and/or lack of self interest, or coercion.
If it did happen, I would suspect the coercion first.  Most miners of any significance have plenty of self interest and very little stupidity.

That's a good way to put it. He keeps putting up detailed scenarios, and then always asks "isn't this right" or "what is wrong with this" or "please read x, y, z and tell me what is wrong". Then someone does so, and he ignores the replies and comes back with a different scenario and repeats. Going onto internet forums and trolling for peer review is a pretty pathetic manner for one to perform research.
legendary
Activity: 1204
Merit: 1002
Gresham's Lawyer
January 08, 2015, 08:36:05 PM
Yes, and what I'm saying is there is no cartel. A cartel implies there is some barrier to entry (for example by limited capacity of equipment). There is none here; everyone can mine, and in a protocol that hasn't reached the stage of specialized hardware, the startup costs are low and entry is very rapid. A huge amount of mining would come online within a day or two, and remember your proposal is for all this to be announced a month ahead, so plenty of time to get ready.

You are making a valiant effort smooth, but it is not one you are going to win with this one. He make the same argument with me, in that a mining cartel could "block" all transactions they want. He refused to acknowledge that a non-conforming cartel would simply be removed from the pool, and the network would continue with the remain honest miners. He refuses to understand that the network will continue as long as there are some remaining honest miners to generate blocks.

I refuse to believe that he can not understand this, and instead believe he is simply trying out and testing new FUD against bitcoin here. Some FUD is easily refuted, other FUD requires more discussion and understanding. He has already said that he is working with his government on educating the public on the scam that is bitcoin.

I also get the impression that we are writing a paper for him, that discredits his imagined dystopia.

Sure it could happen, it would just take a massive preponderance of stupidity and/or lack of self interest, or coercion.
If it did happen, I would suspect the coercion first.  Most miners of any significance have plenty of self interest and very little stupidity.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
January 08, 2015, 07:48:57 PM
PS. I find this discussion bizarre, because until a month ago bitcoiners claimed that altcoins would die because they did not have the huge mining network that bitcoin has.  Now it is the number of users that matters?  Then Auroracoin must have been a success -- didn't they "airdrop" some AUR to every person in Iceland?  Grin

Cool, let's add some more fallacies to your atrociously constructed arguments.

1. All bitcoiners didn't/don't claim that.

2. Even if they did, it wouldn't make it so.

3. Aurora is a coin. Aurora failed. Bitcoin (whether modified not) is a coin, therefore bitcoin will fail. Nice.

Mining can not and does not give a coin value. Mining chases value. If mining gave value then perhaps the value of LTC would have gone up when it switched to "more secure" ASIC mining. In fact its value has gone (almost) to zero.

Mining does one and only one thing, which is limit and disincentivize ballot stuffing by forcing real resources to be used to vote. Any reasonable sort of mining will suffice and it is the value of a coin that determines the amount of mining, not vice versa.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
January 08, 2015, 07:35:22 PM
There would be no point. Focus on users, not miners, for a monent. The have a choice:

Option 1. Hard forked chain that that pays more to miners

Option 2. Hard forked chain that does not pay more to miners

Users would choose #2. Miners would choose #1

Miners are by definition sellers of bitcoin, users are both buyers and sellers. Chain two would have both sellers and buyers. Chain 1 would have sellers but no buyers, and would therefore have no value. ASIC miners would face the choice to waste electricity mining a worthless coin or shut down.

Options 1 and 2 are different coins, that will have different market prices and different expectations of survival.

Already explained that users and only users can give market value. Miners can only hold or sell, but they have no reason to buy. If you don't attract (non-mining) users, you're dead.

Quote
Coin 1 is just the same old bitcoin

It's not. It changed. With a bit of forward looking, one can easily see that it would be changed again.

After all, repeat your plan, exactly as you have stated it:

If miners can fork the protocol to double their rewards once, why can't they do it again? If they can, users will recognize that, and avoid such a coin like the plague, as it is sure to be diluted to nothing.

Your plan, by its own mechanism with no assumptions about alternative mining, fails, because it only succeeds if you stop the game after one iteration, yet the game itself contains no mechanism to prevent such repetition. QED

legendary
Activity: 1470
Merit: 1004
January 08, 2015, 06:19:30 PM
Note that altcoins are created not because they can be better than bitcoin (which in some cases may be true), but because their creators think: "Why should I buy an existing coin, and see its early adopters become filthy rich at my expense, when I can create my own altcoin, and become filthy rich at other people's expense?"

BCnext launched Nxt for exactly 21 BTC, it was by design as the number 21 was symbolic to him, once he hit that mark he closed investment and launched.  BTC was valued at about the same amount as now when he closed funding.  So your point is not true.  Not everyone is purely money motivated.  The people that called his distribution a scam were day traders who were angry they didn't participate during the two months the IPO was open.  Of course, Nxt isn't really an alt coin in the true sense of the form, because it's not a clone of anything.

I accept that there may be exceptions.  I believe my analysis above applies to most of what people call "pump-and-dump" or "junk" cryptocoins.  (I called them "altcoins" out of laziness, it is easier to type.)

Most people here think that anything other than BTC is a pump and dump junk coin.
hero member
Activity: 910
Merit: 1003
January 08, 2015, 06:09:14 PM
Note that altcoins are created not because they can be better than bitcoin (which in some cases may be true), but because their creators think: "Why should I buy an existing coin, and see its early adopters become filthy rich at my expense, when I can create my own altcoin, and become filthy rich at other people's expense?"

BCnext launched Nxt for exactly 21 BTC, it was by design as the number 21 was symbolic to him, once he hit that mark he closed investment and launched.  BTC was valued at about the same amount as now when he closed funding.  So your point is not true.  Not everyone is purely money motivated.  The people that called his distribution a scam were day traders who were angry they didn't participate during the two months the IPO was open.  Of course, Nxt isn't really an alt coin in the true sense of the form, because it's not a clone of anything.

I accept that there may be exceptions.  I believe my analysis above applies to most of what people call "pump-and-dump" or "junk" cryptocoins.  (I called them "altcoins" out of laziness, it is easier to type.)
legendary
Activity: 1470
Merit: 1004
January 08, 2015, 06:02:23 PM
Note that altcoins are created not because they can be better than bitcoin (which in some cases may be true), but because their creators think: "Why should I buy an existing coin, and see its early adopters become filthy rich at my expense, when I can create my own altcoin, and become filthy rich at other people's expense?"

BCnext launched Nxt for exactly 21 BTC, it was by design as the number 21 was symbolic to him, once he hit that mark he closed investment and launched.  BTC was valued at about the same amount as now when he closed funding.  So your point is not true.  Not everyone is purely money motivated.  The people that called his distribution a scam were day traders who were angry they didn't participate during the two months the IPO was open.  Of course, Nxt isn't really an alt coin in the true sense of the form, because it's not a clone of anything.
hero member
Activity: 910
Merit: 1003
January 08, 2015, 05:56:42 PM
PS. I find this discussion bizarre, because until a month ago bitcoiners claimed that altcoins would die because they did not have the huge mining network that bitcoin has.  Now it is the number of users that matters?  Then Auroracoin must have been a success -- didn't they "airdrop" some AUR to every person in Iceland?  Grin
Jump to: