Today on #bitcoin
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gmaxwell: e.g. they noticed lots of txn getting stuck, they didn't understand it was because they were producing invalid txn (even though it was reported to them) and so they thought it was just 'full blocks'
gmaxwell: and they increased their fees from 0.0001 to 0.0005 which was enough to may more than virtually every txn and then later to 0.001 which is basically astronomic. And then they made it mandatory.
gmaxwell: of course their stalled txn had nothing to do with fees.
Edit: Just to clarify, only quoted relevant parts (maybe I should have inserted "[...]" where applicable). Full text here:
http://pastebin.com/DaSph9uTOMFG I was unaware of these facts! This is MINDBLOWING. How gox is still (sort of) going is beyond me. They were warned about all this, and they thought fees would solve their problems? I remember my last withdrawal from them annoying me because of having to pay what I though was a huge fee! (Well it was like a weeks mining profit for me!) My understanding of bitcoin is MINIMAL. I am not a techy type AT ALL, and I understood the mandatory transfer fee to be absurd. How the f$%& did these guys make their own custom wallet software and not lose everything when they make mistakes like this?