Quote from: Atlas on April 06, 2011, 07:53:12 PM

Quote from: Blitzboom on April 06, 2011, 07:48:04 PM

Quote from: Atlas on April 06, 2011, 07:47:06 PM

Call me a dreamer but I would like Bitcoin to demonstrate anarcho-capitalism. You know, without government involvement?

Keep dreaming.

I totally agree with S3052.

His statement has standing but it is still possible Bitcoin exchanges can form a sustainable amount of trust on their own.

True, but for bitcoin to accelerate its growth into full use by a subset of the mainstream, we need someone who already has trust to come along and back it. Evan if its not an exchange, someone with an existing name needs to come along and accept bitcoin in some form.

Quote from: jgarzik on April 06, 2011, 07:48:09 PM

Quote from: ano-nym on April 06, 2011, 07:07:05 PM

Idea #1: Suppose a company can issue its own version of the bitcoin concept as "stocks" (bitstock?). I know this has been talked about on other threads as well. What would be the implications of high-frequency trading on the infrastructure borrowed from bitcoin? For example, we trade thousands of stocks at a rate of thousands of messages per second (i.e. not all messages result in trades). We deal in terabytes of data per day. Is it even reasonable to consider a proof-of-work blockchain in this context? How would this disrupt the trust mechanism for resolving conflicting claims (e.g. could I send some "bitstock" shares to one person, but then change my mind an instant later by sending the same bitstock to another recipient, and then trying to convince the rest of the network that the second transaction was the valid one)?

Yes, a highly interconnected, high bandwidth network -- such as those already used by HFT'ers -- could support a proof-of-work chain at such rates. You're looking at about 600,000 - 1,000,000 transactions per 10-minute block, I'd say.

The main hurdles will be efficient TX broadcasting, and trying not to be CPU-bound doing ECDSA signature verification.

Also, the proof-of-work algorithm would need to not regenerate its mining block on every TX, but upon every $N TX's.

Possible? yes. Easily workable, not at all. Also, to run your own blockchain you would need sufficient mining power at which point the prospect of companies making their own starts to look like a bad idea IMHO. (either they let the "community" mine, which IMHO would never work out when many companies start to do that, or mine themselves which becomes very costly).

Quote from: ano-nym on April 06, 2011, 07:07:05 PM

Idea #3: What if our company could provide a "forex" marketplace for BTC/USD? This has certainly been done already (MtGox, etc.), however it seems there is still a lot of barrier to entry for many participants. How might a big player help? Would it hinder bitcoin's progress in any way?

Idea #4: Does bitcoin need a market maker in its exchange markets? Market makers usually help narrow the spread between the "bid price" and "ask price" by taking some of the risk in moments when there are no natural market participants (e.g. if you want to sell, but at this moment no one is willing to buy, you either have to lower your price to gain attention, or wait a while for more buyers to show up). My sense is that bitcoin is too young to need a market maker, and perhaps does not yet have enough volume to make the role worthwhile. What are your thoughts?

YES, YES, YES, YES, YES. Please do, one of the biggest necessities in the bitcoin market is just size right now. Adding major (or even medium-sized) players right now would add a ton of momentum behind bitcoin.