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Let's say that instead of bitcoin it would be feathers or rocks.
Would terrorists use rocks for their own interests? Of course.
Gun (or bomb) dealers don't care what it is, they want to deal and get paid.
Doesn't matter what currency is used.
Would terrorists use rocks for their own interests? Of course.
Gun (or bomb) dealers don't care what it is, they want to deal and get paid.
Doesn't matter what currency is used.
Do you really think there is any type of transaction that terrorists or "bad guys" in general have not used yet?
You can be sure that they have and are having still. Instead of dealing with banks or carrying big suitcases ful of money it's easier to just go with a smartphone and confirm a simple transaction.
You can be sure that they have and are having still. Instead of dealing with banks or carrying big suitcases ful of money it's easier to just go with a smartphone and confirm a simple transaction.
WE already had World War III.
It was so called ''cold war'' between America and USSR.
Now, we have war against terrorism but not World war.
It's true that Putin fight against West and America, but it's not war about ideology any more.
It's more about economy, resources and global influence.
So, current conflict we can't call World War really.
They will even cooperate against global terrorism, if needed.
It was so called ''cold war'' between America and USSR.
Now, we have war against terrorism but not World war.
It's true that Putin fight against West and America, but it's not war about ideology any more.
It's more about economy, resources and global influence.
So, current conflict we can't call World War really.
They will even cooperate against global terrorism, if needed.
Agreed Daniel91, there are several wars going on at any time somewhere on the planet.
Even though, sometimes I think they might be linked together.
And yes, I'm sure that the majority of them are about money.
What do you think about the fact that cryptocurrencies will literally be the future ? In a few years, it will exploded and, be rich if we hold many ?
Bitcoin holders will for sure be rich, but you will need a good portfolio of at least 21 BTC. The 21 BTC long term holding goal is very real, you would be inside an elite group of holders destined to be very wealthy, that's why we must fight and fight and keep hustling bitcoins with no rest until we reach 21 BTC.
How did you calculate that 21 BTC is necessary?
And what, in your opinion, is supposed to happen, in order to be rich with 21 BTC?
Because 21 BTC is more or less 21k $ - so not really that much to be honest - with that money you'd only get an average car.
Nothing about the fees in your video - interesting.
I understand that it's a paid video, but still - you should be open and honest about everything.
And as usual - it requires ID - of course they are trying to control and track users.
No ATM's for me, thank you.
I understand that it's a paid video, but still - you should be open and honest about everything.
And as usual - it requires ID - of course they are trying to control and track users.
No ATM's for me, thank you.
The US is always looking for a war. Going into countries without the right to do so (only because they're the US Army) and doing what they want and making up rules.
I read somewhere that last year the US spent for war something like around 140 trillion dollars, when world hunger could be ended with a su around 90 trillion.
War is the best business that the US is having, so of course that they are trying all strategies possible to make it happen.
I read somewhere that last year the US spent for war something like around 140 trillion dollars, when world hunger could be ended with a su around 90 trillion.
War is the best business that the US is having, so of course that they are trying all strategies possible to make it happen.
Of course governments feel threatened.
Even though it's obvious that fiat money are also needed.
But why not ban bitcoin. I'm sure that they are doing everything they can to find out ways to control or stop bitcoin one way or another.
Even though it's obvious that fiat money are also needed.
But why not ban bitcoin. I'm sure that they are doing everything they can to find out ways to control or stop bitcoin one way or another.
First of all you can be sure that this is because some kind of a very clear reason.
Second - you don't know that Facebook and Big Brother were not working together from the start. Just because Zuckerberg was against giving access to their data (publicly), does not mean that it's actually true.
Last of all, Facebook is a socializing website, what's the problem if people are using fake names? They're called nicknames and were used since the beginning of the internet. Is Zuckerberg on some kind of power trip? Or he's out of the whole deal and people there are doing whatever they want?
Second - you don't know that Facebook and Big Brother were not working together from the start. Just because Zuckerberg was against giving access to their data (publicly), does not mean that it's actually true.
Last of all, Facebook is a socializing website, what's the problem if people are using fake names? They're called nicknames and were used since the beginning of the internet. Is Zuckerberg on some kind of power trip? Or he's out of the whole deal and people there are doing whatever they want?
If you get money from your wallet into your bank account it's clearly visible. The account is in your name.
And to the guy that said that you want to do that only because you're planning something illegal, I must disagree. It's bad enough that we are made to pay all sorts of stupid taxes, big brother doesn't need to know what you're doing with your own money. Because that's what the government wants - to know everything, in order to control us. They want to tax your hard earned bitcoins. So why should anyone not want to hide their money? The best reason - not to feed the greedy piglet that is the government and the IRS.
And to the guy that said that you want to do that only because you're planning something illegal, I must disagree. It's bad enough that we are made to pay all sorts of stupid taxes, big brother doesn't need to know what you're doing with your own money. Because that's what the government wants - to know everything, in order to control us. They want to tax your hard earned bitcoins. So why should anyone not want to hide their money? The best reason - not to feed the greedy piglet that is the government and the IRS.
Yeah, true, they are less active. On the other hand their hand-eye coordination is better. They learn faster, better, more.
Now we have 11 year old programmers. Children that speak many languages. Non English kids that know proficient English before they go to school. In a way it's about how you look at things. Technology is not bad. It's how you use it. People should be more responsible for their own actions and not blame everything else for their failures.
Now we have 11 year old programmers. Children that speak many languages. Non English kids that know proficient English before they go to school. In a way it's about how you look at things. Technology is not bad. It's how you use it. People should be more responsible for their own actions and not blame everything else for their failures.
Seeing as how our friend - the government, tries to control even bitcoin (no escape from big brother's claws), face-to-face meetings would be best. Lately all exchange sites are required to get your photo ID. Wasn't the idea behind bitcoin exactly that? To be anonymous?
1. roll a 6 sided dice 99 times.
2. write down each result, writing a "0" for every 6 that comes up.
3. take this long string of numbers from 0-5 and convert it from base 6 to base 10.
a. This means starting from the first non-zero digit on the left, multiply it by 6 then add it to the next digit, then multiply by 6 then add to the next digit... etc. until you get a long number with digits from 0-9.
4. Now you will have to calculate the public key. This is more easily done if the private key (the long number you made) is in binary form (1 or 0) so convert the number to binary.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to just use 10 sided dice? This way you can skip some conversions?
or even more crazy, just take $10 in pennies, shake them in a bucket, dump them out and line them up. Not sure how many bits you would need, so I just guessed $10 would be enough (1000 pennies).
So, there would be a way to create a private key without doing any math and just entering 1's and 0's for heads and tails.
Now, this is what we need:
Starting with a bucket of dumped out spread out pennies (so none are overlapping), take a picture, have some software to recognize heads and tails, and convert the result to binary. Though perhaps just looking a the bits in an sha of an image from a lava lamp would be sufficient.
Re: [VIDEO] Dorian S. Nakamoto clears his name in interview with AP
I just read the original article:
http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html
and it seems to fit nicely, but everything mentioned is very circumstantial. Also, I am sure if anything didn't fit with the narrative it was dropped from the story.
The video also doesn't seem to be much validation either. "I never communicated with bitcoins." That would be a very weird way for anyone on the project to talk about it working on it.
Nothing is either proved or disproved, and good luck reading anything useful into his body language.
In the end, yeah, there is a darn good chance is he is the founder, but it is very inconclusive.
If I could pick someone to be the founder of bitcoin, this guy would be it. He is a humble sweet old guy with a penchant for collecting model trains and his dad was a Buddhist priest. So many people involved in bitcoin are pricks, so for the good of the currency, I would be happy if it turns out that this is the guy in question and not someone else.
I say someone should talk to him, and even if he isn't the real Satoshi, we ask him to take the credit for it, and we will adopt him as the founder. In exchange we can all chip in and buy him whatever supplies he needs to keep working on his model railroad.
As far as properly denying anything, the only way I could see it happening is if Dorian was on a live video feed that couldn't be faked, and the real Satoshi signed something time dependent and unpredictable such as the current value of the S & P 500 at the same time. I would call this the Superman Defense as Superman and Clark Kent could never be seen at the same time. This would of course require some collaboration between Dorian and Satoshi, and could only be faked if Satoshi let someone else use his private key (which would give that person the power to pretend to be Satoshi).
Alternatively Satoshi could publicize his private key thus making it impossible for any claim to be Satoshi to be verifiable.
Now that is a scary thought. He is going to need some serious protection now, or for safety sake, if he is Satoshi, he might want to destroy those bitcoins in a public way. For people that think that is crazy talk, countries have been invaded to seize less money. He now has a billion dollar price tag on his head to extract the information out of it.
http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html
and it seems to fit nicely, but everything mentioned is very circumstantial. Also, I am sure if anything didn't fit with the narrative it was dropped from the story.
The video also doesn't seem to be much validation either. "I never communicated with bitcoins." That would be a very weird way for anyone on the project to talk about it working on it.
Nothing is either proved or disproved, and good luck reading anything useful into his body language.
In the end, yeah, there is a darn good chance is he is the founder, but it is very inconclusive.
If I could pick someone to be the founder of bitcoin, this guy would be it. He is a humble sweet old guy with a penchant for collecting model trains and his dad was a Buddhist priest. So many people involved in bitcoin are pricks, so for the good of the currency, I would be happy if it turns out that this is the guy in question and not someone else.
I say someone should talk to him, and even if he isn't the real Satoshi, we ask him to take the credit for it, and we will adopt him as the founder. In exchange we can all chip in and buy him whatever supplies he needs to keep working on his model railroad.
As far as properly denying anything, the only way I could see it happening is if Dorian was on a live video feed that couldn't be faked, and the real Satoshi signed something time dependent and unpredictable such as the current value of the S & P 500 at the same time. I would call this the Superman Defense as Superman and Clark Kent could never be seen at the same time. This would of course require some collaboration between Dorian and Satoshi, and could only be faked if Satoshi let someone else use his private key (which would give that person the power to pretend to be Satoshi).
Alternatively Satoshi could publicize his private key thus making it impossible for any claim to be Satoshi to be verifiable.
And of course to remove the risk from Dorian that stems from the fact that every piece of scum in North America now "knows" that there is a defenseless billion $$$.
Now that is a scary thought. He is going to need some serious protection now, or for safety sake, if he is Satoshi, he might want to destroy those bitcoins in a public way. For people that think that is crazy talk, countries have been invaded to seize less money. He now has a billion dollar price tag on his head to extract the information out of it.
Re: What you need to know about Transaction mutability ...
Ok, now I finally grasped the attack I think on gox.
No the attack didn't involve tx from the user or deposits as both would require confirmations and any breakdown due to malleability would have not resulted in extra payments.
Simple version:
User has x BTC on his MtGox account.
User created a withdraw request for x BTC.
MtGox creates a withdraw transfer with tx id "A".
MtGox's wallet is creating "broken" tx anyways which make legitimate issues for tx propagation.
User takes tx id "A", modifies the mutable parts and this produced tx id "B".
Tx "B" ends up in a block and user has received x BTC.
User notifies MtGox they haven't received their withdraw.
MtGox looks in blockchain and there is no tx "A" and thus assumes (incorrectly) this means user has not been paid.
MtGox creates a new tx ("C") for x BTC to the address specified by user and has now paid the user twice.
User could not either deposit the double bitcoins and pull the con again or modified tx "C" so it is tx "D" and report a second failure ("MtGox tx C didn't confirm either please pay me again, I mean pay me) to continue to the theft.
MtGox has had legitimate issues with withdraws not being confirmed (due to their own errors) for more than a month. How many times did an attacker pull the attack described above? How many bitcoins were double paid?
Quote
Or if you want to be optimistic, gox could have kept 90% of their funds in a cold wallet and all is safe.
Or they saw all these requests as valid normal outflows and when the hot wallet got low, moved funds from one or more cold wallets to replenish the hot wallet so the could continue to double, triple, quadruple pay withdraw requests.
Only MtGox knows how much they overpaid and they simply are not talking.
Ok, this make so much more sense. Thank you DaT.
So if I set up a trading system, and
* someone makes a withdraw
* I have a log of the transaction id A of that withdraw
* They make another duplicate transaction B which has a different transaction id of A
* I see that A didn't make it into the blockchain (though untracked transaction B did make it in)
* Upon the user's request I make another transaction C to remedy that A failed.
* Rinse and repeat.
Wow, that is a problem. I now have more sympathy for gox and others as this could easily happen, though they should have had some basic human powered fail-safes to prevent a run-away situation.
So as a provider, what information should I keep as the unique identifier for the transaction that would prevent this issue. I guess it would be something easily searchable in the blockchain.
Re: What you need to know about Transaction mutability ...
I don't know if I would call the attackers thieves. By the looks of things they aren't making off with bitcoins, they are just invalidating transactions that others are making, and thus making the db's of exchanges inconsistent with the actual bitcoins they possess. They are more like griefers.
There were two different scenarios involving the mutability.
The first was the attackers were ONLY modifying their OWN transactions. They would then report the tx failed, MtGox would lookup the tx id, see it wasn't in any block and pay them a second (and third? and twenty eight?) time.
After MtGox wised up 30 days later someone (possibly the same people, or new people) began mass modifying the tx of OTHERS. This particular event has no direct ecnomic value and your right it is likely griefers, or someone looking to damage the credability of the Bitcoin network. When people are talking about thieves they are talking about the former event.
Ok, now I finally grasped the attack I think on gox.
In my own wallet(s)
Transaction A is created
Transaction B is created Based on A.
Transaction C based on B is sent to Gox
... gox acts idiotically and recognizes C before B is finalized
Bitcoins bumped up in my gox account
I invalidate B so the bitcoins are still in my wallet
I withdraw bitcoins from gox and it says ok as its database of my account shows bitcoins it never really got.
I have just doubled my money
Rinse and repeat until gox notices the problem.
Sounds like gox would be empty in short order.
So then they wise up and shut the door (or they just see no money in their wallet). If they didn't lose most of their bitcoins in the process then they could just make a minor tweak to their process and only recognize confirmed transactions. Unfortunately I think they have been drained dry and are just looking for a way to open the bank with no money in the vault and prevent a run. They need to get some reserve of bitcoins back in their vaults to make payouts so people can feel calm and safe, and I suspect their bluster about waiting till bitcoin fixes itself is a delaying tactic.
Or if you want to be optimistic, gox could have kept 90% of their funds in a cold wallet and all is safe. They could easily verify such things to the public though and their lack of transparency is discouraging. A simple, "look guys, don't sweat it, here is one of our many addresses in cold storage with $1M in bitcoin and this message was signed from its private key. Chill out, and we will have things flowing smoothly in a jiffy."
Unfortunately, I am a pessimist, and this is the second time that gox has f-ed up on a massive scale. I think this will lead to a level of disappointment that wil make mybitcoin look like a small pickpocketing.
Re: I have to disagree with Gavin .... transaction mutability is a problem
And if I understand correctly, this is an issue where the THEIVES have to act QUICKLY.
If you wait 10-20 minutes (confirmations), then there is way too many computers, ie: the whole network with the transaction and question already confirmed and buried under other ones- can't change the hashes now. (lest you do a 51% attack, which presumably again is harder with the passage of time)
If you wait 10-20 minutes (confirmations), then there is way too many computers, ie: the whole network with the transaction and question already confirmed and buried under other ones- can't change the hashes now. (lest you do a 51% attack, which presumably again is harder with the passage of time)
The thieves can only copy transactions, they cannot change the contents. Only one of the copies can be included in the blockchain. If further transactions are based on one of the transactions that will never be part of the blockchain, all these transactions will also timeout when the not-included copy does.
This changes nothing on the usual practice that once a transaction is part of the blockchain it is safe to trust it. A 51% attack actually rewrites the blockchain.
I don't know if I would call the attackers thieves. By the looks of things they aren't making off with bitcoins, they are just invalidating transactions that others are making, and thus making the db's of exchanges inconsistent with the actual bitcoins they possess. They are more like griefers.
The piece of the puzzle I don't understand is how this is a problem for exchanges. Since the very start of bitcoin it was considered that 6 confirmations were required before a transaction was considered valid for any serious financial situation. This probably could drop down to 1 or two conformations since the network is pretty robust now, but considering 0 confirmations as being worth anything? Heck, you wouldn't even do that for an e-commerce site.
My basic conceptual model of how you build any online service using bitcoins as a unit of account is you have a bitcoin address for a user, and you get bitcoins received at that address with 1 confirmation and use that to base the user's balance off of. In your db you then record transfers to and from that user and add and subtract accordingly through a transaction log. So the balance is the sum of bitcoins received + credits - debits.
Not really rocket science, and I feel something must be missing in my view as this very basic system seems the most obvious to me, and it seems like it would be immune to the problems that are plaguing all of the exchanges. Is it just that they were dancing on the edge of the razor of zero-confirm transactions because they felt that turn around was that important?
Please, tell me where I am wrong. Something is not adding up.
Re: [FUD] Russia, China & Apple ban Bitcoins. Gox closing. Is this the end?
Long ago I predicted Gox will have to deal with a run. It has shown many signs of being poorly managed, frequently hacked, and lacking any transparency. If the sun were to shine on their books it would be apparent that they would not be able to settle up a massive withdraw.
I don't know if it is FUD (the doubt is very reasonable) that governments would ban bitcoin and trading floors would be shut down. If a govt doesn't have control over their own currency, they have nothing. This is an existential struggle for them (as well as the banks that control the govt).
Bitcoin will never go away (or at least some form of it), but any business based upon it is on shaky ground, and this will eventually be forced underground.
I don't know if it is FUD (the doubt is very reasonable) that governments would ban bitcoin and trading floors would be shut down. If a govt doesn't have control over their own currency, they have nothing. This is an existential struggle for them (as well as the banks that control the govt).
Bitcoin will never go away (or at least some form of it), but any business based upon it is on shaky ground, and this will eventually be forced underground.
the only coin going to the moon is litecoin.
Why? Please argue your reasoning rather than just saying coin X will be successful.Ok, lets give a run down of what we have going on:
Bitcoin - the oldtimer that has all of the hype. It is first to market, and is unlikely to disappear for decades (centuries) to come even if something else replaces it. It is the original, and people like originals, and that is the only reason it has value over the other coins. You could argue mining power, but that is because of value, and thus is derived from hype.
Litecoin - AKA, darn, I wish I could have mined bitcoin, and F that, I am not buying fancy hardware. Besides, all that fancy hardware just makes for less democratic mining, and wasn't that what satoshi really wanted.
Namecoin - Bitcoin is pretty neat, lets make it do something useful besides a system of accounting. This would continue to be awesome, but they did merge mining with bitcoin and rely on ASICs and whatever, who wants to f with that.
One million litecoin and bitcoin clones. Each thinking they are special because they use a cuddly panda bear as a logo and have a different mining rate, hashing system, etc. Some try to justify mining better with the fact they are solving primes or whatever, but really, mining is never the point. Mining is the hack that makes a distributed accounting system work.
My crystal ball says the true winner, maybe even to be a tough contender for bitcoin, doesn't exist yet, but I will describe it here for those who want to keep an eye out for it.
* It would use scrypt or some other hashing that is cpu bound and would have 1 minute blocks because really, that is ideal.
* Mining would start by default, and it would be super easy to add a pool in the client. The client would also have the best mining tool built in and just be a button press to start stop. Ideally pooled mining would be decentralized.
* It would not have some crazy deflationary thing built in, but provide a steady stream of currency forever. Yeah, it is boring, but we aren't trying to replace gold here, we are trying to replace dollars, and other fiats. They aren't get rich quick things, but things to build an economy of transactions on.
* It will allow you to do a lot more than just transfer money between addresses:
** You will be able to create a new colored coin at a 1-1 ratio for a small fee
** You will be able to set a key=>value store just like in namecoin
** Escrow (but most coins have that)
** Put colored coins up for sale at a certain price point for a certain number of blocks
** Put up actual ecommerce style listings and include a checkout and rating system
** Put up news / messages
** Send private messages
This is all the stuff I could think of at the moment. But bitcoin is a distributed account ledger and data store, and basic transactions are only the beginning.
Other tidbits: I feel that it should not use bitcoin-qt as the base environment. Python, or a web server running on a desktop with a html/css/js frontend would be superior so that front end development would grow rapidly.
Oh and yes, I could see another altcoin succeeding without any new features. It would be one created and backed by a government, and I see that happening someday soon. Perhaps part of it's transaction fees would be collected automatically as taxes. It would have the backing of men with guns and probably some old ideas attached to it, and thus its appeal.
The value of any altcoin is just what makes it different, and just changing some basic parameter in mining and generation isn't going to do it.
Bitcoin - the oldtimer that has all of the hype. It is first to market, and is unlikely to disappear for decades (centuries) to come even if something else replaces it. It is the original, and people like originals, and that is the only reason it has value over the other coins. You could argue mining power, but that is because of value, and thus is derived from hype.
Litecoin - AKA, darn, I wish I could have mined bitcoin, and F that, I am not buying fancy hardware. Besides, all that fancy hardware just makes for less democratic mining, and wasn't that what satoshi really wanted.
Namecoin - Bitcoin is pretty neat, lets make it do something useful besides a system of accounting. This would continue to be awesome, but they did merge mining with bitcoin and rely on ASICs and whatever, who wants to f with that.
One million litecoin and bitcoin clones. Each thinking they are special because they use a cuddly panda bear as a logo and have a different mining rate, hashing system, etc. Some try to justify mining better with the fact they are solving primes or whatever, but really, mining is never the point. Mining is the hack that makes a distributed accounting system work.
My crystal ball says the true winner, maybe even to be a tough contender for bitcoin, doesn't exist yet, but I will describe it here for those who want to keep an eye out for it.
* It would use scrypt or some other hashing that is cpu bound and would have 1 minute blocks because really, that is ideal.
* Mining would start by default, and it would be super easy to add a pool in the client. The client would also have the best mining tool built in and just be a button press to start stop. Ideally pooled mining would be decentralized.
* It would not have some crazy deflationary thing built in, but provide a steady stream of currency forever. Yeah, it is boring, but we aren't trying to replace gold here, we are trying to replace dollars, and other fiats. They aren't get rich quick things, but things to build an economy of transactions on.
* It will allow you to do a lot more than just transfer money between addresses:
** You will be able to create a new colored coin at a 1-1 ratio for a small fee
** You will be able to set a key=>value store just like in namecoin
** Escrow (but most coins have that)
** Put colored coins up for sale at a certain price point for a certain number of blocks
** Put up actual ecommerce style listings and include a checkout and rating system
** Put up news / messages
** Send private messages
This is all the stuff I could think of at the moment. But bitcoin is a distributed account ledger and data store, and basic transactions are only the beginning.
Other tidbits: I feel that it should not use bitcoin-qt as the base environment. Python, or a web server running on a desktop with a html/css/js frontend would be superior so that front end development would grow rapidly.
Oh and yes, I could see another altcoin succeeding without any new features. It would be one created and backed by a government, and I see that happening someday soon. Perhaps part of it's transaction fees would be collected automatically as taxes. It would have the backing of men with guns and probably some old ideas attached to it, and thus its appeal.
The value of any altcoin is just what makes it different, and just changing some basic parameter in mining and generation isn't going to do it.
That is insightful. Thanks for chiming in on the newbie board to give us something to chew on. You are correct...if a government puts out a coin, it will be used. I don't think it would rise in vaule though because they don't like major flucuations. They would pre-mine it all and just use it for transactions of large amounts. I am not sure we would even know about it...in fact, maybe it's already out there.
Thank you. A govt will of course pre-mine, but they will have to sell the idea of their currency. They can also impose rules into the chain about a certain amount goes to govt accounts, and set a nice steady inflation rate which will make everyone feel happy. They won't have to bother with taxes, and they have the option of saying fees partially go to them. They could set up scripts to automatically portion out the coins to the segments of government. If every citizen has a registered address, a portion of the taxes could be distributed in various ways. Basically this will eliminate a lot of the bureaucracy of government accounting, establish trust in the handling of currency, and eliminate the need to go out and collect taxes. In essence everyone is taxed via the fixed inflation based upon their currency holdings and transactions fees (which could use bytes + coin amount as the fee).
This would be great as it would make a very transparent govt - all transactions would flow from tax income through the hierarchy and right down to govt workers. Also, taxes would be taken at a constant rate, so there wouldn't be a huge amount of money dumped during tax time. Politicans would be able to flow money in a constant way to various departments in a traceable way.
As far as the value of alt-coins with very little differentiating factors - buying/selling them seems a little silly if you are just doing it for a name or some starting parameter. Seemingly paradoxically, I think alt-coins of all sorts are a fantastic thing. I could see schools, neighborhoods, or just groups of friends create a coin to establish a community based economy. Or perhaps one that could be used in an online game/forum. There are just so many random fun ideas that can be kicked around. This is why I get kinda depressed when I see just another coin being used as a get rich quick scheme. Put a little heart and creativity into things. Pretty Please
And if getting rich quick is your motivation, keep in mind being different is the best way to getting there. Ok, lets give a run down of what we have going on:
Bitcoin - the oldtimer that has all of the hype. It is first to market, and is unlikely to disappear for decades (centuries) to come even if something else replaces it. It is the original, and people like originals, and that is the only reason it has value over the other coins. You could argue mining power, but that is because of value, and thus is derived from hype.
Litecoin - AKA, darn, I wish I could have mined bitcoin, and F that, I am not buying fancy hardware. Besides, all that fancy hardware just makes for less democratic mining, and wasn't that what satoshi really wanted.
Namecoin - Bitcoin is pretty neat, lets make it do something useful besides a system of accounting. This would continue to be awesome, but they did merge mining with bitcoin and rely on ASICs and whatever, who wants to f with that.
One million litecoin and bitcoin clones. Each thinking they are special because they use a cuddly panda bear as a logo and have a different mining rate, hashing system, etc. Some try to justify mining better with the fact they are solving primes or whatever, but really, mining is never the point. Mining is the hack that makes a distributed accounting system work.
My crystal ball says the true winner, maybe even to be a tough contender for bitcoin, doesn't exist yet, but I will describe it here for those who want to keep an eye out for it.
* It would use scrypt or some other hashing that is cpu bound and would have 1 minute blocks because really, that is ideal.
* Mining would start by default, and it would be super easy to add a pool in the client. The client would also have the best mining tool built in and just be a button press to start stop. Ideally pooled mining would be decentralized.
* It would not have some crazy deflationary thing built in, but provide a steady stream of currency forever. Yeah, it is boring, but we aren't trying to replace gold here, we are trying to replace dollars, and other fiats. They aren't get rich quick things, but things to build an economy of transactions on.
* It will allow you to do a lot more than just transfer money between addresses:
** You will be able to create a new colored coin at a 1-1 ratio for a small fee
** You will be able to set a key=>value store just like in namecoin
** Escrow (but most coins have that)
** Put colored coins up for sale at a certain price point for a certain number of blocks
** Put up actual ecommerce style listings and include a checkout and rating system
** Put up news / messages
** Send private messages
This is all the stuff I could think of at the moment. But bitcoin is a distributed account ledger and data store, and basic transactions are only the beginning.
Other tidbits: I feel that it should not use bitcoin-qt as the base environment. Python, or a web server running on a desktop with a html/css/js frontend would be superior so that front end development would grow rapidly.
Oh and yes, I could see another altcoin succeeding without any new features. It would be one created and backed by a government, and I see that happening someday soon. Perhaps part of it's transaction fees would be collected automatically as taxes. It would have the backing of men with guns and probably some old ideas attached to it, and thus its appeal.
The value of any altcoin is just what makes it different, and just changing some basic parameter in mining and generation isn't going to do it.
Bitcoin - the oldtimer that has all of the hype. It is first to market, and is unlikely to disappear for decades (centuries) to come even if something else replaces it. It is the original, and people like originals, and that is the only reason it has value over the other coins. You could argue mining power, but that is because of value, and thus is derived from hype.
Litecoin - AKA, darn, I wish I could have mined bitcoin, and F that, I am not buying fancy hardware. Besides, all that fancy hardware just makes for less democratic mining, and wasn't that what satoshi really wanted.
Namecoin - Bitcoin is pretty neat, lets make it do something useful besides a system of accounting. This would continue to be awesome, but they did merge mining with bitcoin and rely on ASICs and whatever, who wants to f with that.
One million litecoin and bitcoin clones. Each thinking they are special because they use a cuddly panda bear as a logo and have a different mining rate, hashing system, etc. Some try to justify mining better with the fact they are solving primes or whatever, but really, mining is never the point. Mining is the hack that makes a distributed accounting system work.
My crystal ball says the true winner, maybe even to be a tough contender for bitcoin, doesn't exist yet, but I will describe it here for those who want to keep an eye out for it.
* It would use scrypt or some other hashing that is cpu bound and would have 1 minute blocks because really, that is ideal.
* Mining would start by default, and it would be super easy to add a pool in the client. The client would also have the best mining tool built in and just be a button press to start stop. Ideally pooled mining would be decentralized.
* It would not have some crazy deflationary thing built in, but provide a steady stream of currency forever. Yeah, it is boring, but we aren't trying to replace gold here, we are trying to replace dollars, and other fiats. They aren't get rich quick things, but things to build an economy of transactions on.
* It will allow you to do a lot more than just transfer money between addresses:
** You will be able to create a new colored coin at a 1-1 ratio for a small fee
** You will be able to set a key=>value store just like in namecoin
** Escrow (but most coins have that)
** Put colored coins up for sale at a certain price point for a certain number of blocks
** Put up actual ecommerce style listings and include a checkout and rating system
** Put up news / messages
** Send private messages
This is all the stuff I could think of at the moment. But bitcoin is a distributed account ledger and data store, and basic transactions are only the beginning.
Other tidbits: I feel that it should not use bitcoin-qt as the base environment. Python, or a web server running on a desktop with a html/css/js frontend would be superior so that front end development would grow rapidly.
Oh and yes, I could see another altcoin succeeding without any new features. It would be one created and backed by a government, and I see that happening someday soon. Perhaps part of it's transaction fees would be collected automatically as taxes. It would have the backing of men with guns and probably some old ideas attached to it, and thus its appeal.
The value of any altcoin is just what makes it different, and just changing some basic parameter in mining and generation isn't going to do it.