I'm not convinced that this will become a problem, socially. The same problem exists with real-world cash, which has serial numbers. The technical means to track dollar bills exists. But in practice, nobody bothers. It's prevented by law, but even if the law didn't exist, I'm not sure that mainstream people would care.

No, it's never too late. Mining is always a good thing to do because:

- Fun
- Education
- Participate in the network
- Support the network
- Decentralize all the things
- Help to warm up your apartment

You won't make money, but that should be beside the point!

Hi all,

I have a Bitmain Antminer U1 USB miner (1.6 GH/s) which seems to be dead. When I start cgminer, it doesn't seem to find any USB device attached. Here's the output:


These messages mostly just repeat. After I hit "q", I see:


Does Bitmain have any kind of warranty, repair, or replacement?

I have another (separate) Antminer U1 and it seems to be working great.

We could create something like the UL (Underwriters Laboratories) of Bitcoin.

This doesn't make sense. If you used very long passwords, created your paper wallets on offline Linux machines, and kept all your backups encrypted, then why did you put 50% of your Bitcoins on the Bitfloor exchange?


WTF? The only part of your statement that is mildly true is that Mt.Gox was an established exchange. Where were they registered? They had proven BAD security (see 2011 hack), and were obviously inexperienced in accounting (see 2013 withdrawal problems).


As another side note, did MtGox really anything anyone would trust them after they were hacked in 2011? They were dead from the moment that happened.

Oh, wait...


There's also no proof that they didn't falsify volumes (or give some people perpetual free trading to boost volumes).


It's still very early days in Bitcoin. Enron had revenues exceeding $100 billion - with a "B"!

I got the same email. Email list is probably from the mtgox hack awhile back.

1. "Legitimacy" is misspelled in the video's visual. ("Ligitimacy" is incorrect)

2. I don't believe that regulation has not protected consumers. There are a lot of good consumer protection laws that do effectively make ordinary people's lives better in some ways. So although I like some of Andreas's other talks (especially his "Crash Course"), I cannot agree with his hard-line stance here. The existing financial system has plenty of crooks, but it is built on a foundation of value and much of the corruption is due to the lack of something like Bitcoin. So cryptocurrency has the potential to vastly improve the world while still maintaining the safety, ease-of-use, and security that comes from existing financial infrastructure.

Hey everyone,

Have a look at the new Liquidity Charts:

Bitstamp   Asks Liquidity
Bitstamp   Bids Liquidity

1,000 mBTC = 1 BTC = 1 XBT.

mBTC is pronounced "embit" and 1,000 mBTC is pronounced "one thousand embits". Currently, one embit is worth about one dollar.

Problem solved.

http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/

We are proud to announce the launch of BitcoinPulse to monitor how bitcoin is growing as a technology. We built this because we wanted this for ourselves. We are trying to understand how bitcoin is growing as a way to exchange actual goods versus just being a store of value or even a way of get-rich-quick speculation.

Some of the most important metrics we are adding are:

• Developer mindshare and infrastructure growth, which we track through GitHub repositories referencing bitcoin
• Merchant growth tracked through Coinmap and Coinbase
• Bitcoin payments accepted through Craigslist
• Coinbase consumer wallet growth
• Many other interesting metrics

We'd love to hear feedback, questions, other data sources, etc.

The BitcoinPulse Team

Place a limit order on an exchange like Kraken.com. There's no reason to just get an alert when the price drops; get your order in now, and it will automatically execute when the price reaches that level.

Introduction: "I, Pencil" is an introduction to the economics behind how goods are produced. Read it first:

I, Pencil - http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/i-pencil

Now, this only works when society has good money to use as a medium of exchange.

Good money has 7 key properties:

1. Portable and transferable

It must be convenient and safe for you to bring it along to wherever you want. Other people, including the government, should not be able to stop you from moving your money. Once transferred, the recipient should be able to verify with absolute certainty that they have the amount of money that they think they have. Good money can't be easily counterfeited. When you give me money, you shouldn't be able to take it back without my permission.

2. Divisible

Money must have quick, easy, and reliable divisibility to cater for all types and sizes of transactions. This is why diamonds are not good money.

3. Durable

It must have good durability: it must not decay. If it does, it's not a reliable store of value.

4. Sufficiently rare and scarce

Money must be scarce enough that people can't just easily get more of it from anywhere. Otherwise, it might not have much value at all; or its value might fall over time. This is why US Dollars are not good money: there is a central authority that can create more dollars at any time, thus devaluing all of the existing dollars.

Until 1965, quarters were made of 90% silver and 10% copper. Since 1965, they are mostly copper with some nickel on top to make them look pretty. In 1964, a quarter was worth $0.25. Today, that same quarter is worth $3.59. This roughly approximates the loss of your purchasing power over the past 40 years.

5. Fungible

You can trade or substitute it for equal amounts of the same thing, and it's still worth the same as what you originally had. This is another reason diamonds aren't good to use for money: each diamond is unique, so they can't be substituted easily.

6. Non-consumable

Oil can't be money because it's a consumable commodity. Other than being useful as money, money need not have any other use.

7. Easily identifiable

Money should be easy to detect and difficult to counterfeit. The US Mint goes to great lengths to make dollars hard to copy. When you have some money, you should be able to easily check that it's real.

Here's a comparison of how different things stack up in terms of whether they would make for good money:

http://coin4.me/2012/05/properties-of-good-money-bitcoin/

Why isn't inputs.io in this list?

actually, it's legit. i know a lot of people who have pre-ordered it already.

inputs.io. ha. ha. ha.  :-(

Java isn't a browser extension. There is a Java runtime that can be used a browser plug-in, but I don't think this is the same Java required by Multibit.

Yes, it's MUCH faster. Put bootstrap.dat in your bitcoin-qt data directory.

Looking for people to write blog posts for a new Bitcoin news site. Let me know if you're interested.

My wallet.dat's filesize was 70 KB.

I encrypted it with bitcoin-qt.

Then it was 53 KB.

How can I verify that it's encrypted properly?

Assuming I have a very secure password, it's safe for me to widely distribute my new, encrypted wallet.dat, right?

When you use something like Electrum to generate a brain wallet, the passphrase is the seed. From this seed, the app generates an unlimited number of addresses, public keys, and private keys that can be deterministically re-generated, given the passphrase. So in this case, you can have one "brain wallet" (the passphrase) but an unlimited number of public keys generated from that seed; and revealing any of these public keys should be perfectly safe. Right?