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What features is Mt Gox lacking? How easily could a new market with stronger technology move in? | null | It's lacking the feature of how the hell do I get some bitcoins for some USD in less than 15 minutes. Bitcoinmarket can do that just fine. Also the graphs with the bubbles are fucking ugly, good things it draws attention away from the unintuitive interface... | Bitcoin |
Thanks for the Encouragement | Thanks for encouraging me not to purchase a mining rig. I saved a bundle and actually made money.
Thanks again everyone.
| You're welcome. Whatever that was about... | Bitcoin |
Mining for a Cause | null | I've heard people ask what mining does. Many thought it did something like World Community Grid or SETI@Home. Mining may not do those things directly, but maybe we can set up a charitable mining operation/pool.
The idea is that we could set up a large-scale mining operation that then sells the bitcoins and donates the proceeds to charity. This could also include a mining pool. The website could show mining progress as well as be a place to sell the bitcoins.
Thoughts appreciated! | Bitcoin |
Why would I want Bitcoins over USD or GBP? | I'm just not getting the point of why I would want to convert my stable federal currencies into Bitcoins.
Give me your insights! | > stable federal currencies
says who? One of the major selling points of bitcoin is that eventually it will be more stable than centrally controlled currencies. No secret inflation tax. | Bitcoin |
Generating bitcoins offline? | I use the bitcoin.exe -server with a couple of agents connecting to the client. The agents say they are doing 200mhash/s even when the computer goes offline. When I get back from work, the hashrate has not changed (the hash agents are not giving errors)
Are they doing useful work while not able to connect to the internet? Does the bitcoin client cache enough useful work for several hours of offline hashing?
Thanks for any info you can provide. From my investigations, the agents should stop accepting old blocks to hash after 2 hours, but they never seem to do this. I have no idea about the technical feasibility of "caching blocks to hash" or why the agents seem to tolerate the client being offline for so long. They only error if I start up the agents before the bitcoin.exe client has connected online for the first time.
| "Are they doing useful work while not able to connect to the internet?" - Short answer: No.
For mining, you'll need an Internet connection for several reasons. 1. to obtain the latest block chain to add onto- only the longest block chain matters. 2. to obtain recent transactions to put into a block. 3. to send your block to the network before anyone else. If someone gets a block before you, which becomes part of the longst chain, yours doesn't count.
Unfortunately, miners don't necessarily stop if bitcoin has no connections and bitcoin doesn't always detect it lost all its connections. It's up to you to make sure you're connected to at least some peers.
| Bitcoin |
Changing Bitcoin Value Through Perception | (Apologies in advance -- I have zero academic knowledge of econ and I'm relatively new to bitcoin.)
My question: can we change the perceived value of bitcoin by making it easier to work with fractions of bitcoins? More specifically, Joe Average does not want to consider decimals, so why not make it easier for him to use by bitcoins by naming the subdivisions? For example:
1 Bitty = .00001 Bitcoins
1 Bitter = .001 Bitcoins
**tl;dr** this is just an excuse for me to legitimately buy something sometime for "fiddy bitty" | its going to be fun nick-naming fractions of bitcoins. How about **bit** for .01 bitcoins? It will be interesting to see what develops in the community. | Bitcoin |
"Bitcoins and the Future of the Monetary System" on Public Radio International | null | >...talks about the currency and the danger they pose to the way that people do business.
wtf? they didnt talk about this. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin software Off. | I, like most people with bitcoin, have the [official bitcoin software](http://www.bitcoin.org/) running on their local machine. What happens if someone tries to give me money while the software is closed/my computer is off? Will those coins that someone tried to give me while my computer was off be given to me right after I re-started the bitcoin software? | Not right after you restart it but as soon as you download the block that contains that transaction. Watch the bottom of your client when it starts. First it makes a connection or two to the network, then it starts downloading the blockchain in order to get up to the present block #. | Bitcoin |
The [Crypto-Currency] Case For Flat Tax And Basic Income | null | >Using numbers from Finland and France, if we roughly double the VAT,
Which creates an enormous incentive to evade it.
>It is different from a sales tax in that it is applied to every step of the way in the sales chain: assuming we have a VAT of 25%, the original manufacturer adds this tax to his wholesale price.
And what happens to your beloved vat tax when manufactures start dealing with each other in bitcoins? | Bitcoin |
So... how do you cash out? | Now.. Lets put aside the arguments of "why do you need to cash out". Just lets assume I do. I know how to convert USD to bitcoin, and did it a few times. What do you do to convert it back?
I tried:
- a bunch of sites that convert bitcoin to a virtual credit card (this is what I was really looking to begin with). No luck. Many sites, not a single CC in stock.
- #bitcoin-otc: same thing: everyone sells bitcoin, nobody offers anything convertible to cash or virtual cc
- MtGox: no conversion to USD. You can get a euro-denominated check if you are in europe, but that's pretty much it. There's a long and winding road through LibertyReserve, but I never really figured out the whole route
I am sort of starting to question the whole bitcoin hype at this point. Sure, it is a good idea, but is there any way to get anything useful out of it? Seems like a bunch of folks are buying it, but I see no cash coming back. Are we seeing the beginning of the crash? | > There's a long and winding road through LibertyReserve, but I never really figured out the whole route
So there is a conversion to USD... Maybe you should figure out the road through LibertyReserve.
Also, MtGox does Dwolla.com | Bitcoin |
Ƀ Another Bitcoin Identity | null | I like this, the current Thai Bhat symbol being used is taken and looks too close to the $. | Bitcoin |
Let's get Google to add bitcoin to the currency conversion feature! | null | Whats better is to tell google to add bitcoins to Google Wallet. | Bitcoin |
"In the past few thousand years, the way we pay has changed just three times—from coins, to paper money, to plastic cards. " I think they should have added Bitcoins. | null | Isn't this Google thing more or less just another way to transmit your CC data? Instead of reading the data from your card it's transmitted via NFC? So no difference at all.
Of course, Bitcoins should be the fourth paradigm. | Bitcoin |
Brainstorm of Bitcoin Success Scenarios | Bitcoin's modes of failure as a currency are pretty well known. It seems not many people actually talk or think about actual ways bitcoin could flourish.
I'd like to have a brainstorm session here about what ways bitcoin could win longterm.
The only thing I really hear people talking about is for more people to offer services for bitcoin or use bitcoins to pay for these services. I personally think bitcoin will never succeed if this is the only thing it is used for.
One thing I thought of was what if a company like Western Union used bitcoin to transfer money between its branches. I don't really know enough about WU to know if that would provide any extra value but these are the types of ideas I'm talking about. Another idea is if one of the f'ed up African countries decided to use bitcoin as their national currency to prevent corrupt governments from over inflating their currencies.
Anyone have any good ideas? | I don't see bitcoin replacing fiat currencies we have today. This is probably the hardest achievement it would ever have. Even though centralized banks and governments can't really banish bitcoins, they can certainly make it difficult to enter the mainstream market.
However, it has great potential to become THE ONE virtual online currency used for online trading and services. It's possible to buy "some" food with bitcoins.. but this is so limited today, and I doubt it will ever be a widespread habit to order pizza with bitcoins. | Bitcoin |
GPU Mining Problems | I've tried two GPU miners (Python OpenCL and Phoenix), and both complain about some nonexistant libOpenCL.so file. I have the ATI fglrx drivers properly installed on Ubuntu 11.04, but I am getting this error. Any help? | I think you might require the ATI Stream or AMD APP (not sure what it is called these day) SDK. Read more about it [here](http://developer.amd.com/sdks/AMDAPPSDK/downloads/Pages/default.aspx) . | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin is Worse is Better | null | No offense, but the format of your site is atrocious. You should consider installing Wordpress and get a nice theme from themeforest.net. The average theme is around $15.
You'll likely gain more readers, and will also please your existing viewers as well. Well worth it. | Bitcoin |
Anybody else having a hard time selling things for bitcoins? | I'm wondering if my prices are fair. Could you take a look at my [auction](https://www.biddingpond.com/item.php?id=603) and tell me if I'm crazy to ask for 35 coins plus shipping. Or should I just pull all my auctions and hope the market stabilizes after a couple months, then try again? I can't say i blame people for thinking their bitcoins are worth 50 grand a pop already, but I can't sell these boxes on ebay as they almost immediately get removed/flagged/deleted. | Correct me if I'm wrong, but one bitcoin is currently worth about 8.53 according to Mt. Gox? So that would be $298.55 USD right? Still confused with bitcoin exchange rates. | Bitcoin |
DAE Not buy Bitcoins around a year ago, and now hates themselves. | I remember when you could get about 1 BTC for 0.4 $. Then I forget about Bitcoins until a few weeks ago and saw it was 1BTC for 8$. Opps. | Do you ever regret not buying a lottery ticket? Bitcoin is a gamble. Currently it looks like it will succeed, so I have invested heavily in bitcoins. Back when they were worth a penny I didn't think that they would succeed, so I did not invest. Would I be a millionaire if I had bought back then? Yes. Do I regret it? Not really. | Bitcoin |
BitcoinAction: Groupon + Bitcoin | null | How do we know you aren't just harvesting email addresses? | Bitcoin |
How do you mine with your GPU? | I don't see any option in the bitcoin application... | You need to use some OpenCL mining software. IIRC it's listed on the Bitcoin wiki. | Bitcoin |
Will quantum computing become the most efficient way to mine bitcoins? Does it undermine the security of bitcoin? | null | From what i understand mining with a quantum computer would increase the security of the new hashes, but a quantum computer could also theoretically crack the pgp keys that authenticate you as the owner of your coins. So a quantum computer owner could either mine and increase the security of the network (downside he would have a monopoly on mining) or try and steal btc from other users by cracking their pgp keys. | Bitcoin |
I paid a hooker.. | null | pics or it didn't happen | Bitcoin |
Use Bitcoins to buy Newegg Products! | null | I'd be down with that if there were some clarification on how I would go about returning the product if it was DOA. | Bitcoin |
BitCoin Options Trading (now in beta) | null | What are these things, like options and futures and such? | Bitcoin |
How many Mhash/s you mining at? | I'm currently at 320 Mhash/s on a Radeon 6970 | 1 radeon 5870 @ ~350 MH
1 radeon 5850 @ ~240 MH
4 radeon 5830s @ ~237 MH each | Bitcoin |
Look what I found: Bitcoin Credit Union | null | Very cool. | Bitcoin |
I asked Denise Howell to cover bitcoin on This Week in Law, and it's coming up on episode 114! | null | For those who don't know, TWiL is a very popular show on the TWiT network, covering the legal side of the tech world. I'll be looking forward to this one - the hosts really do their homework :) | Bitcoin |
How would you explain bitcoin to your grandma? | I've tried talking to people about bitcoin but often come up short when explaining what it is in laymens terms.
So, your grandma is presumably the least technically literate person you know... how would you go about having her understand what exactly a bitcoin is, and what gives it perceived value?
Analogies is what comes to mind, but which ones work best with something that is perceived as being so sophisticated? | Explaining **how** bitcoin works isn't possible to someone who doesn't understand basic cryptography without using enough analogies to dilute their actual knowledge gained, thus it's best to just explain what Bitcoin is: an internet currency with no organization backing it. | Bitcoin |
Technological Jailbreak: Bitcoin to Namecoin | null | So its basically using the bitcoin system? Domain names are analogous to bitcoins? I dont get it. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin Weekly - The Wasted Electricity Objection to Bitcoin, Part II | null | I don't see any way to create a sound currency that is not based on something scarce. If there were no shortage of anything, we would not even need money. Money is useful as a medium for exchanging one scarce thing for another, or for storing value to be used for future exchange.
Bits in computer systems are not scarce. To make a particular combination of bits scarce (immune to counterfeiting), an algorithm is needed that involves the use of a significant amount of some physical resource. The bitcoin hashing algorithm requires so much computation that a significant amount of hardware and electricity use is needed, which trace back to limited resources such as the oil used to generate electricity.
So, it is no more wasteful and no less necessary to consume resources to generate bitcoins than to mine and refine gold or silver for coins. And in both cases, the process can be viewed as less wasteful if the coin creation process has side benefits. Generating a bitcoin can help heat a house in a cold climate, and the nearly pure gold or silver in coins can readily be used in many manufacturing processes. | Bitcoin |
/r/Bitcoin Donations | Who owns the address in the sidebar? How much has it brought in? What are donations used for? What else *should* they be used for? | LOL a free subreddit needing donation?
What about handing out free bitcoins to Reddit members, like bitcoin faucet? | Bitcoin |
Founder of Pirate Party Sweden: Why I’m Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin | null | All he can borrow? Fool. | Bitcoin |
I'm guessing bitcoin would fall under this category right? Of course if it was traceable. | null | undoubtedly | Bitcoin |
Investing in Bitcoins | Hi, I live in Ireland. As part of the eurozone, and due to past policies, there seems to be a very real threat of a change in our currencies usefulness. Whether through a Greek default followed by an Irish one, or a collapse of the ECB. Lots of analysts talk of investing in gold or silver, but these are quite useless from a practical point of view (I would own nothing tangible - it would just be a company bond). I don't have a lot of money but was thinking of putting maybe 3000 euro in bitcoin. Would this be as safe or wise as gold/silver? What would be the best way to buy? (mtgox dark pool? Normal?) | It is very risky. Gold and silver won't lose their value greatly, where bitcoin could. The payoff if bitcoin gets big is huge though. In the past 14 months, Bitcoin has 1000x it's worth. I say if you are young, go for it. If not, put your money in gold and silver. | Bitcoin |
bitmunchies.com - buy food with BitCoins | null | Needs to lose the forced account creation. That's a rookie mistake. | Bitcoin |
DeepBit under a DDoS attack | null | Well this blows... | Bitcoin |
Can anyone provide a code analysis of the BitCoin client, specifically what it's doing with SHA 256 and nonces? | I'm looking at the GuiMiner code, just trying to find out what exactly we are doing here. Mind you, I am a bit weak in cryptography, but what I am looking for is this: what inputs go into the generating function, and what comes out, and how do we know whether or not it's what we are looking for?
I think I've found the function here (line 298, BitcoinMiner.py):
noncesLeft = self.hashspace
data = np.array(unpack('IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII', work['data'][128:].decode('hex')), dtype=np.uint32)
state = np.array(unpack('IIIIIIII', work['midstate'].decode('hex')), dtype=np.uint32)
target = np.array(unpack('IIIIIIII', work['target'].decode('hex')), dtype=np.uint32)
state2 = partial(state, data, f)
self.miner.search( queue, (globalThreads, ), (self.worksize, ),
state[0], state[1], state[2], state[3], state[4], state[5], state[6], state[7],
state2[1], state2[2], state2[3], state2[5], state2[6], state2[7],
pack('I', base),
f[0], f[1], f[2], f[3], f[4], f[5], f[6], f[7],
output_buf)
cl.enqueue_read_buffer(queue, output_buf, output)
noncesLeft -= globalThreads
threadsRunPace += globalThreads
threadsRun += globalThreads
base = uint32(base + globalThreads)
I'll pay 0.5 BTC to the first person who can adequately explain (to my satisfaction i.e. I may ask for more explanation on various points), in 3 different ways, how and why this works. I know how much a pain it is to work through a third-party's code, and like to offer some reward for putting up with what will likely be some of the dumber questions asked in this subreddit in quite some time. Assume that I am interested in writing a client in another language, and barely speak Python (which is part of the problem). And I am primarily interested in the calculations of BitCoins...the front end and communication with the server is secondary (because I need to test whether porting it to another language is worth it).
Yes, I've tried Google, but I seem to be getting snippets of how the algorithm works. What are we calculating, how are we calculating it, what do nonces have to do with it, and how do we know it's valid?
And yes, while it is possible this post may belong more in BitMarket than Bitcoin because of the reward, I think it's better placed here in BitCoin where people are trying to learn how it all works.
Thank You. | So we have a block. hash(candidate_block) == something, but this doesn't prove we did a significant amount of work. But if everybody agrees on some value called target, then we can try to see if hash(candidate_block + nonce) < target, starting with nonce = 0 and increasing until the hash is < target. When we finally find a value for the nonce that satisfies this we broadcast the candidate_block, which contains the nonce. Everybody else can easily verify that hash < target. Obviously as the target value decreases it takes more and more work on average to find a nonce that satisfies this. Note that everybody's candidate blocks are different because they try to pay 50 coins to their own address. So the nonce might be 123456789 for you and 987654321 for me. As long as everybody agrees on the rules that choose the target value and the structure of the block on so forth then the integrity of the system is preserved. | Bitcoin |
worthwhile mining with an old-ass computer? | I'm on a 2006 ibook g4 (ppc) running Ubuntu. Is it worthwhile tackling the steep (to me) learning curve to start mining? Or could I expect to earn like 1BTC per year? | The cost of electricity is negligible and you wouldn't generate enough to overcome it, that should give you an idea of how little you would make. Even if you had a modern CPU it wouldn't be worth it. My i5 quadcore running at 2.8ghz gets 4-5mh/s. My dual gtx 460's get a combined 100mh/s which equates to less than .5btc per day. That means my CPU would generate .1btc per day and your ibook would generate only a fraction of that. | Bitcoin |
Forum or Reddit? | Sooooooo Bitcoin people
If I have a related question where should I post it? [Bitcoin forum](http://forum.bitcoin.org/) or [this subreddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/)? I am split. | I havent posted anything to the forum yet. That's why I'm asking. Im pretty well established here though, but the forums might get more exposure to people who care about bitcoins...i think. | Bitcoin |
BitCard follow up | Hey. Remember [this](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/him0f/bitcoin_debit_co/) link I posted? Well I visualized the card. Sort of like concept art. It's far from finished. I still need to add a back and signify that it uses the QR code system. What do you think?
[BitCard](http://i.imgur.com/AEhMc.jpg)
EDIT: YES this system, if it comes a reality, will not follow the standard credit card system standards. However, I am thinking that the protocols etc. should be open sourced so that anyone can make their own company/system if they so desire.
EDIT 2: The back of the card will just contain some info about the debit company and a QR code for the card, **NOT the bitcoin private key.** I dont get why everyone associates QR with private keys. for security, the QR code alone will not incur charges on a card. It needs that plus a security code, which are the last 4 digits of the card number.
EDIT 3: **THIS IS A CONCEPT IDEA. NOTHING IS REAL YET. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN WORKING ON THIS IDEA, FEEL FREE TO DO SO BUT PLEASE PM ME** | I think you're missing some basic features and the mechanism behind bitcoin transfers. a QR code could only hold the public and private key and once you sent the public and private key you wouldn't be able to use them again rendering the card useless. See [bitbills](http://bitbills.com/)
PS a photoshop mockup is not a proof of concept. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin Weekly - One apple today, two apples tomorrow, OR: How I stopped being afraid, and learned to love Deflation | null | When deflation becomes the norm, people will simply stop eating, living in buildings or consuming at all because people are timeless, purely rational economic beings.
Citation: consumer credit markets | Bitcoin |
If bitcoin is widely adopted, what do you think is the most likely result? | Presumably changing the currency would have large effects on the economic and political order of the world, what do you think those would be?
EDIT: Well, that's a few bits and pieces, but nobody's even guessing at a full prediction, which may make it easy to avoid difficult questions. | The most likely outcome would be for government to directly or effectively outlaw bitcoin or any similar system. To challenge the fiat currency system is to directly challenge the power of the government. | Bitcoin |
"Virtual Inflation" - A short column about Bitcoin in the New York Times (scroll down) | null | *deflation | Bitcoin |
Neuroscientists say: Bitcoin and religion light up the same part of the brain. True story. | null | fakenews.witcoin.com
Seems legit. | Bitcoin |
Timing when finding a block | What happens if 2+ users find a solution of the same block on the same time?
How will the coins be distributed? | They toss a coin ? | Bitcoin |
Security Now 302 (Update on bitcoin discussion) | null | They messed up. They said the guy on TwiST said bitcoin are the worst idea ever, when he actually said they are the most dangerous, as in it could rule the economy. | Bitcoin |
Could Bitcoin Revolutionize Online Poker? | null | My magazine also have an article about [Bitcoin Poker](http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/bitcoin-poker). | Bitcoin |
Brainstorm: Bitcoin without electricity | I was thinking of a cell phone client that would make a ad-hoc connection to another phone to transfer bitcoins without the rest of the network. Is is possible? What sort of problems or vulnerabilities would it have? | Without outside confirmation you'd be vulnerable to double-spending. There's a reason you have to wait for confirmations to consider a transaction confirmed. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin will succeed because of porn. | It occurred me today that Bitcoin is perfect for internet porn. If a producer accepts Bitcoins, they don't have to worry about keeping credit card companies happy, it's harder to get shut down by a government, and customer privacy is greatly improved. Do you think that porn could do for Bitcoin the same thing it did for VHS, DVD, and the internet? | Yes, there's already a number of porn site in the bitcoin economy. | Bitcoin |
Visualization of the activities at a Bitcoin node (with new design) | null | It makes me think, because transactions are free, can anyone just create two accounts and do a lot of transactions between them, to attack the bitcoin system?
In the current version of the client everyone has to store all blocks containing info about all transactions, and that data takes already over 200MB on hard drive. | Bitcoin |
An anonymous domain registrar that accepts BTC: Awesome? | null | this could very well be a scam for you to pay them to buy the domain name you wanted only for them to resell it back to you if you actually want to use it. | Bitcoin |
Anonymous vs. Bitcoin. Round one. Fight! | null | That's just sad. [Nothing's even been done with that address.](http://blockexplorer.com/address/1CXdem12MM6mYCCN5q6kXBjAaV3oNw9bbq) | Bitcoin |
Will work for bitcoins | Hi,
I like the idea of bitcoins and even though I don't know much about it, I like what I have read so far. I have a pretty old graphics card (nvidia 9600) so mining is out of the question.
I would like to be in community and work with bitcions, so here I am - I am willing to work for bitcoins :) I can do whatever a monkey can do and I can do programming.
I also invite everybody else to write here if they're on the same boat as me, just with other qualifications and want to work for bitcoins.
I'm here - use me! | I'm a Code monkey for hire. I Know VB dot NET!!! I can make a GUI interface to keep track of IP addresses. | Bitcoin |
Let's kill Bitcoin with a serious attack scenario | I love the idea of Bitcoin, but if it's going to fail we want it to fail early not later when a lot of people might get hurt. So just as a scientific theory should withstand a serious attempt at falsifying it we should take a very hard look at Bitcoin.
If a major bank or a few banks/governments etc. felt their next decade of profits was really threatened I think a a billion dollars might not be out of the question as a budget for attacking. So, let's think about how Bitcoin might respond to a serious attack.
For example, buy up a lot of bitcoins, creating a price bubble. Make some large sales, bursting the bubble. Flood the network with valid and fake transactions (sending them back to yourself) as a DDOS attack timed to begin just after a difficulty update. So far I've seen the argument that an attacker would have to spend real money as transaction fees to make an attack. But if we have many millions to spare than we can create millions of fake and valid transactions. Fake transactions would be designed to take the longest amount of time possible to determine that they are invalid before they could be rejected.
The average Joe and Jane will be unlikely to get a transaction through and the blockchain of "valid" transactions will balloon alarmingly. As the core developers try to respond quickly with code changes attacks on github, mailing lists, etc. could reduce their effectiveness. It's easy to get a bit paranoid and imagine some "sleeper agent" developers who have appeared trustworthy in the past but then in response to an attack propose subtly incorrect countermeasures. With many thousands of nodes mining away it could take days or weeks to get a workable software update deployed (if an effective one can be found at all). The average user might see a week go by with none of their transactions being processed
Confidence in Bitcoin would crash and quite likely not be recovered. Thousands of nodes might stop mining due to the loss of confidence, and the attacking group could jettison many nodes (or leave them in place sending confusion bogus messages but not creating genuine blocks). The network hashrate would plunge so that even if everything was working normally it might take a month for the next difficulty adjustment to be reached. And if recovery is achieved the next similar "zero-day" attack begins, crushing confidence even further.
Okay then, enough of my rambling. If we are five years down the road how might this play out with a billion dollar attack? | The DDOS attack against bitcoin would not be as the attack to a webpage. By bitcoin DDOS attack he/she means a flood of transactions that the p2p network has to handle and store. | Bitcoin |
A new site to find people buying and selling bitcoins for cash near you | null | This is pretty simple, I like it! | Bitcoin |
Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining Bitcoins | null | Mining is not wasted because it contributes directly to the resistanve of the network to attack. If the total network output is say 1Thash/sec, then an attacker needs to control 500Ghash/sec to have the ability to do many attacks. If the entire network conspires to run at only 1% capacity, in order to save on electrical costs, then this means that the magic numberfor hacking drops to 5GHash/sec. | Bitcoin |
Mining Screensaver [open source update] | I made a screensaver for bitcoin mining (and any other command line programs) [here](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/hfknc/mining_screensaver_sort_of/) a couple weeks ago, but a lot of people were wary of a closed-source program from an anonymous guy. So I've open-sourced it! This is my first open source project so I'm a bit nervous, but hopefully it will let you guys check it out without fear.
Please let me know of any bugs or suggestions. One guy in the previous thread said he had trouble when the screen saver couldn't find a program, but I couldn't reproduce his issues and he hasn't responded yet.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29782458/CommandSaver.zip | With this, your computer will start mining automatically whenever you're not using it, and stop when you come back. Of course, that would be silly for dedicated rigs, but I thought it would be helpful to "casual" miners who also use their computer for other stuff. | Bitcoin |
(Looks down at hand) Remind me again what the difficulty level is currently set to? | The current round at BitCoin pool has been going on for over 19 hours at this point. That no one has gotten lucky in all this time is kind of interesting. | Why are you looking at your hand? | Bitcoin |
Can I set poclbm to not use my gpu at 100% | Last night I got poclbm running on Windows 7 (I still have problems running it on ubuntu) and it produced a reasonable (According to the wiki list) ~80Mhash/s but the card is obviously running at full.
After leaving it on for about an hour, I checked its temperature on ati catalyst and it read 105C (which doesn't sound safe, though I couldnt locate any info on what would be a safe temperature limit, it runs at about 60C when "idle").
This whole thing prevents me from running it all the time as I'm scared the card will be damaged AND the noise is insufferable (no way I can leave it on during the nigh and sleep), so is there a way to set a threshold for the miner? (I couldn't find anything on that with a quick google)
Alternatively, is it 100% safe to let the card run at full and reach such high temperatures (at least I can let it work while I am away) | add -f to your poclbm parameters
using something like -f 700 will reduce it to about 33% load, while -f 200 reduces it to about 70% load. | Bitcoin |
Keiser Report: Jon Matonis on BitCoin vs central bankers | null | Awesome!
I like the number of different analogies that Matonis uses. My favorite is "scrunching up a casino chip or dollar bill and shooting it down the internet tubes" [sic].
Now that is something my parents can understand... however ridiculous it sounds to me. | Bitcoin |
Der Spiegel covers Bitcoin [German] | null | The more, the merrier!
On a site note, r/Bitcoin has grown by approximately 71 readers in just 24 hours. Not bad guys, keep telling your friends!
[Here is the translated version if anyone is interested.](http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,765382,00.html&usg=ALkJrhjVMNWGS1vqV4Ka4WfbBxoqX3KciQ) | Bitcoin |
Why are half of the links dead on BITCOIN.ORG? | null | Yea shit... that's bad. First one I clicked was a dud. Somebody contact Gavin in the forums.
***EDIT***: There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it.
Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did.
Somebody got angry (about that) because it was Everybody's job.
Everybody knew that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Somebody wouldn't do it.
And Everybody blamed Somebody because Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
TL;DR I contacted him. | Bitcoin |
Why doesn't r/Bitcoin pay reddit.com for some cheap ad space? | Last I checked they only want something like $20/day for advertising. Not sure exactly what it will get you.
We could do it collectively, or it might be funnier if we all went out individually, spent $20, and tried to draw up our own bitcoin advertisements in paint/photoshop/whatever we could get ahold of?
Just an idea... as I see many "reddit ads" for different sub-reddits and click on them frequently. | because nobody has donated anything to /r/Bitcoin yet.
http://blockexplorer.com/address/1KSDXrsgiQ5mdd7Cg9MMQRnzNgiFm4BiAf | Bitcoin |
Thoughts on some of these arguments from XKCD forums? | null | I couldn't get past the first couple of posts, the level of ignorance is just too high. | Bitcoin |
Buy Belgian beer, chocolate and candy with bitcoins on belgianflavours.com | null | We've started with a basic offering of the best known Belgian goods. If you feel like anything is missing, don't hesitate to contact us. (We do not have "Westvleteren beer", though. It's very hard to get)
Bitcoin is the default currency when following this link, but you can choose USD, GBP and EUR too. | Bitcoin |
Embeddable bitcoin miner for websites (your visitors mine bitcoin for you) | null | I don't see how this will become popular... once people realize they are being used, or that their CPU is hogged down by your website, you will loose audience.
I would be pissed to find out this type of application is embbeded into a webpage I visit. | Bitcoin |
I'm curious... are loans really possible with Bitcoins, a P2P global anonymous currency? | Given the P2P nature of Bitcoin, there is no government or central authority to regulate it. This means, if you lend bitcoins to someone, you will be easily lending cash to some potentially (and truly) anonymous endpoint. When we lend from the bank, there is an entire government, a constitution, laws, contracts, etc... with the authority to hunt you down, sieze your property or even put you in jail for not paying back.
But when you deal in bitcoins... there's no garantee that anyone will EVER pay you back. And when they don't, who you gonna call? It would take governments all over the world to finally consolidate and declare international treaties to deal with these type of criminals... which is, by the way, a COMPLETE UTOPIA.
I wonder if it will ever be possible to rely on anyone for a loan. | creditors even today don't loan to people they don't know and who don't put forward collateral | Bitcoin |
The Official r/Bitcoin Advertisement Fund and Campaign. | As you can tell, we have a lovely Bitcoin address on the right sidebar. All donations sent to this address will go towards a Bitcoin ad campaign on Reddit.
However, we require one thing: ad designs. So, we request that members post some nice submissions. A de-facto commission of .25 (or reasonable equivalent) BTC will come from the community fund towards accepted ads. Of course, post an address if you want some additional tips.
So, let's get cracking and inform Reddit/the world beyond about Bitcoin.
Details:
A basic ad consists of a header post in the guise of a regular submission. The header image can be no larger than 70 x 70 pixels.
As for serious ads, look at the lower right for examples.
**Most of all, don't forget to vote for the submissions you like the most.**
End Date for Submissions: 6/10/2011 | Here's a simple logo/ad. I'm not a designer, but it's [basic and clean](http://plasmator.net/r_bitcoin.jpg)
I'm not above asking for tips. Send here: 1G5kvbP33mMwgtSTHpwAJe86xWKBwUHSV4 | Bitcoin |
Discussion about government intervention of Bitcoin | The bitcoin network is p2p and therefore a government can not do much about the wallet-to-wallet transactions. This alone tells me there is a future for p2p currency in the long term. In the short term, what worries me is that the trading sites might be audited for allowing people to profit without paying taxes on their income. If the trading sites need to manage user data in this way, their fees will increase (or sites could close) and will make bitcoin unattractive in much the same way Paypal is. Sites could also be brought down other reasons. If Mt Gox were to go down in this way, I think the value would decrease rapidly on other markets.Did I miss a discussion on this, or this even a valid concern?
tl;dr Gov can't kill p2p network but can kill trading sites. Ideas? | They can (mostly) effectively embargo bitcoins from any legitimate use. It would become totally black market to trade in BC. Wouldn't kill bitcoin, but would make it more or less castrated. Despite the fact that I am a huge bitcoin fan, I believe that at least some governments, including the USA, will ban it within a couple years. | Bitcoin |
Out of coins? That doesn't seem right... | null | Yeah, not quite sure what that is about...? | Bitcoin |
Is there any demand for a MtGox iPhone Application? | I'm an iPhone developer and I've created a prototype version of an application to trade on MtGox featuring a graph of the price over the last 24 hours, all the ticker data, and the ability to view/delete/place orders on the exchange.
I'm not sure if I should release it or just keep it for myself, as bitcoin and MtGox especially are kind of a niche market. So, is anyone actually interested in something like this?
Edit: remember, this is not for manipulating your bitcoin wallet, it is just for the MtGox exchange | I'd love to try it out! If you get enough interest, check out [TestFlight](https://testflightapp.com/). | Bitcoin |
Buy and Sell Bitcoin locally with BTCNearMe. Everybody should sign up for this. | null | Practically useless without the ability to specify country, no? | Bitcoin |
I'm not sure if this would work, but can't we try to use the miners work for humanity? | I know it kind of goes against the system, but couldn't we replace the kind of useless work of the computers the miners use with BOINC or something similar, a software that does decentralized computing to cure cancer or other philantrophic scientific goals. Couldn't their server give the miner upon completing a task, like calculating the unfolding of a protein the Bitcoin data? It seem like that could change our world for the better. Alot.
**tl;dr:** Lets use the wasted energy of miners for humanity! | Solution: I power my miner with a wind turbine and I also sell carbon credits. | Bitcoin |
The problem with BitCoins | Yes - anonymous, untrackable, can't be shutdown.
Except, until you can pay your utilities, rent, and groceries in Bitcoins, they are severely limited. As it stands now, if I get paid in Bitcoins, and I want to cash them out so I can pay my cable bill, unless I meet someone and exchange hard cash, I have to go through an online banking system.
Whether it's a dude with a Paypal account (which can be frozen), or cashing out with a merchant id (which can be frozen) or someone doing wire transfers (which can be frozen), or going through an intermediate banking site (which can be frozen) - it's incredibly easy for the government to stop this currency.
The hard part isn't that they are new and almost worthless currently, it's that they can be stopped when laws are made demanding Buisness not accept this currency, or governments start targeting it - defeating the entire purpose for this coin system. | The problem with BitCoins - I can't get ino them and fly to the moon. They are therefore worthless. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin is not decentralized | null | I downvoted this for the retarded title given by the original author.
The actual article mentions many times, that bitcoin is in fact decentralised so why choose a title with the totally opposite conclusion?
| Bitcoin |
I could be a millionaire right now... | Damn. I just learned about bitcoin yesterday. In the early days you could easily mine a lot of those, practically for free. If i had mined like 1000 bitcoins in 2009 and held on to them i would be a millionaire right now. Again, damn. | I think you accidentally a math. | Bitcoin |
Large German lobby organization supports ban on Bitcoins | null | German: http://www.bvdw.org/medien/bvdw-warnt-verbraucher-und-haendler-vor-bitcoins-als-zahlungsmittel?media=3006
English: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bvdw.org%2Fmedien%2Fbvdw-warnt-verbraucher-und-haendler-vor-bitcoins-als-zahlungsmittel%3Fmedia%3D3006 | Bitcoin |
Receiving coins creates new address? | How come when ever you get coins it will make a new address? | It is a feature of the client, it creates a new address each time you receive a payment. Your old address still works and is stored in your client. | Bitcoin |
Man pays 50 bitcoins for 100 micrograms of acid using Silk Road | null | Damn that's overpriced....according to current BTC valuation anyways. A year ago it would be about right. | Bitcoin |
China discovers Bitcoin | Up until recently, [Google searches for 'bitcoin'](http://www.google.com/trends?q=bitcoin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0) have been dominated by 'Caucasian' countries (check the 12-month trend).
Recently, China has arrived on the scene in a big way. This is huge step for bitcoin, IMO.
Bitcoin: Not just for paranoid white dudes anymore! :)
| Agreed. I bet they'd have more use for it than the rest of us! | Bitcoin |
Reason.tv: Bitcoin and the end of state-controlled money | null | thanks for skipping the intro! | Bitcoin |
The challenge of paying with Bitcoin. | Given that Bitcoin is an seen as an alternative to cash, I think one area of focus should be making it easier to transfer Bitcoin on the run.
How would you use Bitcoin to pay for items at a convenience store? Perhaps with your smartphone... but the store would have its own Bitcoin address that you'd have to somehow enter into your phone. How could the process of entering in that long address be made simpler? Can existing tap-&-pay technologies be used?
It seems like there should be a simple solution... but I'm not an app developer. And maybe this has already been explored, if so - forgive me, I'm new. | Using NFC tap and pay with a cell phone is totally possible. And i think it would be possible to create a debit card like solution, the card would have its public key printed on the front (so that you could send money to it) and the private key would be inside the mag strip on the back, you would slide it through the reader which would pull up the balance of the card and transfer the correct amount to the seller. Of course such a system would need to be carefully designed as it could store your private key and have access to any coins you put onto the card in the future. | Bitcoin |
when i GPU mine, my Nvidea quadro 4000 runs at 91 Celcius. should I be worried about that? | null | My 5870 runs at 80 and everything is stable but 91 seems a bit too high for comfort. You may want to get an after market cooler, better case cooling or water cooling.
Just wondering what kind of hash rate are you getting? | Bitcoin |
BitCoin is it worth the investment? | I just found out about this today i have been reading up on it all day, i get how it works now sort of. I am from Ireland, i am only 18 and was think on investing small amount of money in bitcoin 200 euro, is it worth it or should i just keep my money in the bank? | 1. Read up on the technical specs behind the protocol, make sure you have faith in the technology.
2. Think about whether or not you see this technology being widely used in the future (a good-sized minimum comparison would be Paypal).
3. Ask yourself what will happen when the US government makes it illegal, will your country follow suit?
4. (Most important) Only invest the amount you are prepared to lose 100%. A failure at any of those three points could make a Bitcoin virtually worthless while you sleep.
If you're okay with the above, my all means invest! | Bitcoin |
I have a legally questionable item I would like to sell. Where can I put it up for auction? | BiddingPond.com asks for too much personal information. The item is just a modded ps3 with some questionably obtained games, so it's not that high profile, but I'm a little paranoid so I'm not comfortable giving everything away. Suggestions? | No. They just banned guns and prostitution. Electronics and digital services and etc. are still valid for the Silk Road. | Bitcoin |
The Time is Now for Bitcoin Startups | null | I started up my exchange a couple days ago. Bitcoinredemption.com (Bitcoins for products on Newegg and other online stores) | Bitcoin |
If I have two open orders with the same balance, when I receive bitcoins, for which order is it? | Lets say I'm selling widgets on an online store. Two separate customers checkout orders and they both turn out to be, 7.111 bitcoins. One customer never sends bitcoins, the other sends 7.111 to my address. You cannot send a note along with bitcoins so when I receive them how do I know which customer it was? | You create a new address for every buyer, for every transaction. | Bitcoin |
How do you get the bitcoins out of these things? | null | Shake them? | Bitcoin |
New graphics card in an older computer? | Hello all,
I have an older computer, not sure the exact specs Ill go look if people say its important, but for reference it has XP on it, if i had to guess its 5-7 years old
I don't know a lot of graphics cards, can new cards go in older machines? Will performance be compromised? Anything else I should be asking?
Thanks | I assume you want this card for bitcoin mining since you posted in r/bitcoin.
If your machine has the correct plug for the video card, then it should work fine. You just need to check whether your mother board has a PCIe x16 slot, and you will be in good shape. (You can use slower PCIe slots, but will need to bit of physical modification to make the plug fit.) Having a slow processor, or not very much RAM shouldn't have any significant effect on your ability to mine.
Couple other probably-not-important-things to keep in mind:
Dual GPU cards (e.g. ATI 6990) are big, make sure they will fit in your case if you are looking at these.
Make sure your power supply has enough extra power to run your card. | Bitcoin |
A question about the scalability of bitcoins. | If I remember correctly only about 21 million bitcoins will ever be made. The current world population is around 7 billion. How can this ever become a world currency if there's not enough to go around? Maybe I'm just not understanding it right, someone please explain this to me. | The currency is divisible up to 8 decimal places. More if bitcoin is modified further.
The real scalability comes in with the number of potential transactions that can happen in a 10 minute period. That is when things get a bit more problematic. | Bitcoin |
Is Bitcoin $10 USD yet? | null | almost 14$ per coin on ebay. | Bitcoin |
Mining question - internet cafe | Hi I'm pretty new to bitcoin
My buddy runs an internet cafe.
Would it be worth putting mining software on the 20 or so computers in his establishment.
Can anyone recommended lightweight software for doing this?
What kind of return could he expect?
Thanks for your patience with a newb and any advice
| Only if it's a gaming type internet cafe and only if the computers have ATI cards that are 57xx or higher | Bitcoin |
A snapshot of the current market depth of BTC. What's your insight? | null | Disregard $, acquire BTC! | Bitcoin |
Trouble installing a second graphic card on ubuntu. | Everything is working fine with a 5850 alone, but if I add my second card (5770) to the same board, the screen just stays black.
If I switch the monitor from the 5850 to the 5770 ubuntu will launch but xserver fails to start, leaving only console mode.
Any ideas? | ...wrong subreddit? | Bitcoin |
What is the GPU power used for? | I'm familiar with distributed computing (folding@home, etc) but I've always been aware of their targeted goals, what is the GPU power from bitcoin mining used for, or is it just wasted? I would like to know before I spend the time getting my rig mining. | They're putting a global list of all bitcoin transactions in a certain order that everyone agrees on, so if anyone double-spends a coin, everyone knows who got it first (and thus gets to keep it).
They're doing that by making a chain of hashed transaction blocks. Specifically, they try out a bunch of random numbers such that hash(transactionBlock + previousHash + randomNumber) starts with a specified number of zeros. An attacker wishing to subvert the transaction history would have to redo a whole lot of computation.
In exchange for doing this work, anyone who successfully completes a block gets to award himself some bitcoins. The new bitcoins are part of the transaction block.
For more details, see the [bitcoin paper](http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf). | Bitcoin |
We need a currency symbol for Bitcoin | The dollar has $, the yen has ¥, the pound has £.
So what's Bitcoin's symbol? | B with a vertical line. | Bitcoin |
I've been generating coins for several days, yet I have a 0.00 balance. What gives? | Thinking it may be a firewall problem, yesterday I opened up TCP 8333 to the host generating the coins to no avail. I'm using the default settings, generating ~3500 hashes/sec with ~3-8 continuous connections; zero transactions. TIA! | Check out /r/mtred and https://mtred.com/site/page/view/about.html for a good option.
I chose to buy bitcoin directly instead of investing in mining hardware. | Bitcoin |
BC to Paypal? | anybody interested? or how would it work | Not to mention that Paypal recently changed their stance to recognize BTC as a currency, and are now cancelling people's accounts over it if they catch wind that you traded BTC via Paypal.
Source: http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=2555.msg101084#msg101084 | Bitcoin |
New high: 1 Bitcoin = $10.57 USD | It not only broke $10, it shot past the mark.
This is a milestone moment. | What is the volume? Also isn't the dollar getting weaker? | Bitcoin |
Al Jazeera journalist writing article on Bitcoin - looking for info/NYC users | null | I should point out I'm not the journalist in question, I just saw the request and thought it worth passing on. | Bitcoin |