Too late to become a bitcoin millionaire?

[lkn]

4 minutes ago, SmartJoe said:

Dont speak about what you dont understand […]

Another post that just belittles me without pointing out a single factual error in anything I have written so far.

 

While a misuse of power by a majority of miners will most certainly result in two blockchains, exactly what will then happen is unknown, and whether or not it was misuse of power is in the eye of the beholder, for example which side did you take in the Ethereum fork? The one that reversed past transactions? Because that seems to have been the winner, yet that goes against the “no-one can touch it”, as is what I was originally replying to, when you made that claim.

 

[lkn]

1 hour ago, lkn said:

While a misuse of power by a majority of miners will most certainly result in two blockchains […]

What I had in mind when I wrote this was miners who changed the rules, for example rewarding themselves more than the agreed upon amount for mining a block. Such block would be considered invalid by other miners, and (hopefully) they would reject these blocks, hence we would get a fork.

 

However, a scenario that I did not consider is that majority of miners decide to ignore transactions from a certain person/organization (address) or maybe above a certain amount, so they will keep appending valid blocks to the block chain, they will just ensure that these do not include transactions that they do not like, and if a block from a minority miner includes a blacklisted transaction, they will ignore that block, and due to faster computation from this colluding entity, they will render the block orphaned.

 

For a larger entity, like the U.S. government, it would not be a challenge to get majority control, as there are only about 6,000 bitcoin miners.

[SmartJoe]

yes and...?  Lets admit they can take, without the news be known, control of 3000 miners mostly in foreign countries.... and what they destroy it ? 

as soon as known it needs just a fork and the governement has paid hundred billions to take control of a network worthless and forked by the community in a brand new blockchain. They are going to pay again to take control of it ? Please... stop fantasy

[lkn]

22 minutes ago, SmartJoe said:

Lets admit they can take, without the news be known, control of 3000 miners mostly in foreign countries.... and what they destroy it ?

No, you do not need to take physical control over other people’s equipment to perform a 51% attack on the blockchain.

 

I am honestly flabbergasted by your comment. Beyond the price graph, what do you actually know about the fundamentals of bitcoin? I ask as someone you previously told should not speak of what he did not know.

 

 

[chingching]

22 minutes ago, lkn said:

 

For a larger entity, like the U.S. government, it would not be a challenge to get majority control, as there are only about 6,000 bitcoin miners.

You are confusing miners and nodes,  there are about 5000 nodes, and the number is decreasing yearly,   This is because to run a node you must have a full copy of the blockchain on your computer. As the blockchain grows ever larger fewer people have the resources or desire to dedicate large portions of their hardware to run a full node.

As a full node you will verify blocks ( which are received from the miners. ) Blocks can contain many transactions and are verified at the rate of one every 10 minutes. Usually your transaction to be accepted requires 3 confirmations, thus 3x10 or about 30 minutes.  You share information with the other nodes.,

Each block can contain many transactions.  Because blocks are now limited to 1MB, they are usually very full,  or even too full to contain all the waiting transactions. Thus the scaling debate.  

Miners are the people that make blocks, they take transactions, and do some computations and bundle them together.  They then have to find a random number that will solve the cryptographic puzzle that will release the block.  The first miner to do this wins the block reward, about 12 bitcoins. They also get the mining fees , which is a fee charged on each transaction.

 This is a very heavy load computationally, so the odds of a single miner winning a block are extremely slim -  So the miners usually join pools where their computer's power is linked to others in the pool.  Then they have a chance of winning a block, and they get rewarded in proportion to the amount of computer ( hashing ) power they contribute.  Presently about 6 pools control more than 50% of the mining power.  Since no one knows how many people are in each pool, the number of miners is unknown.  The bigger pools are not usually a bunch of individual miners, but one guy who has a big warehouse filled with computers.  Thus the worry of bitcoin becoming un-decentralized.

[SmartJoe]

Yes and you have to physically buy or access the hardware to have 51%  mining power 

 

 

[speedtripler]

4 hours ago, lkn said:

Another post that just belittles me without pointing out a single factual error in anything I have written so far.

 

 

 

you belittle yourself by posting a barrage of misinformation to people who actually know what theyre talking about .....

THE DAO HACK was totally unrelated to bitcoin ....happened to a differnt currency ,on another blockchain ,entirely seperate ecosystem 

 

Some samsung phones had dangerous batch of batteries before 

I suppose that would stop you getting a smartphone from apple ??

same logic ,or lack thereoff ........

[lkn]

1 hour ago, speedtripler said:

THE DAO HACK was totally unrelated to bitcoin ....happened to a differnt currency ,on another blockchain ,entirely seperate ecosystem 

The argument was that Bitcoin can’t be touched, I said that sure it can, if a majority decides to change the rules, the rules will be changed, and this is exactly what has already happened for Ethereum after the DAO Hack where a majority decided to reverse transactions! I brought it up as proof-of-concept that despite what you may think, there is no guarantee that the rules governing the blockchain today are the same in a year, and new rules can effectively give new interpretations to existing blocks, effectively rewriting history.

 

As for your phone analogy, it would basically be you saying that there is no way for your phone’s lithium-ion battery to explode, and me pointing to how Samsung phones have exploded, but you then saying I have no idea what I am talking about, because you do not have a Samsung phone.

 

Anyway, I find yours and SmartJoe’s comments very telling, in that you are repeatedly just telling me how little I know and how stupid I am, yet neither of you guys have demonstrated any actual knowledge about how cryptocurrencies work.

[speedtripler]

30 minutes ago, lkn said:

The argument was that Bitcoin can’t be touched, I said that sure it can, if a majority decides to change the rules, the rules will be changed, and this is exactly what has already happened for Ethereum after the DAO Hack where a majority decided to reverse transactions! I brought it up as proof-of-concept that despite what you may think, there is no guarantee that the rules governing the blockchain today are the same in a year, and new rules can effectively give new interpretations to existing blocks, effectively rewriting history.

 

As for your phone analogy, it would basically be you saying that there is no way for your phone’s lithium-ion battery to explode, and me pointing to how Samsung phones have exploded, but you then saying I have no idea what I am talking about, because you do not have a Samsung phone.

 

Anyway, I find yours and SmartJoe’s comments very telling, in that you are repeatedly just telling me how little I know and how stupid I am, yet neither of you guys have demonstrated any actual knowledge about how cryptocurrencies work.

Youre making cringeworthy statements repeatedly 

about subjects that are obviously  way over your head 

to people who have taken the time to understand what 

you seem to be incapable of ...

maybe start here...+ a few more years of reading and youl be up to speed with the rest of us (hopefully)

 

 

 

[chingching]

4 hours ago, lkn said:

Anyway, I find yours and SmartJoe’s comments very telling, in that you are repeatedly just telling me how little I know and how stupid I am, yet neither of you guys have demonstrated any actual knowledge about how cryptocurrencies work.

@IKN,  IKN you gave a link to an article by coindesk to support your theories.  http://www.coindesk.com/short-guide-bitcoin-forks-explained/ perhaps you have taken this line too literally.   "Yet, there are many different types of forks, and the science of studying them is still new. So far, we know some forks resolve on their own, but others, fueled by deep rifts in a community, can cause a network to permanently split, creating two blockchain histories — and two separate currencies."

They are saying there are two histories using TODAY as the frame of reference.  But at the time of the fork  there was only one history.   Both ETH and ETC have the dao attack as part of their history,  several weeks later the community ( not unanimously ) decided to HF.  From THAT POINT onwards there are 2 histories,  one where the dao attack happens,  but he is unable to spend the money (ETH),  and two, where the dao attack happens, and no rules are changed and he keeps the money he "stole" (ETC).

 

The important point is History was NOT changed.  From today we can look back and see there is a fork in the road,  Today there is a blockchain containing all of ETH history and all of the ETC history. Both histories record the DAO attack. 

A real world , real fiat, example of a hard fork would be the American Civil War.  Before the South seceded from the United States,  there was only one national currency.  After they seceded, the South (Confederates) started printing their own money.  Had the South won the war they would not or could not have rewritten the history of the dollar. They could not have declared everyone in the North was now poor, and everyone in the South was now a millionaire.  

 

[lkn]

44 minutes ago, chingching said:

The important point is History was NOT changed.  From today we can look back and see there is a fork in the road,  Today there is a blockchain containing all of ETH history and all of the ETC history. Both histories record the DAO attack. 

As I wrote: “new rules can effectively give new interpretations to existing blocks, effectively rewriting history.”

 

So I do agree with you that the history is still there. But new rules can make it so that what you thought you had, you no longer have, even though it is there in the ledger (but the new rules make it so that you cannot spend it), this is why I said effectively rewriting history.

 

Btw: You said “to support your theories” — it’s not really a theory when it has already happened :) but the reason I brought it up was only because someone seemed to be under the impression that bitcoin was untouchable.

 

I have noticed that some people are under the impression that bitcoin is based on pure math with no politics and because it has “crypto” in the name, it is 100% safe from attacks, when in fact there is a lot of politics going on, although it’s different than the politics of a central bank, but e.g. increasing block size may mean less fees for miners (because if you fix the current delays, people are not going to pay extra to ensure their transactions go through quickly), so that is a political decision with economical consequences, likewise it could also be that at some point, it is decided that the mining reward needs to be increased, because it’s otherwise not sustainable to invest in new mining hardware, which may threaten the network in that no new miners = higher chance of existing miners gaining a majority, but increasing mining reward basically means printing more money (than what was originally planned), which could lead to inflation…

 

[chingching]

2 hours ago, lkn said:

As I wrote: “new rules can effectively give new interpretations to existing blocks, effectively rewriting history.”

 

So I do agree with you that the history is still there. But new rules can make it so that what you thought you had, you no longer have, even though it is there in the ledger (but the new rules make it so that you cannot spend it), this is why I said effectively rewriting history.

 

Well , if you stand by that statement, then i would have to agree with some others, you are ignorant or perhaps you just like arguing semantics.  Case in point, recently a plaque commemorating democracy in thailand was removed. No one knows by whom or why, but it's probably  safe to assume that they were attempting to cause people to forget the real history.  History was not changed by their act , for real, or effectively.  

The history of crypto is much simpler,  "Bob pays Alice 2.66 coins on March 1, 2012 at 15:31:06 "  You would help explain your self if you can give us some example how this could be changed,  especially the part of how Alice can not spend her 2 coins which  she received 4 years ago. and may have already spent.   

[lkn]

5 hours ago, chingching said:

Well , if you stand by that statement, then i would have to agree with some others, you are ignorant or perhaps you just like arguing semantics

I don’t see how you can agree that I am semantically correct but also ignorant — perhaps you meant a pedantic, though it is really not important to me what we call it, I already subsided on the “effectively rewriting history”. 

 

The main point of my comment was that the current implementation of bitcoin is really a set of rules that governs the currency, and that these rules are sometimes changed (e.g. the increase of the block size), and such changes have economic effects (e.g. on the fees market), so they are surrounded by lots of politics.

 

Often, and certainly in this thread, we hear one of the advantages of bitcoin is that it is free from government interference, therefore I find it interesting to shed some light on how immutable the currency actually is.

 

5 hours ago, chingching said:

The history of crypto is much simpler,  "Bob pays Alice 2.66 coins on March 1, 2012 at 15:31:06 "  You would help explain your self if you can give us some example how this could be changed,  especially the part of how Alice can not spend her 2 coins which  she received 4 years ago. and may have already spent.   

We do not disagree on the history being there, I already wrote that, and you are already familiar with what happened with ETH/ETC, so I do not understand why you want me to give you an example of what has already happened.

 

Though adding to ETH/ETC another way is if somebody gets majority control of the network, they can ignore any block that contains a transaction from Alice, thereby effectively preventing her from spending the money she received from Bob (for as long as they have majority control).

 

Based on what you wrote in post 155 this would either be done by controlling a majority of the nodes, but such abuse of power may be detected and the malign nodes might eventually get blacklisted, so a better approach would be to invest in a mining pool that produce blocks at a faster pace than the rest of the network, so you are orphaning blocks simply by building only on your own blocks.

 

Is this all theoretical and thus unimportant for day-to-day bitcoin users? Well, in this thread it has been argued that bitcoin will be worth $1m per coin, yet if somebody solves these theoretical problems, it is reasonable to expect that a cryptocurrency without these problems will win out, and the value of bitcoin will therefore drop to zero.

 

Personally though, I am much more concerned about bitcoin’s scalability problem, as that is causing some real issues right now.

 

[inThailand]

A on paper millionaire is not the same as one. All the bitcoin paper millionaires are waiting for sucker. 

[Scott]

Posts containing a commercial link along with replies have been removed.  

[Senechal]

Buy the rumor. Sell the news.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[speedtripler]

4 minutes ago, Senechal said:

Buy the rumor. Sell the news.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

rumour is a 2  trillion dollar market cap .....http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-could-be-500000-by-2030-first-snapchat-investor-says-2017-3

[JimmyJ]

There seems to have been an insane overreaction to the China situation.

 

Already the Chinese action has moved to Japan, which is now accounting for 51% of BTC transactions, China now down to less than 7%.

[speedtripler]

3 hours ago, JimmyJ said:

There seems to have been an insane overreaction to the China situation.

 

Already the Chinese action has moved to Japan, which is now accounting for 51% of BTC transactions, China now down to less than 7%.

This happens every time the pboc  shut down bitcoin exchanges 

(even happened earlier in this year a few times and it always shakes the market and then the price  reachs a new all time high) 

 

Some Chinese people with inside information could be making millions and millions of dollars each time this happens (if they were corrupt lol) but everyone knows there is no corruption in chyna

[ThailandLOS]

44 minutes ago, speedtripler said:

Some Chinese people with inside information could be making millions and millions of dollars each time this happens (if they were corrupt lol) but everyone knows there is no corruption in chyna

I'm sure they are - good news is that they pretty much exhausted their arsenal of bad news.

 

 

[ThailandLOS]

7 hours ago, JimmyJ said:

There seems to have been an insane overreaction to the China situation.

 

Already the Chinese action has moved to Japan, which is now accounting for 51% of BTC transactions, China now down to less than 7%.

It was speeding up the process of a pullback - with BTC going from 1800 to 5000 in 6 weeks - people were just looking for a reason to take profits.

 

Same thing but reversed during last Fri 40 min rally from the lows - BTC price touched a major support level around 2900 and then exploded. People felt it was cheap and started to bid like crazy.

Caught that move luckily and stocked up on my favorite tokens.

[markcm19]

More people are getting away from the fake, pump and dump scam coin that is fiat currency, once you hold crypto you don't look back. (maybe sell to lock in profits after a month so you freeroll the dirty usd invested) 

[uli65]

Some big players are  controlling the company. maybe not the best outlook for the future??

[ThailandLOS]

9 minutes ago, uli65 said:

Some big players are  controlling the company. maybe not the best outlook for the future??

A lot of those addresses belong to exchanges - so it's not really fair to say that they own them

 

It's estimated that 2 million coins are in 'Sathoshi' addresses, that's also a big chunk and is not gonna be touched anytime soon.

 

But yes, there are some big players out there - even banks are buying behind the scenes.

 

 

[JimmyJ]

This is great:

 

"Bitcoin Obituaries

Bitcoin has died 166 times"

 

 

"December 15, 2010 

 “Why Bitcoin can’t be a currency” – The Underground Economist | $0.23

Negative feedback loops like this are basically homeostasis. In nature, positive feedback loops like exist with Bitcoin are lethal; the only thing that’s even kept Bitcoin alive this long is its novelty. Either it will remain a novelty forever or it will transition from novelty status to dead faster than you can blink."

 

 

"August 9, 2011

“The Bitcoin Is Dying. Whatever.” – Gizmodo Australia | $10.95

So Bitcoin, we’ll remember the good times, like the time that one guy who got heat stroke while mining Bitcoins. Or the time there was the great heist caper that shut down trading site Mt Gox for an entire day. The lulz were abundant. But frankly, it’s time for you to go. Farewell."

 

 

"June 20, 2013

 “Bitcoin Sees the Grim Reaper” – NY Mag | $105.70

Bitcoin’s path to the grave has always been fairly clear to me. . . . You can’t seize a Bitcoin like you can seize a dollar, since it’s simply an alphanumeric string. But people need to be able to get their money in and out of the Bitcoin economy in order for it to be a useful alternative. With Mt. Gox and other Bitcoin go-betweens having such a hard time staying afloat, it probably won’t be long before even some Bitcoin diehards consider packing it in."

 

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/page/9/?r

Edited September 20, 2017 by JimmyJ

[JimmyJ]

2 hours ago, uli65 said:

Some big players are  controlling the company. maybe not the best outlook for the future??

 

 

Bitcoin Rich List

 

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

 

 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2017 by JimmyJ

[speedtripler]

On 20/09/2017 at 12:45 PM, uli65 said:

Some big players are  controlling the company. maybe not the best outlook for the future??

 

 a chart like this would probably look the same for most high St banks too.... A few billionaires own the largest accounts and the other 95% of the people are sharing the other 5%

 

Basically, every valuable or desirable  commodity is mostly hoarded by the rich and greedy  and I don't expect bitcoin to be any different 

 

 

[Farangdanny]

On 5/28/2017 at 6:54 PM, impulse said:

Yup.  

 

Too late to get in on the top level of this pyramid scheme.

 

Besides, what's to stop an Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos from launching a competing currency that's actually backed by someone and an organization whose name we know?  (Edit:  Other than the risk of prison time for launching an unsanctioned currency)

 

Unless, of course, you have a few hundred million in drug money (or ransom money) you need to hide and you have no safe alternative.  

 

If I'm not mistaken (and I may be) Bernie Madoff was thriving longer than Bitcoin has been.

 

You seem very uninformed. If you knew exactly what a pyramid scheme is, you would know that bitcoin can not be one. You should check what well known people, like Bill Gates, Goldman Sachs etc have said. 

[Senechal]

46 minutes ago, Farangdanny said:

You seem very uninformed. If you knew exactly what a pyramid scheme is, you would know that bitcoin can not be one. You should check what well known people, like Bill Gates, Goldman Sachs etc have said. 

 

 

A pyramid scheme is characterized by both a lack of intrinsic value and increases in value coming from new people entering the scheme rather than operations. The definition does fit, but not perfectly: Typically a pyramid scheme also makes use of distributions, but not always.

 

You committed two logical fallacies in your statement:

 

1) https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon

2) https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

 

 

 

 

[hawker9000]

Bitcoin and fiat currencies have something very much in common.  Neither one is "backed" by anything real.  But what sets bitcoin (and I suppose other crypto-currencies) apart from government-issued fiat currencies is that it CAN'T simply be "printed".  Only a finite number of them will ever be available, they're progressively more "difficult" mathematically (i.e., expensive) to "mine" as that limit is approached, and they can't be counterfeited.   So, since bitcoin CAN actually be used as an accepted medium of exchange, is NOT subject to government spending/borrowing abuse, and potentially offers a high degree of anonymity besides (for those willing to go to the trouble), it's kind of foolish to call it a "pyramid scheme".  'No more than gold or any tangible, auctionable, commodity which can simply be bought & sold.

 

That doesn't mean its potential is unlimited however.  Lots of flies buzzing around the ointment.  Can bad guys find a way to hack and steal it?  Can governments find a way to monitor and control it?  Will the merchant population accepting it as payment continue to grow?  Do the proliferating alternative crypto-currencies pose any competitive threat to its popularity - are there or will there be any "better mousetraps" out there?