Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

General Antony

Vyemm Raider
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Block size is definitely a concern (currently only ~2500 transactions will fit in a block. Assuming that was not a constraint you could argue that the reward is still too high (driving the current difficulty and energy cost up). Lot of people in the game and it has become big business. Energy requirements rivaling some countries.

A few things I don't really get...

1) Why gate the block validation to ~5 an hour? As I understand it the difficulty change is directly correlated to mining capacity with the intent to statistically meter the rate a block is solved.

2) Why the low limit on block size? You can conceptually have a low (empty?) block, which would serve to confirm the historical blocks and increase confidence of the blockchain, however why put an upper limit?

3) As someone asked earlier, what happens to the transactions not in the current block? Assuming these are held in a queue based on transaction priority?

1. Leads to higher rates of orphaned blocks for small miners further away from the geographically concentrated industrial miners. Basically more work is wasted on a block that has already been mined before its confirmed by the network.

2. Hardware required to run nodes could quickly limit the people able to run them if you just raise the block size every time transactions exceed the throughput. This is the cause of the hardfork for the Bitcoin Cash people, they think lower transaction fees through higher block size is better than potentially centralizing node control. Bitcoin is trying to solve through 2nd layer solutions like Lightning Network.

3. They sit in the mempool waiting until a miner includes them in a block.
 
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Arative

Vyemm Raider
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Most nodes have a 72 hour timer on transactions where they will forget about a transaction if it hasn't been confirmed, provided no one is relaying the transaction.

I've read where people have sent low or zero fee transactions that are so low it will never confirm and they can run a few start up commands and remove unconfirmed transactions from their mempool and stop broadcasting and them after a few days they can resend the transaction with higher fees. I've never tested it myself.
 

gshurik

Tranny Chaser
<Gold Donor>
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After dealing with Armory being a cunt for literal days, I've finally sold 5 of the 6 bitcoins I had foolishly put in there. I decided to keep one in there for time being just in case the price shoots up again (you never know).

Fuck dealing with a full node wallet again. I get that it's more secure, but It was serious overkill for 6 coins, and my other 5 have been fine in Electrum since I got the tip from here, and that's where they're going to stay for now.

It's fun to sell them, but fuck me the mini panic attacks I get when I think I've lost them is just not worth it.
 

YttriumF

The Karenist Karen
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Meet Michael Poutre ... People

Michael has had a few problems in the past ...
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According to the Financial Times , Michael became a billionaire when ... "Crypto shares are traded over the counter rather than on an official exchange. The price spike briefly gave the company a market capitalisation of $12.6bn and made its chief executive, Michael Poutre, a paper billionaire thanks to his one-fifth stake." - Chloe Cornish

Yesterday, the SEC temporarily suspended trading (Release No. 34-82347) of Michael's company ... SEC.gov | Trading Suspensions


Anyone else wondering when Margot Robbie's vagina will make an appearance?
 

Arative

Vyemm Raider
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The main dev of bitcoin cash sold all his coin after it increased 7500%. You would have thought he would want to hold long term.
 

pharmakos

soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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it's odd to think that, at the end of the day, almost all the money being made off BTC is from illegal activities. even the people that are just investing in it to resell in the future. the whole thing is reliant on the fact that druggies are gonna keep wanting to buy drugs... and more nefarious uses i'm sure when it comes to asia.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
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Nah. BTC has some legitimate uses now, but the price isn't driven by illegal activities anymore. It's driven by supply/demand of BTC as an investment vehicle. It's become an asset.

Monero is where the criminals have moved.
 

pharmakos

soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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BTC has some legitimate uses now

not that i think you're wrong, but i'm unaware of any significant legitimate uses of BTC.

Monero is where the criminals have moved.

i've been out of touch with the internet drug scene for awhile, but the other day i went and checked out the private forum i used to frequent, and all the dealers there are still using BTC.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
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Ernst and Young has a bitcoin ATM and has given all their employees BTC wallets. They even accept BTC as payment, for example.

I'm sure drug dealers still accept it as payment. It's a money maker. Just like I'm sure those drug dealers accept USD (just not over the internet). But Monero scales better and is more secure/anonymous so that's what many of the criminals have moved to. You can accept BTC and turn it into Monero as well. BTC isn't really a currency anymore. It has very limited use as such and most people aren't willing to use it to buy stuff, they only want to accept it as payment (so they can get overpaid and also watch it grow in value).
 

pharmakos

soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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i would wager that the illegitimate uses still outweigh the legitimate uses by a couple orders of magnitude.

for someone using BTC as currency instead of an investment vehicle, it's main advantage over USD is still that it can be discretely exchanged for illegal things.
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
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BTC is just like torrents. There are plenty of legit uses for it but you don't see it on a regular day to day because you don't know what the backend is doing for a lot of things.