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Bitcoin nodes surged to 200k
- eudox 13y agoFirst the surge in Tor nodes, now this? I bet the Feds did this.
- VMG 13y agohow generous of them
- slipt 13y agoWas thinking same exact thing, brotha.
- jaboutboul 13y agoyes, can't help but see the parallels...
- simondlr 13y agoI was watching this through the year, wondering if the decline was due to people moving over to web wallets. Clearly not. I bet this is a good indication of price. The more there is online, the more natural interest there is. I think over time it will start meaning less and less as people do INDEED move over to other wallets.
- calinet6 13y agoThe problem is that this doesn't quite look like natural growth. Maybe it is, but it's pretty quick, constant, and unnatural looking. People don't generally behave that way.
- slipt 13y agoPeople keep asking me "What is the best way to convert my bitcoins to cash?"... anyone know a good answer that you know works (first hand)?
- ihsw 13y agoIt depends heavily on where you are, which bank you're with, with whom you're a citizen of, and a myriad of other factors. Canadians may have an easier time than Americans, but Britons will be SOL.
- davidsong 13y ago> Britons will be SOL Is it that hard to set up on BitBargain?
- user24 13y agoIt is not smooth at all: https://bitbargain.co.uk/trade-bitcoins-app https://bitbargain.co.uk/trade-bitcoins-app Not to mention the 0.4XBT non refundable seller application fee. For a one-off "I want to cash out" use case this is completely unworkable.
- ihsw 13y agoVAT applies to BTC<->GBP, so that really dampens adoption in the UK.
- dcc1 13y agoBuy amazon.com giftcards and buy stuff on amazon, gyft.com and gc4btc.com sell them
- 3pt14159 13y agoSell them to people for cash. I used to use MtGox to get a couple grand out here or there, but now it's too much of a pain. It depends where you are though. There are some decent Canadian options, and Coinbase is supposed to be good for Americans.
- tmountain 13y agoOne relatively easy route is to setup a coinbase account, link it to your bank account, and have your coins converted and deposited from there.
- nullc 13y agoThis is _highly_ misleading. The actual number of nodes that they're measuring is 11,664, which is a sudden increase from a slowly declining level of about 4,400 as of a month ago. The 196,123 number is a count of the number of distinct IP addresses being rumored between nodes. Most of them are never working garbage sent into the network by confused software, misguided would-be DOS attackers, etc.
- carbocation 13y agoIf the actual number is still doubling rapidly from a recent nadir, isn't the implication the same? Also, for people who don't see this as natural (and I agree that it looks almost mechanical), is this a misguided "51%" attack? (Seems unlikely given that if you have the resources for that, you also probably understand how it works.) Just curious what people see this sudden change as representing.
- gwern 13y ago> Also, for people who don't see this as natural (and I agree that it looks almost mechanical), is this a misguided "51%" attack? No. The whole point of the POW mechanism is to frustrate cheap easy Sybil attacks where someone sets up a few thousand IPs and dictates what the network says.
- nas 13y ago> a sudden increase from a slowly declining level That's worrying. I'm much more concerned about a Sybil attack or similar attack on the P2P network than an attack on the cryptography. Given the current size of the ledger, the average person will not want to run a node. I guess one mitigating factor is that the mining pool operators can take steps to ensure they are well connected to each other.
- oakwhiz 13y agoI think that perhaps a large portion of Bitcoin nodes are "dormant," i.e. offline until the owner feels like updating in order to make a transaction.