5 ms·

The State of the Blockchain in 2015

35 points by jackgavigan 12y ago

mcintyre1994 12y ago
One of the links shown Satoshi Nakamoto saying they're not somebody who'd very publicly been 'exposed' as him. I figured it'd be interesting to see what else Satoshi has posted and saw this comment [0]: > Dear Satoshi. Your dox, passwords and IP addresses are being sold on the darknet. Apparently you didn't configure Tor properly and your IP leaked when you used your email account sometime in 2010. You are not safe. You need to get out of where you are as soon as possible before these people harm you. Thank you for inventing Bitcoin. It's the last comment posted on that account from September - is there any more information on this? [0] http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source?commentId=2003008%3AComment%3A55276 http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-sour...
- acjohnson55 12y ago
  Like most things Bitcoin-related, it caused a big splash and then kinda just faded into the background, while much more mundane and incremental developments plod along.
- gwern 12y ago
  No. I've written it off as a blackmail* or concern-troll: the information or claim of such a listing has never surfaced since, no one has claimed to have the dox though the main use would be to leak to a journalist or something (since it's unlikely he'd pay blackmail for such flimsy evidence), such dox would be almost impossible to verify (except maybe the passwords), a Satoshi IP arguably already has been found with minimal notice paid by anyone, and the mechanism is odd - he did have Tor configured correctly for everything else, and some of his mail services specifically scrub IPs from mail headers so an incorrect configuration wouldn't matter. * I believe there was at least 1 P2P foundation post which included addresses for payment at the time, although those seem to have been deleted now.
gweinberg 12y ago
The fact that some miners are suspending operations instead of continuing to mine and simply hanging on to the bitcoins mined until the price rises again suggests that they may lack the (fiat currency) funds to keep paying for electricity or that they’re fearful that the price won’t recover and they’ll end up permanently in the red. That's just stupid. No matter what your financial situation or what you think future prices will be, it doesn't make a lot of sense to mine bitcoins when you can buy them cheaper.
- kordless 12y ago
  > That's just stupid. I will point out your "don't mine if you can buy them cheaper" is nearly logically equivalent to op's "some miners are suspending operations instead of continuing to mine", especially when considering op said "they may lack the fiat" to pay for electricity or coins (assumption). Negating something you agree with, even in part, might be a sign of cognitive dissonance: http://www.geekceo.com/entry/bitcoin-s-polarization http://www.geekceo.com/entry/bitcoin-s-polarization
  - hencq 12y ago
    > especially when considering op said "they may lack the fiat" to pay for electricity or coins (assumption). That's not the assumption. It is the conclusion. The wrong conclusion as gweinberg pointed out. If I can mine 1 bitcoin for $300 worth of electricity or buy one for $200, I should just buy instead of mine. The question of how many dollars I have is irrelevant for that.
    - jackgavigan 12y ago
      > If I can mine 1 bitcoin for $300 worth of electricity or buy one for $200, I should just buy instead of mine. The question of how many dollars I have is irrelevant for that. That's a fair point. I guess the only real difference between mining and buying is that electricity is usually paid for retrospectively, whereas buying requires you to have the money up front.
Animats 12y ago
The blockchain is doing fine. Bitcoin speculation, not so much. The price has been going downhill for a full year now. There have been two Bitcoin bubbles. The first was driven by Silk Road drug sales, and the second by evasion of China's exchange controls on yuan. Both of those uses have been stopped. Until someone discovers a new illegal use case for Bitcoin, it's probably not going anywhere.
- MacsHeadroom 12y ago
  More bitcoin is exchanged for contraband than ever before right now. Current dark market sales figures dwarf that of SilkRoad 1.
- brighton36 12y ago
  How about the Bitcharge use case: http://cointelegraph.com/news/113255/keeping-score-at-the-2014-bitcoin-bowl http://cointelegraph.com/news/113255/keeping-score-at-the-20... (See "The Solution")
- joshontheweb 12y ago
  Not arguing with you're overall point but drug sales have not stopped by any stretch of the imagination. There are more dark net market places now than ever.
- grubles 12y ago
  The bubbles have been foreseen years ahead of time. A quote from Gavin Andresen in 2010 (core bitcoin dev): "I predict there will be between one and five Bitcoin bubbles (price will double or more and then crash back down below the starting price) in the next four years."
brighton36 12y ago
>I doubt Bitcoin’s first-mover advantage will translate into long-term success. Webvan pioneered grocery delivery during the dot-com bubble but ultimately went bankrupt. It's worth noting that open-source platforms typically succeed due to the first-mover advantage, whereas companies may not. Further, because blockchains work, there is always an incentive for miners to join the longest chain (ergo Bitcoin)
negamax 12y ago
Bitcoin's 7tx/sec limit is too low for any mass adoption.
- bequanna 12y ago
  The '7t/sec' limit isn't that relevant at this point. Currently, average tx/second is closer to ~1. [1] Additionally, this limit isn't static. [2] It is pretty naive to think that the community isn't aware of this (non) issue. [3],[4] [1] https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions [2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability [3] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=608561.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=608561.0 [4] http://blog.bitcoinfoundation.org/a-scalability-roadmap/ http://blog.bitcoinfoundation.org/a-scalability-roadmap/
  - A_COMPUTER 12y ago
    I feel like most discussions of this ignore the downsides. You can increase the blocksize which will result in a higher theoretical transaction rate, but then you're burning more resources on orphan blocks , DDoS, etc. So while you can increase it, there are serious downsides to doing so past a certain point which still ends up being a lot lower than what's needed to have the acceptance level of Paypal.

35 points by jackgavigan 12y ago

mcintyre1994 12y ago

One of the links shown Satoshi Nakamoto saying they're not somebody who'd very publicly been 'exposed' as him. I figured it'd be interesting to see what else Satoshi has posted and saw this comment [0]: > Dear Satoshi. Your dox, passwords and IP addresses are being sold on the darknet. Apparently you didn't configure Tor properly and your IP leaked when you used your email account sometime in 2010. You are not safe. You need to get out of where you are as soon as possible before these people harm you. Thank you for inventing Bitcoin. It's the last comment posted on that account from September - is there any more information on this? [0] http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source?commentId=2003008%3AComment%3A55276 http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-sour...

acjohnson55 12y ago
Like most things Bitcoin-related, it caused a big splash and then kinda just faded into the background, while much more mundane and incremental developments plod along.
gwern 12y ago
No. I've written it off as a blackmail* or concern-troll: the information or claim of such a listing has never surfaced since, no one has claimed to have the dox though the main use would be to leak to a journalist or something (since it's unlikely he'd pay blackmail for such flimsy evidence), such dox would be almost impossible to verify (except maybe the passwords), a Satoshi IP arguably already has been found with minimal notice paid by anyone, and the mechanism is odd - he did have Tor configured correctly for everything else, and some of his mail services specifically scrub IPs from mail headers so an incorrect configuration wouldn't matter. * I believe there was at least 1 P2P foundation post which included addresses for payment at the time, although those seem to have been deleted now.

gweinberg 12y ago

The fact that some miners are suspending operations instead of continuing to mine and simply hanging on to the bitcoins mined until the price rises again suggests that they may lack the (fiat currency) funds to keep paying for electricity or that they’re fearful that the price won’t recover and they’ll end up permanently in the red. That's just stupid. No matter what your financial situation or what you think future prices will be, it doesn't make a lot of sense to mine bitcoins when you can buy them cheaper.

kordless 12y ago
> That's just stupid. I will point out your "don't mine if you can buy them cheaper" is nearly logically equivalent to op's "some miners are suspending operations instead of continuing to mine", especially when considering op said "they may lack the fiat" to pay for electricity or coins (assumption). Negating something you agree with, even in part, might be a sign of cognitive dissonance: http://www.geekceo.com/entry/bitcoin-s-polarization http://www.geekceo.com/entry/bitcoin-s-polarization
- hencq 12y ago
  > especially when considering op said "they may lack the fiat" to pay for electricity or coins (assumption). That's not the assumption. It is the conclusion. The wrong conclusion as gweinberg pointed out. If I can mine 1 bitcoin for $300 worth of electricity or buy one for $200, I should just buy instead of mine. The question of how many dollars I have is irrelevant for that.
  - jackgavigan 12y ago
    > If I can mine 1 bitcoin for $300 worth of electricity or buy one for $200, I should just buy instead of mine. The question of how many dollars I have is irrelevant for that. That's a fair point. I guess the only real difference between mining and buying is that electricity is usually paid for retrospectively, whereas buying requires you to have the money up front.

Animats 12y ago

The blockchain is doing fine. Bitcoin speculation, not so much. The price has been going downhill for a full year now. There have been two Bitcoin bubbles. The first was driven by Silk Road drug sales, and the second by evasion of China's exchange controls on yuan. Both of those uses have been stopped. Until someone discovers a new illegal use case for Bitcoin, it's probably not going anywhere.

MacsHeadroom 12y ago
More bitcoin is exchanged for contraband than ever before right now. Current dark market sales figures dwarf that of SilkRoad 1.
brighton36 12y ago
How about the Bitcharge use case: http://cointelegraph.com/news/113255/keeping-score-at-the-2014-bitcoin-bowl http://cointelegraph.com/news/113255/keeping-score-at-the-20... (See "The Solution")
joshontheweb 12y ago
Not arguing with you're overall point but drug sales have not stopped by any stretch of the imagination. There are more dark net market places now than ever.
grubles 12y ago
The bubbles have been foreseen years ahead of time. A quote from Gavin Andresen in 2010 (core bitcoin dev): "I predict there will be between one and five Bitcoin bubbles (price will double or more and then crash back down below the starting price) in the next four years."

brighton36 12y ago

>I doubt Bitcoin’s first-mover advantage will translate into long-term success. Webvan pioneered grocery delivery during the dot-com bubble but ultimately went bankrupt. It's worth noting that open-source platforms typically succeed due to the first-mover advantage, whereas companies may not. Further, because blockchains work, there is always an incentive for miners to join the longest chain (ergo Bitcoin)

negamax 12y ago

Bitcoin's 7tx/sec limit is too low for any mass adoption.

bequanna 12y ago
The '7t/sec' limit isn't that relevant at this point. Currently, average tx/second is closer to ~1. [1] Additionally, this limit isn't static. [2] It is pretty naive to think that the community isn't aware of this (non) issue. [3],[4] [1] https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions [2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability [3] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=608561.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=608561.0 [4] http://blog.bitcoinfoundation.org/a-scalability-roadmap/ http://blog.bitcoinfoundation.org/a-scalability-roadmap/
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  I feel like most discussions of this ignore the downsides. You can increase the blocksize which will result in a higher theoretical transaction rate, but then you're burning more resources on orphan blocks , DDoS, etc. So while you can increase it, there are serious downsides to doing so past a certain point which still ends up being a lot lower than what's needed to have the acceptance level of Paypal.