Bitcoin, Learned Something New Today

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Thanks. Can the register containing all bitcoins in existence be downloaded by any anonymous person? Could a person for instance examine the data of any individual bitcoin in the register?

I don't mean tracking the bitcoin's transaction history or its owner. Merely the ability to inspect the contents of each bitcoin?

Just wondering if each bitcoin contains the math problem and related solution embedded in its definition, which could be extracted and examined?

The idea may seem silly, but if you have a store of math problems and solutions. Would possibly the data be useful for completely unrelated applications, perhaps cryptography, code breaking, other practical or theoretical uses? Some people will throw computing power at odd stuff, such as computing the value of pi to yet another 1000 decimal places or whatever.

Just wondering if all those MFLOPs expended mining coins might have alternate mathematical uses, now that the work has been done? Edited February 28, 2014 by Lester Weevils

[tnguy]

Yes. But remember, there are no actual bitcoins, just transactions.

 

Everyone running a full node gets a copy of the blockchain. That is what makes it distributed.

 

There are even public interfaces to look into it. Here is an example

 

https://blockchain.info/address/115Q77tKkFjnkQCkdELn7V8vvjVqtsBQnT

 

The problems solved are probably not very useful (other than as part of the protocol)

Edited February 28, 2014 by tnguy

[GlockSpock]

tnguy paid me for some PMAG's in BitCoin a while back. Now I just hate reading about BitCoin at all because I remember reading about it 4-6 years ago at some point but being concerned about the stability of it. Now it just makes me queasy thinking about the growth since then.

[Sam1]

If I remember correctly, a bank in china quit accepting them. And the fact that AMD graphics cards can mine the bitcoin derivatives such as litecoin, have made the cards skyrock in price. If anything, the payout was massive a while back and now its falling and falling. The strain put on the hardware also has to be taken into account. I will not buy a card used in mining only because the whole time its been used, its running at 100%. The processor on the other hand is not readily used. If you jumped into it early on, the payday for a lot of people was great. Joining the "late game" will not be lucrative for most once you factor in electricity and the cost of the equipament, ie AMD graphics cards. 

 

Yeah the AMD cards work good for script mining, but anything with an sha256 since the ASIC's have already come out, doing btc with cards is pretty much never going to break even.

 

Oh and tnguy, I actually do know a lot about the coin market... Just like to spread rumors on shortages and failings cause you'd be surprised on what panic buying does to my side business of buying and selling graphics cards.  People will find tid bits here and there and everywhere and the more that show up, the more you can influence the market.  Just this year, I've already ordered over $9000 of radeon 280x's  at pre-rush pricing and sold them for mucho dinero.

 

The nvidia cards are pretty much crap, even the newly touted 750ti's with a low wattage consumption are not really good because you need so many of them to do the same thing a few amd r9 cards do that they almost equal each other out.

 

My advice to anyone looking at this stuff, remember that during the gold rush, the people that owned the general store were the ones that got rich, not the miners.

[tnguy]

MtGox filing for bancruptcy today. While someone may have got rich out if it, it apparently wasn't them.

 

But in general I agree. What little mining I did was mostly just out of curiosity. OK, it was also a little fun.

Edited March 1, 2014 by tnguy

[Oh Shoot]

Can someone explain in a paragraph why the video card is is important in the mining process?

 

- OS

[Sam1]

Can someone explain in a paragraph why the video card is is important in the mining process?

 

- OS

 

Without getting too technical, a GPU processes much faster than a CPU in certain types of calculations.  Most super computers use a combination of GPUs and CPUs (like the one in Oak Ridge).   It's basically like a video card just being tasked to run calculations instead of presenting a display.

 

When you start talking about how it actually works, that's when the really technical garble has to come into play.

[Clod Stomper]

Yeah the AMD cards work good for script mining, but anything with an sha256 since the ASIC's have already come out, doing btc with cards is pretty much never going to break even.

 

Oh and tnguy, I actually do know a lot about the coin market... Just like to spread rumors on shortages and failings cause you'd be surprised on what panic buying does to my side business of buying and selling graphics cards.  People will find tid bits here and there and everywhere and the more that show up, the more you can influence the market.  Just this year, I've already ordered over $9000 of radeon 280x's  at pre-rush pricing and sold them for mucho dinero.

 

The nvidia cards are pretty much crap, even the newly touted 750ti's with a low wattage consumption are not really good because you need so many of them to do the same thing a few amd r9 cards do that they almost equal each other out.

 

My advice to anyone looking at this stuff, remember that during the gold rush, the people that owned the general store were the ones that got rich, not the miners.

 

Wait a second.  Was that you that I saw at the walmart sporting goods department at 0600 yesterday morning? 

 

 

 

:rofl:

[Sam1]

Nope, I don't do ammo... but I'll be the first guy to defend them doing that.  However, I do hoard when possible, just never resell it.

[tnguy]

It's not so much that the video card is important. They can just mine much faster (and more importantly, for less cost and energy) than CPUs. However, they have now been superseded by ASICs in the Bitcoin world..

[DaveTN]

TOKYO — The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange in Tokyo filed for bankruptcy protection Friday and its chief executive said 850,000 bitcoins, worth several hundred million dollars, are unaccounted for.

The exchange’s CEO Mark Karpeles appeared before Japanese TV news cameras, bowing deeply. He said a weakness in the exchange’s systems was behind a massive loss of the virtual currency involving 750,000 bitcoins from users and 100,000 of the company’s own bitcoins. That would amount to about $425 million at recent prices.

Imagine that…

The Feds had already targeted Bitcoin; so stick a fork in it.

[NoBanStan]

I have a friend who is a miner. The only way to actually mine coin these days is being part of a "pool"... and even then you only get portions of a coin. The more coins are unlocked, the harder it gets.... and it's a finite amount, eventually the algorithm just runs out.

 

They also don't have any clue who initially came up with the bit coin, there's theories but that's it (last i read)

 

Personally, when i think about a giant pool of computers, crunching numbers in unision, i think botnet. Back in the day, Google used to allow you to lend your cpu cycles to a pool for scientific use... makes you wonder if the miners aren't providing someone with a multi-million node super computer and the "piece of bitcoin" in return for your time isn't the proverbial carrot on a stick.

[Hershmeister]

What is it about the "mining" that creates value? What are the applications for the math problems that are being solved ?

[tnguy]

NoBanStan: The software is out there for all to view. If you really want to know what it is doing rather than make baseless conjectures, you are free to do so.

 

Hersh, the value of mining is that it preserves the integrity of the blockchain. Eventually, no new bitcoins will be created from mining and all will come from transaction fees. Clearly, if people are willing to pay transaction fees, they likely feel they are being provided some value.

 

There are no extra applications for the problems being solved. It is a sunk cost much like the lighting (and many things besides) at your local bank. Much often seems to be made about the energy consumed for Bitcoin but it is a drop in the bucket compared to traditional banking services.

Edited March 1, 2014 by tnguy

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Isn't there a way to find out where the Mt. Gox bitcoins "went to" if all the repositories are mirrors of the entire dataset?

Yeah, i was curious if the bitcoin math solutions might turn out useful as a giant lookup table of "useful numbers". Ferinstance, a large array of primes can be useful.

If hackers assemble bot nets of grannies puters everywhere to send spam mail, maybe they could enslave granny's computer for mining as well? :)

[Sam1]

oh there are massive botnets that mine, more money in that than malware right now

[tnguy]

It might be possible to track some of that stuff if MtGox wasn't so uncommunicative. There's speculation that this was an inside job. No doubt there's some effort underway already but it depends on how careful the purported thieves are.

[Hershmeister]

So the coins are granted by creating algorithms which essentially create the bitcoin network? Weird - i can't wrap my head around that - at least with fiat currency, its supported by the faith i a particular country's ability to pay its debts. This is created out of thin air and can vanish just as easily (yes i know the same can be said about fiat currency, but its odds of disappearing overnight are less

[TripleDigitRide]

I have just created TDRCoins. The first batch of one-million coins are worth .50 each. They will undoubtedly be worth 1000% more within no time, so you better act now. The TDRCoin is 100% untraceable, so you can confidently buy and sell using your TDRCoins without the .gov knowing your business. 

In order to unlock more TDRCoins, I will post my daughter's Algebra homework online for all to solve. The first person to respond with the correct answers will receive an undetermined number of TDRCoins. 

To purchase your TDRCoins today, PM me for my PayPal information.

Edited March 2, 2014 by TripleDigitRide

[DaveTN]

I have just created TDRCoins.

I desperately want to invest in this, but I can’t get the PM to go through. Please send me your DOB and the last four of your SS number.

[tnguy]

So the coins are granted by creating algorithms which essentially create the bitcoin network? Weird - i can't wrap my head around that - at least with fiat currency, its supported by the faith i a particular country's ability to pay its debts. This is created out of thin air and can vanish just as easily (yes i know the same can be said about fiat currency, but its odds of disappearing overnight are less

 

Pretty much. It's some clever stuff. Bitcoin's value is unlikely to disappear overnight unless some outlandish weakness is found in the protocol though it is still very volatile right now. Fiat (and in particular the US Dollar) is less likely to devalue but the government sure does like inflating it. Other countries like to do things like bail-ins and other cash controls (in addition to the inflation) as well, of course. And I haven't even looked at what's going on with the Ukraine's currency right now.(Edit: Hmm. Capital controls in place).

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-28/ukraine-imposes-capital-controls-limits-foreign-currency-withdrawals

Edited March 3, 2014 by tnguy

[gregintenn]

             http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/head-online-currency-exchange-found-dead-singapore-n45101

The more I read about it, the more interesting it gets.              

[tnguy]

"Satoshi Nakamoto" apparently not a pseudonym.

 

http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html

[Chucktshoes]

"Satoshi Nakamoto" apparently not a pseudonym.

 

http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html

Saw that. Who knew?  :rofl:

[sigmtnman]

Claims he's a libertarian.