I suppose that, when production starts, it should be available at Staples (in boxes of 500).

Leaked image of a 21.co household appliance with embedded mining chip:



(This is only a low-power protopype with Wifi, NFC, Bluetooth, and USB. The production version will have also G3/G4, HDMI, and a power plug rated 30A.)

Leaked image of a 21.co household appliance with embedded mining chip

(This is only a low-power protopype with Wifi, NFC, Bluetooth, and USB. The production version will have also G3/G4, HDMI, and a power plug rated 30A.)

Didn't they go zero-fee for this whole month?  Or am I thinking of some other exchange?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/381ttv/litecoin_has_the_equivalent_of_4mb_blocks/crs82wt

Should I believe it or not?

http://www.coindesk.com/bitfury-light-bulbs-mine-bitcoin/

Which one your girlfriend is more likely to come upstairs to see:

(a) the autographed photo of you and Justin Bieber;
(b) the pet rock that Granma gave you;
(c) your bitcoin-mining lamp?

But maybe one can use heat from a mining chip to drive a Lava Lamp?

He is not the Chief Scientist of Bitcoin, of course.  He stil calls himself the Chief Scientist of the Shrem Karpeles & Friends Foundation; even though the Foundation is now in Roger Ver solvency status, and his salary is actually paid by an MIT digital currency project.

No, it is just that I believe bitcoin is doomed either way, so it is easy for me to be neutral. 

FTFY

A few weeks ago he wrote that he had run tests with a 20 MB version of Bitcoin-Core.  I don't know how realistic were the tests.

Still no information about the hashpower and consumption of the 21.co chips?

Usually, when a company hides "strategic" data, it is because the data is disappointing, or worse...

Thanks!

Indeed there seems to be more going on than a simple technical disagreement.

I won t say that Gavin's proposal is the best one, but at least I understand his position: "with 1 MB blocks the network is close to saturation and will not handle the volume that we would like to see, so let's make the blocks bigger".

The thinking of his opponents (who include Peter Todd, Gregg Maxwell, and Luke Dash Jr.) seems less clear: they say that they are worried about the consequences of bigger blocks, but they have no alternative proposal to deal with impending congestion, and seem to want to see the network saturate.

Someone on reddit pointed out that most or all of those big opponents work for Blockstream, the company that was supposed to develop sidechains and is now working on a thing called the Lightning Network,  Those are projects that would provide fast bitcoin transactions and other bitcoin services (such as micropayment channels) outside the blockchain.  That could be a reason for wanting the network to saturate.  However, Greg says that they were opposed to big blocks well before creating Blockstram.

Someone else suggested that they may want to see the network saturate so that big non-payment users like NASDAQ and Factom are forced to pay huge fees, like $50 on a 1000 satoshi transaction.  That would push common users out of the system and turn bitcoin into a tool for big corporations only.  (Peter Todd does not miss a chance to mention that he is "talking to Big Banks".) Sounds like the FUD that only JorgeStolfi would write.  

Anyway, last Friday night a handful of reddit users set out, without much planning, to try to saturate the network with small transactions.  In the course of 2 hours (23:00 to 01:00 UTC) they put out maybe 30'000 transaction requests.  The queues at the nodes got over the 20'000 mark and the backlog took 8 hours to clear.  It is not clear what fees the guys paid, but they did not put much money into it.  Yet Luke Jr claims that the test only showed that 1 MB is fine.  Boh.

Perhaps the real fear is how the system will react to an intentional hard fork, that is not mandated by a bug...

As far as I know:

What everybody calls "bitcoin" consists of two things: the "bitcoin blockchain" that was started by Satoshi on 2009-01-03, and the "bitcoin protocol", a set of rules that say how the blockchain must be changed and used in response to client requests.

"Bitcoin-core" is a software that implements the bitcoin protocol. The first version was written by Satoshi sometime in 2008 or earlier.  It has been patched and improved since then by a handful of people, the "core devs".  Gavin inherited control of that software after Satoshi's rapture in 2010.  Recently he passed the job to another core dev, and now he works for a project at MIT.

"Bitcoin-XT" is another implementation of the bitcoin protocol, started by Mike Hearn.  It is still compatible with Bitcoin-core; either version can be used with the same wallet files.  Gavin recently said that he would be joining Mike in the development of this software.  Gavin mentioned very recently that he may use this version to push for the 20 MB change, since the current core devs do not seem to be in a hurry,

Gavin's plan (as I understood from his posts) is to deploy a large-block version of the software now, but the change would be programmed so as to allow 20 MB blocks only starting in Q4/2016.

That way, hopefully most everybody will have time to upgrade to the new version and adapt their own programs to allow for 20 MB blocks -- including the major exchanges and services, and most miners.  If that happens, the critical date will pass without a ripple for those who have upgraded.  For the laggards and rebels still using the old version at that time, they will find that they cannot use the exchanges and services, or maybe even move their coins; until they upgrade too.

I think that is an exaggeration. 

I guess that fewer than 1% of the bitcoiners (2'000 in 200'000) are so opposed to the very idea of a hard fork -- even one with a single outgoing branch -- that they will rather use the "old bitcoin" only among themselves, with a ridiculous block rate, than user the "new bitcoin".

The other 99% of bitcoiners do not know about the issue, do not care enough to bother, are in favor of the change, or will assent to it because they do not want problems.

For the large players that matter -- large miners, exchanges, payment processors -- the 20 MB limit will be only a small annoyance. They will go with the crowd.

Thus, i expect that most players will upgrade to the large-block version, well before the fork.  They will not even notice when the fork happens, and the price will not suffer any permanent drop.

I also expect that most of those "rebels" will then give up and upgrade too, in order to recover the value of their investment.

Thus, if the "old bitcoin" does not die immediately after the fork block, it will probably die very soon after that.

Thanks!


Hundreds of billions is still tiny compared to the world's economy.  Visa alone processes trillions of dollars in payments per year.

I don't know whether that is legally possible, but mutiple payouts should be technically possible once the claims are collected and validated.

If that is the case, I suppose that distribution of the existing JPY assets could be made immediately.  The BTC assets would depend on whether they have to be converted to JPY or not.  Then, more rounds should happen if and when the legal actions against Tibanne and the other parties yield more funds.

It may be just the number of listings, not even considering quantity of each item. 

Is there an estimate of the sales volume (USD/year or equivalent) of those dark markets?

Maybe...

Sorry to say this, but it seems that most bitcoiners simply refuse to understand that the legal system does not work at all like an internet forum or bitcoin statup.  We saw it in hundreds of scams, from MtGOX to Neo&Bee to the bizarre capers of Ver x Ripple and Ver x OKCoin: bitcoiners are totally naive when it comes to laws and courts.  Perhaps it is a consequence of the libertarian beliefs, but bitcoiners seem unable and unwilling to distinguish their wishes from their rights, their dreams from reality...

There is no "being nice" in law.  The whole point of it is to suppress the conflicting opinions and wishes of the two parties, and replace them by supposedly blind rules, mechanical procedures, and unquestionable decisions by impartial judges.

Accepting claims after a precise, court-mandated deadline is quite against that spirit.  I don't think that even Kobyashi could authorize that.  Kraken promising to do so without prior approval by Kobayashi (that is what the quote said) is more likely to be wishful thinking and recklessness than inside information.  Them being contracted to handle the claim collection does not give them authority to override what the court expressely determined.

Among the documents in the mtgox site are detailed reports by Kobayashi about the situation of the spoils.  (Scroll to the end, each PDF includes an Engish translation.)

His fees,and the fees of all consultants that he has hired, will be quite substantial, but small compared to the 200 kBTC and several M USD that are left.

These spoils are only 20-25% of the sum total of all client account balances at the time of the collapse, so that is the basic guess for the percentage that will be returned.  The exact amount will depend on how many peopel file a claim, and how many claims will be accepted as valid by Kobayashi.

But AFAIK it is not yet known whether he can return the BTC as BTC, or he will have to auction them to convert them to JPY.