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Bitcoin Price Crashes After Exchange Admits Security Breach, Over $60 Million St

Started by Silent_Bob, August 02, 2016, 09:48 PM NHFT

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blackie

I don't know much about Bitcoin, but I do know a little about open source software development.

There is definitely a Bitcoin core development team.

https://bitcoincore.org/en/team

Anyone can contribute and suggest a change, but only the Maintainers can commit a change to the Bitcoin core code.

It looks like there are currently three maintainers.
Wladimir J. van der Laan, Jonas Schnelli, Marco Falke

Erroneous_Logic

Ok, sure, they're the bitcoincore team. They -do- push out a lot of updates that get adopted. But the -network- is king. Updates are voted on by people either updating to the new version, or not. They can't -force- all the miners to use the new code, because there's no central server to deny access to. If some people persist in using an update that the majority of the network does not accept, that's what we call a fork, and you have two smaller networks operating independently of each other, instead of one big network.

blackie

I also don't like having a transaction fee every time I use a currency.

The only time I ever really used Bitcoin was when I was trying to convert my donkey kong cabinet to take Bitcoin. I had a few dollars of Bitcoin, and thought I would be able to transfer them between two wallets over and over again. But the transaction fee was .25 for each transaction...so at the time it cost .50 to pay someone .25 cents worth of Bitcoin.

What happens to lost bitcoins?

Erroneous_Logic

Quote from: blackie on August 06, 2016, 02:11 AM NHFT
I also don't like having a transaction fee every time I use a currency.

The only time I ever really used Bitcoin was when I was trying to convert my donkey kong cabinet to take Bitcoin. I had a few dollars of Bitcoin, and thought I would be able to transfer them between two wallets over and over again. But the transaction fee was .25 for each transaction...so at the time it cost .50 to pay someone .25 cents worth of Bitcoin.

What happens to lost bitcoins?

Well, you don't have to include a fee for a bitcoin transaction. Some wallets will make you, but there are lots that don't. The transaction fee is, essentially, an incentive for the miner that solves the current transaction block to include your transaction in the block.

So, if you don't have an urgent need for the transfer to occur right this moment, then you could go for no fee, and hey, maybe it'll take a few hours, or even a few days, for someone to include your transaction in a block, but it'll happen eventually. If, on the other hand, you need this transaction to go right now, then you should put in a nice transaction fee to make it happen. Capitalism, baby. The miners are burning a shit ton of electricity to record your transactions to the blockchain, so it's reasonable for them to go for the high fee transactions first.

Generally, the fees are, right now, about 40000 satoshi, which . . .*quick check to google* . . .comes out to 23 cents. Now, for a small transaction of, say, .0002 btc, that's actually an unnecessarily high fee. The cost to the miner of putting a transaction in the block is somehow related to the size of the transaction in bits, which is somehow related to the size of the transaction in bitcoins, and if you want to go dig in the code and decipher the exact relationship go for it. Essentially, the smaller the transactions are, the more of them you can fit in one block, and thus, the lower you need the fee to be in order for it to be worth the miners power bill.

As far as lost bitcoins, do you mean when you lose the private key to a wallet? Sorry. Gone forever. I've got fifty bitcoins bouncing around from when they were 50 cents a pop, and those suckers are -gone- forever. Theoretically, it's possible that someone will randomly generate the private key while making a wallet, but that's wildly unlikely, given that there's a bit more than 1.4 quindicillion wallets. For help understanding how big that number is, here is a fun chart. http://i.imgur.com/ag3KQ0L.png

blackie

When I was playing with bitcoin, even with the high transaction fee it took too long for my needs. I want "right now" to be less than 10 seconds, preferably less than 2 second. Not seven minutes.
https://blockchain.info/charts/median-confirmation-time

I get it for the people who are making money with it, or trying to make money with it. I get it for people who are trying to avoid banks. I don't get it for the average consumer. It seems like a hassle to get and use bitcoin.

Erroneous_Logic

oh, well, just to clarify, the -transaction- happens immediately, it's the confirmations of the transaction that can take longer. for small amounts, like .25 cents, I wouldn't care about confirmations. You would scan my wallet code, send the bitcoin, I'd get a ding, done. and then ten minutes later I might get the first confirmation.
On the other hand, $500? I'mma sit around and make you sit around too, until we get at least one confirm.
$50,000? Three confirms, minimum.

These aren't rules, they're simply good ideas to alleviate risk with large amounts of money.

blackie

Quote from: Erroneous_Logic on August 06, 2016, 01:50 PM NHFT
These aren't rules, they're simply good ideas to alleviate risk with large amounts of money.
That is why I like to use credit for internet transactions. I never have to put my money at risk.

Erroneous_Logic

Quote from: blackie on August 06, 2016, 06:04 PM NHFT
Quote from: Erroneous_Logic on August 06, 2016, 01:50 PM NHFT
These aren't rules, they're simply good ideas to alleviate risk with large amounts of money.
That is why I like to use credit for internet transactions. I never have to put my money at risk.

True. But in a free society, credit companies could not possibly exist as they do now. They rely upon the banks having control of your funds in the event of some kind of non-payment. Without that, their business becomes very untenable.

And to be clear, I'm not saying that bitcoin is a magical panacea for all the world's financial ills. It's not. It's simply one of many ways that you can take control of your own finances.

MikeforLiberty

Quote from: Erroneous_Logic on August 06, 2016, 06:28 PM NHFT
True. But in a free society, credit companies could not possibly exist as they do now. They rely upon the banks having control of your funds in the event of some kind of non-payment. Without that, their business becomes very untenable.
Credit companies make tremendous profits off people who have negative net worth, there are no funds to control.

Russell Kanning


Erroneous_Logic

They do, but again, they only manage to do that because of insurance companies, which, in a voluntary society, wouldn't support such frivolous unsecured lending. They only support it now because the courts have bankruptcy, and during such a proceeding, the borrower basically gets fleeced of anything valuable they have(having negative equity doesn't mean you have nothing of value). None of that would happen without government existence and support.

Jay

People love to the idea of getting something for nothing, and they always whine when it disappears.