This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Bitcoin 'Glitch' Sparks 23% Flash Crash
While we are used to seeing insta-crashes in our highly-regulated and trustworthy equity markets, the unregulated digital world of Bitcoins suffered another flash-crash last night. According to Ars Technica, the 23% plungefest in the value of the digital currency (the second in a week) was due not to Waddel & Reed, not HFT algos, but 'forking' Cryptographic algos gone wild agreeing on different (legacy) keys as being correct - akin to finding Tungsten in your Gold bars (and hence the drop in the value). This latest glitch is different from the problem that caused Bitcoin prices to briefly crash to zero in June of 2011. In that case, the sell-off was caused by the compromise of the exchange itself, whereas this time the glitch occurred in the core Bitcoin software. Obviously, the incident will be another important test of the cryptocurrency's decentralized governance structure - to say nothing of its reputation among the less technically-capable owners and miners (even though BTC rapidly recovered almost all its losses).
Last night's bitcoin software-related crash...
and last week's 'market' based crash
and the life of BTC...
From a high of more than $48 earlier Monday, the value of Bitcoins plummeted to less than $37 around 10 PM Central time on Monday evening, a 23 percent decline. The price has since recovered; one Bitcoin is now worth about $46 - which, one could argue reflects a rapid recoupling with value and confidence (especially given the recent run-up in price) but notably, flash-crashes in equities (as we noted above) never seemed to stop greed-stricken investors piling into them anyway.
Charts: Bitcoincharts.com
(h/t BD)
- 23581 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -





Stacks of Electronic bitcoins do not hold a shine to my other stacks. You know, the ones that computers cannot touch.
Hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ahhhh
Toldja so....
Why...its almost as if...it was never there...digital, there one minute, gone the next.
How odd ;-)
Yes, quite a shocking turn of events.
forking crazy if you ask me !
I felt a disturbance in the force...
Or maybe it was one of Knuck's gefilte fish.
"if you don't understand how the X market operates, get out of it"
X elementOf { equity, bond, foreignExchange, bitcoin }
Anyone else wondering WTF are bit coins?
http://www.planbeconomics.com/2013/03/12/what-are-bitcoins/
here's a hint: "allegedly worthless dollars are traded for them." now give those boyz some twinkies!
Still over 1.5 ounces of silver. Not a single bitcoin was Corzined.
Laugh it up, and forget about bitcoin. Ponzi-scam inflitrated by the CIA, it won't survive after the sun explodes, or something.
"Aaaaaaaaand, it's gone."
It's too bad this happened. One day it might be useful to transmit "money" from one location to another without SWIFT and without government's prying eyes. For example if one had to flee the United States to another country one could sell assets in USA, put them into bitcoin and then re-buy the assets in the other country - all done without a banking system and government reporting.
I don't own bitcoin because I don't think it's stable, but I do see the value of it in some circumstances.
Yes, the concept is great but why should I trust anything about a virtual currency? Then again why should I trust any currency, but that is not my point here.
As a general rule i would say you should trust a currency inversely proportional to the ability of man/government/idiot/krugman/bernanke to fuck with it. Both gold and bitcoin are a threat to the powers that be, my gold is harder to hide, plus i can't encrypt it, copy it, and stash it in multiple locations. Thing is though, bitcoin is a CURRENCY, like the US dollar, not a STORE OF VALUE, like gold. Hence i would recommend bitcoin whenever you can use it just to fuck with .gov, but i would not recommend stashing it like gold, as, like most currencies, it's value is pretty goddamn subjective.
This forking is nothing, and has happend before.
Do you realize that BTC is trading in a spread of 30% everyday?!?!
They don't care. They just want some disaster to gloat over. Froget them.
hehehe, true...
Exactly.
However the one advantage of paper money over bitcoin is:
At least I can wipe my ass with it when it all goes down.
One advantage of bitcoins over paper money: you don't get sued for littering if you throw away bitcoins.
Yes, I'm actually kind of glad this happened. I hope this shook out some of the speculative froth in Bitcoin, leaving people who are more serious about actually using the currency and building new businesses around it.
I just tried out one of the recent newcomers today: http://bitspend.net/ - You can now spend bitcoins on Amazon, EBay and any number of other online stores. Super easy!
Bitcoin is atm highly dependent upon The Silk Road. Shut that road down and Bitcoin plummets.
I like the idea of BT, but in the age of information manipulation, it's too easy to scare off investers and keep down a competing curreny.
Realize having control of the money is hugely advantageous for those who seek power; theyll kill this and any competing currency they can. Everything depends on controlling money.
And if it proves that it cant be killed? What will happen to BitCoin value then?
" ... as if millions of bitcoin users suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."
It's a fad.
Here is more about this.:
http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/03/breaking-blockchain-has-forked.html
I actually love bitcoins, it's like I am in a love triangle between my two favorite currencies, physical silver and bitcoin. One has tradition and scarcity going for it. It looks nice, it has a lovely ring to it when I play with it. The other has all the things going for it that banksters and government agencies hate, anonymity, no charge or holding fees, no middle men, no ability to print more.
The one thing I fear the most would be some bankster saying that bitcoin is so great, they decided to open up an exchange for it and naked-short the shit out of the thing and then get Bit Chilton on the case!
lol....its anonymous...
out of all the purported negatives btc detractors throw around, this is the only one that is real threat:
i can imagine this scenario: btc takes off and becomes a threat to the present day confetti that's been thrown around by central banks. since all cb's print "money" at no cost and can purchase with it anything they want, they can print enough to drive btc to the moon; and then short sell it into the ground just as quickly. and that'll be the end. no one will have any confidence in the value of btc again if it can be manipulated that easily. on the other hand, i cannot explain why so many still trust and buy paper gold/silver instead of bullion.
Yeah, that's a real tough one all right. Would the fact that there are already established BTC exchanges help? Or would "the boyz" and their media cronies and stooges just disregard that and give theirs all the press? Or by that time would their press have any currency in the realm of public opinion anyway? I can see how this could easily turn into the mother of all us vs them social interregnums.
If they drive the price to say $1, taking delivery kills them. There are less than 11M btc out there. As of today, a single bitcoin is more scarse than 10kgs of gold.
They can't do it--and they know it.
Come on now, don't discourage them.
Please TPTB I know you can do it. In fact I'm begging you, please short the shit out of this market. Short it to $1.
Thank you (in advance)!
No violence is strong enough to solve the math problem.
They can always settle for cash.
There is no [enforceable] requirement to deliver. So who's gonna make them deliver? The SEC?
"it's like I am in a love triangle between my two favorite currencies, physical silver and bitcoin."
In any event your going toe-to-toe with the current champ. He's a large and ruthless cyborg that hits below the belt with weighted gloves and owns the venue. The ref and all three judges are in his corner (so it's gotta be a KO). Hell, he'd bite your fucking ear off if needbe.
So be careful.
Shit coins is more like it.
All those wantin' to hate on Bitcoin here's an anthem for ya:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EYr7474iys
I don't own any and do wonder what the potential is as store of value,
HOWEVER,
anonymity is something to consider in this 'check your socks and underwear' world.
Think about it.
I don't think some people appreciate the evil genius of Bitcoin. Allow me to help:
CLUELESS BORDER GUARD - So do you have any firearms, bonds or currency over $10,000 you need to declare?
SOME YOUNG GUY - Well I got this flash drive sir, but it's encrypted using 3DES on a secret Truecrypt partition. Honestly, I don't remember if I got naked pics of my ex gf, my college thesis or ten million dollars on here? Sorry, I forgot the password....
Bitcoin is a crypto-tunneling currency. Information wants to be free. Now try do that with bullion.
what if the border guard keeps it so he can check out your ex or just drops it on the floor and stomps on it because he is a dick?
Which is exactly why you always backup and store your wallet.dat file somewhere else.
cool man, it does seem interesting.
Actually you don't even need the USB drive. If you can remember a random 12 word "seed" you can recover your funds by simply reinstalling the bitcoin client on a new computer wherever you decide to go and typing in the seed.
http://electrum.org/seed.html
Brain wallet bitchez!
mnemonics is for 'terrists!
I can't wait to read the comments when ZH publishes the first "ripple" news.
CLUELESS BORDER GUARD: OK, well i'm going to have to run this high-powered magnet over your USB drive since Homeland Security has been informed drug gangs are smuggling digital currency out of the country via USB sticks.
In the cloud, no one hears your bitcoins scream!
Yeah, we've been over this before. I then take my pretend money and buy a picture of a cup of coffee and a pictures of a croissant. Blah, blah, blah. He who giveth taketh away.
HAH! Flash memory is immune to bulk demagnitizing. You musta been one of those kids wandering through radio shack who thought that thing was a new Tandy Iron.
Bulk demagnitizers still can't demagnitize a stack of Carlton Sheets real estate videos however, so hide your bitcoins in there.
Yupes - Flash Ram (the storage medium in USB Flash Disks) is not magnetic.
On the other hand 220V (or 110V if in the US) from a wall socket directly into the pins will fry it nicelly, thank you very much. Also microwaves will fry it (in more ways than one).
USB drives are not necessarily susceptible to magnetic fields, just sayin'.
I've heard it said by MK and Naomi Wolfe that a developing paradigm is spying vs. privacy. I think there will be a market for both for a while yet to come.
Almost a decade ago in the UK a law was passed that the police can demand the password from you and can jail you until you give it. Even better, not knowing it is no excuse.
The fight between freedom-loving techies and authoritarian authorities has been going on for decades now: far longer than Bitcoin has been around.
(I'm one of those that was on the Internet from when it was just a University and Military network, before AOL made it mainstream)
Real free market price discovery and the very idea of freedom of any kind have become such abhorrent abstractions that even the keyboard warriors on ZH reject the concepts outright evidently. That is something...
Yes it is quite something.
Once bitten, twice shy.
This looks like a Y2K type issue: the older software could not handle blocks that had too many transactions in them. Looks like the two big problems are:
1) during the divergence, any coinds mined may be lost
2) problems with transactions that were completed during the time the issue persisted.
If I had to guess at the cause, I would guess too much penny bets on online gambling. That's the only way I see the amount of transactions in a ten minute period going into the thousands.
that's exactly what happened. zero bitcoins were lost, and the system is now more robust, as everyone is working on solutions for a similar problem in the future.
"For the fragile (TBTF), an error is a catastrophe."
"For the antifragile, an error is information."
By the way, why not report that Litecoin, another cryptocurrency, is about to reach parity with the hyperinflating fedbanknote anytime now?
what are you doing out and about tadpole? Oh, I forgot you are a government lab worker slave sent forth to attack any threats to your beloved government paycheck for doing "research" on tadpoles and "trying" to change the world. How about that rebound last night. a dumb ass like you who doesn't know the difference between a blockchain fork and a dinner fork was hoping that it would go to zero right? well it didn't bitch, so get used to btc being an ever present annoyance to your beloved FRN.
Whoa!
Happens Ben gets pissed and punches the delete key?
(That's probably why he needed Timmah around for those intimate conversations up in the tree house and in his office... Remember the tree house sagas? LOL)
i wonder what the intrade odds were on a bitcoin crash...oh....wait....
LOL
Gold Star Award!
Go for it!
The broken leading the defunct. Like Treasury having the Fed do it's bidding.
What could go wrong?
Booyah!
Intrade closes. Bitcoin user not affected.
http://betsofbitco.in/
http://bitbet.us/
Too bad they weren't still around in a form that could provide the statistical probability of a populist free-market futures exchange and a grass-roots non-fiat based de-centralized digital currency suffering such proximate losses in the face of a rising critical awareness and distaste for the synthetic robo-gamed alternatives.
Really, what are the odds...?
How much does it cost to dig it out of the ground?
.
Did King Solomon have bitcoins?
Come on, Blotto!
You know very well that it only costs $5 to dig bitcoins from the cyberground!
You might be right about that. The cost of data mining computers, time and electricity add up.
The cost is dependant on electricty price, the hash rate per watt of your hardware, and the current mathematical difficulty of mining a new block. Depending on your location, air conditioning and bandwidth costs may also be a factor.
PIZZ! I just about had enuff shitcoins to buy a RPG from Dick's!
MF Bitcoin
It's an interesting experiment, but all it is accomplishing is showcasing our human limitations when it comes to forming reliable institutions. The virtual dollar is only slightly more reliable than Bitcoin. And that's only because of certain perceptions.
Fool's Gold!
Where are the BITCON defenders? Getting stoned and whacking it to some kiddie porn.
NO BITCON FOR ME!
Because gold and silver never get slammed? Because there is never any fake or diluted gold or silver?
Dear Bitcoin haters:
It is with deep regret that I must inform you that you have to wait until it actually blows up before you can gloat. My bitcoins are as usable today as they were yesterday. It was a technical difficulty that will occur in a developing system. I am sure ATMs have gone haywire, people have found silver clad eagles, counterfeit bills, etc.
And assuming people who use bitcoin are into kiddie porn or drugs fits very well into the Nanny State Mindset (NSM). Why would anyone want banking privacy unless they are doing something wrong? If you don't want drones flying over your city you must have mass graves in your backyard!
Two words.... Quantum Computing
Three words... Thought of it.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths#Quantum_computers_would_break_Bitcoin.2...
Exactly, my life savings are under my control, it's not going to disappear because of a software glitch.
BTFGlitch.
Just for the record - a great write-up of what happened during the hard fork, written in a non-technical way for the everyday user.
Source: http://endthelie.com/2013/03/13/financial-crisis-revealed-and-resolved-i...
Full Article Extract:
Monday, March 11th saw calamity strike at the core of the Bitcoin system – over the last 3 years the number of users has increased exponentially, and the value along with it. In the past we’ve seen large public thefts, but Monday’s event was fundamentally different.
Bitcoin is basically one big public distributed ledger (known as The Blockchain) where the ownership of every Bitcoin ever created is tracked, accounted for, and verified automatically by various participants in the system. Transactions can be detected within a few seconds, but merchants generally take the hour or so to gather 6 confirmations to ensure the payment cannot be reversed.
Other participants, upon receiving news of the ownership transfer (payment), check the payer’s account to ensure that they haven’t already spent them publicly. A confirmation is the return message saying “Yes, this all seems to be in order, the value is truly available to be transferred to the intended recipient and we’ve updated our ownership records to reflect that.” With that background in mind, on Monday the blockchain split in two without warning.
Why’d it happen?
Call it growing pains – Berkeley Database (BDB) was used for versions of the Bitcoin software 0.7 and below and as luck would have it, will accept a maximum number of changes per block. The protocol’s self adjusting difficulty seeks to issue a block every 10 minutes. As Bitcoin usage has increased, so have the number of transactions contained in the average block.
So what happened?
On Monday, a single block went through the system containing 1700 transactions, and was rejected by the participants still running on 0.7 due to how many changes it made. Had everyone been running 0.7, the block would have been rejected and the transactions processed in (hopefully) smaller blocks.
Because an upgrade to 0.8 was rolled out several weeks (error in original article) ago that switched to a different database system without the same limitation, we found ourselves with two separate blockchains (ledgers) each disagreeing with the other’s interpretation of reality. Those running 0.7 saw too-large blocks as invalid, while to those running 0.8, everything was normal and the larger blocks were acceptable and built upon.
Cause and effect
An alert went out immediately (at 1:30am UTC) from the mostly volunteer open source development team letting merchants know to not accept Bitcoins for the next few hours while the system sorted itself out. To miners, they asked that everyone revert back to 0.7 so no incompatible blocks will be generated. The average user was unaffected.
Crisis isn’t good for anyone, so participants quickly fell in line wanting to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Within 8 hours things were back to normal; If you live in America, chances are pretty good you slept through the whole thing, including the 23% drop in price, which vanished by morning.
Schrödinger’s Bitcoin
The “Double Spend” is the bogeyman of digital currency world. Since Bitcoins are just data and data can be copied, what’s to protect a merchant from being paid with money already spent elsewhere? This is the function of the blockchain, which represents the network consensus of reality.
When that consensus broke down due to the fork, it created a state best represented by the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment – one in which a single entity simultaneously and paradoxically exists in two states, only one of which can eventually be real.
During the disruption, one large Double Spend actually occurred and was paid out in US Dollars. When the faulty blockchain was abandoned, the reality consensus settled on the backwards compatible ledger. In this case, payment processor OKPAY was left without the Bitcoins they thought they received, and were also still out the nearly $10,000 they exchanged for them.
This is the most valuable instance of a successful Double Spend in the Bitcoin ecosystem, which can only occur under the Schrödinger’s Bitcoin scenario described above.
Luckily this story has a happy ending. Both parties “did the right thing” and have refunded each other. But will things work so well next time? Will there be a next time, is this situation repeatable?
I asked Gavin Andresen, Lead Developer on the Bitcoin project about the risks moving forward:
Question: Are “Double Spends” possible under normal circumstances?
Gavin: Double-spend risk is not a “yes or no” — like most risks, it is “more risky” or “less risky”, down to “So little risk I won’t worry about it. One of the reasons I still tell people “bitcoin is an experiment” is because everybody is still figuring out where the edge-case risks are.
Q: So for the average user or merchant, how much risk is there in every-day use?
Gavin: For the, average user or merchant delivering a physical product to customers: I’d say very close to zero risk after 3 confirmations. Exchanges or merchants that deliver “cash-like” high-value products or services have their own particular set of risks, and they need to be more careful. merchants that deliver services that have a zero marginal cost to them (e.g. “Subscribe to my e-magazine”) have even less risk than users or merchants delivering physical products.
And all of that is modified if you have some trust in the person you’re transacting with. I recently sold a couple thousand dollars worth of bitcoin to a friend who promised to send me a check in the mail, and I was happy to do that.
Q: In your worst case scenario, where you flat out do not trust the person but want to do business with them, what would you recommend?
Gavin: For ultimate trust transacting a huge amount of value to somebody who I think will try to rip me off– 24 hours would be the “100% safe” time. It really is confirmations and not time, but unless something wacky is happening those two are equal after 6 confirmations or so.
I pick 24 hours because that would be 120+ confirmations. I can’t conceive of a situation where “we” (the shared consensus of the bitcoin network) would allow a 120-block fork to happen that double-spent
Q: Now that the issue has been resolved for a day, any lessons learned or things that will be improved on?
Gavin: actually one really stupid/simple thing ‘we’ should have done long ago: make it easy for bitcoin services to get alerts sent to their email/SMS/etc. We’ll be concentrating on things like improving communication during crises, because no two crises are exactly alike.
Regarding specific tasks: implementing a -alertnotify=<run some command> is very high on my TODO list. That’s easy to do, and is the thing I’m kicking myself for not doing sooner
Q: What does that mean?
Gavin: That means “if you get an alert, run this command to tell me about it” where “this command” is specified by the service operator — send email, send sms, whatever
Moving forward
History would have us believe Bitcoin scandal leads to big losses in the trading value of the currency, but this time was different. Despite the currency itself seeming at risk and the impossible momentarily made real, the price immediately bounced back up to near all-time highs.
Bitcoin may be small as currencies go, but the hourly chart below speaks volumes given that every 1K Bitcoins represents about $50,000 USD.
So here we are, less than 72 hours after the event, and we’re basically back to where we started. The system is stable, the fork abandoned and the consensus reality once again agreed upon. And all this with a basically volunteer development team who has no real ability to make anybody do anything, outside of telling them it’s a good idea.
Compare that to the ongoing crisis in currencies controlled by central banks, who have the unilateral authority not only to make all decisions related to their respective monetary policy, but also the ability to issue more bills at will, should the need arise.
Lacking such an option, Bitcoin is forced to deal with its problems and try as quickly as possible to return to a state of normality. So does it work? For now, the answer is a definitive “yes,” but since it was just created in 2009, only time will tell.
From where I’m sitting this was just about as good an outcome as anyone could hope for. No value was lost, even though the system prides itself on irreversible transactions (which once you’ve dealt with Paypal’s merchant Chargebacks, you begin to see the appeal of).
The development team isn’t hiding the cause of the recent issue and is instead using this as a reason to dig into the response with work being done on an internal, comprehensive post-mortem.
They’ve taken the whole thing as a learning opportunity and have pledged to implement a more agile communication-alert system so if this does happen again, users will be alerted and large users will take appropriate precautions.
I like to see people with power admit they are not omniscient, and in this world of centrally planned money it’s too rare a thing.
One thing is certain: Bitcoin isn’t suffering for lack of its own Bernanke, and that should give us all reason to hope.
End of Article.
(Minor format additions for readability.)
I hope that is helpful for someone in the future that turns up this thread via search engines.
Also, in the end - the "power" he refers to is the ability to analyze the code and correct it, not control over the decentralized bitcoin network.
Leroy. I told you to watch yo big feet and that damned extension cord. Leeroy!
Ah say, you listenin' to me son?
Fawtenetly, ah keeps ma digits coded fah jest sech an amugency.
+1 - Long Foghorn
Wait, this isn't possible, it's math, and math is infallible!
Someone just doesn't understand math!
"Enigma" will never be hacked!
Bitcoin is foolproof!
(/sarc)
Obviously, they either did not understand how the core components of their software worked, or they did not anticipate there would ever be more than 100 transactions per minute. Maybe better to wait for bitcoin 2.0, after all the bugs are worked out and the infrastructure is better developed.
Obviously, anything on the Internet and computers is infinitely fungible, fallible, and full of holes.
Fight the machine, yes, but not with their own weapons. Defer to tangibles you hold in your physical defensible possession or suffer the consequences.
I'm with you all in spirit but know after 30+ years in I.T. that anything relying on electricity, the grid, the Internet, and binary databases - that it is a shot in the dark and playing into their hands.
So what you are admitting is that the infallible encryption algorithm's and math behind Bitcoin are infinitely fallible becuase human beings run the sotware and the servers.
C'mon, it's o.k., 1+1=2 until you get human beings involved, you know this to be true, so give up the ghost already.
The math is probably fine, but the math is only one part of a complex system.
Bitcoin, Shitcoin, if it ain't gold or silver and
you ain't holding it in your hand, it is fiat, and
we all know where the value of fiat is going.
Yea, but it gives the central planners shit fits so that alone endears itself in my heart.
Someone doesn't know what fiat means.
Do you think it's the same people going after Silver too...?
Could be.
But it wouldn't matter if the "currency" was something you could hold in your hand and didn't need anything else to make it a valid currency...like internet, USB's, commercial or stored energy...you know...real money, not a debit-credit system.
I got nothing against bit-coin guys fighting the system...but just realize, you're fighting it on their terms.
Whatevahs.
exactly. I would never use it for that reason. but to those that do I sincerely wish them well.
Ditto2
Bitcoin believers are like
modern day Don Quixotes, they are fighting windmills,
but we wish them well.
Well here's a classic Texas swing piece for my sign off tonight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1vbUVeUgPo
Enjoy
(gefilte fish LOL, OMG)
What was that old chinese proverb?
When the wind of change blows some build shelters, others build windmills.
We know what Gold and Silver are. So what does that make Bitcoin?
Better hope the power grid (and therefore the internet) never goes out.
Wait, where did Bitcoin originate and who is that Japanese guy?
No one knows who "Satoshi Nakamoto" is. He/She/They might not even be Japanese. Therefore, dump all your money into this shit.
You mean it could even be a Pseudonym like... like Tyler Durden, the Dude with the funny hair?
Oh the horror.
All I know for certain is that "Satoshi Nakamoto" is an anagram for "Ooh, Satanist Amok".
Also,
And probably a lot more.
The real question is what will be the name of the russian math prodigy that's currently locked away in his apartment decyphering the central algorythm keys buried deep into the source code.
The guy that created this isn't putting his name or face to it, doesn't add a lot of confidence that it's unbreakable or not a genius pump and dump ponzi.
Homer Simpson at the 'Million$ for Nothing' seminar:
"First, let me assure you that this is not one of those shady pyramid schemes you've been hearing about. No sir. Our model is the trapezoid!" The speaker hears a siren outside and leaps out the window (through the glass) in panic.
This reeks of what happened to silver in 2011. Anytime something gains some traction it gets smashed. That being said, the fact that it has pretty much recovered completely is impressive.
Meanwhile the dow rises one pathetic point on 85 freaking billion dollars a month being thrown at it.
No conspiracy with this particular problem; the older versions of the software simply had limits, and those limits got exceeded. Since not everyone was on the newest version of the software, problems happened.
Money=greed
Nothing digital is safe. Nothing digital is secure. Nothing digital is private.
I knew I should not have let my bank put that chip in my ass.
I wish that was the only thing my bank shoved up mine.
Your Ass? Fvkme they shoved it down the head of my Dick's. You have a really nice bank.. I would keep them.
Troll... HaHA
Now that is fucking funny
That wasn't a chip.
@Lost Wages
So true. And now there is a "fork" in the bitcoin algorithm. From the Ars Technica post:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/03/major-glitch-in-bitcoin-network-sparks-sell-off-price-temporarily-falls-23/
It's essential for all miners to enforce exactly the same rules about what counts as a valid block. If a client announces a block that half the network accepts and the other half rejects, the result could be a fork in the network. Different nodes could disagree about which transactions have occurred, potentially producing chaos.
That's what happened on Monday evening. A block was produced that the latest version of the Bitcoin software, version 0.8, recognized as valid but that nodes still running version 0.7 or earlier rejected.
"Fozzie, turn left at the fork in the road".
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Fork_in_the_Road
p.s.- They don't have their servers synchronized on version update rollouts? Wow. That kind of makes Apple (Mac O.S.) security look good.
@ebworthen
The "strength" of BTC lies in its distributed nature.
And thus, it's weakness.
It's not just servers, it is each user using the original client or mining as well. Why would you blindly update your software without knowing what the changes are, and agreeing to them?
A block was produced that the latest version of the Bitcoin software, version 0.8, recognized as valid but that nodes still running version 0.7 or earlier rejected.
What's to prevent an entity, say a government, from putting a bunch of software in, I dunno, Utah, and then intentionally causing this?
I admire people's faith in this, but I think it's misplaced, and it's also a waste of electricity. If it can work, great, but what you just saw is a flaw in fundamental idea. If this can happen by accident, imagine what can happen on purpose?
I see this as a great open beta test for the possibility of a better cryptocurrency in the future. As such, the electricity used is just an investment in R&D.
I frankly can't see how a cyrpto currency is even viable if you can take it down by just setting up a parallel network that just disagrees with the real one.
Hell, a computer virus could COMPLETELY wipe this out.
What's to prevent anybody from setting up a parallel network to have their own bitcoins generated, then JOINING the networks together? I bet fun ensues then.
As I understand this, it also depends on a transaction history to verify that a transaction is valid. What if you get a bitcoin, and don't spend it for 10 years? Will the fact that this coin EVER existed still be in the network?
And everybody is like "look at the code", as if they have. Nobody has really bothered to do any real work on finding out how to sabatoge this thing but although I'm not certain, I'm betting, it's damned easy to sabotage.
I don't know what happens if a region, say Iran for no particular reason, was suddenly cut off from the rest of the Internet and kept using bitcoins internally. I guess it would still work, except any new coins they mined would not exist once they reunified with the rest of the Internet.
When you first launch the original client, it downloads the entire history, which can take days. There are alternative clients that do not carry the history with them. There is probably a faster way to download a copy of the blockchain as a direct download.
And TPTB, since they control the networks and the Internet (remember, it was set up as a military backbone) can take down Bitcoin at will.
Play at your own risk.
They aren't following a good track record on that one, I think bitcoins will be perfectly save from that. Exhibit A: www.thepiratebay.se/
Wait wait wait.
Let's say it was Iran cut off the rest of the world from using "the Internet", and the rest of the world used bitcoins anyhow. Would this mean once the world was allowed to rejoin the Internet (which in this case would merely be Iran), that the newly minted coins that were minted outside of Iran would cease to exist once the world reunified with the rest of the Internet?
If you don't have a central authority, who makes the final decision as to what is a valid exchange and what is not, or who mined a coin first?
It appears this sytem works on majority rules. Well, who has unlimited funds to make an astroturf majority? China does, the US does, Russia does, maybe even India does, Europe does.
You don't have to know math to see there's a problem here.
Let's say Stuxnet is released, now wtih the ability to be a node, and this node says "nope, this coin isn't valid, it was already spent ages ago", and this virus is everywhere on the net?
If this really became a threat to the people that lied about Libor, that have taken us into Iraq and Afghanistan for some unknown reason still (unless you think they sincerely believed Hussein was working on weapons of mass destruction and cared, or really gave a damn about the government in Afghanistan), who created the housing bubble, which MIGHT be shorting gold and silver, who stole the entire United States private gold supply (well actually 1/3rd), who you suspect started WWI and WWII, etc etc etc - do you really think they will give up without a fight?
Any vulnerability will be used to destroy it. You need to realize who runs this world. It isn't Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, it's an AMMORAL ruthless group of assholes who will do anything to retain their power. Murder? Mass Murder? WAR? These people steep like babies because sociopaths don't have any regrets and they don't feel bad for what they do to other people. They are subhuman machines and we live under their thumb because most people just can't imagine somebody could be that remoseless.
If there's any fault in bitcoin, and it appears there is, it cannot replace standard currency. It will not be allowed to, ever. They would destroy the internet if they had to do it.
BTC + HFT = WMD
Everyone knows Max Keiser will sell his silver if needed to support the price of Bitcoin. No need to worry.
If he was gonna sell Lauren Lyster, I'd byte!
I don't think he has ownership rights to Lauren Lyster, but maybe Stacy Herbert.
haven't you heard? you don't need ownership rights to sell something anymore.
+1000 i'd give her the best 30 seconds of her life !
Slow down man, enjoy life - make it at least 30 minutes.
It still just trades on the technicals over the short terms, I'll bet.
‘If it is actually a decently free market, that is.
notice the parabolic rise. this should correct nicely very soon
Because the market is so fuckin small right now.... All you would need to do is buy about 10 million in bitcoins and you could manipulate the whole market
Whereas USD is in the trillions
since ~9 million out of ~10.5 million bitcoins are not in active circulation, you could only buy up up to 10%, but it might be easier to sell them off and drive down the price.
Geezus, we can't even get electronic coinage right in this country anymore!!!
Kids, GET THE F OFF OF FACEBOOK and learn some math and encryption algorithms while you're at it.
The FB zombies junking me?
Watching the last trade on MtGox as some sort of indicator of the value is crazy, since it could have been 0.00000001 Bitcoin traded at $37, at least watch the weighted avarage price which did not drop below $43 and was only as high as $47.5 before the drop.
Why I can't people accept bitcoin is just a competing currency? There's no reason why precious metals can't crash too. PMs and bitcoin are both reducing the power of fiat.
"Why I can't people accept bitcoin is just a competing currency?"
Because if you're not down in the basement huddled around your gold, silver, guns and beans in the fetal position waiting for the global grid to go down permanently due to a massive EMP, the implosion of the global financial system and the "government" to kick your door in (likely all at the same time, mind you), you just don't make the grade at ZH anymore. It really seems to be as simple as that and it is not only sad but frickin' hilarious.
Wow... all the supposed enemies of fiat HATE a huge enemy of fiat.
Good - stay away from BTC. That way the people with balls can use it unobstructed.
Wimps, masquerading as wise-asses.
I personally feel that the government is using Bitcoin as a way to get people to accept the idea of a digital currency. If Bitcoin ever becomes popular, the government will make it illegal and replace it with their own digital currency. Or maybe the government will force Bitcoin to give them the ability to track every Bitcoin transaction, control the number of Bitcoins, etc.
So I think many people are not against Bitcoin per se. But they see it as a step on the way to a world where the government electronically tracks every purchase you make. And ultimately we will end up with something that is even worse than fiat.
Good point. I would even say the government might have even invented and introduced Bitcoin into circulation.
why would the government get people used to having their privacy with a cryptographic currency then? Nice try but not everything you don't understand is a government conspiracy. It will be years before the government even notices BTC. government can't ban btc because it is a voluntary currency where individuals enter into an exchange of goods for btc. there is no mandate as with fiat, therefore they cannot interfere in commerce between consenting adults. additionally, BTC isn't classified as a currency, so the governement has no legal recourse unless they specifically right legislation to outlaw it. the criminal bankers will try and destroy btc long before that happends, but until they can figure out how to create BTC derivatives(paper leverage), btc should be safe. No one really knows how desperate the shyster banksters will get though. since the btc network is a P2P distributed anonymous network, it will be pretty hard to shut it down unless the ISP's decide to knuckle under and a lot of the people that run ISP's are btc officianados.
" so the governement has no legal recourse unless they specifically right legislation to outlaw it"
How hard would creating this legislation be? Not very, I assume, once the banksters who own the government decided that it was a considerable threat. Mind you, no vendor will accept as payment anything that has been declared illegal. Even if some would, they wouldn't if it could be tracked (true for ANYTHING digital, not for physical means of payment). So there you go...bitcoins plunge to zero INSTANTLY. I can't imagine the rush for the exits on this one :-)
You are ignorant as fuck. InQTel asked one of the original bitcon artists to give a presentation to them in June 2012. InQTel is the venture capital fund of the CIA. If anything, they may not have invented it, but they are invested in it now. Put out a fake grassroots currency with a mysterious orgin, tell people it is anti-authoritarian, watch them plow all their money into it and you've got them by the balls.
"watch them plow all their money into it"
People that do that with anything are either on the take (inside info) or at the end of that timeline (with a throw back to the ZH quote) are gonna get what they deserve.
The government is not using Bitcoin, in any way whatsoever. They would be the last ones to even comprehend it.
Breaking news! The government makes illegal absolutely everything in the entire universe, forever! Bitcoin users not affected.
Good luck applying force to an idea. Like it worked so well every time so far.
BitCoin offers a lot of possitives - transparency, transportability, anti-Central Bank
The downsides are - if the network goes down, you're fucked - same for your IRA's, bank accounts, SS account, anything over the web or on computers.
2 weeks ago I thought BC was a joke - now, with the safe full of ammo, AU and AG, BC might be ANOTHER hedge against The Fall.
I'm pretty much anti everything - thus I got shit from friends when in 2007 I said "buy gold/siver", "inflation gonna hit the fan".
Don't buy on my advise, I never had a crystal ball worth shit. But when a lot say bullshit, it might, MIGHT, be worth considering as an additional hedge.