who are the folks that control the protocol, and what keeps them being the ones in charge of it?

Wow the cnn article on bitcoin atm machines is dope. Coming out next week. Unreal how fast this is all going now.

True nature of humanity is exposed when uninformed people start using words like "Surely".

Maybe you should show some humility before giving judgement on things you don't understand.

Whatever technology is developer BitCoin algorhythm will adjust so the rate of mining stays as predefined. In order to "overrun" BitCoin design you need groundbreaking advancement in computational power and even then people will be most probably be able to adjust the cryptography protocols.

blah blah blah the ones who made the most money during the gold rush were the ones selling the shovels blah blah

these are the developers who make the "official" client: http://bitcoin.org/en/development

but its the miners who choose whether or not to accept any updates, so it all comes down to community consensus

here is the formal process for protocol changes:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Improvement_Proposal

in practice any changes have been thoroughly discussed in this forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0

and some changes that would cause a fork have been voted on by the miners (when you mine a block it is possible to write a message) before implementing, and

that said changing the hash function would probably cause a hard fork

You realize it costs $3-5M+ to get an ASIC designed and manufactured?

3-5 million isn't anything when dealing with a 1.5 billion/market.

Say someone didn't want to do a 51% attack but a single person built a farm that was doing 49% of the hashing. Would they consider changing the protocol then? If yes, how is that fair at all? It would feel like these developers are now the "fed" and changing things at their will.

something sorta like that is happening--BTC Guild has almost 50%:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comm..._at_btc_guild/



then again its kinda hard to know which is the correct data.. this says its closer to 36%

Could they theoretically make an update that allowed for faster transaction approval?

I would then assume they're FPGA-based ASICS from Xilinx or Altera, way cheaper, especially for the smaller lot size.
Not a super-power ASIC, but a task-specific chip that can still make a GPU cry.

If anyone is looking for more than 10k, there are reputable services that set up large trades off-exchange for close to zero vig. You can also just find large bitcoin holders/miners yourself on localbitcoins and arrange a trade directly. Theres a few guys who will dump 50k for cash or bank wire in the US, and a bunch of other countries as well.

onemoretimes, it seems like you've learned a bit more in the last couple weeks, so at least your statements make a bit more sense now. They are still wrong. Forget about this 51% attack thing. A miner having 51% does not mean they can change the protocol. You can't even change the protocol with 90% of mining power. None of the bitcoin clients will accept the blocks with the protocol change.

A 51% attacker can only double spend his own coins, charge high transaction fees, or not allow any transactions, until a patch is released in a few hours to thwart him.

yes. but i doubt such a change would happen because it would require messing with the rate coins are generated. but who knows once mining fees are much larger than the block reward i think it could be a possibility.

there is already sort of an example of this, litecoin is essentially the same source code with the block time set to 2.5 min instead of 10 min.

i don't really think faster clearing is that necessary, eventually the blockchain i think will be more used for large entities to settle up and most users will just be making instant transactions through 3rd parties (like passing around MTgox redeemable codes)

So, theoretically, is there money to be made if you have an ASICs coming in within the next few months or will the market be so flooded with the new hardware making it much harder to mine?

My main fear is that once the current ASICs get released they will just produce something way better making the "new" ones practically useless.

this is a huge question and there are people betting on it being possible but i think the margin will be very slim once you factor in the chance on not receiving the asic. why would a company mail out a machine that could pay for itself in a week while simultaneously making them less valuable? wouldn't they just run it, building up unseizable money and then just declare bankruptcy saying it never worked?

holy crap, $140+??? i am an idiot for cashing out a bunch at $108. i really believe that long-term, btc will rule the world, but it just seems to be going up way too fast for something in its infancy. i know the financial collapses are helping increase demand, but this is insane. if you think about the number of coins there are, and the number of people trying to get in, i suppose it does make sense. if a million people in a country (very small % of its population) all try to get some btc, because their currency is getting raped, and nobody is selling, i guess it will go up like crazy. still, i hope it levels off to a reasonable rate of ascent for its own good. i just can't see this being good for its long-term health.

It's been fairly level @ 130-140 the last couple days.

lol, i mean it doubled every month, 3 months in a row. it looks like it will do the same this month. i know it goes down some days too. but, in general, it just seems to increase at a rate that is unhealthy for it in the long term, imo. obviously, i am thrilled that it has done this well so far. i am now more than freerolling on the btc i have left.

I think it has orders of magnitude to go before it's done.

I didn't imply they could change the protocol. However, if a 51% guy can make it so no transactions go through, doesn't that render bitcoin useless? This "patch" you speak of. What would that consist of?

What do you guys think of PPcoins and other cryptocurrencies?

ppcoin just exploded to 80x its value from last week then stabalized to like 3x its value while people dumped, i was late to the party so i sold somewhere closer to 3x than 80

i think litecoin is the nut coin right now, it is harder to centralize because it is not able to be mined with asics well (yet?) and transactions take much less time

i think ppcoin has potential because it uses hardly any electricity

i also think the market is wide open to the first reputable brand that introduces a currency, but I dont know if lord rothschild will let them

All these alt-coins are severely vulnerable to attacks no longer present in Bitcoin.

Faster confirms are a big trade-off and mean reduced certainty of transaction verification.

The fork glitch (and other DoS attacks) can break the alt-coins entirely. Faster confirms contribute to this. The price means far less when the absolute amounts are tiny.

Isn't the whole point of "mining" the fact that it costs money to do thus giving "value" to the coins. If it's essentially free to mine or costs very very little, why should they be worth ****?

its a good question, i havent made up my mind on them yet but i did just dump all my coins

there is a 2billion cap on coins as well which will definitely keep the price low.

in the end i think its good because it leads to less speculation and maybe a currency that people can trust. i guess the price is irrelevant per coin as it will be based on usd or gold