No, the concern is that whoever wins those auctions could still conceivably flood the marketplace with those coins. The volume is such that if it were to happen it would certainly push the price down.

Whoever is buying those coins is someone who would have been likely to otherwise buy coins on the open market, so there is pressure of moving demand in that direction.

maybe you should read my post again.

It certainly is no worse than the Mt. Gox situation! A sustained 51% attack would be pretty bad, and the easier it is for fewer people to "regulate" what transactions get approved is also dangerous.

Think about how someone would double spend a large enough amount to justify the attack. They would have to hold a lot of Bitcoins, transact with them for something and not have your identity known (because if you double spend and the merchant knows you, and you are within some jurisdiction of the law, you are gonna get sued/arrested if you don't return the goods).

It's just bizzare to be so overly concerned with it, and basically shows someone with just barely sufficient technical knowledge to panic but not enough to understand it (sounds like someone in this thread).

There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about mining centralization, but fear of a double-spend is a weird one.

no offense of course but would appreciate your thoughts to why the post is so bad?

So it looks like secondmarket is going to try to buy the silk road coins.

As a brand, bitcoin hasn't got a great name. Most people associate it with drugs or think that it went bankrupt.

Some of the alts are faster and better. So perhaps they would be the Lexus in your example, and bitcoin would be the more commonly used Ford.

Bitcoiners dismiss alts without considering them as quickly as current financial institutions dismiss bitcoin. As everyone knows, things move quickly in the world of crypto. Who knows what the landscape will look like in a year's time? I certainly don't pretend to. I'm keeping an open mind and watching developments.

Heh fair enough

Hi all.

We've launched our casino a few days ago now. Still much to do, more games to add and we intend on changing ease of access/deposit features. But it's fully functional and getting what traffic we bring from our bitcointalk thread for now as we haven't started marketing. We intend to gradually make changes while building trust and a customer base.

We haven't implemented 0 betting yet. If any of you would like to create an account and try it out that would be cool.

Can join the giveaway in our thread, or just pm me here and I'll send you some satoshis.

https://satoshicarnival.co/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=619499.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=629486.0

We're new to this and to the marketing aspect which I'm learning about for when our campaigns begin.

Any thoughts appreciated, thanks

before you ask anybody to use this can you talk about the levels of security you have, your provably fair aspect of your site, and how you do storage for customer accounts.

Not scared of being sent to jail running something like that? (Guessing you don't have a license?)

I'm Canadian, partners in Europe, server in Amsterdam.

Not much to worry about for a little while at they very least, and if it does succeed, we will potentially be looking into licensing. If JD(the site/funds) is currently safe...I think we'll be fine for now.

Provably Fair - sha-512

-click on a bet on the bet table to see the seeding info
-ability to refresh server seed and change player seed
-hash of current server seed in ACCOUNT window

Security / Privacy

- 2 types of 2FA, ebtc address signing and TOTP GA
- Server ports closed, only our 3 IP addresses can access server, admin
- no e-mail required
- no cookies stored
- password retrieval through emergency bitcoin address message signing

Funds

- 80/20 cold/hot
- cold on a dedicated offline Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with encrypted hard drive with bitcoin armory
- I manage that laptop and cold wallet withdrawals (looking forward to bitcoin armory 'coin vaults' so we can multi-sig the cold wallet between us 3 partners)
- can shut down game / block instant withdrawals any time from admin panel

T&C to protect from potential glitches.
Fully transparent system - stats, leaderboards, and custom interval public API for external analysis.

It's all in the FAQ.

Awesome, looks pretty good, good luck with this!

heh... not one for gossip but thought this was funny....

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...-paradise.html

some snippits...

...Meet Roger Ver, ex-U.S. citizen, ex-convict, millionaire investor, self-described libertarian and founder of Passports for Bitcoin.com.

The ever-expanding universe of what you can buy with bitcoins includes a hotel stay in Rome, a kimono in Tokyo, and cable TV in the U.S. Ver, a pioneer investor in bitcoin startups, now says he can add citizenship to the list.

Specifically, that’s the right to live in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, two sun-kissed islands a three-hour flight from Miami. St. Kitts has run an invest-and-become-a-citizen program since 1984, making it the oldest of its kind, says the country’s website.

...One of the people who got a dose of Ver’s sermons was the agent who processed his application for citizenship, Paul Bilzerian. Bilzerian is a former corporate raider who moved to St. Kitts after long battles with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and two stints in prison for securities fraud and conspiracy to defraud the government of millions.

The two men bonded over the belief they’d been targeted by U.S. authorities, according to Ver. Together, they started passportsforbitcoin.com in April, Ver said.

Bilzerian, who is one of several-dozen licensed government processers in St. Kitts, declined to comment in an e-mail.

Their website says a second passport insulates you from governments that intrude on citizen’s lives. The site also has testimonials from Ver and Bilzerian’s son, Dan, a 30-something professional poker player with millions of followers on Instagram, where he posts pictures of himself with half-naked women, along with his gun collection. He didn’t respond to e-mailed questions forwarded through his press agent.

“I value freedom more than almost anything else and a second or third passport provides me insurance just in case the U.S. government decides to value security over freedom,” Bilzerian’s son writes on the passport website.

...

anyone mining these days or have any general thoughts on it? seems like if you could get the hardware immediately, it worked, and at a decent price the numbers would make sense. but all of the hardware companies are so sketchy, difficulty is rising so quickly, etc

Don't do it. Unless you are crazy serious and ready to invest 10-15hr/week in terms of upkeep, research, programming, maintenance, etc. for several years.



IMO these are the 4 biggest hurdles. clear 2 of these withotu having to hire someone and you should think about it. moving forward, as in what professional miners will need to do past 2014, point 3 is by far the greatest value.

don't have a sys admin who can troubleshoot setting up hundreds of mining rigs and have enough technical knowledge to remotely diagnose problems without being present at your colo

they have no general access to cheap mining rigs

they don't have any access to technical knowledge (e.g. electrical engineering) related to building, designing, assembling, ordering, and purchasing custom chip boards overseas

no business plan for reinvestment and general vision for where the mining operation will be 6mo-18mo down the line.



the gist is: dont bother, just buy btc instead.


the guys who buy retail mining rigs have the smallest roi/clearance. the guys who can purchase wholesale chips by the thousands and have thier own custom circuit board design and have them manufactured concurrently with the new chips are easily best positioned to turn roi with regard to usd or btc.

you figured out the problem but if everyone could get hardware immediately the difficult would skyrocket again (~9.5 days). Unless you can produce miners yourself or get preferred orders there is no chance to be profitable

difficult for it to become > simply buying unless you are in for the long haul and plan on expanding and aggressively increasing efficiency while lowering electricity costs and all of this is assuming you time your bulk entrance expenditures properly relative to price volatility. (not to mention the factors you can't control, like pre-ordering 600 Avalon Gen1 chips spring/summer 2013 and getting screwed...)

I hear Washington has inexpensive electricity, as does Florida (assuming former is relevant because of Redskins)

'Buying' coins, investing in / starting a business likely better in most cases. And I say this while acknowledging the importance of more individual miners.

That's the problem with bitcoin right now, is it really is centralized to the small number of people who can mass produce chips at the cheapest cost. They've locked the public out because it's not profitable for average joe to buy one, yet the hashrate keeps increasing. The hashrate is not going up from joe's buying miners. It's from a small group of people who essentially make their own chips and own the network.

I turned a reasonable profit mining altcoins and converting to BTC on ~10k worth of hardware, my brother was running it all in one of the most expensive energy states AFAIK (New Hampshire). Once price of BTC crashed though it became -EV with energy, I think $800 is out breakeven point right now for price per BTC for us to be profitable again, so we have had them off and sitting for a while now waiting for the price to rise. Small usecase I know but was fun/interesting way to learn a ton more about the whole system

Isn't your hardware pretty outdated by now? i don't know anything about bitcoin mining but your stuff has to be like 6 months old now?

Nah since altcoins miners are (mostly) gpus they don't get outdated nearly as quickly. Pretty sure the 7950 has been the preferred miner for over a year now, in terms of hashes/$. Expect all that to change if anyone figures out asic mining for most altcoins though

Smokey is correct on all counts

If PrimordialAA says it looks good it must be good!

You may want to be A LOT more careful with even subtle implied endorsements! How are Lock Poker payouts going?