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A blockchain is an encrypted database that runs on multiple computers, potentially cutting out the need for centralized authorities

How could it possibly run on multiple decentralized computers, if those computers don't know what the data is in the database since it is encrypted? And if it is encrypted and everyone knows the encryption key then it is not encrypted it is encoded.

It is true that parts of the block chain can be encrypted, but nothing in blockchain requires anything to be encrypted.

But you may not trust some random guy on the internet so here is a link: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/ar... note the "How is anonymity defeated?" section where it says:

But perhaps most importantly, all transactions over the Bitcoin network are completely transparent and traceable by anyone. It's typically this complete transparency that allows multiple Bitcoin addresses to be clustered together, and be tied to the same user. Therefore, if just one of these clustered addresses is linked to a real-world identity through one or several of the other de-anonymizing methods, all clustered addresses can be.

Because bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous, and once I tie your identity to your wallet (like, having you pay your tax bill via BTC) I can now look at all transactions with that wallet and see what you did. Bitcoin - blockchains in general - rely upon 100% transparency AND traceability of all transactions, so connecting you to a wallet once has now connected you to every transaction of that wallet.

I thought dedicated bitcoin mining cards were a thing now, and that gaming GPUs would soon be easily available again... especially when miners start selling off all their used GPUs. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/ar...

Yet the Aussies raided him within a few days on "unrelated matters". Sure they did.

Well let's review the facts regarding the raid: Wright told his landlord he was leaving for Australia by December for London but extended his lease to January. He had apparently already began the moving process. So Australia waiting to raid his home and offices any later would have been foolish if they wanted any evidence.

Also The ATO ruled in December 2014 (a year prior to the raid) that cryptocurrency would be treated as an asset for capital gains: "The treatment of bitcoin for tax purposes in Australia has been the subject of considerable debate. The ATO ruled in December 2014 that cryptocurrency should be considered an asset for capital gains tax purposes." So Australia had no reason to raid his home for Bitcoin purposes.

I haven't seen the LN talk but if it's complete nonsense (I would not believe its primary advocate's protests) then he could be completely misunderstanding LN and still not be wrong about Bitcoin economics.

Then you should read or research it more. The original author of Lightning Networks, Joseph Poon, did say that he did not understand Wright's talk in the presentation.

The search for trivially simple answers often leads to foolish conclusions.

And which trivial answers do you object to not understanding? At any time if Wright wishes to publicly show the world he is Satoshi Nakimoto, he can by signing any message. The fact of the matter is that Wright at first claimed he was Nakimoto and then provided underwhelming evidence. When asked to present irrefutable evidence, he then backed down and refused.

It rose earlier this year and then fell sharply due to increased currency trading and mining activity in China. When China started cracking down on exchanges and talking about regulation it fell. It then surged again in anticipation of upcoming changes to Bitcoin and related forks. Since anyone that holds Bitcoin when the fork occurs, essentially doubles their number of coins by now continuing to own Bitcoin and also owning the new cloned currency, in this case Bitcoin Gold, everyone is investing before the fork or consolidating their alt-coins (Litecoin, Etherium, Zcash, etc) to Bitcoin to get the free money. This happened earlier in the year with Bitcoin Cash as well. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/ar...

Bitcoin and other electronic currencies are "property" (see e.g. https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsro... )

Now the IRS doesn't automatically monitor all bank accounts: see e.g. here: http://peopleof.oureverydaylif... for

The IRS can however, force banks, foreign exchanges, and now electronic currency exchange houses, to disclose the identity of those engaged in transactions. It can do this to any individual or corporation if they decide to audit them: see here: http://www.libra.tech/blog/how... As far as I know, criminal law does not necessarily apply. A mere administrative decision to audit someone (could even be selected at random) is enough. See https://www.irs.gov/businesses... and here http://www.investopedia.com/as...

Of course, a complete regulatory framework for bitcoin and lookalikes hasn't yet materialised. According to this post: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/ar... it took about a decade to establish it for derivatives, so one might expect the same for bitcoin.

So what we see is the IRS seeing how far it can go, but they seem to have a very strong case. They're not auditing anyone in particular, but merely tracing a web of payments. Could be an audit. And consider the alternative. Suppose for example that bitcoin exchanges need not disclose the names of participants in transactions on request. You'd have an instant on-shore tax evasion mechanism ... and that is against the general thrust of tax law in general, not to mention common sense.

So I'm afraid the IRS will get its way ... and will go even further. Block chains are electronic records of transactions. Therefore potentially every last blockchain involving electronic currency transactions could become subject of disclosure to the IRS.

Absolute rubbish. If you look at the code for BitcoinXT, which is simply BIP101 attached to bitcoin core, you will see that it allows the blocksize to increase if consensus is reached by miners.

And the miners have flatly rejected it, out of concerns for Bitcoin XT's path of overcentralizing Bitcoin.

Gavin (and others) have introduced plans to solve this issue. Where's your plan?

There's no issue. It's not just me saying this-- it's some of the world's foremost distributed systems experts, such as Bittorrent's creator Bram Cohen. Do nothing and let transaction fees rise. You know when you go to the corner store and there's a sign that says "a fee of 25 cents will be added to any credit purchase under $10"? We do that. We charge people for resolving transactions on blockchain, because it is a limited resource. That's what we're really arguing over, whether transaction fees rise to a fucking quarter or not. You people are willing to burn the house down over it apparently.

Coinbase merely ran XT on a test node to help run bitcoin simulations using larger block sizes. They also wanted to be prepared and understand its operation should XT ever go mainstream. I wouldn't say that they support it

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong: BIP 101 is the Best Proposal We've Seen So Far. Liar, liar, pants on fire. Stop shilling, XT bros.

I'm asking myself why someone like yourself would spend so much time on a post with such an extreme (and negative) view?

Because this is not a game to me. My life depends on Bitcoin. 100% of my income is Bitcoin. The entirety of my savings is Bitcoin. Gavin and Mike's tantrums are vindictive, to damage Bitcoin.

Here is a link to the article: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/7781/satoshis-genius-unexpected-ways-in-which-bitcoin-dodged-some-cryptographic-bullet/

Straw man.

That's when the network was tiny and the software was new and unproven; it was fixed and undone without any real detriment.

Nothing like that has occurred since, even though the Bitcoin ecosystem is now worth billions of dollars and is thus a juicy target for attack. I mean, it's since been nearly half a decade of continuous operation in managing billions of dollars of assets!

It boggles the mind that you are not impressed.

The next worst case happened in March of 2013, when an update essentially made an inadvertent change to the protocol, causing an unplanned "hard fork" of the blockhain. Here's an article about it. It's a fascinating read; it certainly provides some insight into what a hard fork looks like: As is supposed to be the case, the network is defined by those who wield the most computation.

Bitcoin is solid. It is founded on the mathematics that define this universe, decades-old proven cryptography, and software that has been under more scrutiny than anything else in the history of computing.

Bitcoin Magazine has a good article on this subject: Mining Pool Centralization At Crisis Levels. It also suggests a number of solutions.

The primary solution is for miners to switch to a peer-to-peer mining pool. In these the control is decentralized, just like the Bitcoin network itself. Even if such a pool hits 51% market share, it will not be able to actually block or reverse transactions, since the mining pool is decentralized and so its power is vested in the network as a whole.

That's only true for fractions.
1+2 == 3 is always going to be true.
As is 123456789 + 987654321 == 1111111110

You can absolutely express a 32 bit integer in a double with no approximation ever.
We rely on this in our lua scripting as a matter of fact.

http://asmjs.org/spec/latest/ relies on this for the 32 bit integer parts of their spec.

Actually, you can go a lot further than 2^32 - all the way up to 2^53-1.
This is taken advantage of in non-asm.js places. See:
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/7781/satoshis-genius-unexpected-ways-in-which-bitcoin-dodged-some-cryptographic-bullet/

And, you'll be happy to know (well, we were), that Mozilla is adding 64 bit ints to their JS as well, although when that'll be widely available, who knows.

The problem is this: the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm, which Bitcoin transactions rely on for security, has three inputs: the transaction, the signerâ(TM)s private key and a random number. The algorithm then outputs two values, denoted r and s, where s is calculated with the formula k-1(z+rd), z being the hash of the message, k the random number and d the private key. r is dependent only on k. Thus, if the owner of an address signs two transactions with the same random number (and of course the same private key, as every address is linked to one private key), one can extract two s values from the two signatures, subtract them to make the rd terms cancel out, and extracting the private key from there becomes a simple division problem (a more detailed writeup can be found here). Normally, this is not a problem; given a true random number generator, the first âoecollisionâ should take place roughly at the same time as the heat death of the universe. As it turned out, however, java.security.SecureRandom proved to be not so random, generating the same âoerandomâ number twice on many occasions.

I just noticed the "found here" link goes to an article from January. That makes me both unsure they've got the right bug and annoyed it hasn't been fixed already.