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Bitcoin Blockchain Forked By Backward-Compatibility Issue
New submitter jhantin writes "The Bitcoin blockchain has forked due to a lurking backward-compatibility issue: versions older than 0.8 do not properly handle blocks larger than about 500k, and Slush's pool mined a 974k block today. The problem is that not all mining operations are on 0.8; blocks are being generated by a mix of several different versions of the daemon, each making its own decision as to which of the two forks is preferable to extend, and older versions refuse to honor or extend from a block of this size. The consensus on #bitcoin-dev is damage control: miners need to mine on pre-0.8 code so the backward-compatible fork will outgrow and thus dominate the compatibility-breaking one; merchants need to stop accepting transactions until the network re-converges on the backward-compatible fork of the chain; and average users can ignore the warning that they are out of sync and need to upgrade."
Turns out there's an approximately 512K limit to atomic updates in Berkeley DB which were used by versions prior to 0.8. 0.8 uses a new database, allowing blockchains that old versions won't accept to be created.
640K would have been enough for everyone.
Why achieve 'consensus' when we could let the fork fester, and have two virtual currencies floating wildly against one another as well as USD?
In fact, why not introduce Bitcoin-0 through Bitcoint-Aleph and let them fight it out? I'll bring popcorn!
OTOH, it was a really big bug
Three words in and you lost 99% of your readership. Can't you be arsed to make a proper summary??
The consensus on #bitcoin-dev is damage control: miners need to mine on pre-0.8 code so the backward-compatible fork will outgrow and thus dominate the compatibility-breaking one;
Either this should be put into the bitcoin specification or not accepting any size should be seen as a bug. There should not just be an unofficial consensus that "this is what should be done"
You need to stop buying stuff until the "currency" (and I use that term very loosely when talking about bitcoin) is valid again? Good thing it isn't used exclusively by anyone, else they'd now be starving.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
That means I'm wealthy.
??
Why achieve 'consensus' when we could let the fork fester, and have two virtual currencies floating wildly against one another as well as USD?
In fact, why not introduce Bitcoin-0 through Bitcoint-Aleph and let them fight it out? I'll bring popcorn!
BitCoin Bailey: No, no, no, everybody remain calm. We'll get through this together. You're thinking of this virtual currency all wrong. As if I had the BitCoins back in a safe. The money's not here. Your money's on Bill's computer, and Fred's computer ...
Angry BitCoin User: Hey Fred, what the hell you doin' with my BitCoins?!
*a run on MtGox ensues*
My work here is dung.
The correct solution is for people to continue pushing the new version fork and for the people on .8 to update or lose all of their "money".
The forking was fixed within a few hours. Mining pools were notified of the issue and alerted to the recommendation to revert mining activity back to 0.7.x, which was a simple fix to grow a blockchain compatible with all mining pool Bitcoin versions. The majority of miners ignoring the incompatible fork (which caused a "Lock table is out of available lock entries" database error on Bitcoins compiled against certain BerkeleyDB libraries), let the new fork grow longer and all is fixed.
Almost all transactions are expected to be included in the new chain, so there is little opportunity for malfeasance. If you sent someone money for goods, your transaction sending money will likely be in both the new chain and the old.
For those who don't know the first fucking thing about what this summary means (hint to summary writers, if you're going to use jargon, please explain it to those of us who don't follow bitcoin or whatever-the-fuck), here is a much better article on the subject (written in plain English):
Major Glitch in Bitcoin
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
Makes you wonder how Bitcoin can scale when there are versions of the software which impose a limit of 500K limit on block size. The size of a block is driven by how many transactions are in in it, and 500K (or so) of transaction is not really a lot. A block can only be mined every 10 minutes, so this amounts to a maximum of 50K transactions per minute. These are the old versions, but how many transactions per minute can be verified (i.e. "mined") by the current version before another limit is reached?
It seems that good ol' Bitcoin is having problems scaling up to meet the new demand for cryptocurrency. Perhaps we should start looking into alternate cryptocurrencies like Litecoin instead?
So the currency that is supposedly based on crypto winds up forking into two different currencies because of a database update? Nice job guys.
Palm trees and 8
Wasn't it obvious that anything that imposed limits on block size would break the chain once the blocksize limit was lifted (e.g. through using a different database engine, as v0.8 of the satoshi client did)?
Berkeley DB is a nuisance and a piece of shit, something that everyone has known for years - this is just an object lesson demonstrating it.
Well, I read the article and still don't understand Bitcoin, the concept or the need for it. Just seems like a product without a real need other than the idea of being subversive. But perhaps I don't understand it at all. Of course that's why I come here.... So if any /.ers can explain this, I'm sure others would appreciate it as much as I would.
.... that bitcoin always was and always will be a toy currency - maybe of academic interest for the technical and economic theories behind it - but not something someone with any brains should ever invest in in a big way or rely on to purchase goods.
I think its fair to say that while forking code may be a good idea most of the time - when its code running a virtual currency its a very BAD idea. The fact that its been done demonstrates a complete lack of common sense amongst the people running this thing which should make any "investors" very VERY worried.
No one really understands bitcoin. I'm pretty sure that's part of its strange appeal (and, some would contend, an essential part of the scam).
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
Even an outage of a few hours is not acceptable for a currency.
The issue is not the fix, the issue is the poor planning that lead to the error to begin with. It hints that these folks do not know what they are doing. Which considering the deflationary design of bitcoin seems like something we should have all just assumed.
How can you deny that there is a value to having a Paypal with no 'central authority' or any 'One trusted third party'?
Do you use Paypal? Have you ever been robbed by Paypal? I guess you could deny it, if the answers to both of those questions are not both 'yes'. For many people though, I am sure, there needs to be a way to have your money 'on the wire' without putting it into the hands of someone who can seize it when their authority or government of favor decides it's time to do so.
For people who don't use Paypal every day, it will take 10 days to move money using Paypal. At that kind of break-neck speed, you might as well write a check and put a stamp on it.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Someday, someone in some future generation will read that sentence and think, "No wonder they almost caused the extinction of the species".
You are welcome on my lawn.
I thought Bitcoins were a currency... what does it mean when a currency "forks"? As an average user of other currencies, I've never been given a warning I needed to ignore *about my money*...
The point with bitcoins is that in 30-40 years when anonymous payments are outlawed due to terrorists (read: control), there will be a reliable way to still do this on a global scale. These types of news are great, because it means that, as bitcoin grows, the bugs are ironed out before bitcoin is actually needed.
c++;
Just wait until countries start pulling out of the EU.
Then we'll have a real currency backwards-compatibility problem!
Well, I read the article and still don't understand Bitcoin, the concept or the need for it. Just seems like a product without a real need other than the idea of being subversive. But perhaps I don't understand it at all. Of course that's why I come here.... So if any /.ers can explain this, I'm sure others would appreciate it as much as I would.
It's a decentralized, trustless value storage and transfer protocol that allows you to send or receive value to anyone on the internet without the need of a third party. It has the potential to do to banking what email did to the post office.
You can still get robbed when the money transmission service has no central authority, it just works in the other direction. PayPal has the ability to reverse charges that it shouldn't reverse, whereas BitCoin does not have the ability to reverse charges that it should reverse.
Customers like the ability to reverse charges under appropriate circumstances.
Regarding the need, imvho it has the potential to solve the micropayments problem. At this point it's almost impossible to charge for anything less than a dollar unless you're processing a large number of transactions. The fees and discount rate of credit card transactions is simply too high. With bitcoins there can be a transaction fee, but the "friction" is essentially zero. Meaning that if you want to send the equivalent of a penny for access to an article, it's as simple as clicking a few buttons in the bitcoin client or sending an email (see coinapult).
Beyond that I don't see being used as a basis for large value transactions like mortgages. Even when adoption becomes widespread enough and the exchange rate stabilizes. But for sites that rely on advertising, it's a really interesting idea to try charging for content then converting to fiat cash at the end of the day (or simply paying for overhead costs directly in bitcoins, no dollars involved).
It's a new fiat currency (ie. it exists because someone says it exists).
There's no reason why you, I and a bunch of our friends can't get together and say "Right, we'll use this new currency called DollarPounds, we'll use a spreadsheet to keep track of who has how many and they're exchangeable for US$ at a rate of US$1 = $£1" but the only way a fiat currency can possibly work is if you have enough people who will use it.
The idea of Bitcoin is it's a currency that doesn't require a central bank to produce more money. Instead, Bitcoins are "mined" (ie. brought into existence) through means of a mathematical algorithm that generates a verifiable block of numbers. The algorithm is designed to get harder as more bitcoins are mined. Meaning that the rate at which Bitcoins can be mined slows down eventually reaching the point where no more can be mined.
On the one hand, this resolves the "Leaves as currency" inflation problem in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe by creating artificial scarcity. On the other, they've done too good a job - as soon as it becomes impossible - or even impractical - to mine further bitcoins, the currency is likely to become subject to massive deflation. We know what happens when a currency undergoes massive deflation - Germany in the 1930's or, more recently, Zimbabwe happens.
FWIW, my view is it's probably best viewed from a distance with an air of morbid curiosity.
The forking was fixed within a few hours. Mining pools were notified of the issue and alerted to the recommendation to revert mining activity back to 0.7.x, which was a simple fix to grow a blockchain compatible with all mining pool Bitcoin versions. The majority of miners ignoring the incompatible fork (which caused a "Lock table is out of available lock entries" database error on Bitcoins compiled against certain BerkeleyDB libraries), let the new fork grow longer and all is fixed.
Almost all transactions are expected to be included in the new chain, so there is little opportunity for malfeasance. If you sent someone money for goods, your transaction sending money will likely be in both the new chain and the old.
(Emphasis mine)
Good thing that bitcoin isn't actually a currency; if it was anything other than a mere item of barter, the consequences of people suddenly not knowing which cash is good and which is not would indeed be severe.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
If a large enough percentage of people stopped accepting the Euro tomorrow, it would be just as dead.
Tell that to governments that use firearms to compel payment of tax in euros in the days between when "a large enough percentage of people stopped accepting the Euro" and when the people have a chance to elect legislators who will amend the tax statutes to reflect this. See fuzzyfuzzyfungus's post about the "lead standard".
[blockqoute] We know what happens when a currency undergoes massive deflation - Germany in the 1930's or, more recently, Zimbabwe happens.[/blockqoute]
What events is this referring to? Usually when those countries are mentioned together it is referring to inflation, not deflation. But you have the decade wrong for Germany.
There was deflation during the great depression and that was possibly related to hitler's rise to power. Perhaps that is what you are referring to? Bitcoin deflation will lead to the next hitler?
I'm not sure if any significant deflation has occurred in zimbabwe though. There is this story:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/02/02/zimbabwe.dollars/index.html
In your hypothetical scenario, the government requires payment of tax in a new currency. Who elected the legislators who decided to have the taxing authority switch to the new currency?
This is far from the first bug that was found. This version of bitcoin wasn't meant to take off and be used yet. You'll notice that they are at version 0.8 and not 1.0 yet. That is why there are a lot of lost coins, mined early on and the encryption keys deleted.
The very first words on their website state quite clearly that Bitcoin is an _experimental_ currency. If people choose to use it as more than that, that's their fault. Finding issues like this is exactly what Bitcoin's current purpose is.
I generally avoid bitcoin news, but if you have any knowledge of distributed crypto the summary here makes perfect sense. I got it and I haven't touched any of that sort of stuff since highschool.
Of course not everyone is familiar with every field, but this is Slashdot not the New York Times. I think the assumption is and should be that if you care you either already have some very basic knowledge of the field or can do your own research -- which I see you did, and I thank you for posting the link for others -- but I don't think it's the editor's job to make sure every article is explained so well it could be understood by a liberal arts major. I thought they actually did a damn good job on this one.
Also, remember that it's a one paragraph summary. They don't have room to explain everything.
Oh Berkley DB, is there any application you can't screw up?
Yep, as of right now you are forced to pay for it whether you need it or not though.
This sort of thing was solved a long time ago, but because it's "old", people just dismiss it out of hand.
It's called versioning the protocol and having compatibility lists. When two clients connect, they exchange version numbers and if one is too old then the newer one performs additional checks to verify compatibility. If the issue is reconcilable then it aborts the connection with an error. Or programatically enforce that the older version is discontinued and that anyone who is using it can no longer participate in the chain.
I apologize if I sound exasperated and holier than thou... actually, no, I don't. How the hell do people design a system that they intend to be the backbone of a major financial system but fail to accommodate for such things? It is nothing short of stupidity and incompetence.
If a major bank tried to pull this sort of nonsense, they'd be bankrupt so fast that the stockholders would have whiplash.
And that is what escrow services are for. Pick one that has terms you like rather than being forced to use Paypal which is a law unto itself.
Their website explicitly states, right in the first sentence, that bitcoin is an experiment. Anyone who actually uses it as though it is a stable, secure currency is an illiterate moron.
Major banks don't claim to be experiments. Finding problems like this is bitcoin's exact stated purpose right now. Granted, this does seem like something they should have been able to see coming, but at the same time, anyone who had any significant losses from this that they weren't expecting is just an idiot. You don't sink a ton of money into something that explicitly describes itself as an experiment without anticipating that you may lose it. That seems like common sense...
The Weimar republic and Zimbabwe suffered massive inflation, not deflation.
Malfeasance already happened. It looks like someone took advantage of this to have another shot at their losing Satoshi Dice bets: http://blockchain.info/double-spends
How is it experimental when anyone anywhere can use it? FOr that matter what's the experiment? What are the metrics being collected? Whats the control? How will you know if the experiment is a success? If it is a success do you go back and start the non experiment on its own with the lessons learned? I would say that when people are trying to convince everyone to embrace it it is no longer an experiment when it is being used outside of a controlled environment.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Bitcoin is a total MESS.
You misunderstand the parent post. There was no outage -- transactions were processed as normal during the event. Only miners (i.e. people running the network for the random chance of being rewarded as recipient of newly created coins) may have lost out due to the error. Events like this were anticipated in the design, and the system has an automatic method of resolving it, which unfortunately leaves some miners out of pocket, but has no effect on general users.
Not sure about Zimbabwe, but with Germany the inflation came after a period of deflation.
If someone looks up patent information for an experimental drug, produces sine themselves and starts taking it, does that mean the drug is no longer experimental? The fact that people misuse it doesn't change what it is.
And not all experiments are scientifically rigorous. They are collecting data -- like this exact incident. And I bet they'll be looking at steps that could be taken to prevent this sort of thing in the future. The hypothesis is that client X with these features is sufficient to create a secure, anonymous digital currency. The results so far have always been "no it's not, because...." at which point they take those results, refine the client, and try again.
Sounds like a currency fork. You could conceivably end up with two currencies. Which raises the question: what is to stop groups of people (say China) from creating parallel systems?
If the answer is nothing, BTC is wide open for undermining by fragmentation.
A technical error should not introduce "little opportunity" for malfeasance. When my bank has a glitch, the cash in my wallet does not turn worthless for "a few hours".
Yeah but when your bank is the largest in the country and goes down for an entire week, you run out of money in your wallet way before the glitch has passed. But apparently that isn't enough to sink the government owning the bank (wasn't their fault anyway) or the currency.
In the real world, with banks with buggy software, credit card companies and paypal with dubious and opaque policies, in practice a short outage of bitcoin doesn't really register as a world ending thing.
Oh and, of course, you're forgetting about forged currency. Real hard to spot when you've been given it, until the next merchant won't accept it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"A few hours" outage fails the most basic test of a currency - ability to spend it. For a few hours, no merchant could accept bitcoins as payment.
That is simply not true. Merchants could, and quite happily were, accepting bitcoin payments throughout the period of the failure.
"Incompatible fork[s]" causes bitcoin to fail yet another basic test of currency. The population should never be able to fork their currency into "new dollars", "old dollars" and "something which is most likely, in almost all cases, a mixture of both".
You misunderstand the basic concept of a fork in this situation. The currency was not forked -- the chain of signatures on the distributed transaction list used to validate ownership of the coins was. As the transaction lists should be basically the same between the two variants (and a manual effort can be made to ensure they are, which I presume somebody is now doing, and manual corrections inserted into the accepted fork if any transactions were omitted from it) there should be zero consequence of this for end users. The only issue is for those who signed the blocks in the rejected chain, who would have received a reward for doing so had it not been rejected.
A technical error should not introduce "little opportunity" for malfeasance. When my bank has a glitch, the cash in my wallet does not turn worthless for "a few hours".
Nobody's wallet turned worthless. The only potential opportunity for malfeasance works like this: if I owned BTC and attempted to make two transactions using the same coins simultaneously, there would have been a small but non-zero chance of both being accepted during the fork. One of the recipients, if they had dispatched goods immediately rather than waiting for a few hours, would have ended up out of pocket. On the other hand, those vendors are using a currency transfer system that has no per-transaction fee, and have likely saved more by not paying credit card handling charges over the years than they lost during the incident. And it's actually very unlikely that something like this would happen, anyway.
If I have already completed a transaction, with cash in hand, that transaction must not be "most likely" legitimate. It must be legitimate from the very moment that I verify the currency that I received as legitimate. It must not pass verification, then "most likely" have to pass verification again.
This is the only statement you make that's legitimate, although I would argue that it is no worse than current systems. As a vendor, I do not have access to any system other than physical cash that does not have this property -- money paid to me by credit card can be taken away if the bank is later convinced the transaction was fraudulent, for example. In most respects, bitcoin is an improvement over existing online payment systems.
I can't read the article. Maybe the server is overloaded with people looking for news. Thanks for posting the summary though.
Here are my observations from blockchain.info
I haven't seen any blocks bigger thank 512 kilobytes. Most of the blocks that I have seen are smaller than 256 kilobytes. It will be interesting to see how the developers rectify the situation.
I think slept through most of this. so it seems that the fork happened after my bedtime in the United States of America. I checked my Electrum client. Two transactions from this morning .are pending and one is unknown. The Bitcoin network has confirmed the transactions from 3/11. My money seems to be safe; but, the transactions from the middle of the night took slightly longer than usual. This morning, at 11:25 Eastern Standard Time GMT -400, it seems that almost everything is back to normal. Yay.
I checked one of the transactions from Monday and saw this:
Size 601 (bytes)
Received Time 2013-03-12 00:56:54
Included In Blocks:
225,443 (2013-03-12 01:05:42 +9 minutes) - orphaned block
225,443 (2013-03-12 03:54:48 +178 minutes) - main, accepted block
Confirmations 59 Confirmations
Fees 0.0005 BTC
I saw lots of orphan blocks on November 3... err, March 11, 2013:
http://blockchain.info/blocks/1362980285566
I wonder what will happen to the coins in the orphan blocks. I think the miners won't confirm the transaction. Therefore, the coins will stay in their owners' accounts.
You really think the legislation to start printing a new currency and the legislation to have the taxing authority accept the new currency would be independent?
If the new currency arises independently of government, then yes. Bitcoin is such a currency.
It's not fiat because fiat is actually 'backed' by its ability to relieve yourself of tax obligation (if you have any) toward the government issuing the currency. Also, while the bitcoin endgame is deflationary, Germany and Zimbabwe experienced hyperinflation, quite a different beast because those governments were in the position to freely print new currency to try to shore up revenue whereas no entity can do that with bitcoin.
On the other, they've done too good a job - as soon as it becomes impossible - or even impractical - to mine further bitcoins, the currency is likely to become subject to massive deflation. We know what happens when a currency undergoes massive deflation - Germany in the 1930's or, more recently, Zimbabwe happens.
FWIW, my view is it's probably best viewed from a distance with an air of morbid curiosity.
Didn't they both undergo massive inflation?
Since "BitCoin" isn't the authority in charge of reversing a charge, that would be up to the individual service provider who accepted the payment. A much bigger risk for fraud from the consumer side, but less risk of fraud for the vendors.
It's not exactly fiat. The CPU/GPU power required to generate the bitcoins is the "gold standard" behind it. Someone decided once that gold had value, but it wasn't fiat currency either.
"That seems like common sense..."
I won't say it. It's too easy. :)
Fiat means someone ELSE tells YOU that it's worth something to you. The term derives from royal fiat, the divine right of kings. Bitcoin is not a fiat currency because there's nobody with a closed fist telling you it's the coin of the realm.
if the keys are short and the values are typically larger than a few KB I've discovered that my operating system comes with this wonderful thing called a filesystem that seems to do the job quite nicely.
How easily do PC file systems support atomic transactions to multiple keys? And "larger than a few KB" is a big one: most PC file systems have plenty of slack space at the end of each file that's never used.
it has the potential to solve the micropayments problem. .01 USD. .000...001 BTC.
At the moment, that is probably true, but there is still cost associated with BTC transactions, and there at least used to be some penalties in place for BTC transactions that were smaller than some fraction of a BTC which I have since forgotten.
The other problem is that the BTC is gaining ground against the dollar, and being a deflationary currency (and the USD an inflationary one), there could come a day when the smallest fraction of a BTC is more than
I don't know if there will have to be a fiat agreement to do a "stock split" type of deal, or if it is even possible, but something will have to happen in the eventuality that you can no longer buy a stick of gum because it is worth less than
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
No it isn't.
The CPU/GPU power is just a means of regulating the number of bitcoins that can exist, same as the Bank of England is (among other things) a means of regulating the amount of £ Sterling that can exist.
You can't exchange bitcoins for an arbitrary amount of CPU power that you can hold in your hand and physically give to someone in lieu of bitcoins (which is pretty much the point of a currency that's backed by something like gold).
One of the benefits of a currency that's backed by something precious - such as gold - is it acts as a great stabiliser. The value of the currency is unlikely to drop far below the value of an equivalent amount of gold. Mind you, it also wouldn't rise far above the value of the gold. A currency that comes from a stable country and is widely accepted doesn't really need anything to back it, it's "big enough" if you like to stabilise itself.
None of these are true of Bitcoin, which means the value fluctuates wildly. But don't take my word for it - take a look at mtgox. There's a graph you can see shows how the value has fluctuated over a day, week or month - it's up and down like a yoyo.
Sad as it is to say, you've come to the wrong place for an explanation. Most people here understand Bitcoin as little as you do, except instead of admitting it, they'll just feed you some scary dribble in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. I suggest reading up on it at a site like https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ and also pay close attention to this event itself, where the initial panic subsided as people realized that Bitcoin is robust enough to come through something like this without crashing. The devil is in the details, which everyone here, or on fark, or where-ever, conveniently misses. You may not be able to make a ton of use out of Bitcoins (right now) but it is an interesting and clever concept, and not deserving of all the bashing it gets.
Bitcoins are used to buy drugs and illegal pornography. That is their primary application.
Let's not have Slashdot cater two of the most worthless communities to ever exist.
How can you deny that there is a value to having a Paypal with no 'central authority' or any 'One trusted third party'?
Because I'm smart enough to understand why 'decentralized' as far as hackers go, universally fails.
Real people don't even use paypal, we have credit and debit cards tied to real bank accounts not to some scummy ass company known for ripping its customers off.
My bank will epay many things electronicly via their website, and anyone they can't do electronically they'll put a physical check in their mailbox within 3 weekdays of my request.
Perhaps you should grow up and get a bank account like normal people and stop dicking with paypal.
Paypal solves no problem that wasn't already solved before it existed, it serves no useful purpose. The only thing it does better is advertise on the Internet so people dont' realize how many other companies will process transactions for you just like any other CC transaction.
Paypal is for idiots, they deserve to wait 10 days for being stupid in the first place.
No central authority translates to chaos, you just haven't seen that with bitcoin yet as its not time for the scam to be drained out by its proprietors. Once they scam is called, your bitcoins will be worth the bits that make them up. The entire things is trivial to subvert, got its susceptible to just about all the same attacks that used to wreak havoc on IRC, 'trusting the majority' without universal and always on access to EVERYONE to get a FULL MAJORITY OPINION means the system is easily subverted with a net split. You don't have to run the scam long, just long enough to satisfy the seller that your transaction is legit.
I'm not so ignorant to think that 'the majority' is right. In my experience, the 'majority' is almost universally wrong about just about everything. The 'majority' is easy to sway and manipulate. This applies to people just the same as bitcoin nodes.
You simple fail to understand how bitcoin isn't anything like you think it is.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The problem with your argument is that an incompatibility between two cryptosystems should not render those systems insecure. In the case of Bitcoin, the "fork" allowed people to double spend, violating a key security property of any digital cash system.
Let's put it this way: an attacker might deliberately create incompatibilities between nodes in Bitcoin by using some kind of malware; trigger this when enough nodes are infected and you give yourself the perfect opportunity to double spend.
In general, a multiparty computation system (a category that includes all digital cash systems, Bitcoin included) needs to be able to maintain its security properties even when some parties are corrupted. Malicious parties in a system might deviate from the protocol in arbitrary ways, for arbitrary reasons. If Bitcoin cannot survive that sort of deviation, then Bitcoin is not secure enough for monetary transactions, even if you are talking about a third or even half the nodes in the network being malicious.
Palm trees and 8
Not even close.
You can send money now without a trusted 3rd party ... look, I'm transferring you a bajizzillion dollars right this instant in this message! Since you don't need anyone else to verify it, it must be true! Whats that? Bitcoin does require others to verify, it just doesn't have any way to confirm that those others should be trusted either ... my bad.
Email is in no way decentralized. Neither is anything else on the Internet that actually works.
Email DEPENDS on DNS, DNS is most certainly centralized. Both are then delegated to individual organizations to control, but they are in no way decentralized. You fail to understand how things you speak of work.
Email can not replace the post office either. Email can not provide me with a certified legal proof that the recipient received the message. Email'd scans of most objects aren't accepted, though we are getting to the point where we can scan checks and email them if you want to wait extra days for the bank to verify you aren't scamming them. You utterly fail to take into account all the services the USPS offers.
BitCoin solves no problem that were actual problems before BitCoin existed and introduces ones that everyone else in the world resolved via common sense thousands of years ago. You can't makeup a currency without anything backing it of value. Fiat currencies have governments. BitCoin's entire point as you put it is to not have anyone who can back it, brilliant plan.
You BitCoin guys live in a fantasy world. BitCoin is as likely to work properly as pure communism or socialism.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Considering the problem has absolutely nothing to do with encryption/digital signatures and everything to do with simply using the wrong database format. Technically its just a shitty database format with technical limitations they ran into due to poorly thinking things through when implementing.
I think its pretty awesome that the summary is clear due to your knowledge of distributed crypto.
My knowledge tends to say you're talking out your ass, but hey, when does reality matter or anything right?
More telling about BitCoin however is that ridiculously 'should have tested for that' bugs like this exist. Shows the level of forethought and insight that went into this protocol. They pulled the same ignorant mistake that we've been making fun of Microsoft over for ... what ... 30 years now?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The maximum division (0.00000001 BTC, aka 10 nanobitcoins (nBTC) or a Satoshi) is only set by the current protocol. It can be changed in the future if necessary. Doing so would require a fork and would need to be planned and managed carefully by the community though.
But for that to happen, the value of 1 BTC would need to be 1 million US Dollars, and therefore it is unlikely to be a problem for the foreseeable future.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Yes, exactly, you're starting to get it. Now, whose demand is important to get a method of currency exchange to take off? Here's a hint: I just used the word "demand", c.f. "supply". A vendor generally has to use whatever system the consumers want; that's why you end up with credit card companies and PayPal in the first place. Consumers will only choose BitCoin when they perceive the risk of vendor fraud to be lower than the risk of using a traditional means of currency exchange, i.e. when buying contraband. The non-contraband market for BitCoin transactions is comprised more-or-less entirely of enthusiasts and speculators and as such is correspondingly small.
But don't take my word for it - take a look at mtgox. There's a graph you can see shows how the value has fluctuated over a day, week or month - it's up and down like a yoyo.
It actually used to be even LESS stable! Back when gold first started it was unstable too, sometimes being turned into lead by its star. Give it a few billion years and bitcoin will be stable too.
Literally all these things have happened with UK banks several times in the past 12 months. Except it wasn't "a few hours" - it was "a few days".
How is it experimental when anyone anywhere can use it? FOr that matter what's the experiment? What are the metrics being collected? Whats the control? How will you know if the experiment is a success? If it is a success do you go back and start the non experiment on its own with the lessons learned? I would say that when people are trying to convince everyone to embrace it it is no longer an experiment when it is being used outside of a controlled environment.
If it was named Google Coins Beta (TM) you never would have posted that.
What is the scam that will unfold exactly?
The total carbon foot print of a bitcoin generated on hydroelectric power is probably hard to match in any other currency.
But math people always love the extremes. I think physical money has you beaten in a coal powered state, stacked against a $trillion coin. :)
Yes, they should have found this earlier. On the other hand, Microsoft making stupid mistakes like that is quite different, as they never advertised Windows as an experimental operating system the way the bitcoin site describes it as an experiment in digital currency. I'm also a bit more forgiving because it seems like it's not really their code that had the bug that caused this, but rather someone else's database engine.
And yea, the bug isn't in the crypto, but understanding the implications of it requires some level of understanding of the crypto. And to be clear, I'm certainly not saying I'm an expert in this stuff in any way, just that I know enough to understand what the summary is talking about. The same way I'd say I generally understand how Tor works despite having never seen a single line of code from it. I know the basic concepts, and for reading a news article I figure that's good enough. I was pretty heavily into the Freenet project in highschool and contributed small bits of code to some related projects, so that's where my knowledge of this stuff comes from. Different goals, but the principles are similar enough.
The central authority (of which there is none) can't add more Bitcoins to the system. They have to be mined - just like real gold. It's getting harder and harder to find real gold in the ground, and the same holds for Bitcoin.
It's not backed by CPU power, it is a direct representation of that CPU power.
Is that fluctuation its value changing or its exchange rate changing?
If I have already completed a transaction, with cash in hand, that transaction must not be "most likely" legitimate. It must be legitimate from the very moment that I verify the currency that I received as legitimate. It must not pass verification, then "most likely" have to pass verification again.
I guess you've never deposited a check into a bank, only to have it come back on you for insufficient funds?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
How long will this Ponzi scheme be able to continue? It is interesting though that the original 'investors' get a fixed rate of return due to the increasing difficulty in 'mining' and a kind of Moore's Law of mining equipment, but once the Moore's Law breaks down, the returns will stop.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What value does Bitcoin have other than its exchange rate?
You can't pay for your groceries with Bitcoin. Nor can you pay your mortgage, and I can't imagine there are many landlords that will accept it as rent.
About 90% of the BTC that has ever been mined remains unspent; it was created back when the mining cost was negligible and the "exchange rate" was a fraction of a cent. Eventually, the handful of people that own these accounts will want to cash out, but they will need to do it carefully enough that the exchange rate doesn't crash until they've finished converting their buttcoin into real money.
BitCoin has ALREADY worked. More than a few people have used it for trade.
You insisting that it never will work just makes you look like an idiot.
It's longevity is debatable but that can be said of any currency.
If I have already completed a transaction, with cash in hand, that transaction must not be "most likely" legitimate. It must be legitimate from the very moment that I verify the currency that I received as legitimate. It must not pass verification, then "most likely" have to pass verification again.
I guess you've never deposited a check into a bank, only to have it come back on you for insufficient funds?
That's a good point you make - neither the cheque nor bitcoin are currencies. That's one more tick for the "bitcoin isn't a currency" argument. Thanks.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
The same is generally true for gold.
Thats not a scam. I also dont think thats what BitZream was talking about.
Yet here it is, working. Despite a major fork, the community came together, agreed a solution and had the good fork back on top within hours. More so, that is reflected in the current price (a good measure of confidence in some respects) which tanked very briefly and has jumped right back up. This is, ultimately, an experiemnt and one that appears to be gradually gaining significant momentum - it's positives, relatively anonimity, lack of central control, security etc are proving increasingly popular.
How many years of success will it take before the nay-sayers are silenced? Of course when the world ends and the universe collapses into whatever quantum soup awaits humanity, there will surely be one /.'er triumphantly telling us that bitcoin was destined to fail...
We know what happens when a currency undergoes massive deflation - Germany in the 1930's or, more recently, Zimbabwe happens.
Well... at least you were modded "Interesting" instead of "Informative".
Both of those were examples of hyper-*inflation*, not *deflation*
The real litigious bastards...
BitCoin is as likely to work properly as pure communism or socialism.
I bolded your true scotsman for you. It's been working fine for years, and even this catastrophic sky-is-falling "omg bitcoin collapse" bug hasn't stopped it.
It's not a true fiat currency. Bitcoin is backed by a (somewhat) scarce resource: brute-forcing SHA256 hashes of varying difficulty (that's how the payout changes over time). You could argue that brute-forced hashes don't have intrinsic value, certainly, but they are at least scarce.
That said, I have no bitcoins. I just find it an interesting experiment.
Germany suffered deflation before it suffered inflation.
Kinda like when everyone discovers that their ATM/credit card isn't working.
Every 6 months we get a story about how the value of BTC has dropped 25% again and theres been a hacking incident at some exchange or something, but its OK because its mathematically proveable and thus a viable currency.
True, but I think a better argument for you is the fact that despite these periodic "corrections" the price is still continuing to rise precipitously. The volatility is insane, but how viable is it that the price on 1 Jan 2013 was 1 BTC/~$15, and right before this latest glitch, it was pushing ~$50 per BTC?
Look at the chart. See the exponential growth? The value has more than tripled in the 71 days so far in 2013. If the present bubble is extrapolated that represents roughly a 49,000% APY; clearly, that growth is unsustainable even in the face of "pigheaded wishful thinking".
Want to buy some tulip bulbs? I hear they are a "can't lose" investment!
Nobody forces you to use PayPal (well, nobody except ebay, but I doubt they will change that policy due to Bitcoin).
So there's no way the government could detect a bitcoin transaction going over your wire? I somehow doubt that.
Indeed, if anonymous payments are outlawed, even having a bitcoin client on your computer could be sufficient evidence to get you in trouble.
You can buy stuff and pay for services online with it.
Zimbabwe experienced hyperinflation to an absurd degree, not inflation.
I was thinking of ebay. But you're right, they're the only ones who do. Still, Paypal could do with some competition whichever way you slice it.
If someone was very fast, and the people they were sending money to impatient, they might have been able to spend the same coins twice, one on the old version chain, one on the new version chain, and had both of the recipients believe that the transactions were confirmed. (Only one of them would actually get valid bitcoins as a result; in this case, the people on the older clients' chain).
I don't know if anyone actually did do that in this case, or (if they did) whether the recipients called them on it.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
Could people purchase pre-0.8 bitcoins using their post-0.8 bitcoins?
That way no one loses any money.
We know what happens when a currency undergoes massive deflation - Germany in the 1930's or, more recently, Zimbabwe happens.
FWIW, my view is it's probably best viewed from a distance with an air of morbid curiosity.
Um... those are examples of massive inflation, not deflation. You have that backwards. Inflation/deflation relates to the ratio of the amount of currency to the amount of valuable goods in an economy. In Germany and Zimbabwe, the respective governments printed masses of extra money. With more money chasing the same amount of goods, the nominal price of goods increases. (This doesn't really change how functionally wealthy you are... unless you're not the one receiving all this extra cash. If you're not, then you're screwed.) People need more Marks or Z$ in order to buy stuff. Deflation is just the opposite: the money supply decreases with respect to the supply of valuable goods. This can happen when the money supply stays constant while the supply of good increases (via more productivity, trade, etc). In Bitcoin's case, the money supply is ultimately finite, unlike any fiat currency like the US Dollar. It's growing now because the miners haven't mined all the possible BitCoins, but eventually they will, and mining becomes gradually harder over time. (BitCoin was explicitly designed this way.) If Bitcoins become a more accepted currency (ie: demand for them rises as they are exchanged for more valuable goods, including other currencies), and they do this faster than their supply increases, then they will experience a deflationary effect. Things will will cost fewer BitCoins over time. What happens when we have massive deflation? We're not really sure, because it doesn't happen very often (most economies are inflationary, and most rapid changes in money supply happen to be inflationary). The general fear is that, if the currency is increasing in value all on its own, that people will horde them rather than circulate them. This defeats the purpose of a currency (they're exchange vehicles, not investment vehicles). Here's what Wikipedia says on the topic.
We know what happens when a currency undergoes massive deflation - Germany in the 1930's or, more recently, Zimbabwe happens.
Yes we all remember the global tragedy when Flooz was wiped out. Then again when Beenz hit the floor. Oh the humanity...
and logically, I am thinking you do not respect other peoples reading time by just writing random stuff.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
No, you're wrong, the whole cartel of fees-collecting, tax-charging, interest-bearing rich get richer profit from the system of central authority where "mystery shopper" can put you on investigation status and have your funds held, or risk of your account being shut because they have a bone to pick.
Those are all barriers to a new business gaining traction, as to the large business who does hundreds of transactions per day these costs can be absorbed and insured, but for the seller who does three sales a week, a chargeback puts you out of business. That can be your mortgage payment on the line (more likely utility or rent), and if you drop-ship, you just forked over the whole amount of money for merchandise which may have been delivered, but now YOU are on the hook for the full amount again, with two merchants and possibly return shipping cost as well.
By the way, since the buyer filed a dispute, you won't have access to any of the money they sent in order to help with resolving the issues, and we're holding 50% of your other sales' for 45 days because you are on our shit-list.
They want you to think it's only for contraband because they want you to continue to pay the Visa tax.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Real people don't even use paypal, we have credit and debit cards tied to real bank accounts not to some scummy ass company known for ripping its customers off.
Perhaps you should grow up and get a bank account like normal people and stop dicking with paypal.
Paypal solves no problem that wasn't already solved before it existed, it serves no useful purpose.
I have plenty of bank accounts, and I've paid my fair share of overdraft fees when I read my bank balance from the website and thought that was a decent substitute for keeping a check register.
You simple fail to understand how bitcoin isn't anything like you think it is.
How do you think I think Bitcoin is?
So "real people" drive where they need to be, which is the bank, and they don't use companies that do what Banks do unless they are banks. Or they use the US Postal Service and they order checks from a printer. Is that what you're saying?
I grew up using the Internet, I am loathe to "drop anything in the mail," and I'll tell you that my experience with Paypal has actually been great (when I accidentally overdraw my account, which has happened several times, they e-mail me a notice and don't threaten me with $38 per day in fees)
But I'm smart enough to realize that's not anything I've done, it's just Paypal's gracious favor since they like to have more customers, and they would like you to switch to using Paypal rather than a bank.
I'm tired of being a customer of crooked banks and I know what happens to merchants who accept Paypal. The Visa/MasterCard agreements are not any better. They cost.
I suppose you have one bank and one checking account and you're very happy with it. I want another option and the bank is not it. I believe in coming up with ideas rather than shooting them down. I'm open to you coming up with a better idea than Bitcoin for stored value transfer.
Waiting. OK, now. Go.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Which is exactly why it will never be adopted as a real currency.
Apparently, the issue mentioned in the article has been fixed. "Blockchain forking event is over, all is well."
But I have a general bitcoin question. Since total bitcoin production is limited, what happens to all the bitcoins that are lost or destroyed? I mean it the wallet master key is lost of destroyed, wont the bitcoins be permanently stuck in that wallet forever? Say your computer harddrive breaks down or your laptop is stolen or you just delete the key file, etc