Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: connoisseur on April 18, 2013, 04:50 pm
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*CLEARNET*
http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2013/04/18/silk-road-bitcoin/
it seems to get tight:
MtGox and blockchain were DDoS'ed today.
bitcoin-24 is out of business since a week.
bitfloor is out of business since today.
looks like the US govt is trying to shut down BTC trading.
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I don't think it would be SR that would kill off bitcoin. Rather the financial elites in cohoots with the fascist western guvmints, led by the us, would try.
But you know, I don't think they will succeed. The more people who adopt bitcoin, the harder and harder it will be for them to try to manipulate or drive down the use of, and the price of, bitcoin. In the end, a combination of bitcoin, gold and silver will detonate the dollar and most all fiat currencies into oblivion.
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yes Goblin I agree with you completely ...TPTB esp the banksters are trying with ALL their 'skill' to try and undermine the publics confidence in btc...hoping it will die with a bit of help
But some very cool protocols were 'built into" e currencies .... and the main "problem" at the mmoment, Is that Mt Gox have kinda 'accidentally' become the biggest holder ot Btcs in the world, with apparenltly about 90% of the Btc reserves in their 'deposits' which is 'how' a Ddos attack WAS 'possible' and once again satoshi had built into the code, the blockchain itself IS now too big to fuck up
The problem Is that Btc is supposed to be a "de-centralized" curremcy 'held' by everyone ... and IF there were 20 "mini Mt Goxs" each with 5-15% of the total available coin ... this kind of stuff cant happen!
The next problem is the US govt make it "illegal" to use e-currency .... and then, my friend, you are finally standing at the gates of martial law and civil war!!
It will be a sad day, BUT at least alll those americans who fought to keep their guns, can get off a few shots before thet;re taken out by a drone flying 3kms away that they never even heard!
And I thought 9/11 was Bad!
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I seriously doubt Gox hold 90% of the bitcoins, they're an exchange, they make money from bitcoins being bought and sold, it doesn't make sense for them to hold the majority.
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looks like the US govt is trying to shut down BTC trading.
Well like the community has said numerous times, the weakest point of Bitcoin is the exchanges. Luckily they really can't shut down services like Bitcoin-OTC and LocalBitcoins as they're too decentralized. So you can still utilize these services to purchase Bitcoins.
I don't think it would be SR that would kill off bitcoin. Rather the financial elites in cohoots with the fascist western guvmints, led by the us, would try.
But you know, I don't think they will succeed. The more people who adopt bitcoin, the harder and harder it will be for them to try to manipulate or drive down the use of, and the price of, bitcoin. In the end, a combination of bitcoin, gold and silver will detonate the dollar and most all fiat currencies into oblivion.
SR and WikiLeaks is what put Bitcoin into the mainstream in the first place. Notorious or not this place stands as a proof of concept for the anonymity of the Bitcoin protocol.
Well with the recent addition of ASIC based miners it's becoming harder and harder to destabalize the network. As much as I would love for that to happen... I don't see it in the foreseeable future. Unless Bernanke turns off the printing presses and OPEC starts accepting something else besides the USD in exchange for oil, the USD is here to stay.
yes Goblin I agree with you completely ...TPTB esp the banksters are trying with ALL their 'skill' to try and undermine the publics confidence in btc...hoping it will die with a bit of help
But some very cool protocols were 'built into" e currencies .... and the main "problem" at the mmoment, Is that Mt Gox have kinda 'accidentally' become the biggest holder ot Btcs in the world, with apparenltly about 90% of the Btc reserves in their 'deposits' which is 'how' a Ddos attack WAS 'possible' and once again satoshi had built into the code, the blockchain itself IS now too big to fuck up
The problem Is that Btc is supposed to be a "de-centralized" curremcy 'held' by everyone ... and IF there were 20 "mini Mt Goxs" each with 5-15% of the total available coin ... this kind of stuff cant happen!
The next problem is the US govt make it "illegal" to use e-currency .... and then, my friend, you are finally standing at the gates of martial law and civil war!!
It will be a sad day, BUT at least alll those americans who fought to keep their guns, can get off a few shots before thet;re taken out by a drone flying 3kms away that they never even heard!
And I thought 9/11 was Bad!
I don't think it's "the banksters" manipulating the market. It's more than likely a person or small group of people with a bit of bandwidth and some short positions on Bitcoin just trying to maximize their profits through panic selling via DDOS on exchanges.
Where did you get that 90% value if you don't mind me asking? I know they facilitate 80% of all Bitcoin TRANSACTIONS, but not 80% of the entire Bitcoins in circulation. How would having a large offline wallet make a DDOS attack "possible"? What did Satoshi build in? The blockchain is not "too big to fuck up" as we are experiencing with the waste of UTXO space via bitdust transactions like losing bets on SatoshiDice. As it is they are thinking of seperating the node classes to makeup for this. Having a full node would require a monsterous amount of bandwidth and a server, AKA centralization. Not good.
Couldn't agree more. This is why services like Bitcoin-OTC and BTCJam need to be streamlined to allow more Bitcoin users to sell/lend coins directly to potential buyers.
Not far off. China has already implemented a similar policy. They are making it harder to convert USD to Bitcoins as they know this will deter the most use of the currency.
Hehe well I'm not too worried about drones as they can be taken over and controlled via a $1000 GPS Spoofer.
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I seriously doubt Gox hold 90% of the bitcoins, they're an exchange, they make money from bitcoins being bought and sold, it doesn't make sense for them to hold the majority.
They do control the majority of the trade though, which is basically the same thing when it gets DDoSed.
looks like the US govt is trying to shut down BTC trading.
Well like the community has said numerous times, the weakest point of Bitcoin is the exchanges. Luckily they really can't shut down services like Bitcoin-OTC and LocalBitcoins as they're too decentralized. So you can still utilize these services to purchase Bitcoins.
Which would be awesome if all the sellers on LocalBitcoins within 20 miles of me did not have overly inflated prices. The issue with BTC is that if we do not have a major trend setter, exchange rates can vary all over the damn place. Unless we somehow get everyone to agree on one, single fixed price.
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I really mean No malice saying this, :P but everyone who commented after my comment ...should really go and DO some research and UTFSE before you make uninformed comments about something Itr's fairly clear none of you HAVE read any mainstream economic and bitcoin related news ... ::)
It's as I said ...FFS did ANY of you know, that Mt Gox had with OVER 20,000 accounts OPENED and trading on 'average' ,, around 1000 btcs EACH were opened LAST THURSDAY ALONE? :o
OVER TWENTY THOUSAND ACCOUNTS were 'opened and used ON LAST THURSDAYS TRADING ALONE .....nah It wasn't "organised at all!" ::)
Go and DO some research in the "other world" :o
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But some very cool protocols were 'built into" e currencies .... and the main "problem" at the mmoment, Is that Mt Gox have kinda 'accidentally' become the biggest holder ot Btcs in the world...
The problem Is that Btc is supposed to be a "de-centralized" curremcy 'held' by everyone ... and IF there were 20 "mini Mt Goxs" each with 5-15% of the total available coin ... this kind of stuff cant happen!
If you saw Max Keiser's show on Tuesday (it's on youtube now, I hear), one of the solutions to the volatility at least, and maybe to the exchange shutdowns as well, is the creation of more exchanges, but with professional "market makers" on board whose job it will be to smooth the volatility created by accepting all buy and sell orders with the same priority. This is one of mt gox's biggest failures, especially being that it conducts such a huge percentage of the total buy and sell transactions. If there is a buyer or a seller of last resort, then exchanges won't be overwhelmed by a flood of buy orders for which there are not enough sellers, or vice versa. These market makers will do the job of buying when there are not enough sellers, or selling when there are not enough buyers. And we certainly need to cut mt gox down to size, so it goes to maybe 30% or even less of all transactions.
Also, it was mentioned that the bitcoin network is now large enough that a 51% attack is pretty well impossible, which obviously is a good thing.
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Whether or not that article is correct, that is one snazzy graphic.
Let's put some different numbers on it. Adi Shamir and a colleague analyzed the block chain up to block 180,000 and determined that 22% of bitcoins were in circulation (78% have never been transferred between addresses). Assuming that number is still valid, of the 11 million coins that have been mined, about 2.4 million are in circulation. At the current exchange rate, that's $240 million of wealth.
Of course, not all of these coins are being exchanged for state backed currency. Many of them are simply transferred between addresses owned by the same person. It's impossible to know how many are exchanged, because even if we knew how much trade was going on at all the exchanges, we know very little about F2F exchanges, like on localbitcoins.com.
Also, a lot of the coins are bought and sold multiple times by day traders. If I sell 10 BTC, wait for the price to drop a few percent, and buy back 10.5 BTC, on paper that looks like 20.5 BTC have been exchanged, but really only 0.5 BTC has.
So the real question is, how much money will be spent on bitcoins this year by people who don't later sell them. $50 million? Maybe, I have no idea.
Now let's look at Silk Road. The $22 million figure for annual sales is a lower bound. Nicolas Christin admits in his paper that he can only estimate the public listings, based on public reviews. We don't know how many stealth vendors and listings there are, and these may be the biggest sales on the site. Vendors build trusted relationships with a few buyers, then go stealth and offer bigger orders. It seems like you would want to, in order to make up for lost public sales. So SR's annual revenue could be twice the lower bound or more.
By that measure, SR makes up close to 100% of actual trade for goods and services in the bitcoin economy. :)
Well, who knows. It's all guess work. Don't believe that 20% figure in the article either, because they don't know.
But even in this scenario, what would it mean if SR goes out of business? Probably not much. There would still be $200 million in wealth transferred around and day traded, and that would continue, and probably grow.
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What to do at the moment.
Sell the bitcoins or wait.
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I really mean No malice saying this, :P but everyone who commented after my comment ...should really go and DO some research and UTFSE before you make uninformed comments about something Itr's fairly clear none of you HAVE read any mainstream economic and bitcoin related news ... ::)
It's as I said ...FFS did ANY of you know, that Mt Gox had with OVER 20,000 accounts OPENED and trading on 'average' ,, around 1000 btcs EACH were opened LAST THURSDAY ALONE? :o
OVER TWENTY THOUSAND ACCOUNTS were 'opened and used ON LAST THURSDAYS TRADING ALONE .....nah It wasn't "organised at all!" ::)
Go and DO some research in the "other world" :o
No malice taken. I have done my research as has astor who explained my point more eloquently than I could. None of those stats are meaningful when it comes to who is in control of what BTCs. Adi Shamir's paper was the best overall view we can get and it still has huge flaws. Like hotwallets (instawallet, SR wallet, etc), multiple wallets per user, cold storage (coins don't move for months), lost coins, etc.
one of the solutions to the volatility at least, and maybe to the exchange shutdowns as well, is the creation of more exchanges, but with professional "market makers" on board whose job it will be to smooth the volatility created by accepting all buy and sell orders with the same priority.
Also, it was mentioned that the bitcoin network is now large enough that a 51% attack is pretty well impossible, which obviously is a good thing.
This is a good idea but who will bankroll such an endeavor? It was suggested in the ECBs paper on Bitcoins as well. I would love for this to be implemented but who is going to expose themselves to that kind of risk?
Not impossible as BTCGuild is almost at 51% of total hashrate currently. But hopefully when ASICMINER releases the rest of batch 1 it will even out the hashrate distribution.
Is this really the case though when so much of that hashing power is centralized with only a few mining pools?
https://blockchain.info/pools
It doesn't really take much to tip the balance and AFAIK you don't even need 51% of the hashing power to feasibly fork the blockchain which would probably destroy confidence in Bitcoin.
My thought exactly.
Well you could wreak some havoc with under 51% I'm sure. Although from what I've gathered 51% is needed to be able to double spend reliably.
What to do at the moment.
Sell the bitcoins or wait.
If you can afford it wait. This crash wasn't organic anyway. It was the result of trade lag and panic selling.
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Thanks mate.
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one of the solutions to the volatility at least, and maybe to the exchange shutdowns as well, is the creation of more exchanges, but with professional "market makers" on board whose job it will be to smooth the volatility created by accepting all buy and sell orders with the same priority.
This is a good idea but who will bankroll such an endeavor? It was suggested in the ECBs paper on Bitcoins as well. I would love for this to be implemented but who is going to expose themselves to that kind of risk?
Yeah, I see your point, it would be expensive. If the mechanism could put an end or at least slow down this volatility, though, it would be well worth trying. I suppose that would mean some kind of regulatory agency that would mandate such a thing but then, that goes contrary to the spirit of total freedom attached to bitcoin. On the other hand, maybe some "growing up" is called for in the bitcoin community. Either that or accept these horrendous price fluctuations that seem totally random and irrational.
Or maybe, what about some superfund that could be set up by implementing a set of fees on bitcoin transactions? I'm just talking off the top of my head here, but what about 5% on sales of bitcoins and maybe 1% on simple sending, to be split between the buyer and seller or between the sender and receiver? I could be off by an order of magnitude, but you get the idea. And this superfund could be used to do that market making and try to get over these extraordinary days of mass panic selling (as well as mass panic buying).
It might be possible to do it by modifying the code, couldn't it? Like what we have now that says, your sending could be speeded up by adding 0.005 btc or something like that for the miners, etc. Could this work?
goblin
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one of the solutions to the volatility at least, and maybe to the exchange shutdowns as well, is the creation of more exchanges, but with professional "market makers" on board whose job it will be to smooth the volatility created by accepting all buy and sell orders with the same priority.
This is a good idea but who will bankroll such an endeavor? It was suggested in the ECBs paper on Bitcoins as well. I would love for this to be implemented but who is going to expose themselves to that kind of risk?
Yeah, I see your point, it would be expensive. If the mechanism could put an end or at least slow down this volatility, though, it would be well worth trying. I suppose that would mean some kind of regulatory agency that would mandate such a thing but then, that goes contrary to the spirit of total freedom attached to bitcoin. On the other hand, maybe some "growing up" is called for in the bitcoin community. Either that or accept these horrendous price fluctuations that seem totally random and irrational.
Or maybe, what about some superfund that could be set up by implementing a set of fees on bitcoin transactions? I'm just talking off the top of my head here, but what about 5% on sales of bitcoins and maybe 1% on simple sending, to be split between the buyer and seller or between the sender and receiver? I could be off by an order of magnitude, but you get the idea. And this superfund could be used to do that market making and try to get over these extraordinary days of mass panic selling (as well as mass panic buying).
It might be possible to do it by modifying the code, couldn't it? Like what we have now that says, your sending could be speeded up by adding 0.005 btc or something like that for the miners, etc. Could this work?
goblin
All terrible ideas. Volatility is one of the characteristics of bitcoin. It was inherent in bitcoin from the start, and started with the mining (speculation).
Some sort of digital token will be prominent in the future, but I am sure it won't be bitcoin.
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Yeah, I see your point, it would be expensive. If the mechanism could put an end or at least slow down this volatility, though, it would be well worth trying. I suppose that would mean some kind of regulatory agency that would mandate such a thing but then, that goes contrary to the spirit of total freedom attached to bitcoin. On the other hand, maybe some "growing up" is called for in the bitcoin community. Either that or accept these horrendous price fluctuations that seem totally random and irrational.
Or maybe, what about some superfund that could be set up by implementing a set of fees on bitcoin transactions? I'm just talking off the top of my head here, but what about 5% on sales of bitcoins and maybe 1% on simple sending, to be split between the buyer and seller or between the sender and receiver? I could be off by an order of magnitude, but you get the idea. And this superfund could be used to do that market making and try to get over these extraordinary days of mass panic selling (as well as mass panic buying).
It might be possible to do it by modifying the code, couldn't it? Like what we have now that says, your sending could be speeded up by adding 0.005 btc or something like that for the miners, etc. Could this work?
goblin
Well it's a slippery slope to implement a "market maker" as it's pseudo regulation as it is. Yea, the only person/group that would take that kind of risk would be a regulatory body. Well keep in mind this is still very much a beta project. The entire market price is currently held up by a handful of markets accepting bitcoin, SR being the largest, and speculation. The speculation is what is responsible for the wild volatility of late.
Another alt-coin proposed a similar idea, I didn't keep up with the progress, but it seemed to be rather unliked by the majority of the community. I believe it had a fund that started at like 30% total coins and slowly got smaller as the market grew. Don't quote me on that as it was a while ago and I was loosely interested. What we need is a bigger Bitcoin market base. The majority of people purchasing Bitcoins are planning on cashing out into FIAT for profit at a later date. This is not good for the market as we've seen. Currently you can buy drugs, porn, domains, and a select few service-based renewals with Bitcoin. We desperately need more companies and industries to accept Bitcoin as a method of payment if we want a more stable economy.
It's already been proposed in the development forum of BTCTalk and was generally unaccepted.
All terrible ideas. Volatility is one of the characteristics of bitcoin. It was inherent in bitcoin from the start, and started with the mining (speculation).
Some sort of digital token will be prominent in the future, but I am sure it won't be bitcoin.
Hmm well several stock markets implemented this as part of their trading platform. As Goblin mentioned look into Max Kaiser. He created "Virtual Specialist Technology" which is essentially the same thing. I'm not saying abandon speculation, I'm saying we need some type of consistent market for Bitcoins so it isn't ONLY based on speculation.
How sure? Several technologies have risen from the Bitcoin Protocol. Decentralized DNS being one of the most useful I've seen (namecoin). But even if Bitcoin isn't the digital tokens people use but rather eUSD or eEURO I believe they will use a similar infrastructure albeit more centralized like the one being suggested by development.
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What to do at the moment.
Sell the bitcoins or wait.
would sell now if you can profit, then buy more coin when the price drops 50%~~next week? next month?
~or~
If you are with an exchange that offers short sales, like (CBX), Sell short now and buy to cover when prices drop.
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I really mean No malice saying this, :P but everyone who commented after my comment ...should really go and DO some research and UTFSE before you make uninformed comments about something Itr's fairly clear none of you HAVE read any mainstream economic and bitcoin related news ... ::)
It's as I said ...FFS did ANY of you know, that Mt Gox had with OVER 20,000 accounts OPENED and trading on 'average' ,, around 1000 btcs EACH were opened LAST THURSDAY ALONE? :o
OVER TWENTY THOUSAND ACCOUNTS were 'opened and used ON LAST THURSDAYS TRADING ALONE .....nah It wasn't "organised at all!" ::)
Go and DO some research in the "other world" :o
I opened an account on Mt Gox around about that time. No one told me to. Numpty. I hap some bitcoins and suddenly they were worth a packet and I wanted to unload them .. game over.
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What to do at the moment.
Sell the bitcoins or wait.
would sell now if you can profit, then buy more coin when the price drops 50%~~next week? next month?
~or~
If you are with an exchange that offers short sales, like (CBX), Sell short now and buy to cover when prices drop.
I wouldn't be selling them right now. (http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/04/18/bitcoin-buzz-draws-western-union-moneygram/)
I am holding my BTC and i hope it will go back to the 200 euro. And then i will sell them
Thanks for the information +1
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What to do at the moment.
Sell the bitcoins or wait.
would sell now if you can profit, then buy more coin when the price drops 50%~~next week? next month?
~or~
If you are with an exchange that offers short sales, like (CBX), Sell short now and buy to cover when prices drop.
I wouldn't be selling them right now. (http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/04/18/bitcoin-buzz-draws-western-union-moneygram/)
I am holding my BTC and i hope it will go back to the 200 euro. And then i will sell them
Thanks for the information +1
That's not information, those were just opinions. You shouldn't rely blindly in what's presented here as sound financial advice.
goblin
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Exactly, Goblin..wel put ...sad that it needs to be so, why wont some folks use the search engine (UTSE) and investigate a bit themselves, rather than talking 'forum chatter' as Gospel Truth!
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What to do at the moment.
Sell the bitcoins or wait.
would sell now if you can profit, then buy more coin when the price drops 50%~~next week? next month?
~or~
If you are with an exchange that offers short sales, like (CBX), Sell short now and buy to cover when prices drop.
I wouldn't be selling them right now. (http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/04/18/bitcoin-buzz-draws-western-union-moneygram/)
I am holding my BTC and i hope it will go back to the 200 euro. And then i will sell them
Thanks for the information +1
That's not information, those were just opinions. You shouldn't rely blindly in what's presented here as sound financial advice.
goblin
I know mate.
I follow my feeling, dont worry.
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Exactly, Goblin..wel put ...sad that it needs to be so, why wont some folks use the search engine (UTSE) and investigate a bit themselves, rather than talking 'forum chatter' as Gospel Truth!
Just want to add another cosigner to these statements. Forum chatter and manipulation is one of the oldest tricks in the book used to manipulate many financial markets! People just don't do their homework, you don't do your homework then you fail in all aspects of life!
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+1 @ pkiz :P
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Creative misinterpretation time:
Yes, Silk Road will kill Bitcoin for good... for the good time you'll have watching them crash and burn while you blaze and snort.
But seriously, SR won't kill Bitcoin any more than regular drug dealings kill cash. It might slow down recognition by governments &co.
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Yeah, I see your point, it would be expensive. If the mechanism could put an end or at least slow down this volatility, though, it would be well worth trying. I suppose that would mean some kind of regulatory agency that would mandate such a thing but then, that goes contrary to the spirit of total freedom attached to bitcoin. On the other hand, maybe some "growing up" is called for in the bitcoin community. Either that or accept these horrendous price fluctuations that seem totally random and irrational.
Or maybe, what about some superfund that could be set up by implementing a set of fees on bitcoin transactions? I'm just talking off the top of my head here, but what about 5% on sales of bitcoins and maybe 1% on simple sending, to be split between the buyer and seller or between the sender and receiver? I could be off by an order of magnitude, but you get the idea. And this superfund could be used to do that market making and try to get over these extraordinary days of mass panic selling (as well as mass panic buying).
It might be possible to do it by modifying the code, couldn't it? Like what we have now that says, your sending could be speeded up by adding 0.005 btc or something like that for the miners, etc. Could this work?
goblin
Well it's a slippery slope to implement a "market maker" as it's pseudo regulation as it is. Yea, the only person/group that would take that kind of risk would be a regulatory body. Well keep in mind this is still very much a beta project. The entire market price is currently held up by a handful of markets accepting bitcoin, SR being the largest, and speculation. The speculation is what is responsible for the wild volatility of late.
Another alt-coin proposed a similar idea, I didn't keep up with the progress, but it seemed to be rather unliked by the majority of the community. I believe it had a fund that started at like 30% total coins and slowly got smaller as the market grew. Don't quote me on that as it was a while ago and I was loosely interested. What we need is a bigger Bitcoin market base. The majority of people purchasing Bitcoins are planning on cashing out into FIAT for profit at a later date. This is not good for the market as we've seen. Currently you can buy drugs, porn, domains, and a select few service-based renewals with Bitcoin. We desperately need more companies and industries to accept Bitcoin as a method of payment if we want a more stable economy.
It's already been proposed in the development forum of BTCTalk and was generally unaccepted.
All terrible ideas. Volatility is one of the characteristics of bitcoin. It was inherent in bitcoin from the start, and started with the mining (speculation).
Some sort of digital token will be prominent in the future, but I am sure it won't be bitcoin.
Hmm well several stock markets implemented this as part of their trading platform. As Goblin mentioned look into Max Kaiser. He created "Virtual Specialist Technology" which is essentially the same thing. I'm not saying abandon speculation, I'm saying we need some type of consistent market for Bitcoins so it isn't ONLY based on speculation.
How sure? Several technologies have risen from the Bitcoin Protocol. Decentralized DNS being one of the most useful I've seen (namecoin). But even if Bitcoin isn't the digital tokens people use but rather eUSD or eEURO I believe they will use a similar infrastructure albeit more centralized like the one being suggested by development.
+1
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legalize