Disqus - Latest Comments for sgornick

Re: A Haven for Blockchain: The Case for Wyoming - CoinDesk

Stephen Gornick — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 14:09:25 -0000

Regarding LLC on the blockchain, .... Minnesota has "MNVest" regulation, which already allows that.

Silicon Prairie Portal & Exchange is implementing it there, and is now expanding to other states where this is allowed (e.g., Wisconsin, already approved, Iowa ... applied, ... and Reg CF/national soon, reportedly.)

Re: Bitcoin's Price Surge is Making Hobby Mining Profitable Again - CoinDesk

Stephen Gornick — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 13:01:34 -0000

Mining hashrate is increasing, the hashrate in your contract will not increase unless you buy more.

The only way you profit (in fiat terms) is if the exchange rate continues to rise. Might as well just buy BTC and HODL instead.

Re: Sever-Side Rendering of Single Page Apps using PhantomJS and Node.js

Stephen Gornick — Sat, 10 Jun 2017 04:17:13 -0000

With Chrome now supporting "headless mode" (Chrome 57? or 59 and later on Linux, Chrome 60 and later on Windows and Mac), the maintainer of PhantomJS has stepped down.

Re: Montana Boosts Local Bitcoin Miner With $416k Grant - CoinDesk

Stephen Gornick — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 21:56:55 -0000

"jobs supported by". Yes, "supported". That's a weasel word. Maybe that includes a couple weeks of help by a couple electricians, that's two jobs. The realtor leasing out the space, that's another job. The carpenter, in for a couple days ... one more job. Temporary help setting up the cable conduits, another couple jobs. Pretty soon, the three man shop gets credited with supporting 65 jobs.

Re: Montana Boosts Local Bitcoin Miner With $416k Grant - CoinDesk

Stephen Gornick — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 11:02:00 -0000

What matters is, cheap power, cooler air, cheap real-estate / cost of living.

They are near the Thompson Falls dam (94MW hydro generation) so probably are getting power at a decent rate.

So this might not be the worst place to locate a Bitcoin mining op. How they suckered the government into giving them some money for it though, I've no idea.

Three years til the next "halvening", so hopefully they also do altcoin mining as well, so they still have any chance of lasting beyond block 630,000.

Re: Cross Blockchain Trades? Lightning Gives New Life to Atomic Swaps - CoinDesk

Stephen Gornick — Wed, 31 May 2017 18:55:22 -0000

Just launched yesterday is ZenCash, a spin-off of ZClassic (which incidentally, is a software fork of ZCash) and it uses SegWit.

Hopefully some day Bitcoin community will figure out how to get SegWit activated so it can participate in cross-chain atomic transactions as well.

Re: Where is Gavin Andresen? The Quiet Exile of Bitcoin's Former Face - CoinDesk

Stephen Gornick — Sun, 21 May 2017 14:19:05 -0000

> a developer at bank-focused blockchain consortium, R3

R3 does not have any blockchain projects nor have they stated that they have plans for any.

Re: Musk Talks About Tesla Semi, More Gigafactories, & Electric Roller Skates

Stephen Gornick — Sat, 29 Apr 2017 13:02:28 -0000

Energy is plentiful. People's time and productivity is't.

That's why they don't take the bus.

Re: Musk Talks About Tesla Semi, More Gigafactories, & Electric Roller Skates

Stephen Gornick — Sat, 29 Apr 2017 13:01:17 -0000

It most certainly is efficient, ... for the rider!

When subways need drivers, then fewer larger, less frequent subways (the current model) are more efficient for the operator. But commuters waste time waiting, especially if multiple connections need to be made.

When a driverless "pod" is instead waiting for the next load (e.g., passenger). there is no time wasted by the customer. That's why most prefer having their own car -- no waiting, among other reasons.

When you consider efficiency, look at the big picture. Those 30 minutes saved using "pods" versus being spent waiting for a subway or bus could instead be spent as quality time with the kids. It's the greater productivity of the labor force gained from this that's the key variable to look at.

Re: LocalBitcoins Momentum Is Back With Two New Record Highs

Stephen Gornick — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 13:05:29 -0000

Wow ... records at those two economic powerhouses, Dominican Republic and Ukraine!!

In previous Bitcoin rallies of significance, LocalBitcoins trading was right there breaking weekly volume records left and right. This latest Bitcoin rally? Not so much.

So while LocalBitcoins itself is doing OK, this is one sign that things might not be so bullsish for Bitcoin and the rest of the ecosystem. The delays in getting SegWit activated certainly are a contributing factor.

Re: Top 6 Bitcoin and Blockchain Remittance Companies

Stephen Gornick — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 16:50:06 -0000

Honorable mention goes to LocalBitcoins, which doesn't do remittance per-se, but allows one to payouts in a country and currency different from where one resides (unlike most exchanges).

This lets a person who is a foreign worker buy bitcoin in the country where employment occurs but then make a trade on LocalBitcoins where the recipient of the cash is family back home, for example.

Re: Bitcoin in Africa: Insights from the Continent’s Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

Stephen Gornick — Sun, 16 Apr 2017 02:18:00 -0000

> In Africa, bitcoin will only be successful in those countries that don't have currency controls and no foreign currency shortages.

On the contrary. Though I don't have any hard data (or even much anecdotal evidence), I would bet actual Bitcoin usage is increasing in places like Zimbabwe, where they have both currency controls and foreign currency shortages.

Or look outside Africa for other examples, ... Venezuela is the best example, but how about India, which saw a huge spike in Bitcoin usage after their demonetization efforts.

Re: COSS.IO, a Comprehensive Cryptocurrency Platform for Crypto and Fiat Communities

Stephen Gornick — Sun, 16 Apr 2017 01:56:19 -0000

MNo only will they never beat Bitcoin, but their FedCoin efforts will only make Bitcoin more valuable. In Kenya, for example, M-PESA is a form of a FedCoin, a relatiively "hard" form of payment (unlike PayPal which is easily reversed). This "hardness" enables trading as a Bitcoin seller is more willing to accept an account-to-account transfer of the national coin. As a result, there is no shortage of Bitcoin sellers willing to accept M-Pesa, and thus the competition brings the premiums down -- oftentimes to within a fraction of a percent.

Contrast that with PayPal or other online payment methods that are easily reversed and you don't find Bitcoin sellers willing to trade without a very high premium over spot.

Most altcoins also trade with a minimal premium, due to the expectation of it being a "hard" payment method. So a FedCoin would presumably be more like one of the many altcoins, though the FedCoin would differ in being trivially easy to acquire, which lowers the barrier to entry for those wanting to convert fiat to crypto.

This is likely why there have not yet been any Fedcoin launches to-date, ... it will only accelerate the central bank's diminishing stature.

Re: Ethereum's Difficulty Bomb: All Smoke, No Fire?

Stephen Gornick — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 21:20:49 -0000

Incidentally, the original Ethernet chain ($ETC) has since hard forked and gotten rid of the difficulty bomb. They've also fixed the inflation issue by putting an upper limit to $ETC currency creation.

Re: Oroville Dam operators stop flow down spillway, see extensive damage

Stephen Gornick — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 12:20:38 -0000

DWR - March 16th: "Natural-occurring asbestos was discovered near construction zone."

http://www.water.ca.gov/new...

Re: Top 4 Peer-to-peer Bitcoin Trading Platforms

Stephen Gornick — Sun, 12 Mar 2017 14:02:56 -0000

How did you overlook Mycelium Marketplace? (Formerly branded as Mycelium Local Trader)

- https://www.mycelium.com/lt/m/ <-- Interactive map

- https://mycelium.com/lt/hel...

Re: Don’t Miss the Fine Print on That Bitcoin ETF

Stephen Gornick — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 12:05:24 -0000

It is with either incompetence or malice that the language of the ammendment on hard forks was written the way it was.

ETFs deal with stock spinoffs i their holding all the time. Last year Taco Bell's parent company (YUM) spun off its China division (YUMC). But after the spinoff the ETF holds both. If they don't want to continue holding YUMC, they can then sell the YUMC and use the proceeds to increase the number of their shares of YUMC. But they don't simply say "We follow the stronger company" and toss aside the YUMC.

But that's what the language of this ETF says.

And that's about what Coinbase said before the contentious Ethereum hard fork (the DAO bailout) ... "We follow the chain with the most work". Of course, after that hard fork customers demanded their $ETC as well as their $ETH, and Coinbase, eventually coming to their senses, agreed (though they had to go to the markets to secure the $ETC that they had lost due to incompetence/lack of preparation).

So, with the COIN ETF, and there's a contentious Bitcoin hard fork that results in two chains. who gets the spinoff coins?

This would end up in court -- with two sides arguing over the handling, unless it is addressed properly in advance.

Re: Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF Offering Expands to $100 Million

Stephen Gornick — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 14:56:49 -0000

Their S-1 Amendment is written as if this were the first instance of an ETF potentially being granted shares from a spinoff of a stock held in their portfolio and they utterly have no clue of the right way for them to would handle it should that happen.

A contentious crypto coin hard fork is likely to result in two coins. So it is like a simple spin off -- something that happens with regularity (i.e., once a week or more) with listed securities on Wall Street.

Take a recent contentious hard fork example -- Ethereum. They pushed through their contentious "DAO bailout" hard fork, and the "Ethereum" we have today, $ETH, is the hard fork side. But mining on the original chain (without the hard fork code) continued so that side of the fork is now referred to as $ETC.

So in that hard fork scenario, $ETH had a spin off and for every 1.0 $ETH held at the point in time where the hard fork started, you then also held 1.0 $ETC.

> we support the blockchain that has “the greatest cumulative computational difficulty"

Crazy. So that means they would only support the $ETH. OK, fine. So what about the $ETC received (i.e., "shares" granted by the "spinoff")?

It's like back when Ethereum was about to fork and Coinbase (GDAX exchange) was saying the same thing "We follow the chain with the most work". Sure, until the fork resulted in two coins and basic common understanding of property made them rethink their position. Shortly after the fork they had to credit everyone who held Ethereum with an equivalent quantity of $ETC as well. (Even if it meant Coinbase had to go to the markets to buy those "granted" funds back! )

I don't know if the S-1 Amendment language is written the way it is so that COIN ETF executives can pull a fast one (i.e., steal the "spinoff shares" granted from a hard fork) or if it is that way just because of inexperience / incompetence with regard to blockchains.

Re: Bitcoin Market Needs Big Blocks, Says Founder of BTC.TOP Mining Pool

Stephen Gornick — Sun, 05 Feb 2017 17:51:24 -0000

> each capable of blocking segwit activation,

If the market wants SegWit, it will get it (as hard fork of SegWit only is an option as well). If the market is agnostic, so be it. Bitcoin can survive (as a settlement layer) with $5 or $20 transaction fees, if that's all it needs to be.

Re: Bitcoin Market Needs Big Blocks, Says Founder of BTC.TOP Mining Pool

Stephen Gornick — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 20:50:56 -0000

SegWit does mainly one thing ... solves transaction malleability.

Now with transaction malleability solved, off-chain solutions become easier to implement. If you want to argue against those, that's a different argument.

You are likely concluding that if SegWit activates, and that allows LN to emerge and that works, that there will be no significant push for on-chain scaling (i.e., bigger blocks). And you might be right. And Bitcoin remains resistant to censorship. Problem?

Re: Bitcoin Market Needs Big Blocks, Says Founder of BTC.TOP Mining Pool

Stephen Gornick — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 20:45:37 -0000

Technically, 0%. (Block size of a SegWIt "big block", as reported by my Bitcoin v0.13.0 client, is ... 1MB). But you could argue that is does give a 70% increase in transaction throughput ... i..e, the 1MB segwit block handles 1.7 MB of transaction data. But that's still a 70% increase, not >100%.

Regardless, SegWit solves transaction malleability, and that's the key needed for easier implementation of off-chain solutions (e.g., Payment channels). It is these off-chain solutions that "move the needle" as far as potential transaction activity.

Re: Bitcoin Market Needs Big Blocks, Says Founder of BTC.TOP Mining Pool

Stephen Gornick — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 20:39:55 -0000

Bitcoin has never had a planned hard fork. If you are referring to the March 2013 chain fork, that was an unintentional chain split caused by an overlooked property of the database.

Re: Bitcoin Market Needs Big Blocks, Says Founder of BTC.TOP Mining Pool

Stephen Gornick — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 20:36:39 -0000

> Second, even core intentionally fork the chain, their coin's
> value is purely decided by its hash power, no hash power
> no value,

Hashrate follows value, not the other way around.

> As existing coin holder, it works like a share split of the company,
> he still owns both company after the split

Except people aren't aware of how this split works, and accidentally "sell both companies" (using your analogy) "for the price of one". This is called a replay attack, and BU hard fork could be written in a way that protects against that. But they won't.

Re: Bitcoin Market Needs Big Blocks, Says Founder of BTC.TOP Mining Pool

Stephen Gornick — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 00:41:47 -0000

> “We have prepared $100 million USD to kill the small fork
> of CoreCoin, no matter what POW algorithm, sha256 or
> scrypt or X11 or any other GPU algorithm.

Firstly, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight.

A hard fork with PoW change as Luke-Jr describes will not be necessary, ... but for the sake of discussion let's say it happens. While the hashing algo (Keccak) will find ASICs being designed for it, they don't exist today. So that means, initially, mining of the fork would be done with GPUs. There's billions of dollars of Bitcoin market cap at stake. There's many multiples of $100M worth of GPU equipment used for (or potentially repurposed for) mining of cryptocoins -- and currently, most GPUs in mining are on either Ethereum or ZCash. So there's way more than $100M worth of hardware that would be put to work mining this Bitcoin PoW-change hard fork. With less than 50% of the combined total hashrate, what will BTC.TOP's $100M arsenal do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

But such a PoW change would be unnecessary anyway. Why? Because there's absolutely nothing necessary to be done. Even if BU forks off on a chain with a higher maxblocksize, Bitcoin Core miners will continue mining that chain, unaffected by BU. So there'ld be two chains, each with the temporary behavior of slow block solving, ... but other than that the original chain can persist indefinitely. That wouldn't be the ideal situation. That's why this (a contentious hard fork that fails to kill off the original chain) is referred to as "catastrophic consensus failure". And should be avoided.

Those wanting a big blocks fork have the option to make BU as a Bitcoin spin-off. This initial spin-off wold have initial distribution (i.e., pre-mine) of ~16M coins, ... available 1:1 to those who hold the ~16M BTC at the point of the hard fork. Such a spin-off doesn't attack bitcoin but persists alongside it. There would not be any significant objection if BU were to follow such an approach.

Re: Where's Casper? Inside Ethereum's Race to Radically Reinvent its Rules

Stephen Gornick — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:12:16 -0000

How can there be "no deadline". Doesn't mining of blocks start to significantly slow later this year (due to Difficulty Bomb, which Ethereum Classic recently hard-forked to get rid of)?