Crypto Mega-Thread [A.K.A Cryptocurrency mining isn't for hobbyists and Ethereum's terrible]

[Azulath]

Well, we might have read two different papers, but in the one I read they didn’t say why the use base-3, I had to google to discover this. Btw, certain operations are faster in base-2, hence it seems logical to conclude that operations will be faster in base-3, if the computer it runs on is optimised for it. So, if it was optimised for base-16 it should run faster in base-16 too (and base-2 due to some similarities)

As far as I can remember, they mention that there might be different valid tangles in contrast to BTC, where there is only one valid chain. For this there is no single authority needed. The other part mentioned in the paper is trimming down the dangle, but this could happen wia community consenus, just like BTC optimisation.

Finally I think cryptos need PoW currencies or the tanble in order to reduce CO2 footprint

I’m still glad I invested in iota when it was at .4cent

@501st: Scroll up, I was one of those But I still believe BTC is due for a correction. Remember, on Decembre 18th it will be possible to short sell BTC and if you visit coinmarketcap you’ll see that the BTC “drop” to 9.5k was due to a lot of money being pulled out (40 billion I think). This might have been a test on market influence.

@bsodmike I think GDAX (or coinbase) works outside of the states as well. My personal thought on buying 1k worth of BTC is to wait and see what happens when (rich) people start to short-sell BTC. But this is YOUR decision, not mine, nor anyone else’s on this forum. (That being said holding till 2018 will probably (==imho) yield profit) If you do want to invest, read up on BTC. I wouldn’t recommend talking to an account though, since “asking a banker what he thinks of bitcoin is like asking a vampire what he thinks of sunlight” (read it somewhere on reddit). Banks are adamant against BTC and their information is often plainly wrong, at least where I’m from.

@Venom415 The same as above, read up on the subject. But don’t be scared of BTC because of its price. Dogecoin is pretty cheap, but I wouldn’t recommend investing in it. (However, if you do personally feel the need, then go ahead). I also suspect LTC won’t be the best performing crypto of 2018, but it is easy to buy (as are BTC and ETH). LTC just doesn’t compete with BTC right now and is even under 1.000.000 satoshi right now and wasen’t able to recover in the recent and still going bull-run.

[tkoham]

just buy bitcoin. save yourself the worry. (I’m not a fiduciary obviously)

you can buy a fraction of a btc, and you should obv only invest what you can afford to lose.

[tkoham]

That’s not a meaningful difference. everything on baremetal is going to run in the same format (binary) so adding conversion steps and instruction inefficiency can be done with any data format swap. This does not meaningfully make the project post-quantum safe, It just makes their scripting api harder to work with. It’s not that hard a concept to grasp.

The “different valid tangles” bit you remember is them talking about a lack of a consensus algorithm, which they correct using a central gateway server called the coordinator. I already explained this.

If you’ve already bought in I get the hesitance to critique the technology, but it’s not very well architected or thought out. This should be abundantly clear to anyone with even a basic background in cryptocurrency or related technologies.

[tkoham]

Also, low CO2 footprint necessarily means low security, or low scalability. because each IOTA transaction is only probabilistically secured from snapshot to snapshot, the incentives align to spam zero value transactions to keep your consensus trunk the most active. they’re just offloading the up front energy requirements onto storage and repeated confirmation zero value transactions, not reducing the energy needed to run a network of the same size as bitcoin, and even then, with a worse security model (33% can censor the network, sybil is much lower energy, economies of scale dictate centralization on cloud compute and storage instances, a trusted central authority is needed to maintain consensus and snapshot as to allow smaller nodes, etc.)

Their scheme is just obfuscated PoW with a trust model, or PoW on credit if you want to put it glibly.

[Azulath]

That’s not a meaningful difference. everything on baremetal is going to run in the same format (binary) so adding conversion steps and instruction inefficiency can be done with any data format swap. This does not meaningfully make the project post-quantum safe, It just makes their scripting api harder to work with. It’s not that hard a concept to grasp.

Well, according to this presentation, ternary runs faster and binary logic is still applicable. Furthermore, they never claim ternary makes it post quantum safe, iota is post quantum safe, because there is almost nothing to gain when using a quantum computer.

The “different valid tangles” bit you remember is them talking about a lack of a consensus algorithm, which they correct using a central gateway server called the coordinator. I already explained this.

I acctually can’t remeber you mentioning the coordinator, however I haven’t read the entire thread. (Unless you mean the part you posted roughly 10 messages above). That being said, according to their reddit page this coordinator seems only temporary, until iota’s network has grown large enought. (But until the coordinator is turned off, you have to trust the nodes to trust the coordinators, or run your own node and check if a coordinator is acting malicous).

If you’ve already bought in I get the hesitance to critique the technology, but it’s not very well architected or thought out. This should be abundantly clear to anyone with even a basic background in cryptocurrency or related technologies.

Apparently it’s not to me (or I don’t have basic background in cryptos; it works like gold in WoW, right? ) Personally, I do like my point of view to be challenged, since only by challenging or views we are able to grow and learn. (Which is why, receiving news from Facebook and Google is a bad idea due to their filtering…) As long as the discussion remains civil of course. However, you won’t be able to talk me into buying/selling a specific crypto, but this wasn’t your goal to begin with. Also, I have already sold a few partial shares of my iota and currently I have everything (+ some decent proift) back, but I’m also holding a few to see how thing turn out…

As far as I’ve understood is that transactions are validated prior to these snapshots. The goal of snapshots is to reduce the size of the tangle database. As for the parasite chain attack, or double spending, there is a blog post detailing why this is difficult in iota.
Even if iota wasn’t secure enough, I argue that PoS cryptos are more futureproof, due to less CO2 footprint. (Unless PC technology changes or doesn’t consume as much energy).

Finally, I don’t want to talk anyone into buying iota. This should be up to oneself; discussing different crytpos and discussing what/how people are trading is interesting though.

[tkoham]

Well, according to this presentation, ternary runs faster and binary logic is still applicable. Furthermore, they never claim ternary makes it post quantum safe, iota is post quantum safe, because there is almost nothing to gain when using a quantum computer.

It provably isn’t faster (might be faster than raw JS or a JVM interpreter doing the same thing, but that’s a really low bar.) I never said it wasn’t quantum safe, I said using base 3 was a meaningless marketing move, and probably an affinity play for people with a limited understanding of post quantum cryptography.

I acctually can’t remeber you mentioning the coordinator, however I haven’t read the entire thread. (Unless you mean the part you posted roughly 10 messages above). That being said, according to their reddit page this coordinator seems only temporary, until iota’s network has grown large enought. (But until the coordinator is turned off, you have to trust the nodes to trust the coordinators, or run your own node and check if a coordinator is acting malicous).

It can’t be temporary by design. If it goes down the entire network ceases to function. This has already happened once for about 48 hours. The only alternative is to never snapshot the tangle which would (suprise suprise) make it unsustainably large in a few months, and even then, the API is closed, so we have no idea if they ever intend on getting rid of it. in the meantime, they can do whatever they want to the ledger.

As far as I’ve understood is that transactions are validated prior to these snapshots. The goal of snapshots is to reduce the size of the tangle database. As for the parasite chain attack, or double spending, there is a blog post detailing why this is difficult in iota.

Verified and curated by a single trusted 3rd party. You keep citing IOTA marketing material. Has it occured to you that if someone’s selling something that’s hard to audit for average people they might have incentive to be less than honest? If they built a sustainable ledger architecture to begin with, snapshotting would not be necessary. What you’ve bought is a centrally managed and issued medium of exchange with a much less efficient transfer system than fiat.

Even if iota wasn’t secure enough, I argue that PoS cryptos are more futureproof, due to less CO2 footprint. (Unless PC technology changes or doesn’t consume as much energy).

It’s not that it isn’t arbitrarily “not secure enough” it’s that their trust model is identical to paypal or visa without the regulation or accountability. The value of cryptocurrencies is trustless value storage and transfer. IOTA, by design, is a centrally managed cryptosystem, and therefore does not hold that utility. Buying it, logic follows, isn’t an investment, but a speculative play based on its marketing, which is a very different risk profile.
The devs could exit and dump at any time, or censor transacting activity whenever they want to. Even if they are honest actors, a state actor could compel them to shut down the coordinator and the network would not be functional, ever again.

Even if iota wasn’t secure enough, I argue that PoS cryptos are more futureproof, due to less CO2 footprint. (Unless PC technology changes or doesn’t consume as much energy).

Not only is this an extrordinary claim, I’d go farther and say this is provably untrue.

In any trustless model, you have to have an autonomous securing mechanism.

PoW derives 100% of it’s security from conversion of energy into coins on each verification

PoS and other schemes use n% energy and n% obfuscated offloading, which is necessarily less efficient because it either involves trust in a field without legal recourse, or allows for other attacks. This is why Ethereum keeps kicking the “difficulty bomb” down the road. they know attacks will skyrocket when they move to PoS, and they know disenfranchised miners will just pump something else.

Here’s a brief explanation of the math and thermodynamics involved here:

http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/

[bsodmike]

Don’t use Kraken. It hasn’t scaled well with the influx in demand and fails to complete orders on a regular bases. If you live in the states, use GDAX. Outside of the states? GDAX, BitFinex or your local alternative. Though again, Much of these sites are unregulated and have been suspected of not holding as much bitcoin as they have on paper. Coinbase/GDAX is one of the few proven exchanges that didn’t have much of a problem returning users bitcoin.

I’m only using Kraken to go from USD > BTC then to my TREZOR wallet. And the otherway when ‘cashing out’. Thanks for the advice though - I’ve been seeing lots of connectivity issues on Kraken - the CloudFlare CDN error crops up with most clicks now.

Will check GDAX. Thanks.

[bsodmike]

you can buy a fraction of a btc, and you should obv only invest what you can afford to lose.

Agreed - thanks.

@bsodmike I think GDAX (or coinbase) works outside of the states as well. My personal thought on buying 1k worth of BTC is to wait and see what happens when (rich) people start to short-sell BTC. But this is YOUR decision, not mine, nor anyone else’s on this forum. (That being said holding till 2018 will probably (==imho) yield profit) If you do want to invest, read up on BTC. I wouldn’t recommend talking to an account though, since “asking a banker what he thinks of bitcoin is like asking a vampire what he thinks of sunlight” (read it somewhere on reddit). Banks are adamant against BTC and their information is often plainly wrong, at least where I’m from.

Thanks for the info!

[tkoham]

yobit is good if you want to stay low profile

[KuramaKitsune]

Thinking of buying 1 Litecoin

litecoin dont fluctuate much tho

[KuramaKitsune]

just buy bitcoin. save yourself the worry.

just spend a 100 or a 1000
and LITERALLY FORGET ITS EXISTENCE for a year or two

[Marten]

I mined 0.01 x 2 times on my RX 480 late june and july and stooped because I hate windows and wanted to stick with AMDGPU and not fuzz around with my Linux install. Now it almost the price to buy the GPU itself. This was just messing around for fun.
My problem is coinbase which I picked 6 months ago does not let money go to Australia easy, well for tech I would buy. Not a problem really and in Jan the bitcoin split will be in coinbase as well I read. So 0.02 free bitcoin cash coins.
It is a weird thing to just let your gaming card math while you sleep or are www surfing and make money.

[tkoham]

The Math Is In: Bitcoin Is 400% More Scalable Than Ethereum - Bitsonline

[Azulath]

It provably isn’t faster (might be faster than raw JS or a JVM interpreter doing the same thing, but that’s a really low bar.) I never said it wasn’t quantum safe, I said using base 3 was a meaningless marketing move, and probably an affinity play for people with a limited understanding of post quantum cryptography.

This is more or less what I meant earlier; you linking ternary to post quantum crypto. I haven’t seen that part in the paper. As far as I understood, the reason for ternary is to increase performance on some devices.

It can’t be temporary by design. If it goes down the entire network ceases to function. This has already happened once for about 48 hours. The only alternative is to never snapshot the tangle which would (suprise suprise) make it unsustainably large in a few months, and even then, the API is closed, so we have no idea if they ever intend on getting rid of it. in the meantime, they can do whatever they want to the ledger.

According to the reddit post above, it is temporary. But this of course remains to be seen. As for the closed API, there is source code to be found on GitHub and and API Introduction. Thus far, I’ve read neither of them though.

Verified and curated by a single trusted 3rd party. You keep citing IOTA marketing material. Has it occured to you that if someone’s selling something that’s hard to audit for average people they might have incentive to be less than honest? If they built a sustainable ledger architecture to begin with, snapshotting would not be necessary. What you’ve bought is a centrally managed and issued medium of exchange with a much less efficient transfer system than fiat.

Assuming there is nothing missing in the source code posted above, IOTA shouldn’t be any harder to audit then the Linux Kernel. Both is impossible for the average user imho; if however something is missing it changes entirely of course. As for them lying, if it isn’t public, then this is naturally possible - in this case a totally public implementation is perferable, since the trust in a cryptocurrency is derived from one’s trust in the system and mathematics.
Also, if the devs decided to leave, another group of devs could continue development. Sataoshi Nakamoto left BTC and it seems to do fine (unless again, the Github page above is missing something).

http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/

Thanks for the link, I’ll have to read up on this (and the BTC vs. ETH one below)

[tkoham]

This is more or less what I meant earlier; you linking ternary to post quantum crypto. I haven’t seen that part in the paper. As far as I understood, the reason for ternary is to increase performance on some devices.

It doesn’t though. It’s clearly a marketing ploy.

According to the reddit post above, it is temporary.

where have they released the source for the coordinator, or the api? They’ve only released the source of the core client implementation in an asymmetric topology. They explicitly state in their documentation that they are limiting API access for ‘security reasons’. every indication says that if it is temporary, the tangle cannot run or sustain itself in its current form without it at present. this is a huge concern for a project that purports to be decentralized.

Assuming there is nothing missing in the source code posted above, IOTA shouldn’t be any harder to audit then the Linux Kernel

I Repeat: THEY ARE LIMITING THE API AND THE COORDINATOR IS CLOSED SOURCE – ONLY THE CLIENT IN THEIR TOPOLOGY IS OPEN

you cannot spin up or fork without the coordinator code at present. That makes their trust model centralized.

Also, if the devs decided to leave, another group of devs could continue development. Sataoshi Nakamoto left BTC and it seems to do fine (unless again, the Github page above is missing something).

If the devs abandoned the project right now, it would only start working again if someone sucessfully reverse engineered the coordinator and tricked the existing network into authenticating their RE effort as such.

[KuramaKitsune]

@wendell
nicehash suspected hacked.
60million usd+ moved from their main accts
service has been down 8+hours now
https://twitter.com/NiceHashMining

UPDATE • r/NiceHash

[KuramaKitsune]

update

Official press release statement by NiceHash • r/NiceHash

[tkoham]

confirmed rekt

[KuramaKitsune]

[eggmaster]

Mainstream carrying the story now: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42237162

This would make me lol regardless of the coin it had happened to, but a combination of cats and gaming making trouble for a “serious business” system makes me lol even harder.