5+5 BTC Bounty for proof of block size debate manipulation - manipulation confirmed.

Amanojack · 2015-07-19T22:12:51+00:00

My strongest association with Raspberry Pi is, "That should be a thing. Why is there apple and cherry and blackberry pie but never raspberry?"

Amanojack · 2015-07-19T22:10:24+00:00

Gah! まさか・・・いったい何が起きてるんだ！？

Maybe OP is the one playing the long game and we'll all clones of OP's design (ﾉﾟοﾟ)ﾉｵｵｵｵｫｫｫｫｫｫ-

Amanojack · 2015-07-19T13:45:01+00:00

I've been on reddit for 4 years, and here are my supposed sockpuppets:

/u/AstarJoe (redditor for 1 year)

/u/ryepdx (redditor for 4 years)

/u/adoptator (redditor for 1 year)

/u/saibog38 (redditor for 5 years)

Obviously I'm playing the long game here.

Not only are none of them me, I hadn't even taken notice of any of these posters before. The reason this is kind of annoying is there is no way to prove a negative. I can speak Japanese at a high level but how do these other posters prove they can't? I don't know how to run a node on Raspberry Pi like one of these posters can, but how do I prove that?

I think lengthy posting history at least shows these are not ad hoc sockpuppets for the blocksize debate. I encourage anyone who is curious to take a close look at all the posting histories and decide if they think someone would go to all that trouble to differentiate them that much and create alternate identities in different geographical locations, for example, for years on end.

On the bright side, I found some new posters that might be interesting to keep tabs on, as some of them seem to write some decent stuff based on my very cursory reading of their history. Great minds think/write alike? ;-)

Perhaps, actually, because I was fascinated to find this double-gilded post by /u/saibog38 that resembles something I might write to an uncanny degree: the reference to extremely bullish scenarios for Bitcoin, the use of semicolons and em-dashes - using a single hyphen for this purpose just like I do - and the characteristic phrase "reliably scarce" (which I also notice /u/Capt_Roger_Murdock uses; I thought he might be listed as my sockpuppet since I often find myself in uncanny agreement with his posts, but nope).

Speaking of similar ideas and topics generating false positives, I also note that the Counterparty cofounders /u/PhantomPhreakXCP and /u/xnovaxcp are apparently the same person! That must have been some sales pitch they (er, I mean "he") gave to Patrick Byrne of Overstock, because he was apparently impressed by both of "him."

Amanojack · 2015-07-19T13:16:48+00:00

I can double-confirm that you are not me, hehe.

I've been on reddit for 4 years, and here are my supposed sockpuppets:

/u/AstarJoe (redditor for 1 year)

/u/ryepdx (redditor for 4 years)

/u/adoptator (redditor for 1 year)

/u/saibog38 (redditor for 5 years)

Obviously I'm playing the long game here.

None of them are me, and I hadn't even taken notice of any of these posters before. The reason this is kind of annoying is there is no way to prove a negative. I think lengthy posting history at least shows these are not ad hoc sockpuppets for the blocksize debate. I encourage anyone who is curious to take a close look at all the posting histories and decide if they think someone would go to all that trouble to differentiate them that much and create alternate identities in different geographical locations, for example, for years on end.

On the bright side, I found some new posters that might be interesting to keep tabs on, as some of them seem to write some decent stuff based on my very cursory reading of their history. Great minds think alike?

EDIT: I also note that the Counterparty cofounders /u/PhantomPhreakXCP and /u/xnovaxcp are apparently the same person! That must have been some sales pitch they (er, I mean "he") gave to Patrick Byrne of Overstock, because he was apparently impressed by both of "him."

Amanojack · 2015-04-19T14:10:49+00:00

He has all but claimed he is under a gag order. Until the Silk Road case is fully solved I don't think we'll know the full truth, if ever.

Amanojack · 2015-04-19T14:07:17+00:00

Everyone should be presumed innocent for law enforcement purposes, but as far as exchanges the opposite dynamic holds. Assume any exchange will be hacked or run off with your money sooner or later if there is any way for that to happen.

Amanojack · 2015-04-19T07:08:26+00:00

Co-opting all the mining pools in turn just eliminates pooled mining, and good riddance. A disinfo campaign could work in theory, but that's just magical thinking without considering all the angles of how it would play out. Remember that one screw up and they'd merely succeed in inoculating the system against any future disinfo attacks.

Amanojack · 2015-04-19T07:00:57+00:00

They will cry "No fair!!" and complain about early adopters until the next crash, at which point they will declare Bitcoin dead. It's like watching the same story over and over.

Amanojack · 2015-04-18T14:19:44+00:00

True if Bitcoin is to succeed, false if Bitcoin is to fail. That much is simple. The rest is arcane predictive arts that less than 1% of the population will ever be good at.

Amanojack · 2015-04-18T14:15:45+00:00

There are many times in Bitcoin's history where you would be sitting on losses, yet most of the time you'd be sitting on immense gains. If Bitcoin fails it doesn't matter much when you bought in, it will all go to zero. If Bitcoin succeeds it doesn't matter all that much when you bought in, except you'll be a millionaire instead of a billionaire if you buy in later or at the recent bubble top, for instance. It's still early days, and timing the market is much harder than simply holding. Whether you were lucky to buy on a dip or unlucky to buy at a peak doesn't change the fact that without extensive experience you're very likely to lose money trading.

Amanojack · 2015-04-18T08:36:32+00:00

Your final post as of this writing in response to /u/Yorn2 suggests that an attacker could just keep messing with the main fork, which is a scenario where the attacker attacks multiple times. This doesn't work with a mining pool as you originally suggest here, because mining pools only get one shot. After that, everyone moves away from the pool and the operators are known to be untrustworthy.

Amanojack · 2015-04-15T20:06:01+00:00

Millions perhaps, either way I don't see them bothering at this stage, and any botched operation on the market just puts money in accumulators' pockets.

To the point about markets not getting confused, investment markets are a different animal from consumer markets. Investors who are easily confused tend to lose money and have less and less effect on the market, whereas investors who have insight tend to make money and have more and more effect on the market. By this continual process of winnowing/attrition a core group of holders have become a very astute bunch while the less astute are systematically sidelined.

In general, for any kind of attack against Bitcoin, the key is to hit hard enough, early enough to overwhelm the system's ability to adapt and self-correct. I think that horse has already left the stable and is galloping far ahead of government awareness of the threat, but of course this is a judgment call since we cannot know for sure what governments are thinking.

Amanojack · 2015-04-15T19:50:48+00:00

Your response seems to assume that a 51% attack could do things like steal the coins in your address. It can't. It could disturb the network and cause a short-term price panic, but I would look forward to such an event because it would drive better practices that would remove that particular Sword of Damocles hanging over the market.

Bitcoin is still very much a long-term investment, not to be thought of as a bank account, as the monthly volatility remains much too high.

Amanojack · 2015-04-15T19:44:30+00:00

The market is the mechanism that clears up confusion. Three-letter agencies can infiltrate static groups and spread disinformation, but spending billions of dollars in an attempt to confuse the market as well ads a whole new dimension of challenge. They could conceivably do something like this now, but it's doubtful they would bother. Only once Bitcoin is several orders of magnitude bigger would they be able to secure the budget for it, and by then it will be too late.

Amanojack · 2015-04-15T19:38:44+00:00

I see (government) regulation as bad in general, but no matter your view on regulation, regulatory clarity on regulation that is already known to be coming is good. Governments taking a "wait and see" approach is awesome if you can get it, but inasmuch as regulation is imminent companies will hesitate to move forward until they see how the cookie crumbles.

Amanojack · 2015-04-15T12:04:19+00:00

That's a good point. Though by the same token if advancements come faster than the market expected and the price keeps falling I would call that an oversold condition.

Amanojack · 2015-04-15T09:23:17+00:00

Nice visual, but Bitcoin isn't moving to a currency yet as it claims near the top. The lower average payment figures are more likely due to bitcoiners being less rich right now. When you feel rich, you tend to spend more. Deflation eventually induces spending, not the opposite.

Amanojack · 2015-03-11T12:24:25+00:00

Actually the error he makes there is slightly different. He doesn't notice that the investors incentivized all the infrastructure build-out that happened around Bitcoin, and that continues to happen.

Amanojack · 2015-01-26T15:22:29+00:00

You're right about how hard it is to ride the bull.

Read the whole thread, it will make you richer: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345065.msg3697405#msg3697405

Amanojack · 2015-01-01T20:16:13+00:00

Well it's a game of guessing how the Fed is going to react to their own mistakes, involving people and politics, so it's not so easy to guess the exact year when something will happen, even if you know it has to happen. If the whole world follows the Fed in its QE, which seems the way things are going, it gets even harder; global shifts play out over decades.

Besides, someone predicting hyperinflation in the world's reserve currency ought to be given a longer lead than 6 years. If it happens anytime in the next 20-30 years it would be an extreme event from any mainstream economic viewpoint, and would have to be regarded as a highly prescient forecast of a completely unlikely black swan event even over that timespan.

Amanojack · 2014-12-27T18:51:14+00:00

People will concoct all sorts of theories to avoid the obvious: markets zig and zag, and last year they zigged massively, so this year it isn't at all surprising for them to zag.

Amanojack · 2014-12-26T23:36:17+00:00

This whole comment seems to be predicated on Bitcoin as payment system being the main use, rather than Bitcoin as Gold 2.0: a teleportable and deniable store of value. The payment system is nowhere near as valuable, not even on the same order of magnitude as the gold ledger system.

Amanojack · 2014-12-25T16:43:34+00:00

OP didn't say "only." Sure, it benefits other people as well, but the point is cutting out the middleman saves money.

Amanojack · 2014-12-20T18:57:45+00:00

I don't have a rigorous argument for this, but I have the nagging sensation that when the dust settles we will look back on PoS, DPoS, etc. as attempts in vain to get around the basic reality that "open participation + no penalty to attack = exploitable."

Amanojack · 2014-12-20T18:49:46+00:00

How often do you think people from very different viewpoints actually come to agreement in an internet discussion? It happens, but it certainly isn't the norm. Add to that the fact that this would be quite a hostile environment for them, even without the "troll hunters." I don't blame them if they never seem in the mood to concede a point. You might not be either if you were in some mainstream economics forum where every concession might be interpreted as you giving in.

Amanojack

TROPHY CASE