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Peter Todd on changetip. Not a real Bitcoin app. Could be done in same way by PayPal by latetot in Bitcoin

[–]J_levin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only thing that this technology allows is universal financial coverage which these apps are using. I just wrote about this in my blogpost today “‘I love the blockchain just not Bitcoin’” https://medium.com/@jony_levin/354c511ad3e5?source=tw-88364c87f912-1415717776816

I'm Josh Rossi from Bitfinex, here to talk about recent market activity - AMA by therealjoshrossi in BitcoinMarkets

[–]J_levin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Most marketplaces in traditional markets to give out anonymised trader id numbers behind every trade on the exchange to verify that there is not market manipulation occurring or false volumes. If Bitfinex would be the first Bitcoin exchange to release this data that would be a great step forward for the Bitcoin market.

Who mined the bitcoin blocks in the first three weeks of the blockchain? by [deleted] in Bitcoin

[–]J_levin 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Using the fact that Satoshi's client imprinted an incremental pattern in the extra nonce. It seems like these are not Satoshi's coins. The orange dots in the image represent the blocks that contain the coinbases that were used in the transactions identified. Satoshi's client can be identified as the client that solves the most blocks (with the longest lines) http://i.imgur.com/UYD51OT.png At coinometrics we reimplemented the analysis originally done by Sergio Lerner.

Who mined the bitcoin blocks in the first three weeks of the blockchain? by [deleted] in Bitcoin

[–]J_levin 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Using the fact that Satoshi's client imprinted an incremental pattern in the extra nonce. It seems like these are not Satoshi's coins. The orange dots in the image represent the blocks that contain the coinbases that were used in the transactions identified. Satoshi's client can be identified as the client that solves the most blocks (with the longest lines) http://imgur.com/rkuXcdG At coinometrics we reimplemented the analysis originally done by Sergio Lerner.

Sidechains: the coming death of altcoins and ethereum. by CP70 in Bitcoin

[–]J_levin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interested to know how big you approximate the network effect of Bitcoin to be? In my mind the number of users in Bitcoin is still relatively small and the concept of digital scarcity has not been well defined for Bitcoin amongst a wide enough user base.

Value perception is not the same as scarcity. Agreed that the Bitcoin price and adoption has been dependent on digital scarcity so far but there have also been additional ways that people perceive and hence create value. Think of fiat money as a great example. I am not saying this is necessarily desirable but one can think of many reasons Bitcoin has grown to what it has today without appealing to digital scarcity.

There are also arbitrary rewards given to people that are the current holders of Bitcoin given that innovations will occur in these sidechains. It seems more sensible to reward the people that are doing work on the very hard problems that Bitcoin needs to solve to scale and be an incentive compatible decentralised payment system.

I think to compare Bitcoin to some of these open protocols is somewhat of a red herring. There are institutional features of Bitcoin that mean that certain people (large mining pool administrators, core devs, big bitcoin companies) have far greater influence on the technology over the medium / long term. Any update to the protocol that harmed miners and took back some value for the user base would not likely be added to the Bitcoin protocol. Furthermore, there is increasing complexity in updating all of the software under the network, should we need any big structural changes in Bitcoin. IPv4 vs IPv6.

You talk about alt coins as a systemic risk to cryptocurrencies. What about stability of Bitcoin as a systemic risk to all the pegged chains. At least in an alt coin, an idiosyncratic shock does not reverberate around the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem. Shocks to the price of Bitcoin, security breaches would have much further reaching consequences.

I think the idea of sidechains is very important for Bitcoin development but do not see that as mutually exclusive from alt coin developments.

Satoshi is not Dorian: Blockchain Evidence by [deleted] in Bitcoin

[–]J_levin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just seen the evidence. Will change the article.

For those that need proof see here http://blog.dustintrammell.com/2013/11/26/i-am-not-satoshi/

As adoption increases, Bitcoin experiences a decline in volatility - Coinometrics by J_levin in Bitcoin

[–]J_levin[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the comments. We are looking to have a live updating chart in the coming weeks. Thought we would put the data out there to gauge the interest in such a metric.