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Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving
31–40 of 118 posts
Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving
#32[deleted]
what makes you think it's a problem? the fewer bitcoins in circulation, the more they will be worth. And being (theoretically) infinitely divisible means that the tiniest fraction of a single bitcoin would still be enough to go around if all other bitcoin was somehow lost.
Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving
#33Bitcoin is looking increasingly less practical. The size of the block chain is becoming massive. Recently I tried downloading the official client, and after 2.8GB of downloading with the progress bar only about half way through I gave up. If Bitcoin becomes more popular in future the block chain really isn't going to scale well, and that's going to result in a more centralized system in which there are fewer block ch…
This is a fixable problem. BIP 0037[0] for example tries to mitigate the size issue
with bloom filters, so you no longer need to download the complete block chain
to be able to verify transactions.
Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving
#34Bitcoin is looking increasingly less practical. The size of the block chain is becoming massive. Recently I tried downloading the official client, and after 2.8GB of downloading with the progress bar only about half way through I gave up. If Bitcoin becomes more popular in future the block chain really isn't going to scale well, and that's going to result in a more centralized system in which there are fewer block ch…
There's already a couple of ways around this. One is the 'online wallet' set up, where someone already has the complete block chain online, the other is the bootstrap approach, whereby although you still download the entire chain, you can do it a lot more quickly via Bittorrent or the like.
But generally, I imagine most people would go with the online wallet approach if they're not comfortable with the drive space requirements.
I also believe that it is possible (theoretically, at least) to essentially just start somewhere further in the chain, in a way. Having said that, that would probably remove you from the option to mine at the same time. Maybe?
Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happens when nearly all of the 21 million Bitcoins are mined[1]? Will transactions not happen anymore? [1] - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply#Projec...
The reward for mining a block just halved; it'll continue to halve as the supply increases, so that 21 million is not the endpoint so much as it is an asymptote.
That's not true.
It will continue to halve, exactly one more time to 12.5, and then the next time after that, it will stop. Once the 12.5 reward is gone, the network will be supported entirely by transaction fees, and no new bitcoins will be created.
So, yes, asymptote, but the rest of your comment seems misleading. It will halve once more, that's not exactly "continue to halve."
Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin works by having "blocks" of data, containing transaction history (every Bitcoin transfer someone has made - it is only actually made when incorporated into a block), "mined" by a network. These blocks are mined by incrementing a value in the block of data computing a hash of it, until it falls within a certain range. The fact the hash must be in this range results in Bitcoin miners having to do millions of ha…
I've long wondered about this, how long does it take to process a transaction if you add no fee? The fee is pretty significant (especially for microtransactions), and I'm not in a hurry, so I can wait a few minutes/hour. TL;DR: What's the wait like if you're stingy?
Most transactions don't need a fee and even those that do will be relayed eventually even with no fee (currently).
See this Stack Exchange answer for some more details: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/4483/61
Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving
#37Bitcoin is looking increasingly less practical. The size of the block chain is becoming massive. Recently I tried downloading the official client, and after 2.8GB of downloading with the progress bar only about half way through I gave up. If Bitcoin becomes more popular in future the block chain really isn't going to scale well, and that's going to result in a more centralized system in which there are fewer block ch…
Hard drive and network cost per gigabyte is always falling, and much faster than the blockchain is increasing, so it's not expected this will be a huge problem. But what you say is true that it will "centralise" more in a sense - but the barriers to entry will still be much smaller than any other financial institution so there will likely be many groups still involved with processing the block chain.
If it's just the download time that's bothering you, try the electrum client: http://electrum.ecdsa.org/
It uses a remote blockchain so that you don't have to sync with the network. But you control the wallet (the private keys that let you spend the coins) so it doesn't suffer from the problems of the online hosted wallets where you are not in control of your coins.
Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving
#38The fireworks and sound were extremely annoying. I'm not used to web pages making noise on my iPhone and was unprepared for it.
Sorry, it was meant to be a bit of fun and I wasn't expecting it to get on HN front page (developer).
How dare you have fun on your website. Hacker News users are super serious, busy, important startup people. You've just disrupted my zen flow for my super productive day.
Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reward for mining a block just halved; it'll continue to halve as the supply increases, so that 21 million is not the endpoint so much as it is an asymptote.
That's not true. It will continue to halve, exactly one more time to 12.5, and then the next time after that, it will stop. Once the 12.5 reward is gone, the network will be supported entirely by transaction fees, and no new bitcoins will be created. So, yes, asymptote, but the rest of your comment seems misleading. It will halve once more, that's not exactly "continue to halve."
What are you talking about? Check out the wiki page: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply#Projec...
It's supposed to halve 33 times.
Re: Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving
#40The fireworks and sound were extremely annoying. I'm not used to web pages making noise on my iPhone and was unprepared for it.
Nobody is, that's why it's usually pissing everyone. A "Party" button might have done a better job.
The animation is fine, but add a pre-selected mute button for the audio, and a stop button for the animation.