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Realtime Bitcoin Stats

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Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#53
How do you calculate the hash rate?

I have spent some time trying to understand the various hash rate estimates people come up with. Basically, I've determined that they're all 100% bogus. People like to work from the difficulty using bad/incorrect statistics since that's the most obvious way to get to something in the units of hashes/s, but I can never understand exactly what the process is. I'm genuinely curious to know what people do in practice, since I'm genuinely curious to know the "real" answer.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#54

How do you calculate the hash rate? I have spent some time trying to understand the various hash rate estimates people come up with. Basically, I've determined that they're all 100% bogus. People like to work from the difficulty using bad/incorrect statistics since that's the most obvious way to get to something in the units of hashes/s, but I can never understand exactly what the process is. I'm genuinely curious to…

The network collaborates to adjust the mining difficulty, to keep the rate of new coins approximately the same over time:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty

There is a linear relationship between the hash rate and the difficulty (there is further discussion at that link).

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#56
post #8

Very nice rwinn! But I have a question. With the fast rise of bitcoins, lets say that I now have $10m worth of coins(I don't btw). How would I convert all to gbp/usd and would the governments tax you?. With anti-money laundering controls in place in the uk, such a windfall would cause huge problems!

> lets say that I now have $10m worth of coins(I don't btw). How would I convert all to gbp/usd

You can't. You couldn't convert even a small slice of this amount without collapsing the market. It's simply too illiquid.

> and would the governments tax you?

You betcha.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#57
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google up "bitcoin days lost", that's quite a good indicator for the traffic/volume. Also, most of the volume indicators ignore BTC trade, as that's done using the exchanges' internal systems.

The metric you're thinking of is "Bitcoin Days Destroyed". A search for "Bitcoin Days Lost" brings up tales of woe from users who lost bitcoins. But I do agree that this is probably the best metric for measuring how dynamic the Bitcoin economy is. Incidentally, Bitcoin Days Destroyed has continued to rise, even in recent months. It has risen steadily almost since the inception of Bitcoin. http://blockchain.info/chart…

The chart is cumulative numbers of bitcoin days destroyed. What you want is the rate of bitcoin days destroyed.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#58
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google up "bitcoin days lost", that's quite a good indicator for the traffic/volume. Also, most of the volume indicators ignore BTC trade, as that's done using the exchanges' internal systems.

The metric you're thinking of is "Bitcoin Days Destroyed". A search for "Bitcoin Days Lost" brings up tales of woe from users who lost bitcoins. But I do agree that this is probably the best metric for measuring how dynamic the Bitcoin economy is. Incidentally, Bitcoin Days Destroyed has continued to rise, even in recent months. It has risen steadily almost since the inception of Bitcoin. http://blockchain.info/chart…

That chart is cumulative. Of course it goes up over time, there isn't any way for it to go down.

The recent rate of BDD gives some fuzzy picture of current activity though:

http://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed?timespa...

You can see that hoarding increased slightly during March (a day destroying more than about 11 million bitcoin days should roughly reflect the market loosening up, destroying less should reflect the market tightening). Early April is also among the fastest periods (over the entire history of bitcoin) of BD destruction.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#59
post #23
post #8

Very nice rwinn! But I have a question. With the fast rise of bitcoins, lets say that I now have $10m worth of coins(I don't btw). How would I convert all to gbp/usd and would the governments tax you?. With anti-money laundering controls in place in the uk, such a windfall would cause huge problems!

Well for starters, you can go crazy and start spending BTC ( bitcoins ) directly and buy stuff instead of encashing immediately. Coming back to if withdrawn in as local currecny. Income that is earned through the exchange of services with another person, whether in the form of bitcoins, any other currency or even barter; is included in gross income, and would be subject to income tax. So practically bitcoins could be…

Why would BTC gains be subject to self-employment tax? Surely they would be treated like other forex gains?

Honestly if I had $10 million in BTC gains I'd get a tax professional and seek a private letter ruling from the IRS to clarify the situation. I imagine that misreporting $10 million of income would be an unpleasant experience.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#60
post #51

I got a "Your browser sucks" message because I had scripts disabled. Poor form.

Off topic... is this a correct ranking of preferred form in handling this situation?

blank page or other such confusing non-function : bad

"your browser sucks" - page still doesn't work : poor

"please enable scripts or get a newer browser" - page still doesn't work : fair

"please enable scripts or get a newer browser" - page works for non-js users but is somewhat crippled : good

page works perfectly without js : excellent (you could use headers to have it auto reload every few seconds?)

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