Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Realtime Bitcoin Stats

realtimebitcoin.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 152 posts

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#141

Post by MacsHeadroom »

gojomo wrote: post #120
tlrobinson wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how this particular site is doing it, but Blockchain.info has some convenient APIs ( http://blockchain.info/api ), or you can run a full Bitcoin node and either interact with the JSON-RPC API ( https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Original_Bitcoin_client/API_Calls... ) or parse the block chain ( https://github.com/znort987/blockparser https://github.com/gavinandresen/bitcointools ) For price/trade data most (all?)…

Have you found anyone with a public JSONP API? That'd seem to enable a new level of in-browser apps... though perhaps Blockchain.info/MtGox aren't ready for the accompanying level of traffic.

http://bitcoincharts.com/about/markets-api/ has public JSON API for all the popular Bitcoin currency markets.

For the other data (non-market transactions etc.) you can run the Bitcoin-qt client on virtually any hardware and then connect to its built in JSON API.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#142

Post by gojomo »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #141
gojomo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you found anyone with a public JSONP API? That'd seem to enable a new level of in-browser apps... though perhaps Blockchain.info/MtGox aren't ready for the accompanying level of traffic.

http://bitcoincharts.com/about/markets-api/ has public JSON API for all the popular Bitcoin currency markets. For the other data (non-market transactions etc.) you can run the Bitcoin-qt client on virtually any hardware and then connect to its built in JSON API.

JSON_P_?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSONP

I suppose if the JSON endpoints support CORS that'd be as good...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing

However, my (unauthenticated) test attempts against blockchain.info and bitcoincharts.com, with the "Origin:" header, didn't give the right "Access-Control-Allow-Origin:" header in response.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#143

Post by doyoulikeworms »

nawitus wrote: post #139
gigantor wrote: post #76

I have one new appreciation for fiat currencies - they're designed to circulate with a steady rate of inflation. It seems there's a hesitation of spending bitcoins knowing if you just wait a day it will go up, so it's being treated like a precious metal rather than a new way of paying for things. Edit: Thanks for the correction, meant to say fiat currencies tend to 'inflate', not deflate.

According that argument you shouldn't spend any fiat currencies either, because it's more profitable to convert all of it to bitcoins.

Isn't that spending it on bitcoins?

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#144

Post by brc »

myspace wrote: post #96
ramblerman wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how to interpret your argument. It just seems like your pissed of someone else has 2,000,000 dollars.

What pisses me off is people are falling into this Ponzi Scheme.

It's their lookout - if it does collapse, it's small enough that it won't cause real harm. If it doesn't, then it's a pretty exciting new development in the world of currency and money.

People trading Bitcoins and working on it are doing no harm to anyone, so I find it odd that anyone could get upset about it. It's like getting upset about people who trade dolls or toy soldiers or rare oil cans.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#145

Post by brc »

gigantor wrote: post #76

I have one new appreciation for fiat currencies - they're designed to circulate with a steady rate of inflation. It seems there's a hesitation of spending bitcoins knowing if you just wait a day it will go up, so it's being treated like a precious metal rather than a new way of paying for things. Edit: Thanks for the correction, meant to say fiat currencies tend to 'inflate', not deflate.

Yes, but fiat currencies are designed to lose value over time, which makes it difficult for people to save effectively. Governments and large banks get the newly-inflated money first, which gives them first bite at the existing value of money with money essentially made from nothing.

Encouraging people to spend money for the sake of it sounds like a good idea when people have created the concept of 'hoarding' - which is just saving with a scary name. But future productivity has to come through capital appreciation, which has to come through saving. By working against this, wrong investment choices are made because the time horizon is altered.

The concept of fiat currencies in terms of being able to expand the money supply is superior to having a fixed money supply, but the way in which it is implemented works directly against capital formation and feeds directly into misdirected investment and speculation by allowing money creation to run ahead of sensible investment. As aptly experience by the excessive amounts of capital diverted into residential real estate, caused by excessive amounts of new money. Without the easy money, the level of investment in real estate would have been much lower, and the subsequent crash much less destructive.

Fiat currencies have been around for 250 years or so, and not one single one of them have survived that long.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#146

Post by mikeash »

Danieru wrote: post #97
gibybo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does count only unique hash values, but why should that bother me? People don't randomly generate the same 256 bit number very often (in fact, the probability is so low that it has almost certainly never happened) When I search for "bitcoin network hashrate" on google, the first link is http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ , which does in fact report the N-second average rate. It reports the 7-days, 14-day, and 30-day average…

Duplicate hashes are an issue because of the birthday problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem The chance of two hashes being equal is small but the number of two hash pairs grows exponential to the number of hashes.

The birthday paradox basically says that you can expect a collision when you've explored the square root of the problem space. For birthdays, you expect a collision in a group of sqrt(365) ~= 19 people.

For a 256-bit hash, you expec a collision in a group of 2^128 hashes. That is still huge. Absent a weakness in the hash being found, it's unlikely anyone will ever generate two colliding hashes.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#147

Post by drakeandrews »

wamatt wrote: post #122
treeface wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent many years studying economics, but I'm also a programmer. One thing that annoys me about the discussion that tends to crop up on Hacker News is that you have too many of the latter issuing too many uninformed opinions on the former. Currencies that are doomed to deflate are doomed to enter liquidity traps. There is nothing special about BitCoin that prevents this from happening, regardless of its position…

The difference between a normal currency and bitcoin with regards to deflation is that bitcoin is almost infinitely divisible, whereas traditional currencies are not. Divisibility acts in opposition to deflation to create liquidity. The idea is in the future you don't trade bitcoins per se, but microbits, or picobits etc (or whatever they will be called).

Satoshis are the lowest denominator of bitcoin, being .00000001BTC

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#148

Post by Patient0 »

brc wrote: post #145
gigantor wrote: post #76

I have one new appreciation for fiat currencies - they're designed to circulate with a steady rate of inflation. It seems there's a hesitation of spending bitcoins knowing if you just wait a day it will go up, so it's being treated like a precious metal rather than a new way of paying for things. Edit: Thanks for the correction, meant to say fiat currencies tend to 'inflate', not deflate.

Yes, but fiat currencies are designed to lose value over time, which makes it difficult for people to save effectively. Governments and large banks get the newly-inflated money first, which gives them first bite at the existing value of money with money essentially made from nothing. Encouraging people to spend money for the sake of it sounds like a good idea when people have created the concept of 'hoarding' - which…

"Encouraging people to spend money for the sake of it sounds like a good idea when people have created the concept of 'hoarding' - which is just saving with a scary name."

But to be clear: there's a fundamental difference between "saving" and "investment".

1. Saving/Hoarding: Keeping money/cash under the mattress - nobody else has the ability to "spend" the money in the mean time. Also called "sinking funds" by Keynes. This is money kept in a bank deposit. The important point is that you can, at any time, choose to "stop saving" the money and spend it. i.e. you keep the right to spend the money at any time. Nobody else can make use of it. It effectively is out of circulation until you choose to spend it.

2. Investment: Lending the money to someone else for a fixed term - you can't ask for the money back before the end of the fixed term. They can spend it on goods/services for that period of time after which they have to pay it back. The money stays "in circulation".

Absent fractional reserve banking, #2 is the only thing that can actually generate a real return. i.e. real, profitable, economic activity that makes people better off. Without FRB, a checking account cannot pay interest, because #1 cannot be used in any risk-free way to generate value.

For economic productivity, #2 is a good thing, #1 is a bad thing. The fact that everyone is trying to do #1 right now with US dollars and the like is what is considered to be the source of our current economic malaise (according to the economists that I agree with anyway). Fractional reserve banking, QE and the like to some extent lets money that is in category #1 be used for "economic good" in category #2 - effectively fooling the hoarders into "investing" their money.

Of course, bitcoin doesn't have fractional reserve banking - and pretty much by design seems to make it impossible for things in category 1 to be used as category 2. This is why the "hoarding" of bitcoins is considered to be deflationary.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#149

Post by brc »

Patient0 wrote: post #148
brc wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but fiat currencies are designed to lose value over time, which makes it difficult for people to save effectively. Governments and large banks get the newly-inflated money first, which gives them first bite at the existing value of money with money essentially made from nothing. Encouraging people to spend money for the sake of it sounds like a good idea when people have created the concept of 'hoarding' - which…

"Encouraging people to spend money for the sake of it sounds like a good idea when people have created the concept of 'hoarding' - which is just saving with a scary name." But to be clear: there's a fundamental difference between "saving" and "investment". 1. Saving/Hoarding: Keeping money/cash under the mattress - nobody else has the ability to "spend" the money in the mean time. Also called "sinking funds" by Keyne…

>Saving/Hoarding: Keeping money/cash under the mattress - nobody else has the ability to "spend" the money in the mean time. Also called "sinking funds" by Keynes. This is money kept in a bank deposit. The important point is that you can, at any time, choose to "stop saving" the money and spend it. i.e. you keep the right to spend the money at any time. Nobody else can make use of it. It effectively is out of circulation until you choose to spend it.

One of the big problem with Keynes.

Money stuffed in a mattress = hoarding.

Money in a bank deposit = still in circulation, able to be lent by the bank.

There is a massive difference. Other people can make use of funds deposited in accounts. This is why banks take in deposits, to lend it out at a higher rate and pocket the spread.

I would also quibble with your definition of investment. Investment should be classified as spending in the expectation of a financial return (ie, not the joy of owning a new shirt, but actual cash returned on cash outlaid). You can say 'a fixed term' but that is a nebulous concept. 24 hours is a fixed term, so is a week, so is a year, so is 30 years. Lending someone money overnight so they can arbitrage some goods by moving them physically from one location to another one is just as much investment as sinking the money into a toll road for 50 years. The definition has to be on the intention rather than the time horizon, otherwise you're just being arbitrary to support an argument.

>(according to the economists that I agree with anyway)

Highly likely you agree with Krugman. I think he speaks out of his hat. We'll leave it at that.

Re: Realtime Bitcoin Stats

#150

Post by eric_bullington »

kiba wrote: post #57
eric_bullington wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I realize I linked the wrong chart -- was in a hurry. I meant to link to the rate. If you see my other comments mentioning BDD, they reference the rate of BDD.
Post reply on HN