So you are not a coder but as a non-technical person, you’re always open for simplified technical knowledge about Bitcoin. So, you would like to ask people of very deep knowledge of Bitcoin’s code what you would tell some non-technical people.
What are the most important technical points of Bitcoin, where you would say “it’s really important for Bitcoin and people should know it”. Important would also mean for Bitcoin from a hacking-resistant point and what is making Bitcoin superior against competing Altcoins?
The most important features of Bitcoin are that it’s maintained by the largest community of developers out of all the coins, and consequentially it has the largest test suite and debugging infrastructure.
It makes it really easy to pin-point bugs. I can’t stress enough how important having test cases is for your project, whatever it may be, whether it’s related to crypto or not. It saves you from a lot of future bug-hunting
Its simplicity. Not in the sense of being trivial, but in the sense of having a very focused feature set.
Also the importance if permissionlessness seems to be either ignored or forgotten by a lot of alts out there, whereas it remains a top priority for Bitcoin.
One more thing that sets Bitcoin apart is the immense decentralization – in hashpower, full nodes, development and community. For security, the first two are the most critical.
Most altcoins either don’t have node decentralization or / and they have a flawed consensus mechanism (proof of stake) that simply gives the developers total power over the project.
This allows them to change rules at will, but also allows authorities to press them to do such things. In Bitcoin, that’s simply impossible.
A PoW coin without enough hashpower can be attacked similarly, and as a matter of fact most energy is pumped into Bitcoin PoW, which makes it most secure.
Bitcoin works, it has been working fine for the past 13 years (all its life) and safely too.
* You don’t need any third party (middle man like banks) to send, receive or store your money when you use bitcoin.
* Nobody can restrict who sends you money or to whom you send your money
* You can reach anybody, anywhere at any time in the world.
* The payments can not be reversed like other payment networks which provides a lot of security for merchants
How & Why You should Prepare Here are just a few examples of what that sort of total control may look like: Government in total control The government could not only withhold money … Continue reading CBDC’s Tyranny Is Coming→
Here is a list of 100 of the best based things: Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to … Continue reading 100 Based things→
THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s. Cryptography … Continue reading CypherPunk Movement→
The first ever bitcoin transaction from one person to another, on 2009-01-12 at 04:30 used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), when Satoshi Nakamoto sent coins to Hal Finney in Block 170. P2PK is no longer used … Continue reading Block 170 – First ever bitcoin transaction→
The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The … Continue reading The Art of War Quotes→
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.
He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and his ideology was disseminated through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay “Nature”.
Following this work, he gave a speech entitled “The American Scholar” in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence.”
Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays “Self-Reliance”, “The Over-Soul”, “Circles”, “The Poet”, and “Experience.” Together with “Nature”, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson’s most fertile period.
Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for mankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world.
Emerson’s “nature” was more philosophical than naturalistic: “Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul.”
Emerson is one of several figures who “took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world.”
He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him.
“In all my lectures,” he wrote, “I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.” Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist.
As a lecturer and orator, Emerson—nicknamed the Sage of Concord — became the leading voice of intellectual culture in the United States.
James Russell Lowell, editor of the Atlantic Monthly and the North American Review, commented in his book My Study Windows (1871), that Emerson was not only the “most steadily attractive lecturer in America,” but also “one of the pioneers of the lecturing system.”
Herman Melville, who had met Emerson in 1849, originally thought he had “a defect in the region of the heart” and a “self-conceit so intensely intellectual that at first one hesitates to call it by its right name”, though he later admitted Emerson was “a great man”.
Theodore Parker, a minister and transcendentalist, noted Emerson’s ability to influence and inspire others: “the brilliant genius of Emerson rose in the winter nights, and hung over Boston, drawing the eyes of ingenuous young people to look up to that great new star, a beauty and a mystery, which charmed for the moment, while it gave also perennial inspiration, as it led them forward along new paths, and towards new hopes”.
Emerson’s work not only influenced his contemporaries, such as Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, but would continue to influence thinkers and writers in the United States and around the world down to the present.
Notable thinkers who recognize Emerson’s influence include Nietzsche and William James, Emerson’s godson. There is little disagreement that Emerson was the most influential writer of 19th-century America, though these days he is largely the concern of scholars.
Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and William James were all positive Emersonians, while Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James were Emersonians in denial—while they set themselves in opposition to the sage, there was no escaping his influence.
To T. S. Eliot, Emerson’s essays were an “encumbrance”. Waldo the Sage was eclipsed from 1914 until 1965, when he returned to shine, after surviving in the work of major American poets like Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane.
In his book The American Religion, Harold Bloom repeatedly refers to Emerson as “The prophet of the American Religion”, which in the context of the book refers to indigenously American religions such as Mormonism and Christian Science, which arose largely in Emerson’s lifetime, but also to mainline Protestant churches that Bloom says have become in the United States more gnostic than their European counterparts.
In The Western Canon, Bloom compares Emerson to Michel de Montaigne: “The only equivalent reading experience that I know is to reread endlessly in the notebooks and journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American version of Montaigne.”
Several of Emerson’s poems were included in Bloom’s The Best Poems of the English Language, although he wrote that none of the poems are as outstanding as the best of Emerson’s essays, which Bloom listed as “Self-Reliance”, “Circles”, “Experience”, and “nearly all of Conduct of Life”.
In his belief that line lengths, rhythms, and phrases are determined by breath, Emerson’s poetry foreshadowed the theories of Charles Olson.
How & Why You should Prepare Here are just a few examples of what that sort of total control may look like: Government in total control The government could not only withhold money … Continue reading CBDC’s Tyranny Is Coming→
Here is a list of 100 of the best based things: Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to … Continue reading 100 Based things→
THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s. Cryptography … Continue reading CypherPunk Movement→
The first ever bitcoin transaction from one person to another, on 2009-01-12 at 04:30 used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), when Satoshi Nakamoto sent coins to Hal Finney in Block 170. P2PK is no longer used … Continue reading Block 170 – First ever bitcoin transaction→
The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The … Continue reading The Art of War Quotes→
Cryptocurrency markets are volatile enough without making simple, easily avoidable mistakes.
Investing in cryptocurrencies and digital assets is now easier than ever before. Online brokers, centralized exchanges and even decentralized exchanges give investors the flexibility to buy and sell tokens without going through a traditional financial institution and the hefty fees and commissions that come along with them.
Cryptocurrencies were designed to operate in a decentralized manner. This means that while they’re an innovative avenue for global peer-to-peer value transfers, there are no trusted authorities involved that can guarantee the security of your assets. Your losses are your responsibility once you take your digital assets into custody.
Here we’ll explore some of the more common mistakes that cryptocurrency investors and traders make and how you can protect yourself from unnecessary losses.
Losing your keys
Cryptocurrencies are built on blockchain technology, a form of distributed ledger technology that offers high levels of security for digital assets without the need for a centralized custodian. However, this puts the onus of protection on asset holders, and storing the cryptographic keys to your digital asset wallet safely is an integral part of this.
On the blockchain, digital transactions are created and signed using private keys, which act as a unique identifier to prevent unauthorized access to your cryptocurrency wallet. Unlike a password or a PIN, you cannot reset or recover your keys if you lose them. This makes it extremely important to keep your keys safe and secure, as losing them would mean losing access to all digital assets stored in that wallet.
Lost keys are among the most common mistakes that crypto investors make. According to a report from Chainalysis, of the 18.5 million Bitcoin (BTC) mined so far, over 20% has been lost to forgotten or misplaced keys.
Storing coins in online wallets
Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges are probably the easiest way for investors to get their hands on some cryptocurrencies. However, these exchanges do not give you access to the wallets holding the tokens, instead offering you a service similar to banks. While the user technically owns the coins stored on the platform, they are still held by the exchange, leaving them vulnerable to attacks on the platform and putting them at risk.
There have been many documented attacks on high-profile cryptocurrency exchanges that have led to millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency stolen from these platforms. The most secure option to protect your assets against such risk is to store your cryptocurrencies offline, withdrawing assets to either a software or hardware wallet after purchase.
Not keeping a hard copy of your seed phrase
To generate a private key for your crypto wallet, you will be prompted to write down a seed phrase consisting of up to 24 randomly generated words in a specific order. If you ever lose access to your wallet, this seed phrase can be used to generate your private keys and access your cryptocurrencies.
Keeping a hard copy record, such as a printed document or a piece of paper with the seed phrase written on it, can help prevent needless losses from damaged hardware wallets, faulty digital storage systems, and more. Just like losing your private keys, traders have lost many a coin to crashed computers and corrupted hard drives.
Fat-finger error
A fat-finger error is when an investor accidentally enters a trade order that isn’t what they intended. One misplaced zero can lead to significant losses, and mistyping even a single decimal place can have considerable ramifications.
One instance of this fat-finger error was when the DeversiFi platform erroneously paid out a $24-million fee. Another unforgettable tale was when a highly sought-after Bored Ape nonfungible token was accidentally sold for $3,000 instead of $300,000.
Sending to the wrong address
Investors should take extreme care while sending digital assets to another person or wallet, as there is no way to retrieve them if they are sent to the wrong address. This mistake often happens when the sender isn’t paying attention while entering the wallet address. Transactions on the blockchain are irreversible, and unlike a bank, there are no customer support lines to help with the situation.
This kind of error can be fatal to an investment portfolio. Still, in a positive turn of events, Tether, the firm behind the world’s most popular stablecoin, recovered and returned $1 million worth of Tether (USDT) to a group of crypto traders who sent the funds to the wrong decentralized finance platform in 2020. However, this story is a drop in the ocean of examples where things don’t work out so well. Hodlers should be careful while dealing with digital asset transactions and take time to enter the details. Once you make a mistake, there’s no going back.
Over diversification
Diversification is crucial to building a resilient cryptocurrency portfolio, especially with the high volatility levels in the space. However, with the sheer number of options out there and the predominant thirst for outsized gains, cryptocurrency investors often end up over-diversifying their portfolios, which can have immense consequences.
Over-diversification can lead to an investor holding a large number of heavily underperforming assets, leading to significant losses. It’s vital to only diversify into cryptocurrencies where the fundamental value is clear and to have a strong understanding of the different types of assets and how they will likely perform in various market conditions.
Not setting up a stop-loss arrangement
A stop-loss is an order type that enables investors to sell a security only when the market reaches a specific price. Investors use this to prevent losing more money than they are willing to, ensuring they at least make back their initial investment.
In several cases, investors have experienced huge losses because of incorrectly setting up their stop losses before asset prices dropped. However, it’s also important to remember that stop-loss orders aren’t perfect and can sometimes fail to trigger a sale in the event of a large, sudden crash.
That being said, the importance of setting up stop losses to protect investments cannot be understated and can significantly help mitigate losses during a market downturn.
Crypto investing and trading is a risky business with no guarantees of success. Like any other form of trading, patience, caution and understanding can go a long way. Blockchain places the responsibility on the investor, so it’s crucial to take the time to figure out the various aspects of the market and learn from past mistakes before putting your money at risk.
How & Why You should Prepare Here are just a few examples of what that sort of total control may look like: Government in total control The government could not only withhold money … Continue reading CBDC’s Tyranny Is Coming→
Here is a list of 100 of the best based things: Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to … Continue reading 100 Based things→
THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s. Cryptography … Continue reading CypherPunk Movement→
The first ever bitcoin transaction from one person to another, on 2009-01-12 at 04:30 used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), when Satoshi Nakamoto sent coins to Hal Finney in Block 170. P2PK is no longer used … Continue reading Block 170 – First ever bitcoin transaction→
The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The … Continue reading The Art of War Quotes→
Calculating your share of the bitcoins mined can be complex. In an ongoing effort to come up with the fairest method and prevent gaming of the system, many calculation schemes have been invented.
PPS
The Pay-per-Share (PPS) approach offers an instant, guaranteed payout for each share that is solved by a miner. Miners are paid out from the pools existing balance and can withdraw their payout immediately. This model allows for the least possible variance in payment for miners while also transferring much of the risk to the pool’s operator.
PPS, or ‘pay per share’ shifts the risk to the mining pool while they guarantee payment for every share you contribute.
PPS payment schemes require a very large reserve of 10,000 BTC in order to ensure they have the means of enduring a streak of bad luck. For this reason, most Bitcoin mining pools no longer support it.
PROP
The Proportional approach offers a proportional distribution of the reward when a block is found amongst all workers, based off of the number of shares they have each found.
PPLNS
The Pay Per Last N Shares (PPLN) approach is similar to the proportional method, but instead of counting the number of shares in the round, it instead looks at the last N shares, no matter the boundaries of the round.
DGM
The Double Geometric Method (DGM) is a hybrid approach that enables the operator to absorb some of the risk. The operator receives a portion of payouts during short rounds and returns it during longer rounds to normalize payments.
DGM is a popular payment scheme because it offers a nice balance between short round and long round blocks. However, end users must wait for full round confirmations long after the blocks are processed.
SMPPS
The Shared Maximum Pay Per Share (SMPPS) uses a similar approach to PPS but never pays more than the Bitcoin mining pool has earned.
ESMPPS
The Equalized Shared Maximum Pay Per Share (ESMPPS) is similar to SMPPS, but distributes payments equally among all miners in the Bitcoin mining pool.
RSMPPS
The Recent Shared Maximum Pay Per Share (RSMPPS) is also similar to SMPPS, but the system prioritizes the most recent Bitcoin miners first.
CPPSRB
The Capped Pay Per Share with Recent Backpay uses a Maximum Pay Per Share (MPPS) reward system that will pay Bitcoin miners as much as possible using the income from finding blocks, but will never go bankrupt.
BPM
Bitcoin Pooled mining (BPM), also known as “Slush’s pool”, uses a system where older shares from the beginning of a block round are given less weight than more recent shares. This reduces the ability to cheat the mining pool system by switching pools during a round.
POT
The Pay on Target (POT) approach is a high variance PPS that pays out in accordance with the difficulty of work returned to the pool by a miner, rather than the difficulty of work done by the pool itself.
SCORE
The SCORE based approach uses a system whereby a proportional reward is distributed and weighed by the time the work was submitted. This process makes later shares worth more than earlier shares and scored by time, thus rewards are calculated in proportion to the scores and not shares submitted.
ELIGIUS
Eligius was designed by Luke Jr., creator of BFGMiner, to incorporate the strengths of PPS and BPM pools, as miners submit proofs-of-work to earn shares and the pool pays out immediately. When the block rewards are distributed, they are divided equally among all shares since the last valid block and the shares contributed to stale blocks are cycled into the next block’s shares. Rewards are only paid out if a miner earns at least. 67108864 and if the amount owed is less than that it will be rolled over to the next block until the limit is achieved. However, if a Bitcoin miner does not submit a share for over a period of a week, then the pool will send any remaining balance, regardless of its size.
Triplemining
Triplemining brings together medium-sized pools with no fees and redistributes 1% of every block found, which allows your share to grow faster than any other Bitcoin mining pool approach. The administrators of these Bitcoin mining pools use some of the Bitcoins generated when a block is found to add to a jackpot that is triggered and paid out to the member of the pool who found the block. In this way, everyone in the pool has a better chance to make additional Bitcoins, regardless of their processing power.
How & Why You should Prepare Here are just a few examples of what that sort of total control may look like: Government in total control The government could not only withhold money … Continue reading CBDC’s Tyranny Is Coming→
Here is a list of 100 of the best based things: Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to … Continue reading 100 Based things→
THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s. Cryptography … Continue reading CypherPunk Movement→
The first ever bitcoin transaction from one person to another, on 2009-01-12 at 04:30 used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), when Satoshi Nakamoto sent coins to Hal Finney in Block 170. P2PK is no longer used … Continue reading Block 170 – First ever bitcoin transaction→
The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The … Continue reading The Art of War Quotes→
This is a glossary of all cryptocurrency terms and lingo you might come across when reading about mining and mining pools. Just refer to this page when you see an unfamiliar word or phrase.
A
ADDRESS – a cryptocurrency address is a string, containing numbers and letters, from which you can send and receive crypto payments.
ALGORITHM – kit of rules, which are solving a problem via calculations, using a computer. It’s encrypting and transferring data, which makes it mining’s base when it comes to extracting cryptocurrencies.
ASIC – (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) a dedicated mining device, which is able to extract coins, working with on one particular algorithm.
ASIC-RESISTANCE – memory hard algorithms that are hardly cooperating with ASICs, because they are built to be resistance to this kind of devices.
ATTACK 51% – a miner possess 51% of the pool’s hash rate, so he’s able to manipulate the network.
B
BANDWIDTH – the maximum capacity of the network to transmit data.
BLOCK – a piece of the blockchain, containing transactions.
BLOCKCHAIN – a public ledger, which contains lots of data, encrypted in separate block in the form of hashes (messages). Considered immutable and unable to manipulate.
BLOCK HEADER – a string long 80 bytes, which miners hash with the nonce to find the solution of the block.
BLOCK REWARD – this is what a miner gets for successfully calculating a valid hash in the block when performing a mining process.
BLOCK SIZE – this is a limit of bytes that the block might contain (also limits of transactions in one piece).
BLOCK TIME – the average time needed to find a block’s solutions. It’s different for each coin.
BLOCK SYNCHRONIZATION – the time requested for the blockchain to sync with your device (for full nodes usually).
C
CENTRALIZATION – an organization or system, which is controlled by a central authority.
CLOUD MINING – performing a mining process via rented hashing power from a third-party provider.
COIN – a term used to describe units of blockchain value.
CONFIRMATION – the process of validating if a transaction is including on the blockchain.
CONSENSUS – a rule all participant agrees on when operating on the same network.
CONTRIBUTION SHARE – the hash rate a miner puts into the pool to contribute.
CPU – (Central Processing Unit) a processor, which coordinates the work of all the other part of a computer.
D
DAO (Decentralized Anonymous Organization) – organization running smart contracts.
DIFFICULTY – a measure of how difficult might be to mine a new block.
DIFFICULTY BOMB – malicious attack, increasing difficulty that much, that the reward doesn’t cover the expenses to mine.
DISTRIBUTION – percentage of each pool from all the ones available in the network for this coin.
DOUBLE SPENDING – general issue of the decentralized conception or spending a same amount twice.
DOWNTIME – a period when a machine isn’t working.
E
EXCHANGE – a platform to buy, trade and sell cryptocurrencies.
F
FIAT MONEY – national currency of a central government.
FORK – changing in the rules of the consensus, which might be able to exist with the old established rules (soft fork) or not (hard fork).
FPGA – a modern mining device, improving the ASIC, which can mine coins from one particular algorithm. The interesting here is that you can modify it to mine a different algorithm if you decide to change the coin you mine.
FULL NODE – storing the blockchain data locally on your PC.
G
GAINS – increasing profits (reward).
GENESIS BLOCK – the first block, computationally created in the blockchain. It contains the initial transaction.
GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) – a graphic card, also known as a video card (part of a computer), which is successfully used for mining purposes.
H
HASH FUNCTION – encrypted message with fixes size and unique value.
HASH RATE – a unit to measure the computational power by which a miner contributes in the mining process.
HASH RENTAL – a rented computing power for mining purposes by a cloud mining provider.
HARD FORK – this is a protocol change, which results in splitting into two different chains and the longer one continuous existing. If both of them do – we have a chain split. These changes cannot cooperate with the old rules and require an update.
HARD DISK SPACE – the storage a user needs to locally store the blockchain data on a desktop PC.
Halving – decreasing the reward of gained coins per block using a particular formula.
I
ICO (Initial Coin Offering) – crowdfunding via crypto coins for the purpose of gaining capital for a particular project.
IMMUTABLE – unable to change in time.
K
KYC (Know Your Customer) – an identification process for the users in the network.
L
LEDGER – a piece of record of data, which is immutable.
LIGHT CLIENT – not storing the entire blockchain data but using just parts of it (a block’s header). To have some more information, they trust a full node.
LIGHTNING NETWORK – an additional layer of the blockchain to perform faster transactions between the nodes participating in the network.
LIQUIDITY – the ease to buying and selling, without bothering the market’s price.
M
MARKET CAPITALIZATION – a cryptocurrency’s price, according the total supply.
MARKET SHARE – the hash share of the market with which the pool operates.
MINEABLE – a coin which can be mined in return of reward.
MINER – either the device or the person who’s performing the mining process.
MINER’s FEE – this is the reward a miner receives for its contribution to the network by validating transactions. Normally, miners choose transactions with higher fees to add in the next block to profit more and faster.
MINING – a process of extracting a cryptocurrency by adding and verifying transactions to the blockchain, respectively gaining a reward for it.
MINING POOL – group of miners, combining their power to find a block faster and sharing the reward from it too.
MINING RIG – this is a set of multiple mining hardware, combined to mine with higher hash rate and find a block faster.
N
NODE – a computer that keeps a copy of the blockchain.
NONCE – an arbitrary number in a cryptographic communication. It is generated during the hashing process and can be used only once.
O
ORPHAN BLOCK – a valid block, which isn’t part of the blockchain and occurs when two miners find the same block in the same time. The one which is late becomes orphan.
P
PAYOUT LIMIT – the minimum amount of coins which you can withdraw from your account.
POOL DISTRIBUTION – a percentage of each pool, possessed for this particular coin.
POOL FEES – the fees requested from the pool for maintenance.
POW (Proof-of-Work) – when it comes to mining this is a consensus mechanism where miners are using a nonce to search the block’s solutions and get rewarded proportionally of their contribution (work). There’s no need of trust, since everybody’s “work” (share) is visible in the network.
PPS – (Pay Per Share) a type of rewarding system, based on contribution.
PPLNS – (Pay Per Last N Shares) a type of rewarding system, based on time a contribution.
PRIVATE KEY – this is the “password” which helps you to access your public address. It’s the one and only, which let you read the hashes (messages) sent to your public key.
PROP – (Proportional) a type of rewarding system, based on a proportional relation between contribution and luck.
PUBLIC KEY – this is a recipient’s address to receive any crypto assets in the form of a hash, which might be read with only one specific private key.
Q
QR-CODE – a graphic sign, which can be scanned via smartphone camera to read a wallet’s public address and send some coins within it.
R
REWARDING SYSTEM – a method of rewarding the miners, depending on their contribution to the network.
REPOSITORY – a software where you keep all your information, which might be retrieved at some point.
S
STALE SHARE – when two miners send a share to the network to affirm, they found a block, the one which is late is a stale one.
SPV (Simple Payment Verification) – a client which checks on transactions, using only the headers of the blocks, which is considered a proof of inclusion.
T
TRAFFIC (incoming & outcoming) – the traffic from one point to another (movement of data and actions). It’s important when it’s up to cryptocurrencies because it can define your speed when broadcasting a transaction.
TRANSACTION FEE – a payment to broadcast your transaction on the network.
U
UPTIME – the time during which a mining machine is properly working.
UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) – a value, calculating the balance of unspent coins, based on all the previously spent outputs and inputs, based on the public ledger’s history of transactions.
V
VALID BLOCK – there’s a signal that the block is mined and the user’s waiting for confirmation from other nodes to gain the reward.
VARDIFF (Variable Difficulty) – the share’s difficulty might rise or fall, depending on the hash rate.
VPS (Virtual Private Server) – a PC with static IP, supporting the network.
W
WALLET – a digital wallet to store, send and receive crypto assets.
WORKER – either a mining device, either an account in the mining pool configuration.
This is a glossary of all cryptocurrency terms and lingo you might come across when reading about mining and mining pools. Just refer to this page when you see an unfamiliar word or phrase.
A
ADDRESS – a cryptocurrency address is a string, containing numbers and letters, from which you can send and receive crypto payments.
ALGORITHM – kit of rules, which are solving a problem via calculations, using a computer. It’s encrypting and transferring data, which makes it mining’s base when it comes to extracting cryptocurrencies.
ASIC – (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) a dedicated mining device, which is able to extract coins, working with on one particular algorithm.
ASIC-RESISTANCE – memory hard algorithms that are hardly cooperating with ASICs, because they are built to be resistance to this kind of devices.
ATTACK 51% – a miner possess 51% of the pool’s hash rate, so he’s able to manipulate the network.
B
BANDWIDTH – the maximum capacity of the network to transmit data.
BLOCK – a piece of the blockchain, containing transactions.
BLOCKCHAIN – a public ledger, which contains lots of data, encrypted in separate block in the form of hashes (messages). Considered immutable and unable to manipulate.
BLOCK HEADER – a string long 80 bytes, which miners hash with the nonce to find the solution of the block.
BLOCK REWARD – this is what a miner gets for successfully calculating a valid hash in the block when performing a mining process.
BLOCK SIZE – this is a limit of bytes that the block might contain (also limits of transactions in one piece).
BLOCK TIME – the average time needed to find a block’s solutions. It’s different for each coin.
BLOCK SYNCHRONIZATION – the time requested for the blockchain to sync with your device (for full nodes usually).
C
CENTRALIZATION – an organization or system, which is controlled by a central authority.
CLOUD MINING – performing a mining process via rented hashing power from a third-party provider.
COIN – a term used to describe units of blockchain value.
CONFIRMATION – the process of validating if a transaction is including on the blockchain.
CONSENSUS – a rule all participant agrees on when operating on the same network.
CONTRIBUTION SHARE – the hash rate a miner puts into the pool to contribute.
CPU – (Central Processing Unit) a processor, which coordinates the work of all the other part of a computer.
D
DAO (Decentralized Anonymous Organization) – organization running smart contracts.
DIFFICULTY – a measure of how difficult might be to mine a new block.
DIFFICULTY BOMB – malicious attack, increasing difficulty that much, that the reward doesn’t cover the expenses to mine.
DISTRIBUTION – percentage of each pool from all the ones available in the network for this coin.
DOUBLE SPENDING – general issue of the decentralized conception or spending a same amount twice.
DOWNTIME – a period when a machine isn’t working.
E
EXCHANGE – a platform to buy, trade and sell cryptocurrencies.
F
FIAT MONEY – national currency of a central government.
FORK – changing in the rules of the consensus, which might be able to exist with the old established rules (soft fork) or not (hard fork).
FPGA – a modern mining device, improving the ASIC, which can mine coins from one particular algorithm. The interesting here is that you can modify it to mine a different algorithm if you decide to change the coin you mine.
FULL NODE – storing the blockchain data locally on your PC.
G
GAINS – increasing profits (reward).
GENESIS BLOCK – the first block, computationally created in the blockchain. It contains the initial transaction.
GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) – a graphic card, also known as a video card (part of a computer), which is successfully used for mining purposes.
H
HASH FUNCTION – encrypted message with fixes size and unique value.
HASH RATE – a unit to measure the computational power by which a miner contributes in the mining process.
HASH RENTAL – a rented computing power for mining purposes by a cloud mining provider.
HARD FORK – this is a protocol change, which results in splitting into two different chains and the longer one continuous existing. If both of them do – we have a chain split. These changes cannot cooperate with the old rules and require an update.
HARD DISK SPACE – the storage a user needs to locally store the blockchain data on a desktop PC.
Halving – decreasing the reward of gained coins per block using a particular formula.
I
ICO (Initial Coin Offering) – crowdfunding via crypto coins for the purpose of gaining capital for a particular project.
IMMUTABLE – unable to change in time.
K
KYC (Know Your Customer) – an identification process for the users in the network.
L
LEDGER – a piece of record of data, which is immutable.
LIGHT CLIENT – not storing the entire blockchain data but using just parts of it (a block’s header). To have some more information, they trust a full node.
LIGHTNING NETWORK – an additional layer of the blockchain to perform faster transactions between the nodes participating in the network.
LIQUIDITY – the ease to buying and selling, without bothering the market’s price.
M
MARKET CAPITALIZATION – a cryptocurrency’s price, according the total supply.
MARKET SHARE – the hash share of the market with which the pool operates.
MINEABLE – a coin which can be mined in return of reward.
MINER – either the device or the person who’s performing the mining process.
MINER’s FEE – this is the reward a miner receives for its contribution to the network by validating transactions. Normally, miners choose transactions with higher fees to add in the next block to profit more and faster.
MINING – a process of extracting a cryptocurrency by adding and verifying transactions to the blockchain, respectively gaining a reward for it.
MINING POOL – group of miners, combining their power to find a block faster and sharing the reward from it too.
MINING RIG – this is a set of multiple mining hardware, combined to mine with higher hash rate and find a block faster.
N
NODE – a computer that keeps a copy of the blockchain.
NONCE – an arbitrary number in a cryptographic communication. It is generated during the hashing process and can be used only once.
O
ORPHAN BLOCK – a valid block, which isn’t part of the blockchain and occurs when two miners find the same block in the same time. The one which is late becomes orphan.
P
PAYOUT LIMIT – the minimum amount of coins which you can withdraw from your account.
POOL DISTRIBUTION – a percentage of each pool, possessed for this particular coin.
POOL FEES – the fees requested from the pool for maintenance.
POW (Proof-of-Work) – when it comes to mining this is a consensus mechanism where miners are using a nonce to search the block’s solutions and get rewarded proportionally of their contribution (work). There’s no need of trust, since everybody’s “work” (share) is visible in the network.
PPS – (Pay Per Share) a type of rewarding system, based on contribution.
PPLNS – (Pay Per Last N Shares) a type of rewarding system, based on time a contribution.
PRIVATE KEY – this is the “password” which helps you to access your public address. It’s the one and only, which let you read the hashes (messages) sent to your public key.
PROP – (Proportional) a type of rewarding system, based on a proportional relation between contribution and luck.
PUBLIC KEY – this is a recipient’s address to receive any crypto assets in the form of a hash, which might be read with only one specific private key.
Q
QR-CODE – a graphic sign, which can be scanned via smartphone camera to read a wallet’s public address and send some coins within it.
R
REWARDING SYSTEM – a method of rewarding the miners, depending on their contribution to the network.
REPOSITORY – a software where you keep all your information, which might be retrieved at some point.
S
STALE SHARE – when two miners send a share to the network to affirm, they found a block, the one which is late is a stale one.
SPV (Simple Payment Verification) – a client which checks on transactions, using only the headers of the blocks, which is considered a proof of inclusion.
T
TRAFFIC (incoming & outcoming) – the traffic from one point to another (movement of data and actions). It’s important when it’s up to cryptocurrencies because it can define your speed when broadcasting a transaction.
TRANSACTION FEE – a payment to broadcast your transaction on the network.
U
UPTIME – the time during which a mining machine is properly working.
UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) – a value, calculating the balance of unspent coins, based on all the previously spent outputs and inputs, based on the public ledger’s history of transactions.
V
VALID BLOCK – there’s a signal that the block is mined and the user’s waiting for confirmation from other nodes to gain the reward.
VARDIFF (Variable Difficulty) – the share’s difficulty might rise or fall, depending on the hash rate.
VPS (Virtual Private Server) – a PC with static IP, supporting the network.
W
WALLET – a digital wallet to store, send and receive crypto assets.
WORKER – either a mining device, either an account in the mining pool configuration.
How & Why You should Prepare Here are just a few examples of what that sort of total control may look like: Government in total control The government could not only withhold money … Continue reading CBDC’s Tyranny Is Coming→
Here is a list of 100 of the best based things: Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to … Continue reading 100 Based things→
THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s. Cryptography … Continue reading CypherPunk Movement→
The first ever bitcoin transaction from one person to another, on 2009-01-12 at 04:30 used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), when Satoshi Nakamoto sent coins to Hal Finney in Block 170. P2PK is no longer used … Continue reading Block 170 – First ever bitcoin transaction→
The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The … Continue reading The Art of War Quotes→
Joseph Werner: Diana of Ephesus as allegory of Nature, c. 1680
Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth or the Earth Mother) is a personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it, in the form of the mother.
Mother Nature image, 17th century alchemical text, Atalanta Fugiens
The word “nature” comes from the Latin word, “natura”, meaning birth or character (see nature (philosophy)). In English, its first recorded use (in the sense of the entirety of the phenomena of the world) was in 1266. “Natura” and the personification of Mother Nature were widely popular in the Middle Ages.
As a concept, seated between the properly divine and the human, it can be traced to Ancient Greece, though Earth (or “Eorthe” in the Old English period) may have been personified as a goddess. The Norse also had a goddess called Jörð (Jord, or Erth).
“… Mother Nature is punishing us, …, for our greed and selfishness.
We torture her at all hours by iron and wood, fire and stone.
We dig her up and dump her in the sea.
We sink mine shafts into her and drag out her entrails – and all for a jewel to wear on a pretty finer.
Who can blame her if she occasionally quivers with anger?”
Pliny, Pg. 176 – Robert Harris, Pompeii
“Harmony is about bringing things into balance and knowing how to go from sunrise to sunset.
Mother Nature teaches this to us, in so many ways, each and every day.”
Jaeda DeWalt
“Those who train their hearts in natural wonder shall forever know the rivers, forests, wildflowers, and oceans, as friends.”
Atalina Wright, ”Wild Riverbanks”
“Nature isn’t cruel, but unconcerned with human frailty.”
Melissa Febos
“The simplicity of life is universal. Mother Nature is a wonderful teacher.”
Steve Leasock
“Autumn is the time of year when Mother Nature says, “Look how easy, how healthy, and how beautiful letting go can be.”
Toni Sorenson
“The Earth is nothing but phlegm spat out by the Sun, and our immediate solar system a whirlwind of boulders.
There is no “delicate balance.”
A.E. Samaan, From a “Race of Masters” to a “Master Race”: 1948 to 1848
If you can’t be in awe of Mother Nature, there’s something wrong with you.
Alex Trebek
“Only after the last tree has been cut down.
Only after the last river has been poisoned.
Only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
Cree Indian Prophecy
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better.”
Albert Einstein
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
Lao Tzu
“Nature is man’s teacher.
She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumines his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.”
Alfred Billings Street
“We are all visitors to this time, this place.
We are just passing through.
Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love, and then we return home.”
Australian Aboriginal
“The world is not to be put in order.
The world is order, incarnate.
It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.”
Henry Miller
“O Nature, gracious mother of us all, Within thy bosom myriad secrets lie Which thou surrenderest to the patient eye That seeks and waits.”
Margaret Junkin Preston
“Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony and beauty may reign supreme.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“The world will burn for a hundred years.
Fire will consume the things we made from wood and plastic and rubber and cloth, then water and wind and time will chew the stone and steel into dust.
How baffling it is that we imagined cities incinerated by alien bombs and death rays when all they needed was Mother Nature and time.“
How & Why You should Prepare Here are just a few examples of what that sort of total control may look like: Government in total control The government could not only withhold money … Continue reading CBDC’s Tyranny Is Coming→
Here is a list of 100 of the best based things: Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to … Continue reading 100 Based things→
THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s. Cryptography … Continue reading CypherPunk Movement→
The first ever bitcoin transaction from one person to another, on 2009-01-12 at 04:30 used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), when Satoshi Nakamoto sent coins to Hal Finney in Block 170. P2PK is no longer used … Continue reading Block 170 – First ever bitcoin transaction→
The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The … Continue reading The Art of War Quotes→
Hy there to all of you out there, white, black, yellow and avatar 😋🤣 people around the WordPress world !
Hope you are all well and safe in these troubled times we live on this beautiful planet of ours !
I come before you, to ask for your opinion and what you would like to see explained in my posts !?! Just let me know and I will try my best to accomodate your requests !
How & Why You should Prepare Here are just a few examples of what that sort of total control may look like: Government in total control The government could not only withhold money … Continue reading CBDC’s Tyranny Is Coming→
Here is a list of 100 of the best based things: Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to … Continue reading 100 Based things→
THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s. Cryptography … Continue reading CypherPunk Movement→
The first ever bitcoin transaction from one person to another, on 2009-01-12 at 04:30 used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), when Satoshi Nakamoto sent coins to Hal Finney in Block 170. P2PK is no longer used … Continue reading Block 170 – First ever bitcoin transaction→
The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The … Continue reading The Art of War Quotes→
My aim is for any brand new miner to be able to determine just how unlikely any run of bad luck is, and so reduce the overall level of panic amongst miners.
Mining panic has been exacerbated by reports of accidental block withholding attacks, and a stratum vulnerability.
Wouldn’t you prefer to know if your panic was actually warranted?
• 1. Gambler’s fallacy
For miners who have been around for more than a year or two seen good and bad luck (unless they mine at a “Pay per share” pool, in which case they are not subject to luck at all) and know that it will even out in the long term.
However, every new miner striking a run of bad luck will flail around, looking to escape to another pool that is not having bad luck. This sort of response to random events can be thought of as a type of gambler’s fallacy.
• 2. Bad Luck lasts longer
Another reason that makes us mis-judge mining luck is that when we mine, we mostly experience bad luck.
In fact if you go to the trouble of working it out, your hours of mining will be about one-quarter good luck and three quarters bad luck. Why? Bad luck takes longer, good luck rounds take much less time.
• 3. Assessing luck over time instead of blocks
Another mistake made by novice miners is to assume that the extremes of luck will be the same for all pool over any time frame. This is wrong for two related reasons:
The more blocks are solved the closer luck approaches 100%
Because the timeframe for luck to to approach 100% varies depending on number of blocks solved, comparing various pools’ luck over the same time period is invalid. Instead we need to compare luck over similar number of blocks.
• 4. The luck statistic, the Erlang distribution, PDFs and CDFs
I’ll try to avoid terms like “variance” and “median” and “maths” in order to not scare away too many readers, but we do need a definition:
Luck = Mean (expected shares per round / actual shares per round)
Luck statistic = mean (actual shares per round / expected shares per round)
i.e. Luck = 1/Luck statistic
I would much rather just refer to the ‘Luck statistic’ as luck, but due to our psychological preference to assign luck a scale where bigger is better, we need both measures – “Luck” as a shorthand for “How much am I earning as a percent of what I expect to earn”, and the “Luck” statistic. Just keep in mind the larger the ‘luck’ statistic, the worse the ‘luck’.
The luck statistic is negative binomially distributed, but can be very closely approximated by a known and well understood distribution ( Erlang distribution ) which makes calculating probabilities simpler.
The approximation becomes more accurate as difficulty increases – think of Euler’s (1 + 1/n)^n approximation to e as the comparison of an exponentially distributed random variable (Erlang distribution shape parameter = 1) and a geometrically distributed random variable (Negative binomial distribution, size parameter = 1, probability = 1/n).
In case you’re worried about the approximation leading to significant error, at current difficulty you’ll won’t see a probability error greater than 0.0000000001.
Visualising the Erlang distribution:
The PDF is the probability density function, which indicates how probable it is that the luck statistic will be some arbitrary value.
The CDF is the cumulative distribution function, which indicates how probable it is that the luck statistic will be greater than or equal to arbitrary value.
Both plots illustrate:
The luck statistic tends closer to 1.0 as the number of blocks over which the statistic is averaged increases
Extremes of luck are more likely when the luck statistic is averaged over fewer blocks.
• 5. Managing Income Variance
Luck averaged over more blocks means fewer extremes, so more blocks in less time means as a miner you will experience less variation in payout – but also means that you’ll be increasing the size of pools that are already large.
You can avoid this by adjusting your timescale expectations – try to focus on weekly income, or income per retarget and you’ll be less affected by income variations. Wait about one hundred blocks and income will be around +/- 20% of expected.
Your other option is to mine at a pool that has a pay per share (PPS) reward method, but this has a couple of downsides. The first is that since the pool is smoothing out the income variations for you, if they don’t manage that risk properly they could bankrupt themselves, and leaving you with lost income. The other problem is that since PPS is risky not many pools want to provide it so you won’t have many options about where you can mine.
• 6. How can you calculate the CDF probability yourself?
If you want to manage your expectations without using a PPS pool you need to know what to expect. Not just the reward per share but the typical range of values you might encounter in some time frame. So, how can you calculate the CDF probability yourself? If you have some experience with statistics or coding knowledge can use R or mathematica or even python, but you can also use the Wolfram Alpha website. By entering the luck statistic and the number of blocks over which the statistic was averaged, you get the lower tail probability of that statistic occurring.
For example, if the luck statistic was 1.1 over one hundred blocks is that quite unlucky or just a little unlucky? Enter:
CDF [ErlangDistribution[100, 100], 1.1] The result is 0.84, so for 84 times out of one hundred re-runs of one blocks, we’d see luckier blocks. Not that unlucky – 1 in every six re-runs would be unluckier.
• 6. How can you calculate the probable luck outcomes yourself?
Rather than assess how lucky or unlucky your pool has been, planning requires you to estimate how unlucky is could be in future. Let’s say you plan to be able to manage a monthly worst case of 0.999 (one one in a thousand re-runs of the months blocks would be worse), and your expect your pool to solve around 50 blocks in that time.
quantile(ErlangDistribution[50, 50], 0.999) This results in a luck statistic of ~1.495, or a luck of 1/1.495 = 66.9%
• 7. I need something easier. Or less statisticky, anyway.
OK, I hear you. My fun != your fun. This chart gives you the expected luck percentage (and it’s all bad luck) for bad luck with a 1/3 chance of that luck or worse occurring (not very unlucky) to bad luck with a 1/10000 chance of that luck or worse occurring (really quite unlucky). Use it to either plan for the future or get an idea of how lucky you’ve been.
For example, my pool solves ten blocks at a luck of 80%, is that really bad? Not really. It’ll happen around 20% of the time (1/5 chance of that luck or worse occurring). Maybe I just want to make sure I can cope with a 1/thousand bad luck run of five hundred blocks (~67.5%).
8. Summary
Variance in income reduces as a function of number of blocks solved.
Variance in income is not a function of time.
Learn how to plan for bad luck, and to check that your pool’s luck is not impossibly bad.
organofcorti.blogspot.com is a reader supported blog:
How & Why You should Prepare Here are just a few examples of what that sort of total control may look like: Government in total control The government could not only withhold money … Continue reading CBDC’s Tyranny Is Coming→
Here is a list of 100 of the best based things: Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to … Continue reading 100 Based things→
THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s. Cryptography … Continue reading CypherPunk Movement→
The first ever bitcoin transaction from one person to another, on 2009-01-12 at 04:30 used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), when Satoshi Nakamoto sent coins to Hal Finney in Block 170. P2PK is no longer used … Continue reading Block 170 – First ever bitcoin transaction→
The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The … Continue reading The Art of War Quotes→
Silence is the absence of ambient audible sound, the emission of sounds of such low intensity that they do not draw attention to themselves, or the state of having ceased to produce sounds; this latter sense can be extended to apply to the cessation or absence of any form of communication, whether through speech or other medium.
Sometimes speakers fall silent when they hesitate in searching for a word, or interrupt themselves before correcting themselves.
Discourse analysis shows that people use brief silences to mark the boundaries of prosodic units, in turn-taking, or as reactive tokens, e.g., as a sign of displeasure, disagreement, embarrassment, desire to think, confusion, and the like.
Relatively prolonged intervals of silence can be used in rituals; in some religious disciplines, people maintain silence for protracted periods, or even for the rest of their lives, as an ascetic means of spiritual transformation.
Joseph Jordania has suggested that in social animals (including humans), silence can be a sign of danger.
Many social animals produce seemingly haphazard sounds which are known as contact calls. These are a mixture of various sounds, accompanying the group’s everyday business (for example, foraging, feeding), and they are used to maintain audio contact with the members of the group.
Some social animal species communicate the signal of potential danger by stopping contact calls and freezing, without the use of alarm calls, through silence.
Charles Darwin wrote about this in relation with wild horse and cattle. Jordania has further suggested that human humming could have been a contact method that early humans used to avoid silence. According to his suggestion, humans find prolonged silence distressing (suggesting danger to them).
This may help explain why lone humans in relative sonic isolation feel a sense of comfort from humming, whistling, talking to themselves, or having the TV or radio on.
How & Why You should Prepare Here are just a few examples of what that sort of total control may look like: Government in total control The government could not only withhold money … Continue reading CBDC’s Tyranny Is Coming→
Here is a list of 100 of the best based things: Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to … Continue reading 100 Based things→
THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s. Cryptography … Continue reading CypherPunk Movement→
The first ever bitcoin transaction from one person to another, on 2009-01-12 at 04:30 used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), when Satoshi Nakamoto sent coins to Hal Finney in Block 170. P2PK is no longer used … Continue reading Block 170 – First ever bitcoin transaction→
The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The … Continue reading The Art of War Quotes→
1b) Any pool that does NOT share transaction fees should be rejected from consideration (which, unfortunately, is most, if not all, Chinese based pools)
2) Reasonable variance – You need to get paid often enough to be happy. This is a tough one.
Variance is the close cousin to “Luck”.
The luckier a pool is, the more blocks it finds relative to its hashing speed, and the less variance it will have. But its not a real thing! “Luck” could change any microsecond. “Luck” is just mathematical statistics – over a long enough time period, all pools will average out to 100% luck.
Luck Statistik for 14 Blocks
You need to understand Variance:
A big pool finds more blocks, but distributes the earnings out to more miners.
A small pool is just the reverse: it finds fewer blocks, but pays those earnings to fewer people. Over the long run, Rule #1, well, rules.
3) Wind-up/Wind-down time – Most pools use some leveling algorithm.
4) User Interface – That doesn’t matter much if you have a few miners. If you have hundreds, the difference can be thousands of dollars a Year.
Notes:
A)In the long run #2 & #3 really don’t matter much. Both pools show your hashing rate in minutes, payouts just lag on Kano compared to Slushpool, but would continue longer if you changed in the future
B) Bigger is not better. Sure Antpool is #1 in size, in no small part to Bitmain using their own pool (no fees for them!). Your profit will be determined mostly by rule #1 – lower fees mean more profit.
C) More, smaller, pools is healthier for the blockchain. If you can live with the variance, support the pool with the longest average payout you are happy with.
D) For pools with long ramp up times that are relatively small, like Kano, you MIGHT suffer due to difficulty changes while you ramp up.
For smaller pools, make sure you understand what happens to your efforts (based on their scoring system) when a difficulty change occurs.
Executive Order 6102 is an executive order signed on April 5, 1933, by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.”
The executive order was made under the authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, as amended by the Emergency Banking Act in March 1933.
Summary
Forbade ownership of quantities of gold coin, bullion, and gold certificates worth in excess of $100 (about 5 troy ounces), with exemptions for specific uses and collections;
Required all persons to deliver excess quantities of the above on or before May 1, 1933 in exchange for $20.67 per troy ounce;
Enabled Federal funding of Exchange Stabilization Fund using profit realized from international transactions against new Federal reserves.
The limitation on gold ownership in the United States was repealed after President Gerald Ford signed a bill legalizing private ownership of gold coins, bars, and certificates by an Act of Congress, codified in Pub.L.93–373,which went into effect December 31, 1974.
The stated reason for the order was that hard times had caused “hoarding” of gold, stalling economic growth and worsening the depression as the US was then using the gold standard for its currency
On April 6, 1933, The New York Times wrote, under the headline Hoarding of Gold, “The Executive Order issued by the President yesterday amplifies and particularizes his earlier warnings against hoarding.
On March 6, taking advantage of a wartime statute that had not been repealed, he issued Presidential Proclamation 2039 that forbade the hoarding ‘of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency’, under penalty of $10,000 and/or up to five to ten years imprisonment.”
The main rationale behind the order was actually to remove the constraint on the Federal Reserve preventing it from increasing the money supply during the depression.
The Federal Reserve Act (1913) required 40% gold backing of Federal Reserve Notes that were issued. By the late 1920s, the Federal Reserve had almost reached the limit of allowable credit, in the form of Federal Reserve demand notes, which could be backed by the gold in its possession.
How & Why You should Prepare Here are just a few examples of what that sort of total control may look like: Government in total control The government could not only withhold money … Continue reading CBDC’s Tyranny Is Coming→
Here is a list of 100 of the best based things: Trust is not based, and relying on trust is unbased. It is foolish to ever trust someone, because the only way to … Continue reading 100 Based things→
THE CYPHERPUNK MOVEMENT Let’s make a journey back in time to see where blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies came from. It will take us back to the CypherPunk Movement starting in the 1970’s. Cryptography … Continue reading CypherPunk Movement→
The first ever bitcoin transaction from one person to another, on 2009-01-12 at 04:30 used Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), when Satoshi Nakamoto sent coins to Hal Finney in Block 170. P2PK is no longer used … Continue reading Block 170 – First ever bitcoin transaction→
The Art of War (Chinese: 孫子兵法; lit. ‘Sun Tzu’s Military Method’, pinyin: Sūnzi bīngfǎ) is an ancient Chinese military treatise dating from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 5th century BC). The … Continue reading The Art of War Quotes→