” It isn’t obvious that the world had to work this way.
But somehow the universe smiles on encryption.”
Julian Assange
The universe smiles on encryption
” The innovation is that BTC is hard to shut down. […]
Designed from the ground up to survive under the most adversarial conditions. “
Hasu
Bitcoin is hard to shut down
” Bitcoin is the most successful privacy coin to date. “
Pierre Rochard
Most successful privacy coin to date
” Bitcoin is a mathematical miracle. “
Steve Wozniak (Apple Co-Founder)
Mathematical miracle
” Bitcoin is a technological innovation that happens once a species. “
Trace Mayer
Technological innovation that happens once in a species
” Bitcoin doesn’t care about who you are or what your feelings are.
Bitcoin represents equal opportunity
to participate in a system
not encumbered by
our legacy fiat structures. “
White Rabbit
Participate in a system not encumbered by FIAT
” We’re here to unfuck the money and there’s no stopping us.
Fix the money,
change the world. “
White Rabbit
Fix the Money, Change the World
” Hardly anybody actually
understands money. “
Nick Szabo
Nobody understands money
” When you have a disruptive technology,
they call it a category killer.
Bitcoin is a serial killer –
it’s going to go through
40 or 50 different industries. “
Dan Morehead
Bitcoin is a serial killer
” It’s 21 million or death.”
Robert Breedlove
21 million or death
” It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. “
Satoshi Nakamoto
In case it catches on
” Trusted third parties
are security holes. “
Nick Szabo
Trusted third parties
” There are only going to be
21 million coins,
there are billions of people
in the world, some reasonable percentage of who might
find it interesting to
own a piece of Bitcoin.”
Adam Back
21 Million Coins
” I think it’s essential for a program of this nature to be open source. “
Satoshi Nakamoto
Open Source
” SHA-256 is very strong. It’s not like the incremental step from MD5 to SHA1.
It can last several decades unless there’s some massive breakthrough attack. “
Satoshi Nakamoto
Sha-256
” Code mixed with robust game theory is superior to hierarchical command and control. “
ℭoinsure
Code superior to hierarchical command and control
” Given that money is one half of every commercial transaction and that whole civilizations literally rise and fall based on the quality of their money, we are talking about an awesome power, one that flies under the cover of night. “
Ron Paul
Money… an awesome power
” The world has to adapt to bitcoin, not the other way round. “
Herzmeister
The world has to adapt to bitcoin
” When I first bought bitcoin it took me two years of speculation to understand what Bitcoin really was.
But once I fully had a grasp of it, it was life altering. “
Russell Okung
Bitcoin is life altering
” Many countries stand to gain from Bitcoin’s adoption as it would remove their dependence on the US dollar and provide them with a feasible alternative. “
Misir Mahmudov
Bitcoin a feasible alternative to the US $
” Bitcoin is a optimist bet on the future, a bet on human ingenuity.
Gold is a pessimist bet on the past and, often a bet the end of civilization. “
Rodolfo Novak
Bitcoin a bet on Human Ingenuity
” Everyone has got to believe in something.
Why not believe in something verifiable and unforgeable. “
Hass McCook
Believe in something verifiable and unforgeable
” Open source software is a meritocracy of ideas, not of people.
So people are always talking about “Who controls Bitcoin?”
Good ideas control Bitcoin.
Not people.”
Ben Prentice
Good ideeas control Bitcoin
“Bitcoin is a seed of hope in a society which lost vision years ago and perspective just recently. “
Kim Neunert
Bitcoin a seed of hope
” Bitcoin has an inescapable, unavoidable, and omnipotent magnetism for the brightest and most revolutionary minds on the planet.
I’ve never witnessed anything like it. “
Brandon Bridge
Bitcoin’s magnetism
” This is why proof of work needs to be expensive, if it is cheap you can roll back things easily.
You want it to be very difficult to change history.
The only way to make it difficult to change history is to make the process of writing the current history very expensive. “
Jimmy Song
Difficult to change history
” Bitcoin is like gold but with this magical ability that you
can teleport it.”
Vijay Boyapati
Bitcoin magical ability to teleport it
” Can Bitcoin be stopped?
“Not really, this thing is a beast.
As Mises wrote:
Ideas can only be overcome by other ideas. “
Trace Mayer
Bitcoin cannot be stopped
“I’m not here to fix Bitcoin.”
Michael Saylor
Fix bitcoin
” Buying bitcoin is the most powerful protest an individual can make against the current economic system. “
Luc Dossis
Buying bitcoin is the most powerful protest
” These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow.
And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space. “
Bruce Schneier
Maximums that thermodynamics will allow
” Cryptocurrency is such a powerful concept that it can almost
overturn governments. “
Charles Lee
Cryptocurrency can almost overturn governments
” Bitcoin will do to banks what email did to the postal industry. “
Rick Falkvinge
Bitcoin is the email for the postal industry
” I do think Bitcoin is the first [encrypted money] that has the potential to do something like change the world. “
Peter Thiel
Bitcoin has the potential to change the world
” Bitcoin is the most important invention in the history of the world since the Internet. “
Roger Ver
Bitcoin the most important invention in the history since the Internet
” Gold is a great way to preserve wealth, but it is hard to move around. You do need some kind of alternative and Bitcoin fits the bill. “
Jim Rickards
Bitcoin fits the bill as a way to preserve wealth
” You can’t stop things like Bitcoin.
It will be everywhere and the world will have to readjust.
World governments will have to readjust. “
John McAfee
Bitcoin will be everywhere and the world will have to readjust
” I think the fact that within the bitcoin universe an algorithm replaces the function of the government… is actually pretty cool. “
Al Gore
An algorithm replaces the function of government
“People have made fortunes off Bitcoin, some have lost money.
It is volatile, but people make money off of volatility too.”
Richard Branson
Some lost, some won with Bitcoin
” The ability to create something which is not duplicable in the digital world has enormous value…
Lot’s of people will build businesses on top of that. “
Eric Schmidt
Create something wich is not duplicable
“PayPal had these goals of creating a new currency.
We failed at that…
I think Bitcoin has succeeded on the level of a new currency, but the payment system is lacking.”
Peter Thiel
Bitcoin succeeded as a new currency
” As people move into Bitcoin for payments and receipts they stop using US Dollars, Euros and Chinese Yuan which in the long-term devalues these currencies. “
John McAfee
Bitcoin devalues $ € ¥
” Bitcoin is the Currency of Resistance…
If Satoshi had released Bitcoin10 years earlier,9/11 would
never have happened. “
Max Keiser
Bitcoin the currency of resistance
“At its core, bitcoin is a smart currency, designed by very forward-thinking engineers. “
Peter Diamandis
Bitcoin is a smart currency
“The internet is going to be one of
the major forces for reducing
the role of government.
One thing that’s missing but that
will soon be developed,
is a reliable e-cash.”
Milton Friedman
E-Cash
” Bitcoin is a technological
tour de force. “
Bill Gates
Tour de force
” If you don’t believe it or don’t get it,
I don’t have the time
to try to convince you,
sorry. “
Satoshi Nakamoto
Don’t have the time
“WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet’s nest, and the swarm is headed towards us.”
Satoshi Nakamoto
WikiLeaks
” Lost coins only make everyone
else’s coins worth slightly more.
Think of it as a donation to everyone.”
Satoshi Nakamoto
Lost Coins
” In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee
will become the maincompensation
for [mining] nodes.
I’m sure that in 20 years there
will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.”
Satoshi Nakamoto
Transaction fee
” As computers get faster and the total computing power applied to creating bitcoins increases, the difficulty increases proportionally to keep the total new production constant.
Thus, it is known in advance how many new bitcoins will be created every year in the future.
Coins have to get initially distributed somehow, and a constant rate seems like the best formula.”
Satoshi Nakamoto
Coins distribution at a constant rate is the best formula
” Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without
a government, something
necessary and imperative. “
Nassim Taleb
Bitcoin a currency without a government
” Those who believe in Bitcoin also believe in cleverness. “
Arif Naseem
Believe in bitcoin believe in cleverness
” Bitcoin is the most stellar and
most useful system of
mutual trustever devised. “
Arif Naseem
Bitcoin a system of mutual trust
Cryptocurrency is freedom,
Banking is slavery. “
Arif Naseem
Cryptocurrency is freedom
” Our basic thesis for bitcoin is
that it is better than gold. “
Tyler Winklevoss
Bitcoin better than gold
” I think the whole narrative
of blockchain without bitcoin
will amount to very little. “
Fred Ehrsam
Blockchain without bitcoin
” Every informed person needs to know about Bitcoin because it might be one of the world’s most important developments. “
Leon Louw
Bitcoin world’s most important developments
” Bitcoin is a very exciting development, it might lead to a world currency.
I think over the next decade it will grow to become one of the most important ways to pay for things and transfer assets. “
Kim Dotcom (CEO of MegaUpload)
Bitcoin might lead to a world currency
” Bitcoin may be the TCP/IP of money. “
Paul Buchheit (Creator of Gmail)
Bitcoin the TCP/IP of money
” We have elected to put our money and faith in a mathematical framework that is free of politics and human error. “
Tyler Winklevoss (Co-inventor of Facebook)
Mathematical framework free of politics and human error
” I really like Bitcoin.
I own Bitcoins.
It’s a store of value, a distributed ledger.
It’s a great place to put assets, especially in places like Argentina with 40 percent inflation, where $1 today is worth 60 cents in a year, and a government’s currency does not hold value.
It’s also a good investment vehicle if you have an appetite for risk.
But it won’t be a currency until volatility slows down. “
David Marcus (CEO of Paypal)
Bitcoin a store of value
” [Virtual Currencies] may hold long-term promise, particularly if the innovations promote a faster, more secure and more efficient payment system. “
Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Federal Reserve)
Bitcoin may hold long-term promise
“There are 3 eras of currency: Commodity based, politically based, and now, math based. “
Chris Dixon (Co-founder of Hunch now owned by Ebay, Co-founder of SiteAdvisor now owned by McAfee)
Math based currency
” Bitcoin is here to stay.
There would be a hacker uproar to anyone who attempted to take credit for the patent of cryptocurrency.
And I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of hacker fury. “
Adam Draper
Bitcoin is here to stay
” It’s money 2.0, a huge hugehuge deal. “
Chamath Palihapitiya (Previous head of AOL instant messenger)
Money 2.0
” If there is one positive takeaway from the collapse of Mt.Gox, it is the willingness of a new generation of Bitcoin companies to work together to ensure the future of Bitcoin and the security of customer funds. “
Brian Armstrong (CEO of Coinbase)
Future of bitcoin
” Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea.
I like the idea of basing security on the assumption that the CPU power of honest participants outweighs that of the attacker.
It is a very modern notion that exploits the power of the long tail. “
Hal Finney
Bitcoin a very promising idea…
” Bitcoin enables certain uses that are very unique.
I think it offers possibilities that no other currency allows.
For example the ability to spend a coin that only occurs when two separate parties agree to spend the coin; with a third party that couldn’t run away with the coin itself. “
Pieter Wuille
Bitcoin enables uses that are very unique
” At its core, bitcoin is a smart currency, designed by very forward-thinking engineers.
It eliminates the need for banks, gets rid of credit cardfees, currency exchange fees, money transfer fees, and reduces the need for lawyers in transitions… all good things. “
Peter Diamandis
Good things
” There is so much potential…
I am just waiting for it to be a billion dollar industry.”
In a first, Bitcoin developers have done something amazing amid the criticism over the lightning network and issues associated with it. A team of developers has made an international payment using the radio … Continue reading International payment using the radio waves→
My inspiration for this page was given to me by my new aquired friend, a fellow Truth Seeker – Joris and to whom I dedicate this page… Wish you… as well as to … Continue reading Discipline Quotes→
Bitcoin white paper turns 15 and the Legacy of Satoshi Nakamoto lives on. “I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party,” Satoshi Oct. 31, … Continue reading Bitcoin White Paper turn 15→
The quality of Bitcoin’s monetary policy and the public’s confidence that the policy will be respected in the long-run is all what really matters.
For all of you out there, who believe that Bitcoin falls under the “crypto” umbrella, you could not be further from the truth.
“Crypto” is designated for the affinity scams that launched in Bitcoin’s shadow and attempted to leverage its pedigree and latch on to its narrative to sell useless tokens to unwitting noobs.
The scammers believe they can “beat” Bitcoin by providing a feature set and a “culture” more appealing to the masses and make individuals more likely to pick their favorite “crypto” over the best money humans have ever come in contact with.
As most people, these people couldn’t be more delusional.
The success of Bitcoin doesn’t depend on the “culture” of bitcoiners.
Bitcoin is a protocol that has no way of knowing the “culture” of its users.
If it is successful it will be used by many different people from many worldwide lands with very different cultures.
A cultural hold on a particular competitive landscape of social media doesn’t really impress no one at the end of the day.
What really matters is the quality of Bitcoin’s monetary policy and the public’s confidence that the policy will be respected in the long-run.
The best way to build confidence in that policy is to make the cost of attempting to change that policy, or falling out of line with the consensus rules of the network as high as possible.
Nothing in “crypto” comes close to Bitcoin in these regards, and that is because the Bitcoin network is slowly but surely integrating itself into the energy sector of the globe.
The execution risks associated with mining Bitcoin have become very high.
If a miner fucks up and falls out of consensus, they are punished materially by missing out on precious block reward payouts.
As the network becomes more integrated with the energy sector, these costs will rise and abiding by the monetary policy put forth by the network of full nodes will be paramount.
It happend in 2017 when the biggest corporate players and miners attempted to hard fork a block space increase that fell out of consensus with the full nodes on the network.
The unwillingness to follow consensus ruined reputations and lost a lot of miners a lot of money over the four years that have followed the hard fork.
This is the certainty for the people, that bitcoin is a suitable monetary good in the digital age.
All of “crypto” pretenters focused on speed, app building, and being less “energy intensive” have completely missed the plot and have relegated themselves to a hedonistic odd sand box filled with degenerate gamblers and low energy thinkers.
Bitcoin has already won because it has won the energy game.
This energy game is what will protect Bitcoin’s monetary policy in the long-run, being strongly incentivized by full nodes to do so.
Very few understand this and very few will ever understand that !!!
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: transaction management and money issuance are carried out collectively by the network.
The original Bitcoin software by Satoshi Nakamoto was released under the MIT license. Most client software, derived or “from scratch”, also use open source licensing.
The currency began use in 2009 when its implementation was released as open-source software.
Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services, but the real-world value of the coins is extremely volatile.
Bitcoin is the first successful implementation of a distributed crypto-currency, described in part in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list. Building upon the notion that money is any object, or any sort of record, accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context, Bitcoin is designed around the idea of using cryptography to control the creation and transfer of money, rather than relying on central authorities.
Bitcoins have all the desirable properties of a money-like good. They are portable, durable, divisible, recognizable, fungible, scarce and difficult to counterfeit.
Bitcoin has been criticized for its use in illegal transactions, the large amount of electricity (and thus carbon footprint) used by mining, price volatility, and thefts from exchanges.
Some economists and commentators have characterized it as a speculative bubble at various times.
Bitcoin has also been used as an investment, although several regulatory agencies have issued investor alerts about bitcoin.
Bitcoin is P2P electronic cash that is valuable over legacy systems because of the monetary autonomy it brings to its users.
Bitcoin seeks to address the root problem with conventional currency: all the trust that’s required to make it work — Not that justified trust is a bad thing, but trust makes systems brittle, opaque, and costly to operate.
Trust failures result in systemic collapses, trust curation creates inequality and monopoly lock-in, and naturally arising trust choke-points can be abused to deny access to due process.
Through the use of cryptographic proof, decentralized networks and open source software Bitcoin minimizes and replaces these trust costs.
Permissionless and borderless. The software can be installed by anybody worldwide.
Anonymous. Bitcoin does not require any ID to use making it suitable for the unbanked, the privacy-conscious, computers or people in areas with underdeveloped financial infrastructure.
No counterparty risk. If you keep the private key of a bitcoin secret and the transaction has enough confirmations, then nobody can take them from you no matter for what reason, no matter how good the excuse, no matter what.
Can be under divided possession with Multisignature. For example with a 2-of-3 multisig scheme there would be three private keys, of which any two is enough to spend the money. Those three keys can be spread anywhere, perhaps in multiple locations or known by multiple people. No other asset does this, for example you cannot hold gold coins under multisig.
What is Bitcoin?
People’s Currency
A. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency. Peer-to-peer means that no central authority issues new money or tracks transactions. These tasks are managed collectively by the network.
What is Bitcoin
How does Bitcoin work?
Bitcoin Genesis BlockAsics Mining Farm
A. Bitcoin uses public-key cryptography, peer-to-peer networking, and proof-of-work to process and verify payments. Bitcoins are sent (or signed over) from one address to another with each user potentially having many, many addresses. Each payment transaction is broadcast to the network and included in the blockchain so that the included bitcoins cannot be spent twice. After an hour or two, each transaction is locked in time by the massive amount of processing power that continues to extend the blockchain. Using these techniques, Bitcoin provides a fast and extremely reliable payment network that anyone can use.
In a first, Bitcoin developers have done something amazing amid the criticism over the lightning network and issues associated with it. A team of developers has made an international payment using the radio … Continue reading International payment using the radio waves→
My inspiration for this page was given to me by my new aquired friend, a fellow Truth Seeker – Joris and to whom I dedicate this page… Wish you… as well as to … Continue reading Discipline Quotes→
Bitcoin white paper turns 15 and the Legacy of Satoshi Nakamoto lives on. “I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party,” Satoshi Oct. 31, … Continue reading Bitcoin White Paper turn 15→
The Times 03/Jan/2009WikileaksLost coinsTransaction feesAnonymous vs. Pseudonymousbitcoin’s convenience against credit cardsScarce assetGenerate new bitcoin addressNot having bitcoin would be the net wasteInflation vs. Deflation in bitcoinPotential for a positive feedback loop…gain a new territory of freedom…E-currency based on cryptographic proofAttractive to the libertarian viewpointRoot problem with conventional currency
” It isn’t obvious that the world had to work this way.
But somehow the universe smiles on encryption.”
Julian Assange
Nobody yet knows for sure if the universe’s smile is genuine or not.
It is possible that our assumption of mathematical asymmetries is wrong and we find that P actually equals NP, or we find surprisingly quick solutions to specific problems which we currently assume to be hard.
If that should be the case, cryptography as we know it will cease to exist, and the implications would most likely change the world beyond recognition.
“Vires in Numeris”
=
“Strength in Numbers”
epii
Vires in numeris is not only a catchy motto used by bitcoiners.
The realization that there is an unfathomable strength to be found in numbers is a profound one.
Understanding this, and the inversion of existing power balances which it enables changed my view of the world and the future which lies ahead of us.
One direct result of this is the fact that you don’t have to ask anyone for permission to participate in Bitcoin.
There is no page to sign up, no company in charge, no government agency to send application forms to.
Simply generate a large number and you are pretty much good to go.
The central authority of account creation is mathematics.
Bitcoin is built upon our best understanding of reality.
While there are still many open problems in physics, computer science, and mathematics, we are pretty sure about some things.
That there is an asymmetry between finding solutions and validating the correctness of these solutions is one such thing.
That computation needs energy is another one.
In other words: finding a needle in a haystack is harder than checking if the pointy thing in your hand is indeed a needle or not.
And finding the needle takes work.
The vastness of Bitcoin’s address space is truly mind-boggling.
The number of private keys even more so. It is fascinating how much of our modern world boils down to the improbability of finding a needle in an unfathomably large haystack.
I am now more aware of this fact than ever.
Bitcoin taught me that there is strength in numbers.
A successful attack on Bitcoin means attacking Bitcoin’s value.
There might well be a bug that could be exploited to put the network out of commission temporarily, but would soon be fixed and then the network would be up and running shortly thereafter.
To destroy Bitcoin permanently means to end the profit opportunities available with it, and that means either a malicious hashing attack on the network that makes mining impossible or such a malevolent policy against Bitcoin trade that even the black market abandons it.
Both of these require spending resources in proportion to the profits that Bitcoin enables.
In this article, I will discuss three reasons why such an attack is unlikely to succeed: antifragility, subtlety, and attacker defection.
The interplay of these three defenses makes Bitcoin into a kind of wave that rewards those who ride it and drowns those who resist it.
The first of these, antifragility, is exemplified in the fact that malicious hashing is impossible up to a certain fraction of the network.
Below the point that selfish mining becomes possible1 additional hashes per second are almost certainly beneficial because they increase the security of the network.
Any potential attacker, therefore, must weigh in the possibility that he may end up benefiting the network instead of destroying it.
A similar risk accompanies a legal attack on Bitcoin. Bitcoin can adapt to half-hearted attacks. It would move deeper into the black market where it would become permanently strengthened.
Furthermore, a legal attack could be easily corrupted into one that brings as many bitcoins as possible to the government agents instead of one that destroys it (see below).
Bitcoin’s Subtlety
Bitcoin adoption happens one person at a time, and this is true for potential attackers as well as the rest of us.
It takes an entrepreneurial mindset to be able to imagine what Bitcoin could become, given how comparatively small it is now.
It takes time and meditation for people to take Bitcoin seriously because most of its value is in the future.
By the time this happens, Bitcoin has become much more expensive than when they first learned of it.
Thus, Bitcoin is protected from attackers by being initially beyond their understanding.
When Bitcoin was very small, it was very stealthy and was completely unknown to the establishment.
Now they laugh at it, just as it has begun to grow bold.
Of course, we don’t know who really dismisses it and who is deliberately trying to draw attention away from it.
Bitcoin’s Allure
Furthermore, potential attackers are at a disadvantage for another reason.
Bitcoin tends to oppose organizations rather than people.
Even someone who stands to lose from Bitcoin by not reacting to it, such as a banker or government agent, stands to gain a great deal by buying now.
Only the very wealthiest people might reasonably expect to be worse off attempting to buy up as much as possible now than if it were gone. (This could happen if their attempt to buy caused the price to rise too fast relative to their ability to acquire additional bitcoins, to the point that they ultimately had less influence over the future Bitcoin economy than they have over the economy of today.)
Thus, the agency problem with Bitcoin affects bitcoin competitors as well as Bitcoin holders.
Nearly any government agent who begins to see bitcoin as a potential threat must also simultaneously see it as an opportunity.
He, too, can invest in Bitcoin. And why shouldn’t he?
Bitcoin may be a threat to his livelihood, but it may well be making him an offer he can’t refuse.
How can an organization that stands to lose by the adoption of Bitcoin provide its members with a better opportunity for staying loyal than Bitcoin provides for defection?
Even those who might resist the temptation to defect would have to think about the defection of his fellows.
How quickly is adoption happening? Is there time to mount an attack before Bitcoin becomes too powerful? How easily could the resources for such an attack be amassed, given both the ignorance and treachery of the other agents.
If such an attack would be unlikely to succeed, then buying now would be the only intelligent action.
Regardless of whether he liked Bitcoin, it would be futile to continue pursuing a doomed cause.
In the same way that the people cannot easily rebel against the king owing to a lack of coordination on their part, governments cannot rebel against Bitcoin for the same reason.
The government puts the people in a Prisoner’s Dilemma against one another, and Bitcoin does the same to government agents.
Bitcoin is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Bitcoin attracts inside men to act as covert saboteurs. There have long been predictions from both bitcoiners and naysayers of impending government attacks, but I think there is a possibility that Bitcoin could win without suffering much resistance.
Moreover, although I said above only that any legal bitcoin attack could be perverted, the considerations discussed in this section tend to make such diffusion very likely.
Bitcoin defends itself by being obscure, but once it has attracted someone’s attention, its best interest is for that person to understand the logic presented here. For then he will also understand that his best course is to deny Bitcoin’s threat to his superiors and quietly to become its willing slave.
Right now Bitcoin Core does not follow the proper strategy to protect against selfish mining even at very low hashing rates, but the fix would be extremely easy to implement and would make selfish mining impossible up to 25% of the hash rate. ↩
Hashrate (Hash per second, h/s) is an SI-derived unit representing the number of double SHA-256 computations performed in one second in the bitcoin network for cryptocurrency mining.
Hashrate is also called as hashing power. It is usually symbolized as h/s (with an appropriate SI prefix).
What is hashing power or hash rate?
The hash rate is the primary measure of a Bitcoin miner‘s performance.
In 2014, a miner’s performance was generally measured in Ghash/s, or billions of hashes per second.
The hash/second unit is also part of a common measure of a Bitcoin miner’s electric efficiency in the term watts /Ghash/s, denoted as W/Ghash/s. As 1 watt is equal to 1 joule/s, this measure can also be expressed as J/Ghash, or joules per 1 billion hashes.
Bitcoin network hash rate
The hash/s is also used in calculations of the Bitcoin network’s overall hash rate. Because each miner or mining pool only relays a solved block to the network, the overall hash rate of the network is calculated based on the time between blocks.
While not an accurate measure of network hash rate at any given instance in time, measurements over longer periods can be considered indicative and similar calculations are used in Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment.
In January 2015, the network hash rate was around 300 Phash/s, or 300 quadrillion hashes per second.
If you compare a bitcoin mining device to one that is designed to mine, for example, Ethereum, you will notice a very large apparent difference in hash rates.
This is because there are many different algorithms that cryptocurrencies use. They all require different amounts of memory and computing power in order to be mined.
To put it simply, bitcoin and its SHA256 algorithm is considered by today standards to be relatively easy to compute. As a result, a mining device that is still relevant today would need to produce hashes in the terahash range and up.
If we were to compare this to Ethereum, you’ll find that most modern Ethereum mining devices (typically GPU’s) operate in the megahash range.
At first glance, you may think that the bitcoin mining device is significantly more powerful or more productive.
While it’s true that it produces more hashes (of the SHA256 variety), this is because bitcoin hashes are easier to produce computationally.
As a consequence, the network difficulty is significantly higher for bitcoin.
To make things even more confusing, some cryptocurrencies intentionally chose algorithms that can only be mined using a basic CPU.
As a result, mining devices for this network that can produce hundreds of hashes per second are considered to be high and very competitive.
So what does all this mean?
Basically, it means that looking at the hash rate alone doesn’t necessarily tell you the effectiveness of the miner.
You also need to understand the network difficulty, and what the norm is for most mining devices for that particular cryptocurrency.
How can I calculate how many hashes I generate per second?
Your problem breaks down nicely into 3 separate tasks:
Sharing a single count variable across threads
Benchmarking thread completion time
Calculating hashes p/sec
Sharing a single count variable across threads
Now that we know that not all hashes are the same we need to know how to calculate the estimated profitability of a miner based on its hash rate.
For this, will need to use a mining profitability calculators, they are available in the Internet.
public static class GlobalCounter
{ public static int Value { get; private set; }
public static void Increment() { Value = GetNextValue(Value); }
private static int GetNextValue(int curValue) { return Interlocked.Increment(ref curValue); }
public static void Reset() { Value = 0; } }
Before you spin off the threads call GlobalCounter.
Reset and then in each thread (after each successful hash) you would call GlobalCounter.
Increment – using Interlocked.X performs atomic operations of Value in a thread-safe manner, it’s also much faster than lock.
In a first, Bitcoin developers have done something amazing amid the criticism over the lightning network and issues associated with it. A team of developers has made an international payment using the radio … Continue reading International payment using the radio waves→
My inspiration for this page was given to me by my new aquired friend, a fellow Truth Seeker – Joris and to whom I dedicate this page… Wish you… as well as to … Continue reading Discipline Quotes→
Bitcoin white paper turns 15 and the Legacy of Satoshi Nakamoto lives on. “I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party,” Satoshi Oct. 31, … Continue reading Bitcoin White Paper turn 15→
March 19, 2013, 08:40:02 PM Last edit: March 25, 2013, 08:37:28 PM by Hal
#1
I thought I’d write about the last four years, an eventful time for Bitcoin and me.
For those who don’t know me, I’m Hal Finney. I got my start in crypto working on an early version of PGP, working closely with Phil Zimmermann. When Phil decided to start PGP Corporation, I was one of the first hires. I would work on PGP until my retirement.
At the same time, I got involved with the Cypherpunks. I ran the first cryptographically based anonymous remailer, among other activities.
Fast forward to late 2008 and the announcement of Bitcoin.
I’ve noticed that cryptographic graybeards (I was in my mid 50’s) tend to get cynical. I was more idealistic; I have always loved crypto, the mystery and the paradox of it.
When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, he got a skeptical reception at best. Cryptographers have seen too many grand schemes by clueless noobs. They tend to have a knee jerk reaction.
I was more positive. I had long been interested in cryptographic payment schemes.
Plus I was lucky enough to meet and extensively correspond with both Wei Dai and Nick Szabo, generally acknowledged to have created ideas that would be realized with Bitcoin.
I had made an attempt to create my own proof of work based currency, called RPOW. So I found Bitcoin facinating.
When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away.
I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin.
I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test.
I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.
Today, Satoshi’s true identity has become a mystery. But at the time, I thought I was dealing with a young man of Japanese ancestry who was very smart and sincere.
I’ve had the good fortune to know many brilliant people over the course of my life, so I recognize the signs.
After a few days, bitcoin was running pretty stably, so I left it running.
Those were the days when difficulty was 1, and you could find blocks with a CPU, not even a GPU.
I mined several blocks over the next days. But I turned it off because it made my computer run hot, and the fan noise bothered me.
In retrospect, I wish I had kept it up longer, but on the other hand I was extraordinarily lucky to be there at the beginning.
It’s one of those glass half full half empty things.
The next I heard of Bitcoin was late 2010, when I was surprised to find that it was not only still going, bitcoins actually had monetary value.
I dusted off my old wallet, and was relieved to discover that my bitcoins were still there.
As the price climbed up to real money, I transferred the coins into an offline wallet, where hopefully they’ll be worth something to my heirs.
Speaking of heirs, I got a surprise in 2009, when I was suddenly diagnosed with a fatal disease. I was in the best shape of my life at the start of that year, I’d lost a lot of weight and taken up distance running. I’d run several half marathons, and I was starting to train for a full marathon. I worked my way up to 20+ mile runs, and I thought I was all set. That’s when everything went wrong.
My body began to fail. I slurred my speech, lost strength in my hands, and my legs were slow to recover.
In August, 2009, I was given the diagnosis of ALS, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease, after the famous baseball player who got it.
ALS is a disease that kills moter neurons, which carry signals from the brain to the muscles. It causes first weakness, then gradually increasing paralysis. It is usually fatal in 2 to 5 years.
My symptoms were mild at first and I continued to work, but fatigue and voice problems forced me to retire in early 2011. Since then the disease has continued its inexorable progression.
Today, I am essentially paralyzed. I am fed through a tube, and my breathing is assisted through another tube. I operate the computer using a commercial eyetracker system. It also has a speech synthesizer, so this is my voice now. I spend all day in my power wheelchair. I worked up an interface using an arduino so that I can adjust my wheelchair’s position using my eyes.
It has been an adjustment, but my life is not too bad. I can still read, listen to music, and watch TV and movies. I recently discovered that I can even write code. It’s very slow, probably 50 times slower than I was before. But I still love programming and it gives me goals.
Currently I’m working on something Mike Hearn suggested, using the security features of modern processors, designed to support “Trusted Computing”, to harden Bitcoin wallets. It’s almost ready to release. I just have to do the documentation.
And of course the price gyrations of bitcoins are entertaining to me. I have skin in the game. But I came by my bitcoins through luck, with little credit to me. I lived through the crash of 2011. So I’ve seen it before. Easy come, easy go.
That’s my story. I’m pretty lucky overall. Even with the ALS, my life is very satisfying. But my life expectancy is limited. Those discussions about inheriting your bitcoins are of more than academic interest.
My bitcoins are stored in our safe deposit box, and my son and daughter are tech savvy. I think they’re safe enough. I’m comfortable with my legacy. [edited slightly] “
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