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Re: Reducing block time

If you do, then the vendors will ask how many blocks are now needed to aquire the same security as before, and will wait for twice as many blocks compared to today. The number of blocks or speed of the blocks are not a measure of security, block difficulty * number of blocks on top is.

Half the time needed, and block difficulty will be halved as well, and the end result is that you would still need to same amount of "time" to pass to aquire similar security.

Re: Bitcoin costs $30-$50 per transaction?

To be clear: to the average joe, a "cost per transaction" metric is scalable with the number of transactions - therefor the current metric which does not just have to be renamed. It's just ridiculous.

Re: Bitcoin costs $30-$50 per transaction?

@cryptonaut I brought this up on /r/bitcoin and got it on the front page actually :) http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2e9dna/blockchaininfo_should_changerename_the_stat_cost/

One commenter makes a good analogy. Its like making a stat for drivers called "registration fees per mile". Driver registration fees are more or less fixed, so the only way to optimize this "cost" is by driving more nad more miles. Doesnt really tell you anything meaningful at all

I much more like this comment:

It's a cost (inflation) that is not incurred per transaction and therefore it is misleading to report it as a per transaction cost.

If we have 1 transaction in a block, or the maximum possible in a block with current block sizes, makes for quite some volatility in that broken measurement.

Also, referencing the network cost per block in a fiat is rather odd. All fees and rewards are in BTC, and the price volatility of BTC makes it highly uninteresting to look at the current formula to get an idea of how cheap the system is.

In fact, the most common fallacy here is assuming that the bitcoin network costs X per transaction, so as if we get one more transaction it suddenly costs 2X. And with people screaming that X = ~$40 we're being done a great disservice - as if we do two transactions the cost really REALLY isn't ~$80.

Re: How VAT on bitcoin will be handled in EU?

@cryptonaut @crimsonroze the suggestions on this link appear to work for separating quotes also: http://stackoverflow.com/a/13066620

Yes, but how much effort will it take to educate your growing userbase on how to use hacks to get around weaknesses in the markdown platform? (this really aught to be a separate topic, btw)

Re: How VAT on bitcoin will be handled in EU?

@cryptonaut I made it into a bullet list for you, any better?

Better - yes. Good? - I'll manage, but making a bullet list just to get some spaces so I can qoute properly seems abusive.

Anyway, thanks for making it readable.

Re: How VAT on bitcoin will be handled in EU?

I now officially hate markdown.

@cryptonaut

How VAT on bitcoin will be handled in EU?

There is an ongoing case in EU as regards how to handle VAT and one of the parties in the case posted a blog entry about how he cannot afford financing the lawyers needed to move forward:

The case: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsessionid=9ea7d2dc30d68acbbd94962a46ba848f8c05795c02d6.e34KaxiLc3qMb40Rch0SaxuOaxj0?text=&docid=154888&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=110847

• As some of you may already know there is an ongoing case regarding Bitcoin and VAT exemption in Sweden and the EU. The Supreme Administrative Court (“Högsta förvaltningsdomstolen”) has now requested a preliminary ruling from the EU Court of Justice. The case, C-264/14, can be found here and has been covered quite a lot in media (Bloomberg, Law360, CoinDesk).

• I got involved in this simply by asking for an advance ruling in Sweden because I wanted to start selling bitcoin on my site bitcoin.se. It has now escalated and I find myself in a situation where my case will likely decide if and how VAT should be applied to Bitcoin throughout the EU.

• It took me a while to realize the significance of this case and I have to appoint a top law firm team here in Sweden that can prepare a written submission (and we’re short on time here – this has to be done in 3 weeks) as well as a potential oral hearing later on. The Swedish counsel will also cooperate with interested parties throughout Europe to get input and support from other European countries if deemed necessary. I am currently discussing with teams at three of Swedens top firms in VAT and EU-law. After asking about the costs I have received fee estimates that range from 22 000 to 38 000 EUR (approximately 56 to 96 bitcoin at the time of writing).

• So here is my problem. There is no way that I can finance this personally. I don’t have enough commercial interest in the case to throw all of my savings on it, the business that we wanted to start on bitcoin.se has not been launched so there is no money there. This is why I am now reaching out to the Bitcoin community.

• Disclaimer: Donating is in no way a guarantee that we will win the case but if I can’t raise the money the risks are dramatically increased that I will lose since I will have to deal with the court proceedings on my own (which one of the parties I have discussed the case with has described as “catastrophical” for Bitcoin in Europe).

• If the donated money is in excess of the costs I will donate the excess funds to Bitcoin organizations in Europe. If, for some reason, none of the funds raised are used I will return all bitcoins to the sender address (so make sure that you donate from an address that you control!)

• Please send your donations to this Bitcoin address 1EyosiaYh9gVEP7VKPTyrFGSSoS8QDSsbb

• About me My name is David Hedqvist and have been running bitcoin.se since early 2012. I am a moderator of the Scandinavian forum section at bitcointalk.org and I have also been a moderator at bitcoin.stackexchange.com since its launch.

• I will post this message on bitcoin.se, on bitcointalk.org where my name is D.H. and on Reddit where my name is DH. If you read about the case on curia.europa.eu or in media you can confirm that the case is about David Hedqvist and bitcoin.se. Feel free to send me a PM or an e-mail to [email protected] if you have any questions.

• You may also contact Dr. Thaer Sabri ([email protected]), Chief Executive of Electronic Money Association, to confirm the legitimacy of this fund raiser.

Re: Bitcoin costs $30-$50 per transaction?

@tim-swanson The long and the short of it is, without the block reward subsidy, miners will leave. We will see this occur in about 2 years with the block reward halving.

Yes, without incentives to construct the infrastructure the infrastructure won't get constructed. This does not mean that the cost of transactions on the infrastructure is $30+ per transaction.

Re: The next two weeks worth of LTBCOIN

@jayek Can we trust this @Cryptonaut character, after all he is Canadian ;)

I dunno, seems a bit shady to me. I mean, he hasn't abused things so far and he does have access to alot of the source code running the site and could probably play around with the numbers but...

maybe he's an evil diabolical genius and just waiting for things to inflate and grow in size properly before he runs off with them tokens? :P

Either way it's a user-created-asset, it's not a decentralized asset. This is how it works :)

Bitcoin costs $30-$50 per transaction?

if I set out to hold a party every tuesday afternoon and have a budget of $100 per party, and a budget for marketing of $900 and use those $900 to build the social infrastructure then the cost of the party did not raise. The cost of awareness and infrastructure did.

You keep raising the point that a bitcoin transaction costs a ridicilous amounts of dollars to achieve and it's just plain wrong. The block rewards are a marketing tool to ensure that people build the infrastructure - not to ensure that people confirm the transactions. A single pi server can most likely server the entire network today if it weren't for the fact that the system is designed to promote building a system of a scale much larger than we actaully need in the first hundred years or so.

If an employee of a bank gets sick and the bank incurs higher management costs it doesn't mean that the banks automated service network suddenly got more expensive - it means that the banks employee management costs did. Bitcoins block reward is in a different budget, allocated for a different purpose and you mash them up and make it look like transactions in the bitcoin network are expensive. They're not.

Building the underlying global attack-proof infrastructure needed to get the other 99.9% of the population onboard is expensive. That's why there is a block reward.