Bitcoins - anyone else mining? (1 Viewer)

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 20, 2013

Cliff Clavin said:
Hilts said:

DrJ is dropping a staggering level of knowledge in this thread. Amazing work!

Click to expand...

Dropping knowledge on Bitcoin, yes. But wasting time arguing with Jojo shows an incredible lack of knowledge.

Educating one fool at a time.

DrJ · Dec 20, 2013

Another strange anomaly in the data - during the crash of 2011, you were seeing days where almost all of the currency was moving in a single day? 3 million BTC, 5 million BTC.

https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

This is especially odd when you consider that even as of May of 2012 there were only 40 addresses capable of moving gigantic amounts, and all transactions over 50K originated back to a single large 90K transaction made during that late 2010 anomaly...

DrJ · Dec 20, 2013

Also, if you look at those stats you can also clearly see that literally almost 0 of these traded in 2009. There were a couple of transactions in that intial testing phase, then you go months with no transactions whatsoever. Just a bunch of guys mining like crazy and hording. It does look possible that the one guy claiming to have bought 5000 of them actually did so late in the year, but he was probably about the ONLY person to get any of them because there's still almost none traded throughout the entire year. The idea that these were ever traded "for 1300 on the dollar" is quite clearly a myth. There's some light trading in 2010, especially right around the Slashdot article, but nothing very big until the late 2010 anomalies where all of the sudden we see a couple hundred K move from the 90K loop and the start of the first giant run up.

DrJ · Dec 20, 2013

The other thing you have to figure is these ASIC manufacturers have a strong vested interest in keeping this all going. They're selling millions upon millions in mining stuff, but if somehow the price drops below it being "profitable" no one is going to want to buy their useless hardware. And they definitely don't want to unleash a bunch of power on people too fast - number one that's bad for the network of people all in this to "play nice", and #2 it's way better if I can charge for incremental increases in technology the entire way, and "cloud mining" and all of this stuff. So they keep the stuff super back ordered, charge for it slowly, and caveat everything with "your results may be way different by the time we release this to our bitcoin masters first. That's the part that's great about having complete control of the 'printing presses', ya know".

DrJ · Dec 20, 2013

From a March 2013 article - ASIC Mining Profits Will Be Gone By Summer

http://bitcoininsight.com/2013/03/24/asic-mining-profits-will-be-gone-by-summer/

So - the first people they gave these to (hey bitcoin mogul, good buddy, good pal) made a pile of money. And we of course rake in millions on the hardware. But then batch 2, 3, etc weren't going to get anything. UNLESS....the price jacks up some more. But now, we have this new batch of ASICs coming. And the first people to get these will be super rich (hey bitcoin mogul, good buddy, good pal). But you batch 2 and 3 suckers, heh. Did I mention we do "cloud mining". And now we have these miner's that are so powerful you can't even use your home's power supply to do more than 2 of them. And the year after, we've got some that won't even power off of a standard home's power supply in the US, but in Europe it works. If this doesn't all come crumbling down between now and then of course...

But really, don't worry too much and that technical crap. We're just trying to mint a new world currency that helps protect the "common man's" assets from being eroded. And just think, all you need is 1 and you'll be sure to be one of the 21 million richest people in the world. Out of billions. Which isn't too shabby.

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 20, 2013

DrJ said:
The other thing you have to figure is these ASIC manufacturers have a strong vested interest in keeping this all going. They're selling millions upon millions in mining stuff, but if somehow the price drops below it being "profitable" no one is going to want to buy their useless hardware. And they definitely don't want to unleash a bunch of power on people too fast - number one that's bad for the network of people all in this to "play nice", and #2 it's way better if I can charge for incremental increases in technology the entire way, and "cloud mining" and all of this stuff. So they keep the stuff super back ordered, charge for it slowly, and caveat everything with "your results may be way different by the time we release this to our bitcoin masters first. That's the part that's great about having complete control of the 'printing presses', ya know".

So it's a bubble.

It's a ponzi scheme.

It's a scam.

It's a hoax.

and now...

It's one huge conspiracy to make multiple vendors millions of dollars!

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 20, 2013

DrJ said:
From a March 2013 article - ASIC Mining Profits Will Be Gone By Summer

http://bitcoininsight.com/2013/03/24/asic-mining-profits-will-be-gone-by-summer/

So - the first people they gave these to (hey bitcoin mogul, good buddy, good pal) made a pile of money. And we of course rake in millions on the hardware. But then batch 2, 3, etc weren't going to get anything. UNLESS....the price jacks up some more. But now, we have this new batch of ASICs coming. And the first people to get these will be super rich (hey bitcoin mogul, good buddy, good pal). But you batch 2 and 3 suckers, heh. Did I mention we do "cloud mining". And now we have these miner's that are so powerful you can't even use your home's power supply to do more than 2 of them. And the year after, we've got some that won't even power off of a standard home's power supply in the US, but in Europe it works. If this doesn't all come crumbling down between now and then of course...

But really, don't worry too much and that technical crap. We're just trying to mint a new world currency that helps protect the "common man's" assets from being eroded. And just think, all you need is 1 and you'll be sure to be one of the 21 million richest people in the world. Out of billions. Which isn't too shabby.

You seem really bitter about this.

Maybe you should buy yourself a dozer, ship it down to Africa and mine gold since that is so easy to make money. After all everyone should have easy access to mine their way to riches, right?

Kool-Aid Larry · Dec 20, 2013

I thought they buy africans to mine gold

DrJ · Dec 20, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
DrJ said:

From a March 2013 article - ASIC Mining Profits Will Be Gone By Summer

http://bitcoininsight.com/2013/03/24/asic-mining-profits-will-be-gone-by-summer/

So - the first people they gave these to (hey bitcoin mogul, good buddy, good pal) made a pile of money. And we of course rake in millions on the hardware. But then batch 2, 3, etc weren't going to get anything. UNLESS....the price jacks up some more. But now, we have this new batch of ASICs coming. And the first people to get these will be super rich (hey bitcoin mogul, good buddy, good pal). But you batch 2 and 3 suckers, heh. Did I mention we do "cloud mining". And now we have these miner's that are so powerful you can't even use your home's power supply to do more than 2 of them. And the year after, we've got some that won't even power off of a standard home's power supply in the US, but in Europe it works. If this doesn't all come crumbling down between now and then of course...

But really, don't worry too much and that technical crap. We're just trying to mint a new world currency that helps protect the "common man's" assets from being eroded. And just think, all you need is 1 and you'll be sure to be one of the 21 million richest people in the world. Out of billions. Which isn't too shabby.

Click to expand...

You seem really bitter about this.

Maybe you should buy yourself a dozer, ship it down to Africa and mine gold since that is so easy to make money. After all everyone should have easy access to mine their way to riches, right?

I thought the idea behind this was that we were getting our assets devalued by a small group of people and this is supposed to somehow be better. Oh wait, that was last year.

Slapdash · Dec 20, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
DrJ said:

From a March 2013 article - ASIC Mining Profits Will Be Gone By Summer

http://bitcoininsight.com/2013/03/24/asic-mining-profits-will-be-gone-by-summer/

So - the first people they gave these to (hey bitcoin mogul, good buddy, good pal) made a pile of money. And we of course rake in millions on the hardware. But then batch 2, 3, etc weren't going to get anything. UNLESS....the price jacks up some more. But now, we have this new batch of ASICs coming. And the first people to get these will be super rich (hey bitcoin mogul, good buddy, good pal). But you batch 2 and 3 suckers, heh. Did I mention we do "cloud mining". And now we have these miner's that are so powerful you can't even use your home's power supply to do more than 2 of them. And the year after, we've got some that won't even power off of a standard home's power supply in the US, but in Europe it works. If this doesn't all come crumbling down between now and then of course...

But really, don't worry too much and that technical crap. We're just trying to mint a new world currency that helps protect the "common man's" assets from being eroded. And just think, all you need is 1 and you'll be sure to be one of the 21 million richest people in the world. Out of billions. Which isn't too shabby.

Click to expand...

You seem really bitter about this.

Maybe you should buy yourself a dozer, ship it down to Africa and mine gold since that is so easy to make money. After all everyone should have easy access to mine their way to riches, right?

How much money have you made off the link in your sig?

DrJ · Dec 20, 2013

DrJ · Dec 20, 2013

So when they say "50 users have 50% of the money" - realize that they guys have taken steps to transfer the money they do have all over the place so it isn't sitting in one account and you're really understating the case just using the "top 100 addresses". It's far more horrible than that.

DrJ · Dec 20, 2013

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

This looks like one of the pass through accounts (this account receives some big amounts and then passes them along immediately. This is probably to obscure things a bit). Some of these chains you follow and they are clearly using them to sell off little bits at a time, then it merges into an account like this. https://blockchain.info/address/1F9kYDpu2CqwR18ovineZr8Y88NQfW1bzR

Then you follow a chain off of this one - I went with the 10K guy on 6/13.

https://blockchain.info/address/1GUpVovSGu67qdoVajwSUVYT7b4yejweEe

If you look at some of these accounts they're selling to, first guy this account traded with showed up on 5/31 and made it's last transaction 6/16. Next account it sold to makes his only transactions on 6/13 never to be seen from again. Next one - another account that does some trades on 6/13 then cashes out never to be seen from again. Next one makes some transactions on 6/13 and 6/14 never to be seen from again. Next one, same thing - some transactions on 6/13 never to be seen from again. 2 after that - 6/13 only. One after that - 6/13 only. One after that - again 6/13 only. I'm sure this is all just bizarre coincidence though that so much of what you follow through this trail looks just entirely strange. No funny business here at all.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

This account almost seems like an admission of what they're doing. Collects up about 70K in misc transactions and then transfers it out with this message:

https://blockchain.info/address/1BBqjKsYuLEUE9Y5WzdbzCtYzCiQgHqtPN

Public Note: SR mixer. Send to 15pguQEAYtLGwqdqggkK2rRcmmkJweSX68 to have mixed and bounced back. 1.2% fee. 5-10 minutes.

Here we have a nice 40K account doing the same stuff: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000238ea0d47ec27881defbf83457b5051538fa07ae6deaa3f156a

That one leads us to another goofy SR mixer account. Which has a lot of the same goofy messages that are in the one where the 70K transfer went.

https://blockchain.info/address/16cou7Ht6WjTzuFyDBnht9hmvXytg6XdVT

This is the one where the goofy 70K transfer went - same messages: https://blockchain.info/address/1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Looking at some more recent transactions so we know Jojo is right and this was all part of the past but today is on the up and up - here's a 5Kish transaction from today:

https://blockchain.info/address/1BENqU4CMEPwnp3R4A3inos2UNmRJ677uo

I follow that back and it brings me through this trail of money laundering accounts that slowly broke this into 5K accounts in March of 2011. Eventually ending in this account: https://blockchain.info/address/1NMDHMGjJBZjNfAEjvASPjUvT5kwFsHe9U

And what's really strange about that account is it received/sent out a bunch of BTC in February to March of 2011 that all coincidentally happened to be the exact same amounts send and received.

Let's take a look at another transaction. I'm just going to grab another random one around this 4K mark - there's a bunch of them in this block just a short bit ago where an abnormal pile of money just all of the sudden moves: https://blockchain.info/block-index/451760

So here's another one:

https://blockchain.info/address/12psyn7ZkSfDEbhaaSFGyEG758ziZVg2xN

Gee, this one leads me through a bunch of money laundering accounts from the same day in March of 2011.

And imagine that - it actually brings me back to the same exact address as the last one:

https://blockchain.info/address/1NMDHMGjJBZjNfAEjvASPjUvT5kwFsHe9U

This has all got to be a giant coincidence. Let's try again.

https://blockchain.info/address/1Miy5sJZSamDZN6xcJJidp9zYxhSrpDeJm

Gee, this one leads me though a bunch of money laundering accounts from right around that time in March of 2011 yet again.

It does actually end at a different address, one that again coincidentally did all it's trading around the exact same time and has a few in/out transactions all in the exact same amounts across said period.

https://blockchain.info/address/1Miy5sJZSamDZN6xcJJidp9zYxhSrpDeJm

Crazy, this can't be. One more time:

https://blockchain.info/address/1C3RkzSx7bBoF7qqVAqsguw3MHetJW8HTA

Again leads you back through a bunch of laundering accounts from early March of 2011. Imagine that. So I end up here: https://blockchain.info/address/1NMDHMGjJBZjNfAEjvASPjUvT5kwFsHe9U

Now, let's follow the 150K.

And I end up back at this aggregation account where the money had been separated to a number of addresses but all comes back together again: https://blockchain.info/address/1AYtnRppWM7tWQaVLpm7TvcHKrjKxgCRvX

It seems that any time you see a big amount of these move you can be assured you can follow the chain back to a pile of goofiness like this... I'm pretty prepared to say that the people that created and run this need to be brought up on some charges and rot in prison for the rest of their lives. This is plain and simple fraud. And these are genius level dudes with advanced mathematical capabilities who pour over these numbers, there's absolutely no way something like this could have happened without them being a direct part of this or at least noticing and being a willing accomplice. They didn't just knowingly create a deflationary system that benefited them, that wasn't even enough, they've clearly gone out of their way to either manipulate it or allow it to be manipulated, and this continues to present day.

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

So you have no context for any particular transaction, your exercise is futile, you are wasting your time.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Yeah, let's watch where these transactions all go - like the big ones from today that I traced back. Something tells me they have a strong chance of all ending up back in the same place again. Because there's unlikely to be 20 suckers all at the exact same moment sinking 4 million dollars a piece into this thing, only to watch the value of the bitcoin drop off sharply right afterwards.

It's pretty funny to look at the chain on some of these early blocks as well. A lot of the early Finney blocks seem to be sitting there idle, just a bunch of addresses holding a single block of 50 since inception. When you get to around the 20K's you start to see a lot of them that move. Typical pattern is - it gets aggregated into some big account because there were only a few guys at that point and they all have these gigantic amounts. Those might get aggregated into some bigger account still, which gets split out into some smaller accounts. And usually a lot of this activity happens on days where this runs up. A lot of times you'll see some tiny pieces being sold during the periods of really high action. Only to see the coins all inevitably make it back into some gigantic pool again.

There's a couple of trails you can follow to find accounts where people seem to be actively using them in small amounts and racking up transactions over the life of the system. But VERY few. But by and large you follow them and you end up in a situation where you giant piles get moved over and over and over again, and most of the bits that get broken off to give to the masses end up going back into one of the giant piles.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Here's another funny one. Maybe you can explain this account's motivation for doing something like this. There's transaction fees and stuff today, right? (Unless you control the whole network and collect almost all of those fees)

4 pages of buying some up, and then selling them up right afterwards. Starting at about 25 of them and increasing rapidly as of late to amounts over 2000. Sometimes as short as 3-5 minutes after they bought them. https://blockchain.info/address/1F1sfcDMYDphhW9Btzrbvrd1GqhyzRneAP?offset=150&filter=0

And if you look at some of the accounts it was engaging in this with, they were doing the same thing: https://blockchain.info/address/1En64bMBvmNh27Lk7TUCMkJrAXsW1jk6uh?offset=50&filter=0

So why would someone do that? Give me any context where that makes sense other than trying to manufacture trades.

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

These are all anonymous transactions, you have absolutely no context of what is going on so you assume someone is trading bitcoins for dollars on some exchange and is manipulating the price?

You are off your rocker, but keep at it, I'm sure you'll have this whole thing figured out in no time. :rolleyes:

It's probably a merchant for all we know - people pay in bitcoin and the merchant takes no liability so the exact amount is converted into dollars immediately afterwards.

...and/or they could be gambling, you know there are a bunch of bitcoin gambling sites? Here's that address that looks like it is placing bets with SatoshiDice (based on the similarly priced transactions w/ comments).

...or it could be an exchange facilitating trades which would explain people buying btc and then that account going idle and not buying anything.

...or it could be a large investor mixing bitcoins across multiple wallets they own...

It could be any number of things, but yeah, I'm sure you're right, must be money laundering or price manipulation. :lmao:

AAABatteries · Dec 21, 2013

DrJ said:
Jojo the circus boy said:

Here's a review of your credible source

Click to expand...

By Jeff Garzik, another creator of the bitcoin and lead developer at BitPay. You've called my credibility, and even chose to raise. Oh my.

Holy #### - I used to work with this guy about 20 years ago. We both went to Georgia Tech and were co-ops with Siemens. Very smart dude.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
These are all anonymous transactions, you have absolutely no context of what is going on so you assume someone is trading bitcoins for dollars on some exchange and is manipulating the price?

You are off your rocker, but keep at it, I'm sure you'll have this whole thing figured out in no time.

It's probably a merchant for all we know - people pay in bitcoin and the merchant takes no liability so the exact amount is converted into dollars immediately afterwards.

...and/or they could be gambling, you know there are a bunch of bitcoin gambling sites? Here's that address that looks like it is placing bets with SatoshiDice (based on the similarly priced transactions w/ comments).

...or it could be an exchange facilitating trades which would explain people buying btc and then that account going idle and not buying anything.

...or it could be a large investor mixing bitcoins across multiple wallets they own...

It could be any number of things, but yeah, I'm sure you're right, must be money laundering or price manipulation.

Only an idiot such as yourself doesn't realize what's going on. If this were a business or pool there would be a lot of small transactions, not a bunch of them for exactly 1000, exactly 2000. The small amounts are much more random in size and move much more randomly, usually finding their way back to a big pile but sometimes not. You find any large transaction, and they all follow this ridiculous pattern where they never stay in one place for long, the accounts they pass through have few transactions and usually these are just transferring amounts in and out quickly. They often go through accounts that like to do business with "indian junkies", "chinese exchange students", and "SR Mixer" accounts. And they aren't anonymous because only about 40 addresses had piles that big. This has been documented by dudes way smarter than any of us (especially you), and completely bears itself out in the chain.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

AAABatteries said:
DrJ said:

Jojo the circus boy said:

Here's a review of your credible source

Click to expand...

By Jeff Garzik, another creator of the bitcoin and lead developer at BitPay. You've called my credibility, and even chose to raise. Oh my.

Click to expand...

Holy #### - I used to work with this guy about 20 years ago. We both went to Georgia Tech and were co-ops with Siemens. Very smart dude.

Now he's into fraud. Small world.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Pretty good blog post (and resulting discussion) by Nick Szabo. He's part of the lineage of "e-gold" supporters and was working on this concept at the same time the 1998 paper was released:

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-long.html

While the security technology is very far from trivial, the "why" was by far the biggest stumbling block -- nearly everybody who heard the general idea thought it was a very bad idea. Myself, Wei Dai, and Hal Finney were the only people I know of who liked the idea (or in Dai's case his related idea) enough to pursue it to any significant extent until Nakamoto (assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai). Only Finney (RPOW) and Nakamoto were motivated enough to actually implement such a scheme.

There's nothing like Nakamoto's incentive-to-market scheme to change minds about these issues. Thanks to RAMs full of coin with "scheduled deflation", there are now no shortage of people willing to argue in its favor.

However, there is a crucial difference between gold and BitCoin: the negative feedback that keeps gold price stable at (actually -- for some reason that I do not quite understand -- below) marginal expected mining effort is that if gold becomes too expensive, more effort will be put into mining thereby increasing supply, while if gold price falls, people stop mining. With BitCoin, there is no such feedback: no matter how much effort is put into BitCoin mining, the rate at which BitCoins emerge is near constant.

Intersted in reading Szabo's "Origins Of Money" piece that he links there. He's definitely someone that likes e-gold, has tons of experience in this area, and has a clear understanding that this was designed to create a rabid frenzy (and make early adopters AKA the guys that made the code) super wealthy in the process.

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

DrJ said:
Jojo the circus boy said:

These are all anonymous transactions, you have absolutely no context of what is going on so you assume someone is trading bitcoins for dollars on some exchange and is manipulating the price?

You are off your rocker, but keep at it, I'm sure you'll have this whole thing figured out in no time.

It's probably a merchant for all we know - people pay in bitcoin and the merchant takes no liability so the exact amount is converted into dollars immediately afterwards.

...and/or they could be gambling, you know there are a bunch of bitcoin gambling sites? Here's that address that looks like it is placing bets with SatoshiDice (based on the similarly priced transactions w/ comments).

...or it could be an exchange facilitating trades which would explain people buying btc and then that account going idle and not buying anything.

...or it could be a large investor mixing bitcoins across multiple wallets they own...

It could be any number of things, but yeah, I'm sure you're right, must be money laundering or price manipulation.

Click to expand...

Only an idiot such as yourself doesn't realize what's going on. The small amounts move much more randomly, usually finding their way back to a big pile but sometimes not. You find any large transaction, and they all follow this ridiculous pattern where they never stay in one place for long, the accounts they pass through have few transactions and usually these are just transferring amounts in and out quickly. They often go through accounts that like to do business with "indian junkies", "chinese exchange students", and "SR Mixer" accounts. And they aren't anonymous because only about 40 addresses had piles that big. They aren't Casinos and Vendors - they are ALL the creator's. This has been documented by dudes way smarter than any of us (especially you), and completely bears itself out in the chain.

Yeah I'm the idiot making ludicrous assumptions based on my paranoid beliefs, you have no ####### clue what is going on here and you are talking out of your ###. You lack the fundamental understanding of how bitcoin is explicitly designed to permit multiple owners, individually and independently adding signatures to a single transaction such as in shared coin pools (web wallets) and change transactions where bitcoins are sent back to the creator. But please continue to post your crap about your paranoid theories, I'm done arguing with someone that does not understand the basic principles and will ignore your posts.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
DrJ said:

Jojo the circus boy said:

These are all anonymous transactions, you have absolutely no context of what is going on so you assume someone is trading bitcoins for dollars on some exchange and is manipulating the price?

You are off your rocker, but keep at it, I'm sure you'll have this whole thing figured out in no time.

It's probably a merchant for all we know - people pay in bitcoin and the merchant takes no liability so the exact amount is converted into dollars immediately afterwards.

...and/or they could be gambling, you know there are a bunch of bitcoin gambling sites? Here's that address that looks like it is placing bets with SatoshiDice (based on the similarly priced transactions w/ comments).

...or it could be an exchange facilitating trades which would explain people buying btc and then that account going idle and not buying anything.

...or it could be a large investor mixing bitcoins across multiple wallets they own...

It could be any number of things, but yeah, I'm sure you're right, must be money laundering or price manipulation.

Click to expand...

Only an idiot such as yourself doesn't realize what's going on. The small amounts move much more randomly, usually finding their way back to a big pile but sometimes not. You find any large transaction, and they all follow this ridiculous pattern where they never stay in one place for long, the accounts they pass through have few transactions and usually these are just transferring amounts in and out quickly. They often go through accounts that like to do business with "indian junkies", "chinese exchange students", and "SR Mixer" accounts. And they aren't anonymous because only about 40 addresses had piles that big. They aren't Casinos and Vendors - they are ALL the creator's. This has been documented by dudes way smarter than any of us (especially you), and completely bears itself out in the chain.

Click to expand...

Yeah I'm the idiot making ludicrous assumptions based on my paranoid beliefs, you have no ####### clue what is going on here and you are talking out of your ###. You lack the fundamental understanding of how bitcoin is explicitly designed to permit multiple owners, individually and independently adding signatures to a single transaction such as in shared coin pools (web wallets) and change transactions where bitcoins are sent back to the creator. But please continue to post your crap about your paranoid theories, I'm done arguing with someone that does not understand the basic principles and will ignore your posts.

None of that actually explains any of this data. You're a moron.

Das Boot · Dec 21, 2013

DrJ, thanks for your posts, have you run across much online discussion about the manipulation you think you have found?

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

It's not just deflation against which BitCoin is defenseless. Given the lack of feedback, it is just as susceptible to inflation:

Suppose that mining costs catch up with market price. Then, for some reason, market price falls as people sell off their BitCoins. Some miners stop. Some may even sell their equipment and quit the network altogether. This will not reduce the supply of BitCoin, just makes the system a bit more fragile. Those who stay in the mining business will see their rate of mining increase, and rationally anticipating further fall in prices, will also increase the rate at which they sell BitCoin, fulfilling their expectation.

People with BitCoin savings liquidate, some businesses stop accepting BitCoin.

BitCoin's market price falls further. The limit is zero. No feedback to stop the ensuing inflation caused by the general shrinking of BitCoin economy. More and more BitCoin chasing fewer goods and services (and currencies).

[icon] · Dec 21, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
So you have no context for any particular transaction, your exercise is futile, you are wasting your time.

JOJO. LOLZ.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Das Boot said:
DrJ, thanks for your posts, have you run across much online discussion about the manipulation you think you have found?

The only thing I've found was the RSA paper I've linked, which I originally found out about from this Ars Technica article: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/78-percent-of-bitcoin-currency-stashed-under-digital-mattress-study-finds/

Here's the full paper again. http://fc13.ifca.ai/proc/1-1.pdf

"We discovered that almost all these large transactions were the descendants of a single large transaction involving 90,000 Bitcoins which took place on November 8th 2010, and that the subgraph of these transactions contains many strange looking chains and fork-merge structures, in which a large balance is either transferred within a few hours through hundreds of temporary intermediate accounts, or split into many small amounts which are sent to different accounts only in order to be recombined shortly afterwards into essentially the same amount in a new account."

It's entirely clear in the chain that this is happening. And they were only calling out transactions greater than 50,000 specifically - following that 500K pile around will find you almost every single transaction over 50K in the entire system's history prior to May 2012, and it'll keep leading you around all the same places. From what I've seen in the chain though, if you run this against 10K or 5K plus transactions it's probably going to look roughly the same (there were only a couple thousand of those types of transactions in their analysis as well - a miniscule figure - and a lot of them obviously have to be part of the movement they describe). Just pick a random transaction for over 10K BTC or 5K BTC in the chain and follow it around, it's about 90% certain you'll see this pattern and will probably run into a bunch of "I am an indian junkie, SR mixer, etc" messages that like to toss around like .00001 BTC, seamingly to help them mark the accounts or something. All of this money basically being run all over the place through loops, merging back together, and then looping all over the place again. And it's still happening - they did this paper in late 2012 and used data from May 2012 and before. Jojo claims "maybe this was happening in the early days when things were immature, but things are so much better now". No, it's the same game - most blocks range between a couple hundred K and a couple million USD in transactions, then you see one where 75 million was done and sure enough there were 20 suckers that all bought about the same amount (4 million USD) and all of the accounts that sold them trace back like this. A bunch of accounts that all weren't active except a couple day period in March of 2011 where they transferred it all over the place a ton of times over the course of a couple days. Usually the account would receive them and dump them within hours or minutes and never be active again. I wish I was a more proficient coder (working on it as I definitely buy into the DevOps movement, but still have a way to go) and I'd consider running a similar analysis with today's data.

From the paper itself:

Fig.1.
The backbone of the graph of almost all largest transactions in the Bitcoin
scheme (those which are larger than 50,000 BTC's). The red letters refer to some of
the most active entities in Bitcoin as listed in Table 7.

Fig.2.
A Sub graph of Fig. 1: A trace back of some flows of BTC's leading to the first
large transaction of 90,000 BTC's on November 8
th
2010

Fig.3.
A Sub graph of Fig. 1: A long chain of transactions where each address puts
aside a small amount of BTC's. Those amounts sum up to 140,000 BTC's

Fig.4.
A Sub graph of Fig. 1: A long chain of transactions where each address transfers
most of its BTC's forward. The rest is distributed in a binary tree-like structure

Fig.5.
A Sub graph of Fig. 1: An entity is sending 90,000 BTC's to itself in a self
loop, then transfers it forward but gets it back via 90 transfers of 1,000 BTC's each,
all carried out on the same day. 31,000 of it is then transferred forward

Fig.6.
A Sub graph of Fig. 1: Large amounts of BTC's are transferred from one
address to another by sending parts of it to intermediate addresses, which are then
being merged into the same destination
.
Fig.7.
A Sub graph of Fig. 1: Large amounts of BTC's are rapidly transferred in a
very long chain of hundreds of transactions in a very short period of time.

Fig.8.
A Sub graph of Fig. 1: A very large amount of BTC's is transferred by splitting
it into equal amounts each directed to a dierent address belonging to the same entity,
then most of the accumulated sums are transferred to a single receiver

Fig.9.
A Sub graph of Fig. 1: A similar scenario as described in Fig. 8 but with more
intermediate addresses.

Fig.10.
A Sub graph of Fig. 1: The largest amount of transferred BTC's is finally
distributed among many addresses via a binary tree-like structure

Their paper is completely damning, especially when you look at some of their other tables as well. And it's very clear to see when following these large transactions around. Garzik had the balls to pull a Jojo and try to nitpick a couple items to try and invalidate them, while admitting it didn't "wholly invalidate them".

Now, they don't call this outright manipulation or anything. But if you match some of the dates these coins are moving to the pricing moves around those various dates, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a strong correlation. I'm fairly certain this is pure fraud at this point. At very least it's completely certain they distributed this money to a ton of small holding accounts and your "top 100 bit holders" list is entirely worthless. They probably don't even account for the top 50 holders, who have a ton of holding accounts and have distributed the money in a binary tree type fashion. Nor does it account for a lot of the Satoshi/Hal Finney blocks (many/most of the earliest ones in the chain) which involve a ton of accounts holding 50 a piece which have never even moved once. Those addresses probably make up a huge portion of the 50 BTC holders in the stats. And as Garzik points out - it doesn't account for all of the ones that have been lost at this point either - which makes it worse still.

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

icon said:
Jojo the circus boy said:

So you have no context for any particular transaction, your exercise is futile, you are wasting your time.

Click to expand...

JOJO. LOLZ.

DrJ couldn't find the curtain if it smacked him upside the head...off the top of my head:

1. DrJ thinks the bitcoin moguls can make the price whatever they want it to be.

2. DrJ doesn't understand how the DDoS attacks were fixed, he just reiterates news from 1 to 3 years ago

3. DrJ thinks all alt coins have the same market penetration as bitcoins and the only difference between them is the room they have to deflate :lmao:

so he is valuing all of these digital currencies only for the currency aspect and not the utility they provide, the size of the P2P networks, the number of exchanges and merchants on board with each, etc...

4. DrJ thinks there is a scalability issue with the bitcoin network and then says bitcoins won't be able to handle a tps rate on par with VISA, but provides no explanation other than to point to the fact that it took him a few hours to download the Litecoin block chain exposing his lack of knowledge of how bitcoin transactions and merchants operate

5. DrJ equates MtGox with the bitcoin network :lmao:

6. DrJ does not understand Counterparty Risk "Bitcoin should have just gotten the transaction reversed. Oh wait - theft is entirely anonymous and irreversible in the bitcoin system."

7. DrJ doesn't understand the purpose of hot and cold wallets "Why do all heavy bitcoiners store all of their 'currency' in offline storage?"

While I appreciate his eagerness to learn, his attitude has been obnoxious and I've given up trying to educate him.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
icon said:

Jojo the circus boy said:

So you have no context for any particular transaction, your exercise is futile, you are wasting your time.

Click to expand...

JOJO. LOLZ.

Click to expand...

DrJ couldn't find the curtain if it smacked him upside the head...off the top of my head:

1. DrJ thinks the bitcoin moguls can make the price whatever they want it to be.

2. DrJ doesn't understand how the DDoS attacks were fixed, he just reiterates news from 1 to 3 years ago

3. DrJ thinks all alt coins have the same market penetration as bitcoins and the only difference between them is the room they have to deflate so he is valuing all of these digital currencies only for the currency aspect and not the utility they provide, the size of the P2P networks, the number of exchanges and merchants on board with each, etc...

4. DrJ thinks there is a scalability issue with the bitcoin network and then says bitcoins won't be able to handle a tps rate on par with VISA, but provides no explanation other than to point to the fact that it took him a few hours to download the Litecoin block chain exposing his lack of knowledge of how bitcoin transactions and merchants operate

5. DrJ equates MtGox with the bitcoin network

6. DrJ does not understand Counterparty Risk "Bitcoin should have just gotten the transaction reversed. Oh wait - theft is entirely anonymous and irreversible in the bitcoin system."

7. DrJ doesn't understand the purpose of hot and cold wallets "Why do all heavy bitcoiners store all of their 'currency' in offline storage?"

While I appreciate his eagerness to learn, his attitude has been obnoxious and I've given up trying to educate him.

See what I mean - it's like the dumb version of Jeff Garzik.

Maelstrom · Dec 21, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
icon said:

Jojo the circus boy said:

So you have no context for any particular transaction, your exercise is futile, you are wasting your time.

Click to expand...

JOJO. LOLZ.

Click to expand...

DrJ couldn't find the curtain if it smacked him upside the head...off the top of my head:

1. DrJ thinks the bitcoin moguls can make the price whatever they want it to be.

2. DrJ doesn't understand how the DDoS attacks were fixed, he just reiterates news from 1 to 3 years ago

3. DrJ thinks all alt coins have the same market penetration as bitcoins and the only difference between them is the room they have to deflate so he is valuing all of these digital currencies only for the currency aspect and not the utility they provide, the size of the P2P networks, the number of exchanges and merchants on board with each, etc...

4. DrJ thinks there is a scalability issue with the bitcoin network and then says bitcoins won't be able to handle a tps rate on par with VISA, but provides no explanation other than to point to the fact that it took him a few hours to download the Litecoin block chain exposing his lack of knowledge of how bitcoin transactions and merchants operate

5. DrJ equates MtGox with the bitcoin network

6. DrJ does not understand Counterparty Risk "Bitcoin should have just gotten the transaction reversed. Oh wait - theft is entirely anonymous and irreversible in the bitcoin system."

7. DrJ doesn't understand the purpose of hot and cold wallets "Why do all heavy bitcoiners store all of their 'currency' in offline storage?"

While I appreciate his eagerness to learn, his attitude has been obnoxious and I've given up trying to educate him.

You do realize that none of those are what DrJ has said. They are, in most cases, extrapolations of what he said based on you filtering it through your desire for Bitcoins to be pure and good, and succeed.

You are too close to Bitcoins to be able to take any criticism seriously. It would probably do you well to step back mentally and give it another look. It would also help if you don't always put the burden of proof on others, but give your own proof that what you claim is correct.

The truth is likely found somewhere between your extreme (Bitcoins are a valid currency that will soon be on par with other fiat currencies) and DrJ's (Bitcoin is a fraudulent network to designed only to make the initial founders rich). The personal insults don't help either of your cases, it works much better when you both stick to the facts.

[icon] · Dec 21, 2013

It's almost like JOJO doesn't even realize how badly he's getting smoked by Dr J in here.

Maelstrom · Dec 21, 2013

[icon] said:
It's almost like JOJO doesn't even realize how badly he's getting smoked by Dr J in here.

Yup, I'd call it a blowout except DrJ started resorting to insults as well. Dilutes the message. Stick to the facts, it's damning enough.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Maelstrom said:
Jojo the circus boy said:

icon said:

Jojo the circus boy said:

So you have no context for any particular transaction, your exercise is futile, you are wasting your time.

Click to expand...

JOJO. LOLZ.

Click to expand...

DrJ couldn't find the curtain if it smacked him upside the head...off the top of my head:

1. DrJ thinks the bitcoin moguls can make the price whatever they want it to be.

2. DrJ doesn't understand how the DDoS attacks were fixed, he just reiterates news from 1 to 3 years ago

3. DrJ thinks all alt coins have the same market penetration as bitcoins and the only difference between them is the room they have to deflate so he is valuing all of these digital currencies only for the currency aspect and not the utility they provide, the size of the P2P networks, the number of exchanges and merchants on board with each, etc...

4. DrJ thinks there is a scalability issue with the bitcoin network and then says bitcoins won't be able to handle a tps rate on par with VISA, but provides no explanation other than to point to the fact that it took him a few hours to download the Litecoin block chain exposing his lack of knowledge of how bitcoin transactions and merchants operate

5. DrJ equates MtGox with the bitcoin network

6. DrJ does not understand Counterparty Risk "Bitcoin should have just gotten the transaction reversed. Oh wait - theft is entirely anonymous and irreversible in the bitcoin system."

7. DrJ doesn't understand the purpose of hot and cold wallets "Why do all heavy bitcoiners store all of their 'currency' in offline storage?"

While I appreciate his eagerness to learn, his attitude has been obnoxious and I've given up trying to educate him.

Click to expand...

You do realize that none of those are what DrJ has said. They are, in most cases, extrapolations of what he said based on you filtering it through your desire for Bitcoins to be pure and good, and succeed.

You are too close to Bitcoins to be able to take any criticism seriously. It would probably do you well to step back mentally and give it another look. It would also help if you don't always put the burden of proof on others, but give your own proof that what you claim is correct.

The truth is likely found somewhere between your extreme (Bitcoins are a valid currency that will soon be on par with other fiat currencies) and DrJ's (Bitcoin is a fraudulent network to designed only to make the initial founders rich). The personal insults don't help either of your cases, it works much better when you both stick to the facts.

I definitely think that there's quite a few people that have good intentions with this and that there's some great things about the technology itself. But it wasn't entirely pure either, as demonstrated by Hal's posts and the fact that he and Satoshi (assuming they're actually different) had a clear understanding of many of the implications of how it was designed. They courted greed as part of their marketing strategy when the fact is that it only takes a couple of bad apples to spoil the bunch, especially when they have such gigantic stake and control over what's a very immature and fragile market. DId all of these guys go into this with the intentions I'm attributing to them? No, probably not, but I'm sure some of them did. Did many of them probably get caught up in things, so much they were willing to overlook some of this stuff that's been happening? I'm pretty danged certain on that at this point. Does it continue to this day? Sure looks like it.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Maelstrom said:
[icon] said:

It's almost like JOJO doesn't even realize how badly he's getting smoked by Dr J in here.

Click to expand...

Yup, I'd call it a blowout except DrJ started resorting to insults as well. Dilutes the message. Stick to the facts, it's damning enough.

Yeah, you guys are right on this.

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

icon said:
It's almost like JOJO doesn't even realize how badly he's getting smoked by Dr J in here.

This coming from the guy comparing bitcoins to the " newseason sports stock market thing "

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

If the price is manipulated why is it trading at $631 why not $2,000 or $5,000 or $10,000?

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
If the price is manipulated why is it trading at $631 why not $2,000 or $5,000 or $10,000?

Because it needs to be run up in an orderly fashion to have any credibility whatsoever.

[icon] · Dec 21, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
icon said:

It's almost like JOJO doesn't even realize how badly he's getting smoked by Dr J in here.

Click to expand...

This coming from the guy comparing bitcoins to the " newseason sports stock market thing "

The similarities are stacking up rapidly..

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

icon said:
Jojo the circus boy said:

icon said:

It's almost like JOJO doesn't even realize how badly he's getting smoked by Dr J in here.

Click to expand...

This coming from the guy comparing bitcoins to the " newseason sports stock market thing "

Click to expand...

The similarities are stacking up rapidly..

Now you are just trolling - there are thousands of merchants that accept bitcoin. If you are going to wait for Amazon to accept bitcoins before you give it its due you are going to be waiting a few years.

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
icon said:

Jojo the circus boy said:

icon said:

It's almost like JOJO doesn't even realize how badly he's getting smoked by Dr J in here.

Click to expand...

This coming from the guy comparing bitcoins to the " newseason sports stock market thing "

Click to expand...

The similarities are stacking up rapidly..

Click to expand...

Now you are just trolling - there are thousands of merchants that accept bitcoin. If you are going to wait for Amazon to accept bitcoins before you give it its due you are going to be waiting a few years.

So then just about every other currency is way better than bitcoin since a far larger group accepts it as legal tender?

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

DrJ said:
Jojo the circus boy said:

icon said:

Jojo the circus boy said:

icon said:

It's almost like JOJO doesn't even realize how badly he's getting smoked by Dr J in here.

Click to expand...

This coming from the guy comparing bitcoins to the " newseason sports stock market thing "

Click to expand...

The similarities are stacking up rapidly..

Click to expand...

Now you are just trolling - there are thousands of merchants that accept bitcoin. If you are going to wait for Amazon to accept bitcoins before you give it its due you are going to be waiting a few years.

Click to expand...

So then just about every other currency is way better than bitcoin since a far larger group accepts it as legal tender?

yep "way better" at buying more stuff from more places, you are a genius at pointing out the obvious, how old are you 16?

AAABatteries · Dec 21, 2013

DrJ said:
AAABatteries said:

DrJ said:

Jojo the circus boy said:

Here's a review of your credible source

Click to expand...

By Jeff Garzik, another creator of the bitcoin and lead developer at BitPay. You've called my credibility, and even chose to raise. Oh my.

Click to expand...

Holy #### - I used to work with this guy about 20 years ago. We both went to Georgia Tech and were co-ops with Siemens. Very smart dude.

Click to expand...

Now he's into fraud. Small world.

Wouldn't surprise me although what little I know of him it would most likely be done for techie reasons and not greed, but I haven't spoken to him in almost 20 years.

Quick, mostly stupid tangent - when we were co-ops he found an employees computer unlocked and sent an email out to everyone from that person stating that his cats had fleas and he was asking for help. :lmao:

- Garzik got his hand slapped for doing it. The guy whose email it came from got a bunch of replies from people with home remedies. So stupid.

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

Maelstrom said:
Jojo the circus boy said:

icon said:

Jojo the circus boy said:

So you have no context for any particular transaction, your exercise is futile, you are wasting your time.

Click to expand...

JOJO. LOLZ.

Click to expand...

DrJ couldn't find the curtain if it smacked him upside the head...off the top of my head:

1. DrJ thinks the bitcoin moguls can make the price whatever they want it to be.

2. DrJ doesn't understand how the DDoS attacks were fixed, he just reiterates news from 1 to 3 years ago

3. DrJ thinks all alt coins have the same market penetration as bitcoins and the only difference between them is the room they have to deflate so he is valuing all of these digital currencies only for the currency aspect and not the utility they provide, the size of the P2P networks, the number of exchanges and merchants on board with each, etc...

4. DrJ thinks there is a scalability issue with the bitcoin network and then says bitcoins won't be able to handle a tps rate on par with VISA, but provides no explanation other than to point to the fact that it took him a few hours to download the Litecoin block chain exposing his lack of knowledge of how bitcoin transactions and merchants operate

5. DrJ equates MtGox with the bitcoin network

6. DrJ does not understand Counterparty Risk "Bitcoin should have just gotten the transaction reversed. Oh wait - theft is entirely anonymous and irreversible in the bitcoin system."

7. DrJ doesn't understand the purpose of hot and cold wallets "Why do all heavy bitcoiners store all of their 'currency' in offline storage?"

While I appreciate his eagerness to learn, his attitude has been obnoxious and I've given up trying to educate him.

Click to expand...

You do realize that none of those are what DrJ has said. They are, in most cases, extrapolations of what he said based on you filtering it through your desire for Bitcoins to be pure and good, and succeed.

You are too close to Bitcoins to be able to take any criticism seriously. It would probably do you well to step back mentally and give it another look. It would also help if you don't always put the burden of proof on others, but give your own proof that what you claim is correct.

The truth is likely found somewhere between your extreme (Bitcoins are a valid currency that will soon be on par with other fiat currencies) and DrJ's (Bitcoin is a fraudulent network to designed only to make the initial founders rich). The personal insults don't help either of your cases, it works much better when you both stick to the facts.

Point out one he hasn't said.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

As far as burden of proof, how do I prove what all of the anonymous transactions DrJ is dreging up are? That's why they are anonymous, it is futile to make sense of them without knowing who each party is on either end and what the transaction is for, assuming it is for malevolent gains is silly and a waste of my time to "disprove".

When someone steps in and says, "prices are being manipulated today", that is a pretty strong statement, you somehow expect me to provide proof that this statement is false?

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

AAABatteries said:
DrJ said:

AAABatteries said:

DrJ said:

Jojo the circus boy said:

Here's a review of your credible source

Click to expand...

By Jeff Garzik, another creator of the bitcoin and lead developer at BitPay. You've called my credibility, and even chose to raise. Oh my.

Click to expand...

Holy #### - I used to work with this guy about 20 years ago. We both went to Georgia Tech and were co-ops with Siemens. Very smart dude.

Click to expand...

Now he's into fraud. Small world.

Click to expand...

Wouldn't surprise me although what little I know of him it would most likely be done for techie reasons and not greed, but I haven't spoken to him in almost 20 years.

Quick, mostly stupid tangent - when we were co-ops he found an employees computer unlocked and sent an email out to everyone from that person stating that his cats had fleas and he was asking for help. - Garzik got his hand slapped for doing it. The guy whose email it came from got a bunch of replies from people with home remedies. So stupid.

We used to do that kind of crap when I worked at IBM. We were outsourced at a customer's site, so locking your computer was like rule #1. Anytime someone didn't, everyone got to know about it.

As a whole I'd tend to agree with your analysis, he definitely seems like he was among those that probably got in this for the right reasons. I definitely have great respect for his work previous to this, I use ethtool and probably many of his other contributions almost every day in my various Linux exploits. But his response to the paper I'm quoting seems pretty intellectually dishonest, and seems kind of out of character for him based on the other stuff I've seen from him. It's clear when looking at this chain that these transactions happened as that paper described despite his rather empty response.

Shoot him a message, maybe he'll make it rain in bitcoins for you. It seems he either has or knows someone that's got hundreds of thousands of them.

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

Here you go DrJ, a simple question, you are asserting Bitcoin prices are being manipulated today.

The USD market cap of Bitcoin is $8B

How many bitcoins / how much volume needs to be traded to manipulate the current price of $630USD/Bitcoin?

DrJ · Dec 21, 2013

Jojo the circus boy said:
Here you go DrJ, a simple question, you are asserting Bitcoin prices are being manipulated today.The USD market cap of Bitcoin is $8BHow many bitcoins / how much volume needs to be traded to manipulate the current price of $630USD/Bitcoin?

Very little if someone is sitting on all of them in a holding account and has virtually complete control over available supply.

Jojo the circus boy · Dec 21, 2013

DrJ said:
Jojo the circus boy said:

Here you go DrJ, a simple question, you are asserting Bitcoin prices are being manipulated today.The USD market cap of Bitcoin is $8BHow many bitcoins / how much volume needs to be traded to manipulate the current price of $630USD/Bitcoin?

Click to expand...

Very little if someone is sitting on all of them in a holding account and has virtually complete control over available supply.

Define "very little", you are the one trying to convince us price is being manipulated, I need to know how many bitcoins I need to buy to manipulate the price myself, very little sounds like something I could afford.

I'll even help you out, average daily volume for the past month was $180 million.

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