In what would have been Bitcoin mining news during the ancient stretch from summer 2010 and to the close of 2012, AMD's next refresh of their Radeon graphics cards will include a process shrink from 28 nm to 14 nm (archived). The new parts are set to arrive in the Summer of 2016 placing their availability within a few months of the next Bitcoin subsidy halving, if current trends in Bitcoin network difficulty continue.
Category Archives: Bitcoin
Year 8 Begins
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"confirmations" : 391627,
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"merkleroot" : "4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b",
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"time" : 1231006505,
"nonce" : 2083236893,
"bits" : "1d00ffff",
"difficulty" : 1.00000000,
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Bitcoin Foundation Address Recap
The Bitcoin Foundation opened the year with a State of Bitcoin Address sharing a few developments as the Foundation continues in its second year of work. The address is highlighted by the Foundation's impending move to tag their reference client version 0.5.4 with the release label. Other developments include: Continue reading
2015 In Bitcoin
Difficulty Rises 11.16% Adding A New Digit At 103,880,340,815
Just in time for the 2016th (incidentally, the number of blocks in Bitcoin's shorter metric of elapsed time) year of the fiat calendar, Bitcoin added a new digit to its difficulty decimal, now equal to 103,880,340,815 (an increase of 11.16% over the previous value, placing hashrate estimates over 690 PH/s.). While such increases used to be noteworthy, they pale in the shadow of the last leap (December 18th's 18.14% increase, to 93,448,670,796), leaving thin-margined miners nervously wondering whether they'll ever make good on the forecasts of yesteryear. Continue reading
Paxful Gets Desperate, Priced Out Of Bitcoin
Paxful, a website that claims to do "peer to peer" matching of Bitcoin buyers and sellers, issued a desperate plea on their blog (archived) threatening to move to an altcoin as they get priced out of Bitcoin. Because Paxful specializes in facilitating very small trades any pricing of transaction fees in an actual market obliterates their market niche, and Bitcoin is definitely moving towards a healthy market for block inclusion fees. Paxful claims to: Continue reading
The False Dilemma of XT Versus Blockstream
Since the beginning of the XTCoin affair a substantial amount of social engineering has been directed into framing the Bitcoin blocksize as a polarized dispute between exactly two camps. Continue reading
Two Milestones Passing On Bitcoin Blockchain
The Bitcoin network will see two significant milestones pass on the Bitcoin blockchain. The first is the mining of the 15 millionth coin leaving only a maximum of 6 million more Bitcoins to be acquired through subsidy for mining new blocks. The 14 millionth coin was mined back in March and represented two thirds of all Bitcoin to ever exist having been mined. The second milestone is the imminent commitment of the hundred millionth Bitcoin transaction to the blockchain.
Corpse of Vessenes' Fundnation Expels Janssens From Board
Oliver Janssens reported on Social media today that his fellow board members at the Vessenes' Fundnation expelled him from the board (archived). The circumstances leading to the expulsion followed a failed vote to disband the Vessenes' Fundnation in light of their breakneck march to insolvency. While this drama plagues the Vessenes' Foundation, the actual Bitcoin Foundation's work continues in providing stewardship over a reference Bitcoin codebase. Meanwhile other fiat backed groups incorporating words like "Digital Currency", "Council", "Blockchain", "R3", and "Chamber of Commerce" in their names have emerged trying to fill the void left by the late Vessenes' Fundnation in promoting scams and trying to subvert Bitcoin to fiat.
Miners Enforcing BIP 65: Plan for SPV Miner Forks
A few hours ago BIP 65's OP_HODL achieved its threshold to begin triggering miner enforcement. Bitcoin users should plan to accommodate blockchain forks of the kind that happened 5 months ago when BIP 66 was triggered. A maddening amount of hashpower remains directed to at least two pools that are confirmed to not completely verify the blocks they mine before building on top of them.