Category Archives: Bitcoin

F2Pool Lashes Out When Called Out For SPV Mining

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Discus FishLate last week some minor drama occurred on the old forum when a certain large SPV mining pool which has caused headaches for Bitcoin's network stability before had some of their IP addresses published publicly.

Bitcointalk user Kano revealed that a part of the SPV mining process used by F2Pool (nee. Discus Fish) and likely others involves connecting miners to other pools in order to more rapidly detect block changes and generate an empty block header to feed to their miners sooner than they could otherwise. The connected listening "miners" at least as implemented by F2Pool at the time of this outing did not actually mine on the connected pools making their detection easier. Continue reading →

Recent "SigOp" "Attack" On The Blockchain Or Advanced Power Rangering

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Signature operations or "SigOps" in Bitcoin transaction scripts requires checking ECDSA signatures to assure a Bitcoin transaction is valid. This is computationally expensive work making it an  avenue of potential disruption on the Bitcoin network. The possibility was known for months (archived). Yet little attention was paid until yesterday's events caused ineffective block filling. The mining side was amply discussed there, and can be easily fixed by miners who know their stuff. I rather wish to shed some light on network propagation of these transactions, as the burden of signature checking rests on full nodes, too. Continue reading →

Forever 21 Inc Tries Preventing Other Raspberry Pis From Running Software

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Forever 21 Inc. raised $116mn in venture funding before a product or business plan was even announced. Earlier this fall the company announced the 21 Computer, a Frankenstein creation using a Raspberry-Pi 2 and a proprietary ASIC which will be obsolete soon given the continual difficulty increases. This computer can be bought for the low price of $400, which allows users to connect to 21 co.'s API a bastardization of the already functioning Web of Trust. Recently code was independently released allowing individuals to run the 21 co. software stack on a $40 Raspberry Pi, to which the CEO of 21 Inc. responded on reddit stating they will be patching the code to prevent non-21 Co. from connecting to their marketplace. Continue reading →

Biggest Difficulty Increase In a Year

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The Bitcoin network difficulty has now climbed to 72,722,780,643 which is an increase of 10.44% over the previous increase. The previous difficulty was 65,848,255,179.7 which arrived via a 5.77% increase the highest in six months. Today's increase is the most substantial jump in more than a year with the closest recent increase of this magnitude being a 10.05% increase on November 5th of 2014, with the previous greater increase coming all the way back on September 25th 2014. New all time high difficulty figures come with astounding regularity, but the magnitude of these last two increases is notable.

Venture Capital Fuels Stupidity In Bitcoin Not Innovation

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Venture Capitalists have been flocking to Bitcoin recently in what seems to be a poorly orchestrated fiat invasion. They intend to bring the problems of too much money to Bitcoin and its related "businesses". A very small fraction of the VC capital is hitting the market for Bitcoin, which may be an attempt to assert some sort of fiat control over Bitcoin through price suppression. Continue reading →

EU Planning Bitcoin "Crackdown"

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Reports are emerging that the European Union is planning some sort of "crackdown" on Bitcoin  in the wake of the Paris mass shooting amid allegations that ISIS has some Bitcoins. This is in spite of the declared intention of ISIS and their actual movement to establish a precious metals based monetary system in their caliphate. Estimates floating around in the media suggest that if ISIS has a stash of Bitcoin, its value is roughly the equivalent of 3 million United States Dollars, a figure which is substantially lower than the value of some individual pieces of military equipment which has found its way to ISIS through the United States. Continue reading →

Current Bitcoin-XT Incompatible with BIP-65

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Last year Qntra reported on BIP-65 which adds a new opcode OP_HODL which prevents nLockTime transactions from being double spent before the nLockTime threshold is reached on the Blockchain. Miners following the developers of the "Core" Bitcoin client have been adopting BIP-65, with approximately 25% of the last found blocks claiming to be ready for the soft fork on the version string in the block header. If or when BIP-65 is triggered, it may spell trouble for Mike Hearn's Bitcoin-XT due to deliberate incompatibility. Continue reading →

Larcenous Winkelvii Exchange Hits $2200/BTC, Recants

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Shortly before Qntra experience significant downtime this week due to a hardware failure, the Gemini "exchange" reversed a trade that had on Friday November 13th taken the traded price of Bitcoin on that exchange to 2200 United States dollars per Bitcoin. Gemini's "account review team" along with their "executive management" by their own reports conspired to brand the trades a "customer error" and reversed the trades leaving some other parties to these trades with zero or negative balances as they had continued trading after the earlier trade. Winkelvii apologists are blaming fiat market "obvious error rules" for the reversal, though the volume of the trades that took Gemini out of concordance and to 2200 United States Dollars was only 80 Bitcoins suggesting a critically thin order book which makes all attempts at actually trading on that exchange the result of erroneous judgement.

"Core" Bitcoin Client to Drop Transaction Priority

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According to a mailing list post by Matt Corallo plans are in the works to drop transaction priority relay and mining code from the Bitcoin client "Core" in its 0.12 release (archived). "Core" is the Bitcoin Client whose development was formerly supported and directed by the Vessenes' Foundation, in contrast to the bitcoind client 'therealbitcoin' maintained by the Bitcoin Foundation. Earlier this week the developers of the "Core" client released a version 11.2 which introduces soft forking code to implement a time locking feature referred to as "Check Lock Time Verify" and designated BIP 65. This summer a soft forking change designated BIP 66 lead to several chain splits and reorganizations when it was triggered.

Bitcoin Difficulty Jumps By Six-Month Record

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Today's difficulty adjustment to 65`848`255`179.7, a rise of 5.77%, is notable as both the tenth consecutive increase — a streak the likes of which has not occurred for nearly a year — and the largest increase since April 5th, when difficulty rose by 5.84%. This ongoing rise should come as no surprise: naive estimates (archived) place the next reward halving on July 24th, so work must accelerate to realize the market's prediction of July 20th.