Bitcoin Pioneer Says New Coin To Work on Many Blockchains (bloomberg.com) 65
A reader shares a Bloomberg report: Jeff Garzik, one of a handful of key developers who helped build the underlying software for bitcoin that is known as blockchain, has seen its shortcomings firsthand. So he decided to create a better digital currency. He's calling it Metronome and says it will be the first that can jump between different blockchains. For example, coins that are used for applications on the Ethereum blockchain will be able to move to Ethereum Classic before jumping onto Qtum or Rootstock, which connects with the bitcoin blockchain, said Garzik. The mobility means that if one blockchain dies out as the result of infighting among developers or slackened use, metronome owners can move their holdings elsewhere. That should help the coins retain value, and ensure their longevity, Garzik, co-founder of startup Bloq that created metronome, said in a phone interview. It will be unveiled Tuesday at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas. "Institutional investors should be very excited to see something like this," Matthew Roszak, the other co-founder of Bloq and chairman of industry advocate Chamber of Digital Commerce, said in a phone interview. "We've built a thousand-year cryptocurrency, something that's built to last." That's a concern for many digital currencies. Infighting among developers and various supporters, and the slow pace of enhancements on the bitcoin blockchain have helped to limit use. Both bitcoin and its main rival, ethereum, have split into several versions.
Same guy causing the problems in first place (Score:2, Informative)
Isn't this the same guy responsible for all sorts of attacks on bitcoin, all sorts of lame implementations of coins (that fail)... And bloomberg is looking to him to fix things. Gah.
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The reason there was a split with Ethereum and Ethereum Classic was because one had a vulnerability that allowed other people to hack into someone's PC and steal their wallet of coins. Implementing a fix for this problem caused a split in the community. Now they are trying to fix the solution to this problem by creating a new coin that can cross between these networks.
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What? ETC hard fork was done because the guys who wrote the DAO did so badly enough that someone was able to tell the DAO to credit him with ETH, in a way the DAO contract writers had not forseen and arguably didn't want.
This was not a shortcoming of Ethereum, but a bunch of people learning the hard way that "smart" autonomous contracts need to be thoroughly proven before implementation.
Re:Same guy causing the problems in first place (Score:5, Interesting)
Three Bitcoins for the Hacker-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Drug-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Libertarian Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord Satoshi on his dark throne
In the Land of Mammon where the Shadows lie.
One Bitcoin to rule them all, One Bitcoin to find them,
One Bitcoin to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Mammon where the Shadows lie.
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> In the Land of More Dough where the Shadows lie.
FTFY. :-)
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Still a better love story than Twilight.
I canâ(TM)t wait to fork this (Score:2)
One coin to rule them all.
Great! (Score:3)
I'm going to move my fifty thousand Dogecoins to the Bitcoin blockchain!
I'm rich!
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Anyway, when I won my bets instead of getting my kumquats, I get these "quatloos". I want to exchange them for Bitcoin but how?
. . . just trot on up to the chick with the green hair, wearing the tinfoil bikini, armed with a giant can opener . . . she will handle your, . . . um, "exchange" . . .
Metacoins? (Score:2)
So what is this... using DATA fields on different Blockchains to represent the transaction entries of a 3rd kind of currency whose transactions are Encapsulated in the comment field of transaction IDs on other blockchains referenced by records on the Altcoin's own blockchain, or what?
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folks only use these digital currencies as arbitrage for real currency.
That sounds like a broad generalization to me.... i've actually purchased goods and services from vendors using BTC, and
it wasn't for arbitrage purposes, but I'm not holding more than $50US worth of BTC either, out of concern that occassionally
the digital currency has been so volatile that tomorrow my same amount of BTC could be worth $20 or $90,
so the high rate of volatility for conversion is a concern, but otherwise I would be
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Well, more or less. When it's time to withdraw, you need to break said piggy bank so it's going to cost you a brand new one, which requires some of your U.S. coins.
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They have this amazing thing called a plug on piggy banks that you can open you know.
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But wait, give it a few months and there will be competitors in this space too. Bubbles upon bubbles.
Can someone explain how it would work? (Score:3)
Then it looks a lot like someone putting his dollar bills in a shredder, then flying to Germany and claiming the ECB should print him Euros because he destroyed his dollars.
Obviously I missed something here. Can someone explain what?
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No, you've got it; there can be no authoritative transaction between blockchains unless the algorithms agree to respect inputs from each other, in which case you've either created one bigger blockchain with two different units of measure, or made two really insecure blockchains.
Whatever. People will buy into this and as long as the overall trend is 'up', it won't matter. They'll believe until after it finally crashes... and maybe even then.
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This is coming from a dev that used to be mildly involved in Bitcoin development. Recently he has been the champion dev trying to fork away from the large development community with much drama. Now he is launching this new thing to solve the infighting problem he helped create. And he is doing it with an ICO-- he wants to be paid up front to try and create this loosely defined solution. And his company is going to keep 20% of the currency for themselves.
All you're missing is his ulterior motives. Once you u
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Yes, you missed the obvious: :P ... hope you manage to get in without meeting some 'skin heads' !
After you have shreddered all your US money, you can not afford a ticket to fly to Germany
And then we have this refugee oroblem here
Sounds familiar... (Score:3)
Build up one business scheme and get out before it falls, only to build up a similar business and get out before that falls. Rinse, repeat.
I believe this is very similar to some sort of ????? scheme, I just can't quite remember what it is called...
Re: Sounds familiar... (Score:1)
It's called Wall Street. Last it went down was in 2008.
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A governmental scheme?
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get-rich-quick I think
Pump-n-dump feature of the day! (Score:2)
Every day, we seem to have another crypto-currency being touted and most seem like vapor-ware.
Founders are gonna put on a good show, then take investor money and run.
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Every day, we seem to have another crypto-currency being touted and most seem like vapor-ware.
Founders are gonna put on a good show, then take investor money and run.
That's the very definition of alt-coin: A pump-n-dump scam to obtain more BTC, by trading something worthless in exchange.
And then BTC gets exchanged for USD... So, it's ultimately just one big elaborate scam to get what people really want - good old American cash.
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No different from startups and stock options.
In the Immortal Words of Apu (Score:3)
No, no, no. Do not listen to that man.
He's a lying, cheating, scammer creating another scamcoin.
It's still a wild west frontier... (Score:2)
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Do bitcoin mining scripts have to talk back to a central server OR point @ servers for it that are 'centralized'?
It's a P2P network, all decentralized. You need to find the IP address of one of the peers, then from there you open a connection to 10 (or so) of the other peers. To make a transaction, you tell them all that you want to make the transaction. Eventually (usually within 10 minutes), the transaction gets verified and added to the block-chain.
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See subject: What I needed to know was if they can operate ON THEIR OWN independently & they don't - thus, they can be blocked (provided you have what they point @, which IS tougher to do but NOT 'impossible').
Yeah, if you know all the IP addresses of the mining cluster, you can theoretically block bitcoin mining in your browser. But I think in practice, most websites that do this probably send their work back to the server via a standard http request, and the server aggregates all the work done, and only then sends it to the bticoin cluster.
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At first I thought his explanation was wrong, but I had skipped over the "mining scripts" part of your question.
So yes, any crypto-currency mining javascript has to talk to a server somewhere because the computations are being done for someone else, not for the browser's owner.
If that someone else credits the browser owner for something (content, links, whatever) then it's another topic entirely.
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Obligatory South Park (Score:2)
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xZ_JiU7... [ytimg.com]
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Any event big enough to disrupt bitcoin, would disprupt credit cards and banking just the same. Not many people keeps cash.
Give me a break (Score:3)
We were sold on the idea of a Heinz 57 basket of virtual currencies because it's supposedly beneficial for them to be distinct from each other, and now suddenly it's supposed to be beneficial for them to somehow magically morph into each other (which would require, I gather, some level of inherent trust between those competing systems, mutual fraud protection mechanisms, etc.)? Got it.
IMO, this is just the latest example of a bunch of too-smart-by-half tech heads sitting around coming up with a series of poorly planned ad-hoc ideas and finding bubble-seeking investors to throw cash at it. The emperor has no clothes.