On 03/19/2017 10:12 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2017-03-19 03:34, George from the tribe wrote:
On 03/19/2017 06:43 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2017-03-18 23:35, Greg Freemyer wrote:
On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 5:41 PM, Carlos E. R. <> wrote:
On 2017-03-18 18:05, Doug wrote:
So, no openSUSE rpm? :-))
According to my research, it is very difficult to become profitable by mining these days. Apparently the amount you will pay in electric bills will not cover what you may get in return in bitcoins.
Yes, I heard that.
My dumb idea was to use a computer that has to be up anyway, and run it at low power as not to heat it up. So it could that many months or years to mine one, just for the kicks of doing it.
That's probably a pretty good idea. It would be worth experimenting to see if such a thing is feasible.
There is a limit to the number of bitcoins available at 21 million. IIRC, the latest number of the total number of mined bitcoins is around 16 million. After all 16 million are found, there will be no more. This limit is expected to be reached within the next 10 years or so. That is one of the reasons people are turning to bitcoin as an alternative currency - governments cannot devalue them away in order to pay off their debts.
I have a problem understanding this. First you say that the limit is 21 million, then than the max is 16 and we are near that number already. What is it, 21 or 16?
Oops, I caught my mistake after I sent it. The limit/max is 21 million, but 16 million is the number we are near now. It is not near the limit yet.
However, my main question, and why I posted here and not in the off-topic list, had to do with the technical considerations of installing a secure bitcoin wallet in an encrypted directory on an opensuse machine.
There is an rpm in the repositories, in the update repository and in the OSS repository. There is the bitcoin source package, as well as bitcoin-qt5, bitcoin-test, bitcoin-utils, and bitcoind. I am pretty sure that these packages consist of the bitcoin client, which allow trading of bitcoin to and from other people into your own wallet, but I am not yet familiar with the process. I haven't looked into any of these, and I am wondering if someone has. If you want to email me privately also, feel free. Or if someone can show me how to contact the maintainer of these packages, I can do that.
I am also interested in knowing what those things are.
I haven't installed it yet, but I did find out one thing that was interesting. There is a difference between the bitcoin-qt client and a wallet like Electrum. Apparently if you install the bitcoin-qt client, you are volunteering to become a full node on the decentralized bitcoin network. The way bitcoin's system of authentication of transactions works is that millions of computers worldwide are constantly updating the blockchain with every transaction. So a transaction is only accepted once all the nodes accept the transaction, a process that can take up between 5 and 30 minutes I think. In contrast, if you make a payment through your bank to your credit card, your bank clears your transaction, and you have to trust your bank (a form of centralized control). With bitcoin, the entire bitcoin network clears the transaction, making it virtually impossible for a centralized controller to defraud you on the transaction. It also makes it impossible to reverse the transaction, and makes it next to impossible to hack the transaction (it is theoretically possible, but nobody has ever done it because they say it would take the processing power of 250 pedaflops, something that far exceeds any current computer capacity). So, if you install bitcoin-qt, in order to begin transacting business, you have to wait until the full blockchain is downloaded to your hard drive. Right now I believe the full blockchain is greater than 55GB, so unless you have unlimited bandwidth, very high speed internet, and plenty of hard drive space, it might not be worth it to use bitcoin-qt. However, a wallet like Electrum only downloads part of the blockchain - that which is pertinent to your own transactions. For those of us in limited bandwidth connections, something like Electrum is definitely the way to go. Also, there is an effect on the whole system. If you have the ability and are willing to become a full bitcoin node, using bitcoin-qt, then you are actually part of the network that helps the strength of the overall system, because you are helping clear transactions aside with every other node. However, if you only use part of the blockchain by using a wallet like Electrum, you are only a user. It is not hurting the network, but it is not helping it either (except in the sense that as long as the user base grows it is a good thing). With regard to bitcoin-qt, I am not sure if qt here is referring to the qt graphical programming language that KDE uses, or something else, because there is apparently a bitcoin-qt available for windows.
A google search for bitcoin wallets shows electrum as being a popular opensource wallet, but it is not in the repositories for opensuse. I was also wondering if/how anyone has set up a bitcoin wallet on an opensuse platform, and what the technical considerations are for doing that.
My next step is to install the packages and see what happens.
I assume the wallet doesn't need to be connected to internet unless you want to do a transaction.
I believe that even if your wallet is not connected to the internet, you can receive money as long as the sender knows your public key. When you connect to the internet, anything you receive will be updated in your wallet. However, I don't think you can send money unless you are connected (I don't know that for sure, just guessing).
On 2017-03-19 13:43, Greg Freemyer wrote:
You left out:
...
Interesting points, thanks.
So a wallet also has some kind of cryptographic identity. Are they created out of the blue, then perhaps registered, or bought from someone else?
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