TxTenna

The goTenna looked interesting for off-grid applications, but at $179 for two, it's hard to justify.  Well, TxTenna might be just the application to justify the hardware....

Bitcoin Again

• The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) process, from the Bitcoin git repository.
• Deconstructing Bitcoin transactions.
• The dark underbelly of SegWit.

Crypto Wikis

• Bitcoin: in particular for the FAQ, technical articles, and protocol documentation
• Ethereum: in particular for the FAQ and info on Ethash, mining, and problems
• Litecoin: wiki currently down (Cloudflare error); mored from GitHub page
• Zcash: in particular for the FAQ as well as the spec info

Side-note: Ripple apparently is being called a cryptocurrency because transactions are signed, but from a cursory view it appears that the consensus algorithm of the ledger requires trusting nodes to not collude:

During consensus, each node evaluates proposals from a specific set of peers, called chosen validators. Chosen validators represent a subset of the network which, when taken collectively, is "trusted" not to collude in an attempt to defraud the node evaluating the proposals. This definition of "trust" does not require that each individual chosen validator is trusted. Rather, validators are chosen based on the expectation they will not collude in a coordinated effort to falsify data relayed to the network.

The lack of this trust requirement is one of BTC's desirable attributes, at least to liberty people.  However, it's easy to see why Ripple is supported by banks: they have a place in the XRP ecosystem.

Bitcoin Protocol

Stream of browsing, an article on doing a raw Bitcoin transaction came up.  Neat.

The Bitcoin wiki has some useful information about messages on the network.  It might be neat to make a client that just sits and monitors traffic.

Ethereum Mining

It's been a quarter since my last post.  Bitcoin is up over $16k, and other cryptos are up too.  Apparently making regular buys via ACH is destined to not be easy, so mining is looking attractive again.  Well, if it's break-even with zero profit, I'm still interested, for that reason.  (Not interested in "cloud mining contracts" because I don't trust code running on someone else's computer.)

Recently I was looking at mining Ethereum because it's still profitable with GPUs.  Bitcoin and Litecoin both have ASICs available, making it a hardware arms race.  Based on several articles (Cryptocompare on hashrate, TechSpot on hashrate, Tom's Hardware on ETH's effect on card prices) it appears that the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is the best balance of cost and hashrate.  ~18 MH/s in 120W for $280 times three should pay for the GPUs in under a year's time, especially if the price of ETH keeps going up.  Of course, there's the cost of the mobo, processor, memory, and OS (if I don't use Linux).  I have an NOS Soldam case lying around, although I'll have to check if the power supply is sufficient.

BTC Stuff

A couple interesting things: CoinShuffle (forum, paper) and libbitcoin (main, Perl lib).

Zerocoin

Zerocoin adds anonymity to the pseudo-anonymous Bitcoin.  Sounds interesting, but isn't worthwhile unless adopted.

Bitcoin Attacks

A few weeks ago I saw an article claiming "Bitcoin is Broken"--must've shown up on Reddit.  There's also a related thread on bitcointalk regarding "Sybil attacks".

More Bitcoin Info

The Genesis Block's dashboard shows the difficulty level increase.

btcinvest.net has a profitability calculator that takes into account USD/BTC appreciation.  Of course this is immaterial, since in the case where appreciation matters, buy and hold would be a superior investment method.

The Bitcoin wiki has a list of mining pools.  Eligius looks like the one to pick since it doesn't have any fees.

Bitcoin

Of course I'd heard of Bitcoin, but Joe B. at work pointed out that there were ASICs coming out that are supposed to crank the mining hash rate.  Butterfly Labs is one of the companies producing specialized machines.  (The FPGAs are more interesting since you could repurpose them later, but they have higher power consumption and lower hash rate.)

Seems pretty risky, though, since a bunch of ASICs will probably be coming online at the same time.  BFL's FAQ has an entry on this that seems to imply that one could break even in about 6 mo, but that calculation may lowball the impact of the additional computational power; then again, the exchange rate has also risen about 60% since that calculation.  In other words, it's a total crapshoot.  Another site has a profitability calculator.

There's also a mining hardware chart on the bitcoin wiki.  Some people build custom mining rigs using multiple graphics cards, but the hash rate doesn't even come close to the theoretical rate of the ASICs.  In that regard, investing in one of those might be more sound.  Or it could be better to have the lower rate now before the ASICs come online....