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[YouCouldHaveStoppedThis]

(removed)

[wierd]

I hear it is even worse given the economic sanctions from the annexation of crimea has caused the ruble to drop below the peso by a significant amount...

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=currency%20ruble%20peso

Nevermind the absurd number of rubles they need to pay you to get even ONE bitcoin...
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=currency+ruble+bitcoin

As for the pay for correcting the record, I hear it is terrible too, since the Ministry of Truthiness is very stringent on who they hire, and then expect brand loyalty for free. Something about "patriotic duty" and all that.

[Reelya]

http://www.trumpcoin.com/
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/trumpcoin/

In typical Trump style, you can't mine for TrumpCoin, you have to buy them on an exchange from someone who already mined them.

[origamiscienceguy]

Is bitcoin divisible?

[wierd]

I dont think so, being a cryptocurrency. A bitcoin is unique because of its crypto-hash. A partial hash is kinda meaningless.

[Reelya]

That's not correct. A block is not a bitcoin. Bitcoins are divisible into Satoshi:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_(unit)

The connection between blocks and bitcoins is that each time a block is processed (blocks are a chunk of transactions), whoever processed it gets the right to put their own transaction giving themselves a specific number of bitcoins at the start of the block, and that "bonus" amount is halved every X number of months. So, that's how transaction processing is incentivized even though there's no bank behind this.

The amount of work to process a block is therefore fluid in a supply/demand system. If the price of bitcoin drops or when the reward halves, the value of processing a block drops, less people process the block, and the value therefore levels out again to be in line with the value of the block reward. People talk about the "massive" waste of resources from bitcoin mining. But the fact is, when you look at the value of bitcoin and how much each block is worth, that puts a fairly low cap on the total world resources invested in mining bitcoins.

[origamiscienceguy]

That is only for mining purposes i thought.

[wierd]

It was my understanding that the solution space for the blockchain puts natural limits on the number of bitcoins that can exist, and that the computationally complex task of identifying a valid solution in that space gets more and more costly as the easy solutions are found. Given that the core of what a defines a bitcoin (a valid solution inside the solution space, eg, the block chain), a "partial" bitcoin cannot realistically be transacted. Instead, an exchange would need to have reserve currency on hand to handle whole coin transactions by exchanging equivalent currency value for a partial coin, and offer exchange credit on partial coin transactions instead.

EG, we can say that 1BC =100 USD.

Bill and Mary both have 50$, and want to get .5BC credit.  The exchange aggregates both Bill's and Mary's transactions, and allocates 1BC reserve credit, extending .5BC to each, while preserving the currency integrity.

[origamiscienceguy]

I thought that the reward for cracking a hash just decreased the more bitcoin that exist.

Did a google search, and bitcoin seems to be divisible to the hundred millionth place.

[Reelya]

That's just wrong about not having partial bitcoins. Your bitcoin wallet address, which is part of the blockchain and NOT part of any external exchange can have any amount of bitcoins down to a single Satoshi.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3vhfgt/can_you_buy_partial_bitcoins/

People really are mixing up Blockchain with Bitcoin here. Bitcoin is basically the data-payload, not the medium. the medium is Blockchain, and that's what the crypto is about.

[wierd]

How do they accomplish this, mathematically?

[Reelya]

The difficulty is just set periodically. If too many people are mining, the block difficulty is raised to slow down the rate of block generation. If too few are mining, the difficulty is dropped, which speeds up block generation. This is just done automatically via algorithms, since each node in the network knows the rate of block generation, they are in automatic agreement about difficulty adjustments without needing a central arbiter. If one node is a "rogue" one and submits a block with a crypto hash difficulty that doesn't fit the algorithm, it's rejected by all the other nodes.

People seem to think the whole thing is more "cryptic" (excuse me) than it really is, which just shows there's not a widespread understanding of how coin mining / crypto works.

In terms of total processing power aimed at bitcoin, it's capped by supply and demand. Basically if people aren't making enough bitcoins back to justify mining, they drop out, making things more profitable for those who remain. So the total cost invested into bitcoin mining (hardware and electricity) is a known quantity capped by the value of the coins that are generated.

[wierd]

That does not explain partial coin transactions, which is what I was after.

As far as I understand it, a bitcoin is like a prime number. The idea of a partial prime number is nonsense. Likewise, a partial bitcoin makes just as little sense, mathematically.

[Reelya]

That does not explain partial coin transactions, which is what I was after.

As far as I understand it, a bitcoin is like a prime number. The idea of a partial prime number is nonsense. Likewise, a partial bitcoin makes just as little sense, mathematically.

You have the wrong idea about what a bitcoin is then.

The crypto is to generate the blockchain. Bitcoins are the payload, which is the transactions inside the block, and have literally no connection to the maths.

The amount of bitcoin awarded to each block is completely arbitrary. Some other types of coins based on the same code have a constant reward, or an increasing reward or whatever. It's just that the inventor of bitcoin decided to start with some arbitrary reward per block, and have that halve every X blocks, where "X" is also arbitrary. You can literally download a coinmaker program, and plug some numbers in to make any sort of idiotic increase or decrease in coin rewards you want, give it a name, and have your own "bitcoin" running on your network which doesn't do any of the stuff you claim it should.

[wierd]

So more like encrypted messages then?

You still need a discrete unit for the crypto function to succeed, which sets the minimum granularity. Otherwise there is not enough entropy in the function to guarantee uniqueness. There's only so much salt you can add.