Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[awemany]

Hey @rocks, nice to see you back!!

Your analysis is putting into clear words about the thoughts that I have on my mind.

It is an important observation that both SegWit and transaction limiting are exactly working as ways to keep Bitcoin out of the hands of the masses and "bury" it - exactly like the govs did for gold. Eerie parallels.

I guess it helps to stay away for a while to see the full picture.

Until I saw your post here, I was just going to write on the EDA: The EDA is IMO very ugly, and the miner's use and abuse of it even more so. If it is what is needed to break free from Core - so be it. Can't say I am in any way liking this. The way it is used, it also speeds up Coin release, which gets uncomfortably close to me to 'change the inflation schedule'.

I think the miners unfortunately made yet another grave mistake by starting Bitcoin Cash. Diluting the value of Bitcoin by creating parallel coins that will have similar valuation.

They should have going all in on full confrontation with Core. And I think that this was a grave mistake will be visible in the next months, unfortunately.

 

[freetrader]

Great to see you back here, @rocks . I remember reading your satoshisbitcoin code as my first introduction to the bitcoin source code and the topic of forking.

One thing I'd like to add: the Bitcoin Cash fork was only possible due to users (the united community here), developers and miners working together.

Still, the survival of Bitcoin Cash is strongly in the hands of miners at the moment.

Core has consistently rejected the importance of the miners - I feel this is a central oversight in their view of Bitcoin, and suggests to me that they will want to move away from proof of work in the longer term.

It is indeed ironic that at this time, they celebrate the activation of SegWit while at the same time users are cursing high transaction fees and a 70K transaction mempool backlog.

I'm feeling more confident now that Bitcoin (in the form of Bitcoin Cash) will survive. And that even as other branches may survive too, at least for a while, the overall value of the system is increased and valuable lessons have been learnt.

Hopefully you will have some time to assist in Bitcoin related development - your insights about the necessary code transformations are much needed and will take much effort to implement.

 

[AdrianX]

@rocks so glad to see you are still around.

 

[freetrader]

Can't resist posting this for comedic value.

All aboard the dipship !

 

[solex]

Great to see your message @rocks
I wondered a few times about how you were getting on.

You are absolutely right that permanent damage has been done to Bitcoin, and not just by the 1MB itself. The censorship on reddit and bitcointalk.org soured the whole community. The elitism of Core Dev drove away many talented programmers who find a happier place in other crypto. Bitcoin desperately needed to foster and help Rootstock, Counterparty and Omni to add extra on-chain value and unlock non-currency blockchain benefits to global business. So, much opportunity has been lost it is arguable that Bitcoin Cash is two years too late. Let's hope some ground can be made up.

Really, the fundamental error is that many Bitcoiners have mistaken the first mover advantage, and resulting network inertia, as a god-given right to always be No.1

I am reminded of Shelley's poem about Ozymandias, King of Kings.
Except, at the moment the statue still stands. But for how long?

 

[Zarathustra]

I think the miners unfortunately made yet another grave mistake by starting Bitcoin Cash. Diluting the value of Bitcoin by creating parallel coins that will have similar valuation.

Mistakes everywhere. But that is exactly what a civilized (patronized) swarm is doing from the very beginning of its invention: marching in fours with totalitarians. Masochists in symbiosis with sadists.
In other words: This species became sick when patriarchy replaced anarchy.

But what exactly do you think is the mistake of the miners by mining Bitcoin Cash now? Not marching in fours with the appeasers of the appeasement project called 2xSegwit?

The Bitcoin society as a whole (Users, hodlers, merchants, miners) makes the same mistakes. Irrational support of BS instead of BU, until the BS rottened. You can't fool a majority of the people all of the times, but for a very long time.

They should have going all in on full confrontation with Core. And I think that this was a grave mistake will be visible in the next months, unfortunately.

We (Bitcoin Cash) went all in on full confrontation with core. 2xSegwit did not. They still try to compromise with the compromised ones. We don't.

 

[freetrader]

And something worth adding:

 

[Epilido]

@freetrader

Is there some sort of specialized block relay network running for cash? If not it seems this needs to be promoted that even with just the gossip network, fast and sometimes large blocks are being propagated well.

Edit a letter.

 

[freetrader]

@Epilido : I believe miners have an adapted relay network in operation.

 

[adamstgbit]

@freetrader

Is there some sort of specialized block relay network running for cash? If not it seems this needs to be promoted that even with just the gossip network, fast and sometimes large blocks are being propagated well.

when we do see 8mb blocks consistently it will be interesting to see stats on how the nodes are handling it.

of course minning nodes will have no problem with 8mb blocks, but it will be interesting to see how nodes handle it on different connection speeds / different PCs

 

[Epilido]

I am trying to wrap my head around the difficulty adjustment. It seams that in the face of rising hash rate added to the total network, the segwit chain has had a difficulty adjustment down a few percent. I am thinking that there could be a situation in which the miners can reduce the total difficulty of the segwit chain and keep the difficulty of the cash chain oscillating where it is currently. There will be an equilibrium but the total will be decreased work on the main chain and increased work on the cash chain (compared to today) resulting in a shorter time to reach "chain of most work parity".

Modeling the timing of this should prove very useful for trading.

not that I trade......

 

[AdrianX]

@freetrader

Is there some sort of specialized block relay network running for cash? If not it seems this needs to be promoted that even with just the gossip network, fast and sometimes large blocks are being propagated well.

Edit a letter.

Greg Maxwell is wrong to think it is necessary, whatever advantage a relay network can deliver, it should be made part of the default protocol, for now there is a superior solution it's called Xthin which is the ideal solution.

 

[adamstgbit]

i think the only sure way to fix the minning problem will be to add another type of EDA, this time adjusting dif up if blocks come in too quickly.
this should have the effect of forcing dif to bounce between -5% +5% profitability, and as a result avg block times will be 10mins.

currently we have effectively lowered diff well below where it should be.

BUT this dose have 1 positive effect, which might actually be desirable.... BCH is quite secure because of the large amount of hash rate being subsidized with faster blocks.

 

[Mengerian]

@adamstgbit Yeah, the EDA creates some strange effect, although it's been successful in keeping the Bitcoin Cash chain alive.

It seems that when you have two coins sharing the same Proof of Work, there will always be some amount of instability or oscillation, but it could be a lot more stable than currently with a better difficulty targeting algorithm.

This is an area where lots of work and research has been done in the altcoin space. I wrote a Medium article on this topic, including links in the references to most of the work in this area that I could find. Hope it's of interest.

https://medium.com/@Mengerian/bringing-stability-to-bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjustments-eae8def0efa4

 

[adamstgbit]

@Mengerian

its good to know poeple are thinking about it.
its better that they prepare somthing now, because like you said its going to take a couple of months to roll out.

 

[Peter R]

Bitcoin is no longer "hashcash extended with inflation control":

 

[adamstgbit]

their might be a larger/longer minning cycle then we have currently seen...

Imagine BCH always has at least 10% hashpower, while 40% switch back and forth.
that leaves BTC with a steady 60% and 40% coming and going ( mostly going...)
BTC will have dif adjustment down ~30% and will be profitable again, more so then BCH.
BCH will have miners minning at 10%dif even tho its not as profitable as BTC minning
at that point the flipfloper miners will go mine BTC untill its dif adjustment UP +30% again
and then we repeat the Full cycle again!

 

[Epilido]

@adamstgbit

As soon and the flip occurs to segwit chain favor the EDA will kick back in again lowering the cash difficulty until it is profitable to mine. It will not take the segwit chain to adjust up the 30 percent as you suggest.

 

[adamstgbit]

@Epilido

thats assuming that all BCH miners will stop minning if its not as profitable as bitcoin.
there might be a base of miners that will continue to mine BCH even if its say 5% less profitable then minning bitcoin.
in that case, its possibly EDA kicks in and only manages to lower dif to like 2% less profitable then BTC minning.

if not, then BTC's adjustment down 30% will kill BCH

miners will have to pick between killing BCH by abusing the living shit out of the EDA or continue to mine BCH for slightly less profit.

BUT all that is required for BCH to servie is some small % of total hash power willing to mine BCH for slightly less profit than minning BTC.

i think ultimately we will see BCH settle at 2% less profitable then BTC , and running at 10% bitcoins hashrate

 

[Epilido]

If ALL miners switch then cash is dead because no more blocks will be mined.

I'm sure I am missing something but you seem to have 3 options.

Miners abuse the EDA and kill cash
mine for slightly less profit and carry on
very small amount of miners keep the cash chain barely alive.

first one: do you see cash being devalued by the increase in emission causing dilution and decreased value on the chain. if not how does abusing the EDA kill the cash chain?

second one, the closer to parity the more likely to switch a small amount of miners and finally approach equality. I cant understand why 2% is a magic number instead of parity.

third: no one donates forever. as the chain withers the EDA again is active and the difficulty reduces until mining profits are again at parity and the miners switch.

If EDA is abused and the next block reward halving comes sooner then predicted then there will be a massive reduction in the profit for miners. The hash power will return to the segwit chain iincereasing the durration between blocks and EDA will kick in on the Cash chain. One could see that this would push more hash power to the segwit chain over time but that is a long way off even if you compress the reward schedule to 2 days instead of 2 weeks. It would still take years to bring the Cash rewards down to a tiny level less than 1 BTC per block.

This all assumes that there is no price movement between the 2 coins and no missteps by either developer group causing mass panic or instability.

Interesting times we live in.