Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Mengerian]

I just want to leave a few links here "for the record", regarding Greg Maxwell's accusation of insufficient attribution for the UTXO per-output changes in Bitcoin ABC.

Let's look at Greg's "Notice of copyright infrigement" [sic] on Github. He links to a commit, which has a commit message starting with "This is the main chunk of the work started with D342 ."

So what is this mysterious "D342"? It's an earlier commit, which has a commit message including this sentence: "This is based on work from Pieter Wuille."

Let's also look at a few other commits: D471 states "This is based of work from Pieter Wuille and a continuation of D342 .", D368 includes the statement "This is useful during reorg. It is based on work by Pieter Wuille and a continuation of D342 ."

In fact, pretty much all the commits implementing this change refer back to D342, which contains the attribution to Wuille. If we really want to dig more, look in the ABC source management for D342, where you can see about a dozen other commits refer to it.

The release notes also state "backport from Core"

It is completely clear and unambiguous that the source of this change is properly attributed to Pieter Wuille and Core.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

@Mengerian

Yep, @deadalnix did everything to properly attribute the work. And from the license alone, he wouldn't even have to do anything like that (as long as he keeps the copyright/license notice) so it is just a matter of good faith and fairness. If Core wants other projects to have a "hail Greg Maxwell" line in every commit message, they have to use a different license. "Notice of copyright infringement", imho that wording by Greg was the only part remotely litigable (as libel) in this non-issue.

Apart from that, awemany's proposal sounds good to make the attribution issue easier.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Today I got a late birthday present by my mother ... it was a couple of tulip onions ... I guess she meant it as something to digg in the earth to get flowers out of it. I will keep it in case I time travel back to 17th century Amsterdam

Last friday I wrote about the IOTA bug. In german forums IOTA has become a big thing. I did not pay attention to it after I wrote the most quoted / linked article about IOTA back sometime in 2016. Since IOTA fanboys are spamming Bitcoin.de's uservoice page and our forums, I deeply enjoyed writing about the bug and other things.. "We scale to every single transactions of the 50 bio machines on earth. Our transactions are 1.6 or 3.7 or 6.4 kb large - we don't really know - we are centralized and can redo past transactions, we have no light client, no snapshot, just full historic nodes, and no model to incentivize honest nodes, no mining rewards, no fees - but hei, tangle top, we are the future, and every pissing bitcoiner is just jealous."

Weekend was hell. I felt like I had criticized Core. Every hour someone commented on my blog. No argument, nothing about technology, just insults. That's state of crypto 2017.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Do you know "House of Cards"? In the late first session a cypherpunk appears. Gavin. He fools a journalist into becoming a cyber terrorist and being arrested by the FBI, because he is extorted by the agency. Somehow I wondered if such things happen and if it is thought too far that some people in Bitcoin land share his destiny ...

--

I just watched a few minutes of breaking bitcoin and read some tweets. But what I saw, and the line up, gave me the impression of a gigantic orgy of self-celebration of those self declared cypherpunks. In terms of morals, this seems childish.

There are two adult aproaches to moral: The legal way, judging by action, and the religios way, judging by intent.

If you break a law, your intent doesn't matter, if you break a contract, your intent doesn't matter too. This is why I never had respect for the arguments of Peter Todd against Hong Kong agreement ("the intent of it was ...") nor do I think Petrov's announcement of a possible break of BitFury with New York aka Hong Kong II ("the intent was to ...") should have any validity.

I personally prefer a pragmatic approach of the legal way, considering that you can do good by breaking the law and do bad by complying with law. But I think it is uneffitable to go with the religious way, from time to time, "God will judge my actions, because HE knows what I intented", because the intent of someone's action can be an indicator of his future course of action.

A childish approach to morality however is to judge by group membership. For example, you say "I'm a cypherpunk" and explain your action as "a cypherpunk's action". The idea is, that everybody who is a cypherpunk is good in terms of morals, because he is a cypherpunk, and all what he does, is good, because he is a cypherpunk, and those, who disagree, are bad, because they can't be cypherpunks. That's some kind of perpetuum mobile of morals, perfectly made for small souls seeking redemption.

It is hard to justifiy yourself by your actions. It is a little bit easier to justify yourself by intent, because you intentions are no hard facts like actions. But it is even more easy to justify yourself by group membership, as this does not even demand thinking about why you did something.

--

I want to add two points to my theorizing about morals ...

First, very offtopic, the European reformation marked an important shift in the moral identity. The roman church based moral mostly on action, which faciliated an economy of sin, which became weird, when it mixed actual action with fantasy ("Slapped your wife? Do 12 Ave Mariae"; "The witch slept with the devil? Torture her to purge her soul!"). I think this survived in islamic extremism ("You had a sinful live? Go, kill yourself with a hundred of disbeliefers, and you get the key to paradise."). The reformation started to base moral mostly on intent, (its origins have been mostly the dissatisfaction of the roman catholic's instrumentalization of the weird parts of sin economy ("You slept your wife? Pay 1 Florin to us!")). This enabled the state to become the dominator of action and law in a critical historical episode, while religion switched in the sphere of pure intention.

Second, and more ontopic: It seems you cannot create or maintain a free society with children which base their moral identity on branding. They seem to unevitably rally behind the psychopathic assholes which claim the brand most loudly. Be the brand "teutonic race", "working class" or "real believer in god". This counts even when the brand itself is "freedom". The "Cypherpunk" branding exemplifies this. They censor, the mark opposing ideas as social attacks, they hide in uniforms (no2x, uasf, etc.), they spread lies - all because "cypherpunk". In fact, the brand itself does not matter. If you base your moralic perception on branding, you are not made for being part of a free society.

So, sorry for the offtopics

 

[albin]

"Cypherpunk" has clearly devolved into some absolutely horrific virtue-signalling cult behavior. I'm not some expert by any means on the history of the "movement", but it couldn't be more apparent that this has just become a label for asserting moral superiority

"Cypherpunks write code" is a great maxim if you're perhaps dealing with a world that has swung entirely the other way, and it's evocative to think of how technological progress obsoletes certain manual social structures. I'm interested in these ideas, but I'm not interested in a bunch of naive douchebags and bad actors jerking each other off constantly about how "cypherpunk" they are.

Adam Back and his ilk need to go back to Hot Topic where they belong, I mean the evidence is really piling up.... making t-shirts and calling himself "punk"??

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

I guess she meant it as something to digg in the earth to get flowers out of it.

Maybe it was a broad hint about her idea of the stuff you work with.

@albin
One sentence that stuck with me was Gavin saying "Can we all agree we want to avoid a future of "Bitcoin: Eleven Times as Popular as PGP!" ???". You can build (good) stuff all you want and have great ideas, if they are not widely used they become useless for the great picture.
Adam talked about Bitcoin becoming important to pay for services like TOR, torrenting etc. and I actually agree, that that is one of the most important "hope for the future" points of bitcoin. But to see that fundamentally colliding with business use and widespread adoption, you have to be a special kid like Greg. Sometimes I wonder if some of the so called cypherpunks are actually interested in the widespread adoption of their work, or if they rather stay in their own circles. And it is funny how many cypherpunks suddenly came out of nowhere, when someone finally managed to create decentralized money. 20 year old college kids with UASF hats suddenly have been best friends with Julian Assange for the last 30 years. And of course everybody has been a cypherpunk since forever. I mean, if Samson Mow isn't a cypherpunk, who is!

"Cypherpunks write code"

I always have to laugh when I see that quote and think of Adam Back's loc count in Bitcoin... (The self declared king of all cypherpunks)

On another point, I'm a bit concerned about nChain. They look more and more like a (trivial) patent troll company lately tbh, but I hope I'll be proven wrong. And it's ironic to see CSW speak about the fantastic future with 3D printing and whatever, when patents were the reason, that the adoption of 3D printing was prevented for decades because of patents...

 

[AdrianX]

Sometimes I wonder if some of the so called cypherpunks are actually interested in the widespread adoption of their work, or if they rather stay in their own circles.

@satoshis_sockpuppet if you think about this it's very telling. Bitcoin's economic incentive design creates a new type of digital asset, one that can't be reproduced without control over people. I imagine cypherpunks are about building code and not about politics and control of people but it's the opposite that seems true with the "cypherpunks" involved in bitcoin.

What I find telling is that these "cypherpunks" are not about building code and designing software, they don't need bitcoin to do that, they can just go do it. In reality they are seeking power to control people by changing the economic incentive design in bitcoin. The shocker is they seem happy to ignore the economic incentives that make bitcoin work and insist on political manipulation to achieve their goal.

There is nothing stopping them from copping the code the value is not in the software. The more rational observation is they are not into writing code, they are after the network of people.

 

[AdrianX]

This is what living in a bubble looks like:

Industry support for a 2MB hard fork = 95.14% in the past 24 hrs.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Bitcoin Core 0.15.0 will disconnect from BTC1 peers on the network. This means that the Bitcoin network will experience less disruption if the SegWit2x hard fork splits the network, as both types of nodes will more easily find compatible peers. While this change has gotten some media attention, this change shouldn’t really be noticeable.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-core-0150-released-heres-whats-new/

The skeptic in me can't help but wonder if theses developers are actually trying to inflict maximum damage on bitcoin investors.

 

[albin]

And it is funny how many cypherpunks suddenly came out of nowhere, when someone finally managed to create decentralized money. 20 year old college kids with UASF hats suddenly have been best friends with Julian Assange for the last 30 years. And of course everybody has been a cypherpunk since forever. I mean, if Samson Mow isn't a cypherpunk, who is!

The moment Nirvana hit, everyone and their grandma was into the Germs and Subpop records forever. Once pop punk took hold when I was a teenager, everybody suddenly was into The Dead Kennedys and Bad Religion their whole life! You weren't allowed to like The Clash because some moron who first heard Crass maybe a month ago discovered they made a diss track with one line shitting on The Clash!

This is the same exact shit. Even the self-defeating animosity towards success is exactly duplicated in these scenes with people who play in bands.

 

[adamstgbit]

This is what living in a bubble looks like:

Industry support for a 2MB hard fork = 95.14% in the past 24 hrs.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-core-0150-released-heres-whats-new/

The skeptic in me can't help but wonder if theses developers are actually trying to inflict maximum damage on bitcoin investors.

but they were saying that the segwit2x agreement was falling apart?
they said some big pools pulled out of it already...
not sure this chart is reflecting reality

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

hehe, the news, that bitcoin 0.15 disconnects btc1 is very hidden in the release notes. I scanned it with the knowledge that it might be a thing, but I didn't find it before I read through more info to find the commit.

The "100+" developers who participated in this release did all consent to this change? And everybody is happy to see a major release politicized?

 

[adamstgbit]

core no longer cares (or never cared...) about consensus. If its not them dictating consensus, then there is no consensus
[doublepost=1505491132,1505490240][/doublepost]so i read the PBOC's open letter about the ICOs, and two things come to mind.

1) these exchanges were dumb enough to allow Crazy Toxic ICO trading on there platforms??? wtf did they expect that the PBOC would let them trade toxic shit forever without ever interfering?? good job exchanges you've proved to the PBOC that you cannot self regulate. EPIC FAIL

2) i dont understand why these exchanges are shutting down, there seems to be no official request to shut them down, the PBOC seem to want to shut down all the ICOs... not necessarily bitcoin trading itself, which is understandable, i mean that ICO shit is going to burn most 95%? "investors" sooner or later, you have to be pretty naive not to see that.

of course google translate does a poor job with chinese...

I can't help but think that the PBOC has reached out privately to these exchanges, and told them to shut down.

If the PBOC is truly worried about investors, then shutting down all BTC trading platforms is a BAD idea. OBVIOUSLY.

IMO there is way more to this then they are saying, somthing BIG is happening in chain, and if i had to guess i'd say that this is that: the PBOC is going to go full retard and exercise FULL control over these exchanges, they need them to shut down and implement all kinds of facilities so that PBOC can oversee and control all aspects of their businesses.

the shutdown is also maybe a way for the PBOC to weed out the exchanges that are operating on fractional reserves, and or engaging in market manipulation with "fake BTC" or "fake CNY"

 

[Justus Ranvier]

the shutdown is also maybe a way for the PBOC to weed out the exchanges that are operating on fractional reserves, and or engaging in market manipulation with "fake BTC" or "fake CNY"

Back around the time of the first Gox bubble and crash, I remember people talking about trying to coordinate such events voluntarily: spread the word and get all exchange users withdraw all their coins at the same time to prove the exchanges were solvent.

Completely impractical to get enough people to go along with it, of course, but it would have been great had such behavior taken off and become enough of a tradition that nobody even attempted to run fractional reserve scams.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

I always had the impression as if the Chinese exchanges were operating pretty much in wild-west mode all these years. If you see trough how many loops exchanges like Coinbase etc. have to jump to get a license in the US, I wondered how fast, for example, ViaBTC could start their exchange. So I doubt, that Fiat<>BTC exchange will be prohibited in mainland China completely (if so, majorly idiotic move by the CP, even the Russians are starting to get the message) but that they'll start to implement more strict KYC/AML rules.

But maybe I'm totally wrong, China is a black box for me.
Btw, I'm really interested who the big green candle was... lol

 

[Norway]

@satoshis_sockpuppet I think you are right about the wild-west mode. It's probably the only way to break new ground in China. Regulators come after, not before the inventions.

This is how Alibaba operates, according to Jack Ma in this fresh interview:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-09-14/alibaba-s-jack-ma-on-alipay-tencent-and-regulation-video

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

@Norway
Interesting clip, this is like I would have imagined it.

btw, I think I'll go full norway with the cheap BCC coins these days... BCC reawakened so many great ideas, what one can do with Bitcoin.

Most informed people are still waiting for 2X I'd guess. I think BCC could have a huge boost if it implemented a "final" blocksize solution this year. Still a Bip101 fan (it's aggressive, predictable, easy and oldschool). Other solutions might be good as well, but I see the danger of overengineering a simple problem. BIP101 on BCC plus things like Yours, browser wallets, Bitpay integration... Win!

 

[adamstgbit]

@satoshis_sockpuppet

I would like to see BU's EC for blocksize on BCC. that would be a very nice final solution.
but with 8MB its probably a long ways out untill blocksize becomes an issue again.

if BCC can consistently fill 8MB with fee paying TXs, this time next year, i'd be pleasantly surprised.

 

[AdrianX]

Some interesting global cogs are turning leaving me to think we're leaning closer towards a global currency reset.

To coincide with People's Bank of China banning bitcoin.

Jamie Diamond calling bitcoin a "fraud" and he seems very confident in its coming demise, despite his enthusiasm for "Blockchain" financial services. JPMorgan having a well lubricated Revolving Door with Washington and the Treasury, I am sure it has a lot to do with his bravado. Not to mention
JPMorgan, and others form new blockchain alliance with lots of attention on Etherium.

China has moved to denominate oil futures trading in CNY, and to maintain existing capital controls is proposing to settle balance of payments using gold - How China Just 'Reset' the Global Monetary System With Gold

The US threatens to cut off China from SWIFT If It doesn't support North Korea Sanctions. (and FUD about the North Korean government acutely using bitcoin)

I'm positive lots of back room meetings have been going on and I'm sure "what to do about Bitcoin/crypto" was on the table.

Peripheral to that are BS/Core efforts that looks like they are failing to grasp control over bitcoin with a looming minority fork supporting the features TPTB would want (1MB4ever). The limiting of on chain capacity, moving usage to a banking layer like the LN, is diminished with the creation of Bitcoin Cash, and it looks to be losing to a 2MB fork.

The end game in the light of the geopolitical events above leaves me to think there could be a little bit of a crypto collapse on the horizon as governments and banks look to circumvent bitcoin as part of the solution. It's all very positive news in some ways but I think it could result in a rocky bear market for a while given 1.3 billion people are about to lose assess to bitcoin markets.
[doublepost=1505506207][/doublepost]

So I doubt, that Fiat<>BTC exchange will be prohibited in mainland China completely

is BTCC the only one temporally suspending trading while all others shut down?

BTCC being the only on to have Liquid Sidechains allowing off blockchain blockchain settlements and market manipulation.
[doublepost=1505506404,1505505627][/doublepost]

@satoshis_sockpuppet

I would like to see BU's EC for blocksize on BCC. that would be a very nice final solution.
but with 8MB its probably a long ways out untill blocksize becomes an issue again.

if BCC can consistently fill 8MB with fee paying TXs, this time next year, i'd be pleasantly surprised.

BitcoinCash is not centrally controlled, BUCash already supports EC, its only ABC, XT and Classic that support the limit. I too like BIP101 it's still my favorite solution.

 

[lunar]

Yup, geopolitical tensions are the highest I've witnessed in my lifetime. Xenophobia, Terrorism, Nationalism, Wealth disparity at record levels, Stocks at all time highs, Monetary policies of many countries are close to hyperinflation, Hate speech, Media manipulation on massive scales, Anti science becoming the norm, rational minds are hard to find. This makes the average person frustrated for reasons they can't quite understand, willing to blame their fellow humans for problems that are clearly the fault of a fundamentally broken system. Things are indeed looking bleak.

Time to get out of the cities. Especially the USA, I think if the dollar does collapse, that many have been predicting for years now, the USA will be bit hard, and we all know what happens when wounded dogs are cornered.

Our best hope is the internet, freedom of speech and the one world global village, shining a light on the madness, before too many get crushed.

Maybe, just maybe, with the blocks uncapped now, there is a safe haven for some people to run too. I hope it's not too, little too late.

 

[lunar]

https://blog.bitpay.com/bitcoin-cash-wallet-beta/

"Want to manage your Bitcoin Cash alongside your Bitcoin? With the new beta release of our open source Copay bitcoin wallet, that's no problem."