Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[adamstgbit]

To put it blunty, this naïve theory of unbounded demand for cheap or free transactions is nonsense. You don't see people storing genome data on Google Drive, despite the almost unlimited and free storage possibilities.

i think its only a matter of time.
if things like colored coins and DEX (decentralized exchange) catches on... we can very quickly get to the point where demand for "free" TX is virtually limitless.
and if bitcoin cash tries to attract use cases of blockchain that produce these types of TX... thats what bitcoin cash will get.

Apart from that, no sane miner would include transactions below the raw cost of doing so. In the same way that a salesman at a bazaar doesn't bargain below the price that he acquired his goods for, the miners won't include transactions that are paying less than the cost of including them.

this i agree with, i just think that for a miner storing and transmitting a 100MB costs at most 1$ (even if we take into account orphan risk) probably far far far less. ( just a feeling )

for now we should probably just agree to disagree. i guess....
[doublepost=1511484881,1511484241][/doublepost]

Just to increase the the block size once by 1MB you need to spend around $3000 in $0.01 transaction fees. the cost to store that data for my lifetime is just pennies. this notion of Spam is a red herring.

a TX paying 1cent isnt what i'm woiired about

if we had 8MB of >1cent TX fees i would say that its time to incress the blocksize.
what i'm worried about is millions of "free" TX spamming us to a premature 1GB blocksize.

Aa cretin percent of free transaction are always relayed, but when the network is overburdened with free or extremely low fee transactions it's not in your best interest as a node to congest the network and relay all transactions. For a miner using Xthin if they want optimal block propagation they want to avoid uncertainty, they want to include transaction they know all other miners already have.

this is the hole in my logic, if indeed extremely low fee transactions are not relayed, then their is no potential for a problem.

 

[NewLiberty]

Whilst in complete agreement, it is worth noticing that this is so frequently misquoted, and taken out of context, that folks who weren't in the room when it was said can be easily forgiven for doing that.

if a small-bitcoin-businesses needs a 20K machine to run a node, that HURTS

The US$20k machines are for those who have been in Bitcoin since 2009, not small-bitcoin-businesses.

The quote was:
"If you have been in Bitcoin since 2009 and you can't afford a $20,000 node to help this network, piss off."

A transcript is here:
https://gist.github.com/harding/b7067d2943706e2e3d3f7aab539a67c5

There's node sizes for all sorts of folks. All my small-bitcoin-businesses run full nodes on utility hardware. These are essentially free, as they primarily do other things which already justify their costs.
So nodes can be free for small-businesses.

On the other hand, my research equipment had cost quite a bit more than US$20K, but then again it was bought by a multinational telco. By helping the network, I took this to mean studying Bitcoin, not simply using a $20K for small businesses.

 

[adamstgbit]

I'm not sure why, but i'm honestly supersized most poeple here have the opinion that, increasing blocksize to the absolute limits is justifiable merely by the presence of enough "free" TX demand. i'm defiantly not a small blocker... but i'm only willing to tell poeple to "piss off" if i feel the TX demand warrants a blocksize increase. consistently filling blocks with 1cent TX is a good definition of what "warrants a blocksize increase" means to me.

I think you have some solid points, and you might be right about having no worries about no limits. I hope I am certain bitcoin cash will have this "problem" of being a victim of its own success and i look forward to seeing all this play out.

 

[NewLiberty]

i'm honestly supersized most poeple here have the opinion that, increasing blocksize to the absolute limits is justifiable merely by the presence of enough "free" TX demand. ... ... but i'm only willing to tell poeple to "piss off" if i feel the TX demand warrants a blocksize increase. consistently filling blocks with 1cent TX is a good definition of what "warrants a blocksize increase" means to me.

I don't know anyone with the opinion that the presence of "free" TX demand warrants blocksize increase. I know a few miners, who agree entirely with you, and it is the miners that make the market. This is why we don't need any limit, the market already provides it, because the miners are just as rational as is adamstgbit and don't give it up for nothing.

Once upon a time, way back when coin was US$300 or less, a limit was needed because flooding the network would be too cheap. Now it is no longer a risk, the value is high enough, and the emission is low enough that what was once an attack is no longer one... provided there is not a limit on block size.
It is the limit that is now the vulnerability, and lack of one isn't. We've passed the tipping point of bitcoin valuation where we are no longer subject to cheap flooding attacks. These flood attacks would now be quite costly and would serve to support the network security though mining subsidy as we see on BTC chain even now.

 

[molecular]

Hypothesis: *the core boys are behind Bitcoin Gold*.

It's exactly what they want, isn't it?

* has SegWit
* has 1 MB blocksize limit (I guess, not sure)
* has "decentralized mining", gives finger to Chinese miners
* they can be early adopters

Just pondering... does this make sense?

 

[Zarathustra]

Once a free-thinker, always a free-thinker.

The USAF bolsheviki as well as the pseudo-libertarian right wing collectivists and ancap esoterics are not amused.
They want to trade with aliens, but not live among them. Open borders for money and goods, but closed borders for humans. Ridiculous ideology.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7f4147/jeffrey_a_tucker_im_thinking_that_the_critics_of/

 

[albin]

Had some more free time time this holiday weekend, and I was reading about Bram Cohen's latest Proof-of-Space work.

Isn't this just a kind of PoW in disguise. Sure you're not burning CPU cycles, but anyone have any insight into how in practice this would be any different? You still have to supply electricity to storage devices, and there is still capex involved in the setups themselves. Maybe there is some different ratio in practice between capex and electricity cost, but this is surely a minor difference that's not in kind, and it's not like producing the capital equipment doesn't itself consume opportunity cost of labor, materials, energy, and depreciation of the capital equipment to manufacture anyway.

Broader question this poses: do consensus mechanisms that rely on some kind of external real-world resource all ultimately reduce to slightly different forms of what PoW is doing?

 

[awemany]

@albin:

Broader question this poses: do consensus mechanisms that rely on some kind of external real-world resource all ultimately reduce to slightly different forms of what PoW is doing?

Yes, this is my thinking as well. Gavin asked about how to define Bitcoin a while ago, and my input there was that it might make more sense to replace 'most cumulative SHA256 hashes' with 'most energy in Joules'. Which might on one hand be harder to measure, but on the other hand grounds the Bitcoin blockchain definition just in physics.

@Zarathustra: I think you are making it too simple. How can there be 'open borders' if all borders are gone and replaced with private property boundaries? Similarly, if I trade with my neighbor, does that mean he has a right to freely use my property? That seems to be the conclusion of your attitude of "Open borders for money and goods, but closed borders for humans. Ridiculous ideology." above, taken together with an 'abolish the state' stance.

Mind you, I like free movement and less borders. But I am also aware that social cohesion and common culture + customs helps in lifting exactly those borders. Maybe there is some kind of unifying human element underlying all cultures that, when progressing towards that realization, allows us to remove borders and barriers.

But right now, that sounds very much like an unrealistic, utopian hope. And current politics in many places of the world seem to move us toward less national borders, only for those borders to be replaced by borders between neighboring city ghettos of different cultural markup. The idea of a 'no-go area' is the idea of a border, in disguise. Goes for Dubai as much as it goes for Berlin or London. Different laws for different groups of people - a medieval idea.

The world is shades of gray. This is why I call myself 'libertarian leaning'. Ideals instead of ideology. I have seen too many people infected by longing for their own variants of utopias. I am also becoming more and more of an "unapologetic westerner", seeing the value of enlightenment, separation of powers and of church and state. All while the west disintegrates on those very fronts.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@albin I think everything boils down to PoW in the sense that people will expend resources to gain a block reward until marginal cost = marginal expected return. In PoW that means mining until it's unprofitable. In PoS that means stakegrinding until it's unprofitable. In a masternode scheme that might mean masternode operators get bribed, blackmailed, MitM'd, kidnapped, etc.

Paul Sztorc has a pretty good article on this: http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-and-mining/

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/fork-futures/

To my delight, Paul Sztorc has updated his blog with an excellent* post on how to do fork futures properly, to get all the things we would want from them. It's a bit complicated under the hood as it involves 8 tokens to cover every possibility, but it's quite well-specified, allows for a simplified UI without reference to the 8 tokens, and should be easy for an exchange to implement. This also explains part of the reason why no exchange seemed to be able to do fork futures correctly (besides daftness like linking 2MB to BU's repo): it's not quite as simple as I had assumed to get all the required dynamics nailed down. Sztorc is the dude for this kind of thing.

*except for his usual anti-hardfork bias and odd claims about contentious forks and BCH/BTC-style fork arbitrage trading (the status quo bias he mentions is a valid concern though and it shows how much higher BCH would be if we had had proper fork futures before August 1st, or shows how BCH sentiment is higher than 21% of the investors (current BCH/BTC ratio) and big blocks sentiment is higher still (since many still hold out hope for BTC to raise the cap))

 

[adamstgbit]

Hypothesis: *the core boys are behind Bitcoin Gold*.

It's exactly what they want, isn't it?

* has SegWit
* has 1 MB blocksize limit (I guess, not sure)
* has "decentralized mining", gives finger to Chinese miners
* they can be early adopters

Just pondering... does this make sense?

just a freindly reminder about the BTG scam.
BTG is almost 400$ today, you MIGHT want to collect your profits.
BE VERY VERY CAREFULL
more then one BTG wallet has been proven to be stealing private keys.
I wouldn't be supersized that the official client also steals keys...

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Bitcoin finally over $10,000 total.* Didn't expect it to happen in this strange form, though. Actually, looking back, maybe I did.

Perhaps we can say, "The non-monetary aspects of the protocol are part of the ledger maintenance function that were falsely considered to be inextricably tied to the ledger itself." Or, "The non-monetary aspects of the protocol snuck into our conception of what Bitcoin is, when they should have been just part of how the ledger is serviced."

In other words, different implementations of the protocol are just different competing service layers built on top of the basic ledger layer.

The main remaining pieces to implement in the full "blockchains as ledger-servicing layers for the WWL" vision in that link are:

1) Wallets that automatically cover every spinoff that has a market price (the bitcoin.com wallet covers BTC and BCH, but not BTG)

2) Full Sztorcian fork futures markets, preferably on a DEX (full futarchic market governance)

3) A DEX that automatically reweights your portfolio if you want, so that users are aware only of using "Bitcoin" and paying in "Bitcoin," even as more complex stuff is happening with the spinoffs under the hood (simple user experience)

*BTC+BCH+BTG (minus BTG premine which makes it "not the Bitcoin ledger," but that's a rounding error here)

 

[albin]

My biggest concern at this point about the forkfest is whether one day within the statute of limitations from filing date, the IRS is going to decide that these are all regular income in the year you receive them to set the cost basis, and they decide we're all tax cheats for not knowing about some lame crap like Bitcoin Diamonds or Bitcoin AIDS or whatever trolololol Dragon's Den anti-Cash initiative is rolling.

Obviously it makes sense to just split the cost basis (which many believe would be the treatment), but until they say something who knows.

 

[79b79aa8]

yeah i have no clue what i am going to tell my accountant about BTG. i hope she does not fire me.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

Bitcoin AIDS

Next Poe's Law candidate right there.

 

[solex]

Here it is. The blank wall at the end of the small-blocker, settlement layer, digital gold rabbit-hole.
Transactions don't matter, only holding does:


Quoting this gem for posterity

Tuur Demeester‏ @TuurDemeester Nov 24
There is an increase in usage: as a store of value. Hodling doesn't require transactions.

A ponzi-coin is literally one that people hold, without all the user-to-user commerce which is the primary function of money. A coin to just hold does nothing to deserve its value.

Meanwhile, yesterday it is reported that ETH comprises more than 50% of all crypto transactions, doing about 540,000 per day. Next day it gets a massive price spike. The market knows what the small-blockers refuse to learn.

 

[79b79aa8]

the quaintest part of is the delusion that the crypto market is to be conquered on social media, or that tricks like distraction forks will tilt the balance in favor of one coin. however much effort, however sophisticated the techniques, however self-important the talking head, the long term effect of all this sound and fury will be negligible. we are talking, after all, about M-O-N-E-Y. does anyone really think that what gets established to be used as money by hundreds of millions of users will be decided on a subreddit? it is not about anyone's opinion's or number of upvotes, it's about which vehicles out there are fit to take a significant share of the world's monetary base. this is to be decided on macro terms, on cold economic calculations by an aggregate of users across the globe who have never heard and never will hear of these puny internet debates.

 

[adamstgbit]

I've been holding back my BCH buying, i was hoping for some fantastic drop, some obvious opportunity, I've been buying slowly here and there, i have more BCH then BTC, but really i'd want more BCH value then BTC value. sadly didn't mange to really sink my teeth in.

i'll go bananas at .15

 

[Roger_Murdock]

Tuur Demeester‏ @TuurDemeester Nov 24
There is an increase in usage: as a store of value. Hodling doesn't require transactions.

Blockstream should start a cloud storage company and offer insanely competitive rates, like 100 TB of space for $1 / month. And then...

Chat
You are now connected to Blockstream Cloud Storage support.
Blockstream: Hello, and thank you for using Blockstream Cloud Storage's live chat service. Is there something in particular I can help you with today?
You: Hi, yeah, this is sort of an embarrassing question because I'm sure the answer is going to be obvious. But a few weeks ago I uploaded some important files to my new cloud storage account. Well, I need to access them now because my hard drive crashed. And for the life of me I can't figure out how to do so. Can you help?
Blockstream: Unfortunately, Blockstream Cloud Storage is purely a file storage solution. At this time we are not offering customer access to stored files. May I suggest you contact our affiliate company, Blockstream Cloud Access? They offer a service that would allow you to access any of your stored files for $100 per MB downloaded.
You: Wait... what?!
Blockstream: Is there anything else I can help you with today?
You: Is this some kind of fucking joke?
Blockstream: Thank you for being a valued Blockstream Cloud Storage customer and allowing me to help. Have a great rest of your day!
Blockstream has disconnected.

 

[adamstgbit]

the BTC road map:

pretend segwit to will "nearly double capacity"
pretend it'll only be a couple months till segwit effectively increases capacity
pretend LN will "completely solve the scaling and fees problem"
pretend LN is ~18 months away from being ready
pretend it'll only be a couple months till LN is widely used, once it released.
pretend other solutions are not worth considering, as they prove to be far more effective (BCH)
pretend to be bitcoin.
pretend that pretending to be bitcoin, gives BTC value in and of itself