Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[lunar]

@Norway That's amazing "Fuck Off Blockstream, Bitcoin's our dream."

whoever was behind the campaign simply overdid it all by trying to force Bitcoin all the way to mold to their expectations. If you think about this, the 2X failure might well be seen as the beginning of the end of the old financial system.

I think you're right that this was the Minskey moment of Blockstreams influence, but from a fatalistic PoV they had it coming even if they'd increased to 2MB. As soon as the transaction levels hit any significant friction, it becomes obvious the flow would move elsewhere. The pressure is just too great to restrict.
Really what options did they really give the market, none.

Look LN centralising into banks already.

Or in real time, if you have a popcorn surplus that needs eating. https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/?fail
[doublepost=1516397038][/doublepost]@hodl

That looks ideal. Just need a place to put it. ;-) How much juice does it take? I assume you'll need something extra to the typical home supply + transformer?

 

[79b79aa8]

I'm hiding under the Bitcoin Cash caps

HAWT

 

[lunar]

Great thread on Bitcoin Game theory, before the trolls turn up.

"Bitcoin is a a von Stackelberg security game with a dynamical leader allocation."


It's a bit like the 'Bitcoin is not a mesh it's a semi complete graph' concept. It's obvious when someone points it out, but unless someone had pointed it out, I think it would have taken years for anyone else to see it so clearly.

 

[79b79aa8]

@lunar thanks that is very interesting. off the bat it is puzzling why CSW claims POS degrades to oligopoly while POW does not. it seems the stackelberg game is precisely intended to model an oligopoly scenario, which mining de facto is. what i think he means is that IRL the situation does not get locked into an equilibrium (in this case the uncompetitive situation in which extant miners forever keep their hashrate share), because unknown factors (e.g. price) alter the conditions for each hashrate rebalancing move. with POS, everything you need to take into account to maintain your hashrate share (i.e. everyone else's hashrate) is known.

speaking of which, in case you missed it, the miners-moving-out-of-china story is real. i just got reimbursed on my bitcoin.com pool contract because they are turning the switch off and relocating their equipment.

 

[Richy_T]

I've been working silently on my new project which is meant to realise many of these goals. I no longer call things a 'node', but instead it becomes a 'hub'. The hub is much more humble and has a lot less duties than the full node. And in real Unix philosophy, the hub is intending to be the best at the things it does.

If you want to read more on this idea; http://floweethehub.com

Sounds good. Yes, my theory is that a base node (or hub, whatever) should do the actual bare minimum in blockchain validation. As I say, I wouldn't even make the network layer a part of it. Just have it as something that feeds data in to the system.

 

[torusJKL]

i just got reimbursed on my bitcoin.com pool contract because they are turning the switch off and relocating their equipment.

Unfortunately because the Bitcoin Cash value has gone up since I bought my mining contract receiving a 100% full refund of my initial USD cost (paid in BCH at current exchange rate) is not such a good deal which means I will not ROI.

 

[Zarathustra]

Great thread on Bitcoin Game theory, before the trolls turn up.

"Bitcoin is a a von Stackelberg security game with a dynamical leader allocation."


It's a bit like the 'Bitcoin is not a mesh it's a semi complete graph' concept. It's obvious when someone points it out, but unless someone had pointed it out, I think it would have taken years for anyone else to see it so clearly.

http://www.dasgelbeforum.net/forum_entry.php?id=452902&page=0&order=time&descasc=DESC&category=0

Within a swarm there is always some balance (autopoiesis). Followers become leaders et vice versa:

"However, in an (indefinitely) repeated Stackelberg game, the follower might adopt a punishment strategy where it threatens to punish the leader in the next period unless it chooses a non-optimal strategy in the current period. This threat may be credible because it could be rational for the follower to punish in the next period so that the leader chooses Cournot quantities thereafter."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stackelberg_competition#Credible_and_non-credible_threats_by_the_follower

 

[theZerg]

Great thread on Bitcoin Game theory, before the trolls turn up.

"Bitcoin is a a von Stackelberg security game with a dynamical leader allocation."


It's a bit like the 'Bitcoin is not a mesh it's a semi complete graph' concept. It's obvious when someone points it out, but unless someone had pointed it out, I think it would have taken years for anyone else to see it so clearly.

Scale-free network is the term you are looking for I think. It makes sybil attacks hard but not impossible.

 

[lunar]

off the bat it is puzzling why CSW claims POS degrades to oligopoly while POW does not. it seems the stackelberg game is precisely intended to model an oligopoly scenario, which mining de facto is.

The way i'm understanding it so far, is that PoW is a dynamic environment of competition. I've seen this described as a 'Red Queen Game' basically the market leader has to continually move or innovate, just to stay in the same position. It's a driving form of evolution. Back when we were discussing N Dimitris paper, I speculated here how even in the duopoly situation, once a miner has >50% they are competing with themselves. Meaning it's unstable - or not making profit. So it's an Oligopoly but one where anyone can compete and overthrow the Queen.

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." L.Carroll
​

The difference between this and the Oligopoly formed under PoS is that the Queen or Queens don't have to run to stay in the lead. Perhaps PoS should be described as a 'Fat Cat Game' ? Once an entity has acquired sufficient stake in the system, they can afford to sit there like Banks and just rake in the interest of others labor.

This paper is an excellent read: https://nchain.com/app/uploads/2017/07/Proof-of-Work-and-the-Firm.pdf
- on PoW
"Whenever we add additional states into any system, these need to be taken in consideration of the overall utility and welfare that results. The initial system changes dynamically to vary significantly even on small changes. - The most important part of this consequence is that any additional inclusion is either of no utility and thus should not be incorporated or is of utility that can be expressed across a market in the form of profit."

"However, in an (indefinitely) repeated Stackelberg game, the follower might adopt a punishment strategy where it threatens to punish the leader in the next period unless it chooses a non-optimal strategy in the current period.

I wonder if this partially explains why we got in this mess? The market leader 'Antpool' was too hesitant to act when others used a punishing strategy? It came eventually, but too late to avoid the split. Their optimal move would have been to announce in 2015 they were running code to mine on top of >1MB blocks no matter what the consequences. Theoretically as it was in the interests of everyones profit, others would have followed their lead?

 

[hodl]

Prudent ballsy leading seems to be the best strategy to me. We've now seen several examples of it in Bitcoin: for the several soft forks that core forced through, they just released code whether the community wanted it or not and everyone grudgingly used it as they were the leader (csv, cltv, RBF, bip9). When ABC hard forked, they just did it and enough believers followed along. Again when Amaury wanted his version of the DAA, he basically just lead and did it and everyone accepted it. Now, BCH wants to implement its version of bech32 and they are just doing it, and Bitpay appears to be following along. Of course, you have to have a modicum of sensibility to what you do but as long as it makes sense, has some technical merit, and is perceived to be for the good of the community as opposed to one's pocket book, you'll go far. It's a good thing in retrospect that I've come to appreciate about what Amaury (despite my own concerns about his personal conduct at times) and @freetrader have done for the community. It has turned out to be our saving grace

 

[Justus Ranvier]

Perhaps PoS should be described as a 'Fat Cat Game' ? Once an entity has acquired sufficient stake in the system, they can afford to sit there like Banks and just rake in the interest of others labor.

This is exactly where all the anti-PoW hatred comes from.

From the perspective of a Fat Cat, a new monetary system that ends their ability to extract rent is the end of their world.

The PoS Fat Cat model also applies to Lightning Network hub operators. Many prospective Fat Cats support LN because they've been told that they'll be able to effortlessly earn interest on their bitcoins.

 

[79b79aa8]

I wonder if this partially explains why we got in this mess? The market leader 'Antpool' was too hesitant to act when others used a punishing strategy? It came eventually, but too late to avoid the split. Their optimal move would have been to announce in 2015 they were running code to mine on top of >1MB blocks no matter what the consequences. Theoretically as it was in the interests of everyones profit, others would have followed their lead?

only in an extended sense though . . . if I am understanding correctly, when POW mining is modeled as a von Stackelberg game, there is only one possible move for each miner to make at each round: to decide how many hashes per second he will pay for during the following round.

It's a good thing in retrospect that I've come to appreciate about what Amaury (despite my own concerns about his personal conduct at times) and @freetrader have done for the community. It has turned out to be our saving grace

it made the difference between being despondent and being elated.

 

[solex]

BUIPs 83 and 84 have been passed.
Thanks to all the BU members who supported my candidacy for another 2-year term as president at BU. This commences on 21 January 2018.

BUIP084 contains a bounty for coin-splitting instructions suitable to include in the BU website. This is open to anyone now.

 

[Peter R]

Bitcoin Unlimited is hiring a full-time web developer! If you want to work on exciting cryptocurrency projects, enjoy telecommuting, and have strong web-dev skills, please apply!!

https://medium.com/@peter_r/bitcoin-unlimited-is-hiring-a-web-developer-4b772e6968b5

 

[79b79aa8]

Unfortunately because the Bitcoin Cash value has gone up since I bought my mining contract receiving a 100% full refund of my initial USD cost (paid in BCH at current exchange rate) is not such a good deal which means I will not ROI.

i bought the contract on aug. 2 or 3 to add a tiny bit of hashrate to the BCH chain, without expectations of getting any return. in the end i did anyway . . . bitcoin is an amazing thing.

 

[Zarathustra]

@Peter R

You wrote on Reddit:

"CSW has told bald-faced lies in public, and his "technical ability" is an order-of-magnitude below what he portrays. What I struggle with though is whether his involvement is a net benefit or a net hindrance to BCH. He is helping to spread the word about BCH and make people aware of the problems with BTC. And he also helps clarify technical misunderstandings such as the fact that non-mining nodes are mostly impotent and that users do not need to run them. But then he seems to be on a crazy patent-binge which concerns me, and he pushes many false statements as fact too.“


I think, CSW contributed also „an order of magnitude“ more to our project than it is mentioned here. The 'mesh / complete graph thing', the Stackelberg game, the 'Blockchain 2003' and many other informations that triggered some of the most interesting discussions in this and other forums.
As soon as we are forced to lie, we are all liars.

To answer your question: To me he is (still) a net benefit. Do I believe/know that he is 'the main part of the team Satoshi', as Ian Grigg and JVP do? I don't know. I think it is possible. A team member - even the main part - doesn't have to be flawless to initialize a revolutionary project. Elon Musk did it and perhaps CSW did it too.

I like the Austrians of Bitcoin Unlimited and I like the Austrian CSW, despite I'm not a believer of that school. I also like CSW and Peter Rizun who both believe that the society will make progress with the progress of technology, despite I don't believe it. I believe that the Society is something that needs to be overcome. Crypto could be one of the weapons to make society/collectivism impossible.

Then you write:

It's funny. When I first got into Bitcoin it seemed that the entire community was "different" than the rest of the world in that they valued independent critical thought. Then the block size wars broke out and it became clear to me that many small-blockers just blindly accepted the BS/Core doctrine. Again, I thought the "big blockers" were someone different and better at critical thought. But now the CSW thing has taught me that that's not the case either. It seems in any group, there is a sub group that will look to find an "expert" they resonate with and then blindly agree with whatever they say.

Yes, you've been wrong in your assumption. That was very naive ;-)
There is some sort of a Craig Wright Cult, Peter Rizun Cult, Roger Ver Cult, but that's a small problem since those who are blindly following are just a minority. I'll continue to 'follow' you and CSW with open eyes.

 

[awemany]

@Zarathustra, @Peter R.:

In my opinion, CSW is excellent at looking up old conversations and ideas and then repackaging them as twitter or reddit soundbites, together with an aura of "Whoa dude, this is deep!"

Name dropping such as saying "Stackelberg" further helps to prop up the desired impression of "I am Satoshi".

The first mention is in this paper, I believe: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2400519

Which is from 2014.

 

[Zarathustra]

In my opinion, CSW is excellent at looking up old conversations and ideas and then repackaging them as twitter or reddit soundbites, together with an aura of "Whoa dude, this is deep!"

And he was excellent at supporting @deadalnix' and @freetrader's Bitcoin Cash from the very beginning in July.

What conversation did he "look up and repackage" here:

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Defending Craig Wright's eccentricities is always going to open a huge can of worms that I won't likely have time to close with the standards of argumentation I'd prefer to uphold here, but in the interest of maintaining at least a degree of accuracy I feel obligated to mention some things that will be apparent to all who have undertaken a deeper investigation of his work.

If the claim is that Wright merely repackages older material, off the top of my head:

• He brought up Turing completeness in Bitcoin for the first time in late 2015, when no one else was talking about it.
• I never saw anyone else talk about network graph theory before him, not even a trickle, whereas he is a waterfall on that topic. It has turned out to be an elephant in the room and a major key to the whole scaling issue. Were that his only contribution, I would class him with the best in the space on that alone.
• Besides Satoshi indirectly, I saw exactly two people saying anything along the lines of nodes completely useless for regular users to run before CSW did: Jorge Stolfi directly (calling non-mining nodes "abominations") and @Tomas van der Wansem indirectly. Both of those are pretty obscure, just being a few reddit comments. CSW gave even more straightforward reasons that make eminent sense in hindsight, as well as copious examples from early code and Satoshi writings that had been hidden by some semantic flourishes in the meantime (the meaning of "node" had subtly changed through Core's reign, with the result that Satoshi's real views remained hidden in plain sight). He thoroughly harped on the semantic issues.
  
• His criticisms of various altcoins are often quite novel: IOTA (graph theoretic issues), ETH (novel critiques of PoS and short block times), BTC (novel critiques of Segwit, to my knowledge fleshed out much more than anyone who may have hinted toward similar issues), LN (pointed out routing as others did, but noted specifically the multiple-depot travelling salesman problem).
• Stag hunt dynamics of mining.

There are so many more of these that it is pointless to go on. No matter one's position on CSW, it would be hard after thorough investigation to claim his problem is a lack of original material.

The argument will shift to, "But he is wrong about this and that," or, "He didn't specify this or that enough to warrant such sensational mention of it." Wrong - possibly, but I haven't seen any major examples yet (and were there any, that wouldn't make much difference to me as I haven't found anyone who gets nothing wrong). Underspecified and coy - yes, frequently. It's frustrating to some, but tantalizing to others. Personally, given his major contributions to my understanding heretofore, I'd rather see such hints than nothing at all.

I also haven't seen much blind parroting of his ideas. I've mainly seen people repeat the ideas that do make sense. For example, I don't see a bunch of people going around saying selfish mining is wrong, even though he spent a lot of time on that. I don't see people talking about Turing completeness unless they have some expertise, and those that do generally talk about it from a different angle. The node ideas have been a hard sell; I've been down in the trenches pushing them for months because they make a lot of sense to me (and it is striking how clearly Satoshi never said anything to suggest Core's idea of "full nodes," which had somehow been inured to a fixture of Bitcoin even among anti-Core folks).

He does of course repeat some ideas himself, as we all do, and as is expected for someone as thoroughly read as he is (note that the issue of his degrees should now no longer be in dispute, but as with everything else, he doesn't lay it out on a silver platter for investigators).

Lopsided genius is going to be more and more common going forward as we enter an age of unprecedented specialization and unprecedented levels of autism. No longer will brilliance always present itself in the more complete package of a Mises, a Hume, or a Hayek. Especially not if the person is just a guy who had a twisted love-hate relationship with being in the public eye in the first place. But this is getting into the proper way of evaluating evidence of claims of this nature. A post for another time, if I ever have a week or so free to try to cover such a complex topic as this enigmatic man.

 

[79b79aa8]

"I saw exactly two people saying anything along the lines of nodes completely useless for regular users to run before CSW did: Jorge Stolfi directly (calling non-mining nodes "abominations") and @Tomas van der Wansem indirectly"

not wishing to say anything about Wrightgate as fanning the flames on this discussion is clearly playing in the hands of the usurpers. just want to state my perception of this is different from ZB's. i remember setting up a non-mining node from a home connection in 2013 or 2014 and being unanimously told (on BCT, but probably by some ppl who are now here) that this was really not helping the network in any significant way, rather taxing it, while providing no tangible security benefits.