Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[AdrianX]

I just donated $100 in BTC towards more beer. - I got the early bird missed the member's tickets.

 

[79b79aa8]

@satoshis_sockpuppet lolnet hopefuls are adrift in open water in a leaky raft without a paddle, and they know it. i doubt it's worth trying to get through that complexity. what i want to know is how to get the guardian to charge me 0.0001 BCH per article. i want to pay.

@AdrianX that's Gresham's law in action.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

@79b79aa8
I wouldn't care if it was a bunch of enthusiasts trying to build their unicorn solution and experimenting with cascading payment channels. I'd say: Good for your, I doubt it will work, but best of luck!

But they are trying to sell a turd as a bar of gold. And I don't understand how other people are so polite towards the LN devs. All the "famous" proponents and devs are a bunch of lying assholes. That simple. roasbeef, Cdecker, Stark.. They lie every single time they talk about LN. And they are actively promoting to give up your privacy. It is like knowingly selling a backdoored encryption system.

They can't hold a single one of their promises except for nearly instant payment... Something that's possible since Bitcoin exists through payment channels.

 

[AdrianX]

I don't think there is any concern regarding nChain and all this fuss around IP. that said it's the responsibility of developers to avoid incorporating proprietary IP.

 

[79b79aa8]

New heights in monetary analysis by celebrated economist Nouriel Roubini:

"Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value, whereas fiat currencies certainly do, because they can be used to pay taxes."

 

[Norway]

If Calvin is right, his party/conference in Hong Kong in May will be epic.

 

[awemany]

I don't think there is any concern regarding nChain and all this fuss around IP. that said it's the responsibility of developers to avoid incorporating proprietary IP.

But that's exactly the problem with "IP" that was also highlighted by the recent debate:

You might be right on the legal aspect on who's responsibility it is to avoid incorporating "IP".

But not all IP is the same, and I think lumping it all together like it happened in the debate is not making the situation more clear.

I personally think it is much easier to track and honor the 'property' that is copyright than it is to patents. And I think there are decidedly fewer ways to abuse the system than there is for patents.

One major difference is, that with copyright, it is quite easy to tell for a layman whether a work is under copyright compared to patents, both regular ones as well as software patents.

And that's one heck of a difference: In one case (copyrights), you have a pretty cut and dried set of rules that are comparatively easy to follow (don't take from someone else unless you asked, paid and checked the license details). On the other end (patents), you have a lot of room of interpretation, innovation- and productivity-killing uncertainty PLUS feeding a whole system keen on self-preservation (the vultures that are named lawyers, the patent office, the courts ...) by producing the most murky grounds they can make to let you sink into. A system designed to feed the legal profession, growing, growing, growing - but in the bad way. And no offense meant to the lawyers around here

With broad submarine patents, you don't even know whether your are in violation.

And, honestly, it is pretty much impossible for a developer to be aware of the extend, applicability and legal details involving such patents - and then honor his or responsibility to avoid them.

Which is also why I think, yes, nChain is worse than Blockstream in this regard. Blockstream at least made the attempt of a fair patent policy.

This is not touching the abomination that is criminal law related to copyright (SWATting for having the wrong CDROM in your shelf), of course, nor is it the attempts (though many of them failing and I thus still consider that a relatively minor issue) to try to extend copyrights to some kind of software patents light (copyrighted UIs and APIs etc).

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Today I tried to export a bech32 SegWit Electrum Private Key and import it in Bither. Guess what happened? It didn't know the format of the priv key. It really feels not good to have funds on these adresses.

... and they wonder why SegWit is still at 15% adoption after years of propaganda and 8 month after activation.
[doublepost=1517481519,1517480414][/doublepost]WRT IP / nChain

I have a major mistrust against nChain and IP. I wonder if CSW will anytime deliver anything he promised.

However, I'm not in principle against IP. Maybe it is because I'm an author and a victim of mass-copyright-violation every day.

For example, here is the list of copyright violations of my yesterday's article

https://www.google.de/search?q=arum+die+beiden+Firmen+die+Vorladung+erhalten+haben,+ist+derzeit+nicht+bekannt.+Vermutlich+geht+es+aber+darum,+dass+Bitfinex+und+Tether+die+sogenannte&client=ubuntu&hs=jwE&channel=fs&dcr=0&filter=0&biw=1855&bih=959

For me as an author it is relatively unproblematic that this happens, as I invest not so much time in an article and the other sites steal my content, but not my readers. I guess if you invest years in tech IP violation is much more harmful. IP is also part of a company's valuation and so on. It has it's pros and cons, and it is every developer's decision, if he uses IP or not. The worst thing that can happen is that you start to block progress for moralic reasons with regard to IP. Then you enter politics.

 

[Zarathustra]

Sounds somehow like a BIG thing:

When Dr Craig Wright tweeted “Expect some BIG things this January with BCH. The crypto world is about to change and grow up.” He was onto something… because he had seen what Centbee had been working on.
(...)
So, what makes this wallet so special and so easy to use? “Contact integration is the killer use case”. Centbee have devised a method where it is super easy to send anyone an amount of money. They don’t even have to have the app installed, and in fact, they don’t even need a Bitcoin wallet at all. The app cleverly notifies a user and advises them to get the wallet to claim their money if they have any sent to them. This is a sorely needed function for wallets, and Centbee addresses this.
(...)
The other interesting area that Centbee are looking at concerns sending every day money. That sounds glaringly obvious, and Brown even laughed when he said it, but allow us to elaborate. Right now, there is a legitimate inaccessibility to send money across the country, or to neighbouring countries. The existing methods are either far too expensive, or just unreliable. Centbee tackles this problem by enabling citizens to be able to send a sum of money instantly, that is, fiat to fiat.

Picture that, a solution that makes money transfer so easy, that you don’t even know that you’re using Bitcoin Cash. Brown explains that Bitcoin Cash in this case works as the medium of transfer. Ofcourse that’s not the way it’s going to remain, as adoption grows, more and more people may choose to receive BCH instead of fiat.

https://coingeek.com/centbee-to-deliver-a-game-changing-eco-system-replacement/

 

[KoKansei]

The app cleverly notifies a user and advises them to get the wallet to claim their money if they have any sent to them. This is a sorely needed function for wallets, and Centbee addresses this.

It will be interesting to see what functionality is provided beyond Coinbase's "send to e-mail address" feature. Perhaps they have developed a way to effectively create a bitcoin cash wallet on a potential user's behalf, trustlessly?

 

[AdrianX]

Which is also why I think, yes, nChain is worse than Blockstream in this regard. Blockstream at least made the attempt of a fair patent policy.

Blockstream had no business model, their investors Mastercard and the owners of big banks, as well as companies who make a living of data mining networks for asymmetric knowledge like Google, have many ways to profit from layer two tech.

Blockstream created a scenario where bitcoin growth has to occur on Layer 2 and held patents to some layer two tech. If they had on intention to leverage the IP they could have just released the knowledge into the public domain like Satoshi did with Bitcoin.

Blockstream is way more evil, nChain is benign to bitcoin they are building the version of bitcoin I invested in, and I don't have to use their patents.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

Plenty of companies had and have terrible ideas. Blockstream was able to do a so much damage because they secured an effective development monopoly.

If nChain gains the same degree of control over BTC as Blockstream obtained over BTC then it will be time to worry.

 

[AdrianX]

However, I'm not in principle against IP. Maybe it is because I'm an author and a victim of mass-copyright-violation every day.

IP as a concept is as archaic as the notion of slavery where people are property.

I make a living from IP. and I only support IP laws because to have a civil society we all need to be judged by the same rules; we cant have one set of rules for poor people and one set for the rich or politically favoured,

IP law is broken and it looks like it is unworkable in a capitalist system, if you have IP and you want to defend it you need long pockets. The law says one thing but in reality, the IP belongs to the entity that had the most resources. When you want the state to make a ruling on IP, it goes on and on until one party backs down or they agree to stop arguing over it. The law does nothing, and if the law can be enforced with impunity expect it to change to advantage those with long pockets. Try making a living by creating IP in this reality.

So IP for now but it needs to change like slavery is a productivity tax, not free labour, IP is as cumbersome to free markets.

 

[awemany]

@AdrianX, @Justus Ranvier : Of course, overall Blockstream is absolutely the worse menace. I was talking specifically in regard to handling of IP and patents.

And I just think it is absolutely note- and discussionworthy that nChain compares unfavorably to the gold standard of evilness - Blockstream in this one metric.

That doesn't mean they don't do good stuff to: Co-fnancing the Giganet or, now, Electron Cash development.

I have no strong opinion on nChain, neither negative nor positive, so far, honestly, overall. As most of you know, I am a little bit wary of CSW's involvement, but then that company is more than a single person and, yes, I am aware of that as well.

But at least Blockstream had a goal of a open/free patent use policy. I am not aware that nChain has a comparable one. If they do, and you can point that out, I'll take back that they are indeed worse than Blockstream in this regard.

 

[79b79aa8]

it seems clear enough to me that whatever patents nChain intends to deploy do not concern the bitcoin (cash) protocol, which on the contrary they are extremely motivated to defend under its current open source model.

they have chosen to develop or fund proprietary solutions to go on top of the base protocol, and this may well be a boon, as it ensures infrastructure development. whether it is a good business model for them i do not know.

the announcement that they will only participate in development for the BCH chain perhaps simply means that they will only get involved with solutions that assume big blocks.

 

[Norway]

This is awesome, love it! Thanks for doing this... hope it's not the last we hear. Donation sent, of course.

Do you have a higher quality encoding of the audio or is that available to buy anywhere? What I'm getting from this youtube sounds like crap on my good hifi gear. (That's what I get for finally getting good speakers and amps: I can't listen to stuff encoded with low bitrate lossy codecs any more)

This might be a higher quality of the sound:


EDIT: If it's still too shitty quality for your high end hifi gear and your sensitive ears, let me know. It's recorded in a good studio, so I will get access to it when I ask. I just don't have the gear/ears to tell the difference.

EDIT2: And your donation is welcome. I don't get anything, it all goes to the four guys in the band.

 

[awemany]

@79b79aa8 : Yes, fair enough. Maybe I am the pessimist here. It doesn't change anything on the lack of a sound (software) patent policy from nChain, though.

 

[79b79aa8]

@awemany @freetrader is there a simple explanation why the hash functions used in strong cryptography are not injective? is it because those are easy to invert? sorry if obvious never studied this particular stuff.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

@79b79aa8
Not that I know anything about that but I'd say
a) you can't have an injective function that maps input of any length to output of a defined length.
b) Yes, ff you could prove, that SHA256 was injective I'd guess you could easily invert it.

 

[79b79aa8]

@satoshis_sockpuppet there are perfect hash functions . . . but length of argument might have to be bound . . . and i guess they are "easy" to invert.

i'm just trying to understand the use of SHA256^2, @awemany made me see it was an interesting question. still have to work out what @Tom Zander said.