Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

here's what i'd do if i was the fucking benevolent dictator of the dominant implementation of Bitcoin Cash. first, i'd take this dip opportunity to buy a truckload of BCH. then, i'd go to the beach after refusing donations or funding of any kind. every once in a while i'd go home, check my computer for all the screams of interested, agenda seeking devs and for-profit business guys threatening to go elsewhere or fork if i didn't do this one thing for them (insert code flavor of the day to facilitate their agenda), tell them everything is going to be ok and i'll get to it, and then every 6 mo or so, toss them a bone amounting to a line or two of additional code that enhances the p2p ecash & SOV properties of BCH, BCH. and then i'd head back to the beach.

the idea is to pigeon hole everyone in to having to buy my coin in order to conduct business thus driving the price to the Moon while i'm sitting on the beach serving up that line or two of additional code for plausible deniability that i'm actually doing something. caveat: don't tell anyone that you're actually on the beach. this strategy may sound selfish but Moon is actually a prerequisite for a worldwide reserve currency if you're gonna cap it's supply at a mere 21M coins. it's great. it's easy on the arteries, i don't have to do much, if anything, and i become King of BCH, BCH. and, price appreciation of my coin guarantees i don't have to rely on donation or funding of any kind. i can always say i'm not beholden to anyone and i'm only working to drive the price of my coin. anyone can understand that. the problem with Gavin is he was just too nice of a guy and he spent altogether too much time on his computer trying to make everyone happy. this is a guaranteed formula to vast RCH's as i sit back and watch the power of Sound Money go viral.

 

[cypherdoc]

oh, and i'd remember to keep telling myself three things. first, i have the brilliance of Satoshi's original vision working for me 24/7. acknowledging that i'm unlikely to be as brilliant as he. two, it's only been 9y in without his vision ever being allowed to have been fulfilled. so, even if i am more brilliant than Satoshi, i want and need out of respect alone, to see his experiment thru to the end. everyone's curious about that, except central bankers of course. three, i have the original ledger working for me in the form of 9y's of coin distribution. since it appears highly likely that most early adopters of that ledger are behind me, that will ensure they won't sell the coin out from underneath me. volatility excepted, of course.
[doublepost=1522340572,1522339893][/doublepost]i guess there's a 4th thing. i need to remember that there is a fucking shitload of shit-fiat-currency floating around in the world that absolutely dwarfs everyone's piddly little stocks, bonds, insurance, tokens, and gambling markets, etc. if i can get everyone to start diverting that shit into my BCH, they will be my BCH's.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@cypherdoc

I like that radically simplified view, but there is one catch: maybe no one will use it. Maybe they'll use Litecoin, and maybe Litecoin will wise up and raise the blocksize. Or something else. Relaxing on the beach might be fine if there were also a bunch of Roger Vers spreading the word and driving adoption.

I have to admit it's somewhat baffling to me that every single person in Venezuela and every person of means in China who wants to leave the country, and every wealthy person who wants to shelter their assets, isn't already using Bitcoin/BCH or one of the other top coins. A big question still looms: is there no usage because Core killed it, or is there something else we have got wrong?

(I think this issue is opcode agnostic; we could have BCH be able to do absolutely everything any alt can do, 10 times better, and still not get used for anything - seeing as sound money is still barely being used.)

 

[cypherdoc]

i see BCH as a reboot; we're only 8m in. and yet, by my estimation, significant adoption IS occurring. just maybe not at the pace you want. that's where sitting on the beach relaxing helps.
[doublepost=1522341719][/doublepost]i'm pretty sure the formula works; otherwise we wouldn't have seen the BTC price go to $20K (sans tokens) amidst the many year's long onslaught of merchant business. as an aside, does this mean merchant business is forever doomed? no. i said long ago that i see the price appreciation/volatility following the issuance curve of coin out to 2140 due to the inflation/emission (block rewards) which creates the speculation. after 2140, miners will become a utility with income solely from processing fast, cheap tx's in volume. the volatility will then settle down/flatten out to a sustainably efficient economy with all participants having to focus on serving up real value.

 

[cypherdoc]

here's what the press and lay public focus on. no BCH required except to secure the XCP price:

Naturally, then, as activity associated with the Counterparty platform increases (as more developers come on board and, in turn, as the applications they develop and launch increase in popularity), more XCP is required to keep the applications operational and, by proxy, the increased demand boosts price:

https://globalcoinreport.com/counterparty-xcp/

 

[Tomothy]

Yeah, Cypherdoc it's a nice dream but I don't think it's reality. I think you somehow have to prime the pump before you can go back and sit on the beach and sip mai-tais. How you prime the pump again, I'm not sure. What I mean is that the market is diverse, competitor's many, and it's all about profit. There are plenty of alt-coins that have started with a bang and ended with a whimper. As stated above by Zanglebert, why BCH? What's the compelling use case that makes people use this. People care about making money, how will you make them money? How do you get the greed back as opposed to fear. When you have fear, it's easy to just implement an xrp clone backed by central banks and have them use that. The only people that will care about financial sovereignty are a limited number. But again, there are more esoteric coin options those people can be attracted to. Also, there's always cash, suitcases full of it. What I'm saying, is that bch and it's hashpower is still dwarfed by bitcoin, something fundamentally (imho) broken. But people don't care because it has that greed factor going for them. I think the length and duration of the coming struggle has been vastly underestimated. I'd like to be wrong.

 

[Richy_T]

and something which deserve addressing at length. There is a feeling that such concerns can be mitigated,

I'm a little concerned that this sounds a little like browbeating and the belief that those with dissenting views are wrong but they just haven't "got the message". Let's try and steer away from condescension if possible. That's what we've tried to leave behind.
[doublepost=1522365029][/doublepost]

i don't think so. they'll be priced in dollars. hence the competition for dollars that BCH will face.

I have 0 worry about competition for dollars. I think the other issues alone are enough for us to make sure we have a good in-depth discussion about this though. I think the "pros" list comes up a little short. Speaking of which, perhaps we should have a good pros and cons list going on (let's try to avoid disingenuity though)
[doublepost=1522365819,1522364890][/doublepost]

@cypherdoc

I have to admit it's somewhat baffling to me that every single person in Venezuela and every person of means in China who wants to leave the country, and every wealthy person who wants to shelter their assets, isn't already using Bitcoin/BCH or one of the other top coins. A big question still looms: is there no usage because Core killed it, or is there something else we have got wrong?

Core killed it, no doubt. I don't buy any other excuse for why Bitcoin's dominance fell so far so quickly. I think that removing the programmable money feature is a large part of why Bitcoin failed to take off. Ethereum has that of course but it is too small. The combination of being *the* cryptocurrency and all the applications that programmable money would have brought would have been dynamite. Instead, Bitcoin is just a squib and the crypto invasion has been set back at least 5 years. Phase 1 went well (get the currency into the hands of early adopters), phase 2 (killer apps for that currency) fizzled.

What we're currently looking at is as if HTML/HTTP had been invented but never evolved past static webpages and not been allowed out of its academic womb.

 

[theZerg]

This is a false syllogism.

To highlight the logic error you are making let's consider RBF.

RBF has the characteristics that

1. It is barely used at all

2. Its mere existence in the code weakens the entire system

I can see how you would argue that. But RBF isn't really a feature, its a change that undermines a feature -- 0-conf security. Similarly one could imagine a "feature" that is only used once but mints 100 million BCH, or crashes the client -- you are reducing my argument to absurdity by removing the semantics around a "feature".

Tokens are at worst orthogonal to BCH -- token transfers do not change the operation of BCH transfers at all, especially for a large block coin. But actually they utilize BCH for tx fees (and therefore increase chain security) and as the medium of exchange will encourage holding.

 

[cypherdoc]

Yeah, Cypherdoc it's a nice dream but I don't think it's reality. I think you somehow have to prime the pump before you can go back and sit on the beach and sip mai-tais. How you prime the pump again, I'm not sure. What I mean is that the market is diverse, competitor's many, and it's all about profit. There are plenty of alt-coins that have started with a bang and ended with a whimper. As stated above by Zanglebert, why BCH? What's the compelling use case that makes people use this. People care about making money, how will you make them money? How do you get the greed back as opposed to fear. When you have fear, it's easy to just implement an xrp clone backed by central banks and have them use that. The only people that will care about financial sovereignty are a limited number. But again, there are more esoteric coin options those people can be attracted to. Also, there's always cash, suitcases full of it. What I'm saying, is that bch and it's hashpower is still dwarfed by bitcoin, something fundamentally (imho) broken. But people don't care because it has that greed factor going for them. I think the length and duration of the coming struggle has been vastly underestimated. I'd like to be wrong.

that's just sad. big blockists are supposed to be optimists, not pessimists. if so, what are we doing here? when i started this damn thread Aug 2011, it was a prediction that Bitcoin would supplant gold as the ultimate SOV (Sound Money) subsuming it's entire speculative value above it's industrial value at the time which was around $250. it's been so long i can't remember what the BTC price was back then; maybe $22? well, it's lopped off ~33% off the gold top @$1923 down to where it is today @$1329 with BTC skyrocketing all the way to ~$20K before topping out. now, by my estimation BCH is poised to take over that role from BTC in a MySpace kinda way. we just have to let it happen. but i guess no one here thinks it can happen despite not giving me one solid macroeconomic reason why it can't happen except that "it's too late" or "it'll be too hard". you guys sound like small blockists with small thinking wanting to take a stab at wooing the speculative asset markets of ICO's & altcoins. oh well, it was worth a try. but i guess since it's gonna fail as a pure form of sound money, we might as well all pack it up here and go home.

 

[theZerg]

So, WRT above by Jessquit, I think a better question is how enabling the OPGROUP op code SPECIFICALLY makes BCH function better as p2p-ecash. As opposed to op-codes in general? I think the prior discussions about the use of on-chain scripting makes bch better money, especially in terms of possible privacy/security solutions. Is this better for limiting/shaping discussion? And then again I think the primary concerns regarding opgroup regardless of functionality are testing/necessity as they could be superfluous post the additional opcodes. Thoughts?

I've responded to this many times so let me try again and hear why the argument is being rejected:

It changes Bitcoin Cash from a payments network to an exchange network, and moves BCH from a means of payment to a medium of exchange.

BCH is currently a P2P, trustless, pseudo-anonymous, non-present payments system. But not really trustless: in practice you need to click the "send" button before someone hands you the goods or cash. There is a tiny window of opportunity there that has been exploited. Pseudo-anonymous: not really as you register yourself and provide passport, paystub, prove source of funds for exchanges. Non-present: not really as you sit in the coffee shop waiting for confs before handing over whatever was bought.

If tokens are enabled, I can't make alpaca socks physically fall out of your monitor if you exchange BCH for them. But we can do so for the myriad of virtual commodities (music, video game skins and items, ebooks) out there, and for securities, titles, etc.

That is huge. It massively increases the utility of the BCH. I don't care at all to "woo" the ICO market. I want BCH to be the medium of exchange for every land sale worldwide because it HAS to be because doing so puts an indelible record on the blockchain that the land was properly transferred for value (a contract is not valid if it isn't an exchange of sufficient consideration).

 

[cypherdoc]

so i just had to go back and try to find the price at the beginning of this thread and the oldest chart i could find, Bitstamp, ends just beyond this threads beginning on August 9, 2011. last price i could see at the left of chart was from 8/18/11 when price was $10.90. time to pack it in guys:

 

[theZerg]

@theZerg i noticed that you very briefly mentioned prediction markets (?) on your op_dataverify presentation. Do you mind to kinda get a bit deeper on this, im particularly curious of why you said "?"

Good question. If you could tokenize the outcome of a bet, you could make a prediction market that engages buyers and sellers to price units of that bet. The ? is because we don't have tokens, and a scheme to tokenize the outcome of the transaction would need to be created.

 

[cypherdoc]

I've responded to this many times so let me try again and hear why the argument is being rejected:

It changes Bitcoin Cash from a payments network to an exchange network, and moves BCH from a means of payment to a medium of exchange.

and i've responded to these points many times so let me see if i can get you to listen

when you say it's merely a payments system, you trivialize greatly what us sound money advocates see as BCH's ultimate potential. BCH is meant to be money with the 3 properties we all know and love. #1: "payments" as you say are equivalent to "medium of exchange" in my book. we agree there in that i don't think anything you're wanting to do will disrupt that. but BCH is also meant to be #2, a unit of account. i believe you think you will achieve this by making BCH the Amazon of crypto. i disagree in that i've shown how the token market dilutes dollar investment into BCH. i know, i just talked to a hedge fund insider that offers a big ICO fund that directly accepts dollars in exchange for discounted tokens. no BCH required. that's dilutional to the BCH price which is harmfull b/c the BCH price needs to Moon to become the unit of account. as well, these tokens are a first world problem not experienced by the ROW who are the majority on this planet who will really drive decentralization and revolution. after all, they are the poorest who have the most to gain and the most to lose by not overthrowing their gvt's monetary shackles by adopting an apolitical international BCH. OPGROUP doesn't help them by opening up betting. #3 given that it's supply will stay at 21M, BCH fulfills the SOV criteria as well; as long as you don't destroy confidence that you won't be continuously monkeying with the rulesets that make it so. imo, the simplest solution that provides all 3 of the above in a consistent long acting way will gain the most confidence from gold bugs, investors, miners, merchants, and users worldwide. changing the tx format to me is no different than Core changing block format. you may not be doing directly for your own benefit but you just said that you've been getting pressure from for profit businesses that they will take their business elsewhere if you don't enable a new ruleset called OPGROUP that will enable their agenda. that's disruptive to what is supposed to be a neutral money and it's SOV potential.

 

[theZerg]

@cypherdoc, maybe these details were not meaningful for you, but smart contracts and tokens (putting any asset "on" the blockchain) were a large part of the early narrative. Remember smart cars that don't start if you haven't paid this month?

These details were extremely important to me and others because it meant that bitcoin was not only sound money but could disintermediate and optimize a huge portion of the existing financial system, resulting in a large surplus due to increased efficiency.

 

[solex]

@cypherdoc

...you guys sound like small blockists with small thinking wanting to take a stab at wooing the speculative asset markets of ICO's & altcoins

That is an unfair mischaracterization. While some people may be going to the beach, others are working hard to make Bitcoin Cash the world best peer-to-peer money. Examples:

1.Setting up and maintaining a global network of 20 nodes to support gigbyte blocks, building and propagating test >1GB blocks in a world first, is a major milestone in the road to banking the world's unbanked, which is one of your oft-stated and worthy goals.

2. Holding a major conference to advance BCH as peer-to-peer cash, bringing together many of the best minds working on practical business solutions and developing, re-energising the community - is another achievement.

Going to the beach is not an option as that is how a coin (like BTG), fades into decay: lack of work, lack of support, lack of effort to advance it.

No browbeating is being done or intended. In a collaborative atmosphere, discussion is essential, especially between developers, miners and stakeholders. That is what is happening. We are looking at the big picture of risks to adoption and this summarises it:

@cypherdoc
I like that radically simplified view, but there is one catch: maybe no one will use it. Maybe they'll use Litecoin, and maybe Litecoin will wise up and raise the blocksize. Or something else. Relaxing on the beach might be fine if there were also a bunch of Roger Vers spreading the word and driving adoption.

This may also be correct, and if so, there is an even higher mountain to climb, except we can be more confident of succeeding long term:

(I think this issue is opcode agnostic; we could have BCH be able to do absolutely everything any alt can do, 10 times better, and still not get used for anything - seeing as sound money is still barely being used.)

 

[cypherdoc]

Pseudo-anonymous: not really as you register yourself and provide passport, paystub, prove source of funds for exchanges.

forgot to respond to this one. the only place where any of us need to do this is with exchanges, which is to be expected. they are the onboarding ramps for fiat investment and interface with the fiat money system, so it is expected that AML/KYC is required. but the long term goal, and you should watch one of Falkvinge's latest videos on this, is that we are trying to close the loops with regards to ordinary user to merchant commerce. THAT is the ultimate goal and WON'T require any AML/KYC and will be the most disruptive use of Bitcoin that will change the world by avoiding banks.

But not really trustless: in practice you need to click the "send" button before someone hands you the goods or cash.

i thought we all had agreed that 0 conf was probabilistically ok?

If tokens are enabled, I can't make alpaca socks physically fall out of your monitor if you exchange BCH for them. But we can do so for the myriad of virtual commodities (music, video game skins and items, ebooks) out there, and for securities, titles, etc. That is huge.

if you're talking about atomic swaps for goods, i can see your point here.

 

[theZerg]

> you may not be doing directly for your own benefit but you just said that
> you've been getting pressure from for profit businesses that they will
> take their business elsewhere

Wow. You need to really grok the reality of the altcoin market. Its more like I'm begging them to stay.

I'm going to make a prediction: The first crypto to get tokens that represent publicly traded securities, supply chain material titles, rock concert tickets, coupons, gift cards will be what the USD is today -- spendable worldwide and in everybody's pocket. The rest will be like gold today -- sure you can spend it but there will be a time consuming, expensive, and poorly supported intermediary step before you do so (either a centralized exchange or a cross chain atomic swap).

 

[cypherdoc]

@cypherdoc, maybe these details were not meaningful for you, but smart contracts and tokens (putting any asset "on" the blockchain) were a large part of the early narrative. Remember smart cars that don't start if you haven't paid this month?

These details were extremely important to me and others because it meant that bitcoin was not only sound money but could disintermediate and optimize a huge portion of the existing financial system, resulting in a large surplus due to increased efficiency.

i do remember Mike Hearn's talk about this in Switzerland early on. as you might expect, i believe my eyes glazed over a bit last weeks driverless Uber killing may put a dent in that vision, but i could be wrong. is this function integral to OPGROUP or can that be done with existing OPCODE smart contracts?

 

[theZerg]

>> But not really trustless: in practice you need to click the "send" button >> before someone hands you the goods or cash.

> i thought we all had agreed that 0 conf was probabilistically ok?

You click send, they grab the cash and run. Or pull a weapon. Its happened several times.
[doublepost=1522376695][/doublepost]WRT assets: People hadn't thought it through fully. It was supposed to work with "colored coins" BUT you need a full node or a trusted connection to one, and the protocol to figure out the coloring is complex and its easy to accidentally uncolor. Your car can't be a full node; it would be awkward if all Ford cars won't unlock because Ford's node went down or got DDOSED. Its not untrusted asset validation if your embedded device has to trust a full node. I think that this is what has depressed tokens for so long on Bitcoin.

So you really need OP_GROUP.

 

[cypherdoc]

>You click send, they grab the cash and run. Or pull a weapon. Its happened several times.

i don't get it. if you're doing a localbitcoincash for dollar tx in a dark alley, how does OPGROUP stop someone pulling a gun to repossess his cash?
[doublepost=1522377161][/doublepost]

That is an unfair mischaracterization.

yeah, that was unfair. i was reacting to @Tomothy unfortunately. my apologies. you guys are clearly doing yeoman's work and i think i've repeatedly said that to you in the past.
[doublepost=1522377897,1522377078][/doublepost]

These details were extremely important to me and others because it meant that bitcoin was not only sound money but could disintermediate and optimize a huge portion of the existing financial system, resulting in a large surplus due to increased efficiency.

why can't BCH do this from a dumb token standpoint ie as a pure p2p ecash plus SOV? please give me solid macroeconomic reasons instead of things like "see, right now, tx counts are so low", "it's too late", "see, price is going down", "no one wants a sound money".
[doublepost=1522378144][/doublepost]personally, i think BTC is dying. that means all bets are off that BCH is doomed if nothing is done in regards to OPCODES & OPGROUP. i'd be WAY more concerned if BTC were continuing to skyrocket as BCH has fallen and if the general stock markets weren't also falling. BCH could turn right here at the cross of 0.0984: