Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Norway]

@solex Do you have a larger picture of that graph? I can't read it.

 

[Norway]

What's Craig Wright and nChain up to?
@theZerg evaluate their token solution here. Strongly recomended reading.

https://www.yours.org/content/hash-chain-tokenization-criticism-e2b0ae5a5abf

 

[solex]

@Norway
For sure. Updated to the larger version now.

 

[lunar]

@cypherdoc

I've been doing a little more research on the question of Bitcoin as a security, but exempt from regulation. I came across this epic essay by 'he who shall not be named'. Apparently I was late to the party on this one, as it was published last month.

https://medium.com/@craig_10243/lightning-is-malleable-steel-is-not-4e68bfdef31

It's a long and exceptionally dense piece, that I had to read several times. Besides utterly destroying Lightning (the parasitic promissory note), and should give you enough ammo to keep - gizram84 (Of House Stark) tied up in knots for a months. It also has this section:

"Interestingly, Bitcoin is unbacked pure commodity currency. This places it under the exemptions of 15 U.S.C. § 77c(a) (2000) [2]. Not as “Digital Gold” but as cash. The system completes each exchange. Unlike Lightning, where a forward instrument is used (with penalties), Bitcoin is the commodity with a direct payment in that form."

Then (as we've discussed here many times)

"[10]. In this case, US Supreme court acknowledged that Washington did not follow the risk capital test. This judicial assessment demarcates a security as “requiring only that risk capital be supplied with a reasonable expectation of a valuable benefit but without the right to control the enterprise.”[1] Lightning hubs are profit-seeking enterprises or ventures. The distinction from mining is in the scope of the exclusions to these laws and that used by the SEC.

It is also something that will require LN Hubs to comply under the various AML/CTF regulations."

In other words it may well be the case, that it is Bitcoins function as Cash that keeps it outside the purview of the regulators; no doubt having an unknown issuer and sufficient decentralisation aids this interpretation. We need some lawyers here.

I think this is very relevant to the token conversation, and why i'm inclined to strongly agree with @Mengerian

That's a hard choice, I have similar reservations about both. They both touch the core protocol in a way that seems too "hard coded" for one particular function.

There is an incredible buzz around tokens on BCH, numerous teams working on proposals, many have already been showcased.

@Norway I share your excitement for tokens, but I think we'll see a deluge of such concepts released in the next month or so, many that don't touch the base protocol, and probably some that will be just building blocks, so any conceivable type of token can be issued. Bitcoin is Turing complete afterall. Careful not to specialize too early.

 

[cypherdoc]

@cypherdoc

I've been doing a little more research on the question of Bitcoin as a security, but exempt from regulation. I came across this epic essay by 'he who shall not be named'. Apparently I was late to the party on this one, as it was published last month.

https://medium.com/@craig_10243/lightning-is-malleable-steel-is-not-4e68bfdef31

It's a long and exceptionally dense piece, that I had to read several times. Besides utterly destroying Lightning (the parasitic promissory note), and should give you enough ammo to keep - gizram84 (Of House Stark) tied up in knots for a months. It also has this section:

"Interestingly, Bitcoin is unbacked pure commodity currency. This places it under the exemptions of 15 U.S.C. § 77c(a) (2000) [2]. Not as “Digital Gold” but as cash. The system completes each exchange. Unlike Lightning, where a forward instrument is used (with penalties), Bitcoin is the commodity with a direct payment in that form."

Then (as we've discussed here many times)

"[10]. In this case, US Supreme court acknowledged that Washington did not follow the risk capital test. This judicial assessment demarcates a security as “requiring only that risk capital be supplied with a reasonable expectation of a valuable benefit but without the right to control the enterprise.”[1] Lightning hubs are profit-seeking enterprises or ventures. The distinction from mining is in the scope of the exclusions to these laws and that used by the SEC.

It is also something that will require LN Hubs to comply under the various AML/CTF regulations."

In other words it may well be the case, that it is Bitcoins function as Cash that keeps it outside the purview of the regulators; no doubt having an unknown issuer and sufficient decentralisation aids this interpretation. We need some lawyers here.

I think this is very relevant to the token conversation, and why i'm inclined to strongly agree with @Mengerian


There is an incredible buzz around tokens on BCH, numerous teams working on proposals, many have already been showcased.

@Norway I share your excitement for tokens, but I think we'll see a deluge of such concepts released in the next month or so, many that don't touch the base protocol, and probably some that will be just building blocks, so any conceivable type of token can be issued. Bitcoin is Turing complete afterall. Careful not to specialize too early.

as i've said before, there is no obligation for the BCH blockchain to change it's concensus rules for all willy-nilly tokens that come along that want equal status to the dumb token BCH coin. in fact, i think it's a bad and risky thing to do so. let them secure their tx's within the OP_RETURN. i've come around to the fact that this may be inevitable, so be it. that is a concession in and of itself as it's size has been increased to 220B just for them. let Omni or whomever embed away and the rest of us can prune away their data from the UTXO set without touching concensus. as for issuers controlling each token tx, so what? if you want to get involved with such tokens, rest assured that those tx's approved by said issuer can and will be hashed accordingly but don't assume you have a right to gain equal status to BCH ecash and miner security. if you do your due diligence on said token/ICO you will be fine but the BCH protocol and security cannot be some dumping ground for all sorts of scams.
[doublepost=1531931520][/doublepost]i find this to be still a good summary:

It means that if someone tries to send you an invalid token, you are immediately aware that it's worthless. (In the video, Oldenburg complains "but then the value would immediately drop to zero...", which is exactly what the value of an unredeemable redeemable token is supposed to do.)

https://www.yours.org/content/on-group--there-is-no-such-thing-as-permissionless-transfer-of-redeema-7c1714cff413/

 

[cypherdoc]

at any rate, i don't think we get to decide, now that Wormhole has been proposed by Bitmain themselves. they specifically stated that they don't want to change the concensus rules.

 

[lunar]

Kerrching ! another one.

Simple Ledger Protocol
A token system for Bitcoin Cash

Jonald Fyookball, James Cramer, Unwriter,
Mark B. Lundeberg, Calin Culianu, Ryan X. Charles

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GcDGiVUEa87SIEjrvM9QcCINfoBw-R7EPWzNVR4M8EI/edit
[doublepost=1531936032][/doublepost]"i don't think we get to decide"

One good thing to come out of the Blockstream Blockade. The Miners are now very much awake. This is great for our future. I'd like to think they see and enjoy all this spirited debate. It's certainly a step up from all the censored shit, that everyone has been dealing with for the last few years.

i'm confident the honest miners will decide the best proposals.

 

[Mengerian]

Seems like we're witnessing a Cambrian explosion of tokenization solutions. Next will come the long period of competition and selection where only the fittest survive. A key determinant during the selection phase will be how each competing solution fosters the co-evolution of a surrounding ecosystem of projects and tools to make their tokens more useful and easy to use.

I had a quick look at "Wormhole", which is based on Omni/Mastercoin. It seems like a really capable system. The thing I don't like is that, if I understand correctly, it creates another token as part of its system to function as a "utility token". This is unfortunate, we want BCH to be useful as cash directly, so it seems annoying to have to deal with a secondary token in addition to the actual token you want to use. I wonder if that's a necessary part of the system, or if the Wormhole devs can remove the "Omni token" portion, and make BCH the native currency of the Wormhole system.

This makes me think that from a Bitcoin Cash perspective, the most important characteristic is that the token system should interact well with BCH for payments. It needs to be easily bought and sold for BCH, payments such as dividends should be paid out in BCH, and that any fees needed to use the tokens should be native BCH. Other technical features of the tokens I don't have strong opinions on. I don't even know if token systems need to be part of the BCH block chain, as long as they are tightly integrated with BCH as the money of the system. I don't mind if a few different approaches battle it out in the market. Maybe we'll end up with two or three token systems that serve different niches.

 

[solex]

This Cambrian explosion of tokenization solutions appears to me, part of a wider historical parallel between Money for the Internet and Information for the Internet. The latter has played out for decades longer, and still continues. Today's FANG companies, which are dominating information dissemination and associated public usage of the Internet, were non-existent when the battle for the "heart and soul" of Usenet took place between the early adopters and the rest of the world, led by commercial interests.

I invite reading the article Spam Dispute Brings Usenet and CompuServe to Brink while considering the purity of "peer-to-peer cash" analogous to the purity of "Usenet", also consider "spam" as all the non-cash, broader uses of cryptocurrency which are vying to leverage blockchain technology in the most profitable manner.

Bitcoin, when first launched, was only peer-to-peer cash, the first form of money which incorporated the advantages of gold and electronic fiat. It remains a revolutionary invention comparable in importance to that of the printing press. Although Bitcoin has OP codes, many were disabled by the first cryptographers who wanted to advance Satoshi's invention, as their focus had been all along on the vast benefits of money for the Internet. Satoshi himself foresaw complex transactions and tangential implementations where he reportedly was involved in the launch of Namecoin. Nevertheless, the purity of peer-to-peer cash has remained the primary focus for many Bitcoin users and investors, both in Bitcoin Cash as well as Bitcoin BTC.

There is a subtlety between primary focus and single focus. Is the stance of cash-only realistic when the rest of the world comes on board and swamps the early adopters?...even while making the early adopters rich.

Usenet allowed an explosion of global discussion on thousands of different subjects, opening up a new paradigm of knowledge sharing and social discourse. It was revolutionary in its way, and also leveraged the Internet far beyond original expectations. The first users of Usenet envisioned a new knowledge sharing paradigm for the world and fought back against spam, something from our perspective, inevitable, when commercial interest in the Internet exploded, along with the thousands of different facets of profit from information. This spectrum ranges from advertising to pornography, from free enterprise to ideology. The world is a far more complex place than any set of purity standards held dear by early adopters.

Usenet was once the most important information resource for the Internet, but has since been marginalised beyond recognition. The rest of the world wanted far more, and the web was a game-changer. Do we think that the 21st century global economy can be satisfied with just peer-to-peer currency? Or will thousands of use-cases come to drive the ultimate success of the few blockchains which dominate and prevail long-term?

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

@Mengerian

A great quote from one of the most intelligent thinkers and a source of inspiration for all of us in the modern world:

"Nerds are the easiest people to manipulate and control. If they are upset, just throw them a Rubiks Cube and they will focus, calm down and be happy."

STEIN H. LUDVIGSEN​

Who is this Stein H. Ludvigsen? A famous minigolf-player from Norway?

It reminds me on a quote of another great thinker, a German expert for cat training:

"The Lightning Network is a mental trap in which the a-little-above-average smart people are poised to fall."
- Christoph Bergmann

--

About your main point: I don't understand why there is even a discussion of a proposal for token which always needs permission of the issuer to be transfered. If someone wants this, he can just do it, without permission and consens and so on, and see how the markets don't care. It is absurd that such a proposal is used to shut down the real proposals.

I always said this: If a token requires external verification to detect / pretend double spends, it will not be able to compete with ERC-token (or with a large variety of centralized solutions). Only when the miners (and nodes) fully verify the validity of the whole token transfer process, including the amount, it has a /chance/ to compete.

--

Short story: Yesterday I had a mail exchange with a guy from a startup I talked to a few years ago to write about his project. Last year they switched from BTC to ETH, because of the fees, and now they are thinking about switching from ETH to BCH, because of the fees. I was happy to find an unexpected Bitcoin Cash fan in him. He said, his project can basically run on most coins, but not on Lightning. He also confirmed the enormous hatred towards Bitcoin Cash.

There is a lot of value in a decentralized blockchain that pledges to provide very-low-cost monetary onchain transfers for a long time and on a high scale, and currently you don't see serious competition on this field. Neither Bitcoin Core nor Ethereum can provide this, Ripple and Stellar are centralized, Litecoin is toxificated as a political testbed for Bitcoin Core, and Monero is too hard to use ...

 

[sickpig]

This makes me think that from a Bitcoin Cash perspective, the most important characteristic is that the token system should interact well with BCH for payments. It needs to be easily bought and sold for BCH, payments such as dividends should be paid out in BCH, and that any fees needed to use the tokens should be native BCH.

I can't refrain noticing that this precisely what GROUP brings to the table.

That said I share you concerns, I really do feel that a token solution would have to use BCH as fuel rather than a new base currency.

What counteract this opinion is what we saw in ETH, even if a lot of tokens created on top of ETH are not using the native token as "fuel", the eventual success of such tokes dragged the value ETH up.

Maybe the main difference here is that ETH is not aiming to become sound money but something else.

 

[79b79aa8]

hatred towards BCH reminds me of . . . hatred towards BTC. not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, BTC was shady, probably illegal, a scam, a cult, something that could not work. then the media started reporting BTC making people rich. BTC experts mushroomed, Blockchain blossomed, shoeshine boys gave trading tips. unfortunately, BTC did not become an immediate pathway to riches, the market did not always cooperate, money was lost, there appeared technical difficulties hard to comprehend, competition grew, what is this BCH, it must be shady, probably illegal, a scam, a cult, something that cannot work.

 

[Norway]

I don't even know if token systems need to be part of the BCH block chain, as long as they are tightly integrated with BCH as the money of the system.

I agree the tokens like Tokeda do not even need to be part of the BCH blockchain. As I wrote in my article, Tokeda is just a database posting selfies on Memo.cash.

But how do you keep the tokens secure? A great token system should have the security of the BCH blockchain and provide permissionless transfers of the token itself.

A token system that relies on computers different from the mining nodes can easily be attacked and brought down. This should be elementary to seasoned bitcoiners.

GROUP is AFAIK the only proposal currently that qualify as a great token system.

We should not wait for the weak alt-tokens to fight it out before we implement GROUP. Let's get GROUP implemented as soon as possible. The november fork would be a good time to do it.

Time is money, and we're running out of it. This is a matter of giving freedom to trade at a whole new level to the world.

 

[79b79aa8]

although these spikes are caused by test transactions, not a bad pulse:

 

[Norway]

Good read on tokens:
OP_RETURN based tokens are fundamentally flawed

Why does it matter? Well what happens when nodes disagree? Naturally this problem is what Bitcoin originally solves with POW, often referred to as Nakamoto Consensus.
For example if there's a security issue or bug in one wallet/node implementation a silent consensus divergence can occur. Compared to a Bitcoin hard fork this may not be immediately evident.

https://www.yours.org/content/op_return-based-tokens-are-fundamentally-flawed-322e6156d60f

 

[cypherdoc]

as you might expect, during these times of internal turmoil and confusion, the not so subtle cries of inflation start to creep in. maybe it's b/c some of our more desperate/impatient devs keep demonstrating a willingness to mutate the protocol?:

 

[79b79aa8]

^ that's not a genuine proposal, but a tactic from an r/Bitcoin troll.

i think the token debate is healthy (if exhausting for the devs). let's trust the process and continue moving forward carefully but resolutely.

 

[cypherdoc]

i agree. my prediction is that as with any disagreement around a particular topic, the middle of the road approach will ultimately be the first to be moved forward.

 

[Norway]

@theZerg 's critisism of Tokeda:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/905rpk/tokeda_criticism/

 

[79b79aa8]

what we might expect to happen seems clear. a variety of tokens that require no protocol change will be implemented first, since this process is permissionless and underway. these solutions may or may not serve as the foundation for viable businesses/use cases; either way we will learn about their capabilities and limitations. as the dust settles we will know if solutions that require a protocol change have market support, and time will have been gained to thoroughly test them.