Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[freetrader]

WTF is this? everyone needs to step back a moment and compare what is being said (and done) to that of what Core once said (and did):

Core didn't 51% attack Bitcoin Cash - yet.

Deadalnix is not wrong. He is simply talking about the option of last resort of users against a hostile miner majority.

Turning miners into space heaters is perhaps the last defense against

Big Banks or Big Government using Dirty Tricks to shut down Bitcoin

Just in case

somebody rich and irrational will try to pull off the attack

and prove themselves to be a dishonest tyrannical majority.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

@freetrader

agreed. If nChain constantly directs hashpower majority, we need a pow change patch ready, just to keep balances. If I understand Amaury this way, I'm happy he stays with us after ABC lost protocol lead, and helps us to prevent misuse of pow majority. If so, I would have nothing but respect for him.

 

[cypherdoc]

@freetrader

i basically see your statements as a failure to understand Bitcoin, no offense intended. if you don't believe that miners have the financial incentive to be honest to the original principles in the WP (and i don't consider attacking other chains as dishonest), then you don't believe in PoW as it pertains to Sound Money.

if you believe that Bitcoin was meant to "take over the World", as i do, then you have to believe in hashwars eliminating competing chains. changing PoW algos, and/or replay protection, is meant to isolate off your own coin which you want to control, which is what Amaury wants to do so as to avoid investing in what's really important to compete; mining. you'll maybe respond that it's users that are important; but it's a complicated circle b/c miners are also users. and non-mining users, like me, will follow miners (who protect against gvts) and will continue to fight to protect their tx revenue streams which have always been meant to replace block rewards.

long short; any attempt to change PoW algo is a cop out.
[doublepost=1542041393][/doublepost]just to be clear, one of the original theses of this thread was that deep pockets, including gvts, would never have the wherewithal even with their printing presses, to derail/attack Bitcoin. so far, so good. we see many politicians worldwide who have loaded up on Bitcoin.

 

[freetrader]

@cypherdoc:

No offense, but I wrote "and prove themselves to be a dishonest tyrannical majority."
As long as miners don't perform 51% attacks on their own chain but compete *honestly*, there is no need to change POW.

if you don't believe that miners have the financial incentive to be honest to the original principles in the WP (and i don't consider attacking other chains as dishonest)

I believe that miners *do* have rational incentive, but that doesn't mean that Bitcoin is safe against 51% attacks by big banks or big government.
This includes buying up hashrate with fiat in order to effectively shut down the system.

any attempt to change PoW algo is a cop out.

Don't misunderstand my comment - or deadalnix's - to be advocating for doing that right now.
I have lots of proof, including in this GCBU thread, of my opposition to that idea, and my intent to give miners chances to mine honestly.

just to be clear, one of the original theses of this thread was that deep pockets, including gvts, would never have the wherewithal even with their printing presses, to derail/attack Bitcoin

Well, I joined this thread late, I don't subscribe to that thesis, and I don't think Gavin did either (see my quotes above).
What I can do in relation to that thesis is hope it's more right than wrong, and prepare for the case that it's wrong.

 

[cypherdoc]

>No offense, but I wrote "and prove themselves to be a dishonest tyrannical majority."

that's purely in the eyes of the beholder. i'm not, and never will be, a CSW fanboy as i mentioned before. i listen to what he says and certainly could be appalled at what he does. for instance, the plagiarism that has been pointed out appears pretty disgusting. i found what @Zangelbert Bingledack had to say on this matter interesting however. in the end, i ignore all that bullshit and focus on what is in the SV protocol changes; 128MB blocks and re-enabling of original opcodes. i don't find fault with that. i also plan on holding him to his word about eventually removing the limit altogether and locking down the protocol b/c that is what i'd like to see to move devs permanently out of the way. of course i realize that optimizations and emergency refinements may be needed along the way but i certainly am in favor of the minimalistic approach. if he reneges, hard fork away. and that's b/c a true new Money needs stability and predictability of which q6mo hard forks cannot provide. even tho Amary claims 32MB can handle Paypal levels of throughput, that's not enough. if i were a stock brokerage or financial institution, i'd never be comfortable with Bitcoin until i knew for sure that it's protocol was unlimited for growth in tx throughput. that is, for better or worse, what the world and financial markets are based on today; continual growth.
[doublepost=1542042567][/doublepost]the fact that Amaury feels so threatened by bigger blocks and re-enabling of opcodes to the point where he supports changing the PoW is telling. if he were mature, he'd accept a winning SV and join in. the visions are not that far apart honestly. at least Calvin said he'd rejoin ABC if he loses.

 

[go1111111]

Most importantly, provisional reasoning, which is the key error most CSW-critics fall into and underpins all the rest

This is essentially Bayesian reasoning, which is the right way to reason, but I don't think it leads to the conclusion that Craig is either Satoshi or a genius. The general idea is you estimate some prior probability that CSW is Satoshi and then continue multiplying by other probabilities as evidence comes in. You still need to factor in the effect of the low initial prior on your posterior probabilities.

Well, he's not a complete doofus in this field, that much is clear - you don't get to be world record holder in cybersecurity certs while being a cyber doofus.

In the tech world these types of certifications are actually seen as low status and unimpressive. They're usually a way for people who don't have first rate talent to prove that they at least meet some minimum bar of competence. Accumulating them is kind of like accumulating associates degrees from community colleges.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Unlike all those 100% convinced truthers here and there, I wouldn't rule out that Craig is (part of the team) Satoshi, but I can not imagine that Craig is identical to the person who wrote on bitcointalk. Can you?

Craig has stated that their system for posting was that Craig would write a comment as a draft and Dave would edit and post it. He describes Dave as a "people person," able to make others understand whereas he could usually not.

Also, a comparison closer in time to his Bitcointalk style would be his InfoSec mailing list style and his articles for GIAC/SANS. He is still recognizble for some Craigisms and confrontation, but not the typos, low-effort, and abstruseness. You can also see Dave's writing style on the InfoSec list. Here's a paper they co-authored in late 2008 about whether hard drives need to be wiped with multiple passes, which also mentions security as an economic function.

Further, think of the familiar pattern of how a redditor's writing can become progressively aggressive or even unhinged over the months/years. It can be desperation or just consternation with how people are not getting their message. Sometimes it's just social media addiction and they recover after some time away.

Wright seems just from his demeanor to have beem through some personal hell around 2015. It's public record that he was hounded by the ATO, and he claims he was extorted and doxxed by Phil Wilson and that his daughter was threatened. Those who have seen him at conferences know he travels with bodyguards. Since late 2015 he's gradually calmed down and looked healthier, despite the continuing dickish streak and occasional bouts of unhingedness. His TFoB presentation a year ago and the video I linked above where he talks to Chinese miners are very different. In the former he constantly trips over his words, seems nervous and really pissed off, and is often all over the place in what he says despite some gems. In the latter, recorded a few days ago, he speaks clear coherent sentences with very little stumbling and is even eloquent. As I mentioned, highly variable.

See his interviews with @reina or the BCH Boys for him sounding a lot more level-headed and calm as well, where he makes a lot more coherent points. I have seen the dynamic in text as well: sometimes typo-filled screeds that seem to make no sense, and other times much more carefully laid out text that says something clear step by step.

All this points more to personality oddities than anything else. I can see how being secretly Satoshi could take a toll on a person (as, of course, could being secretly a fraud). In The Satoshi Affair I believe we see a lot of the man laid bare, good and bad. It's a must-read for anyone interested in getting to the bottom of this.

@go1111111 To answer a key point in your post I was thinking about, Craig states selling one side of the chain and then attacking it is illegal. Not sure which law he thinks it breaks; might be that killing the chain is allowed if you are claiming it is illegitimate and/or a threat, but that transacting on it first would estop you from making that claim.

 

[go1111111]

@cypherdoc:
I believe that miners *do* have rational incentive, but that doesn't mean that Bitcoin is safe against 51% attacks by big banks or big government.
This includes buying up hashrate with fiat in order to effectively shut down the system.

Attacking BCH currently takes only around a million USD per day. This is in the reach of a rich person involved in an ego battle. For a government this is trivially cheap. The fact that BCH is vulnerable to this is a big weakness in its security model (and in the model of all PoW coins).

Proof of stake is actually a lot better at defending against such attacks, for two reasons:

(1) Cost of attack is much higher. If BCH ran PoS and 10% of users staked coins, an attacker would have to spend 300 million USD (assuming the price didn't rise as they bought, which it would) to buy up enough coins to stall the system until a fork. Compare that to the 1 million USD per day attack cost under PoW.

(2) It's much easier to punish the attacker in PoS. You can fork and slash only the attacker's stake, which means the 300 million USD the attacker spent to briefly attack the chain all flows to the other holders. After a fork, the attacker needs to spend another 300 million USD to mount another brief attack. Each time this expenditure is basically given to other holders. On a PoS coin I would actually look forward to a state trying to attack it because it would mean I'm making significant money during each attack. In PoW the attacker's cost doesn't flow to holders.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Deadalnix is not wrong. He is simply talking about the option of last resort of users against a hostile miner majority.

This is true, Deadalnix is not wrong that a PoW change as an extreme last resort is better to have ready in one's pocket than not. The timing is odd though.

Since this precaution was delayed because of a belief that CSW was off his rocker about having all that hash or being able to competently deploy it (or being able to handle 32MB blocks), and all that has now been shown false, maybe it's also time to reassess whether he is really "irrational," the justification you gave above for the PoW switch.

 

[go1111111]

@go1111111 To answer a key point in your post I was thinking about, Craig states selling one side of the chain and then attacking it is illegal. Not sure which law he thinks it breaks; might be that killing the chain is allowed if you are claiming it is illegitimate and/or a threat, but that transacting on it first would estop you from making that claim.

I was thinking of the "sell BCH_ABC, buy BCH_SV, but don't attack anyone" strategy. Surely that isn't illegal. As you've mentioned there is some risk that by leaving BCH_ABC alive it could eventually overtake BCH_SV and its miners could attach BCH_SV, but multiple things have to happen there so the overall probability of that seems low enough to still make it worthwhile to try to 10x (or 3x now) your BCH_SV coins in the market.

 

[BldSwtTrs]

I have an honest question to SV supporters: what is the point to have a blockchain if a single company validate transactions?

 

[Jonathan Vaage]

Rather, as quite a few people would know he is Satoshi, he would have seen the dark side of sycophancy. Getting loved is easy; getting really understood is not so much, as people will pretend to understand just to get into the inner circle.

This reminds me of Daniel Krawisz's thoughts on intelligence testing. It seems to be of high importance that rich and powerful people categorize those they interact with into at least three groups: sycophants, potential allies, and haters. CSWs antics may be well calibrated to filter out those in the first and 3rd classes, perhaps with full recognition that the most competent adversaries/rivals belong to the second group. This process is entirely unnecessary for almost anyone else. It doesn't prove anything on its own, but shouldn't be used as grounds for dismissal either.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

This is essentially Bayesian reasoning,

The essential error is to switch between scenarios midway. I explain this several times in the long post series. As with evaluating a different paradigm, it can be impossible to reach the correct conclusion if you evaluate each piece in isolation and scrap them one at a time as preposterous, because they can hang together through mutual reinforcement to create an overall picture that is more coherent than the one orginally being assumed in the process of dismissing each isolated piece.

In the tech world these types of certifications are actually seen as low status and unimpressive.

Whatever the case may be with GIAC/SANS and the infosec industry specifically, all I need to establish here is that it is unreasonable to say these do not imply a baseline level of infosec competence and awareness sufficient to not bumble in such a spectacular way, which allows Occam's razor to be applied and conclude he is at least as likely to have modified his old blog posts to mess with people (including perhaps Ira Kleiman and Phil Wilson, who he had a plausible reason to mess with in this way) as to have done so in a naive hope he could fool all the people he knew would be going over his archived sites with a fine-toothed comb.
[doublepost=1542050855][/doublepost]

I have an honest question to SV supporters: what is the point to have a blockchain if a single company validate transactions?

Which single company? Coingeek, nChain, Mempool, OK Miner, or one of the miners on SV pool?

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

I have an honest question to SV supporters: what is the point to have a blockchain if a single company validate transactions?

Everybody can mine. If price (in BTC) rises, more miners will join. If price stagnates ... I guess than BCH is a lost case longterm and the single company will lose majorly.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I was thinking of the "sell BCH_ABC, buy BCH_SV, but don't attack anyone" strategy. Surely that isn't illegal. As you've mentioned there is some risk that by leaving BCH_ABC alive it could eventually overtake BCH_SV and its miners could attach BCH_SV, but multiple things have to happen there so the overall probability of that seems low enough to still make it worthwhile to try to 10x (or 3x now) your BCH_SV coins in the market.

Yeah, I would certainly go that route. Someone who has way more than enough money and cares more about the vision may make a different tradeoff. Also, Craig says he would like to see exchanges burn. He sees them as encouraging altcoins (he is fine with just fiat-bitcoin exchanges). He seems to like to save up his cards to play when they can yield maximum effect, and killing the altcoins and those that enable them is high on his list.
[doublepost=1542052188][/doublepost]

This reminds me of Daniel Krawisz's thoughts on intelligence testing. It seems to be of high importance that rich and powerful people categorize those they interact with into at least three groups: sycophants, potential allies, and haters. CSWs antics may be well calibrated to filter out those in the first and 3rd classes, perhaps with full recognition that the most competent adversaries/rivals belong to the second group. This process is entirely unnecessary for almost anyone else. It doesn't prove anything on its own, but shouldn't be used as grounds for dismissal either.

I agree, and he has alluded to this many times. His whole schtick of "I don't care if you don't like me, I don't want your money, I am scaling this thing to 5 billion people - if you don't like it, stiff" shows the same orientation. And yes, it doesn't prove anything but neither is the cantankerous attitude and low-effort posting automatic grounds for the degree of dismissal it would usually warrant.

 

[Jonathan Vaage]

It's almost as if much of this drama has been orchestrated precisely for the purpose of demonstrating Proof of Work unequivocally trumps Proof of Social Media & popular social consensus. It's intentionally central to the entire system's design. Even market signals are easier to fake/distort than proof of work.

In other words: "These are the actual rules of the game, you idiots! Let there be no ambiguity about it. Play ball or get the hell off the field."

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Satoshi reaches down through the years to comment on specialized opcodes like OP_CDSV.

[doublepost=1542054120][/doublepost]@Jonathan Vaage

Even market signals are easier to fake/distort than proof of work.

That's nicely succinct. The standard answer to this used to be, "You can just rent hashpower." Now with the advent of hardline miners (defined as those willing to sacrifice short-term profit for a long-term industry vision) like Coingeek and nChain, and assuming only one coin on the PoW algo as is their plan to ensure, the only hashpower available for rent will be from the non-hardliners.

Perhaps we can make the statement more unassailable: "Even exchange market signals are easier to fake/distort than committed hashpower."

 

[Roy Badami]

the visions are not that far apart honestly.

Really? Given the stated SV vision includes removing the ability to send to P2SH addresses, somehow sending lost coins to miners, and somehow making it impossible to burn coins, I somehow doubt that.

I have no problems with the changes that SV are proposing for this month. One reason I cannot support SV is because I most definitely do not support their vision

 

[Zarathustra]

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

somehow sending lost coins to miners

This is nothing more than the obvious: as we move to new cryptographic security systems (many decades from now), you have a choice of letting the best hackers take the coins that no one ever moved after decades of advance warning of the change, or pushing them back to the miners as a security incentive. Which do you choose?

Making it impossible to burn coins sounds pretty benign. And P2SH wasn't in the original protocol so this being a goal of Satoshi's Vision should be nothing new.