Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[BldSwtTrs]

Bitcoin is like the real world, like the geopolitical game.

Power begets rules. Moral concepts like honesty are outside the realm of power and rules.

 

[cypherdoc]

@satoshis_sockpuppet

btw, as i assume you are an early adopter, you benefited from guys like BitcoinExpress and Artforz culling the altcoin herd via mining attacks. if you're concerned with the morality of the situation as it applies to sound money and mining attacks, maybe you and all the other outraged here ought to return the profits you made from BTC?

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

It's hard to be wrong. Seems like I have been wrong in my prediction how cenrtral people in BCH will act. Maybe I have been lured into the CSW story too much, because I WANTED to believe that Bitcoin Cash ist something more than ABC-Coin backed by BTC-hashpower. Maybe you remember, I freaked out about this BEFORE SV became I thing. If the war is already over - and some of you wish - it just made this fact harder to deny.

Did you notice that on the SV-side of the table you find mostly "BCH Maximalists", while on the ABC-side people rather tend to think that BCH is just an altcoin. Like with industry support: ABC tends to be supported by Multicoin-companies, while SV by BCH only companies. All those exchanges and so on accept every kind of shitcoin - while yours, memo, handcash and so on only accept BCH.

We wanted hashpower, we got hashpower. It was absolutely predictable that BTC miners will 51-attack Bitcoin Cash. I would have prefered BCH miners to do the attack, but ok. In a hashwar this is absolutely ok, as is to just kidnapp miners in your pool. It's a war, so, no rules, no fouls.

. It's ok to attack, it's ok to exploit the DAA, it's ok to implement checkpoint. I don't think ever that giving ABC the power to define which chain is the real one is a very good idea, but again: it's a hashwar, and if the result just confirms that Bitcoin Cash is ABC-coin, so it be.

But I doubt it's over yet. War starts, one side does an ABSOLUTELY predictable move - enforcing ABC with BTC miners. It was really what EVERYBODY expected, even most convicted SV supporters.

If this move won the war, it would mean that Craig / Calvin have made up all this, their nexus of mining, development and investing, just to try a very expensive bluff. That makes not much sense ... but maybe it is not a requirement for life to always make sense

I just want to remind everybody who prematurely cheers on the "victory" of ABC, that he cheers for BCH to being easily controllable by ABC and BTC-miners. It's ok to want this outcome. But you should at least want it to be hardened in a fight ...

 

[solex]

The term "honest", when used to discuss blockchain mining, must only be interpreted in the narrow sense of whether the miner is providing a net benefit to the majority of the ecosystem for the coin. Even this narrow definition has fuzzy edges.

Back in 2011 there was a BTC miner which only produced empty blocks. Now that still provided a benefit in terms of adding confirmations, accumulation of security. On the other hand it added a small delay for unconfirmed txns. The same action in 2018 on BTC would be deemed an attack due to their blocks full paradigm.

Miners are encouraged to pick and choose (censor?) transactions on fee level, but picking and choosing based on a blacklist of addresses would attract the "dishonest" label.

 

[awemany]

Honesty doesn't mean anything.

That is a typical example of the kind of nonsensical sentences pervading our "post-modern" times. You are referring to a thing while declaring to be non-existent at the same time. Which is a language trick.

 

[BldSwtTrs]

It's a moral concept, which is therefore irrelevant in the context of securing and perpetuating world money.


We don't care if central banks are honest or not. They do it because they can.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

So sadly I'll also have other stuff to do today and should stop posting..
But for fucks sake, I am really concerned about how some people, whose opinion I
used to respect a lot, are arguing now.

The "final" outcome of Bitcoin I'd like to see is pretty much congruent with
what - at least that's what I've believed - people like @cypherdoc want to see.
And I've agreed with pretty much everything you wrote in the last years, at least
big picture wise. So it's weird how much this CSW story plays with minds..

The word "honest" appears 15 times in the Bitcoin whitepaper. And people, that
allegedly support the "real Satoshis vision" now want to explain to me, that
honesty is a concept that is irrelevant to Bitcoin?

That being said, what in gods fucking name are the supporters of CSW/SV bitching
about right now? His little mining adventure got crushed by the "bad guys".
As honesty and whatever doesn't matter.. Where do you see a problem now?

The Fed's central committee is honest, isn't it?

No, it is not. They are using violence.

may the best chain win.

Finally some sense!

btw, as i assume you are an early adopter, you benefited from guys like BitcoinExpress and Artforz culling the altcoin herd via mining attacks. if you're concerned with the morality of the situation as it applies to sound money and mining attacks, maybe you and all the other outraged here ought to return the profits you made from BTC?

What am I outraged about? I am arguing for honest miners to defend the BCH chain.
And, yes, from the standpoint of an Altcoin, these miners were dishonest.
And I do not believe that crushing altcoins was in any way important for Bitcoins
success. I also do believe, that Altcoins should defend themselves against attacks.
What is new about that?

I just want to remind everybody who prematurely cheers on the "victory" of ABC, that he cheers for BCH to being easily controllable by ABC and BTC-miners.

What is wrong with the BTC-miners?

Also: This is not a victory of ABC. I know of at least three implementations that follow
the same ruleset as ABC.

It's a moral concept, which is therefore irrelevant in the context of securing and perpetuating world money.

I think you skipped quite a few steps in your argument.

We don't care if central banks are honest or not. They do it because they can.

I do, and others do as well.

btw, if checkpoints are completely against Bitcoins idea, how did you explain
to your node, which genesis block to use?

 

[BldSwtTrs]

You are assuming violence is immoral, which again is irrelevent.

Violence is outlawed in most cases. This is a rule.
Central banks are legal. This is a rule.

Rules and morality are not the same thing. The rule is the majority of PoW can kill a chain. Morality is irrelevant, it's the rule that matter. If it could happen within the rules, it will happen.

You cannot scale a social system with morality, you do it with rules.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

So sadly I'll also have other stuff to do today and should stop posting..
But for fucks sake, I am really concerned about how some people, whose opinion I
used to respect a lot, are arguing now.

Me too I hope I get out of the hardfork social media addiction today --

What is wrong with the BTC-miners?

Also: This is not a victory of ABC. I know of at least three implementations that follow
the same ruleset as ABC.

If your coin gets changed by a 51-attack of another coin's miners, you probably have a shitcoin ... BTC made with BCH what BSV announced to do with a split-off ...

Neither XT nor BU welcomed the changes. They implemented it only because they predicted that ABC will win (and because theys dislike CSW). ABC didn't give a shit about a large number of critics and complaints. If you ever called BTC "Bitcoin Core", you should start calling BCH "Bitcoin ABC" - if this is what we get ... (I still hope ...)

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Did CSW deliver a client that is able to handle the promised blocksizes?

We'll likely know this weekend during the 128MB stress test.
[doublepost=1542370967][/doublepost]Re: The term "honest," Satoshi later said he needed a better term for it. Choose a definition and stick to it. Some candidates:

1a) Honest: Rationally profit-seeking over the long term

1b) Honest: Rationally seeking profit on the miner's preferred chain over the long term

2) Honest: Supporting sound money

3) Honest: Following the whitepaper and/or current protocol (a definition that changes over time, as a miner voting to change the protocol rules is short-term dishonest but long-term honest)

4) Honest: Nice, gentlemanly

5) Honest: Following community opinion, or dev opinion, or a given dev team's opinion

6) <ditch the term altogether, perhaps only speak of valid vs. invalid blocks>

 

[Norway]

Great times! We finally get to see Nakamoto Consensus on a big scale. I'm having a meetup tonight, I hope people don't start to fight after a few beers, lol!

I'm also looking forward to the stress test tomorrow.

I don't think covert or overt checkpoints are going to make a difference other than drag the battle out a little. I think the maximalist will win this battle because the multicoiner is not prepared to do the investments needed to win.

This is exciting!

EDIT: If the numbers on https://pool.bitcoin.com/ can be trusted, it looks like bitcoin.com didn't even last the 24 hours they promised. If mining BCH represents a cost and not a great investment to you, you're not in it for the long run.

EDIT2: Or Bitcoin.com is reorging SV, lol.

 

[awemany]

@BldSwtTrs :Now we're down to mincing words.

I am keenly aware of what you say. Look above for the example I gave wrt. what majority hash power could do.

I think that overall, "honest" in the sense how @solex circumscribed it above is the best fit when reading the white paper.

That said, I think even the more conventional definition of honesty is of value here. As it still allows to differentiate between grades of escalation and of crossing of lines.

SV reorging or attempting to reorg BCH will be such a line being crossed.

At the risk of invoking Godwin's law, but solely give you a drastic example how this concept still applies in the kind of "purely game theoretic scenarios" that seem to inspire so much awe in you:

During WW2, Hitler didn't use chemical weapons against the allies.

That's right. Not because he had qualms with gassing people, as we all know. But because he feared the response.

This shows you how "psychopathic purely game-theoretic thinking" is still very much impacted by the conventional scales of morality.

 

[Norway]

Finally, Hitler arrived

 

[Zarathustra]

>> The Fed's central committee is honest, isn't it?

> No, it is not. They are using violence.

> What is wrong with the BTC-miners?

They support North Corean violence.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

They support North Corean violence.

How so?

We'll likely know this weekend during the 128MB stress test.

I can say you the answer today.

6) <ditch the term altogether, perhaps only speak of valid vs. invalid blocks>

The validity of blocks is decided by software which is written by humans who created the rules the software should use to decide.

You do not win anything by replacing words. Bitcoin doesn't fall from the sky as an alien gift. It is made by humans and it's rules are manifestations of what people think are good rules for money.

Do you people think it is dishonest / morally wrong to double spend / and or have inflation?

Would you accept the longest PoW chain (which algo will you choose? Is SHA256 the holy gospel of hashing algorithms?) if miners can create money out of thin air or steal your coins? If not, why not?

 

[Zarathustra]

>> They support North Corean violence.

> How so?

By voting whith their CPU power for that disgusting shit.

Another view on 'honesty' by Jiang Zhuoer:

"This is the underlying rule: survival is the final debate, the very reason that determines right from wrong. There are a lot of sayings that states the rule, for example “the winner is the king and the loser is the thief”, “ the truth is only within the reach of the gunfire’’, “force determines the rules”.

Why is atheism correct? Is it because atheism is able to convince other religious beliefs? On the contrary, atheism and religion stem from very different foundation logic, it is almost incomparable. The reason why atheism is correct is not because it is more ‘’logical’’, but rather atheism can create gun."


Schopenhauer would challenge this view. The ultimate problem is the will to live. The ultimate truth is to overcome this blind will.

 

[sickpig]

All, just a quick thing about checkpoints:

1) all BCH clients added a new checkpoint after the fork happened on Aug 1st 2017. Check the code. BU and ABC did it also for all the rest of successful protocol upgrades, not sure about XT and bitprim.

Why having a checkpoint back then was not a problem? What's different now?

2) core does have checkpoints, they are still used, though they are "old", the last added is about height 295000. Recently they introduced a new feature to "disentangles" the script validation skipping from checkpoints.

It helps to skip validation for very old blocks and so make it quicker to do an IBD, but at the same time it does not prevent very big reorg.

Regardless to reorg an assumed valid block you need to have an alternative chain with at least nMinimumChainWork accumulated in case the node is partitioned and can't compare with any other alternative chain.

 

[Inca]

From an outside perspective this fork has been destructive to the reputation of Bitcoin Cash so far.

I'm out of the loop regarding the politics of why a contentious fork has happened over such trivial issues, but now pro-btc exchanges are relabelling BCH into two new split tickers and the market cap of each chain is smaller, diluting the brand of the project further.

I'm not clear on the apparent motivations behind each group but a dramatically reduced market cap and significant damage to the brand identity is not a good outcome. From the perspective of pro-Core btc proponents this is a fantastic result. No wonder Maxwell was keen to get involved (just like in the ETC fork). It is hard not to feel conspiratorial that the same forces at play stopping btc scaling are working furiously to damage Bitcoin Cash right now.

In any case, may the best chain win!

 

[Richy_T]

i don't see it that way at all. i'm not a CSW fanboy, as i've said. i don't care if he is or isn't Satoshi, or that he has patents, or that he's a lunatic disruptor. all i care about is the current SV changes; 128MB blocksizes and re-enabled opcodes along with his promise to remove the limit entirely sooner than later as being a major push forward to solving what is still the biggest problem in the space; the limit. all 32MB represents is a moving of the limit goalpost to make all you guys "ABC fanboys" .

Ironically, I think CSW has only further cemented ABC's hegemony. Indeed, the tinfoil hat that lives in the darkest recesses of my heart is wondering if SV was some kind of false-flag action to forestall honest and rational opposition to ABC's madcap agenda because it's hard to believe that it could have been done that incompetently by accident.
[doublepost=1542377641][/doublepost]

From years of reading your posts I believe we are not as divided as you might think.

We generally are not. We have been presented with two pretty bad choices and asked to pick one. Let's not fall for that and keep our eyes on the ball. Peer to peer electronic cash. I think BU picked the right values to build upon and we should return our gaze to those to see the way forward. Let's not fall into the traps set by political operators.

 

[freetrader]

Checkpoints: Having them around for emergencies is a good idea, but that doesn't change the fact that actually using them - especially repeatedly - introduces tremendous moral hazard and warrants the "centralized shitcoin" brand to stick for years thereafter. Early Bitcoin is exempt for obvious reasons.

Early Bitcoin history continues to teach us.

Advocating for having checkpoints available as a nuclear option preferable to chain death should be carefully distinguished from advocating for their use as a whole new security model.

Way to set up a strawman. No-one is advocating their use as a whole new security model.

Go and consider the moral hazard of supporting a rich billionaire and hedge-funded crony fraudster in a hostile takeover of Bitcoin Cash that negatively impacts the lives of its users through an engineered community split (of which you are part) and attempts to disrupt and halt free commerce.
[doublepost=1542377927][/doublepost]

From an outside perspective this fork has been destructive to the reputation of Bitcoin Cash so far.

I'm out of the loop regarding the politics of why a contentious fork has happened over such trivial issues, but now pro-btc exchanges are relabelling BCH into two new split tickers and the market cap of each chain is smaller, diluting the brand of the project further.

I'm not clear on the apparent motivations behind each group but a dramatically reduced market cap and significant damage to the brand identity is not a good outcome. From the perspective of pro-Core btc proponents this is a fantastic result. No wonder Maxwell was keen to get involved (just like in the ETC fork). It is hard not to feel conspiratorial that the same forces at play stopping btc scaling are working furiously to damage Bitcoin Cash right now.

In any case, may the best chain win!

I think you hit the nail on the head.