Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[AdrianX]

It sounds to me like you just made an argument for retaining a block size limit at some level. Your conclusions are correct in the case of no limit, but if there is a limit the miner must continue to progress the chain in order to have space for all of the transactions

This is a good argument for block size but only if we accepts the premise that miners will not compete in a free market. So long as there is the potential for free competition in the mining market Bitcoin continues to work as designed. Even something as subtle as BIP100 changes the the mining marketplace it allows the creation of rules that are voted on that can inhibit free market participation.

 

[AdrianX]

Or we can make a concerted effort to ignore (both automatically through an ignore function and also making a pact to shun useless content completely - not even responding to point out its uselessness) any very low signal:noise ratio poster right now, so that they won't have any fun when they come.

There won't even be any ostensible benefit from bumping the thread for visibility because there is so little noise.

If they show up it's a win they're just circle jerking over there. It's my opinion that the debate helps those who keep an open mind and pay attention. I'm sure they will show up. Bitcointalk has a cancer they keep belittling newbies and sunning them, not very conducive for Bitcoin or bitcointalk growth.

 

[cypherdoc]

Bitcoin's Sound Money function ensures that there will always be competition in the mining market, not only between private participants, but public as well.

 

[awemany]

I don't see how it's even conceivable that there would ever be a single miner. The worst I can ever see would be a single mega miner per nation state. And that is even stretching it as the concept of nation states begins to blur. The stakes and incentives are just too high.

Theoretical extremes are fun however.

Indeed. If Bitcoin becomes very successful, nation states (or their populace) will IMO have a strong interest in owning a share of the mining power.

Depending on hash rate vs. coin price, a Bitcoin success scenario could mean eventual 'arms reduction treaties', i.e. mutual agreements on the reduction or limiting of hashpower. And it might also mean that for further resilience (attacks etc.) to at least physically distribute ('decentralize'!) mining power.

Though this is all far future and my imagination is certainly only one of many equally valid ones, given the data and reasonable gut feeling about human nature.

What happened during the last couple of months though, interestingly enough, was just one type of imagination persisting in most of the discussions. The imagination that increase in blocksize will lead to the eventual death of Bitcoin due to centralization. That was quite a successful social engineering attack.

 

[Inca]

I had a message this weekend from Roger Ver saying he is setting up a forum on bitcoin.com. Yet another positive step in the diversification away from btctalk and /r/bitcoin..

 

[Stereotype]

.....so its all been sorted out with Roger and Mr OKCoin?

 

[sickpig]

I had a message this weekend from Roger Ver saying he is setting up a forum on bitcoin.com. Yet another positive step in the diversification away from btctalk and /r/bitcoin..

good to know.

what about suggesting Roger to join forces with @Bloomie?

 

[Bloomie]

Roger did favorite our tweet announcing the new forum, but I haven't heard from him otherwise.

 

[cypherdoc]

Mark Friedenbach, what a troll.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jvu0i/who_is_afraid_of_bip_101/

 

[solex]

It might not be only an artefact of unsound money.

One little-known fact about many of the large public sector pension funds is that during the 90s tech boom, some insane state legislatures wrote into a law a mandate for the managers to obtain 8% annual returns.

Anybody with more than 3 brain cells can easily see that this is impossible to sustain for more than a handful of years. If the economy grows at 3% per year and your portfolio grows at 8% per year, you can calculate the year at which your portfolio would be greater than 100% of the economy.

How much influence as a shareholder does CALPERS, for example, have on publicly traded companies in the US?

I remember hearing story after story about profitable tech companies in the US being effectively strip mined (stop all R&D, full power to marketing, offshore to China) in the early to mid 2000s.

Everybody said it was because CEOs only cared about the next quarterly report, but no one ever speculated as to why this had suddenly become the case.

Large public sector pension funds with their legally-mandated, yet mathematically-impossible, desire for yield would appear to be a huge smoking gun that should be investigated but I've never heard of anyone looking under that rock and reporting back what they found.

Fantastic point about CALPERS and the impossible chase for endlessly high returns. I remember Mish writing about the 5% or 6% growth projected for the Illinois pension funds. Where do these people think this money comes from? Unless such returns are linked to fund manager renumeration, and it doesn't matter whether the final numbers are invented through mark-to-model.

 

[awemany]

Mark Friedenbach, what a troll.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jvu0i/who_is_afraid_of_bip_101/

He's quite out there, saying BIP101 will outright destroy Bitcoin. Wow.

 

[cypherdoc]

 

[cypherdoc]

these types of announcements should make you realize that Bitcoin continually incentivizes broad based participation in mining worldwide that will help us keep the network decentralized:

http://blockzero.org/2015/09/07/australian-based-bitcoin-group-looking-raise-20-million-though-ipo/

 

[_mr_e]

This part worries me a lot though: "The prospectus notes that Bitcoin Group acquires hash power predominantly in China (98.5%) through the purchase of mining equipment..."

 

[cypherdoc]

that doesn't particularly worry me. look at all the tech equipment produced in China today.

actually, who should really be worried is the USG.

 

[cypherdoc]

 

[cypherdoc]

gmax digging himself deeper and deeper:

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3jwebt/mike_hearn_on_sidechains_and_blockstream/

 

[awemany]

/u/tsontar's reddit post

Nice one. I answered. I think we should all motivate him

 

[Peter R]

gmax digging himself deeper and deeper:

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3jwebt/mike_hearn_on_sidechains_and_blockstream/

I'm starting to get the feeling that Gmax gilds his own comments.

I've noticed something else that *only* happens when I argue with Gmax. A good example is this post I made responding to Gmax's claim that some of my work from two months ago was "pseudo science" done with the intention to "mislead" or because I was "too ignorant."

OK, so within a few hours my response to his ad hominems received something like 70 upvotes. His response below mine was actually well in the negative. However--slowly--over the course of the next 12 hours, my response lost points and his response gained points and now they sit fairly equal in score.

I've only noticed this effect when I'm in direct communication with Gmax. If I point out various errors or ambiguities with his comments, I'm normally upvoted rather quickly. But then if I check back the next day, sometimes my comments end up in the negative and his comments are sometimes boosted back into the positive.

 

[cypherdoc]

@Peter R

i've noted a variation on this theme.

when i argue with gmax, i immediately seem to get a downvote to 0 pts, while he gets an upvote to 2pts. makes me think he has an extra troll acct he carries around with him.