Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Mengerian]

Amazing to see how effectively Back/Maxwell have engineered a "coup" seizing control of Bitcoin development. All it took was a modest investment, funding a few key developers and getting them onside, and controlling a few key channels of communication. They have seized the initiative and effectively framed debate along their chosen lines. Big players like Coinbase, with major investment money backing, have been caught flat-footed. The Chinese miners have been left basically confused and in disarray. It's like something out of Sun Tzu.

This has shown the importance of influencing Bitcoin protocol development, and I wouldn't be surprised to see larger players getting more involved and funding developers, so this could be a positive long-term outcome. We may also see large investors paying more attention to mining.

In the shorter term, it looks like some sort of disruptive change is becoming increasingly likely. SegWitness, while a cool concept, does virtually nothing to alleviate the pressing capacity constraints. It is also becoming obvious that its deployment will be complex and risky. No block-size increase seems to be in the pipeline for Core.

I think the best response to all this is to just keep persistently plugging away. BIP 101 is still the only option that actually addresses the needed throughput increases, is actually implemented, and is tested. We just need to stick to our guns, keep building evidence, and keep building solutions that solve real problems.

EDIT: In other words: don't fight for control, instead build alternatives.

 

[rocks]

Someone mentioned here a while back that Greg previously wrote a paper saying that decentralized consensus was not possible, and then when Bitcoin worked later claimed that it was because of the 1MB cap.

Does anyone remember this, and if so have a link to the paper or anything else relevant. Am curious. Thanks

 

[cypherdoc]

nice ramp
[doublepost=1449617993,1449617284][/doublepost]this is why i think Bitcoin ramps when stocks plunge.

non-correlated alternative source of returns.

 

[lunar]

Who are you? And how did you get into Bitcoin? ..... I am a bit of everything.


I've been involved for a long time.... ;-)

 

[rocks]

nice ramp

GBTC closed at 55.30, each share is equal to 0.09572 BTC. That works out to $577 at market close.

Given today's after market close ramp, GBTC might break $600 tomorrow. This is brokerage account type pricing.

 

[lunar]

@rocks

It might be becasue of this http://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-this-unknown-australian-genius/

 

[cypherdoc]

Something Snaps In China As Bitcoin Takes Out Stops, Soars Higher

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-08/something-snaps-china-bitcoin-takes-out-stops-soars-higher

 

[rocks]

@rocks

It might be becasue of this http://www.wired.com/2015/12/bitcoins-creator-satoshi-nakamoto-is-probably-this-unknown-australian-genius/

“How did you first learn about bitcoin?” Seven interrupted again, as if still trying to determine Wright’s significance.

Wright paused for three full seconds. “Um. I’ve been involved with all this for a long time,” he stuttered. “I—try and stay—I keep my head down. Um…” He seemed to suppress a smile.

The real Satoshi went to crazy lengths to hide himself. I do not believe he is going to bitcoin conferences and hinting he's satoshi now. If satoshi was at that conference he'd be saying very definitely that he got into it after 2012, or something along those lines.

This is better than Newsweek, but still way off IMHO

Edit: OK I should have read further, yes that is interesting. Need to consider more and see what comes out. But we need to remember Satoshi was not the only very smart guy working on making distrubted crypto cash.

 

[lunar]

@rocks

There's a lot of compelling but circumstantial evidence in the wired article.

The two quotes that stuck, and made me think this is actually his 'albeit resigned' acceptance of the inevitable. Perhaps this is him coming out quietly on his own terms?

“I never desired to be a leader but the choice is not mine,” reads a third recent tweet from Wright. “We are a product of the things we create. They change us.”

“Am slowly coming to the realisation and acceptance,” he added, “No secret remains forever.”

Anyway it's pure speculation, but this timing of the Wired article and the price bump seems very close?

 

[rocks]

@lunarboy
I'm still reserving judgement, Wired did collect an impressive number of data points, but it's still not conclusive IMHO and could point to either someone else exploring crypto currencies at that time (of which there were several) or someone trying to make themselves look like Satoshi.

If Satoshi (whoever he is) does start to come out soon, I think it would be more related to the blocksize debate and blockstream direction, than price movement. I think the project is really at risk here, and if I had 1M coins at risk and saw my project being taking over by a bunch of goons, I would do everything possible to get it back on track, even if it meant re-appearing.

But Satoshi can re-appear and communicate his wishes while remaining anonymous. He has is PGP key and BTC signatures for early blocks to prove himself, that's all it takes. Satoshi could release a vision statement and 0.13 client with BIP101, sign the whole package and disappear again. That's how I think he'd do it. Not by dropping hints to Wired....

 

[lunar]

Ok well as we should. Moving on from the man to the idea.

I've just watched that entire video and Craig mentions an idea I've never heard of before. Perhaps someone else could vet this?

@min 16:45
"unfortunately not many people have knowledge of Assembly code or Forth anymore'... 'In machine code there is none of these limitations.' 'in fact we have a rather rich instruction set in bitcoin, it's just not well defined yet'... 'Forth actually does loop'...'you have to use a separate code stack'.. 'Forth and forth type languages use a duel stack architecture'...'it's just going to take time for people to understand it"

 

[Melbustus]

Wright seems a little unstable (from some of those quotes in the articles, at least); that'd be unfortunate for Bitcoin if he's Satoshi, both for ad-hominem reasons, and cuz he might be in control of a lot of coins.

But if there's any truth in this story, perhaps Kleiman was Satoshi and Wright was a friend/partner of his who was an early miner; maybe (and this would be unfortunate since he could still control lots of coins) running the farm that generated the characteristic nonce distribution that led to the conclusions about "satoshi's" coins.

Edit: And maybe Wright realized he had an opportunity to present himself as Satoshi, hence:

 

[JVWVU]

Assuming Wright is Satoshi, wouldnt you be a little unstable in the thought that everyone knows you have 1.1 M bitcoins in a Tulip Trust that is accessible in 2020. Right now that is 0.5 Billion USD.

 

[Melbustus]

Whatever the case, I hate these Satoshi unveilings (true or not). The person doesn't matter, but the coins do, and the market is obviously going to be skittish if any credible 1M+ coin holder shows up.

 

[Mengerian]

Some interesting comments by Mike Hearn over on the BitcoinXT mailing list:

The prediction curve in BIP 101 is arbitrary and not very important. In an ecosystem where miners and users felt free to adapt the system to a changing world, if BIP 101 turned out to be wrong in either direction, no problem, just schedule another hard fork and adjust it.

The only reason anyone cares about the growth curve in BIP 101 is this: some people have become convinced that either

1. Hard forks are difficult to trigger or
2. Hard forks should be difficult to trigger.

Bitcoin Core and Blockstream in particular pushes both views very strongly, but it's vital to realise that this is a purely political discussion that has nothing to do with the actual technology.

It is political because at its core, a dislike of hard forks represents something far deeper - it represents a dislike of democracy itself. This came through very strongly when I talked to the miners some time ago and you can see it play out in the arguments of Core developers/their supporters on reddit and elsewhere.

Signs you're dealing with someone who doesn't trust democracy include arguments like these:

• If we can hard fork to change the block size limit, there might be a hard fork to change the 21 million limit. Anything could happen!
• We shouldn't hard fork unless everyone agrees (phrased another way, the speaker believes they should have a personal veto that overrides even 99% support from other people)
• Hard forks are bad but soft forks are good
• Bitcoin is meant to be immutable no matter how many people agree it should be changed, and that immutability it's most important value
• Bitcoin is meant to be a digital equivalent to gold
• It's important that protocol decisions are made by intellectuals and not by "The Mob". We want there to be a single group of experts who tell us what to do.

People with the opposing views would make arguments like these:

• There's no connection between the Bitcoin monetary policy and block sizes. The 21 million limit isn't protected by requiring a dozen developer conferences to change it, it's protected by the fact that it's in the users own interests to keep it.
• A system in which any single person can veto a change no matter how strongly supported it is, is dysfunctional and non-workable.
• There is little technical difference between hard and soft forks. Without any ideology involved, hard forks may well be preferable for technical reasons.
• Money is a social construct that only has meaning because other people accept it. To try and create immutable money that can't be changed even if everyone wants it to is a nonsensical goal that fundamentally misunderstands the very nature of money itself.
• Gold is not independent of social decision making, as the general decline and abolition of the gold standard itself shows. Nor is gold especially predictable, as the Conquistador-triggered European hyperinflations showed. So to claim Bitcoin should be hard to change to make it "like gold" is just a restatement of the previous point.
• There are no "intellectuals" and "the mob" is much better described as "the user base" or even "the customers". Expertise is easy to claim and difficult to verify, so is best judged by a market. To hold the userbase in disdain is to fundamentally disagree with the basic assumption of decentralisation itself - that power is best distributed over the people whom it affects, because that's how the best decisions are made.

Unfortunately as these opposing views views are based in very deep rooted assumptions about the nature of politics and human interaction, changing them seems very difficult (though not impossible). But I don't forsee the guys involved with Bitcoin Core or Blockstream ever concluding that the wider userbase might know better than they do, for instance. It just runs counter to everything they seem to believe in

You have to separate different things.

When I talked to the miners, I heard three things:

1. We have $RANDOM_ISSUE with BIP101, or, we don't and BIP101 would be fine
2. We will consider voting for BIP101 after December if there is no progress
3. However, we will not run anything except Bitcoin Core

The last requirement makes any change to BIP101 irrelevant because Maxwell will not accept any block size increase in Core (and it's basically Maxwell who runs that project now). Thus changing BIP101 to try and satisfy whatever their latest wishlist is would be pointless.

It also makes Bitcoin itself largely pointless, as it makes the system no different to PayPal or any other proprietary financial network. But even when I pointed this out and they accepted that was true, the miners still had huge mental difficulty with the whole idea that they should have opinions and exercise them through voting.

Source: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/bitcoin-xt/b05mPLx1HWg

 

[lunar]

And then there's this....
Small blockers might be in for a surprise?

 

[JVWVU]

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2644014-Tulip-Trust-Redacted.html

http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-friend-invented-bi-1746958692?utm_term=sports+football+baseball+basketball+poker+motorsports+soccer+hockey+tennis+golf+chess+volleyball+girls&utm_content=magazine&utm_source=eihtballprayer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=eihtballprayer

Note per the contract Wright gets coins back from trust in 15 months after Kliemans death

Klieman died in April 2013 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Kleiman

So Wright has had Tulip Fund since August 2014 and can sell at any time

 

[solex]

@JVWVU

Don't overlook (like the Wired article does) that Satoshi's coins are in different addresses of 50 BTC each, perhaps 20,000 or so. I had thought a while ago that if he was mining into 2011 he could drip-feed into the market from the latest ones without causing too much of a stir.

 

[Melbustus]

And then there's this....
Small blockers might be in for a surprise?

Well....Satoshi being in favor of big blocks would be pretty consistent, at least.

 

[JVWVU]

@JVWVU

Don't overlook (like the Wired article does) that Satoshi's coins are in different addresses of 50 BTC each, perhaps 20,000 or so. I had thought a while ago that if he was mining into 2011 he could drip-feed into the market from the latest ones without causing too much of a stir.

Wright has already been tied to a $60M USD nest egg of bitcoin himself (no Satoshi coins) so those could be ghe drip feed
[doublepost=1449628345][/doublepost]Also this is no different than Zuckerburg with Facebook stock, 1.1 M of the ~15 M shares is now only 7.3% . He is also smart enough of Satoshi to know that he can slowly sell and donate bitcoins for the rest of his life and still control 3% of all coins.

I would be more interested in how many coins did Klieman leave to his family on the hard drive or did they just disappear with no private keys kept.