Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Looks like @drwasho of OpenBazaar has joined us, right after @Gavin Andresen. I wonder how many people know 90% of the general discussion in the forum happens in this here thread, despite the title.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Here is the twitter feed in pics from the alleged Satoshi

Fascinating. There is something to this fellow, no matter who Satoshi is.

 

[sickpig]

welcome on board @drwasho, keep up the good work with open bazaar. we, as a community, are in desperate need of a p2p decentralized market place.

@Zangelbert Bingledack: now both of them now it @cypherdoc you should change the thread title into something like: Bitcoin slack channel /joke (credit to @Justus Ranvier for the idea)

edit: typo

 

[awemany]

[...] ROW [...]

I feel I am out of the loop: What is ROW in this context?
[doublepost=1449735067,1449733952][/doublepost]Regarding this Craight S. Wright guy:

One thing that I do indeed wonder about is his supposed supercomputer. Is the TOP500 list in any reviewed, or is it basically just a website anyone can submit (fictive) super computers to?

 

[solex]

@cypherdoc

There does not seem to be much talk of the SW rollout plan, but I assume that 95% of the mining power would need to be on-board before SW tx can be accepted by the network and included in blocks. At this point a large %age of the non-mining nodes should have upgraded too.

The remaining non-upgraded nodes won't be able to verify SW tx but they can still verify the existing types of tx. So they will become a kind of lightweight node which are much better than SPV but not as good as full nodes, although, eventually they will benefit from fraud proofs received from full nodes.

 

[awemany]

@solex: Core can't really implement it with anything less than 95% of miner power without complete losing face ('consensus').

So aren't we now in a dead-locked situation where BIP101 doesn't get agreement because of the Chinese Miners and SW doesn't get agreement because of the big blockers?

I think the only sane way forward now is to implement both. BIP101 and a little later SW.

 

[Zarathustra]

SW = quadruple the cap to get a double throughput

Is this formula correct?

 

[solex]

@awemany
Core still has the upper hand with most of the hash-rate, and many big-blockers like the SW concept so I can't see the dead-lock situation. We have kind of just road-tested that theory with CLTV which Core is driving through regardless of XT holding out as long as possible.

Many of us want BIP101 now as we are worried about ecosystem growth stalling when legitimate user tx with reasonable fees are commonly getting stuck in cyberspace. I suspect that SW will not be deployed by the time that happens, and when it does the 2 or 3MB equivalent that it gains will be eaten up soon after.

I think SW is going to be deployed, users pushed to use it (because: cheaper tx that get quicker confirmations) and then Adam Back's 2,4,8 will make an appearance.

The Chinese miners don't seem to have enough gumption to overrule Core with their own limit increase.

@Zarathustra
That's a useful working approximation. It is only tx with large scriptsigs that can make the most use of the witness data area.

 

[albin]

Now this explanation I think I buy. Extension blocks rebranded as the malleability fix. Political solutions from folks who purportedly "hate" politicization.

 

[awemany]

@solex:

Maybe! But 95% is a high barrier. There just needs to be a single bigger miner who says 'give me BIP101 before SW' to stop it from happening.
(Unless of course the 51% starts censoring, but then Core will be confronted with all the ridiculousness of their consensus idea)

 

[Justus Ranvier]

then Core will be confronted with all the ridiculousness of their consensus idea

Nice thought, but have you observed any evidence that they feel bound to maintain continuity with past positions, vs making whatever argument appears to work in the moment?

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I guess that's what happens with any position of power.

1) They get to set the rules and standards, changing them as necessary for their ends. This way they maintain the appearance of fairness, democracy, reasonableness, openness, etc. while actually doing whatever they want.

2) More subtly, they get to interpret what words mean, like fork/consensus/economic majority, again changing the interpretation to suit their needs, even from sentence to sentence. This allows all sorts of fallacious reasoning in their favor that joiners are unable to detect because they feel a strong pressure to see the world through the social construct of language and can always be cajoled by the combination of authority + semantic blur to believe something just because it "sounds right."

I've always rejected the whole premise of any sort of consensus being necessary for changes. It's a dead end concept, and BIP101 plays right into it.

I believe the only effective counter is to reject the whole idea that Core has any authority. See through and call out their semantic games every time. Demand consistent definitions despite social pressure and authority that cries, "Come on, we all know what we mean here. Stop trolling."

Most of all, create the tools for a market-based decision on forks (I suggest fork arbitrage by having exchanges offer options-to-buy coins in each fork) so that such consensus smokescreens can never get off the ground.

 

[VeritasSapere]

@Aquent Very interesting write up. I really do like the idea of starting BIP101 at 2MB instead, this compromise might help us to gain a higher degree of consensus. Such a change would need to be implemented in XT, and BTCD as well. Since it would be counterproductive to split up our camps more. I think this idea should be seriously considered.

I think changing the mining algorithm however is a terrible idea, that is something we should never do. I am also not convinced that the economic majority and or the miners have failed us, quite the opposite actually this can still work out. We need to keep doing what we are doing here. Bitcoin unlimited is very important in this regard, the sooner we can complete it and put it out there the better. Giving people more freedom of choice is very important, I might like XT and Mike but the guy is a PR disaster, we need to give people more alternatives even if for some it might be for the wrong reasons.

 

[lebing]

Looks like @drwasho of OpenBazaar has joined us, right after @Gavin Andresen. I wonder how many people know 90% of the general discussion in the forum happens in this here thread, despite the title.

Yep. We might want to break the discussion up a bit into other threads in order to help this forum get more users.

 

[cypherdoc]

Let the competition begin:

North Carolina Exempts Select Bitcoin Businesses from Regulation

http://www.coindesk.com/north-carolina-exempts-bitcoin-regulation/

 

[theZerg]

Vote for the BUIP001 release contents today!
Don't abstain. Show your involvement and support of the project by voting.
https://bitco.in/forum/threads/buip001-unlimited-inspired-extensions-to-the-bitcoin-client.222/#post-5263

 

[Melbustus]

I believe the only effective counter is to reject the whole idea that Core has any authority. See through and call out their semantic games every time. Demand consistent definitions despite social pressure and authority that cries, "Come on, we all know what we mean here. Stop trolling."

Not to belabor the point, but I think what we really need to counter this is a mining pool. It should be clear after Hong Kong that we cannot rely on the current set of miners to think for themselves. That's a pretty significant fault in the bitcoin ecosystem right now. In time it should correct, but there needs to be a catalyst.

If enough vocal support gets behind the idea of a non-profit pool built to "professionalize" mining in a way that can more deeply involve the rest of the bitcoin ecosystem, I think the idea may get off the ground.

Someone mentioned upthread that Coinbase had toyed with the notion of doing their own pool, which is great and shows that they realize businesses can no longer ignore mining, but I think the notion is much more powerful if done as a non-profit with the support of *many* companies/individuals in the ecosystem, as opposed to just one.

 

[cypherdoc]

not only do i think the Chinese miners should have it explained to them that the economic value of the network as a whole and the individual value of their holdings will grow as a result of 101 or BU, but i also think Garzik should be convinced to drop 100.

now that Scaling is over and it is clear BS has no intentions of implementing 100, it should be withdrawn. it was an illusion for miners and they need to wake up. Garzik already said he doesn't think 100 has a chance nor has he coded it up. not only that, Sam Cole flat out said that he's suspicious of 100 b/c a single miner with 20% (i think he meant >20%) can veto any bigger block increase. we already have that one miner, f2pool:

i also believe that the economic majority, reflected here and by the exchanges/pmt processors, have already stated their suspicion of 100 as giving miners too much power and could end up having the reverse effect of smaller blocks. that would be a disaster and given the childish behavior of one of the Chinese miners (macbook-air), 100 should be a non starter. fortunately, the mining panel discussion showed me, at least, that most of the Chinese miners are reasonable and intelligent ppl who should understand these arguments.

tl;dr Garzik needs to take 100 down.

 

[theZerg]

Is there any way for "the community" to force a BIP to resolution?

 

[albin]

Some kind of activist political action is life or death right now, because the outcome of Hong Kong very clearly indicates that in maybe two years time, we're going to be expected to just lay down and take Flexcap. We'll have déjà vu where promoting a client that refuses "consensus" on Flexcap may get you banned from r/bitcoin. Folks for a free market in transactions may be stigmatized as "assuming bad faith". Now is the time to push back, because everything in the Soviet playbook is coming at us hard in a couple years if nothing changes.