Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Mengerian]

Some more Mike Hearn quotes from the BitcoinXT mailing list:

Again - Samson's view makes no sense because he is assuming "hard forks" are hard. I actually have come to hate that terminology (I certainly did not invent it) because it's so misleading.

In a world in which the community feels free to execute hard forks whenever necessary, after some forward planning, setting up a BIP101 style formula is merely a convenience intended to reduce the likelyhood of needing one. But if it turns out that formula is wrong, OK, make a new BIP, and fork again.

I actually talked to Samson a few months ago. He couldn't grasp the idea that the system was changeable. The fact that Samson can't see any explanation for BIP101 beyond arrogance/recklessness says a lot about his worldview - he thinks BIP101 would be forever, even though if it happened, that would be proof that it wasn't!

>>If they are changeable why can't we put in his preferred future blocksize limit? Could he not say: "It's changeable why don't you adopt my view?"

Yes, but

1. We can say the same thing: it's changeable, so why don't you adopt our view?

2. Changing the code would mean a new BIP, new code, new testing, etc. For what? The difference between 4mb and 8mb as an upper limit is not that large.

3. They have no consistency. Different pools say different things.

4. The Chinese miners have made it very clear at Hong Kong that they won't consider running anything except Core. In fact their view is that they shouldn't have to think or have opinions on how Bitcoin works.

Reflect for a moment upon the last point, and what that means.

Thin blocks doesn't change the block size limit, it just changes how the data is relayed on the network. A 1mb block remains 1mb for the purposes of the calculation.

The scaling solution - the only scaling solution that isn't totally insane - is to raise the limit and keep raising it so the network always has plenty of capacity.

I realise you are searching for a political solution. If you wish to code up and test a different proposal to BIP 101, fork Core, rebrand it, then build and distribute it, you are welcome to do so.

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

 

[albin]

Just as an exercise in values that I feel are generally good ethically, over the last couple days I've made a non-trivial effort to try to read as much as possible and give the "small block" / "decentralist" / whatever argument as much benefit of the doubt as possible and try to relate to where they're coming from.

It's an impossible Herculean task. There is no way to quickly come to any concept of what the main arguments are. With the anti-artificial scarcity side, you can read Peter_R's paper, and agree or disagree, you'll be able to work out very easily what he's actually arguing. You can pick up any of Hearn's blogs and get a sense of where he stands on all the political behind-the-scenes dev and governance-related issues.

With the other side, it appears that your only option is to go down a rabbit hole and start emotionally swallowing some kind of vague Maxwellian religion, because in order to get anywhere, you have to parse his entire online forum life. I'm having a really difficult time seeing any discourse from this guy that isn't a manipulative scolding of somebody or another, mainly rooted in their not being a Ph. D. in Maxwell's bullshit. And Peter Todd, looking back on his body of work broadly, all I can say is one man's "adversarial thinking" is another man's "rich mental fantasy life". As for Adam Back, I'm having real difficulty finding any technically substantive contribution he's actually making to anything here, almost everything he has to say is concern-trolling about software projects.

I tried really hard but this is just impossible. If you poke around reddit you can see upwards of half a year ago I tried to get an outline going on the major arguments WRT blocksize, so there's some tangible reason to believe my effort here has been in good faith.

 

[cypherdoc]

I've mentioned this before, but since you're looking into Maxwell's past, go over to BCT and check his personal ratings. Note all the negative ratings he's dished out over the years as well as having received. Look at mine and see if anything occurs to you.

But really the most interesting thing is look at the other 4 core devs ratings. They're mostly empty. IOW, they don't bother with such childish things.

 

[Erdogan]

*sigh* I feel like we're all in the dark (or maybe I am just in the dark)... what IS going on? I am assuming that Coinbase, BitPay, Bitstamp, KNC Miner, 21 Inc, and various other parties are frequently meeting right now and working out a plan to put together enough mining power for BIP101 (and or a marketing strategy to convince other miners), but I have no idea... I would be very disappointed to learn that they are just each doing their own thing and hoping this problem will take care of itself.

Somebody reassure me!

I think you are right, and this is the out-of-band communication that I talk about. It is not needed to have a voting mechanism embedded in the blocks. The chinese miners are obviously quite passive and their major concern is to operate their mining factories, just like it should be. But there is some stretching of rubber, and suddenly the rubber breaks and we have larger blocks. My guess is that it will be XT, since it is implemented and tested (at least in the full node domain). We will see.

 

[cypherdoc]

getting ready for the next pump.

tomorrow could be a doozie in the stock mkt as Stone Lion begins to get priced in by the plebes:

 

[Inca]

Let's see if markets crash tomorrow. Imagine if bitcoin rallies and breaks out as the major equity indices lose a few % points.

What about this rumour of a trillion dollar put?

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@albin

I think the amorphousness of the small block position is due to the fact that there really is no one single position other than a general feeling that we should be cautious and lean/clever instead of "recklessly" attempting to scale via "klugey" blocksize cap increase (despite this being circular, since the cap is effectively a bran new dynamic just now being introduced; though Luke and others dispute this, saying it has had an effect all this time). Some care or claim to care about TOR, some about mining centralization, some about incentivizing more code optimization.

The closest thing to the main/quintessential Gmax argument is probably the idea that there are limited network resources to work with, and they can be allocated to anonymity, bigger blocks, or whatever, but there are always "tradeoffs," without acknowledging that this is a truism that fails to justify any particular level (especially not 1MB; but Greg has said he doesn't think 1MB is a magic number, and as if to prove or double down on that, he has said the cap should probably be even *smaller*; recall that he thinks the 1MB cap is the only reason Bitcoin can work at all, and he was a skeptic until he learned about that precious blocksize cap).

Have you read Paul Sztorc's article Measuring Decentralization? It pretty much sums up the TOR angle, as well as some of the anti-hard-forking lore that are at the root of many small blockist claims. It's the most concentrated and viciously argued set of small block arguments I've seen.

http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/measuring-decentralization/

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@Mengerian

Mike's first quote about hard forks is such an obvious point that it's astonishing to see it (Samson's view) keep coming up. Yes the very fact that we are able to hard fork into BIP101 shows the cap can be changed as needed, yet people freak out about it being set in stone. That's one thing I'd like to see explained, how that can even be entertained. It's baffling.

 

[Peter R]

*sigh* I feel like we're all in the dark (or maybe I am just in the dark)... what IS going on? I am assuming that Coinbase, BitPay, Bitstamp, KNC Miner, 21 Inc, and various other parties are frequently meeting right now and working out a plan to put together enough mining power for BIP101 (and or a marketing strategy to convince other miners), but I have no idea... I would be very disappointed to learn that they are just each doing their own thing and hoping this problem will take care of itself.

Somebody reassure me!

Well, I like the sounds of this:

And this suggests to me that the fracturing of Core is near:

 

[albin]

Omg omg omg, 2nd half of the last LTB. Peter Todd BS'ing his face off about reading Adam Back and trying to invent digital cash when he was in highschool! A must listen!

 

[Melbustus]

Stephen Pair (BitPay CEO) gets it:

 

[rocks]

Well, I like the sounds of this:

And this suggests to me that the fracturing of Core is near:

Collectively the entities who need a payment system drastically dwarf blockstream and should be able to allocate vastly more resources towards development for scaling than blockstream can invest in LN.

But so far the have not allocated any resources at all.

Hopefully the last 6 months has been a wake up call that will change this....

 

[Zarathustra]

Well, I like the sounds of this:

And this suggests to me that the fracturing of Core is near:

Maxwell backed by Back is now fulltime defending himself.

"BEHOLD, IT COMETH, IT IS NIGH, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!"

Thus spake Zarathustra.

 

[Erdogan]

Let's see if markets crash tomorrow. Imagine if bitcoin rallies and breaks out as the major equity indices lose a few % points.

What about this rumour of a trillion dollar put?

Yes, high yield lending may stop abruptly on december 14, 2015, after America wakes up. Still, I hold that bitcoin is just a tad too new for the general market. All they know is neo-keynesianism. Keynes himself at lest knew that the system was not sustainable, he just did not care. The current pack does not know.

 

[albin]

That Pieter Wuille clip from the Q&A linked in that reddit post is utterly fascinating. I originally listened to this talk audio only in the car and completely missed all those cues as to what was going on.

Upon receiving the question about why 4MB is suddenly ok, he reminds me of somebody in those Derren Brown mentalist/hypnotism specials from the UK immediately after coming out of a trance, with that awkward bewilderment and confusion. Maybe there's some general philosophical insight we can glean here about the nature of poorly-reasoned beliefs, perhaps there is something akin to a self-hypnosis that we use functionally.

 

[Zarathustra]

Coinbase against Blockstream. I bet on Coinbase.

https://blog.coinbase.com/2015/12/08/coinbase-exchange-introduces-volume-based-rebates/

 

[cypherdoc]

busy morning.

silver leading us lower. Gold collapsing, Bitcoin UP

$DJI violates first little red line of support. bad news:

[doublepost=1450113588][/doublepost]$DJI desperately trying to convince you that everything is OK despite every other index and asset in the world collapsing; except Bitcoin:

[doublepost=1450113706][/doublepost]JNK further collapsing:

[doublepost=1450113818][/doublepost]if you're small business, you're outta luck. but who cares about small biz anyways?:

 

[cypherdoc]

miners making their move. to the downside:

 

[rocks]

All they know is neo-keynesianism. Keynes himself at lest knew that the system was not sustainable, he just did not care. The current pack does not know.

The best of them seem to understand it is unsustainable, they just believe they can kick the can farther. And so far they've been right.

Each new generation of economists move the goal posts though for what is acceptable. Just as recently as the 80s a top FED person ( I forget who ) said that a 20% reserve requirement for banks was a red line, this meant 1 to 5 ratio. By 2008 we were well over a 1 to 20 ratio. In 2020 negative rates might be considered to be a functioning market...

 

[_mr_e]

Is this good or bad for mining decentralization?

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3014509/data-center/bitcoin-miner-knc-is-planning-another-four-week-data-center-build-out.html

At least it's taking some power from China.... but I wonder if all mines will all eventually need to be set up in the coldest/cheapest electricity places on earth and could centralize around those few locations?