Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[theZerg]

I think those places will turn out to be pretty diverse. For example, you could install solar in the desert, and use the heat to desalinate water.

 

[cypherdoc]

insurance? oh heavens:

[doublepost=1450119221,1450118468][/doublepost]continuing to worsen:

[doublepost=1450119385][/doublepost]$DJT doggedly refusing to confirm the desperate $DJI pump. note that just today, the $DJT has now dropped below its 3rd previous short term cycle low, setting a new yearly low. not this low since 4/14. that's bad:

[doublepost=1450119690][/doublepost]what a coincidence!!!

[doublepost=1450119815][/doublepost]not getting ANY better. just going deeper and deeper and deeper down. such bullshit:

[doublepost=1450119911][/doublepost]and it just gets worse. LQD, or high quality investment grade corp debt, reaching new lows today. moar such bullshit:

 

[VeritasSapere]

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?

I would argue that this is good for decentralization. Of course I would like to see more home miners like myself however it does make sense that such large industrial mines will gain the lions share of the hashpower, especially during this early period in Bitcoins development.

The reason why I consider this to be a positive development for mining decentralization is because KNC is one of the smaller private mining companies presently, so them increasing their hash power will help to distribute mining more, when compared to the presently more dominant private miners. If we had a hundred mining companies all truly competing with each other responsible for the majority of the hashpower, I would still consider this fairly decentralized.

KNC is also a supporter of BIP101, so more power to them is definitely good for our cause. This might explain in part why the hashrate has been going through the roof recently, at least it is being accompanied by an increased price, which is allowing my mining operation to continue humming along profitably at least.

 

[cypherdoc]

and i weep:

http://i.imgur.com/lyu4EJh.png
[doublepost=1450122343][/doublepost]here's the 20 yr weekly chart of oil futures. note that the low in 2009 was 33.55:

 

[theZerg]

https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3wpl1x/psa_mining_code_change_in_bitcoin_core_is/

Ahhh! I always liked the idea that some transactions could be accepted with 0 fees. Its great advertising, even if its a bit unlikely/takes a while at this point. I guess everything good (for the user) must be removed in order to "simplify the code" and maintain the 1MB limit.

EDIT:

Nodes only take so many KB of free transactions per block before they start requiring at least 0.01 transaction fee. The threshold should probably be lower than it currently is. I don't think the threshold should ever be 0. We should always allow at least some free transactions.

-Satoshi Nakamoto

 

[molecular]

In my more sceptical and paranoid moments I wonder how I would stop bitcoin if i were the central banking powers that be.
/rant

Divide and conquer. Polarize the community over some issue, seed mistrust and hate.

 

[awemany]

I really wonder what's going on in the minds of gmax & co now.

Does the effective censoring on /r/Bitcoin make them believe they are universally loved and thus any change to Bitcoin is ok now, the ecosystem bending to their will?

[...] ... and I think things are gelling nicely around a productive path forward for the project.

Is it just me or is this quote from gmax to be read as 'we consensified some folks to think right?'

There are moments where I am afraid that we are the fringe and everyone has already been consensified. But then Bitpay's, Coinbase's and Bitstamp's support for BIP101 should be a clear indication of what is going on.

 

[VeritasSapere]

I made another post on the #rekt thread. I am a big fan of the dialectic, so even though I love posting here, I am just preaching to the choir so to speak. I like posting in places where I know a lot of people will disagree with me. I even started questioning their so called allegiance with the cyberpunks, since I think that for some people the resistance to these ideas are linked to their supposed "identity", it might not be rational but it seems to be something I am observing in people. I found the responses rather revealing actually in regards to the mindset of Core supporters.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1162684.msg13240963#msg13240963

I have a background in philosophy so I pride myself in using good reasoning. Which gives me hope considering the responses on this thread where so irrational and so far removed from constructive reasoning. I would like to think that the majority of the Bitcoin community would not be fooled by such manipulation and logical fallacy. This ties back to my hope in the future and how enlightenment philosophy presumes that in an environment of the free exchange of information and ideas the truth will rise and triumph.

I do have confidence that eventually this situation will be resolved, in the meantime however it does hurt me to see Core introducing changes that I disagree with so much. I really do love Bitcoin it has changed my life and giving me so much more hope for the future. It pains me to see them doing this to the thing that I love so much. Even though I do have the confidence that this will work out eventually, if this did add a decade to mass adoption however I can not help to think how much more good Bitcoin could have done in that time, how many more lives could have literally been saved.

 

[cypherdoc]

@VeritasSapere

you and @Zarathustra are doing yeoman's work over there.

 

[VeritasSapere]

Thanks man, I appreciate that. The commentating that I have been doing indeed feels very meaningful to me. I have a way with words so I am using that power for good.

 

[cypherdoc]

here's the long term JNK weekly chart going back to 2008:

 

[rocks]

I really wonder what's going on in the minds of gmax & co now.

Does the effective censoring on /r/Bitcoin make them believe they are universally loved and thus any change to Bitcoin is ok now, the ecosystem bending to their will?


Is it just me or is this quote from gmax to be read as 'we consensified some folks to think right?'

There are moments where I am afraid that we are the fringe and everyone has already been consensified. But then Bitpay's, Coinbase's and Bitstamp's support for BIP101 should be a clear indication of what is going on.

The number of people on /r/Bitcoin and bitcointalk.org are a very very small fraction of the total number of people playing with or using Bitcoin. Most people do not pay close attention to the day to day happenings at all. Just look at the mining community, it seemed over half of the overseas miners are caught somewhat flat footed that there is a disagreement in the development direction.

The vast majority of people see Bitcoin as something they can use. A fee market will completely break this. If there is only space for 75% of the potential users, no matter how high fees go 25% of potential users will not be able to make transactions.

Only then will most people look at what is going on, and it will be a mess with tons of FUD and confusion being thrown around. What most people will take away though is there are scaling solutions available today, but a small number of "core developers" refuse to implement them.

I am beginning to think (or maybe hoping is more accurate) that this is what Coinbase and others are waiting for. They are waiting for the average user to feel pain from Greg's nonsense. This will consist of people not being able to transfer funds in or out of payment providers because the transactions don't clear and there is a backlog of high fee transactions. That is the right moment for all the merchant solutions providers to band together and issue a joint statement on what has been happening, how there are easy solutions today (simply raise the cap) and how they will work on longer term solutions over time (IBLT, etc). You will then have one company blockstream vs. a the large Bitcoin venture funded ecosystem.

 

[cypherdoc]

that tx that took 24h to clear for me was from 21co. i gotta believe i wasn't the only one experiencing delays. i also wouldn't be surprised if ppl were having delays withdrawing from CB. how could they not? the complaints must already be here.

 

[VeritasSapere]

I am somewhat concerned that this will hurt adoption. Since many people would just blame Bitcoin for being unreliable and slow, while not fully realizing the situation which is causing this to happen, and that under normal operating conditions this would not be the case.

My hope is that all of these big companies are going to one day just make a collective announcement for their full fledged support of BIP101 regardless. That would be truly great, I suppose that would be a best case scenario, even if this would cause a split. I suspect some people will stick with Core even if their support is minimal, that is if the developers do not all rage quit like they said they would if they do not get their way. I think this borders on community blackmail, considering they are also saying on the other hand that it will be impossible to find proper developer talent beyond Core. Politically speaking actually I would think the right thing to do for these Core developers would be to stick with Core under that scenario since they will be giving the minority a voice and the market the opportunity to return to Core if it proves itself superior.

I wonder if they do actually realize that their economic model will not function unless they have a monopoly or a lack of competition for cryptocurrencies, which to me seems to be a impossibility considering cryptocurrencies voluntary nature.

I sometimes entertain myself with the thought, what if Core decided to release an altcoin with its primary feature being "block scarcity" or a limited transactional capacity, necessitating the need for third parties to even transact cheaply. It would be a complete joke, it would have absolutely no merit compared to the alt coins that already exist. There are thousands of altcoins, and I have never heard of even one of them ever advertise this as being a desirable attribute. In the absence of a chain fork an altcoin with increased transactional capacity is actually useful and would completely out compete the "Core Coin". It is only because they can leverage the massive network effect of Bitcoin that they are able to maintain such a position. I suspect that this is also because of the reverence that Core commands and possibly due to the lack of political understanding among Bitcoiners who mostly have IT backgrounds, as opposed to politics and economics.

No offense to the IT guys out there, we need both disciplines to keep the blockchain churning.

 

[rocks]

@VeritasSapere
Oh yes, it most definitely will stall adoption and turn people off just as more mainstream sources are starting to be positive on Bitcoin. It might very well kill the current price rally. Most people are going to be unhappy for sure.

I think we are also just crossing the volume threshold this week or next week. Look at the volume chart linked, there is a clear jump in transactions starting a couple weeks ago (zoom to 1 year) and for the first time Bitcoin is sustaining well over 200K transactions/day.
http://www.coindesk.com/data/bitcoin-daily-transactions/

This is sustained volume right near the limit for the first time ever. It is no longer a question of what will happen at some point in the future, we are here. We can now watch it in action.

Again, a fee market does not fix this, at fee market simply priorities who is able to use Bitcoin and who is not able to use Bitcoin. There are losers in a fee market that become priced out.

I predict panic in the ecosystem and demands for a quick fix. Even the Chinese miners who didn't seem to support BIP101 said that it is too early to force a fee market and Bitcoin is not ready, but here we are and a fee market will develop very soon.

 

[solex]

@rocks Agreed, and also I am moving to the view that SW is not a viable short-term solution for enabling a capacity increase for tx.

Jonathan Toomin is talking sense as usual:

I think that segwit is a substantial change to how Bitcoin works, and I very strongly believe that we should not rush this. It changes the block structure, it changes the transaction structure, it changes the network protocol, it changes SPV wallet software, it changes block explorers, and it has changes that affect most other parts of the Bitcoin ecosystem. After we decide to implement it, and have a final version of the code that will be merged, we should give developers of other Bitcoin software time to implement code that supports the new transaction/witness formats.

This is a major change which needs a while on testnet with active input from many Bitcoin businesses. Does it even have a BIP yet, let alone a period for consultation?

Adam Back is living in La-La Land with this response:

I've seen a few people want to do BIP 102 first (straight move to 2MB
and only that) and then do seg-witness and other scaling work later.
That's possible also and before Luke observed that you could do a
seg-witness based block-size increase via soft-fork, people had been
working following the summary from the montreal workshop discussion
posted on this list about a loose plan of action, people had been
working on something like BIP 102 to 2-4-8 kind of space, plus
validation cost accounting.

So I think personally soft-fork seg-witness first, but hey I'm not
writing code at present and I'm very happy for wiser and more code and
deployment detail aware minds to figure out the best deployment
strategy, I wouldnt mind any of the above, just think seg-witness
soft-fork is the safest and fastest.

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011969.html

Leaving aside that a huge number of people have argued for BIP101 and variations, of which BIP102 is scraping the bottom of the barrel, it is obvious to everyone that changing a constant from "1" to "2" is a trivially simple and safe change compared to SW with its transaction disassembly.

It would be surprising to see SW live and the ecosystem ready to handle all its consequences before this time next year.

 

[rocks]

@solex
Agreed, SW is not ready. Even if you ignore the massive complications in changing the block structure, the main reason SW is not ready is simply that it requires significant changes by every single Bitcoin service.

SW does not involve simply updating software, it requires re-writing the critical sections of key pieces of software. Wallet code bases need to be overhauled and tested, websites need to be re-implemented (can you imagine implementing SW and blockchain.info not recognize the transactions), point-of-sale merchant tools need to be redeveloped and redistributed. I could go on.

The fact the "core devs" even suggested SW as a quick fix, demonstrates that they do not think the rest of the ecosystem matters. In their minds Bitcoin is whatever bitcoind is and everything else is not Bitcoin. As people think through the implications of SW, people will realize it was an absurd suggestion and demonstrates incompetence by Greg and team. They can claim SW is a "soft fork", but it is a soft fork that leaves every single other entity and code base behind, unable to monitor transactions.

SW also demonstrates the absurdity of the soft vs hard debate. SW may be possible to implement as a soft fork, but it completely changes the blockchain structure and requires significant re-work of tons of code. BIP101 is a hard fork but takes 10 lines of code and is super easy to for everyone to quickly implement and test.

The simple fact is a major overhaul such as SW can not be rolled out quickly as a soft fork. It requires a major effort by all bitcoin entities to redevelop code and probably takes minimum 1-2 years of time AFTER SW has been agreed to.

Greg and team are going to have to simply raise the 1MB limit in a simple short term hard fork. The change will go through smoothly and then everyone will question why was that so hard.

 

[lunar]

Greg and team are going to have to simply raise the 1MB limit in a simple short term hard fork. The change will go through smoothly and then everyone will question why was that so hard.

Trees that don't bend with the wind won't last the storm.

Visible signs of stress appearing. It's a real shame this is getting so messy. These dogged idealisms need to have some flexibility. He is going to eventually take the 'hint' or it will break him.
(Soft forks good - Hard forks Bad; Small Blocks good - Big Blocks Bad)

Please don't let it go that far nullc; compromise is easy if you are willing to admit, you don't always know best.

 

[VeritasSapere]

That is ridiculous, that he would even say that. It is quite clear he is diverting from the original vision of Satoshi, after all Satoshi did think that big blocks and hard forks where good. I even pointed this out to him specifically in my conversation with him on Bitcointalk, he should know better.

Great thread though by the way, I enjoyed reading that, nullc did not end up responding again, he really should if he wishes to maintain any credibility.

I am starting to get the feeling that the majority of the community is turning against Core. It is just so hard to read, its not like we have any reliable metrics to measure the sentiment of this community as a whole, or what we refer to as the economic majority more abstractly. Certain people like myself and some of my ideological opponents have a much greater presence and sometimes influence on these type of forums, it is most likely always disproportionate to the real sentiment of the community. Since it tends to be a small group of people that do most of the writing on forums like these compared to the much greater proportion of people that just read. I was in the later category for a long time, this blocksize debate did motivated me to become more active since I felt like I could contribute to this discussion at least with my specific background.

I have always thought that the people in the Bitcoin community tend to be a smart group of people, with a love for freedom, when the resistance to increasing the blocksize came about and the arguments became about governance I felt like I might have been wrong.

Obviously I was being overly pessimistic, I think if this group of people can not resolve this dilemma then the rest of the world certainly can not either, the entire experiment hinges on the success of these presumptions of game theory which the governance of Bitcoin also depends on.

It is just so difficult to know what is really going on in the minds of the majority, this why proof of work is also so useful in my opinion, this does present somewhat of a dilemma for the miners however, the larger ones at least, since they need to try and figure this out for themselves, this could explain part of the hesitance of the miners when it comes to these issues, especially the Chinese miners who also have a language barrier to deal with.

 

[cypherdoc]

"Indeed, there are more than a few hints of that motive from the statements of radical Islamic operatives. Osama Bin Laden responded directly to Bush’s facile argument that al-Qaeda attacked the United States because of a hatred of Western values. Bin Laden noted that his group had not attacked countries such as Sweden. That was true even though Scandinavian culture (especially its liberal sexual mores) was far more offensive than American culture to conservative practitioners of Islam. The reason for the restraint, Bin Laden emphasized, was that Sweden had not attacked Muslim countries. Indeed, he stated categorically that “any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.”

http://www.cato.org/blog/moving-beyond-self-serving-myths-acknowledging-principal-cause-radical-islamic-terrorism?utm_content=buffer2a9d8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer