Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

Two stories you might have missed?

Looks like the days of a decentralised Ripple being considered 'competition' have passed.

http://bitcoinist.net/wait-ripple-centralized/

also.
Cyprus style banking bail in - AKA theft, has lead to a tragic suicide. Hints at full blown banking crisis in Italy. Other sources (Reuters) say the bailed out banks have mis sold high risk bonds.
Contagion
http://www.businessinsider.com/italian-banking-system-in-serious-trouble-2015-12


2016 is shaping up to be a doozy

great articles @lunarboy .

yes, contagion is afoot. i smell it despite the 2d rally in stocks. the rest of the week should be good. note how most of the Italian stock mkt is composed of financial companies. same here, as it was just before the 2008 crisis. i'm holding my DXD and Bitcoin, plus alot of cash.

Ripple is a lost cause. the epitome of centralization. i worry that Blockstream is as well as it is steering us in a very centralized direction.
[doublepost=1450221881,1450221251][/doublepost]listen to the George Selgin podcast. it's a great review of the 2 Bear Stearns funds that ignited the 2008 crisis. i remember exactly where i was and where in June 2007 when they went under. i was in the Caribbean at the time and in my hotel when i first heard about them.

 

[rocks]

I could probably laugh, if it wasn't for the fact that they've done something which I find unforgivable: They've created a situation where I have the feel grateful that Mike Hearn and Coinbase are saving Bitcoin.

On one side we have Coinbase which, as a MSB in the United States, is not allowed to be much more than a hand puppet for FinCEN. And then there's Mike Hearn whose willingness to entertain protocol-level censorship as an acceptable outcome was outrageous enough that I couldn't decide if he was a paid agent, or a Baker Act candidate.

And they are the only ones making sense.

On the other side, all the so-called cypherpunks are busy spouting off economic nonsense, preening themselves with their past accomplishments and academic titles, generally acting increasingly tone deaf to the needs of the users of the network (including proposing protocol-level censorship for things they don't think should be in the blockchain!), and engaging in activities that are increasingly difficult to interpret as anything other than intentionally hobbling Bitcoin for their own personal profit. And according to them, they're the good guys!

Couldn't agree with this post more. If you told me a year ago I'd be rooting for mike and coinbase to save bitcoin I would never have believed it.

At this point I've come to the conclusion that the ONLY thing that matters now is removing the limit. The limit is the only internal limitation on bitcoin and I am confident that if the limit is removed bitcoin will be well positioned to route around future attacks.

If it takes mike and coinbase to fix this then so be it. I've also come to see that I agree with mike much more often than I thought I did before and see him as an asset.

 

[lunar]

China seems to be about 15$ ahead of Stamp ATM.

If the past is any thing to go on.... This could leg up a little ways in the next 24hrs

 

[cypherdoc]

i know it feels scary in Bitcoin right now with all the drama.

but technical trading demands that you not fight the tape. the market knows something you don't and either it's saying we're wrong and core dev is right OR it is saying we're right and it thinks our efforts will prevail in forking away from core. no one knows for sure which it is, but the last thing i will be doing is selling out of fear from the fundamental news.

because the chart says "all systems go".

 

[cypherdoc]

not getting any push back here. yet.

Con & Kano two big figures in mining software. surprised gmax hasn't entered the thread yet as he is moderator:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1274066.msg13260583#msg13260583

 

[JVWVU]

At least I think we can trust Jameson Lopp. The guy just seems not to have a chip on his shoulder and he seems to be an all-around stand up guy, easygoing, hands off, not seeking power, just the right mindset for a mod. Hopefully the lead mod of /r/BitcoinXT is similar.

One thing that should be obvious I think: you don't ban people for insulting mods, and especially not for "talking back" to them. Mods should have thicker skins and be held to a higher standard than normal users, to compensate for the power differential.

James is Statoshi and in other locations and forums he has always been top notch to deal with even when he disagrees with you.

 

[cypherdoc]

real world ProHashing at it again:

http://forums.prohashing.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=684

 

[lunar]

Well with all the /btc moderator drama today, It might be worth a note that J Ratcliff - Confessions of an /r/bitcoin moderator has just recently been added as the latest mod. Hopefully this will add a little more balance and calm.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3wyihe/lets_offer_roger_some_alternative_mod_options/

 

[theZerg]

I think market is saying if we win valuations will be huge. If we lose they'll merely be large. And maybe it even thinks that if we fork valuation will be both!

 

[_mr_e]

I'm only a small part of the market but I'm still buying because ultimately I believe Bitcoin Unlimited will be successful and show the whole world that bitcoin is not to be fucked with!

 

[rocks]

i know it feels scary in Bitcoin right now with all the drama.

but technical trading demands that you not fight the tape. the market knows something you don't and either it's saying we're wrong and core dev is right OR it is saying we're right and it thinks our efforts will prevail in forking away from core. no one knows for sure which it is, but the last thing i will be doing is selling out of fear from the fundamental news.

because the chart says "all systems go".

I hope so, I still think most Bitcoin users are completely unaware of any of the happenings recently. The number of people on reddit and bitcointalk.org are very small compared to the global market.

I think either Bitcoin blocks suddenly running out of space or a large scale public message from the main exchanges/merchants that they are forking and users need to update their wallets to continue working with them, will be a shock throughout the Bitcoin ecosystem. IMHO it will be a surprise to the majority of users outside of the drama that has mostly taken place in English on US forums. It is likely to make many question Bitcoin's resiliency for a time ("bitcoin blocks are full it can't scale", "private companies are taking over bitcoin", etc. etc. )

We really have no idea how it will go, the price might rally on this news, it might collapse. An exchange led fork might resolve itself in minutes, it might split the network for weeks/months with two sides refusing to give in.

I'd rather take the pain now and have a stronger system longer term. I suspect most of the large players feel the same way. At the same time I want to see the next price run that we all see forming.

 

[VeritasSapere]

I have never really sold any Bitcoin for Fiat either, except for exchanging it for goods and services directly. I am not planning on selling any Bitcoin either, hopefully until we reach that point at which we wont need to.

I even have a 10KW mining operation so call me crazy.

 

[cypherdoc]

@VeritasSapere

yep. most individual miners do this, according to the straw poll at Hasher's United. those coins are going to be worth much more than when you mined them.

btw, $16 spread btwn CB and China. that's too big.
[doublepost=1450233081,1450232003][/doublepost]https://coin.dance/charts/RUB

 

[Melbustus]

well, for some positive news. this is freaking amazing:

Historically I'd agree, but currently, it scares the hell out of me. If Bitcoin is heading toward a new revaluation phase, having its "cheap, fast, global" thesis empirically broken (even if just until blocksize is raised) is exactly the sort of thing that can kill a rally, and which the media will ignorantly latch on to and amplify.

There's always something that kills the runups: in 2011, it was the Gox hack; in April 2013 it was the Gox "cool down periods", in Dec 2013 it was the China bank regs... Those were all in reality minor things that don't matter long-term (and *something* has to kill a parabolic rally), but Bitcoin seeming fundamentally broken is a big deal. I agree with lots of what @rocks said a few posts ago.

Part of the beauty of Bitcoin's design, which many of us realized a long time ago, is that block reward subsidizing mining fees for the first 10-20 years makes transactions cheap, and therefore the system is much more attractive to use than anything else for a long time. Long enough that it has a good chance of becoming economically and socially embedded into the fabric of global society, and thus economically meaningful - which in turns means high marketcap, high security (hashrate), and a high number of people benefiting from Bitcoin's monetary sovereignty.

And that's just one argument...we've detailed many others. It's incredible how thick-headed core-dev et al is being. They've lost any ability to see beyond their narrow concerns.

 

[VeritasSapere]

Things got a bit crazy in Bitcointalk today, it started out with theymos making a very messed up joke, which I thought was distasteful. Quite the discussion did ensue however, 6 pages in just one day. There are not really any new concepts discussed however it is just the same arguments repeated again. So my recommendation is not to even bother reading it, its much nicer in here, with far less negativity. However I thought some of you would be interested none the less.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1162684.msg13252513#msg13252513

 

[cypherdoc]

would be funny if it weren't so sad:

 

[rocks]

@cypherdoc
What a confusing and nonsensical post by maxwell. Pales in comparison to the clear vision satoshi laid out in his white paper.

It's obvious that he put work into "selling" his world view post the scaling conference, but the result is just sad. There is no consistency to his thinking and he is all over the place, seems to use one thread of thinking for one point and opposite threads at other times.

He's also completely delusional if he thinks everyone is behind him. Not sure if he thinks this or just pretending to have consensus. Reminds me of Baghdad Bob...

This jumped out at me "without its anticipation and earlier work such as headers-first I probably would have been arguing for a block size decrease last year." That is Maxwell threatening us saying "see how patient I am with all of you, I could have LOWERED the blocksize if I wanted to." The arrogance here is astounding.

Most important his views on segwit are delusional. Greg is putting his entire reputation into this, and he is going to hang himself with it.

He really thinks segwit can be rolled out quickly. He is going to roll out segwit just as blocks fill up and claim success. But everyone else will see that their wallets can't use segwit, popular websites don't use it, merchants can't recognize segwit payments, exchanges and merchants are incompatible, POS hardware doesn't work, etc, etc. It is going to be the biggest mess imaginable. And all because they insist on living in their own bubble safe from viewpoints that differ from theirs and might educate them.

Edit: Gavin's response in the thread is very interesting. He is very polite, but is clearly trying to warn maxwell on just how long it will take for everyone else to catch up and implement segwit.
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011877.html

This is Gavin trying to warn Maxwell but seeming to understand that he doesn't want to be helped.

"I think a barrier to quickly getting consensus might be a fundamental
difference of opinion on this:
"Even without them I believe we’ll be in an acceptable position with
respect to capacity in the near term"

The heaviest users of the Bitcoin network (businesses who generate tens of
thousands of transactions per day on behalf of their customers) would
strongly disgree; the current state of affairs is NOT acceptable to them."

 

[Erdogan]

Maybe this is a good time to try to promote /r/BitcoinUnlimited. I personally didn't even know it existed(and the first thread I check for my Bitcoin needs is this thread) until I just checked it out of curiosity.

Is there a reason why there is limited discussion there?

Just crossposting stuff from this forum would create a subreddit that would rival others in the bitcoin space.

You can run it. I think (unfortunately) they have done more than just removing the limit, at least they have planned fancy stuff for later. I think that was premature. Anyway, it is out there, you can run it. It should really be counted with the BIP101 nodes on xtnodes, but currently only two nodes are active.

 

[Zarathustra]

This could get interesting:

Estimated Next Difficulty: 94,624,055,366 (+19.62%)
Adjust time: After 401 Blocks, About 2.3 days

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

 

[awemany]

@Zarathustra: Indeed.

I find the sudden, huge jump in hash rate odd, to be honest. Here's a possible explanation: Switch on and rent all mining power that you can get hands on until the next difficulty interval. At that point, instantly switch it all off.

Result: Drive blocks even more into saturation, due to longer confirmation time.

That could be used to push for BIP101 adoption (Make the situation even worse than it already is).


I am not saying I like such games at all. But I'd expect at least some players who are pro-BIP101 plaing as dirty as Blockstream does!


On another issue, I actually have to agree with Greg, something which was recently discussed on the Bitcoin-ML (and which I missed until now): Coalescing of old UTXOs. I don't think it is at all a pressing problem and if we get storage that will have an addressable bit per million atoms eventually, it might never become one. But I do favor coalescing old UTXOs together if needed.

That would make the blockchain a beast that is in about O(n) for storage and O(n) bandwidth, with n users, and I expect the number of users (people on this planet) to be bounded.