Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[lunar]

@cypherdoc

solar won't get traction until oil prices go berserk. the EROEI is too high for solar to compete. that's my feeling at least.

I can remember having a brief thumb through both of those books a few years ago, good references but neither really took into account the future messed up state of the global economy. The peak oil idea was sound but failed as a short term model, due to lack of growth and this crazy price war.
Neither of which really matters as I'll respectfully disagree with the above statement. The oil price is rapidly becoming irrelevant due to exponential technology improvements both in storage and efficiency. It's simple a matter of time until grid parity is reached for pretty much anywhere with a decent amount of sun.
Time will tell.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-29/while-you-were-getting-worked-up-over-oil-prices-this-just-happened-to-solar

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/solar-grid-parity-world-2017

 

[cypherdoc]

@rocks

To me, there is a great transfer of wealth that is going to occur from those who disrespect money to those who do respect money. That can occur at many levels from the individual to a state. They just have to choose.

 

[VeritasSapere]

@solex, that is good to hear, but I want to see the compromise first before I'll start to trust again.

The problem with comments like this
"I am personally fine with a short-term small block size bump to kick the can down the road if that is what the ecosystem desires, but I can only agree with merging it in Core if I'm convinced that there is no strong opposition to it from others."

is that as Jeff highlighted in his post yesterday, doing nothing is in fact a change. When Wladimir says he'll only allow an increase if there is no strong opposition, then he is still a road block. His default is to force a change into Bitcoin by not doing anything.

The default should only be:
"I am personally fine with leaving the cap in, but only if there is no strong opposition to leaving it in from others"

See the difference, in this version the cap always moves up unless the vast majority want to put a cap in. That is how it should be. And this is why BIP101 is so important, BIP101 makes the default to increase and makes the second stance above the default, not Wladimir's quote.

So yes I am still concerned by Wladimir because he does not seem to be onboard with Satoshi's vision.

I think there being no strong opposition to a blocksize increase is impossible. Wladimir wants there to be consensus. This type of consensus is impossible for contentious issues, especially when dealing with a larger group of people. This issue has already become contentious.

If consensus among large groups of people where possible our governments and societies of today would look very different. He is conflating the concept of "Bitcoin consensus" with the literal meaning of the word. The definition being that everyone agrees, political regimes that hold this position tend to either catastrophically fail or rely on censorship, propaganda and often force in order to maintain this illusion of consensus.

This does seem to imply to me that Core will not increase the blocksize, unless Wladimir changes his position.

 

[rocks]

@VeritasSapere That is exactly my point. If he takes this view of full consensus is required to increase the cap then everything is still stuck.

And it is because the default is wrong, instead the default should be to scale as Satoshi clearly stated and most people signed up for. If that is the case then the blocksize increases by default unless there is 100% consensus to stop increasing the cap.

So I still think the situation is screwed and we will need a user led fork.

It is possible that so much was dumped on Greg that he finally couldn't take it and so dropped from commit access. If that is the case then I think pressure should be put on Wladimir to increase the cap, and if he doesn't then increase the pressure until he does or drops out also. If Gavin had final say we wouldn't have wasted 6 months on this.
[doublepost=1450404384][/doublepost]

@rocks

To me, there is a great transfer of wealth that is going to occur from those who disrespect money to those who do respect money. That can occur at many levels from the individual to a state. They just have to choose.

Agreed, that is how sound money systems work, and why they are better.

My point was that Bitcoin mining does open up opportunities for new countries to become commodity vendors. Generally this results in graft and corruption at the government level. There was a paper a while ago that showed pretty well how having an abundance of cheap commodities long term is actually a curse for a society than a blessing.

 

[cypherdoc]

w.r.t the oil price @awemany @VeritasSapere @cypherdoc @JVWVU

Don't quote me on this as it's a massively complex issue. It seems it can roughly be summed thus.

The good ole USA has been hard at it for the last 6 years or so, more or less doubling their output. This is largely due to the new fracking industry and an attempt to become self sufficient. The funding for this is has been the huge amounts of newly created QE debt and 0% cheap money.

Result - vast fracking reserves have been bought online and it's pushed out imports from other parts of the world Nigeria et al .. but key player is Saudi Arabia.
Some fracking oil can break even a low as 25$ but 60$ is the start of the pain point. Venezuela for eg is way up at 150$ (so they're fracked whatever happens) good stats here.

So Key OPEC player Saudi would normally cut their quotas in periods of lower demand, but this time they've decided to gain %market share rather than keep the oil price high. The theory goes they have vast treasury reserves and some oil that can produce down to 2$ a barrel. Main goal of this was to break the USA fracking industry that required huge sums of cheap debt to get up and running. (theory 2 suggests its USA and Saudi combined trying to break Russian markets) Either way the plan appears to be working many US oil firms are on the brink of collapse. not to mention oil-producing oil states Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, Ecuador, Brazil and Russia. With Iran newly free of sanctions and ISIS 'secretly' selling oil to turkey it's a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

HOWEVER -- and this is where it gets real fuzzy. The timing the Saudi decision was really poor (chicken and egg here) as the world was going into a massive economic slowdown. Producing a huge supply glut. (They're stacking full oil tankers as nobody wants them) It appears it's become a free for all, everyone for themselves. OPEC is essentially dead, and we could be in for a long period of cheap oil ??? - prediction we'll see 25$ before, if ever we see 100$.

It might be worth its own thread? Oil collapsing Solar up ( swanson's law ) more or less Moore's law for solar power, combined with linear increasing efficiencies some nearly upto 50%. I'd predict over the next 10-15 years we are nearing the 'Whale Oil moment' for the Petroleum industry.

disclaimer: i'm no expert just a geophysicist who used to own Sunpower shares before Mr market started saying bad news was good news.

i'm glad i reread this. great information. i certainly wouldn't be surprised if tech has improved the return on solar. that makes sense esp as materials design has improved so much over the last 10 yr. and a transition to solar would be a great thing for humanity. i will be keeping a closer eye on this industry.

 

[VeritasSapere]

@VeritasSapere That is exactly my point. If he takes this view of full consensus is required to increase the cap then everything is still stuck.

And it is because the default is wrong, instead the default should be to scale as Satoshi clearly stated and most people signed up for. If that is the case then the blocksize increases by default unless there is 100% consensus to stop increasing the cap.

So I still think the situation is screwed and we will need a user led fork.

It is possible that so much was dumped on Greg that he finally couldn't take it and so dropped from commit access. If that is the case then I think pressure should be put on Wladimir to increase the cap, and if he doesn't then increase the pressure until he does or drops out also. If Gavin had final say we wouldn't have wasted 6 months on this.
[doublepost=1450404384][/doublepost]
Agreed, that is how sound money systems work, and why they are better.

My point was that Bitcoin mining does open up opportunities for new countries to become commodity vendors. Generally this results in graft and corruption at the government level. There was a paper a while ago that showed pretty well how having an abundance of cheap commodities long term is actually a curse for a society than a blessing.

Whether an abundance of resources in a country becomes a curse or a blessing I think depends on the size of that countries military, geopolitical position and political culture.

I am also starting to think that a user led fork might indeed be the best way forward. I wonder if some of these major companies will band together and make an announcement soon, possibly with their own implementation, or pledging support for BIP101 with a set date for the fork.

I think what was always intended for Bitcoin was for us as a community to be in control, in many ways a user led fork does fit perfectly with the ethos of Bitcoin.

 

[cliff]

@VeritasSapere - 100% agree.

A related obstacle to consensus is that there are no reliable or uniform ways of defining and measuring it - there are no standards generally. Likewise, there do not appear to be any agreed upon priorities or criteria for determining them. There is no benevolent dictator to grumble out a path forward when there is gridlock. I know some folks say that the lack of these things are the virtues of operating on a consensus basis, but I think that position is often overly simplistic and can often overlook trade-offs. For example, a consensus model seems like it is probably subject to abuse, attack, and endless (and unnecessary) ideological gridlock more than other decision-making models. That may be ok depending on the circumstances, but a conference session or two by an outside-industry professional about collaboration, group communication, group ethics, etc. might be productive from time-to-time.

 

[lunar]

Interesting visual, give you an idea of the scale of things to come.

http://money.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization/

 

[cypherdoc]

remember how i've been ringing the alarm on retail?:

 

[Zarathustra]

w.r.t the oil price @awemany

Don't quote me on this as it's a massively complex issue. It seems it can roughly be summed thus.

@solarboy ;-)

Do you or someone else know the ETP Model? What's your opinion?

An interesting theory with nice graphics:

http://www.thehillsgroup.org/depletion2_022.htm
http://www.thehillsgroup.org/depletion2_018.htm
http://www.thehillsgroup.org/depletion2_015.htm

You have to pay for the whole study, but here is a version in German:

http://www.peak-oil.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ETP-Modell_Total.pdf
http://www.peak-oil.com/2015/11/das-etp-modell-der-hillsgroup-eroi-des-oelfoerdersystems/

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@lunarboy Awesome visual. And people balk when I say we can reach $100 million per coin. Plus that graphic doesn't even show how much huger the entire pie gets in a Bitcoin-powered world, with all that entails: vastly expanded scope of international division of labor, explosion of transnational investment, immense streamlining of financial services, and a continual weakening of state clampdown on economies. The effects in advanced countries will be staggering, but in emerging markets and developing countries the effects could be even more profound.

Also good to see @Roger_Murdock has joined the forums. I can't count how many times I've pointed people to his concise explanations of why Bitcoin is a thing.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Rusty, come on.

 

[Zarathustra]

@ZB
I know just one economist who explained what money really is: Dr. Paul C. Martin.
Unfortunately in German only available.
Money is DEBT! The root of all kind of money (paper, metal, digital metal) is DEBT.
And the root of all private debt is the debt to the war lords, aka the state.

Ungoverned humans who are living beyond the state don't need an economy/market/money. They are self-sufficient, they don't owe tribute to the mafia (state,church, war lords) and therefore they don't create money and a marketplace. Metals became money because the state/church/mafia demanded it. (to produce weapons)**

Krugman said: "Fiat money is backed by men with guns." That's true, but thought to the end it was true for all kind of money.
As soon as you will be taxed in Bitcoin, we will have a Bitcoin debt economy.

I think the real revolution is not Bitcoin, it is Cryptography (kryptós, "hidden, secret").


„We are literally in a race between our ability to build and deploy technology, and their ability to build and deploy laws and treaties. Neither side is likely to back down or wise up until it has definitively lost the race.“

John Gilmore

**
Paul C. Martin:

Private property as de iure institution needs a foregoing state to come into existence. The state needs foregoing power and foregoing power needs armed force. The ultimate “foundation of the economy” thus is the weapon, where possession and property are identical because the possession of it guarantees property of it. Armed force starts additional production (surplus, tribute). The first taxes are contributions of material for the production of attack weapons (copper, tin). Thus non -
circulating money begins. Taxes as “census” and money are the same.

 

[awemany]

Along those lines...

I am not yet 100% sure what to think about Greg's departure in terms of tactics and moves ahead.

But let us assume, for a moment, that this signals full defeat of the small-block attack on Bitcoin and the failure of all attempts to steer Bitcoin towards a small-block future:
-----

Yesterday, I had the realization and deja vu that Bitcoin is indeed just fine and works follows after the regime (Core) has been toppled. It is designed to do so. It is just a huge network of computers, bigger than any single individual, chugging along quietly.

Bitcoin has an intense, blue-hot fire of projected power burning at its (perceived!) center. That fire will consume anyone who happens to be drawn too close to it. It is entirely understandable that Gavin's approach is to throw logs into this fire (such as BIP101) only from a safe distance.

The best leaders are those that won't let themselves get burned and thus have to always stay far away.

Which leads to the paradox that Bitcoin cannot, long-term, have a single, good leader. Satoshi cannot lead it, Gavin can't. Greg tried, but failed.

You either understand, or you get burned.

I three phases in Bitcoin's mid-term time-line: First, a phase of concentrated, indeed mostly consensus-based development. Second, a phase of total upheaval and destruction of all centralizing structures. Third, the growth of smaller states/kingdoms/democracies (XT, BU, BS Core, btcd, ...).

The first phase is what we had so far. Phase two is probably short, but maybe it started now or a while ago.

I am thinking here about what @solex said: No offense to Jeff, but he seems to be somewhat drawn to actually dance too close to this fire, too. Though if Core under leadership of Greg gets its stuff together and stays for a while (with an agreement to bigger blocks), phase two might come much later for Bitcoin.

But I am sure that eventually, at some point, any single centralized structure that would be Bitcoin Core will need to be destroyed before Bitcoin can progress.

Ironically, this is also a strength. Divide-and-conquer attacks on Bitcoin might well make it a lot stronger. External powers can only attack internal powers in Bitcoin, and Bitcoin works well without them - in the long term even best without any. What happened now might be a case of exactly that.

@Zarathustra: I was inspired by your nick to look for a Nietzsche quote I faintly remembered, but I unfortunately cannot find it. It is along the lines of 'very soon, man will strive for rule over the whole planet'.

I can't help but wonder whether this part of Nietzsche's prediction of world history is actually coming to an end.

Ruling the whole world through means of direct war and violence has come to end end since the invention of nuclear weapons.

Ruling the whole world through means of indirect power (fiat money) may have been made impossible by the Internet and Bitcoin.

 

[sickpig]

by the way Blockstream is hiring:

https://blockstream.com/2015/12/16/new-hires/

Jonas Nick
Gregory Sanders (ex GreenAddress)
Ben Gorlick, Director (ex Cloudhashing)

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@cliff

I think the solution is to have benevolent dictators* of each implementation, but have a plurality of implementations to choose from - on the market if necessary. That avoids both dev domineering and gridlock. Devs can only lord it over their own implementation; users never have to stand for being dictated at. It seems clear to me that this is the way it should be, and Mr. Bitcoin is starting to require people to understand this.

*an anachronistic term once there are multiple viable implementations!
[doublepost=1450443474,1450442403][/doublepost]

@sickpig

No mention of anything economics-related in the background or interests of any of these new Blockstream guys either. It's like it's not even on their radar. To BS it's apparently all just a software project.

 

[cliff]

@Zangelbert Bingledack - Fair points. I posted an article yesterday about dairying in india. India has utilized decentralization in milk production to become the world's largest milk producer and eliminated the trust rural farmers have had to place in urban conglomerates. I think there could be a solution there, but not sure, that may be applicable to some of the challenges Bitcoin faces. Just scratching the surface in my free-time, though. More on this: I have a client (I'm a lawyer by day) who is the world's foremost authority in vanilla. He's from india and has been studying the indian model to see how his company its partners may be able to improve rural communities in Africa and elsewhere. The goal is to reduce the rural farmer's dependency on third parties for entering the market and getting a fair price. We were talking about this one day and his description of the Anand Model & Operation Flood (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Flood) struck me a totally relevant to the Bitcoin community and its governance challenges. Wish I had more time to dig into this, but maybe some of the economists here already know what I'm talking about.

 

[sickpig]

Jeff "on fire" Garzik strikes again and again:

BIP 102: Increase block size limit to 2MB + 20b/10min (#6451)


---

@Zangelbert Bingledack 100% agree.

Or even worst: maybe they think that they already know and comprehend everything needed at the economic level.

 

[kyuupichan]

@VeritasSapere
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

Please don't give this artificial "fee market" concept the respect it doesn't deserve. Markets cannot be centrally planned, and as anyone who has been using bitcoin for 4 or more years knows, there has been a healthy fee market for a very long time, since at least mid 2011. The small blockists have never once explained why people paid fees when "they apparently didn't need to" other than with the contemptuous argument that they "don't know what they are doing". That sums up their world view.

Bitcoin works fine with no block limit, has done so, and will continue to do so. All it needs are a few rational actors willing to write some code to reject blocks they find inappropriate, for their own definition of inappropriate. Not one of us needs an egotistical central planner to tell us what a good block is.

Unfortunately there is an unlimited number of idiots willing to step up to such a plate.

 

[cliff]

Possibly off-topic, but I really like the layout and overall design of this forum. Good job to whomever is in charge of that. That is all, carry on.