Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

XRT at new lows for year:

 

[Justus Ranvier]

@molecular

fwiw armory provides such a scheme for a very long time.

Using an Armory m-of-n backup split between trusted friends who live on different continents was exactly the kind of solution I was suggesting earlier.

 

[AdrianX]

There are great observations here, one thing that I do disagree with however is your assessment of BIP101, I do not think we can say it has been rejected by the miners, this might be true in the moment but this can still change quickly. I think that many miners will not touch BIP101 because of the controversy and extreme polarization that has taken place. Big miners tend to be conservative, for good reasons. Even though we have a better option now in the form of BU, I do think that BIP101 is still very much in play.

@Aquent it not that XT made a mistake. The improvement proposal 101 was released on the assumption that Bitcoin was in fact a decentralized system.

What we learned is, it's not, it's actually quite centralized, XT was a victim of attack for supporting BIP101.

The idea of launching BU by using Core is 100% political. To illustrate BU is pro having a free market to support the fee market.

By using Core BU is not supporting a free fee market, it's actually supporting Code's fee market where Core Developers have already set a minimum fee per transaction. Both Core and BU will not broadcast a transaction with a very low user defined fee, nor will Core or BU broadcast a transaction with old cons and no fee.

XT on the other hand is supporting a free fee market by allowing the miners to choose a minimum fee.

This has been my experience using BU and I've confirmed it is consistent with Core but not XT.

 

[cypherdoc]

wow. looks like it was a just big headfake:

 

[AdrianX]

real world mining

Should be called hole in the ground mining.

Hashing for the Bitcoin network is also real world.

 

[cypherdoc]

Hearn pounds it home:

[doublepost=1452281171,1452280558][/doublepost]El-Erian re: China, "it's the currency".

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-01-06/marc-faber-asset-markets-will-crash-like-titanic

 

[Aquent]

The drums now beat loud in a vicious cyberwar currently being waged to decide the fate of bitcoin and the world.

Every revolution and profound technological invention has a battle where its fate is decided. For bitcoin that is these very moments.


Their strategy is to paralyse by criticising, adhomineming, ddosing, whatever, keeping the businesses and the miners divided so allowing by default their suffocating grip to continue in a divide and conquer manner. They never provide justifications, always on the attack, so operating on the tactic of beat the other so that you win by default.

But the finale is drawing. The drums shall soon beat louder and then stop beating.

The blocksize question is not technical. Any technical solution, from 2-4-8 to bip100, to BU to the Bitpay suggestion works. The blocksize question is political. We need to unite and focus and move towards a suggestion, regardless of what it is, to overcome their tactics of paralysis and division.

In my view BU serves the purpose perfectly because we can always just say, well, we'll add your proposal and you can just choose it. They may enquire how that is to work when anyone can just choose their proposal, and we'll explain that it works by using god given rationality and reason.

It is time to persuade the miners and those on the sideline, while discrediting these 12 year old kids asking for Gavin to go. This deadlock must be broken. At this point, the how, in my view, is irrelevant.

 

[albin]

@Aquent

I think this is the endgame for pretty much any regime of censorship and enforced groupthink, eventually they get drunk with imaginary power and massively overplay their hand.

 

[cypherdoc]

The drums now beat loud in a vicious cyberwar currently being waged to decide the fate of bitcoin and the world.

Every revolution and profound technological invention has a battle where its fate is decided. For bitcoin that is these very moments.


Their strategy is to paralyse by criticising, adhomineming, ddosing, whatever, keeping the businesses and the miners divided so allowing by default their suffocating grip to continue in a divide and conquer manner. They never provide justifications, always on the attack, so operating on the tactic of beat the other so that you win by default.

But the finale is drawing. The drums shall soon beat louder and then stop beating.

The blocksize question is not technical. Any technical solution, from 2-4-8 to bip100, to BU to the Bitpay suggestion works. The blocksize question is political. We need to unite and focus and move towards a suggestion, regardless of what it is, to overcome their tactics of paralysis and division.

In my view BU serves the purpose perfectly because we can always just say, well, we'll add your proposal and you can just choose it. They may enquire how that is to work when anyone can just choose their proposal, and we'll explain that it works by using god given rationality and reason.

It is time to persuade the miners and those on the sideline, while discrediting these 12 year old kids asking for Gavin to go. This deadlock must be broken. At this point, the how, in my view, is irrelevant.

now with Maxwell gone, someone has to pick up the trolling.
[doublepost=1452281740][/doublepost]that someone being Strateman, Corallo, & brg444.

i'll assume the others will be along in short time (Todd, Luke, etc)

 

[Inca]

Markets down again. Bitpay releases another alternate client to Core. @Peter R 's pie chart may be coming true.

edit: @cypherdoc, let us know if you come across anything remotely interesting or worthy of investment attention other than bitcoin.

 

[cypherdoc]

catching down almost complete. should get a bounce soon. probably Monday. but it should be short-lived before another push down further:

[doublepost=1452292157][/doublepost]nice recovery of GBTC by the end of the day to form a spinning top. don't let them fool you. they are going to have to buy Bitcoin to survive this currency crisis:

[doublepost=1452292467][/doublepost]i'm having to zoom out to at least 2y charts now to be able to see the previous lows on all sorts of stocks/sectors:

retailers crack support to the downside:

financials crack. so beautiful:

 

[cypherdoc]

hot diggity!

[doublepost=1452294111][/doublepost]this is really bad. emerging mkts. you have to go all the way back to May 2009 for the last low. that back to the last crisis. and we're just getting started here in the US:

[doublepost=1452294672,1452293683][/doublepost]aaand, it gets worse.

here's FCX. we haven't been this low since October 2002:

here's BHP. go all the way back to 11/2004:

 

[theZerg]

So how can I hedge my heating and gasoline use for the next 5 yrs? Just buy a crude ETF?

 

[Mengerian]

I'm starting to feel pretty optimistic with the recent news, in particular BitPay and Coinbase playing with alternative implementations, and the positive reception of Bitcoin Unlimited.

By the end of the year we could have:
- Multiple competing node implementations
- A larger block size limit
- Better communication and information flows with several vibrant uncensored forums
- Several improvements to the peer-to-peer network and block relaying, including redundant competing protocols (thin blocks, weak blocks, subchains, JToomin's blocktorrent, IBLT, Block Relay Network clones)
- Companies sponsoring developers to work on Bitcoin node implementations
- Wider general understanding of Bitcoin governance and decentralized consensus, spurred by Bitcoin Unlimited

Above all, Bitcoin will have demonstrated, once again, that it can overcome adversity and emerge stronger for it. Take all of this, throw in the block reward halving, the ongoing organic growth, and probably many development I am unaware of, and 2016 is looking like a great year!

I am feeling bullish

 

[AdrianX]

Bitcoin never fails to entertain, I ventured out to the local Vancouver Bitcoin ATM and to my surprise it was quite busy.

Needle to say I met a fiew interesting people. My biggest surprise was a call girl who was buying Bitcoin, to be honest I'd have thought she'd be a net seller.

Anyway it turns out call girls pay a 100% premium for Bitcoin in Vancouver after 9:00pm when access to the ATM closes.

Well who would have guessed they need Bitcoin to advertise on BackPage. What do you know so much trust invested in 0 confirmations and BackPage playing such an essential role in an informal first world economy

 

[cypherdoc]

@AdrianX

married man: i'm here for a quicky
call girl: no problem
married man: you do take Bitcoin, right?
call girl: of course
married man: ok, sent
--awkward silence--
married man: well? let's get on with it.
call girl: you gotta wait 10 minutes
married man: you said you do quickies!!?
call girl: not since RBF
married man: what the hell is that?
call girl: ask Peter Todd

 

[Peter R]

I was thinking more about this idea of the "blocked stream." And the more I think about it, the more it strikes me that this is a really damn good analogy for our situation (Dad joke: it's also a really good dam analogy).

This analogy first gives us the idea of pressure. If increased transactional demand causes the equilibrium block size to be larger than the artificial limit, that's going to create well, pressure. Now some (who I'll allow to remain nameless) might hope that the pressure caused by blocking the stream(TM) will simply force more of the transactional flow to be diverted to their preferred off-chain solutions. But that can only work if the dam holds.

So focusing on another aspect of the analogy, what is this "dam" made of? Well, it turns out, nothing very substantial. We might think of one layer of the dam as the "inconvenience barrier," the fact that, until recently, it was kind of a pain for most users to mod the Core code to set their own block size limit parameters. Another layer might be thought of as the "psychological barrier." This one I think is well-illustrated by that cartoon I linked to the other day. Breaking down this barrier simply involves recognizing that Core is not Bitcoin, we already have the power to change the block size limit ourselves by choosing what code we run, and we should exercise that power because allowing the decision about a key economic parameter to be made in a centralized manner is incredibly dangerous. If I had to name a third layer, I might say the "collective action barrier," i.e., we can all raise the limit if a substantial number of us act in concert, but no one can raise it by themselves. (Frankly, I think this last one is pretty minor compared to the first two.)

This provides a good summary of why I'm so optimistic that the limit will get raised. The pressure that's attempting to sweep away the dam is only going to increase as blocks get fuller and fees start to rise significantly. (As far I can tell, as of right now, this pressure has barely even started.) In addition, the dam itself is beginning to weaken. The "inconvenience barrier" is being rapidly eroded by Bitcoin Unlimited. Bitcoin Unlimited and the ideas behind it are also contributing to the erosion of the "psychological barrier." Maybe it's my own bias, but just based on what I've seen in the past week, BU seems to be starting to capture mind share very quickly.

(As an aside, this analogy also provides a nice visual for my thoughts on the frequently voiced concern that the current obstruction will allow an alt-ledger to take over. To me, that would be sort of like our metaphorical river tunneling through a half mile of solid rock to flow through an alternate available channel. The market could do that if it had to. But it doesn't have to because it's not the path of least resistance. Again, our "dam" here is mostly an illusion.)

Here's my first attempt at animating your post

 

[Smoothie]

When comparing bitcoins to cash and observing that cash is more confidential, it does not mean that Bitcoin is out of the woods because the amounts can be so much larger. Like that record tx worth $140 million which was pinned down to Bitstamp shuffling its cold wallet. That is way beyond the league of cash and completely anonymous tx of that size will always annoy governments.

Keep in mind that Bitcoin is not completely anonymous.

Each Bitcoin has a unique history that can be traced back to its coinbase transaction not to mention any metadata associated with a transaction.

 

[Smoothie]

Russell breaks 2 major support levels and on the verge of another major one:


[doublepost=1452271869][/doublepost]Quite the implication of my former Monero buddies:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1233817.0;topicseen

What implications are that?

I wouldn't believe everything you read on that forum. Much more going on under the surface than you think.

 

[Smoothie]

Interesting perspective from one of my favorite analysts and hugely successful UST investor;

http://www.thinkadvisor.com/2016/01/07/gary-shilling-chinas-economic-glory-days-are-over?ref=hp-financial-news

Good read.

I disagree where he mentions the markets tanking this week may be due to China.

It's not China ...it's a global slowdown.