Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[sickpig]

Then they fight you...

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/the-rand-corporation-report-national-security-implications-of-virtual-currency-1452528204

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1200/RR1231/RAND_RR1231.pdf

 

[Zarathustra]

In other words, the best solution is actually for nodes and miners never to completely agree on a solution. It is that dance of uncertainty which maintains the proper balance of power between miners and nodes.

Exactly! Organisms are autopoietic and never controled by single organs:

 

[Erdogan]

About the proposed russian legislation, reported here:
http://www.coindesk.com/bill-bitcoin-ban-russian-legislature/

I don't care if it goes through or not, if it does, it is just a minor and temporary inconvenience. But I noted that the new law uses the concept "money surrogate" referring to bitcoin. This is clearly wrong, as bitcoin is not a surrogate, it is the actual money. It is private property, free market money. It is not a form of fake rubles or ruble substitute. It means that the bankers/lawmakers in Russia have not yet understood bitcoin and what is happening. I thought it was interesting.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Its success also attracted many who are technically adept but not in tune with the principles (free market and self-interest) behind its operation.

Yes, holding bitcoin together instead of letting it fork into peaces is a political challenge, not technical. Unfortunately our leaders in this case are technicians wth not the best senses for publicity, the market, politic, ethic and business.

 

[YarkoL]

It's absolutely valid for individual businesses to make risk allocation decisions based on the probability of catching scammers - that's got nothing to do with Bitcoin.

I believe Coinbase has already factored in
the risk of accepting 0-conf transactions. Or if not,
I sure hope they warn the users in their TOS.

I don't think for a minute that they'd start crying
for police to help if and when double-spend occurs,
but I shake my head in sorrow when I see some in the
community suggest this.

P. Todd may be an [insert your favourite expletive] but
he did demonstrate a succesful attack using open-source
python script. (edit: and hasn't he returned the amount he
defrauded? Of course, if he intends to keep it, the situation is
different) I hope Coinbase will now reconsider their
policy of accepting zero-conf.

I felt the same way when amaclin spammed BTC some
time ago. It prompted the Core devs to make changes to
sigop processing portion of the code, which made the system
little more secure. It took a concrete demonstration to make it happen.

 

[yrral86]

Yes, I think I agree on all points!

A couple of new thoughts: I'm wondering if the block size limit debate will resolve with miners running different code than non-mining nodes. For example, Gavin really likes BitPay's moving median method. However, I don't think this can be the complete solution because it gives full control of the block size limit to miners.

It's OK if just the miners run it, but if the nodes run it too, then they've relinquished all of their power to control the size of blocks!

From this perspective, Bitcoin Unlimited suddenly becomes a veto tool useful to small-block proponents. The miners can agree to whatever limits they want as long as those limits are less than the limits imposed by the economic majority of nodes.

I think this means our work on BUIP005 to communicate the node's limits through the user-agent string becomes more important. To give miners confidence, nodes will want a way to let them know "yeah, I'm cool with blocks up to 8 MB (or whatever the node's limit is)."

In other words, the best solution is actually for nodes and miners never to completely agree on a solution. It is that dance of uncertainty which maintains the proper balance of power between miners and nodes.

If miners want blocks of size B and some nodes advertise they will only relay up to size B-D, wouldn't the miners just drop those peers until they were fully connected to nodes and that will agree to relay? Then the nodes trying to force a lower limit would only achieve being the last to know and possibly on the wrong fork temporarily.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

I hope Coinbase will now reconsider their
policy of accepting zero-conf.

I don't understand why you think this event would cause them to reconsider their policy. Do you think it failed in some way?

 

[albin]

This Coinbase re-instatement event smells like Soviet-era rehabilitation more than anything, as high-status appatchik morons (theymos, drak, et al) are using it as an opportunity to bloviate publicly over the dominance of their particular disembodied semantics.

 

[Richy_T]

I believe Coinbase has already factored in
P. Todd may be an [insert your favourite expletive] but
he did demonstrate a succesful attack using open-source
python script. (edit: and hasn't he returned the amount he
defrauded? Of course, if he intends to keep it, the situation is
different) I hope Coinbase will now reconsider their
policy of accepting zero-conf.

And how would you feel if someone demonstrated the vulnerability of glass to hard, fast moving objects by throwing rocks through your windows? Even if you'd already said to them that you were aware of that vulnerability but had decided it was worth it to have light easily enter your house? And how about if that someone was antagonistic towards you previously?

 

[Peter R]

If miners want blocks of size B and some nodes advertise they will only relay up to size B-D, wouldn't the miners just drop those peers until they were fully connected to nodes and that will agree to relay? Then the nodes trying to force a lower limit would only achieve being the last to know and possibly on the wrong fork temporarily.

Time will tell, but my hunch is that it won't work like that in practice. We've already seen that miners are conservative with respect to the blocks they produce. Imagine a future where websites exist that continuously estimate the "effective block size limit" of the network--possibly using the user-agent strings, statements from influential companies like Coinbase and BitPay, and other heuristic methods. In such a future, would miners would run roughshod and breach that limit?

 

[cypherdoc]

sure. a bounce is expected. but don't let them fool you.

FCX down another whopping -10.2%!!!.

copper:

oil:

[doublepost=1452615391][/doublepost]XLE:

TNX still dropping=Deeeflation:

 

[cypherdoc]

Meni Rosenfield

http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/8285

BTW, has Cypherdoc's favorite photo been posted in this thread yet?

somehow i missed this.

great to see you Steve. despite our apparent differences in blocksize, i highly admire your contributions to Bitcoin. i hope your Kenyan projects are doing well.

 

[Peter R]

@theZerg:

Great interview you did!

http://bitcoinblog.de/2016/01/12/consensus-is-not-a-thing-some-developers-can-decide-but-something-that-should-emerge-from-the-actions-of-individuals/

 

[cypherdoc]

Be like @Gavin Andresen and (if you're not a miner) accept any block with a valid PoW (composed of valid transactions) regardless of its size:


Running Bitcoin Unlimited (with a high limit) allows you to signal to the miners: "you mine a big block, I'll accept it!"

i like what @Gavin Andresen is saying here and i like the concept of an adaptive blocksize even tho the multiplier of 2 is somewhat of a centralized decision that hopefully would be adequate to cope with a growing Bitcoin economy and would thus never have to be changed via another consensus decision making hard fork.

the problem with the user config setting in BU is that it throws an element of doubt into the relay function of full nodes. let's assume the worse scenario where we go to adaptive limits tomorrow and all full nodes are using BU. the new limit is 2MB. what if all BU full nodes decide to reset the default limit from 16MB down to 1MB? or that the default limit is changed to 1MB as some have suggested here? in that scenario, miners are hard pressed to make a 1.1MB block as it would be orphaned. as unlikely as this scenario is, my point is that the user config adds an element of uncertainty and unpredictability in the minds of miners, which is why i nack'd the user config from the beginning. otoh, with adaptive blocks, the limit is hard set at 2MB above the 1MB ~average and miners know for_sure their 1.1MB block will be propagated.

it's a compromise, i get it. but given where we are might be the better way. i'm still running all my BU nodes we'll see.

all this ignores the relay network of course.

 

[YarkoL]

I guess now I'd better crawl back to my little hole,
but I'm curious. If it's in principle OK to call
help from "the authorities" to make 0-conf
safe from double-spend, what about 1-conf?

Where do you draw the limit ( 2,3,...N-conf)?
and on what grounds?

 

[chriswilmer]

"i like what @Gavin Andresen is saying here and i like the concept of an adaptive blocksize even tho the multiplier of 2 is somewhat of a centralized decision that hopefully would be adequate to cope with a growing Bitcoin economy and would thus never have to be changed via another consensus decision making hard fork."

The difference between a centralized decision on a fixed *limit* and a centralized decision on a fixed *multiplier* is like the difference between being paralyzed from head to toe vs. being free to move anywhere but without being able to make any really sudden movements.
[doublepost=1452622589,1452621563][/doublepost]Hey @cypherdoc : Let us know when you think we should buy some of these crashing assets (if ever).

 

[cypherdoc]

@chriswilmer

a doubling of blocksize every 2 wks in the most extreme optimistic scenario is pretty darn good. exponential growth.

how about i tell you when i cover?

 

[Justus Ranvier]

If it's in principle OK to call
help from "the authorities" to make 0-conf
safe from double-spend, what about 1-conf?

I'm not sure what part of "has nothing to do with Bitcoin" continues to elude you.

When people are victims of crime, they usually seek out whatever recourse is available, if any. Fraud is a crime, so if people are defrauded, they will react accordingly. It doesn't matter whether the currency involved is dollars, bitcoins, or shiny rocks.

If you're confused why businesses might accept risks, including the risk of fraud, in circumstanced where they deem it to beneficial, then perhaps advising other people about how to operate a business might not be something you're qualified to do.

 

[cypherdoc]

this is bearish for metals:

[doublepost=1452625557][/doublepost]silver will most likely break to new lows following SLW and then followed by gold and the rest of the miners:

 

[YarkoL]

If you're confused why businesses might accept risks, including the risk of fraud, in circumstanced where they deem it to beneficial, then perhaps advising other people about how to operate a business might not be something you're qualified to do.

I already expressed my belief that Coinbase and
other businesses that accept 0-confirmations have
in all likelihood factored in the risks, and have ways
to deal with it.

But other people have been advising Coinbase to
report the Todd incident to the police, and it was to that
line of thinking that my last post was addressed to.