Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

Roger_Murdock

Active Member
Dec 17, 2015
223
1,453
This "firing all the devs" rhetoric is crazy. We're changing the governance and vision with the move to Classic--every dev will still be free to contribute (how could they be stopped, anyways?)
Mr. Bitcoin isn't "firing all the devs" because Mr. Bitcoin never had any employees. He prefers the flexibility of independent contractors. Every code offering that any group of developers puts out is a fresh bid that Mr. Bitcoin is free to accept or reject. (Protip for future bidders: it looks like Mr. Bitcoin is getting increasingly less keen on proposals that include a 1-MB block size limit. Might be best to avoid those going forward if you want the work.)
 

AdrianX

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
2,097
5,797
bitco.in
@cypherdoc

Agree that it wouldn't become dominant, but I think enough people might download it that it would create a "Blockstream coin" that would have some persistent market cap. People would almost certainly mine it too, because difficultly would be reset allowing GPUs to compete.

I'm not suggesting this is a realistic threat to Classic--more like a thought experiment.
I think existing holders may short it, and that would kill mining until the wealth represented by the blockchain was reflected in the market value. Mining would be unprofitable untill total mining input was in balance with total persevered wealth stored on that blockchain.

It'll die.
[doublepost=1453010055][/doublepost]
brg444
anybody find these drive bys hilarious


he HAS to be a Blockstream founder or employee given that he's *everywhere* attacking naysayers. he's the drive by assassin
He's said he is not employed by Blockstream yet he has conveniently been in close proximity at key times.

I think you're bang on when you refer to him/her as a founder.
 
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cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,998
@AdrianX

if he can hang out in the Wizards channel w/o being a coder and not getting chased away means he's someone close that they know.

also, putting up the HK Scaling Schedule before it was public and getting directly tweeted by the likes of Adam look suspicious.
 
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Zarathustra

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
1,439
3,797
@AdrianX

if he can hang out in the Wizards channel w/o being a coder and not getting chased away means he's someone close that they know.

also, putting up the HK Scaling Schedule before it was public and getting directly tweeted by the likes of Adam look suspicious.
Anyway, besides Todd, Maxwell and the compromised one he is one of those few 'Bitcoiners' who managed to make Blockstream the most hated entity on the Bitcoin Planet. A company that delegates such hyper-arrogant ad hominem 'communicators' doesn't need enemies anymore. A conspiracy theorist would argue that they are paid by a big block institution to discredit the small blockers even faster than without them.
 
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Inca

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 28, 2015
517
1,679
Posted a few messages of support towards bitcoin classic on /r/bitcoin and then got banned for my trouble.

Fascinating to see the complete difference in subject matter displayed on /r/btc and /r/bitcoin. This fork is going to surprise a lot of people who never leave that subreddit.

The trolls and disinformation shills are out promoting 0.12 in force - as if that will achieve anything.
 

sickpig

Active Member
Aug 28, 2015
926
2,541
/u/nullc back from vacation, posting at a fury pace on reddit.

on the other side in one twit @adamu3 called bitcoin classic xt/2. disgusting.

lastly ptodd's just published an article explaining that soft forks are good and hard forks are bad.

they are fighting back as hard as they can.
 

Aquent

Active Member
Aug 19, 2015
252
667
earlier today i was talking in the Classic channel about Blockstreams reaction to the Classic Team if we hard fork successfully. well, here you go from Austin Hill himself just now:

"Until Bitcoin classic or alternative forks of Bitcoin core have support of the development community (which is orders of magnitude larger then
our entire company then I would be hesitant to support that fork given that it is essence firing the volunteers that brought you to the dance."

what he's saying is his company will not allow it's core devs to help Classic devs. Blockstream will draw a line in the sand.

I don't think they can order Sipa around for much longer. He is very talented, with a PHD etc, and he was in favour of big blocks - even suggesting some (very conservative) increase. I'm sure someone can give him a job to get him out of there.

They can keep the rest. The maintainer, wumpus, does confuse me however. He banned hearn from #bitcoin-dev if we remember. He has banned me as well from #bitcoin-core-dev and refuses to change the ban to a set quite. Can't really read him, but from what I know he is employed by MIT so I don't think he can easily just leave - although of course everyone is a free spirit - but I think it is far more likely that he would contribute to classic.

With Sipa and Wumpus contributing, as well as Gavin and Jeff etc, the rest can do whatever they want, but most likely they'll contribute since I'm sure they in for the love of the code not some crazy theology developed in 2013.

The blockstream employees as well will probably have no choice. As I predicted Gmax is back (after trying his Putin stunt for a second time) - he can't leave - he founded blockstream. Not sure if blockstream can function if they do not have control over bitcoin to do whatever they want though... In fact GibbsS something whatever his nick is let it out some months ago when it seemed that XT was winning by seemingly stating that he would have to look for another job or whatever - he then declared he was hired by blockstream - and I called him out on it at the time by stating to him something like "so your job did depend on this".

Not very sure why blockstream needs control over bitcoin to survive though. Presumably they can still offer their bitranets, develop them, etc. The more puzzling question however is how on earth did they think they would be allowed to be in control of a currency which exists for the sole reason of having no one in control!
 

albin

Active Member
Nov 8, 2015
931
4,008
I think a very large part of the situation is that Maxwell is very talented at producing half-baked, handwavy assertions that oversimplify complex issues in order to place them under the sole purview of technical people. A great example is that incomprehensible gibberish about infinite demand posted earlier, which ordinarily seems like a bizarre and embarrassing thing to say, but I think I can maybe sympathize with how bold declarations like that press buttons that appeal to the cognitive biases of a certain type of participant here.
 

tynwald

Member
Dec 8, 2015
69
176
@AdrianX

if he can hang out in the Wizards channel w/o being a coder and not getting chased away means he's someone close that they know.

also, putting up the HK Scaling Schedule before it was public and getting directly tweeted by the likes of Adam look suspicious.
Austin Hill IMO. Same guy was wandering around Scaling Conf @ HK telling people he had been super busy vetting all of the proposed talks.
 

Badbeat

New Member
Nov 30, 2015
8
17
Prohashing with another great post


I'm not worried about all the point he makes but there are a couple that really are on point.
 

Justus Ranvier

Active Member
Aug 28, 2015
875
3,746
I think a very large part of the situation is that Maxwell is very talented at producing half-baked, handwavy assertions that oversimplify complex issues in order to place them under the sole purview of technical people.
His talents do not lie in the realm of creating full-stack solutions.

Consider CoinJoin. He created a blind signing technique that allows agents to facilitate a join without learning their inputs or outputs, and sketched out some other parts of a working system that would also be needed.

That's very nice, but in terms of creating a compete protocol and infrastructure for universally-accessible CoinJoins, it's about 5% of the solution.

The other 95% is less interesting than the cool blind signing technique, but without it CoinJoin never goes anywhere.

In that sense, Gregory Maxwell is a quintessential cipherpunk - do the cool, intellectually satisfying cryptography work while being actively hostile to the tedious drudgery of turning that cool thing into a usable product for adoption by customers. It's why nobody uses PGP, or CoinJoin.

Many Blockstream employees, in fact, appears to be people who are actively hostile to the concept of serving customers because it insults their dignity or something. It's fine for companies to have a few employees like that producing cool things in the background, but they're supposed to keep them managed and sequestered away from public-facing roles.
 

albin

Active Member
Nov 8, 2015
931
4,008
@Justus Ranvier

I think there would be little harm if this weren't done in the context of a hostile environment where folks are shouted down for wanting to question any part of these flimsy assertions, as though the question has been settled for all time. I can't trust any notion of "consensus" in that kind of toxic environment, because judging from practical experience, a very normal way that alot of people attempt to deal with that kind of personality is to appease to avoid the bullying, while maybe passive-aggressively infiltrating the edges. It's impossible to have a functional community if the situation exists where, evidenced in the irc log, somebody feels the need to ask if he's upset just because something he might disagree with has even been said. I don't think it's realistic at all for any claims about technical consensus to be made when everyone has to walk on Gregshells.
 

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,998
Austin Hill IMO. Same guy was wandering around Scaling Conf @ HK telling people he had been super busy vetting all of the proposed talks.
yeah, i think brg444 is Austin.

a few "hints". yesterday, i finally achieved smackdown on brg444 early noon here w/o a smartass ad hom response from him:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=700411.msg13576716#msg13576716

then, later on that afternoon, i hit Austin with a response on reddit which also uncharacteristically doesn't receive a response:


point being, i think i achieved a state of smackdown, at least for an afternoon, where brg444/Austin didn't want to tangle with me. arrogance on my part? maybe. but you have to admit it's uncharacteristic for both of them to not respond to me in the same time timeframe, whereas they both usually do w/o hesitation.

note also in the very same reddit sub-thread further up that Austin goes after @Aquent with language suspiciously like a brg444 post.

"I can 100% say you are wrong and this post is full of lies."


that's interesting, @Aquent is upvoted at +66pts right now whereas Austin is down -12 pts.

but he doesn't go after me for this post that's right alongside @Aquent's. again, uncharacteristic. smackdown?:


then later on, i find brg444 in the Wizards channel doing his usual ad hom act. once again, how does a non coder, toxic individual (even if is on the Core side) get to hang out there w/o being asked to go away?

remember that brg444 starts posting June 2014 on BCT when Blockstream was formed; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=251751

exactly around that time June/July 2014, i put up this warning post on Blockstream:


so BS puts my name on high alert status for when they release their WP in Oct 2014. who shows up on the day of the release in my gold thread to shadow me and counteract my every anti-SC post? why, brg444. for 300 specific pages on the topic but also all the way to the threads end; the locking of the thread b/c of the XT talk:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg9300935#msg9300935

anyone like brg444 who fights for Blockstream so viciously and relentlessly must have alot of money on the line.