Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[dill]

With regards to old bitcoin wallets on the 1MB chain when classic forks to 2MB, could the 2MB chain merge mine the 1MB chain at the same time but force the 1MB to contain 0 transactions? If any block adds transactions it's orphaned as the 25% miners can't compete with the 75%. To keep the 1MB fork working they would have to fork to another 1MB chain. It would mean mining the chain forever? but because it contains 0 transactions and the "block reward" is stuck the branch is pretty much useless but protects old software from seeing confirmations on a chain that isn't the majority and doesn't add to the 21 million cap since the block reward on the 1MB chain is useless but still mined to protect the 2MB chain. It would also reduce the risk of old software keeping a dead fork alive.

 

[cypherdoc]

Broad middle-east and african stock markets crashed over 5%, erasing any gains back to November 2008 as the carnage from last week continues. From Kuwait (-4.3%) to Qatar (-8%) it was a bloodbath as Saudi Arabia Tadawul Index plunged 5.4% - the most since Black Monday (now down over 50% from their 2014 highs). These losses are far in excess of US 'catch-up' moves and suggest a dark cloud over Asia this evening.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-17/mid-east-massacre-qatar-crashes-saudi-stocks-plunge-most-black-monday
[doublepost=1453068292][/doublepost]

With regards to old bitcoin wallets on the 1MB chain when classic forks to 2MB, could the 2MB chain merge mine the 1MB chain at the same time but force the 1MB to contain 0 transactions? If any block adds transactions it's orphaned as the 25% miners can't compete with the 75%. To keep the 1MB fork working they would have to fork to another 1MB chain. It would mean mining the chain forever? but because it contains 0 transactions and the "block reward" is stuck the branch is pretty much useless but protects old software from seeing confirmations on a chain that isn't the majority and doesn't add to the 21 million cap since the block reward on the 1MB chain is useless but still mined to protect the 2MB chain. It would also reduce the risk of old software keeping a dead fork alive.

i talked about this the other day with @Roger_Murdock .

if you're looking to kill the 1MB chain, the big miners simply have to 51% it a few times to cause a financial panic driving the price to 0 causing ramping of the 2MB chain price.
[doublepost=1453068485][/doublepost]wut?!!

time to suspend mark to market again! laws are only good when they're convenient. oh USS of A:

Exclusive: Dallas Fed Quietly Suspends Energy Mark-To-Market On Default Contagion Fears

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-16/exclusive-dallas-fed-quietly-suspends-energy-mark-market-tells-banks-not-force-shale

 

[cypherdoc]

oh my, you never had a chance. yep, that's right, -459:

[doublepost=1453072531][/doublepost]oops, i mean -476

 

[Inca]

Tomorrow should be a doozy in the markets!

 

[cypherdoc]

-481
[doublepost=1453072639][/doublepost]someone wake Janet up.

oops. you mean she hasn't gone to bed yet?

 

[cypherdoc]

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41fwz2/segregated_witness_new_economics_new_bitcoin/

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

So satisfying to see this message getting through.

 

[cypherdoc]

if you're an old node and you receive a SW tx, you will see it as a non-std tx and will ignore it (no validation or relay) until it is accepted into a block. this is b/c SW pushes 2 items onto the execution stack instead of one.

 

[Peter R]

Some insight into the mind of a Blockstream employee (maaku):

The ideological line in the sand at 1MB cannot be crossed, it would seem.

 

[cypherdoc]

@Peter R

Freicoin believer maaku7 digging his heels in.

 

[rocks]

The ideological line in the sand at 1MB cannot be crossed, it would seem.

1) It is insane to be attached to a number that was literally pulled out of thin air at random. Satoshi performed no analysis that came up with 1MB as the true and final number, he randomly selected it as a temporary point to be changed.

2) There is no need to engage with them on this anymore. The community has spoken and Bitcoin will only keep a limit as a spam filter far above transaction demand. If a fee market one day develops it will because it has reached true scaling limitations and not an artificial supply limitation.

 

[albin]

The Selection Committee (at least the original incarnation of it) accepted my proposal, and then conference organizers asked me to agree to allow a group of experts to review my slides and "offer technical feedback" prior to my presentation.

The term "technical feedback" seems really bizarre to me, because it doesn't appear to me to be a technical talk in the fields of whatever experts they have, unless they have economists with a focus in game theory research in the mix.

 

[solex]

It's tough to take his 1MB security-bear away but someone's got to do it!

 

[albin]

@Peter R

I'm grasping at straws here for sure, but maybe that's a very shrewd PR move, because if any of these guys cease working on Bitcoin full node implementations and continue employment at Blockstream, it would mitigate the perception that these devs were brought onboard to control Bitcoin protocol dev.

 

[tynwald]

albin> If BS are/were serious about using side chains as stated, then the next stage would involve a great deal of lobbying and selling to banks. Since LN is not a slam dunk, with or without control of Core implementation, and VC-funded startups won't burn money on profitless 'cool' coding forever.

In that scenario I doubt many of the original so-called cypher-punks will be happy for long.

 

[Peter R]

1) It is insane to be attached to a number that was literally pulled out of thin air at random. Satoshi performed no analysis that came up with 1MB as the true and final number, he randomly selected it as a temporary point to be changed.

2) There is no need to engage with them on this anymore. The community has spoken and Bitcoin will only keep a limit as a spam filter far above transaction demand. If a fee market one day develops it will because it has reached true scaling limitations and not an artificial supply limitation.

After Saruman retreated into the heart of Mordor in December, and after Unlimited and later Classic took off, my hunch was that he'd return and back-pedal:

"The Bitcoin Core developers recognize that Bitcoin is ultimately governed by its users; although we stand behind our scaling roadmap, the community has spoken. For this reason, we will be increasing the block size limit in Core to 2 MB in the spring."

Instead, he and his orcs dug their heels in deeper.

We're now competing for the hearts and minds of the non-fanatical. By engaging #bitcoin-wizards--and receiving clear statements like this from maaku--the other participants can see the childish pettiness of Blockstream's position. They might ask themselves:

"Am I really going to leave Bitcoin just because I'll be issuing pull requests from a different repo (or perhaps more than one repo)?"

"If 1 MB was a magic number anyways, is it worth risking my reputation defending this arbitrary line in the sand against the overwhelming support from the community?"

 

[cliff]

Random Comment. I was going back through the old cryptography mailing list from Nov 2008 and noticed a few funny posts after Satoshi's paper started getting some dialogue on money and politics going:

These two are funny due to current btc politics:
http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/014867.html
http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/014824.html

List Moderator's Edict of the Day:
A bunch of people seem anxious to branch the discussion of
cryptographic cash protocols off into a discussion of the politics of
money. I'm a rabid libertarian myself, but this isn't the rabid
libertarian mailing list. Please stick to discussing either the
protocols themselves or their direct practicality, and not the perils
of fiat money, taxation, your aunt Mildred's gold coin collection,
etc.
​

But, since I'm a huge Zooko fan (Satoshi put a link on the March 2009 bitcoin.org site to Zooko's site) and think he might be Satoshi (which I stated here last month), I found this Zokoo post (Nov 7, 2008) - responding to the quoted post above - to be quite interesting:

Hey folks: you are welcome to discuss money politics over at the p2p-
hackers mailing list:

http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers

I'm extremely interested in the subject myself, having taken part in
two notable failed attempts to deploy Chaumian digital cash and
currently being involved in a project that might lead to a third
attempt.

Regards,

Zooko​

 

[Justus Ranvier]

Bitcoin development documentary:

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Well here's my response to Mark Friedenbach's Olympic-tier handwaving in defense of his position.


A very slightly modified comment was instantly deleted from the /r/Bitcoin thread, probably because I said Mark's mental model appears to be fuzzy, which I guess they count as "insulting a Core dev." (EDIT: Weird, it was deleted but now it's at -2. Maybe it was reinstated?)

 

[Peter R]

Is the bitcoin-dev mailing list still a serious thing? I submitted a new proposal (see below) but my email was rejected and I was asked to take it up with Janet Yellen (presumably the one from the Federal Reserve) if I wished to dispute:

Here was the body of the email (perhaps a little cheeky but I think a pretty reasonable proposal all-in-all):

PROBLEM:

Bitcoin Core has committed to NOT raise the block size limit in 2016; however, significant support exists for an increase to 2 MB via the new implementation called Bitcoin Classic.

If Core sticks to its scaling roadmap, all nodes running Core would be forked from the network should blocks greater than 1 MB be accepted into the longest chain.

If Core deviates from its scaling roadmap--for example by capitulating and mirroring Classic's 2 MB limit--it may be seen as weak-minded and less relevant.

SOLUTION:

Stick to Core's Scaling Roadmap HOWEVER add an advanced configuration window to allow node operators to increase their block size limits at their own risk. This would allow current Core customers to track the longest proof-of-work chain (regardless of the success of Bitcoin Classic), while simultaneously allowing Core developers to continue to work on the scaling roadmap that they’ve committed to.
[doublepost=1453102461,1453101358][/doublepost]Hmm, now I received another email saying "oops, this was a process bug in the mailing list and it sucks...please resubmit."

Must be a sophisticated bug if it writes things like "to dispute...please contact Janet Yellen."

UPDATE: I resubmitted as they requested and it was rejected again, this time with no explanation.