Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Justus Ranvier]

Even assuming the best intentions for Blockstream employees, in today's world it's not possible for them to accumulate the power they want without eventually being compelled to (mis)use it.

Bragging about how they just convinced 80% of the hash power to agree to let them exclusively decide the consensus rules just painted a larger target on them than may have existed before.

Surely they know this, but apparently they want their code deployed so badly they'll risk the long term survival of the network to see it launch.

That's the best I can do in terms of assuming good faith.

 

[YarkoL]

We now have a decision. The judges say it is to be a settlement system so opening the final ruling to the grand jury of users.

It is now obvious that we are in for the long haul. They were producing propaganda videos three years ago while the defenders of satoshi's vision did not begin to counteract their arguments, let alone build their own forceful arguments, until some moths ago.

They have a headstart and they have banning and censoring power which agitates, but we have truth and all we need do is espouse it, communicate it, inform all in a rational and logical manner with the aim to persuade.

We have Bitcoin Unlimited. Through that we can make our arguments, with no silly thresholds, no committees, no politicking, no signed letters. A mere offer. Run it, nothing changes. Consensus compatible. Fully decentralized. No backroom deals. No project fear.

The future has only began. Lessons have been learned. Bitcoin is ours, and so too its future.

That was such a great post that I had to quote it in its entirety. Bolded the crucial thing. It's a roller coaster but we can always glide a bit.

 

[Inca]

I haven't felt this bad about Bitcoin since winter 2011.

Bitcoin is captured and can now be safely nudged towards niche obscurity by Blockstream and their funding partners.

I agree with your sentiments entirely, Melbustus. It is taking a monumental effort to not drag my coins out of cold storage and dump the lot.

 

[Zarathustra]

@Zarathustra

If blocks do fill up immediately even with SW (possible because people may not use SW), then that is when the hard fork pressure will become overwhelming. The only question is how much annoying delay we get.

They won't fill up immediately, because additional adoption is constantly prevented by the cap.
The core implementation is RBF (Ruin By Fee / Ruin By Frustration). Why should adoption increase in such a ridiculous environment? Civilization means that the idiots win in more than 99 percent of all cases. Otherwise Switzerland wouldn't be the one and only country on the planet with direct democracy.
In all other countries the idiots are the winners. How is that possible? But I hope you are right this time!

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/46sl5w/okay_the_ddosers_censors_totalitarians/

 

[Peter R]

...or, very likely legal council to Blockstream saw that & immediately informed Adam that he could be opening up a lawsuit against the company if Blockstream was perceived to be the reason behind a last minute stalling tactic or if the HF is never allowed to go thru.

someone have a screenshot?

I still have the original page loaded. It's hard to get a good screen shot that shows the full context, however. Here's something though:

 

[Melbustus]

Bitcoin is captured and can now be safely nudged towards niche obscurity by Blockstream and their funding partners.

I agree with your sentiments entirely, Melbustus. It is taking a monumental effort to not drag my coins out of cold storage and dump the lot.

Likewise finding it difficult to not paint the days-destroyed chart today. But I'm not. A ray of hope:

 

[cypherdoc]

i had a long convo w/ Samson Mow a few nights ago. man, was i disappointed w/ his answers & long term vision. to paraphrase our convo:

he thinks fees don't matter. i asked him how miners will make money long term as rewards drop. his answer, "price will go UP". i said that makes no sense. the mining business cannot rely on the exchange price going up. astute investors and potential new entrants to the system will ask what the fundamental biz model of miners will be. the answer can't be the "price will go UP". the correct answer that all of us here know, is that miners have to replace rewards with tx fees. i pointed out that LN will compete for those fees. he said that doesn't matter for now b/c it's worth it to stop the arguing so the "price can go UP". i said that giving Core what it wants with SW & LN will only make the arguing worse b/c of the fin COI from BS. he said he doesn't hv any problem with BS. i asked why and he said they were core devs before BS. i said that didn't matter b/c VC money can change anyone's motives. i asked about fees again and he said all he cares about is no orphans. i said SW can give you 4MB potentially of BW reqs. he had no answer for that. i pointed him to my SW math posts and he said he had no time to read them & to get gmax to comment. he was more interested in macro. i said i was too but you can't understand what you're getting into unless you understand the math. he didn't answer. again i said that LN will compete for fees but he said it could increase the use case and he said miners could merge mine as a result of LN. i missed this technical mistake b/c Mow is the type of frenetic IRC chatter that tries not to leave a moment btwn what you say and his response so we were going back and forth furiously. and as most ppl who run out of arguments he said he had to get back to work along with his refusal to read some links i provided b/c he didn't have time.

overall, highly disappointed w/ his ability to assess the current and long term situation.
[doublepost=1456012351,1456011750][/doublepost]

I still have the original page loaded. It's hard to get a good screen shot that shows the full context, however. Here's something though:

[doublepost=1456012818][/doublepost]so what's the latest on backwards compatibility btwn 0.12 & old clients regarding the virus checks for the chainstate?

 

[Melbustus]

@cypherdoc - disappointing indeed. Why the hell do so few people in bitcoin understand bitcoin?

 

[albin]

He strikes me exactly like your standard corporate incompetents, who ply their trade on social propriety instead of real meat and potatoes subject matter expertise. Ayn Rand very uncharitably characterized these kind of people as "second-handers".

 

[lunar]

Trouble at the mill ;-)

 

[Peter R]

...A ray of hope:

Wouldn't it be more impactful for Xapo to run Unlimited? Imagine if Xapo, Coinbase and BitPay all said "our nodes will accept blocks up to 16 MB today, this ensures that we track consensus regardless of the method miners use to coordinate a block size limit increase."

@Gavin Andresen: let's head out on the campaign trail!

 

[cypherdoc]

that's interesting.

our own @dgenr8 thinks brg444 is maaku7 given a particular trolling style. makes sense altho he wasn't my first choice. brg444 making a complete ass of himself yet again trolling @Justus Ranvier in that ridiculous Voorhees Twitter feed.
[doublepost=1456014167][/doublepost]well there you f*cking go. i knew it. i've been telling ppl how SW preferentially discounts LN multisigs to push tx's offchain as a primary objective as opposed to UTXO consolidation (stated objective). and now we hear it from the horse's mouth for the first time afaik:

 

[albin]

I'm not buying that Friedenbach suddenly became a man of high moral fiber on a dime. This is the perfect disinfo/PR setup to give credibility to the overwhelmingly chutzpah-laden claim that a large quasi-governmental Hong Kong company that invests in Blockstream can throw a secret meeting where the President and some employees of Blockstream sit like they're the wedding party, yet the President of Blockstream was acting as an individual. A $76 million dollar startup has more than adequate resources to retain the services of professionals adept at manipulating us through online messaging (I'm looking at you brgtroll!).

 

[Melbustus]

Wouldn't it be more impactful for Xapo to run Unlimited? Imagine if Xapo, Coinbase and BitPay all said "our nodes will accept blocks up to 16 MB today, this ensures that we track consensus regardless of the method miners use to coordinate a block size limit increase."

@Gavin Andresen: let's head out on the campaign trail!

That'd be great.

And I do think the time has definitively come for industry to pick up the ball on this. If Brian Armstrong, @Gavin Andresen , Wences, and some others can get on the same page and lead a coalition, miners would be forced to listen.
[doublepost=1456015295][/doublepost]

that's interesting.
...

Gad, no wonder this guy created a demurrage coin. Read that language - implicit is that he thinks every economic outcome and user behavior needs to be *explicitly* engineered! I see zero appreciation for the market in that statement. And that's the underlying thread of terribleness throughout this entire fight for me: far fewer bitcoiners than I thought truly appreciate free-market dynamics.

 

[cypherdoc]

[doublepost=1456017730,1456016785][/doublepost]

 

[cypherdoc]

Fenton just entered the Classic Slack channel...

 

[dwaltrip]

Well fuck me sideways. Let's just say, looks like things will continue to be interesting. To those who are now itching to dig out some old coins for the exchange.. My hunch is that blockstream can't completely hobble Bitcoin even if they wanted to (not saying they do). I have a vague sense it will all work out in the end. No alt has gained any serious inch on Bitcoin. Its first mover status has made it the Schelling point (or Schelling coin, if you will) for all cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Everyone interested in crypto wants it to succeed, and I think the incentives will work things out, one way or another. I do suppose taking some healthy profits if one hasn't done much of that wouldn't be too ill advised

 

[cypherdoc]

now we know why GreenAddress is such a big pro core supporter:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/46que7/blockstream_meet_the_team/

 

[Matthew Light]

Ok, now we know.

Blockstream owns Bitcoin.

Now, I invite all of you visionary and clear-minded thinkers to join the next Schelling point for blockchains, which already can handle 10x Bitcoin's transaction volume and is aggressively targeting many orders of magnitude more capacity over the next few years.

 

[kyuupichan]

Miners were played like a fiddle. Made out to be fools and passed the test 110%. Even gave concessions to just join core's existing roadmap. Unbelievable!