Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

If it goes merely "big" for 1-2 years on that hype as somehow BS pulls rabbits out of its hat, fine. Delays. People can fork any time along that path. Not the worst outcome.

I am not so optimistic. I already see movement towards altcoins and, more important, intelligent people being scared away from Bitcoin and Bitcoin development.

1. Longtime holders will sell at the next hype bubble (segwit, halving, whatever they push) and move on.
2. Core has already been successful in scaring sane people away from contributing to Bitcoin. The never ending charades by the miners and the ongoing frustration will someday push even the most patient sane people away. This effect is self-energizing.

In the end, you only have a handful of seasoned people left. But why should you fork now? All big holders already left and nobody cares about your toy anymore. Blockstream is either bankrupt or just manages another paypal clone (spiced with some cryptoblabla).

A fork to another POW, or at least the realistic option on the table, must be ready before Blockstream and China burned Bitcoin to the ground.

 

[_mr_e]

Anybody else think these recent Green Barret posts were actually a plant by blockstream? When I first read the post the few blockstream points really stook out to me for some reason. Now I'm noticing a trend where if you criticize blockstream people are quick to call you a Green Barret...

 

[VeritasSapere]

I am not so optimistic. I already see movement towards altcoins and, more important, intelligent people being scared away from Bitcoin and Bitcoin development.

1. Longtime holders will sell at the next hype bubble (segwit, halving, whatever they push) and move on.
2. Core has already been successful in scaring sane people away from contributing to Bitcoin. The never ending charades by the miners and the ongoing frustration will someday push even the most patient sane people away. This effect is self-energizing.

In the end, you only have a handful of seasoned people left. But why should you fork now? All big holders already left and nobody cares about your toy anymore. Blockstream is either bankrupt or just manages another paypal clone (spiced with some cryptoblabla).

A fork to another POW, or at least the realistic option on the table, must be ready before Blockstream and China burned Bitcoin to the ground.

I think a split should be on the table, however I still do not like the idea of changing the POW for the reasons I have already explained. I suppose I would like our minority fork to become the dominant cryptocurrency again, by keeping the old POW we can allow the miners to move back to the big blocks chain when it becomes clear that the Block Stream vision has failed. Meaning that it will be become the longest chain again, and for all intends and purposes as defined in the whitepaper the longest chain is Bitcoin.

 

[Zarathustra]

If it goes merely "big" for 1-2 years on that hype as somehow BS pulls rabbits out of its hat, fine. Delays. People can fork any time along that path. Not the worst outcome.

I like your optimism. Yes, in theory people can fork any time. In theory, a majority of the people already could have forked away from Thermos and Core. In practice, they couldn't. In theory, people could behave as we do. In practice, they cannot. In theory, all countries could have direct democracy as we have here in Switzerland. In practice, only Switzerland can. In theory, society (in contrast to the community in the nature) could be something different than a symbiosis between sadists and masochists. In practice, it can't.

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
But in practice, there is."

 

[VeritasSapere]

I didn't read carefully enough. I simply can't do it anymore I've developed some sort of allergic reaction to threads like those hosted on BCT. But what catch my eyses is this phrase by Lauda:


Independently from any considerations on block space and its scarcity, SegWit introduce two different economic goods, namely tx space and signature space.

The latter would be blessed by an arbitrary discount of 75% (50% in the last Corallo's proposal) when accounting for block space.

I've inferred after reading scattered references from various sources that the discount is justified by the fact that signatures could be discarded by full nodes after the validation step and are not necessary at all for SPV clients.

Nevertheless signatures have to be relaid by the network and consume bandwidth as the txs themselves. For the typical LN settlement txs, witness bandwidth could be even 4 times higher than base space.

Take into account that multisig (m-of-n) txs by definition have an advantage in respect of the "normal" ones, in fact as general rule: the higher the number of signatures the bigger the witness space.

I would say the above should be enough to make people pay more attention in comparison to what has been given to SegWit deployment and the following consequences.

Weren't core devs obsessed by orphan rate and bandwidth consumption?

Still I haven't see by SegWit proponents an economical/game theory analysis related to the above changes, and to me economic incentives are even more important that all the tech aspects considered together.

That said I dare saying core proposal is not a compromise and by a long shot.

Even worst time for comprises is ended.

The max block size cap has already changed bitcoin economic incentives, as @Justus Ranvier already mentioned on twitter, for the first year since its birth bitcoin was not able to double in terms of txs number.

edit: grammar

I suppose what I was trying to do was earnestly attempting to find a compromise with my ideological opponents. If I could just get them to agree to a two megabyte blocksize first then we would at least have a temporary solution. I explained our positions hoping that he could at least understand and take that into consideration. Unfortunately they did not budge at all, it has to be whatever Core says to the letter unless it is unacceptable for them. Therefore they say Segwit first, which you are right I do not consider that a compromise at all, I did say this as well, but they seem to be unable to be more flexible.

I literally even said that it will either be a compromise or a split, I presented the compromise as simply just increasing the blocksize to two megabytes before segwit is implemented. Which I thought was reasonable enough, however it does seem that the response was pretty much, my way or the highway. Unfortunate considering that I truly do believe I had a real workable compromise where both opposing visions can actually live side by side in peace for a while longer.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

I think a split should be on the table, however I still do not like the idea of changing the POW for the reasons I have already explained. I suppose I would like our minority fork to become the dominant cryptocurrency again, by keeping the old POW we can allow the miners to move back to the big blocks chain when it becomes clear that the Block Stream vision has failed. Meaning that it will be become the longest chain again, and for all intends and purposes as defined in the whitepaper the longest chain is Bitcoin.

1. Keeping the same POW on a forked chain is an invitation for a 51 % Attack. A minority fork must be combined with a pow change.
2. Imho it is important to make all mining equipment scrap metal if you carry out a successful fork. It gives future miners an incentive to behave. If you allow existing miners back on to your chain they don't have too much to lose. People have to remember: The miners are serving the users. "Screw you guys I'm going home" should be the answer to miners acting contrary to user demands.

As I said earlier, the choice of pow is secondary. It has to be different enough from the existing pow to make all the existing mining power worthless.

 

[Richy_T]

I didn't read carefully enough. I simply can't do it anymore I've developed some sort of allergic reaction to threads like those hosted on BCT. But what catch my eyses is this phrase by Lauda:

I have come to the conclusion that Lauda is one of those people that it is impossible to have any kind of discussion with as any part of the argument of the other side, no matter how fundamental just washes off him like water off a duck's back. He refuses to give any ground, even the most trivial and the saying about teaching a pig to sing springs to mind.

 

[VeritasSapere]

1. Keeping the same POW on a forked chain is an invitation for a 51 % Attack. A minority fork must be combined with a pow change.
2. Imho it is important to make all mining equipment scrap metal if you carry out a successful fork. It gives future miners an incentive to behave. If you allow existing miners back on to your chain they don't have too much to lose. People have to remember: The miners are serving the users. "Screw you guys I'm going home" should be the answer to miners acting contrary to user demands.

As I said earlier, the choice of pow is secondary. It has to be different enough from the existing pow to make all the existing mining power worthless.

I have argued this point extensively now, check my previous post on this subject on this thread. I do not think the minority fork would be under great risk of fifty one percent attacks, I am familiar with the theory that only one large chain with the same POW can exists but I think that theory is flawed. The altcoin space is actually a good counter example of this, there are even altcoins out there that use the same algorithm that Bitcoin does now and they do not even come under attack, not fatally or regularly at least, they survive. Actually an equilibrium forms in terms of hashpower and block reward in part due to multipools, miners keep chasing those profits after all.

In regards to burning the bridges to all of the old miners, I do not think this is a good idea, many miners do believe in the original vision of Bitcoin and even if they do not they are still profit driven, meaning I would like to give these miners the chance to return to the real Bitcoin once it becomes clear which way the winds are blowing. Maybe I am a bit biased being a miner myself, but I really do not think a POW change is necessary and furthermore even counter productive to our goals.

 

[Richy_T]

So what if all of us as early adopters with significant numbers of coins actively worked to suppress the price from rising to wipe out these large irresponsible miners?

The price rise is likely to already be priced in by the market somewhat. The question is if the hashrate continues to rise hugely. If it does, and the price doesn't, that means even less profits for the miners.

I think it's probably safe to assume that mining is less than 50% profitable so when the halving happens, we are going to see a lot of miners switch off. It's 10 days to next the difficulty adjustment after that assuming a constant hashrate but it will likely be much down so it could be extended out quite a lot further, especially if it causes a crash and more miner switch-offs. I used to think this was going to be a bad thing but right now, I think it's probably what the miners deserve.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

I have argued this point extensively now, check my previous post on this subject on this thread. I do not think the minority fork would be under great risk of fifty one percent attacks, I am familiar with the theory that only one large chain with the same POW can exists but I think that theory is flawed. The altcoin space is actually a good counter example of this, there are even altcoins out there that use the same algorithm that Bitcoin does now and they do not even come under attack, not fatally or regularly at least, they survive. Actually an equilibrium forms in terms of hashpower and block reward in part due to multipools, miners keep chasing those profits after all.

In regards to burning the bridges to all of the old miners, I do not think this is a good idea, many miners do believe in the original vision of Bitcoin and even if they do not they are still profit driven, meaning I would like to give these miners the chance to return to the real Bitcoin once it becomes clear which way the winds are blowing. Maybe I am a bit biased being a miner myself, but I really do not think a POW change is necessary and furthermore even counter productive to our goals.

@51% Attack: I think you're wrong here, the altcoin space is not really comparable to an aggressive competing blockchain fork. Miners profits can also come from performing attacks as a service.

"Many miners" is questionable. Maybe many small individual miners. But the overwhelmingly part of mining power is stupid and working against the original vision. I agree, that changing the pow is far from perfect, especially for small miners who are working for the original vision. But it is obvious that these miners are an extremely small minority today in terms of hashing power.

The option must be at least discussed in the open now. Go back a few months, a year, and look where we are now. Miners are refusing a fork to 2 MB for gods sake. Imho Bitcoin with 8 MB Blocks and a spinoff of the existing blockchain looks pretty good right now...

 

[JVWVU]

Anybody else think these recent Green Barret posts were actually a plant by blockstream? When I first read the post the few blockstream points really stook out to me for some reason. Now I'm noticing a trend where if you criticize blockstream people are quick to call you a Green Barret...

I am a guy with a small dick so what? I don't give a shit what the old green beret sock puppet says.

 

[lunar]

Responding to the usual FUD


warning: The toxicity in this thread is painful
[doublepost=1456241284][/doublepost]Also, I'm so sick of seeing this argument everywhere. I want to have a Hard fork, if for no other reason than to see this die forever.

 

[sickpig]

Jonathan Toomim is not listed anymore on BitcoinClassic.com developers list. what happened?

bump.

nobody knows what's going on?

 

[VeritasSapere]

@51% Attack: I think you're wrong here, the altcoin space is not really comparable to an aggressive competing blockchain fork. Miners profits can also come from performing attacks as a service.

"Many miners" is questionable. Maybe many small individual miners. But the overwhelmingly part of mining power is stupid and working against the original vision. I agree, that changing the pow is far from perfect, especially for small miners who are working for the original vision. But it is obvious that these miners are an extremely small minority today in terms of hashing power.

The option must be at least discussed in the open now. Go back a few months, a year, and look where we are now. Miners are refusing a fork to 2 MB for gods sake. Imho Bitcoin with 8 MB Blocks and a spinoff of the existing blockchain looks pretty good right now...

I suppose this brings me back to my second point, miners are profit driven, they do not need to be ideologically driven. If our minority fork does prove to be superior then the miners will devote their hashing power to that chain. This might even happen in a shorter period of time especially if the small block blockchain becomes completely overloaded and congested, it might even be worth timing the chain fork in such a way. In that situation the move over the big block blockchain might even be a no brainer. I am not convinced that miners would devote significant mining power to attack the other chain, considering how much this would cost, furthermore considering that they would not be able to attack the chain continuously they will be unable to completly destroy it, which would further put into question whether it is worth attacking.

Another example from the altcoin world is the cryptonight coins, they are all anonymous competing cryptocurrencies that operate on the same hashing algorithm, yet these chains do not come under attack from each other. If anything I think miners might even perceive this as a positive since it provides a backup for profitable mining in case anything goes wrong with their preferred coin. I also suspect many miners are even highly agnostic when it comes to mining, not caring about the coins themselves only profit. If miners behave rationally driven by profit, I do not see any reason why they would expend such a high amount resources futility attacking the big block blockchain while instead they could have just joined a multipool and enjoyed the profits instead.

 

[cypherdoc]

bump.

nobody knows what's going on?

he's not been listed for awhile yet still pops up in Implementation regularly. after all the controversy he and his brother created with their "appearances" it's probably better that he leaves the "visible" dev to Gavin and Jeff.

just to expound a bit more on my above idea. i think if the price stays where it is, come July we'd see around half miners shut down and certain exchanges go out of biz. who would that preferentially effect? i think the larger miners like the Chinese and probably Bitfury b/c they are likely to be the most leveraged towards building their larger facilities. also, after talking with Mow, it's clear to me that he coerced this latest Roundtable agreement in HK by locking everyone in the room until he achieved "forced harmony". there was extreme urgency to his chat when talking to him just prior to the meeting and i'm sure it was present at the meeting. hence the pics of Luke and the other guy sleeping in the room. to him, the argument is now over and the "price can go UP". this is his business model; profit from price rises while neglecting the longer term biz model of growing users and thus fees. he claims he is in it for the long run but his actions speak otherwise.

so bottom line, i expect a culling of the miners due to a static price to hurt the larger miners preferentially as they will have been found to be the most irresponsible, short sighted, speculative, and highly leveraged of the bunch. we could get more decentralization out of this than we realize. this could be a very good thing.

 

[VeritasSapere]

@cypherdoc That last comment of yours is making me seriously question whether I should wait to purchase those Bitfury miners when released, or whether it might be better to just buy some more GPU rigs now.

I do agree with you however, a "culling" of the miners might indeed be a very good thing for decentralization. I have not given up hope on the viability of Bitcoin style proof of work governance just yet. It could be that the mining industry will change a lot over the next year, it might mature into something that could possibly be more palpable to our philosophies.

 

[cypherdoc]

we're still merely in a long term massive bullish triangle that doesn't terminate until early April.

my sense is that nothing happens with price until then. and until then, we're going to have a lot of changes in sentiment, plans, & projections as to what the future holds on the blocksize issue. interestingly, this is the time when SW should be launched. we'll obviously get a big move out of the tip of that triangle one way or the other but technically, the default would still be up. i hesitate to mention that b/c my preference would be to see the price stagnate thru Aug/Sept to wipe out the irresponsible miners. that would be a good thing. but the technicals tell me something else might arise to solve this situation and allow for the default break up out of the triangle. of course, i have no idea what that might be or whether it ever happens at all. we'll see:

 

[theZerg]

We should be watching ebay around that time to see if we can snap some modern but non-competitive (remember no mining machines will be competitive at that time) miners for cheap

 

[cypherdoc]

his trolling continues:

 

[Aquent]

Decision time is now truly upon us. The devs have made their decision, the miners have made their decision, now it is for the most decentralized aspect of them all, upon whom the whole thing truly depends, to have their say, the users.

Today we enter into a new system which has never been tried before. No cryptocurrency has ever operated under full blocks. As much as blockstream devs like to go on about safety, science, "we the experts", nuclear scientists, there have been no tests, no analysis, no simulation, nothing at all on how this radically new system is to operate. Which means that we are now in unchartered territory and we have no clue what will happen. I think the path we are on is utterly reckless. I have no idea why the miners thought it fit to risk what could be a complete collapse.

Will it happen? I have no clue. We have no facts whatever, instead, we have a system shock. No one can say what happens now because it has never been tried. People might outright panic, perhaps a meme is formed that bitcoin does not work with transactions dropping out, confirmations taking forever, users being fully inconvenienced and leaving, world "leaders" proclaiming bitcoin can not scale beyond 3txs, maybe nothing happens and people keep using it, maybe only some leave, maybe utxo crashes nodes and the whole system crashes. Who knows. Who is to say when all we have is speculation. No tests, no simulations, no facts, no knowledge at all, which makes the path we are on utterly reckless for a 6 billion dollars monetary system.

I'm personally diversifying. There's just too much risk. I don't want to sound like I'm pumping ether because I haven't even had the time to diversify a bit, but, I think they're a real alternative. A fork coin has ugly implications. A competing coin is probably good, keeping everyone on their toes, making sure users are listened to and they have a very competent development team... I think, haven't looked into it, should take the time to do so I guess, but last time I did check them quickly I think they fund their development team from mining rewards so making sure the dev team has huge incentives to listen to the users. And ether has it's own community, it's own culture, it has a level of energy, stuff are happening, stuff is positive.

Obviously, I'd rather bitcoin, but, you know, I'm not a miner in a smoke filled room deciding to take a reckless path, so, I can only vote within the options I have and maybe through them express my voice by action. Who knows, maybe they want to see how much economic power we really have, but even beyond that, I think there's just too much risk because frankly no one has any clue what will happen from now on.

The plan those 2-3 guys in their smoke filled room agreed to is perfectly designed to ensure that blocks remain full at all times. Today they have reached brownout, by the time segwit, demand would have increased to fill whatever relief it offers, and same by time 2mb hardfork 2017, if that even happens, but even if it does blocks would be full even while including the hardfork capacity by then. And what happens after? We would have just had a hardfork. Obviously we can't have another one we would have just had one.

No, the facts are we have a settlement system and with today being the day we reached brownout level, it's decision time and this time that decision is ours.