Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Cconvert2G36]

Very disappointing article from Slush. That someone who's been involved so closely and for so long could view Core's actions as anything other than corporate steering and capture... (listing out all the contributing devs like they were somehow equally behind the direction chosen by the BS clique.) Making light of those who do see it, and have warned about it the entire time... terming them conspiracy theorists. My hands just drop, perhaps this is the beginning of the end of the Bitcoin experiment for me, too. I really admired Slush, his former statements and actions were an important strand in the shreds of hope I had left.

The excitement about the future, the limitless possibilities, it's all just been turning to ash lately. The gmax treehouse is just going to ride this first mover pony as long as they can, and miners' fear of uncertainty is running us right down the long road of irrelevance. All made possible with the centralized control of information, while using overblown fear of centralization as a tool of control... just like in good 'ol meatspace... it's pretty disgusting.

I've been over-invested in BTC for a long time, did quite a bit of diversification around 440-460 this year, and I don't see that trend reversing until Bitcoin's "core" trajectory changes. I've moved my meager hash to F2pool for the time being, and will be selling all the hardware soon. For the first time since 2011, I won't be participating in this upgrade cycle. There's still a chance some exchange rate pain will encourage the miners to change course, but frankly, I don't want to be along for that ride. I welcome any kind of "segwit consensus/halving" rally as I slip out the side door.

It's been a pleasure reading many opinions here that align very closely with my own, if not for many of you guys, I would have washed my hands of the whole thing already. We are not alone, and the fight is not over...I'm not going away, and I'll continue to serve in the ideological battle. I just can't, in good conscience, have a meaningful portion of my net worth tied up in something I think is on the wrong track.

A monopoly cannot exist without barriers to entry, and some highly "technical" thinkers are seemingly committed to learning that the hard way.

 

[megadeth]

Sad to see another old-timer lose faith.
@Cconvert2G36

 

[freetrader]

Slush has written a quite balanced article where it seems like it does not want to face directly core:
https://medium.com/@slush/contentious-blocksize-wars-6fd7c07f9d90

His support for Core does explain why he's been resisting calls to split up the non-voting hashpower in proportion to the cast votes. One can debate about what the fair course of action is, but it's undeniable that his choice favors Core. And it's his right to make that decision, no doubt about it.

The rational choice imo would be for Classic miners to move to a more supportive pool.

 

[adamstgbit]

@megadeth
He's not the only old timer losing faith....
bitcoin is faced with a hard choice (maximum decartelization Vs increased capacity ) core is using this hard choice to justify making the wrong choice! clearly being influenced by their blockstream project's potential profitability.

 

[Inca]

Uh oh. I'm rumbled.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4biob5/research_into_instantaneous_vote_behavior_in/

EDIT: I will post the logs and source from my reddit vote manipulation project later this week.

EDIT2: and the top ten is a who's who of shills and sock puppets for the Core dev's..

 

[freetrader]

The most alarming thing about this data to me is that specific users are being targeted, apparently based solely on their political views

Who would have thought that happens in /r/Bitcoin.

"You must be naive if you think it'll have no effect. I've moderated forums since long before Bitcoin (some quite large), and I know how moderation affects people. Long-term, banning XT from /r/Bitcoin will hurt XT's chances to hijack Bitcoin. There's still a chance, but it's smaller. (This is improved by the simultaneous action on bitcointalk.org, bitcoin.it, and bitcoin.org)" -Theymos (Oct 2015)

Source

 

[rocks]

The original vision of Satoshi will be upheld in the alternative cryptocurrencies.

This.

The vision will follow the cryptocurrency with the most utility. Increased utility drives increased usage, which increases holding of the asset.

Despite all of the infrastructure that has been built around Bitcoin (exchanges, merchants, etc), if people cannot use Bitcoin directly then Bitcoin will have no value. Any alternative that has better utility and more direct access will easy beat Bitcoin in the end. Blockstream and most miners have demonstrated zero understanding of this, and I think the odds of Bitcoin scaling are quite low at this point.

There are only two options: One is to find and move holdings over to altcoins with greater utility, but this destroys the value of long-term holdings. The second is to hard fork and gain acceptance, this preserves long-term holdings but requires enough Bitcoiners to follow.

 

[adamstgbit]

when i think about the "second layer solution"

 

[albin]

I think this is fairly common amongst core supporters.

Could it be that a lot of people are simply walking on Gregshells?

What Pierce had to say on the podcast was somewhat baffling, it sounded as though the private conversations he purported to have with Core devs were way more indeterminate than Maxwell's half-assed post-conference wrap-up be-all-end-all forgone conclusion of a "roadmap".

 

[AdrianX]

This.

There are only two options: One is to find and move holdings over to altcoins with greater utility, but this destroys the value of long-term holdings. The second is to hard fork and gain acceptance, this preserves long-term holdings but requires enough Bitcoiners to follow.

I think your underselling the second option the one you're working on which I see as the only viable one and only necessary one if Blockstream do manage to hold on to the reins of power. All holding are preserved and its just dependant on the demise of the Blockstream vision.

 

[cypherdoc]

anyone have the Lombrozzo podcast link?

 

[cypherdoc]

i'm looking for both a stock mkt roll and gold roll right here:

looking good:

 

[VeritasSapere]

I think your underselling the second option the one you're working on which I see as the only viable one and only necessary one if Blockstream do manage to hold on to the reins of power. All holding are preserved and its just dependant on the demise of the Blockstream vision.

It might not be able to compete with the alternative cryptocurrencies that are already out there. Which is part of the reason why I favor keeping the PoW algorithm since that is one of the few advantages that such a genesis fork would have.

I am starting to think that the Bitcoin community overall wants what Core is giving to them. That people within the Bitcoin community might just be to arrogant and loyal towards Core. I am starting to think that maybe they deserve the consequences of their actions, it is what many of them believe and want after all. I suppose what I am saying here is that they might succeed in creating their crippledcoin no matter how ridiculous we might think it is. They might even forever remain happy with what they have created, even as Bitcoin becomes completely out competed, obsolesced and overtaken by real cryptocurrencies that do represent the original vision of Satoshi.

 

[cypherdoc]

look what has happened to the banks since i called the top last May:

 

[AdrianX]

@VeritasSapere I think we need to consider all probabilities and then weight them.

I'm not confident that the one you describe has very high probability of manifesting, yet it's real.

I'm not your average bitcoiner so I can only speak for myself and my observations. I think what rocks is doing is important, I hope it's redundant.

Bitcoin offers a break from the financial Hegemony, the way Core is headed will result in more of the same and I think an above average number of bitcoiners are independent thinkers and will make the correct choice when the time comes.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@VeritasSapere

I think what you're describing is exactly what won't happen. That scenario is one only a Blockstream employee could love.

As @adamstgbit implied above, Core only gets support based on people's confidence that Core will raise the blocksize soon, or that Core's solutions will save the day soon.

When it comes to the austerity policy Greg seems to tacitly hold, that "if Bitcoin must stagnate indefinitely to remain 100% verifiably secure/decentralized then Bitcoin must stagnate indefinitely," I don't think there are many outside of BS in that camp - and most of those few who are will have a change of heart once they see what it means for the price (hopefully with the benefit of comparison to a soaring fork or spinoff price).

After all, despite all the venom in the arguments, we are united by the fact that outside BS just about everyone is a hodler first and foremost.

 

[Zarathustra]

His support for Core does explain why he's been resisting calls to split up the non-voting hashpower in proportion to the cast votes. One can debate about what the fair course of action is, but it's undeniable that his choice favors Core. And it's his right to make that decision, no doubt about it.

The rational choice imo would be for Classic miners to move to a more supportive pool.

I like classic love. Still, at this moment, I'm with the whore devils ...

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

german magazine coinspondent.de made short Email-Interviews with 3 Bitcoin-users and 3 "bitcoin-pros" (working with bitcoin, including me). One question was about the blocksize.

From all 6 people not a single one said: we don't need to raise it or Segregated Witness is enough. about the half said they don't know, and the other half said we should raise the blocksize.

https://coinspondent.de/2016/03/23/so-lebendig-ist-bitcoin-die-antworten-teil-2/

I made a survey in the german bitcoin economy in june 2015 (!). I made a survey on the blog (301 users) and 4 CEOs.

Result: 50% of the users are pro bigger blocks, 25 against and 25 don't know.

Two CEOs have been explicitly for bigger blocks, and two don't know but tend to bigger blocks.

Interesting: the CEO of genesis mining supported Gavin Andresens proposal to raise the blocksize to 20mb (!!!!!). You might know that he signed the hongkong contract to not run any software supporting blocks larger than 1mb.

http://bitcoinblog.de/2015/06/10/das-meint-die-deutsche-bitcoin-szene-zur-blocksize-debatte/

And now r/bitcoin says there is a massive vote manipulating to downvote small block posts and to upvote big block posts. Sure. If the results of our surveys are in any way representative and not a black swan (or a valid block header) in the ocean of randomness you actually need a massive amount of manipulation to create the image that the overwhelming majority is not for bigger blocks and that the small block camp has many supporters outside their echo chambering irc-channels and self-moderated threads on bitcointalk.

 

[cypherdoc]

Hmm, Good news. But how does slush solve so many blocks so close?

 

[Inca]

For those who are curious I have just concatenated the logs of the reddit voting bot i have been running since mid January. It has been a busy bee.

http://expirebox.com/download/4b00467e360a4f70c9f5e058c5241e47.html

EDIT:
Who is up and downvoted was entirely my decision based upon who I decided was trolling or unfairly being downvoted despite making entirely valid attempts at appropriate conversation on /r/bitcoin during the toxic weeks of the blocksize debate.

At no time was more than a single instance of this running in the cloud (and I could have run many versions, or made the script cycle through multiple accounts to leverage the effect if had wanted) so it really acted as a single symbolic lone voice of protest against the censorship on /r/bitcoin by theymos and his cronies. I also could have made it far more subtle and varied the time between post identification and downvote, or simply added a degree of randomness of whether to downvote or not to sow further seeds of doubt. But this was a protest and meant to be obvious to those who have not been playing fair.

Oh and finally whilst not everyone will agree with such methods, when the opposing team is cheating through banning and censoring opinions they dislike rather than debating the content and validity of arguments, then fair is fair in my book.