Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Aquent]

As much as I love rocks, his proposal is highly controversial, especially right now. It is not yet said which way the pendulum will swing. We are still very much in the midst of it.

So I would recommend some patience. Maybe there will be a right time when such proposal could be seriously considered, but, in my view, right now is not it. So, of course I in no way think he should be censored etc, nonetheless I would say right now is very much not the right time.

 

[freetrader]

@Aquent : you do admit that a fork like @rocks' will ALWAYS be highly controversial, right?

 

[Aquent]

Timing, with any and everything, is of the essence. Maybe that sort of fork would have been the savior a few months back when at bottom, but right now things stand at balance.

As I've previously said and I genuinely mean it, I think rocks is absolutely awesome and I hold him up there with peter, awemany and others, but in my view, right now is in no way the time and, personally, right now, I would speak out against it. Obviously I wouldn't be speaking out against the idea itself, but the timing. I think I was sort of the first one, in here anyway, to suggest the pow forking thing, in the context of the current debate, but right now it is not it is in any way the right time. Still, having it as a ready option would be cool, but actually asking for it to be implemented at this specific point...

I'm probably rambling right now and just saying stuff so don't be swayed by what I say, but, things are very complex as they stand. Simple solutions can be perceived to be easy and easily implemented, but reality is a pastiche. There is a balance to be had and right now, in my view, the balance stands on waiting for a bit.

Obviously others may have a different view and I would not in any way actively oppose them, but nor would I support them, at this specific point.

 

[johnyj]

I suppose you don't understand what "programmable" means.
If you have consensus for a set of opcodes you do not need any consensus at all for any usage of them: a simple P2PK tx or a multisig with nlocktime or a more complex one gets correctly validated (and thus has full consensus) since the very first Bitcoin release that implemented the used opcodes. You do not need a new consensus for any way you combine their usage (i.e.: the program you write with them).

It's human creativity that find new ways to use those opcodes to create something new and more useful, that's why you can use programs as complex as like the browser you are using right now, programmed (or programmable) with a few basic operations (opcodes) that Alan Turing envisaged decades ago.
The consensus on the working of those basic operations is enough to make any program, ever. (That's what "touring complete" means, btw).

I suppose you don't understand what "consensus" means
Consensus means that all the community members, being able to program or not, must reach a consensus on one specific decision. Thus the more complex it is, the longer it takes for them to make a decision, or not be able to make decision at all during their life time

In applications this is seldom a problem since you lose nothing by using or not using an application, you are free to try. But in a financial system where you have lots of money invested, this could be a life and death decision, thus any complex solutions will take extremely long time to evaluate all the possible impacts before everyone is comfortable with it

Do I need to show you that thanks to softforks, new opcodes like OP_CTLV has been introduced in the network in a very short time without any difficulty at all, and without requesting any consensus by final users? They just had to wait miners to adopt latest bitcoin core version.

The fact that you can impose a change without any consensus from end users already indicated that the current decision making process is terrible. The spirit of bitcoin is trusting nobody but the code, but if you blindly believe what is fed to you, then you are responsible for all the potential losses that is caused by your ignorance

For example, mining pools lost over $50K during the 2015 July 04 soft fork accident, just because they don't really understand the dangerous of soft fork and blindly believe what core devs say

We need new opcodes every once a while because Bitcoin scripting language (unlike Ethereum's) is not Turing Complete and hence it can't implement arbitrary complex programs.

You need bitcoin users consensus to agree that you have to implement arbitrary complex programs in bitcoin. Bitcoin script is intentionally designed to be Turing incomplete, just to make sure it focus on its main property as money

Smart contract concept have many security hole and that's why they never really works unless can be enforced by machines (machine maker will be the centralized control point). If you are interested in smart contract we can have another discussion. I have been studying it for years and so far have not find any convincing evidence that it can work without a centralized authority enforcing it

 

[freetrader]

@Aquent : if you don't mind:

It is not yet said which way the pendulum will swing

Can you please tell us what you perceive to be the extremes of this pendulum.

For the sake of argument I would accept a multi-polar pendulum as well instead of a bipolar one.

We are still very much in the midst of it.
...
... right now things stand at balance
...
... in my view, the balance stands on waiting for a bit

I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, but can you tell me:

You are measuring this how? An instrument requires a reference to be properly calibrated, and the reference for your opinion is hopefully reason operating on facts, and not emotion. It is honestly hard to tell, and I can admit to being a little confused myself by this.

things are very complex as they stand

I would like to understand where things stand - are there facts which you can share that support your opinion?

Simple solutions can be perceived to be easy and easily implemented, but reality is a pastiche

Can we attempt to boil this down to a technical or economic argument?

having it as a ready option would be cool, but actually asking for it to be implemented at this specific point...

I agree with the "ready options" stance, but you have to realize that the "asking for it" is literally incompatible with the permissionless nature of Bitcoin.

I feel we should consider how the word "controversial" has been (ab)used in the run-up to our present time in this debate. Handle with care.

 

[johnyj]

@freetrader I'll do this in a bit. I'd like to make some improvements based on the public test a couple weeks ago (which went really well) to help the networks better partition and also get a basic website up. Then I think it makes sense to try announcing it again, hopefully in a couple weeks I've been slammed with day job and family commitments. Anyone open to helping is more than welcome, just PM me.

@rocks I'm interested in your fork and want to try it out. I think action is thousands of times better than talking, has been tired of all the fruitless debates online lately. I've been testing my own fork too

However next week I'll go out for a vacation, can you just postpone it a bit? As I remember, your original activation date is around April 15, block 407xxx, and I'm back April 17

 

[cypherdoc]

everybody should check out Whatsapp. it's badass.

 

[AdrianX]

@cypherdoc I'm in two minds about Whatsapp, on the one hand my family asked me to install it some 6 or 7 years ago when it was predominantly a Nokia app with 1 year of free use - and I told them to just get a better phone plan with free SMS.

fast forward and last year it became the go to communication tool for groups of people, and I couldn't avoid it - apparently over a billion other people can't either. While you can obviously manage privacy settings they're a bit complicated for some one like me.

After installing it and "not" syncing my phone book It has connected me with a huge network of users who have my phone number in some public profile (not to mention Face Book also just added many new accurate "you may know this person connections". It doesn't feel very private. Not to mention I've even received unsolicited spam, so someone out there knows I'm using it.

This latest end to end encryption also leaves me suspicions, after being aquifer by Facebook I'm sure its an NSA mining tool and how offering "encrypted communications" , not to mention my communication history and defiantly my frequency could be saved in the cloud. It's like the NSA have finally found a great tool - my family members who've been using it forever tell me I won't ever need to pay despite having agreed to pay for service after 1 free year as they've never paid for the app.

I'm not sure how you stay in business for all those years with no revenue but I'm sure a network of a billion users is more valuable than a network of 500 million paying customers who would use any number of other free apps if you charged a dollar.

 

[VeritasSapere]

When their service is "free", you are most likely not the customer. You are the product.

Though I do use it myself, skipping through different apps as their privacy policies changed, while trying to convince other people to use alternative apps... A demonstration of the power of network effect I suppose. I have come to choose my battles in regards to privacy.

The second point in regards to the cost of use is also a demonstration of the power of competition. There are analogies and lessons that can be drawn here from this in regards to the blocksize debate.

 

[Epilido]

If you think whatsapp is cool take a look at Telegram
end to end encryption stored on the device only. Works well and free forever.

https://telegram.org/

The wiki page seems straight up crypto anarchy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)

Excerpt from Wikipedia :

Development[edit]
Telegram was launched in 2013 by brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, who previously founded the Russian social network VK, but had to leave the company after it was taken over by the Russian Government.[11][12] Nikolai Durov created the MTProto protocol that is the basis for the messenger, while Pavel provided financial support and infrastructure through his Digital Fortress fund.[13]Axel Neff became a co founder of the company, structuring Telegram LLC in the United States and Digital Fortress.[citation needed]

Telegram is registered as both an English LLP[14] and an American LLC.[15] It does not disclose where it rents offices or which legal entities it uses to rent them, citing the need to "shelter the team from unnecessary influence" and protect users from governmental data requests.[16] The service says that it is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.[17] Durov left Russia and is said to be moving from country to country with a small group of computer programmers.[11]

 

[cypherdoc]

this is why i want Bitcoin to focus on the money function:

What we are doing now is having money's value determined by international currency trading. Ten banks control 77 percent of all currency trading. When currency value is more varied and volatile than the economic activity that it measures, the horizons of economic activity shrink until today the famous "flash boys" trade by the second rather than investing for the future.

Currency trading is by far the biggest industry in the world economy. It is a runaway scandal of money. The banks make money off it. But the rest of us don't even get a measuring stick that's valid to gauge our savings, assure our retirements, or expand investment in business.

Declaring that the government monopoly on money is the source of all monetary evil, Friedrich Hayek, the great Austrian economist, predicted that capitalism would be saved by monetary competition from the private sector, which today can come from bitcoin and a new tie to gold.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/05/the-fed-is-a-god-that-has-failed-george-gilder-commentary.html

 

[albin]

A personal pet theory of mine is that basically almost everything that's going horrifically wrong macreconomically and socially can be traced directly to the Nixon administration:

- Closing the gold window on Bretton Woods leading to the current free-floating forex system and worldwide macro instability... check

-HMO Act bringing in the managed care regime... check

- Massive agricultural subsidies, thus high fructose corn syrup in everything .. check.

- Bank Secrecy Act getting the ball rolling on the end of financial freedom and the single-biggest lever for police state encroachment ... check.

- Expanding the war on drugs to the ludicrous levels we see today and all the associated corruption and socioeconomic and race relations decay... check.

Obviously a lot of this stuff has been in the works prior and after, but Jesus Christ on a cracker, could there be a more perfect storm of disaster?

 

[Dusty]

everybody should check out Whatsapp. it's badass.

Whatsapp is a closed source application using proprietary and undocumented API for it's messaging services. Trusting it because they say they now encrypt conversations is as foolish as trusting the NSA when it tells you that it will never spy you.

 

[freetrader]

@freetrader I'll do this in a bit. I'd like to make some improvements based on the public test a couple weeks ago (which went really well) to help the networks better partition and also get a basic website up. Then I think it makes sense to try announcing it again

Good plan. I was a little surprised to find a SB PublicTest node on the list of connections to my Classic Node as recently as 1 or 2 days ago.

 

[Dusty]

I suppose you don't understand what "consensus" means
Consensus means that all the community members, being able to program or not, must reach a consensus on one specific decision. Thus the more complex it is, the longer it takes for them to make a decision, or not be able to make decision at all during their life time

Yes, that's why I showed you that consensus on some basic codes enables automatically consensus on the combination of that codes.
What's your point then? I can't follow you any more.

The fact that you can impose a change without any consensus from end users already indicated that the current decision making process is terrible. The spirit of bitcoin is trusting nobody but the code, but if you blindly believe what is fed to you, then you are responsible for all the potential losses that is caused by your ignorance

Of course, but that's because 99% of people can't understand these kind of concepts: they'll always rely on some trusted entities because they are not knowledgeable enough to validate le concepts, let alone check the code.
Anyway, the fact that a a lot of people has not followed blindly the core ideas and we are here to discuss and propose possible alternatives looks good to me.

For example, mining pools lost over $50K during the 2015 July 04 soft fork accident, just because they don't really understand the dangerous of soft fork and blindly believe what core devs say

No, you just don't understand what happened: the SPV mining problem was due exactly to the fact that some miners gave up consensus and relied on trusted third parties.
SPV mining means that you don't validate yourself the block you are mining upon,and that was never suggested by core devs but was a policy developed and used by some miners by themself.

So, to better sum up: they did not blindly followed what core devs said, but they did exactly the opposite.

You need bitcoin users consensus to agree that you have to implement arbitrary complex programs in bitcoin. Bitcoin script is intentionally designed to be Turing incomplete, just to make sure it focus on its main property as money

No, that's not why: Satoshi himself envisioned and explained the smart contract concept and that's why he developed a script system instead of a fixed way to move between money between accounts.
That's why even a simple payment from A to B is a specific form of contract.
What Satoshi (quite rightly) did was to limit the scripting capabilities to the bare minimum because that was the most secure way to begin with: programming is very complex and it's better to bootstrap a simple system and then add something when found useful.
That's why I think that in Bitcoin, carefully adding some specific new opcodes that solve real-world problem is much better than having a complex and full-featured scripting language like ethereum.

Let them explore new possibilities, let us understand how and if they'll be used, and after a lot of experience decide if and how add new things to Bitcoin in a safe way.

Smart contract concept have many security hole and that's why they never really works unless can be enforced by machines (machine maker will be the centralized control point). If you are interested in smart contract we can have another discussion. I have been studying it for years and so far have not find any convincing evidence that it can work without a centralized authority enforcing it

While I agree with most of you say, if you restrict the domain of the data you handle to the same where you operate (as Bitcoin does) you do not need external authority nor sources.
[doublepost=1459923988,1459923352][/doublepost]

this is why i want Bitcoin to focus on the money function:

I want that too, but please realize that it's not up you (or me) to decide what people will do with Bitcoin or with any other software they'll adopt.

There is no the difference between me or Cypherdoc saying "bitcoin must only be used for that" and blockstream saying "bitcoin must work this way" except for the reasons they believe are true.

So the best we can do is to give people choice and educate them on the matter, and for who has wealth to put his money where his ideas are.

 

[Zarathustra]

A personal pet theory of mine is that basically almost everything that's going horrifically wrong macreconomically and socially can be traced directly to the Nixon administration:

- Closing the gold window on Bretton Woods leading to the current free-floating forex system and worldwide macro instability... check

-HMO Act bringing in the managed care regime... check

- Massive agricultural subsidies, thus high fructose corn syrup in everything .. check.

- Bank Secrecy Act getting the ball rolling on the end of financial freedom and the single-biggest lever for police state encroachment ... check.

- Expanding the war on drugs to the ludicrous levels we see today and all the associated corruption and socioeconomic and race relations decay... check.

Obviously a lot of this stuff has been in the works prior and after, but Jesus Christ on a cracker, could there be a more perfect storm of disaster?

I guess this is a bit shortsighted.

A personal pet theory of mine is that basically almost everything that's going horrifically wrong socially can be traced directly to the replacement of anarchy by patriarchy (collectivism), which began 10'000 years ago, with the metamorphosis of the homo sapiens into the homo oeconomicus. Humanity never experienced 'good times' since that tragedy began.

http://www.miprox.de/Wirtschaft_allgemein/Martin-Symp.pdf

 

[johnyj]

Yes, that's why I showed you that consensus on some basic codes enables automatically consensus on the combination of that codes.
What's your point then? I can't follow you any more.

These codes means no consensus for anyone that is not a programmer, thus will not help to reach consensus

Of course, but that's because 99% of people can't understand these kind of concepts: they'll always rely on some trusted entities because they are not knowledgeable enough to validate le concepts, let alone check the code.

People have the ability to make their own choice regardless of the technical solution: You don't need to know how to make an airplane to be able to travel by air. Many technically superior product have been proved a market failure too. To reach a consensus just means the community agree on one specific change that they are satisfied with, has nothing to do with its technology content, they will all interpret from their own angle, and I believe many of them are much smarter than programmers financial and economy wise

No, you just don't understand what happened: the SPV mining problem was due exactly to the fact that some miners gave up consensus and relied on trusted third parties.
SPV mining means that you don't validate yourself the block you are mining upon,and that was never suggested by core devs but was a policy developed and used by some miners by themself.

If it is a commercial software, it is the programmers need to compensate the loss, since the change is imposed by programmers and they have not explicitly tested all the possible scenario including SPV mining. Because without change there would never be a loss, so who have made the change is responsible for the loss

Of course this is open source and every one use it at their own risk, and that's enough reason to not trust core devs any more: I use your software, and I lose money, and you say that is my fault. Ok, please give me a reason why should I use your software next time? To lose money and get blamed again?

 

[Dusty]

Of course this is open source and every one use it at their own risk, and that's enough reason to not trust core devs any more: I use your software, and I lose money, and you say that is my fault. Ok, please give me a reason why should I use your software next time? To lose money and get blamed again?

First: who is "me" and "you"?

Second: I've said the exact opposite: the miners that lost their money were using a proprietary modification of the core software, so they can only blame themselves for what happened.

That's why your sentence:

For example, mining pools lost over $50K during the 2015 July 04 soft fork accident, just because they don't really understand the dangerous of soft fork and blindly believe what core devs say

is not only false, but what happened was exactly the opposite.

That is my last reply to you because I find like you are trolling me: you don't seem to get the point and to be able to follow logical reasoning, I'm sorry.

 

[freetrader]

If it is a commercial software, it is the programmers need to compensate the loss, since the change is imposed by programmers and they have not explicitly tested all the possible scenario including SPV mining. Because without change there would never be a loss, so who have made the change is responsible for the loss

I don't follow - what commercial software are you talking about here? SPV mining software?

Just to re-iterate: Bitcoin itself is not commercial software, there is no company selling the software.
It's open source, by using it you agree to the (MIT) license, otherwise you need to write your own and take your own responsibility.

Of course that might not stop someone from suing ...

 

[cypherdoc]

Hey @albin

Someone is starting to think like you. Sounds like a reasonable idea to me:

When Lightning Network is released, who here is ready to lock away a year's salary in a Starbucks payment channel in order to scale?
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4dklt7/when_lightning_network_is_released_who_here_is/

http://reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4dklt7/when_lightning_network_is_released_who_here_is/