Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[albin]

Is Flexcap actually a trojan horse to get rid of the 21 million?

The mechanism doesn't work if there's no block reward to forfeit in exchange for producing a bigger block.

 

[awemany]

Hey guys!

Just pondered: Isn't a properly hardforking Bitcoin instead of a softfork actually more of a sign that the community is closer to consensus?

 

[freetrader]

@albin : maaku is pointing to this link as w.r.t. flexcap:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/hong-kong/a-flexible-limit-trading-subsidy-for-larger-blocks/

and writes this summary on Reddit:

The simple form of the idea is this: allow the block size to increase if there is sufficient fee to pay for the difference in block size, measured as a ratio of the total revenue of the block proportional to the size of the increase. This is enforced by requiring that a block larger than the base limit give up a corresponding amount of the subsidy + fees. At regular intervals (e.g. every 2016 blocks) the base limit is adjusted to be an average of the actual adjusted limits over that period.

Because the miners pay a real cost to increase the block size (and are paid dividends to decrease it), they only would do so when the transaction fees are high enough to justify it. Thus, it is the users (by paying fee) which drive growth of the block size limit.

I wouldn't put too much stock in this idea since he also claims "We have entirely exhausted the capacity for on chain scaling."

 

[molecular]

Hey guys!

Just pondered: Isn't a properly hardforking Bitcoin instead of a softfork actually more of a sign that the community is closer to consensus?

Definitely. In fact a proper hardfork "ensures" consensus by kicking non-consenting nodes off the network. It's a much more honest and clear approach than softforking.

Imagine we hardforked to Bitcoin Unlimited (as an example). That would send a signal "to the outside" that we have found -- at least for now -- a workable solution (or workaround) for our scaling issue and that we have buried the differences for now. Trust in valuation would sky-rocket and so would price.

 

[Norway]

Banned from North Korea, lol!

 

[Erdogan]

@Fatman3002
Got a story published in a big norwegian newspaper. It's written in weired viking-speak, and the title means "Blockchain technology is useless to banks".

http://www.aftenposten.no/viten/Blockchain-teknologien-er-ubrukelig-for-banker-8439542.html

"A database that nobody controls, and it is only useful for money".

Glitters.

 

[Inca]

The price is rising on low volume out of The Great Wedge. One difficulty I have with bitcoin is that if I didn't sell at 160$ then why would I sell if we bubble back to $1200 again! The price returning to retest such levels makes the claim that bitcoin will become the universal permissionless payment ledger for the internet that much bolder, and as such makes the argument against holding that much more difficult to counter.

As the market cap rises so does bitcoin's ability to soak up more capital, which becomes a virtuous circle of positive feedback incorporating increasing levels of confidence and capital to support it as an asset layer.

One thought I have been ruminating is the idea I see promulgated by people who wish the price to fall that the halving is 'priced in'. My first reaction to this is that such people actually simply don't understand markets, because understanding markets is about understanding how people and in particular crowds of people think in unison during price movements. Prices move and human brains fit that change to a narrative comprised of news and the flow of current and future events. In one sense the market is constantly pricing the halving in every second of the day. The difficulty is that the price is also constantly changing every second of the day and as the halving approaches closer it will become more newsworthy and the acute knowledge will disseminate into the minds of those who have been watching bitcoin for some time and wanting to jump on board. At this stage anyone looking at charts will see that bitcoin could plunge down lower or burst back higher to retest the mid-600's and beyond. As I wrote on bitcointalk about six months ago, the end of the long bear market will seem completely obvious in retrospect, but when the price was hovering at 200$ it took balls to keep buying bitcoin!

Each successive halving should probably generate diminishing returns to the investor, but what it does is hopefully generate a media and speculation frenzy around bitcoin investing every four years - well done Satoshi.

The price could travel either way over the next few months (given our profound disagreements with the direction of Core development with regard to the original Satoshi design). But a situation where the price casually takes out $500 dollars in the next few weeks and then spikes upwards suddenly as the halving hits the headlines seems such an easy situation to engineer that I hope it occurs. One of the main reasons in my mind for why there will certainly be at least one more bitcoin bubble is that there is too much money to be made for those orchestrating such an event for it not to occur.

We are at $450 now and there is no FOMO taking place. Hold on to your hats, as July approaches things are about to get interesting!

 

[Richy_T]

I don't think the halving is fully priced yet but I also don't think the outcome of the halving is properly understood by many yet, especially with the lack of the safety valve of allowing more transactions per block.

If the price rises significantly close to the halving, I will likely move a proportion of my funds to an alt to hedge.
[doublepost=1461423671][/doublepost]Also, expect to see an emergency hardfork for difficulty adjustment from Core. This should be seen as an admission of incompetence. I think this is probably a point we need to make clear ahead of the fact.

 

[bucktotal]

A very rare specimen of political guy with a working brain made some surprising statements about Bitcoin: http://www.coindesk.com/european-parliament-member-blockchain-get-some-bitcoins/

thats Tony G, a wealthy business man and big time gambler. while he may have turned politician, he most likely own a lot of bitcoins, hence the interest and statements that everyone should buy some. he's quite savvy.

 

[BldSwtTrs]

Haha it's been a long time I haven't seen this video. Glad to see this good old Tony G is a bitcoiner and politician now.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Why spinoffs are a beautiful solution that everyone in all factions should be drooling over, even Core fans as they stand to make big money on us Classic/BU supporters (if they are correct that Core is better )

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/bitcoin-unlimited-with-a-new-genesis-block.1109/#post-18388

 

[Justus Ranvier]

Why spinoffs are a beautiful solution that everyone in all factions should be drooling over

If I'm choosing which software I want to run, I'm going to prefer a project that has an undiluted goal of preserving the Bitcoin ledger.

If the developers of a Bitcoin client have also created a financial stake in a competing ledger, then their interests and mine as a Bitcoin user are no longer as aligned as would be otherwise possible.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@Justus Ranvier

What you're saying would apply to an altcoin.

The great part with a spinoff is it's the same ledger in every sense we'd want it to be, yet a separate ledger in every sense we'd want it to be. Two ledger-copies form one total ledger, and by default no stake changes happen for you regardless of relative value changes of the two ledger-copies.

Whatever interest some devs have in another copy within that total ledger structure, it doesn't affect you unless you want it to. If their interests pull them in a different way than you'd like, you're free to aggressively trade against them if you want, or just wait for them to fail (and for their stake to return to your preferred ledger-copy once again) if you prefer to remain totally safe in all scenarios.

--

Relatedly, we're missing a big opportunity to sell the spinoff idea to Core fans.

"Imagine if there was a way to take the money of every Gavincoin shill, every /r/btc wingnut, every hapless pot-smoking Classic fanatic. Imagine if every Hearnia channeled a new wave of revenue into your pocket by increasing the number of BTC you held. With spinoffs, that XX% of deluded suckers in the Bitcoin space give all their money to you in misguided bets on their Classic/XT/BU pipe dreams!"

Whatever XX is in terms of total percentage of BTC held by Core nonbelievers, Core fans stand to increase their BTC holdings by up to XX percent. If it's 20%, spinoffs mean the opportunity for Core fans to make a quick 20% return (if they are right) while simultaneously bankrupting all the nonbelievers. A great purge that they make money from. Beautiful

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@johnyj

That's not how the mathematics of ledger copying works, and this is absolutely crucial to get so I'll explain it from another angle.

When you copy a ledger *there is no inflation whatsoever*. Inflation means *dilution* of some people's stake (of course entailing an increase in someone else's stake, as in QE). Inflation in that context is NOT effected by say (suppose by magic) simply doubling everyone's bank balance and every bill denomination in everyone's pocket; that would merely require rewriting price tags and such, no actual economic difference, no one having their stake diminished or expanded. No inflation in the usual negative sense.

Likewise, copying the ledger dilutes no one's stake. It is a 100% economically neutral accounting change. 42 million coins makes no difference if everyone now has exactly 2 BTC for every 1 BTC they had before. The total "money supply" is just an arbitrary term of convenience; what matters is how much of the total ledger you own. If you own 1% of the total ledger now, you will always own 1% of the total ledger no matter how many copies there are and how the coins on those copies shift in value relative to one another.

Imagine taking photos of the same pie and placing them side by side and shrinking or expanding some of the photos. If you had 1/3 of the total original pie, you always have 1/3 of every pie copy and also you always have 1/3 of the total amount of pie, regardless of shrinkage or expansion (or even extinction of some of the copies).

To repeat the point made in comments above, "I have 1 BTC out of 21M total BTC" is just a more easily graspable way of saying, "I have a 21-millionth of the total Bitcoin ledger." The latter is more unwieldy but it avoids such confusions as thinking forking or spinning off entails anything that is in any way like QE. "I have a 21-millionth of the total Bitcoin ledger" is a statement that clearly doesn't change no matter how many copies of the ledger you make, much like a stock split doesn't actually increase or decrease anyone's stake despite now having more shares - or for that matter the point Peter Schiff tripped up on, that infinite divisibility of BTC doesn't imply inflation.

It's all the same error. Thinking in terms of percentages or proportions of the total rather than "coins" clears up the confusion.

Visual explanation of this:

 

[Justus Ranvier]

@Zangelbert Bingledack The thread you linked to is about creating an altcoin via a new genesis block.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Yeah, but the conversation turns to talk about spinoffs and fork arbitrage. That's what I'm talking about (I'd never support an altcoin )

 

[AdrianX]

Blocstream investor Eric Schmidt, recently joined a Department of Defense advisory panel.

I'm more suspicious of Blockstreams insistence to push for off chain growth over on-chain growth (restricting of the blockchain) for Bitcoin than ever.

It seems like a subversive way to bundle a bunch of undesirable changes in the next hard fork.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/21/us-tech-industry-government-ties-white-house-twitter-uber-china-kathy-chen

 

[Justus Ranvier]

@AdrianX

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Bitcoin:

 

[AdrianX]

@AdrianX

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

Yes I read that when you first posted it. The article I posted just confirmed it for me. I guess Google issues in China have little to to with freedom as we understand it. Not to mention Eric Schmidt's visit to North Korea probably was the basis for a comedy.