Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Ivanhoe]

Why did he not choose to simply come back as Satoshi to endorse the blocksize increase? Does anybody have any thoughts on that?

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Source: [1]

This sounds very responsible. Right? Right?

Because if there is ever an existential risk to Bitcoin, there can be only one person in the world to trust with coming up with the solution.

I have now come to appreciate what a gigantic ego this man has. Black hole sized.

[1]
I just skimmed the AMA responses and was a little horrified. But then I thought, fuck that.

Gregory Maxwell doesn't download a pdf from todds website, he "received a copy of a leaked early draft."

Maxwell doesn't read papers, he does peer-reviews.

In fact Maxwell just repeats what I wrote on my blog immediately after Todds post. He's right, but you don't need to be genius to be.
--


Another thing with some loose relation to the messy AMA and that evil scenarios how to regulate bitcoin:

0.12.1 implemented some new scripts that are needed for Lighning Network's payment channels. I'm still wrapping my head throught this unbelievable complicated thing, but if I'm not wrong, the idea of the new scripts in 0.12.1 is, that you can create a transaction that is revocable under certain conditions. Isn't this the perfect foundation for some kind of regulations? Like you say exchanges are only allowed to write outputs with some kind of script inside that enables the government to revoce a transaction if big data says this transaction should not be allowed?

Isn't this kind of regulation easier than "bribing the miners"?

Just an idea while I try to understand what is currently made with bitcoins. At one moment I startet to like Lightning - because it solves capacity-problems, latency-problems (confirmation times) and privacy-problems ... on the other side I realized how severe the changes are, bitcoin is currently undergoing:

- rbf kills zero-conf under the condition of full blocks
- 0.12.1 enables crazy scripts noone understands
- 0.12.2 will enable Segwit and with it a new fee policy, a new adress format (or not?) and a lot of possible new scripts enabled by softforks

While I did not see a wallet that is able to implement multi-sig in a user-friendly way.

 

[awemany]

Gregory Maxwell doesn't download a pdf from todds website, he "received a copy of a leaked early draft."

Maxwell doesn't read papers, he does peer-reviews.

LOL.

 

[cypherdoc]

@cypherdoc:

Neither do I believe that selfish mining is a serious threat. The point I'm trying to make is that given Eyal and Sirer's assumptions, the paper is mathematically correct. You can argue that their assumptions are not realistic (what you appear to be doing), or you can show that they made an error in their analysis (I don't believe they have). Craig Wright did neither.



This is what I originally thought until I read the paper in more detail. They do NOT actually assume that the race has 50:50 odds. They solve the problem for all odds between 0:100 and 100:0. This is the γ coefficient in their paper. With γ=1 (the selfish miner wins all races), the selfish mining attack is profitable regardless of the miner's hash power. With γ=0 (the selfish miner loses all races), the selfish mining attack is still profitable but only if the miner's hash power is greater than 33.3% of the network total. This is summarized in Eyal and Sirer's Fig. 2:

Yes, I completely agree. The attack only becomes profitable after the difficulty re-adjusts and long after the world has realized that the attack is taking place. I don't think miners would take this risk.



My take on Sirer is that when he first got into Bitcoin, he wasn't taking it that seriously. He came across to us as a total dick after publishing his selfish mining paper (he tweeted that Bitcoin was fatally flawed and that everyone should sell their coins...IMO bad behaviour for a CS professor). Since then, I think he's realized both that Bitcoin is a goldmine for future research and that our community is full of serious researchers and developers who he now respects. I think you two might actually get along if you had met under different circumstances.



I agree again. The Eyal and Sirer model is very simple and doesn't take into account the complexity of human behaviour. But as an academic paper, their work is still correct (given their assumptions) and valueable (given the research and thought they've inspired).

from the paper:

We denote by γ the ratio of honest miners that choose to mine on the pool’s block

why would any honest miners decide to mine on the pool's (SM's) block? by defn, the SM has to "listen" for a public block announcement meaning that the public block has already been released and is actively propagating across the network (and probably via the relay network). the SM has to then "react" by pushing his block to try and achieve a 50:50 network distribution btwn 2 separate chains that will be sustained for at least 10 min. i don't think that's possible given the propagation lead the public chain has. furthermore, to achieve a 50:50 network split, you could imagine that the honest and SM attacker would have to be exactly on opposite ends of the planet to achieve this. what's the likelihood of that?

 

[Justus Ranvier]

It's good that we have a public example of Greg Maxwell admitting that a soft fork (ChainAnchor allows miners to tighten the validity criteria, not loosen them) could be a potential existential threat to Bitcoin.

This means every place where soft forks are mentioned in the general sense, we can replace the term "soft fork" with "potential existential threat to Bitcoin". Just like we could for the term "hard fork."

Example: "BIP-9 allows miners to vote on 29 potential existential threats to Bitcoin in parallel."

That's the kind of thing that happens when people take the shortcut of sophism, even when they think it's for a good cause.

Remember that the #bitcoin-wizards were offended by the beginning that anyone outside their circle had the temerity to insist they explain what they were doing to allow for outsiders to make an independent judgement on whether or not their changes to Bitcoin should be implemented. After all, that's why the Challenger blew up.

They never seriously accepted the argument that outsiders had agency, so they didn't bother ensuring their answers to questions were actually correct. They wanted segwit and not a block size increase, so they argued that segwit was safer because it was a soft fork and soft forks are safer than hard forks.

It is not true that soft forks are safer than hard forks - soft forks are at least as dangerous as hard forks - but arguing that they were always safer met the needed of the moment so that's what they used. (Who are the hoi polloi to demand valid arguments anyway? They should be grateful that the #bitcoin-wizards deign to speak at them at all.)

That kind of reckless disregard for truth and objective methodology can work in the short term, but it can't go on forever.

 

[Richy_T]

I thought about the relay network when I wrote that. As fast as you could listen for a new block announcement would be as fast as a new public block can propagate. You'll always be behind.

True. But a bit less behind than if you were working with multi-hop propagation.

 

[cypherdoc]

@Richy_T

all the public chain needs to defeat the SM chain is to convince 51% of the network.

 

[Norway]

I'm so exited!

 

[freetrader]

> I'm so exited!

LOL, don't leave now, it's only getting fun!

Let's instead make some bets at what time Wright will publish the next update.
Has anyone been keeping track?

I'm placing my bet on 5pm UTC (today, that is).

 

[Norway]

@freetrader
LOL, I thought about the same time. Because it's 24 hours after the previous one.

 

[Inca]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hu9cx/bitcoin_expert_it_was_a_mistake_to_blog_about/

The fact that /r/bitcoin is openly allowing posts like those contained in the above thread about Gavin is damning. Any vestige of doubt that was in my mind that Blockstream and Core are not an attack on bitcoin has evaporated.

Whilst they cling to power over bitcoin governance it is deeply damaging the scene.

Literally the best thing that could happen for bitcoin now is for Satoshi to post a signed message distancing the current Core developers and roadmap from his original vision, naming in particular ego maniacs like Maxwell.

Bitcoin needs to be rid of these bastards who have in all likelihood cost us at least one price bubble already.

@Justus Ranvier : the logic is impeccable as always, but being on the right side of the argument made little difference thus far in this struggle

 

[cypherdoc]

@Inca

yep, /u/smartassbanking is all over the place spewing venom. as he has been for years.
[doublepost=1462378498,1462377813][/doublepost]@NewLiberty apparently deleted his acct: https://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-2#post-73

lotsa crazy shit going on. BitcoinBelle?:

 

[Melbustus]

@cypherdoc - I do not understand the current stuff with haq4good or bitcoinbelle at all, nor the history with Ian Grigg, etc.

And I really wish I didn't have to care. Satoshi drama is always annoying, but I have to care to some extent given the possibility of an unpredictable deception-loving showman* controlling 1.1M BTC.


* whether or not he's Satoshi, or associated with Satoshi, or not Satoshi, the description fits unfortunately.

 

[Norway]

Some weired shit here:

The reddit user Stoffolln paid for a reddit ad showing up on my phone.

https://www.reddit.com/user/Stoffolln

Screenshot of the ad:

The ad links to this story:
http://silliconangle.com/blog/2016/05/03/Craig-Wright-faces-criminal-charges/index.html

 

[Justus Ranvier]

the logic is impeccable as always, but being on the right side of the argument made little difference thus far in this struggle

Logic and truth always win in the long term, but frequently lose in the short term due to the efforts of skilled attackers.

The struggle is about accelerating our progress to the long term so that we arrive before it's too late.

 

[Norway]

The newssite is a fake version of siliconangle.com. It has two l's in it's address.

WHOIS info on silliconangle.com:

Domain Name: SILLICONANGLE.COM
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 48
Whois Server: whois.enom.com
Referral URL: http://www.enom.com
Name Server: DNS1.NAMECHEAPHOSTING.COM
Name Server: DNS2.NAMECHEAPHOSTING.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 03-feb-2016
Creation Date: 03-feb-2016
Expiration Date: 03-feb-2017

Doesn't tell me who owns this site.

Who would do this?

EDIT: How can I archive this fake website for the future?
EDIT2: Got it!
https://web.archive.org/web/20160504165446/http://silliconangle.com/blog/2016/05/03/Craig-Wright-faces-criminal-charges/index.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20160504165647/http://silliconangle.com/index.html

http://whois.domaintools.com/silliconangle.com

 

[Richy_T]

@Richy_T

all the public chain needs to defeat the SM chain is to convince 51% of the network.

Yep, I didn't mean to imply it made the strategy valid.

 

[cypherdoc]

oh great. JVP has brg444troll all over his ass:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4hp6qe/psa_joseph_vaughn_perling_aka_newlibertystandard/

 

[bluemoon]

@Norway

Looks like a copy of siliconangle.com apart from the defamatory story about Craig Wright.

Someone's dirty tricks department spreading misinformation among reddit users.

 

[cypherdoc]

@bluemoon

yeah, i wonder who?

@Justus Ranvier being practical again: