Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

satoshis_sockpuppet

Active Member
Feb 22, 2016
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3,312
I have repeated this many times, nobody sees other implementations as an attack. Classic is an attack because it aims to eliminate a consensus rule, locking in significant opposition at the time of activation, as part of a deliberate and stated aim of changing the rules on a significant part of the network, against their will. Please can you stop mischaracterizing this as if people regard any alternative implementation as an attack. This mischaracterisation causes unhelpful confusion and animosity. Why do you insists on making this false and destructive claim?
A few post earlier you made clear, that rules might be evil etc. I don't see where an "attack" to remove an evil rule might be doing anything wrong.
It is an implementation that offers a (technical) rule change. This technical rule change is there to avoid or revert a social rule change to the way bitcoin works. That' all.

I am not saying launching this attack is immoral, I just think it is vital that Bitcoin has the incentives in place to ensure the attack is defeated. The attack is being defeated by participants acting freely.
  • 95% of miners are not participating in Classic
  • 82% of nodes are not participating in Classic
  • 85% of developers are not participating in Classic
  • 85% of investors, in the only polls which exists, do not want Classic.
I therefore do not see what you are complaining about.
I don't see what you are complaining about, why are arguing against Classic here? You can be happy, the attack has been fend off in your book.
You see it as a sign of a working network, I see it as a sign of a weak network. And if you look at the drain of money towards altcoins you can see that I'm not the only one seeing it as a bad sign.

, give strong consensus a chance.
Strong consensus isn't defined. You can say it is 51 %, 75%, 95%, 100%.
And I am not interested in the Bitcoin, Core envisions. So honestly I don't think there is a lot of common ground for consensus. If summer 2017 is going to be the date for a 2 MB HF I will move my investments to a saner economy.

just choose 95% and 6 months and get it done.
Imho it's pretty easy. After the halving or shortly before miners have a small time window to support Classic and get Bitcoin back on track. If they don't, Bitcoin is fucked and we are past the point of no return. 2 MB blocks 2017 isn't going to be enough for Bitcoin.
I am very certain, that Bitcoin isn't the number one cryptocurrency any more, if we don't have blocks > 1MB before the end of 2016. 6 months grace period isn't going to do the trick.
 

Richy_T

Well-Known Member
Dec 27, 2015
1,085
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No, it was introduced as a softfork. There has never been a hardfork.
OK. Yup. I guess my point was that it was done at a time when such a rule change had no consequence and thus had no effective opposition other than, perhaps, jgarzik

I really see very little difference in the effect of the change though. If you were happily mining 1.5MB blocks before the change (admittedly, no one was) and everyone else integrates the 1MB limit, you are forced to upgrade or have all your blocks rejected.
 
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BldSwtTrs

Active Member
Sep 10, 2015
196
583
To me it's a conundrum to understand why the miners act the way they do.

I only see 3 possibilities:
- Current miners are a bunch of retards who will get clear out the market soon and be replaced by cleverer people.
- POW incentives are fundamentally broken. Miners are not retarded, they are rightly optimizing there expected utility which happens to be orthogonal to the long-term network value.
- We are all wrong on this thread, the miners and Maxwell are right.
 
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AdrianX

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
2,097
5,797
bitco.in
@BldSwtTrs there are many other options,

Just to name a few one explanation for the miners disturbing response to keeping Blockstream's / Core growth imposed limit, might be they have a relationship with their software providers and that relationship is still strong, (Core Developers say "trust us we've got your back, we've delivered in the past so why not trust us now".)

Or they realise the competition and the business is going to get tough and potentially devastating with every halving and it's unclear how much income can be extracted from fees and how the competitive landscape looks when the security subsidy is small. (here again Blockstream Core have come to the table with a hansom offer to "Core the Road" and manage the risk provided they run their software, this wolf in sheep's clothing has above average weighting imo)

There is also the very hard reality of the centrally controlled Relay Network that almost all miners have come to depend on to reduce orphan risk, (keeping this centralise leverage over miners is now part of Blockstream' / Core's strategy) Miners will not want to see it undermined as whoever is not part of this network will lose significant income and leaving it voluntarily guarantees loss.

All the issues have tested solutions, Gavin imo has his finger on the plus he's doing the right things.That end of level meme earlier made me realise there are intelligences at work that he has failed to understand if this was poker Gavin may have played his "we don't need a leader card too soon" and now there is an army of trolls professional and ignorant celebrities who are marginalising those developers who have the solutions so they can maintain control. (its funny but they are now the end of level bosses.)
 

albin

Active Member
Nov 8, 2015
931
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Out of interest why do you think Gavin is wrong when he says Blockstream acts in good faith?
Politeness and social etiquette is a very complex endeavor.

Just based on the manifest content of his statements, devoid of any analysis of context, his position could be interpreted quite rightly as anything from the literally propositional to the exact opposite but just expressing an excess of decorum.
 

bluemoon

Active Member
Jan 15, 2016
215
966
What makes Bitcoin powerful is the ability for different people, with different ideologies and who may be enemies, to agree on the one true chain.
The one true chain is the chain valued by the market. In fact, the market can actually choose to have more than one true chain: it is possible for Bitcoin to split into Bitcoin A and Bitcoin B. The 21M cap is a case in point.

I hope that in several decades time the ecosystem is much larger and more powerful forces try to change one of the protocol rules, such as raising the 21M cap. At this point I hope you realize how important it is that hardfork’s cannot occur without strong consensus across the community and how important it was that the small blocksists won the battle in the 2014 to 2016 period.
Raising the 21M cap is not something I would favour, yet if someone wishes to introduce a hard fork to raise the cap that is up to them. The result would be a division of opinion. The minority, whichever side it fell on, would then have to choose whether to align itself with the majority or whether to go its own way. The expectation is there would normally be compelling economic reasons, created by bitcoin’s internal dynamic, to go with the majority. My suspicion is that, in this particular case, the market might well value the side favouring a 21M cap enough for a split chain to be viable even if it were the minority. Possibly that would depend on the size of the minority.

The fact the chain splits means there is continuity for holders. Whichever chain predominates, holders can maintain their stake. They can choose one chain or the other, both or neither. The holders are the market, which bitcoin serves or it is nothing.

Funnily enough, I am a holder. I hold bitcoin and have done for some years.

Part of the attraction for me was that bitcoin was stable and resilient, yet it could adapt quickly when faced with the need for change. I am no longer sure that is true.

The reason it could adapt quickly was that anyone could introduce a change. If there was no majority for the change it would be unlikely to happen, because the market would likely value the stronger, majority position in preference to the weaker, minority position. If a majority developed, change would then become likely.

In each case, however, the minority could decide to split off and seek to survive on its own terms in the market, whether that be a minority seeking change or a minority seeking to maintain the status quo.

Conformity with the bitcoin majority is not driven by politics, it is driven by the market. When that ceases to be true, bitcoin becomes coercive and inflexible, unable to meet market needs because it is always preoccupied with itself.

You and BScore are currently seeking to prevent the evolution and development of bitcoin except on your own terms, what you call "strong consensus".

There is no technical reason, no validating rule, which enforces “strong consensus” (or 95% majorities) for hard forks. So, like those in control of the world's fiat currencies, BScore is reduced to politics and desperate attempts to manipulate opinion: refusing a block size limit increase (unless agreed by ‘a few individuals’ to suppress an alternative implementation), forum censorship (by ‘a few individuals’), DDoS attacks (by ‘a few individuals’), personal abuse and trolling (by ‘a few individuals’), timewasting 'scaling' conferences, and so on.

Do the ends justify the means? I don't believe so. The effects seem to me entirely malign. If BScore supports this form of politics it is a malign influence. I said that yesterday too, but you did not deign to comment.

For you Blockstream Core is all sweetness and light, everything they do is done from the highest motives, they have no commercial interests or plans beyond maybe holding some bitcoin, they are interested only in safeguarding the interests of the weakest of the miners, etc, etc.

You are so reluctant to discuss Blockstream Core critically and openly that you say, "claims that Blockstream have nefarious self interest in profiting from LN, which is why they are blocking a HF" [...] "make the conversation difficult to continue."

Unfortunately this is the elephant in the room: what is Blockstream's business model and how do they intend to provide a return to their investors?

I accept that if you have no relationship to Blockstream you may not know, but if it is unclear to you, how can you be so sure of what their commercial interest is not?

Meanwhile I believe it is entirely credible that Blockstream Core hope to monetise off-chain solutions to scaling for which they need to implement Segwit, that they wish to exploit their control of the reference client to that end, and that they regard restricting the blocksize limit as advantageous to themselves (despite at least 85% of miners wanting to see an increase). Nothing in your response seriously challenges that view or explains why it is mistaken.

The idea Blockstream Core can only ever introduce a hard fork to increase the block size when all competing proposals which do not satisfy your idea of "strong consensus" have been withdrawn is ludicrous. I can only hope the miners finally realise that it is they that have the power of decision, they that serve the market, and that it is they that are going to have to act to increase the block size limit or else fail the market and see bitcoin disintegrate around them. No one else can do it.

E: means and ends
E2: punctuation
 
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go1111111

Active Member
I assumed good faith for a long time, but I've changed my mind. Given the censorship, the attacks, the inconsistencies, and the overall weirdness, it's too much for me to look the other way.
What parts of their behavior can't be explained by Core devs getting into a political/tribal battle? IMO you see the same sort of motivated reasoning and 'dishonest' tactics among liberals and conservatives arguing with each other. Yet these people sincerely believe that they are reasoning correctly and that the other side is just full of evil people and/or idiots. Or do you think most political discussions are also done in bad faith?
 
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Peter R

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
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@go1111111 : Yeah I think yours is a perfectly fine explanation: a political/tribal battle for control/power/ego/.../whatever where people are using deceptive tactics to gain some advantage. But would you not classify this (or some of the resulting behaviour) as bad faith?



Off the top of my head, here are some examples of arguments in bad faith:

1. Adam Back's lobbying of the Chinese miners that Bitcoin must not become "political." This is a bad-faith argument because the fact that he is lobbying the miners means Bitcoin already is political.

2. Blockstream/Core's insistance that Classic/Unlimited are "alt coins" or "attacks." This is a bad-faith argument because a central tenet of Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is governed by the code people freely choose to run.

3. Blockstream/Core's support of the censorship in r/bitcoin, the bitcoin-dev mailing list, the Scaling Bitcoin conferences, and bitcointalk.org. Silencing one side of the debate is an act of bad faith.

4. Moving goal posts with respect to increasing/eliminating the block size limit, as we address every technical concern they raise. This reveals bad faith by illustrating that the reasons they give are just post hoc explanations to justify their position.


Out of curiosity, can we write a similar list for the large block side? (I know both sides have been guilty of character attacks).
 
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Peter R

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
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@Zangelbert Bingledack : Good point. I suppose the difference would be intent, which is always difficult to prove.

On a related note, is it possible that I am suffering from cognitive dissonance?

Is it possible that I'm wrong and that Bitcoin is not political? And that somehow the miners siding with BS/Core keeps it that way? Is there some way this makes sense?

Is there some way to view developers working to improve bitcoin according to their own vision, and then marketing their code to the community, as an attack?

Or if I choose to accept blocks greater than 1 MB today, am I waging war against Bitcoin? What is the argument?
 

Zangelbert Bingledack

Well-Known Member
Aug 29, 2015
1,485
5,585
@Peter R

I don't think so, but maybe that is just another way of me saying that I think we are right. I see cognitive dissonance (compartmentalization of insight, failure to take understandings seriously in the sense of propagating them fully through their web of beliefs) in large blockers as well sometimes, and call it out when I see it. I dare say it is far more prevalent in small blockers, or rather Core adherents specifically.:D

Also, I would say Adam and Greg are often disingenuous in their arguments, though sometimes Mike and even Gavin can be. Not sure where the line spills over into bad faith though.
 

solex

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 22, 2015
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4,694
Interesting read on ZH "The Biggest Bitcoin Arbitrage Ever?"

A mainstream investor seeing the price difference between the Bitcoin Investment Trust and the underlying (BTC), and not realizing the arb isn't there for structural reasons, mainly the 1-year lock-in.

What's more illuminating is the amount of comments mentioning ETH. This is new, and shows a growing network effect for this crypto. Fricking Core Dev are fiddling while Rome burns.
 

AdrianX

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
2,097
5,797
bitco.in
@Zangelbert Bingledack : Good point. I suppose the difference would be intent, which is always difficult to prove.

On a related note, is it possible that I am suffering from cognitive dissonance?

Is it possible that I'm wrong and that Bitcoin is not political? And that somehow the miners siding with BS/Core keeps it that way? Is there some way this makes sense?

Is there some way to view developers working to improve bitcoin according to their own vision, and then marketing their code to the community, as an attack?

Or if I choose to accept blocks greater than 1 MB today, am I waging war against Bitcoin? What is the argument?
I wonder the same thing and more so since the censorship of ideas that have lead many of the dissenting opinions to be herded into an echo chamber.

In that regard @jonny1000 presence here has been very refreshing. Among the many things Bitcoin has taught me, is to look at information through many lenses, and keep an open mind to avoid the cognitive dissonance. I generally only open my mouth when I see a consistent pattern through multiple lenses, anything less leaves me with relative uncertainty.

Analysis of the dissenting opinions around here reveal a cognitive dissonance consistent with @Peter R 's analysis when it comes to the issues being debated. Although I would value a more structured rebuttal none is available. While I may present unlikely extremes when it comes to my examples the underlying facts are true, (but history is full of far more profound exaggerations being fact) and despite any claim to the contrary I have not been presented with any evidence to suggest my understanding is false.

Still outside this free zone it seems like personal attacks are norme when debating ideas. none the less I keep my relative uncertainty radical and nonconformist opinions to myself.

When dealing with cognitive dissonance a practice I'm not very good at is asking questions that lead to the other party to evolve their thinking to overcome their cognitive dissonance, that may have been a better approach with our new guest.
 

Mengerian

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 29, 2015
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I hope that in several decades time the ecosystem is much larger and more powerful forces try to change one of the protocol rules, such as raising the 21M cap. At this point I hope you realize how important it is that hardfork’s cannot occur without strong consensus across the community and how important it was that the small blocksists won the battle in the 2014 to 2016 period.
Could you explain the logic of how this works? How does "defeating the attack" now make Bitcoin stronger in future?

I see two possible situations:

1) Bitcoin is resilient to the "hard fork without consensus attack". If this is the case, we do not need to waste our time arguing about this, just let those advocating the hard fork proceed with their plan and see how things play out. If there are problems, we gain knowledge and can make necessary fixes. But Bitcoin survives with its fundamental value intact.

2) Bitcoin is vulnerable to the "hard fork without consensus attack". Defeating the attack requires convincing a significant proportion of the community to stop trying to hard fork without "consensus". Let's say a massive campaign of arguing, censoring forums, and making deals with miners manages to defeat the "attack". Then in a few years, Bitcoin grows and attracts an order of magnitude more participants to the ecosystem. But it also gains much stronger and well funded foes who try the "hard fork without consensus attack" again. How does the prior "victory" of the small blockists make it any easier to defeat this new attack?
 

albin

Active Member
Nov 8, 2015
931
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What exactly are the allegations against Gavin?

There has to be some inside baseball that the public-at-large is not aware of, because none of this makes sense, and obviously the answer is not BIP101 in BitcoinXT, because the witchhunt has been going on since at least 2013.

Is there some insider drama where the VC's behind Blockstream have some mortal fight w/ Andreessen-Horowitz? (Adam Back once tweeted something totally out of character that tipped me that something like that might be a possibility).

Is it just a garden-variety belief that Gavin is an ignoramus and I-am-very-smart devs plot to remove and/or undermine him? (kind of the impression I get from the John Dillon emails wrt how Peter Todd characterizes his dialogue w/ Maxwell)

Is there some bad blood between certain devs and the Bitcoin Foundation that we don't know about? Maybe even just hurt feelings over the title "Chief Scientist"?

There is clearly something possibly very strange and personal going on vis-a-vis axes to grind, and it doesn't take a Lt. Columbo to conclude it has nothing to do with Gavin's public advocacy on the blocksize ramping up in 2015.
 

jonny1000

Active Member
Nov 11, 2015
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101
On a related note, is it possible that I am suffering from cognitive dissonance?
Yes, we all suffer from this, on all sides of the argument. Your other claims of potentially inappropriate behavior are partially valid, in my view. However the below comment is totally correct:

You see the same sort of motivated reasoning and 'dishonest' tactics among liberals and conservatives arguing with each other. Yet these people sincerely believe that they are reasoning correctly and that the other side is just full of evil people and/or idiots.
Many Blockstream employees are suffering from all kinds of biases, leading to all kinds of possibly inappropriate behavior or irrational reasoning. However, the claim that they are consciously blocking a hardfork, due to their own financial self interests, is wrong and destructive. Please refrain from making this divisive claim.
 

albin

Active Member
Nov 8, 2015
931
4,008
@jonny1000

Why is that suspicion "wrong and destructive"? Why is a claim bad because it's "divisive"? What specifically do you mean you describe the claim as "contentiously" blocking? I feel like you're just throwing around a bunch of negative words all willy-nilly that don't really mean anything in particular.

Literally the very reason Blockstream exists as a company is to develop layer-2 solutions. How can anyone sanely just dismiss a financial conflict of interest in obstructing on-chain scaling?