Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Melbustus]

...
Massive congestion?

As blocks fill:

1) This chart goes flat for the first time in Bitcoin's history: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints=false&timespan=all&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=
2) Fees rise
3) Bitcoin becomes worse money
4) The Bitcoin dominance index continues to fall (BTW, we're holding under 80% right now, which is a first).

 

[cypherdoc]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-catches-on-with-gold-bugs-1463959897

 

[Melbustus]

One of the saddest things about all this is how even a lot of the early bitcoin folks are on the authoritarian side of things now. Such as oakpacific:

 

[_mr_e]

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@Zangelbert Bingledack et alia

Have you thought about actually working towards building an exchange for single ledger fork arbitrage (Crypto Arbitrage TM)?

The simplest model has no fiat on-ramps, just a way to trade between a coin and its fork. But this assures no liquidity for the forked coin and hence necessarily disadvantages it, which in turn makes fork arbitrage moot.

So a full-blown exchange is required. But as (in most cases) value of coins on one fork is expected to drop fast, the quickest way to get out will be to directly exchange for dominant coin, which may in turn be exchangeable for fiat elsewhere.

In other words, liquidity requirements are not exorbitant and arbitrage occurs as long as all coins are paired with some fiat denomination. Thus (a prototype for) such an exchange could conceivably be set up in some favorable jurisdiction without tremendous resources. KYC/AML procedures are necessary but risk of money laundering seems low.

No?

I have always assumed the fork arbitrage would have to be broadly available with high liquidity for it to work. I'm not sure any other exchanges than those big name ones with the most liquidity would serve the purpose. Now if there comes a way to do it purely through TOR in a way that minimizes or eliminates the risk of users losing their coins, such as through OpenBazaar...

 

[jonny1000]

The fundamental nature of bitcoin is that it achieves decentralized consensus by longest chain

Longest valid chain...

 

[solex]

In the years to come there will be a book called either "The Rise and Success of Bitcoin" or "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin" .
We don't know what the title will be yet, but we do know that this thread will supply some source material for historical writers. It will not be found lacking.

 

[jonny1000]

There is a very very critical aspect of BU's scheme that you appear to not understand, I would strongly recommend reading the actual documentation.

I have read as much as I can, please send me a link to any formal documentation
[doublepost=1464047899][/doublepost]

Can you justify in any way at all how this little gem is not completely made up misinformation?

Are there any more moderate people on this forum who would like to explain why Classic locks in exactly 25% opposition at the time of activation?
[doublepost=1464047977][/doublepost]

Is that what Chinese miners think? That Classic only activates at exactly 75%? Am I'm in fucking Bizarro world?
@jonny1000 How on earth do you explain saying these things? Is that really what you and others in the Core camp believe???

Yes the Core camp does believe that. This is the root cause of the strong opposition to Classic. If this is not the case, I may no longer regard Classic as an attack. Classic may well have even succeeded by now. Locking in 25% opposition is what the miners believe and why they rejected it.

 

[theZerg]

Guys when BU first was announced @jonny1000 was against it without even knowing how it worked. He literally just made stuff up and claimed that it was BU.

He then went on to exhibit all the standard tactics of moving the goalposts, concern trolling, ignoring sound technical/mathematical arguments to nitpick details, never bothering to actually look at BU to learn the facts and finally tried to convince me to waste weeks of time writing a simulation just to convince him.

He then disappeared when I called him out on these tactics. Only to reappear now.

Tldr: don't waste your time with this troll/forum vampire.

 

[jonny1000]

Doubtful.

I've been reading Jonny the last few days. He strikes me as either one of the "dipshits" or the dipshit identifier.

Be advised that the motive for the recent dialogue may not be apparent on the surface AND that Classic, XT, Unlimited, etc. have all compromised more than enough - there is no need to further weaken their bottom lines by adjusting fork-triggers (From 75% to 95%, for example).

Jonny has provided enough evidence to believe that he and his supporters would do anything to be on the right side of consensus (this includes sabotage of Gavin, etc

It would be greatly appreciated if some of you with a more reasonable view would speak out against this.
[doublepost=1464048608][/doublepost]

Tldr: don't waste your time with this troll/forum vampire.

Again, I would really appreciate if some of you with a more reasonable attitude would speak up against this type of comment.

 

[albin]

Are there any more moderate people on this forum who would like to explain why Classic locks in exactly 25% opposition at the time of activation?

I'm going to presume that this means that you don't actually have any explanation of what exactly you're trying to say with that incomprehensible statement.

I have read as much as I can, please send me a link to any formal documentation

If you genuinely don't understand how BU is treating consensus with respect to blocksize (which strains plausibility), then I'm afraid that you read exactly nothing.

 

[cypherdoc]

One of the saddest things about all this is how even a lot of the early bitcoin folks are on the authoritarian side of things now. Such as oakpacific:

i think that he now posts as proslogion on Core Slack and is obsessed with criticizing me once a day. he's angry b/c i recommended BUY BUY BUY back when he subbed to my newsletter when the price was btwn $4-6, iirc, lol.
[doublepost=1464049494][/doublepost]

I have read as much as I can, please send me a link to any formal documentation
[doublepost=1464047899][/doublepost]

Are there any more moderate people on this forum who would like to explain why Classic locks in exactly 25% opposition at the time of activation?

i have to believe you're trolling since you seem to ignore my direct answer to your question about this.

 

[albin]

Guys when BU first was announced @jonny1000 was against it without even knowing how it worked. He literally just made stuff up and claimed that it was BU.

Is there any connection to Adam Back's concern troll thread on bitcointalk to defame BU?

That episode alone is enough to infer pretty shameless, outright jaw-dropping bad faith.

 

[cypherdoc]

Locking in 25% opposition is what the miners believe and why they rejected it.

no, this is what you and core dev believe and is the excuse you're giving for rejecting Classic. and now you want us to concede yet again by changing the threshold from 75% to 95%. as @Aquent has said upthread, if you're so concerned about it, you and core dev should release a 2MBHF pull request at 95% which, according to your logic and assessment of the market, should make everyone happy and you can go ahead and "lead" everyone to the right conclusion and core client (which would be the logical way to "defeat the Classic attack").

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Classic activates if and only if exactly 25% of the blocks in the last 1,000 do not support it. It is impossible for Classic to activate with 80% support, for example.

I'm having trouble seeing how that would even make sense as a proposal. If Core thought that that was what Classic proposed, why wasn't their first thought that there was a typo somewhere?

The idea is that with Bitcoin, a majority can not impose changes to the money, against the will of a significant minority of savers/holders.

This seems to ignore the point I made above, that 'savers/holders' and 'Bitcoin' are fluid concepts when the Bitcoin ledger can be copied with stakeholders going their separate ways:

All participants in what *they* think is Bitcoin stay in consensus at all times. Or put more carefully, for any given participant in a given version of Bitcoin, they find at all times that there is perfect consensus among them. Different participants will want to call a fork "Bitcoin" and another fork "not Bitcoin," and likewise they will call some people "participants in Bitcoin" and other people "no longer participants in Bitcoin," so within their viewpoint they always have "consensus among all Bitcoin participants."
​

Perhaps you are really just saying that we should never change the PoW algorithm as a way to foil miners? Because if you can change the PoW - or even credibly threaten to - you never have to worry about a majority of anyone changing the rules of your money. (You still have to worry about investors disfavoring the monetary token of your money system, but that is an obvious and ever-present reality so I assume that is not at all included in what you mean by "impose changes to the money.")

 

[albin]

@Zangelbert Bingledack

The tragedy to me is that lifting the blocksize limit isn't even a change to any supposed social contract or consensus about what Bitcoin is. The blocksize limit is code rot. It was a safety rail for over-ensuring the stability of the early network that we need to move past, instead of fetishize as some kind of post hoc essential characteristic of the economic design of the system.

 

[BldSwtTrs]

Again, I would really appreciate if some of you with a more reasonable attitude would speak up against this type of comment.

Why are you expecting some of us to care about your feelings?

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

It would be greatly appreciated if some of you with a more reasonable view would speak out against this.

I don't see a need to disown every comment from every poster, as anyone can post here (even a provocateur) and we don't censor. FWIW, I don't think you are a troll, a dipshit, or pretending to be from the UK (not that it matters anyway).

On @theZerg's post, I would only point out that everyone posting heavily against the grain in any forum in the history of the Internet has been called a troll, a timewaster, and worse - and usually they have slid into those tendencies at times as well (not saying you have, but I didn't follow your interaction with @theZerg that closely). It's tough to be perfect or even close to it in such circumstances; I imagine going to Core's channels and trying to argue with them while remaining perfectly civil, let alone avoiding doing anything that could be interpreted as annoying (while they continually nip me on technical details and "going off topic" and label me a troll for trying to explain the same thing several times when they have failed to get it), would be an almost impossible task as people systematically underestimate inferential distance and mistake it for trollish behavior or otherwise magnify the normal human foibles of any arguer when on "home turf." We've seen enough of that on the mailing list and on /r/Bitcoin. There's no need to respond to a poster who you think doesn't warrant response, and that goes for both sides.

 

[Peter R]

In fairness, @jonny1000, I've witnessed @theZerg explain BU to you several times, so I would agree that you appear to be playing intentionally obtuse on this topic.

Anyways, I drew a picture to explain one more time. The most important idea is a node will eventually accept an excessive block (i.e., a block larger than its block size limit) once enough proof-of-work exists between its chain tip and the longest potential chain tip (this picture illustrates a node with an "acceptance depth" of 3 (or 4?) [not sure if the first block counts].

This means that all nodes will eventually converge to the same chain, regardless of their individual block size limits. It also has the effect or discouraging blocks greater than the hash-weighted average block size limit, as these blocks are very likely to be orphaned. The idea behind Bitcoin Unlimited can be extended beyond the block size limit to all Category #2 protocol rules.

You claim that Unlimited will result in multiple permanent forks. Can you give an example of how this would be possible?

 

[jonny1000]

I'm having trouble seeing how that would even make sense as a proposal. If Core thought that that was what Classic proposed, why wasn't their first thought that there was a typo somewhere?

I agree, I do have trouble seeing how it makes sense. My first thought was exactly this, I thought it was a typo. Gavin had even hinted to me this may change. I was then astonished to realize that Classic only activates when there is exactly 25% miner opposition and that it was not a typo.
[doublepost=1464056051][/doublepost]

Why are you expecting some of us to care about your feelings?

I just thought some of you wanted productive dialog with the strong economic majority. Some of you, mentioned you appreciated that. refraining from insults insures the dialog continues and is productive.