Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

@Peter R I like your gifs but if one is honest until now there is not too much of "nodes form new consensus at higher limit".
Sheeple are still running Bitcoin core.

 

[cypherdoc]

sheesh. what a frickin sieve:

http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/47532/cyber-crime/swift-thord-cyber-heist.html
[doublepost=1464120956][/doublepost]it's sad when they turn on themselves:

The attack occurred in January 2015, it was revealed via a lawsuit filed by the Ecuadorian Bank against Wells Fargo that sued US bank over hacker thefts.

“Wells Fargo Bank failed to follow its own fraud detection policies, honoring millions of dollars of fraudulent international transactions that should have triggered alerts, a lawsuit by an Ecuadorian bank alleges.” reportedthe Reuters.
[doublepost=1464121261][/doublepost]amazing. first principle in open source is to share vulnerabilities ASAP so others can fix and patch. not in legacy financing apparently:

There are a number of errors that advantaged the attacks, for example, the incident was not disclosed for months, we now know about the heist due to the legal action of the BDA against the Wells Fargo which was responsible for approving the fraudulent transfers. The lack of information sharing on the incident allowed the attackers to continue their action.

SWIFT was not informed by both BDA nor Wells Fargo as confirmed in an official statement.

“We were not aware,” SWIFT said in a statement. “We need to be informed by customers of such frauds if they relate to our products and services so that we can inform and support the wider community. We have been in touch with the bank concerned to get more information, and are reminding customers of their obligations to share such information with us.”

According to the Reuters, the SWIFT told clients on Friday to share information on attacks on the system to help prevent further incidents.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

I have to admit I'm pissed by Coinbase pumping Ethereum instead of forcing BTC to do the right thing.
Didn't Brian Armstrong full-throated declare they are going to fund a new Bitcoin dev team?

 

[lunar]

@Zangelbert Bingledack

Great post. I think you might be onto something. This has been pointed out here before many times. The term 'overwhelming consensus' is meaningless without definition. Yet more than this, the term 'consensus' it's self has been misunderstood by those that tend to use this phrase.

Bitcoin is a concens-atron it redefines the meaning of consensus in a distributed digital age, get on the 51%+ longest proof of work chain or Fork-off. The Network effect ensures all but the extremists come along with it. (but as it's a voluntary system even they are free to peruse their own fork).

you can see the Core error in reasoning here.

Let me try to explain again.When Bitcoin came out I thought it was an interesting and unique concept, precisely because I thought you required strong consensus in order to force changes on the network which effect a minority. This meant this new type of money protected minority rights in a way they were not protected with traditional money like USD. If Bitcoin turns out not to have this characteristic, then in my view, it is not sufficiency different from the USD to be interesting, in my mind the value of bitcoin in that scenario should fall to zero.

Trying to insist any prior consensus is required to alter a protocol that actually defines consensus is thus flawed circular logic. Fortunately, Bitcoin does not require consensus to achieve consensus.

I'd like to understand who the minority is in this statement? Presumably (BOFD) it is those that hold and use Bitcoin, against that big bad outside fractional reserve centrally planned legacy financial system. Otherwise it's the same mistake again: Assuming a minority should control against the majority in a majoritarian system designed to protect the minority.

However....

I had always assumed that if anyone does try to change the rules, without strong consensus, then many participants would rally behind the existing rules to defend the system. I have built new ideas on top of this assumption. If this assumption no longer holds I am simply not interested in Bitcoin.

Fortunately for @jonny1000 you're in luck. Strong consensus exists within a hardfork. it begins within the code at 51%. After that the 49% are offered a choice stay with the larger, safer, more valuable network or begin a new. Many participants are rallying behind the founding rules. A free market for the blockspace commodity. Which is why it's been a misguided catastrophic mess trying to change these rules to a controlled fee market for blockspace.

 

[Norway]

Meanwhile..
https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions
edit up 1500 tx since posting.

1-2 hours to next adjustment of the difficulty. If difficulty goes up (hashpower is extremely volatile now), I think we have 20k+ transactions in mempool within 24 hours.

(I get the impression that some big miners are maybe tweeking by turning off hashing power to keep difficulty down at this adjustment.)

 

[albin]

@lunar

Being around for a few years now, I cannot for the life of me bring myself to believe that first quote is anything more than a post hoc rationalization. The point of view that he's spearheading is something I first saw fairly recently in Adam Back's concern-trolling to disrupt the formation of any kind of consensus to hardfork a blocksize increase. There is close to a 0% chance that he really believed anything like that in January 2009.

 

[cypherdoc]

Fred Ehrsam losing faith:

What is very real, though, is the possibility that Ethereum blows past Bitcoin entirely. There is nothing that Bitcoin can do which Ethereum can’t. While Ethereum is less battle tested, it is moving faster, has better leadership, and has more developer mindshare. Developers → apps → users → network success. First mover advantage is challenging to overcome, but at current pace, it’s conceivable.

https://medium.com/the-coinbase-blog/ethereum-is-the-forefront-of-digital-currency-5300298f6c75#.ezj5eyhtg

i disagree with the bolded though. Bitcoin has fixed supply of coin with a programmed release which allows miners to compete for newly issued coins. Eth had a premine initially with lots of the early devs and others getting handouts. that plus not having the security mechanism (POW or POS) worked out yet is a major huge risk in that from here out vested interests have presumably differing views on how security should be implemented which could pollute the process.

secondly, Fred presumes that more development (tinkering) by more devs is a good thing. one of the advantages i believe that Bitcoin should have is simplicity in the money function; which is why Satoshi designed it the way he did. this was to prevent excessive tinkering and maintain the SOV sound money function. what Fred and kore dev perceive as a liability in my mind is an advantage. but yes, that is the current controversy (emphasis on smart contracting vs money) and will shape the future of both platforms.

we'll see how it works out but surely "lots of ppl are going to lose money investing in cryptocurrencies".

 

[BldSwtTrs]

@cypherdoc one of your argument against ETH is POS, but we are seeing right in front of our eyes with the blocksize nonsense that incentives of POW are probably not good to favor long term network value.

Big holders are mostly in favor of bigger blocks but they have no leverage. If Bitcoin were POS I think blocks would be bigger since a long time.

 

[cypherdoc]

a major part of the reason why i think Fred will be wrong is b/c of something i've said many times before. the #1 problem in the world is unsound money, ie, unfettered CB money printing. this is the biggest problem in the world of finance, imo, and is why gold had such roaring success btwn 2001 and 2011 before Bitcoin came along. articles like this at the top of r/bitcoin illustrate the problem nicely:

http://www.straitstimes.com/world/americas/price-of-corn-flour-in-venezuela-rises-by-900-per-cent

in the sense of which platform (Bitcoin vs Eth) has the greatest potential to solve this problem? i still think it's Bitcoin by far. i think you only have to believe that it IS a problem before you come to the same conclusion. hint: many ppl don't think it's a problem, including the clowns at Blockstream who clearly think Bitcoin doesn't work and would rather shift to a system that employs smart contracting and are happy to accept fiat to make it a self fulfilling prophecy.

in this sense, i'm going to stick to the platform that has the most binary outcome in terms of value appreciation going forward until i'm convinced otherwise. and that continues to be Bitcoin.

 

[Norway]

poor Spamson. he's upset:

@cypherdoc , I don't think you should call Spunkcunt Meow silly names. It's not constructive to the debate.

 

[79b79aa8]

Run Bitcoin Unlimited today!

Sorry for asking rather than looking, but did a BU client for OSX get released?

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

@cypherdoc Full ack, especially this:

secondly, Fred presumes that more development (tinkering) by more devs is a good thing. one of the advantages i believe that Bitcoin should have is simplicity in the money function;

As I wrote above, I honestly think this is betrayal by Coinbase. They gave up on Bitcoin and I wouldn't use them.

@BldSwtTrs
You haven't seen PoS in direct comparison.

Ethereum isn't better. It has nothing to offer to me.
Does anybody believe Ethereum would be at the place it is now if it wasn't for Bitcoin failing?
Most of it is marketing.

 

[BldSwtTrs]

@satoshis_sockuppet I have not seen POS but I understand that with POS holders, and not miners, decide about what to do with the protocol. That would pretty much solve the blocksize debate.

All the POW vindication comes from the premise that the interests of miners and holders are aligned. But this premise is weakening a little bit more each day.

 

[cypherdoc]

@cypherdoc one of your argument against ETH is POS, but we are seeing right in front of our eyes with the blocksize nonsense that incentives of POW are probably not good to favor long term network value.

Big holders are mostly in favor of bigger blocks but they have no leverage. If Bitcoin were POS I think blocks would be bigger since a long time.

you're right. that's a problem; right now. the question is, can we break thru with a blocksize limit increase? i think so. miners are fighting back against kore dev policy on SWSF. will it work or are miners actually bucking for a 2MBHF like we think? this is the difficulty that all bull mkts present to investors which make them so difficult to figure out. it's never easy. yes, i could be wrong in my assessment but i still don't think so. July certainly will be a defining moment when the halvening kicks in. there's going to be pain and lotsa ppl are going to lose if they don't get it right. it could be me too, i don't know for sure. but i'm still optimistic we're going to break thru.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

I don't think so, I think interests of miners and holders are aligned.
Miners are apparently just too stupid to defend their interests.

 

[cypherdoc]

that's why we need to diversify away from this first generation of unsophisticated miners by lifting the limit to allow Western miners to gain a foothold in mining competition by leveraging their capital and superior BW.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4kvlmn/fighting_fud_with_facts/

 

[cypherdoc]

i'm also not convinced that we can fully automate smart contracting w/o the full support of the judicial system. who wants to trade smart contracts representing stocks, bonds, houses, or other types of assets w/o a mature established dispute resolution system. would i trade my house for ether while depending on some unknown arbitrator to settle the contract if my counterparty and i get into a dispute? what if i lose my private key? do i lose my house?

alternatively, when paying for things with cash, normally there is no recourse. we do it and we accept it b/c it's usually for smaller amounts. big tx's require wires or ACH to provide a record in case something goes wrong. this is the system i see Bitcoin was created to replace. all these other types of assets are rightfully traded within financial institutions by the financial elite. that's ok, let them tinker there. just remove the bailouts. perhaps we can even move to a system where BTC is actually used to pay for these other assets in the long run (as opposed to smart contracting). but that would require a full mobilization to full Bitcoin financial system. it's possible if Bitcoin becomes the currency of the internet.

 

[Norway]

diversify away from this first generation of unsophisticated miners by lifting the limit to allow Western miners

KnC in Sweden FTW!!!

You can see pics from KnC's huge mining farm in this norwegian documentary. It is also an interview with Sam Cole in english.

https://tv.nrk.no/program/koid75000216/bitcoineksperimentet

 

[Richy_T]

@Peter R I like your gifs but if one is honest until now there is not too much of "nodes form new consensus at higher limit".
Sheeple are still running Bitcoin core.

But blocks are not consistently full and hashrate has just climbed 30-40%