Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

the 75% threshold was used by @Gavin Andresen to prevent a single pool, like f2pool or Bitmain, to veto support for Classic. it's that simple.

 

[sickpig]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4n64qy/proof_that_rbitcoin_is_being_censered/

 

[steffen]

To anyone who might be(come) involved in developing a solution which enables proponents of bigger blocks to split away from the stream blockers:

We know from experience that DDOS attacks is a method the stream blockers are willing to use against competitors. There are different ways to defend against such DDOS attacks. One defence method we often see in nature but I haven't seen mentioned in the bitcoin battle is camouflage. A BigBlock node might not (always) have to appear to be a BigBlock node. It might (sometimes) be camouflaged as a Bitcoin Core node or as something else to avoid being detected and attacked. This method might be used for all BigBlock nodes or it might be used selectively for nodes close to important miners to make sure those miners can receive all transactions and blocks and send its discovered blocks.

I am no expert so this is just meant as food for thought to the technical wizards who might be(come) involved in developing a solution which enables proponents of bigger blocks to split away from the stream blockers.

 

[solex]

Effective summary by Eric which is the important message, (not how Coin Telegraph is regarded by reddit). He is building some backbone but it is taking a long time,.


@steffen
Good idea, and camouflage has been tried in the past with a degree of success. For BU we put informational text in the user agent string which gives our nodes away, so their numbers have indeed suffered from DoS attacks. @Peter Tschipper details one of the latest attack variations here and @jl777 has shown the way to a great solution. Attacks do make the network stronger in the long-term by fostering defences.

 

[AdrianX]

No, censorship is as strong as ever, I'm still 100% censored for another 360 odd days with no explanation from r/bitcoin moderators despite my requests for an explanation.

 

[Roger_Murdock]

Well no, there could be a voting window where Classic needs at least 75% support, for example.

Okaaay, Classic could certainly have used something other than a rolling window for its activation trigger ... but that doesn't make your statement that "25% miner opposition is locked-in" when Classic activates any less nonsensical. So your response is kind of a non-sequitur.

Your insistence in interminably invoking this ignorant incorrect inanity is causing me to lose all respect for the veracity and sincerity of your position.

Yeah, I tried hard to assume good faith for as long as I could, but even I have my limits.

@Zangelbert Bingledack I'm still having trouble imagining how a fork futures market could be set up in a way that would be very helpful. You want to use a future markets to allow investors to tell the miners what the market wants, but it seems to me the market is going to mostly predict what the miners are going to do (because the highest-PoW chain is such a powerful Schelling point).

Re: Voorhees' apology, ugh, that's sort of like having to apologize to a serial killer because it turns out they weren't responsible for one particular murder they were accused of (just the other 20).


EDIT: "This comment was deleted." Huh, well that's strange. Wonder what happened there. Here's the text of the comment I left:

To be clear for those who might not read the blog post, he's only admitting he was wrong about one suspected instance of /r/bitcoin censorship:

Over the past year, there have been instances of clear censorship on the Bitcoin subreddit. It got so bad in late 2015 that an entirely new subreddit, r/btc, was created to cater to those who felt disenfranchised and angry at the gatekeepers of the former.

/r/bitcoin obviously censors relevant Bitcoin-related content that doesn't toe the party line. Just take a look at the sidebar:

Promotion of client software which attempts to alter the Bitcoin protocol without overwhelming consensus is not permitted.

 

[AdrianX]

I must say I do get a lot of LOL's when reading some of the replies, the innocent serial killer apology was spot on with regards to r/bitcoin censorship.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@Roger_Murdock

I'm still having trouble imagining how a fork futures market could be set up in a way that would be very helpful. You want to use a future markets to allow investors to tell the miners what the market wants, but it seems to me the market is going to mostly predict what the miners are going to do (because the highest-PoW chain is such a powerful Schelling point).

It seems to me the market mainly predicts what the market itself is going to do. As you start with a bitcoin (future) on each fork, if it tips a little one way you have the choice of going all-in on that side or maybe betting on the other side for the even bigger payoff if it reverses. Once it tips strongly one way or the other it seems there will be race to get out of the losing side. Unless there's a very close split at 50/50.

Then it seems miners will simply follow the money; that's what they're in it for anyway. They know the fork that is far more likely to pay them the big bucks, and they know the market's (nodes') choice so they can be more confident of not generating a split. I don't see why they would choose to mine the fork that is deemed nearly worthless. I'm not sure what that would even accomplish for them.*

All the while the investors are taking into account everything, including appropriately weighting any information about miners' own preferences. Let's even suppose someone has inside information, such as a miner or their employee, about what a certain mining complex is going to do. Then if it is really the case that the game partly involves anticipating what miners will do, if the futures price is weighted too far away from where the insider knows it should be, the insider can get extra expected payoff by buying the other side. Prediction markets have this amazing way of including all information, because anyone who has privileged information stands to benefit from the arbitrage.

So I tend to think it won't matter much what miners want, and if it does I think the market incentives are set up to ensure it is reflected in the price as well.

because the highest-PoW chain is such a powerful Schelling point

*It's a powerful Schelling point for Nakamoto consensus, which determines the ledger state (which transactions to include in which order) within the confines of a particular set of validation rules. If the users/market wants different rules than the miners, a large amount of hashing power is more just a threat in that those miners could choose to disrupt the market's chosen chain (in theory; not sure why profit-seeking miners would want to do that). This messiness is the consequence of mining/noding division due to mining specialization. So it might be a consideration for the market; but the idea that the market would kowtow to the miners seems perverse in the long run. The users have the power to change the PoW in the odd event where miners choose not to work for the boss that pays more, so that should be the solution even if it would be drastic, because I can't see how the solution to miner disagreement with the market would be give in to the miners.
[doublepost=1465429278,1465428422][/doublepost]It may be instructive to consider what happens in a populist/Keynesian attack, where the mainstream inflationistas come in with many investors and miners and want to lift the 21M coin cap.

Then I think it's a no-brainer that we change the PoW and let the miners come. However, prospective miners are going to need to know just how much money is going to be available in the classic 21M-Bitcoin fork, in order to know if it's worth gearing up for the new PoW mining. They need a prediction market for that, even if the price is in the minority compared to the populist fork. (This is one case where the price of the minority would likely not go to zero, as there are many people - all the sound money people - who will stay in come hell or high water.)

I think looking to miners for the vote on consensus rules is the tail wagging the dog. In the modern day, with the miner-user disconnect, it looks like miners just follow the money. Even if they were to try to get political, they don't have any ultimate power to fight a fork-wielding market; at most they can tip the scales if things are close.

 

[taxed4ever]

It can't be easy, so I thought I'd stop by and say - Go Bitcoin Unlimited!

 

[chriswilmer]

I second @taxed4ever ... keep it up guys!

My only suggestion is, in addition to everything else you're doing, make more of an effort to communicate with the miners. They may come to see the light on their own eventually, but I think the highest ROI time-wise is to try and speak with them directly... repeatedly.

 

[AdrianX]

You seem to not understand the difference between and hardfork and softfork, or perhaps you have your own different definition, which can wholly account for our disagreement and makes our discussion up to this point totally ridiculous.

This distinction is not based on the deployment mechanism used, but the nature of the change.

Adding the 1MB was a new rule and therefore a softfork, old nodes that did not have the 1MB rule, regarded the new blocks of less than 1MB as still valid. The old rule was less than 32MB, the new rule was less than 1MB, since 1MB is less than 32MB, it was a softfork. Nodes were therefore not required to upgrade to stay on the main chain and if they did not upgrade, the chain would not split.

It is clear from this that you do not understand my point of view at all and it is therefore amazing how we have been arguing.
[doublepost=1465345168][/doublepost]

• censorship - I think some private Bitcoin forums may not want to be used as a tool to facilitate the attack, that seems reasonable for me.
  
• personal attacks - These are not justified, in my view
  
• bribes - You mean like the Classic mining fund?
  
• backdoor meetings - discussions should be seen as positive
  
• maybe even assassination since you said "all necessary measure" - No, violence is not justified. By all necessary measures, I mean reducing the value of my holding to zero, through means such as spending all my money running Core nodes, mining Core blocks, selling Classic futures ect ect. I do not mean to justify physical violence of any kind, I apologies if anyone thought it meant that.

It's evident you understand how transaction limit came to be introduced. You incorrectly call it a soft fork, should it have failed to become a consensus rule, I wouldn't argue the point and I'd agree it was a soft fork but it's not, it became a consensus rule and at that moment it was a hard fork, here is the quote I wanted to reference and it's some what related https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15121#msg15121 . The problem was recognized early.

Still by your definition at some point the limited transaction volume rule stopped being a soft fork and it became a hard fork rule. You must agree because your defending it like a fundamentalist and are willing to preserve it "at any cost" and feel justified in bringing down the "whole network reducing all value to zero" to preserve it from being removed" or at the least to prevent it from changing without transforming through your version of Extreme consensus.

FYI if it was still a soft fork rule all nodes would still honour blocks above 1MB, we know it's not a soft fork rule for this reason blocks above 1MB will be orphaned.

For sake of arguing semantics, I understand why you call it a soft fork, and that's what I was wanting you to see, however it's not worth talking with you if still believe it to be a soft fork rule - its defiantly a hard fork issue.

You've also exhibited limited understanding of BU in that you understand by setting the block limit to 1MB and the tolerance to some large number it will follow the the existing consensus rules and ignore all fork attempts so we have some ground to build on.

You incorrectly suggest limiting block tolerance to prevent double spends, when in all reality having 7 confirmations is more than adequate for transferring amounts in the realm of $1,000,000, and transactions where you are sending amounts in that realm and the transaction happens to be orphaned and it results in a double spend are only problematic in the case where you are doing business with full anonymity and zero time delay - in which case I recommend 8 confirmations. But the likelihood of doing $1,000,000's of business anonymously with no time delay is almost rationally impossible as, most people transferring that type of value have some form of contract, and if one is looking for confirmation of payment one just needs to reference the blockchain, and payment either has or hasn't been made.

So understanding how the limit became a hard fork consensus rule is important, as it did not go through your Extreme consensus process, it happened over time and then one day "bang" there was 100% consensus on the network.

my point is it doesn't need your centralized Extreme consensus to be removed. it can be removed by the exact same process by which it was introduced. Bitcoin Unlimited allows nodes to signal tolerance for bigger blocks, and if ever the time comes then miners can start producing bigger blocks, the opposition will just tag along and continue to use bitcoin the way the always have.

You just need to think of BU clients that accept 10MB blocks as soft forks, they ignored by all nodes until such time as it is not anymore. It works just the same way as the "soft fork" that introduced it in the first place.

 

[cypherdoc]

Okaaay, Classic could certainly have used something other than a rolling window for its activation trigger ... but that doesn't make your statement that "25% miner opposition is locked-in" when Classic activates any less nonsensical. So your response is kind of a non-sequitur.



Yeah, I tried hard to assume good faith for as long as I could, but even I have my limits.

@Zangelbert Bingledack I'm still having trouble imagining how a fork futures market could be set up in a way that would be very helpful. You want to use a future markets to allow investors to tell the miners what the market wants, but it seems to me the market is going to mostly predict what the miners are going to do (because the highest-PoW chain is such a powerful Schelling point).

Re: Voorhees' apology, ugh, that's sort of like having to apologize to a serial killer because it turns out they weren't responsible for one particular murder they were accused of (just the other 20).


EDIT: "This comment was deleted." Huh, well that's strange. Wonder what happened there. Here's the text of the comment I left:

be glad you weren't banned for a year like @AdrianX and i.
[doublepost=1465434025,1465433024][/doublepost]pretty big move up today with strong finish into the close for GBTC. like i said; Big Hint:

 

[Melbustus]

@cypherdoc - what's the Big Hint? At least in my casual and irregular observation, GBTC's action/direction seems to mostly lag the underlying.

 

[cliff]

@cypherdoc

If we don't have time, we'll have to muddle through. Per my analysis above, that means finding a makeshift way around the market data problem, or maybe just waiting for things to get bad enough that no one can wonder whether or not 2MB is better than 1MB anymore. Perhaps that is why things have already gotten as bad as they have. We are starved for good data, and all the data we have is heavily biased by laziness and other grossly asymmetric incentives.

One way around it is of course the "leap of faith" or the "try it and see if anyone forks away" approaches by the mining majority, which is sloppy but would likely be fine in the end if the increment is small like 2MB (certainly needlessly risky though).

The faster we can get a futures market up, the easier everything will be. But I imagine if the heads of Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Huobi, etc. were convinced they could offer futures contracts quite easily starting a few weeks from now, regulations permitting.

Just identifying the parts and mechanics of a fork futures (FF) market (M) is a challenging problem in itself. The time crunch makes the whole situation a little bonkers.

On that note, let me ramble out what might be 1) a so obvious it goes without saying/its been said already idea OR 2) just a terrible/not connected to reality idea:

When I think of a FFM, I think of traders buying and selling rights, in the form of contracts, to transact at some price in the future. @Zangelbert Bingledack also mentioned contracts. BTC could have an exchange that trades smart contracts or some other contract-token easily enough I guess. That is to say, 'yep, its doable.' However, firstly, there's probably not enough time to build that FFM - there are way too many players in that world that would need to quickly assemble money and other resources to build a new wing of the crypto-economy. Secondly, there would be new legal and compliance challenges. I could imagine that trading in contracts would be interesting to the SEC, in addition to the CFTC, since "contracts" are one of the key indicators of a financial instrument being a security. In other words, this could be a good opportunity for additional scrutiny. I'm sure there are other challenges as well. But in a nutshell, a contract-based FFM may have too many short-term hurdles to clear for it to be a viable option.

One way around some of these problems might be to change the concept of a futures market by changing what is traded (maybe this is really obvious and I've been out to lunch): the coins from the forked chain are the futures. Miners can sell them on the exchanges to hedge the risk of having mined the minority chain. Because only one coin can come out on top as extending "Bitcoin" in a fork-off, the prediction/bet in trading them is whether the newcoins transubstantiate into bitcoins. Following a winner being declared, the minority chain and its coins would probably hang-around for a while at least as a collectors item/novelty coin - maybe even with respectable volume (I don't think this is bad necessarily). Anyway, this approach seems simple because its doable now. Again, maybe its obvious and maybe I've missed a few too many posts.

EDIT: Just occurred to me that Hearn's Lighthouse P2P crowd-funding platform could provide some infrastructure and/or inspiration for a futures market. It has a "pledge" feature built into the wallet/client, IIRC. A "pledge" could be a FF - a contract to buy X at Y price in the future upon some condition/deliverable etc.

------------------------
Separate Topic: Interesting article, striking paralles: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-08/deutsche-banks-shocking-ecb-rant-warns-social-unrest-and-another-great-depression

 

[cypherdoc]

Gartman went on to call Bitcoin “the Millennial’s answer to gold.”

"Regarding Bitcoin […] which we rarely write about and which we truly do not and likely never shall truly understand […] it has had a recent massive bullish run, predicated upon immense Chinese buying. We are quite certain that much of this buying in the past might have made its way into gold, but has been diverted in Bitcoin for a number of reasons not the least of which is the secrecy involved in transacting trades in it."

"Bitcoin traded very poorly [on June 7, 2016] peaking early in the day on a spike higher and then closing sharply lower and at or very near to the day’s lows. This is ominous then for holders of Bitcoin, but it may at the same time be supportive of gold in return. "

https://news.bitcoin.com/dennis-gartman-bitcoin-millennial-gold/

 

[Erdogan]

...in the past might have made its way into gold, but has been diverted in Bitcoin...

That's gold collapsing, bitcoin up. Maybe Gartman is smart after all...

 

[Zarathustra]

Playing some more devil's advocate (hello Austrians!); I guess it will not get many likes:

All we are discussing and lamenting in this thread is a reflection of another market failure, which is a tautology. Market means (more or less) human failure, and won't ever be something different since a market per se is a contest within a society, vulgo: the opposite of voluntarism within a community:

Collectivism (society/patriarchy) vs. humanism (community/anarchy).
Homo oeconomicus vs. homo sapiens.

In an anarchist environment (paleolithic homo sapiens) the 'production' has never been a contest. At least I learned here that some Austrians promote the paleo diet. That's a good start.

 

[freetrader]

At least I learned here that some Austrians promote the paleo diet.

LOL, it seems you've found a hook, Zarathustra!

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

the coins from the forked chain are the futures.

That's exactly what I've meant. Maybe I am getting the terminology a little off and that is throwing some people. Unless I'm forgetting some details, all I mean by "fork futures" is that, say, Huobi says something like:

NOTICE: On September 1st a spinoff of Bitcoin will go live, meaning your balance (currently 8 BTC) held on Huobi will entitle you to withdraw that amount in both sides of the spinoff. If you would like to adjust the ratios, we have set up a market for you to trade the 'rights to withdraw BTC' (in one or the other side of the spinoff) with other users. Note that any amount of BTC not entered into trading on this market can be withdrawn at any time, but the amounts entered into trading on this market won't be withdrawable until September 1st."
​

In terms of government regulations, would this be any different from offering altcoin trading (like exchanges already do)?

In terms of infrastructure setup, it seems very easy since it's all happening on the exchange's internal ledger anyway. As far as I can tell, the exchange has no need to even prepare extra liquidity, since all payouts will come from deposited BTC.

 

[lunar]

Demanding ethical standards without making excuses seems like a pretty strong example of "monetary behaviour" or at least in general a strategy to minimize cheating in the reciprocal-altruistic case of protecting the good faith participant in community discourse.

The basic game theory has changed, since the separation of mining from nodes and hence nodes from voting. This has led to a division of voting power and signalling - Miners without a good read on the market and the economic majority without a good voice. The byzantine generals solution seems to require a caveat as nodes can no longer vote with their CPU power.

The economic majority and the mining power must be a reciprocally altruistic pair. Whereas before it was "If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes" We must say "If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more ASIC and economic power combined than all the dishonest power" Satoshi then went on the say that 'an attacker ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules'. This statement no longer holds true.

To explain: if a dishonest attacker can pervert the blockchian to their own needs they no longer have to be bothered with such trivialities as stealing users coins they can just syphon off their share of transaction fees onto proprietary off-chain solutions, essentially making new rules by stealing from the mining incentives and hence network security in the process.

In short we urgently need to reconnect one node(user) to one vote. @Zangelbert Bingledack with the fork arbitrage method seems like a reasonable signalling solution. My first instinct is to think that this will suffer from relevancy and considerable setup time. For such a system to function you'd need a significant network of 'important' parties and sufficient liquidity to act as leverage on the miners decision making.

The best way of course would be to have all the voting back at the node level. Unlimited for the win.