Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,998
@VeritasSapere

"I thought it was pretty much decided upon, PoW and then PoS, which is pretty common in the altcoin world since it allows for a better distrubution at first while later removing mining with all of its pros and cons. Though you are correct in that the exact specifications of this new PoS has not been completed yet and therefore can not yet be reviewed."

well then, what are you going to do if the attacker continues to hold 5% of DAO tokens when the shift to POS occurs? you say that's not much; i beg to differ. that's a huge %. i remember when i first read Andrew Poelstra's indictment of POS, there was a similar snatch of 5% of Bitshares (?) which was a POS system. eventually that imploded altho i can't for sure pin it on that event (altho i think it contributed).

i personally can't believe anyone could even consider investing in a platform that doesn't have it's security mechanism established ahead of time. i've warned about all the politics/shitfestting that will go into establishing that mechanism b/c whichever path they take will change the economics of Ethereum substantially. in that sense, i don't see ether as sound money at all.
[doublepost=1466486485][/doublepost]Satoshi's brilliance was in establishing the rules of Bitcoin ahead of time. you either took 'em or you left 'em, but you knew what you were getting into when you took the jump.
 
Last edited:

VeritasSapere

Active Member
Nov 16, 2015
511
1,266
@cypherdoc Fair enough, I can see the reasoning there. I am not that concerned myself about five percent being under the control of a potential malicious actor. I do not think it is a big enough share to compromise the governance mechanism. If the thief is self interested and not part of a larger attack he is more likely to do what is best for the network.

We do know at least what this change in economics will be, roughly speaking. We also have a lot of examples of functioning proof of stake blockchains out in the wild today as well. Ethereum is definitely highly experimental with all that entails. And I wont try and argue that it has more of the characteristics of sound money when compared to Bitcoin, because it does not. Bitcoin is presently far more sound for the reasons you have stated here.

However I do not consider Bitcoins future certain either and it is going through its own problems, for me the governance issues which are causing the networks throughput to remain restricted is a rather glaring problem. This is one of the reasons why I am happy that these alternatives do exist, even if some of them might be immature or even flawed. I am at least confident that the cryptocurrencies with the most merit will rise to the top over the long term.
 

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,998
I have not heard that yet, I should definitely check that out, though I am pretty confident if that is the case that the miners would not allow that change to happen, since that would definitely go against their incentives.
here, listen around this time:
[doublepost=1466487801][/doublepost]
However I do not consider Bitcoins future certain either and it is going through its own problems, for me the governance issues which are causing the networks throughput to remain restricted is a rather glaring problem.
yep, i get this. thanx to good 'ol Gregory. that's what makes investing hard; there's always something. and this is Bitcoin's something that makes ppl skeptical. i see it as an opportunity though, even though i could be wrong. but in the end, i think the power of sound money will wash him and his cronies away.
[doublepost=1466487905][/doublepost]ok, gotta crash. night.
 

sickpig

Active Member
Aug 28, 2015
926
2,541
from the minutes of last Core IRC dev meeting:

Core Dev IRC meeting said:
[on the subject of Compactblock and feature freeze] Sipa proposes to push the feature freeze one week back for compact block and segwit to stabilize. Wumpus doesn’t like that idea since the feature freeze is already pushed back a month. Sdaftuar doesn’t think compact blocks is ready right now as it still has outstanding issues. [snip]
Nobody would like to see segwit without compactblocks, as blocks will become effectively bigger.
Bold's mine.

To my knowledge this is the first occurrence of Core devs stating explicitly that p2p needs enhancements in order to stay relevant.

So it seems that they just had this sort of epiphany, isn't this a little bit late?

Core dev are still the "de facto" gate keepers of a system that has the potential to change the future of our societies.

Even assuming good faith they have shown the naivete of a teenager rather then the impossible to achieve foresights and wisdom needed to substitute the free market in determining the price of scarce resources.
 
Last edited:

theZerg

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 28, 2015
1,012
2,327
I think you are all right once hyperbole is removed. The DAO has likely set smart contracts and ethereum back a few years. But it got ahead of itself anyway. Likely a vast amount of that 100mil invested was paper profits...

Smart contracts may remove 90% of the lawsuits, but never all of them. And just like almost every other discipline, lawyer firms will now need software engineering.

The "halting problem" work proved that a property of ANY program cannot be proven. However, you can prove specific properties of specific programs are upheld. This is particularly possible with carefully designed languages. See Haskell.
 

kyuupichan

Member
Oct 3, 2015
95
348
Just finished reading this, what a strange story!
Way too many obvious mistakes in fact for me to take it particularly seriously any more. Seems like a soap opera. Craig is apparently a sad person willing to go to extraordinary lengths to fool people.
 

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,998
Is it really worth my time to read that monster of a story?
 

sickpig

Active Member
Aug 28, 2015
926
2,541
@cypherdoc

I found it interesting.

35K words are a lot though. You don't need to read it all at once. It's a good leisure read since it doesn't require any particular effort, so when you're tired, bored or just need to relax a little...
 

Mengerian

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 29, 2015
536
2,597
I have come up with a conspiracy theory about the Bitfinex outage. The events so far:

2 June - CFTC fines Bitfinex $75, 000, and as part of the settlement Bitfinex agrees to "make a number of changes to its business practices" - http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7380-16

17 June - Bitfinex site goes down for about an hour for scheduled maintenance

20-21 June - Bitfinex experiences extended outages due to "internal networking issues"

I'm wondering if these events are related. Perhaps changes were made to their systems during the 17 June outage that led to the subsequent issues. Did the CFTC penalty "changes to its business practices" cause Bitfinex to deploy some hastily developed code on its systems? Or even worse, did they agree to run some code from the CFTC on their systems, perhaps for trade monitoring?

Disclaimer: These are just my wild speculations based on minimal facts. There's probably nothing to them.
 
Last edited:

pekatete

Active Member
Jun 1, 2016
123
368
London, England
icreateofx.com
Is it really worth my time to read that monster of a story?
Depends whether you want SN to be a normal human being (and thus could be CSW). If however you are like the head honcho of the junta i.e keep SN as a myth, then probably not worth your while. There are little nuggets of first hand detail scattered in the story that'll make it worth reading, IMO.
 

theZerg

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 28, 2015
1,012
2,327
Is it really worth my time to read that monster of a story?
It is a fun read. Perhaps the only real take-away though is that he probably would have gotten away with the scam if cryptographic proof did not exist.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Norway

Inca

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 28, 2015
517
1,679
Ok chaps back in bitcoin again from fiat. Bit of a gamble but i have another 50 odd coins. I apologise in advance if the price crashes down to the depths..
 

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,998
I have come up with a conspiracy theory about the Bitfinex outage. The events so far:

2 June - CFTC fines Bitfinex $75, 000, and as part of the settlement Bitfinex agrees to "make a number of changes to its business practices" - http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7380-16

17 June - Bitfinex site goes down for about an hour for scheduled maintenance

20-21 June - Bitfinex experiences extended outages due to "internal networking issues"

I'm wondering if these events are related. Perhaps changes were made to their systems during the 17 June outage that led to the subsequent issues. Did the CFTC penalty "changes to its business practices" cause Bitfinex to deploy some hastily developed code on its systems? Or even worse, did they agree to run some code from the CFTC on their systems, perhaps for trade monitoring?

Disclaimer: These are just my wild speculations based on minimal facts. There's probably nothing to them.
where is BFX located?
 

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,998
@Mengerian

yeah, i wouldn't put it past the CFTC to demand monitoring. said fine could've been much higher if it wanted.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Norway

Mengerian

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 29, 2015
536
2,597
@cypherdoc Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The fine seemed suspiciously low.

Regulators also have a habit of making rules that the monitoring has to be kept secret.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Norway