Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Many were attracted to Bitcoin, like me, not necessarily because I thought it was better than this but because I thought Bitcoin was different. The majority is unable to change the rules, when there is a significant unhappy minority, because with Bitcoin strong consensus across the entire community is required to hardfork.

I think this really is the key difference in how we view Bitcoin. You seem to have thought, "Well at least this is something different. Hard to change and not easy to change like central banker whim. It might not be better, but at least it is different. At least it is something new that just might work."

Whereas I thought, "This is market money. The monetary aspects won't change easily because lack of easy change in monetary aspects is extremely valuable to the market - it's as good as gold. Yet for the very same reason, the non-monetary aspects can change fairly easily when the market deems those changes valuable. Holy shit this is exactly what is needed and quite likely to work unless something unforeseen stops it."

Hard to change vs. Market control

"There will never be more than 21 million bitcoins!" was the slogan. If it had been the more subtle, "The market will almost certainly never support issuing more than 21 million bitcoins" I don't know if as many people would have bought in, but on the other hand this hard-to-change/strong-consensus misconception wouldn't be so rampant. As Bitcoin grows, we have to understand more and more nuances. Understanding the nuances also makes one more bullish, as one sees the incredible resilience inherent in the system.

I can't really see why you don't see the above point, but I can see why you wouldn't see the following even more amazing fact that I also came to realize, as it is quite counterintuitive and obscured by how we use English terms: "Even if 'the market' wants to make a bad change, as long as there is a subset of the market that very much wants to reject the change, that can be accomplished by a persistent fork (with necessary changes in PoW and tx signing)," to which I later appended, "aided by fork futures trading."

However, you do seem to understand this on at least one level, but judge that a split would be a PR nightmare. I don't think so since any situation where a truly persistent split happened would be a huger rift* with more salient differences, that should be clear enough to the market at such a time. Still, this is a much more easily debatable issue so if we are debating just this that is great progress.

*the current rift may seem huge, but that's because it's not just about blocksize but about the issue we are now discussing as well. 1MB vs. 2MB isn't going to rend the community all by itself.

 

[tynwald]

@Mengerian

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

Possibly trade reporting under Dodd-Frank levels of scrutiny and timing i.e. every 15 minutes. Something like that implemented the wrong way could easily mess up a trading engine, and BFX engine has had many examples of total flakiness ...

 

[Norway]

What with it fast approaching sunday here's the long weekend read.
(As if you didn't already have enough to distract you)

The Satoshi Affair

Andrew O’Hagan on the many lives of Satoshi Nakamoto

A very well written piece that has so many nuggets of information it will certainly leave you wondering?

I think there is a lot more to this story that may take years to come out.

Finally got around to read this excellent piece. It took me six hours, but well worth it!
Craig Wright hiding from the police standing on a toilet seat in a toilet booth and more!

EDIT: Remember to increase the size of the letters on the top right of the story before you start reading!

 

[awemany]

EDIT: Remember to increase the size of the letters on the top right of the story before you start reading!

Ctrl - '+' does that much better for me. There's always that random person who doesn't know about that, so maybe I am lucky today ;-)

 

[AdrianX]

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.

I like the idea of smart contracts they can solve problems, but they are not going to solve 99.3% of contract problems, Lawyers and Lawsuits arise because of issues ill defined or not defined in the contracts and because of cash flow problems. Programmers are not going to write better contracts than lawyers and smart contracts are not going to solve those issues.

Lawyers aren't going away any time soon, yes they may need to do less clerical work and property registrations but I don't expect to see the number of lawsuits drop any time soon with the adoption of cryptocurrencies.

 

[cliff]

 

[freetrader]

This is still one of the best CSW interviews:


Ok, I'm ashamed to say I rushed off to /r/buttcoin to see if they had something on the DAO whitehat drain, and came back with this...

 

[Norway]

Ctrl - '+' does that much better for me. There's always that random person who doesn't know about that, so maybe I am lucky today ;-)

As a former Art Director, I have to disagree. I'm not just talking about larger letters, but the number of letters on each line in a column. This also depend on the shape of the letters, as an "i" takes less horizontal space than an "O".

The rule of thumb is one and a half alphabet width to a column. Too many letters on a line makes it difficult to find the beginning of the next line when you read. Space between lines is also a factor.

EDIT:
Let's check out the default settings in this forum:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklm

 

[AdrianX]

I split it up over two days - found it a worthwhile read but it left me confused. A lot of things still to unfold.

To be honest I liked the Satoshi Nacamodo origin, (Ash - Satoshi from Pokemon - that's awesome ) and (Tominaga Nakamoto a Japaneses philosopher - also cool) I found the reference to CW's fascination with Japaneses culture as a kid a little too contrived, I'm going to have to trust the author did his homework on that one. It's a long read I'm 1/3 of the way through.

 

[cypherdoc]

@AdrianX

is this you?

https://www.bullionvault.com/gold-news/users/adrian-ash

 

[AdrianX]

@cypherdoc No, I'm a little better looking and not that into gold but the guy does have a nice first name .

 

[Norway]

From "The Satoshi Affair":

Wright had strong views about how the technology should develop, and how it could ‘scale’ to meet greater demand. ‘It can go to any size,’ Wright said that day. I’ve tested up to 340 gigabyte blocks, which is hundreds of thousands of times greater than it is now. It’s every stock exchange, it’s every registry rolled into one … Ultimately bitcoin is a 1980s program, because that’s what I was trained in … The idea is good, the code is robust, it runs and does the job, but it’s slow and cumbersome. There were some things early on that needed to be fixed and were, but it wasn’t as perfect as everyone thinks. At the end of the day, it needs to be turned into professional code. It needs to move away from the home user network and into a server network environment. And then it can do much more and be faster.’

 

[cypherdoc]

no kidding:

[doublepost=1466544849,1466544132][/doublepost]

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Will Ethereum complete the trifecta of fail - ICO, future switch to PoS, bailout - and become a billion-dollar spreadsheet?

Note how these are actually intertwined. The ICO/premine ensures founders have a ton of power, especially after the switch to PoS, which ensures they can push through a bailout to help themselves and their friends. They can also control the timing of the move to PoS to their benefit. The ICO ensured they got paid before the system had to actually function as intended, so that issues can be responded to in an ad-hoc manner to keep the pump going by maintaining PR image. No real long-term plan, no conviction, just keep those plates spinning.

If you simply imagine what the best way for insiders to make the most money is, then everything that has happened so far starts making a lot more sense.

 

[priestc]

Does anybody who follows this thread work for a bitcoin-related company as their day job? I lost my job about 3 weeks ago, and have sent my resume to just about every big blockchain business, including Coinbase, Xapo, Blockchain.info, 21, etc. I have not gotten a single response. Are blockchain companies simply not hiring anybody or are the jobs just so competitive?

 

[theZerg]

I like the idea of smart contracts they can solve problems, but they are not going to solve 99.3% of contract problems, Lawyers and Lawsuits arise because of issues ill defined or not defined in the contracts and because of cash flow problems. Programmers are not going to write better contracts than lawyers and smart contracts are not going to solve those issues.

Lawyers aren't going away any time soon, yes they may need to do less clerical work and property registrations but I don't expect to see the number of lawsuits drop any time soon with the adoption of cryptocurrencies.

The lawsuits will be very different since the contract is unambiguous. So arguments will have to be that the contract did not cover what was discussed.

I mean the DAO thief could literally argue that he has a legal right to the money.

There will probably be contracts that are redundantly natural and software languages, contracts that have separate natural and software clauses, and contracts that specify that the software is the full and complete contract superceding any and all prior natural verbal or written understandings.
I

 

[AdrianX]

So arguments will have to be that the contract did not cover what was discussed.

That's the nature of most contract disputes, and having a smart contract resolve on a technicality won't make the world a better place. Simple contracts like a post agreement deed transfer is all good and well as a smart contract but incorporating all the subjects to an offer in a smart contract with deed transfer would be irresponsible given the nature of such contracts and most contracts, I've yet to find a contract deliverable that isn't subject to subjective interpretation in the real world.

I could make an exception for financial products but even that's now up for debate given the 2008 financial crisis.

 

[cliff]

@theZerg and @AdrianX - Lawyers will play the same role they do today in large part because lawyers primarily provide counsel to and advocacy on behalf of their clients. For smart contracts to disrupt the legal industry by replacing lawyers as counselors and advocates, they'd need to massively empower the people that ordinarily seek independent third-party advice in the status quo on various complex matters enough for them to operate alone OR they'd need to eliminate entire causes of legal disputes all together. I don't see this happening in the short to medium terms. Anything can happen in the long-term.

That said, in the short- and medium terms smart contracts may become another tool of the legal trade just like various software, document forms, databases, and verification/authentication technologies etc. are today. I can definitely see a role for smart contracts in the form-based practice areas, especially the ones that involve a lot of filing with various government offices and courts (real estate, secured transactions, corp., bankruptcy, other admin agency/permitting office). I can see them in estate planning. Again, smart contracts here are just a tool of the counselor or advocate. Lawyers are probably an ideal market for smart-contract software.

When used outside the legal industry (i.e., in consumer facing situations), for lawyers, smart contracts will probably just be a different type of evidence/piece of the puzzle in the same categories of matters that exist now, especially in litigation where the key piece of evidence might be that someone didn't make a payment or didn't do something else as evidenced by the ledger or the lack of subsequent execution of the contract. I can imagine credit card companies using smart contracts in issuing terms of credit to users and approving/making payments. The smart contract will basically authenticate identity, document events (repayment, maybe), and/or approve consumer purchases up to X amount. A lawyer's role in this world is not all that much different from what it is today: they will be an advocate to either the company or the consumer, or counsel to the company.

 

[cypherdoc]

Does anybody who follows this thread work for a bitcoin-related company as their day job? I lost my job about 3 weeks ago, and have sent my resume to just about every big blockchain business, including Coinbase, Xapo, Blockchain.info, 21, etc. I have not gotten a single response. Are blockchain companies simply not hiring anybody or are the jobs just so competitive?

i'm sure you can thank Greg and his buddies in kore dev for choking tx volume putting the squeeze on businesses.
[doublepost=1466558456][/doublepost]

and contracts that specify that the software is the full and complete contract superceding any and all prior natural verbal or written understandings.

you should listen to the LTB podcast with Brian Klein and Pam Morgan. there is no such thing as a smart contract that can override or supercede common law if one party feels he was wronged.
[doublepost=1466559435,1466558349][/doublepost]lol, what could possibly go wrong?:

https://np.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4p7mhc/update_on_the_white_hat_attack/
[doublepost=1466559772][/doublepost]ppl are reading this thread:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-06-21/winklevoss-s-gemini-launches-u-k-bitcoin-exchange
[doublepost=1466560234][/doublepost]well, if even the USG can see that kore devs policy of high fees resulting in tx delay is a bad thing, then we are indeed in trouble:

The FSOC, which is also responsible for overseeing banks and insurers deemed as potential systemic threats, noted that bitcoin had experienced “dramatic” increases in trade delays and some transaction failures in recent months.

These occurred because “the speed with which new bitcoin transactions are submitted has exceeded the speed with which they can be added to the blockchain”, the regulators said, referring to the record book of all bitcoin transactions.

Although bitcoin-like systems are designed to prevent fraud by a single party, the regulators noted that “some systems may be vulnerable to fraud executed through collusion among a significant fraction of participants in the system”.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4p7zup/regulators_say_bitcoin_poses_financial_stability/

 

[Zarathustra]

@cypherdoc
"there is no such thing as a smart contract that can override or supercede common law if one party feels he was wronged."

That's the crux.