Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[xhiggy]

I wonder how blockstream has prepared for this eventuality? I bet they considered it as a risk and have a plan to counter a hardfork, this is based on the fact that their strategy is clearly dependent upon a hardfork not happening. This means they've analyzed the costs of a HF, decided against it, and came up with a few ways to counter it other than FUD spreading and censorship that they are currently employing.

It's important not to underestimate their ability to do something drastic and put a squeeze on the miners who switch, causing the fork to fail.

Perhaps a POW change, and a large group of their own miners? Miners to deliberately mine the core fork, thus creating the 25% opposition they 'predicted' would happen? Will they keep their own chain, with a lower difficulty and continue to pretend like nothing happened in r/bitcoin? Their less secure chain, with notable developers, and a media perception that the fork is controversial and evil/anarchistic may bring businesses to their small block version of bitcoin. Their sidechain version could still attract significant interest and create a return for blockstream. Does a private bitcoin, with the social inertia of being bitcoin to some casual observers, pose a threat to this fork?

This is a step towards victory, but also the time to be the most paranoid and suspicious of blockstream. They will counter, injured animals and all that...

 

[cypherdoc]

 

[AdrianX]

head in the sand:

I'm convinced BS/Core have more than one top notch PR firm working the propaganda machine.

r/btc just moments ago was the forum of nothing but hurt, full of complaints about censorship, and now it's the heart of an on chain scaling propaganda machine. some BS/Core fundamentalists are still fully encapsulated in their bubbles, believing their own censorship results.

 

[cypherdoc]

You're so full of it.

you see, the dipshits are so deceptive that you can't even tell if he's talking 2MBHF or 2MBSWSF.

 

[freetrader]

I fully expect a media campaign to demonise the Chinese miners.
Expect the words 'coup', 'attack', 'state actors', 'government', 'conspiracy' and various verbal paintings of sky falling.

Meanwhile, they will proclaim how Bitcoin cannot continue without developers (pretending that all developers would quit), and issue unprecedented amounts of FUD and smear about those associated with Classic. That's about it for starters, I would also expect the budget to accommodate some more DOS attacks on the opposition and various attacks on sympathetic businesses, most likely kicking off with garden variety fake customer astro-turfing and tabloid-quality internet articles, but probably escalating quite fast to sternly-worded CEO blog posts and apparently drug-induced tweets.

I am genuinely curious what role Excellion will play in this. He's been playing the hero, now will he show us if he can play the villain too?

 

[Norway]

Could somebody with a twitter account tweet the meme to @Jihan?

 

[AdrianX]

Jeez @jonny1000 , I didn't figure you would resort to outright lying and claim SegWit was released in April:

Source: https://r.go1dfish.me/r/Bitcoin/comments/4qleza/_

Intending to move up the Blockstream/Core ladder?

---

For you, for free:

According to Gmax it was released with the first implementation of Spamson Mao's Bockstream partnership, fully deployed in Liquid: Bitcoin's First Production Sidechain.

 

[cypherdoc]

Could somebody with a twitter account tweet the meme to @Jihan?

dude, 2 hours ago :

 

[freetrader]

@AdrianX : I know Gmax lies, but I was surprised to see Jonny1000 stoop to that level.

 

[cypherdoc]

I wonder how blockstream has prepared for this eventuality? I bet they considered it as a risk and have a plan to counter a hardfork, this is based on the fact that their strategy is clearly dependent upon a hardfork not happening. This means they've analyzed the costs of a HF, decided against it, and came up with a few ways to counter it other than FUD spreading and censorship that they are currently employing.

It's important not to underestimate their ability to do something drastic and put a squeeze on the miners who switch, causing the fork to fail.

Perhaps a POW change, and a large group of their own miners? Miners to deliberately mine the core fork, thus creating the 25% opposition they 'predicted' would happen? Will they keep their own chain, with a lower difficulty and continue to pretend like nothing happened in r/bitcoin? Their less secure chain, with notable developers, and a media perception that the fork is controversial and evil/anarchistic may bring businesses to their small block version of bitcoin. Their sidechain version could still attract significant interest and create a return for blockstream. Does a private bitcoin, with the social inertia of being bitcoin to some casual observers, pose a threat to this fork?

This is a step towards victory, but also the time to be the most paranoid and suspicious of blockstream. They will counter, injured animals and all that...

here's how i would hope it would play out, all things considered.

Adam Back and Gregory Maxwell get ejected from Blockstream as being the principle architects behind the failed strategy of obfuscation, stalling, bullying, and outright lying. the remainder of the company pivots hard by joining the Classic core dev team (in obvious deprecated roles decision-wise) and they make the best of it. otherwise, you would have to believe that the rest of the company including all its investors and fellow core devs, will be willing to piss their money, coin, and careers down the drain. the community is barely tolerating the streamblock currently, imo, and they definitely won't tolerate a slash and burn strategy from these guys if the miners decide they want a 2MBHF. of course, if they want to remain ostracized and do no further business in the community in a reckless gamble to dig in their heels, they can. but the consequences will be catastrophic; for them. someone else in here made the comment the other week that Bitcoin is too big to tolerate obstruction and any force that tries to stand in it's way will get washed away. Blockstream and it's kore devs are standing 40 yds out in a low tide situation with the tsunami gathering steam.

 

[solex]

According to Gmax it was released with the first implementation of Spamson Mao's Bockstream partnership, fully deployed in Liquid: Bitcoin's First Production Sidechain.

This is Maxwell's explanation about SegWit being 2 months late:

April 2016 is "when the design and implementation would be done and up for review".

So, definitely not the release date.

 

[AdrianX]

@solex, thanks, I am aware of the situation, and the pending ambiguity of the word "released" when it comes time to increase the block size - hell even increasing the block size to 2MB may just be the 2MB block increase from SegWit Core committed too. I was referring to Gmax's statement here he says a functioning version of SegWit has already been released:

 

[cypherdoc]

grinding higher. yay @Jihan!
[doublepost=1467326960][/doublepost]absolutely awesome video on ATM skimmers:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/24/atm-skimmer-caught-in-the-wild-by-a-real-security-engineer/

 

[albin]

The "terminator" plan appears to be an example of something that I've tried to explain to the resident consensification concern troll (received as a matter of course with fingers in ears and accusations of extremism), that the notion of "locking in" 25% opposition is nonsense because of meta-consensus out-of-band of the actual programmatic activation through miner communication.

 

[cypherdoc]

The Perfect Storm:

[doublepost=1467342245][/doublepost]Going Off The Cliff:

[doublepost=1467342461][/doublepost]first Deutche Bank, then Bank of Santander, and now all of Italian banks?:

Italy Granted "Extraordinary " €150BN Bank Bailout Program To Prevent "Panic, Run On Deposits"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-30/european-commission-grants-italy-crisis-€150bn-bank-bailout-program-prevent-run-depo

 

[Mengerian]

I am hopeful that we are witnessing the beginning of a transition to decentralized development.

In the past, many people talked about alternative implementations. But this was often accompanied with the proviso that these alternate implementations would need to be very careful to maintain consensus with each other. This focus on maintaining consensus extended to plans for a “consensus library” that the implementations could all share to ensure they were compatible.

While this “friendly” approach might sound nice, I don’t think it is sufficient to ensure a robust and truly decentralized network. For Bitcoin to become truly anti-fragile, we need to move to an ecosystem where competing implementations pursue different goals, and push for different consensus rules.

I imagine a future where different groups are constantly vying for influence on the Bitcoin network, and developing competing clients as part of their strategy. These groups could be backed by investors, by miners, or large merchant processors. Some of these groups will try to push changes that others might disagree with, and others will develop tools to defend against the changes they do not like.

If the system works properly, we end up with a vibrant and dynamic ecosystem held together by economics and game theory. A system that can adapt and incorporate changes that increase its total value, while at the same time fending off attacks that seek to undermine it.

Viewing things this way, we don’t necessarily want Core to be “defeated”, they are free to promote their vision. Rather, I think we want other clients, like Classic and Unlimited, to gain in influence and acceptance. People should feel free to run Classic or Unlimited if those clients match their vision for the progress of Bitcoin.

Although the block size impasse is very frustrating, if it leads to strong competing implementations with robust communities behind them, then maybe the pain will have been worthwhile. It will likely be a bumpy road ahead, but I am hopeful that it leads to a bright future.

 

[cliff]

This is cool - he's helping prospective node providers make appropriate hardware choices for running a Classic or Unlimited node. #GrowTheNetwork

 

[freetrader]

I wonder which enterprising exchange will set up fork futures first (ClassicCoin vs CoreCoin)?
Would be very surprised if it is Bitfinex.

---

Going to copy some of my thoughts from Classic Slack here (not verbatim - with some additions):
(also posted with some adaptations at https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4qqzzk/proofofcommitment_to_the_terminator_proposal/ )

Let me preface this by saying: I like the reaction I've seen in the last 12 hours from Jihan Wu on the topic of the 2MB fork.

However... the miners are still not officially underwriting the proposal and maintaining a safe distance, I think a case could be made for a proof of commitment from them before clients like Classic or BU commit to deviations from their roadmaps to make the terminator plan "happen".

The clearest imaginable way of showing commitment would be to signal actual support for BIP109.
50% of blocks should be easily possible under the circumstances, and that would show everyone that they are serious negotiating partners.
This can be initiated before the halving (although 50% cannot be reached by then).
Still, it would be hard to overstate the positive market reaction that could follow if big block support were to drastically ramp up on chain.

On the topic of SegWit, I think the idea of proving SegWit on Litecoin first should be seriously examined.
Charlie Lee has already indicated that he is willing to accept SegWit on LTC.
From a risk perspective it makes perfect sense to try new technology on an altcoin that's very similar to Bitcoin, but less valuable.

One upside for LTC would be great marketing exposure, and a practically guaranteed future role as a testbed for new Bitcoin technology.

However, I would say this is all contingent on getting SegWit's quality issues ironed out.
O(n) signature hashing is a big one. Removing any known possibilities of TM is another one.
This is elementary in terms of requirements we would expect from SegWit on Bitcoin, otherwise the benefits are not apparent.

To fix these things, more time is needed, including more validation on on testnet, otherwise even the Litecoin folks will assuredly decline.

I also think that the discount structure of SegWit should be re-examined.
It should be well analyzed and rationalized. Unfortunately Blockstream/Core have not really provided a convincing justification for it, at least in my view.
We need to determine whether any claimed benefits are credible and necessary (seeing as miners have done effective UTXO cleanups in the past). Ideally, after careful scrutiny and public debate, the final discount should be opened up for community vote (at least, in BU - other project might have their own ways of finding consensus).

---

Excellent article on the recent events by @Aquent :

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-miners-hardfork-according-circulating-rumors/

And you have even managed to lure Spamson Mow out of his stunned silence:

I'm loving this salty popcorn!

 

[cypherdoc]

Spamson has me blocked on Twitter and i can't load the tweet in Android
[doublepost=1467377398][/doublepost]I still worry about signaling from miners as small block heads will surely initiate ddos attacks. Perhaps they should just activate and give everyone28d to upgrad. Would certainly be enough time for me but it's businesses that i wonder about. Exchanges at the least should be contacting miners privately.

I wonder which enterprising exchange will set up fork futures first (ClassicCoin vs CoreCoin)?
Would be very surprised if it is Bitfinex.

---

Going to copy some of my thoughts from Classic Slack here (not verbatim - with some additions):
(also posted with some adaptations at https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4qqzzk/proofofcommitment_to_the_terminator_proposal/ )

Let me preface this by saying: I like the reaction I've seen in the last 12 hours from Jihan Wu on the topic of the 2MB fork.

However... the miners are still not officially underwriting the proposal and maintaining a safe distance, I think a case could be made for a proof of commitment from them before clients like Classic or BU commit to deviations from their roadmaps to make the terminator plan "happen".

The clearest imaginable way of showing commitment would be to signal actual support for BIP109.
50% of blocks should be easily possible under the circumstances, and that would show everyone that they are serious negotiating partners.
This can be initiated before the halving (although 50% cannot be reached by then).
Still, it would be hard to overstate the positive market reaction that could follow if big block support were to drastically ramp up on chain.

On the topic of SegWit, I think the idea of proving SegWit on Litecoin first should be seriously examined.
Charlie Lee has already indicated that he is willing to accept SegWit on LTC.
From a risk perspective it makes perfect sense to try new technology on an altcoin that's very similar to Bitcoin, but less valuable.

One upside for LTC would be great marketing exposure, and a practically guaranteed future role as a testbed for new Bitcoin technology.

However, I would say this is all contingent on getting SegWit's quality issues ironed out.
O(n) signature hashing is a big one. Removing any known possibilities of TM is another one.
This is elementary in terms of requirements we would expect from SegWit on Bitcoin, otherwise the benefits are not apparent.

To fix these things, more time is needed, including more validation on on testnet, otherwise even the Litecoin folks will assuredly decline.

I also think that the discount structure of SegWit should be re-examined.
It should be well analyzed and rationalized. Unfortunately Blockstream/Core have not really provided a convincing justification for it, at least in my view.
We need to determine whether any claimed benefits are credible and necessary (seeing as miners have done effective UTXO cleanups in the past). Ideally, after careful scrutiny and public debate, the final discount should be opened up for community vote (at least, in BU - other project might have their own ways of finding consensus).

---

Excellent article on the recent events by @Aquent :

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-miners-hardfork-according-circulating-rumors/

And you have even managed to lure Spamson Mow out of his stunned silence:

I'm loving this salty popcorn!

 

[freetrader]

@cypherdoc: I'm not even on Twitter ... sounds like you need a VPN!

Excellion's tweets read:

"It's very creative FUD" (talking about the Terminator proposal)

and about @Aquent 's article:

"It's especially telling when FUD mongers like the fake reporter Andrew Quentson try to portray me as anti-Core. #LOL"

Irony level approaching dangerous threshold...