Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[freetrader]

I cordially invite you all:

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/bs-core-and-the-ferengi-rules-of-acquisition-keeping-score.1285/

The first submissions are going to be the easiest fruit, of course. With regard to the birth of SegWit I can already pinpoint at least one actual compliance, but I'm going to refrain from starting because as game host, that would be bad form (unless you egg me on).

Please ensure that verifiable evidence always accompanies, and try to have the facts on your side.

Let the acquisitions begin!

 

[chriswilmer]

It's pretty quiet for 400 blocks before the halving...

 

[cypherdoc]

Holding breath....
[doublepost=1467839604][/doublepost]Is there any question that the hodlers have won?:

 

[cliff]

Have his posts been getting stranger and stranger over time?

Not sure they're more strange than before. He's certainly not an "M"VP or a Lebron James in this space ( ) - at least not visibly so atm.

 

[AdrianX]

I cordially invite you all:

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/bs-core-and-the-ferengi-rules-of-acquisition-keeping-score.1285/

The first submissions are going to be the easiest fruit, of course. With regard to the birth of SegWit I can already pinpoint at least one actual compliance, but I'm going to refrain from starting because as game host, that would be bad form (unless you egg me on).

Please ensure that verifiable evidence always accompanies, and try to have the facts on your side.

Let the acquisitions begin!

go ahead and give us an illustration, as the host the point can be discarded as an illustrative example.

 

[Erdogan]

Metals became money because the war lords demanded it from the people (tribute/tax) to produce weapons and because they promised it to the soldiers (IOU Gold).

As soon as the state (war lords/church) demands production (metal/grain) as a tax/tribute, the surplus production begins. Those who are not able to deliver at scheduled date are forced to lend gold (with interests, which enforces even more surplus production). Those debt papers then became money (Greaber "Debt - the first 5'000 years").

Graeber: “Say a king wishes to support a standing army of 50,000 men. Under ancient or medieval conditions, feeding such a force was an enormous problem… On the other hand, if one simply hands out coins to soldiers and then demands that every family in the kingdom was obliged to pay one of those coins back to you [to pay taxes], one would, in one blow, turn one’s entire national economy into a vast machine for the provisioning of soldiers, since now every family, in order to get their hands on the coins, must find some way to contribute to the general effort to provide soldiers with the things they want.”

But a king, however powerful, can not just proclaim gold to be valuable by fiat. He robbed people of gold, borrowed from rich people and confiscated gold mines to get it. Gold became money because it was the best stuff on the market to hold value over time, just to turn around and make another trade, store value from the autumn market to the spring market, or to even out someones consumption over a lifetime. It just had the best properties to be used as money.

 

[freetrader]

go ahead and give us an illustration

Happy to oblige. How about an application of Rule 52 "Never ask when you can take."

 

[Erdogan]

Holding breath....
[doublepost=1467839604][/doublepost]Is there any question that the hodlers have won?:

Since inception? You can't calculate that.

For the future, it is better to use just multiples in stead of percentages.

 

[lunar]

Comedy Interlude... and stress test

 

[AdrianX]

I put two and two together, and I think they're working on a new whitepaper already:

It's perhaps not surprising. The nature of the beast seems to be that many, if not all, of the possible futures of Bitcoin imagined at some point in time can and *will* be tried by those who believe strongly enough in them. And of course imagination is an incessant process. Evolutionary theory must intuitively extend beyond biological organisms - as we ourselves strive to grow beyond our physical limitations and extend our capabilities through technology, the law of 'survival of the fittest' accompanies all our creations. I ought to finish reading Voltaire's Candide before I muse on about how we should try to guard our moral / spiritual side on this journey. Are our emotions in any way a useful compass, having presumably evolved along with us?
[doublepost=1467745353,1467744163][/doublepost]Sometimes all the discussion about how to scale short term is extremely frustrating - it just seems so logical that the less the software interferes with the market in terms of block size, transaction fee floors etc., the freer the entire system is to find an optimum that satisfies what the market will want from it. Now and in the future. Argh, why don't we all run BU already?!

that Hal 9000 is becoming a martyr for the idea of an artificially limited settlement layer.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4rkgtr/kyle_torpey_on_twitter_hal_finney_talking_about/

 

[jonny1000]

Since you didn't want to answer my "Who told you...?" question on this forum, I had to bring it up again (but you're aware since the comment was a reply to you):

Sorry I do not remember who said it then.

This thread seems to think it was released:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4fi3t8/segregated_witness_by_sipa_pull_request_7910/


However this definition does not really matter, most people are now saying it has not been released. I am happy to accept that.

 

[freetrader]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-06/after-4-400-surge-bitcoin-s-fate-hinges-on-huge-chinese-miners

 

[lunar]

This is actually getting pretty serious.

Domino #7: In Dramatic Twist, UK Property Fund Cuts Value Of Its Assets By 17%



Spidey senses are tingling, this could become the straw that beaks the camels back. Is it the next https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Rock moment?

 

[Erdogan]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-06/after-4-400-surge-bitcoin-s-fate-hinges-on-huge-chinese-miners

A quite good article, summarizing the capacity situation and governance problem. I wish they would lose the flawed comparison to Visa.
[doublepost=1467853936][/doublepost]Visa is a dollar-denominated credit transfer system.

Bitcoin is money.

 

[cypherdoc]

that Hal 9000 is becoming a martyr for the idea of an artificially limited settlement layer.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4rkgtr/kyle_torpey_on_twitter_hal_finney_talking_about/

yeah, i wouldn't take that post seriously. b/c in the same breath, Hal states there will be Bitcoin banks that are the only one's who transact onchain for "settlements". lol. if that were the case, why would any individual bother to run a full node for free? just to help the banks? i think not. there goes any decentralization that the small blockheads advocate in terms of nodes.

also, he says this: "I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. Most Bitcoin transactions will occur between banks, to settle net transfers. Bitcoin transactions by private individuals will be as rare as... well, as Bitcoin based purchases are today."

so unless small blockheads are advocating for entirely new digital currencies (altcoins) to be running btwn these same Bitcoin banks with bitcoin only serving as a reserve currency, then i don't see it. as well, we already see that Bitcoin tx's are NOT as rare as purchases were back then.
[doublepost=1467855046,1467854395][/doublepost]

A quite good article, summarizing the capacity situation and governance problem. I wish they would lose the flawed comparison to Visa.
[doublepost=1467853936][/doublepost]Visa is a dollar-denominated credit transfer system.

Bitcoin is money.

i find it pretty sickening that large banks like JPM et al can clearly see our capacity problems and laugh at us, while at the same time, we have a kore dev junta that strangles Bitcoin in hopes of financial profit thru their petty little Blockstream.

 

[Erdogan]

also, he says this: "I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. Most Bitcoin transactions will occur between banks, to settle net transfers. Bitcoin transactions by private individuals will be as rare as... well, as Bitcoin based purchases are today."

This is wrong in the following sense:

The current system is base money consisting of the actual paper rectangle dollars and QE dollars, plus credit money denoted also in dollars and locked to dollars in value by promises, ultimately from the Fed. Other fiats are just extensions. The value peg between the real money and the credit money may last forever, but can also break in a cataclysmic money event.

In the bitcoin/altcoin world suggested by Hal Finney, the altcoins are money in their own capacity, floating in value.

Not the same thing.

 

[cypherdoc]

the problem has not gone away:

 

[Peter R]

"if that were the case, why would any individual bother to run a full node for free? just to help the banks? i think not. there goes any decentralization that the small blockheads advocate in terms of nodes." -- @cypherdoc

I think I finally got the "Blockstream Vision" that makes sense of this apparent contradiction: An individual would run a node so that he had access to the Bitcoin Network as a sort of "Dispute Resolution Center" for Lightning transactions. Since he would not expect to issue many (or any) transactions on the Blockchain, the high cost per TX is not a deterrent to him. The node is more like an insurance policy and the cost per TX is like the deductible when making a claim. From a game theory perspective it needs to be understood by everyone that this individual could settle on the Blockchain in order to prevent the security assumptions behind LN from unravelling.

 

[jonny1000]

@Peter R, Great video.

On one of the slides you have the following equation:

Risk = ZQ*(block reward)/10 minutes

Please could you try to think about this with the following additional parameter to the equation:

Risk = (1-Hs)*ZQ*(block reward)/10 minutes

Where Hs = the miners share of the global hashrate

This is one of the main concerns I have with respect to mining centralization and your talk did not address this point.

Peter, do you have time to respond to this?

 

[Peter R]

"Peter, do you have time to respond to this?" -- @jonny1000

Sure. Both equations are valid, depending on how you define Z.

I had originally used your form of the equation--and I was going to explain how the "mine-two-blocks-in-a-row" effect benefits miners with a larger value of h and how optimistic mining can counteract this advantage if it gets abused. But that seemed like too much material to present so I omitted it.

But yes I do agree that a miner or mining pool with a larger value of h takes on less orphaning risk, all else held constant. This is not "ideal" in my mind, but is not a serious problem in my mind either.