Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

i always throw this out there every once in a while to remind everyone that i've got unlimited ammunition for this war:

[doublepost=1468344258][/doublepost]i've been always amused how they discontinued this data. any economists amongst you that have suitable replacements?:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/28
[doublepost=1468344607,1468343958][/doublepost]i'm not sure how any of these monetary velocity graphs can be considered "good":

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/32242

 

[bluemoon]

@cypherdoc

M3 estimated to be up around 80% since your 2006 FRED chart, about 6% compound.

http://www.shadowstats.com/charts/monetary-base-money-supply

 

[cliff]

Interesting article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-banking-caribbean-specialreport-idUSKCN0ZS29V

Here are some highlights:

Burdened by chronic back pain, Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow avoids traveling abroad, his colleagues say. But in January, he flew to Washington and visited one government agency after another on a singular mission: reconnecting his country to the U.S. financial system.
...
As banks scrub their books of potentially risky businesses amid a tightening regulatory noose, major U.S. financial institutions have ended relationships with regional banks across the Caribbean in the last four years, Caribbean officials and bank executives say.

This so-called “de-risking” or “de-banking,” in which banks pull out of certain lines of business and even parts of the world, has intensified. Enhanced scrutiny on financial fraud and new regulations to stem money laundering and terror finance are all at play.
...
In February, Moody’s warned that Belize could face “significant disruptions” to tourism, trade and foreign investment after losing its banking links. About 60 percent of tourist spending in Belize involves credit card transactions settled by correspondent banks.

Historically, the Caribbean has cooperated closely with the United States, interdicting drug flows and hosting U.S. naval and air stations. Yet now some transactions that used to occur in U.S. dollars are being conducted in euros and Chinese yuan.

“What I don’t understand is why the United States at the government level, diplomatic level, at the political level would not see the harm that this is doing to its relationship with countries that are on its doorstep,” said Ambassador Sanders, of Antigua and Barbuda.​

I think I know of a technology that could help w/ this problem . . . .

 

[AdrianX]

nullc likes to throw around the accusation that the miners are already accepting fiat side payments for block space or special handling; as if the existing system is fundamentally broken

how hypocritical, we are seeing these same Core developers cripple the Bitcoin protocol and now they starting to charge to relay their blocks with a separate relay network.

 

[freetrader]

I read this technically correct post:


And thought:

So now that I've signed a 2-of-2 multisig tx in the channel, my bitcoins (they are still my bitcoins, people keep telling me) are only as safe as the hub that is holding on to the other key that can sign them over (at least, as many as have currently been agreed upon - services delivered or not).

Have I just taken on a big risk that this hub will be hacked, the attacker will "collect" on the open channels and empty out the hub? Of course I have...

As long as I'm the only one in charge of "executive" keys to my coins, and not N hubs, that risk seems a little more manageable. That is why I do not want to be forced onto a layer-2 payment system through 100x higher fees on the main chain, thank you very much.

I'm not saying all LN hubs will probably have worse security than SWIFT, only that there will be some. @cypherdoc's 95% rule WILL apply.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/billion-dollar-bangladesh-hack-swift-software-hacked-no-firewalls-10-switches/

 

[awemany]

@freetrader: I see no reason to think there will be problems in the crypto with LN - after all, the very basic building block, the micro-payment channel, works well already with Bitcoin, and the other side can't just disappear with my money.

I see problem with LN in a a limited blocksize scenario like now, and a very unpredictable fee rate when closing channels creating @Roger_Murdock 's 'fractional teller banking' problem.

Even blockstream absolutely needs to up the blocksize for their model to work.

 

[freetrader]

@awemany: I don't see a special problem with the crypto as relates to LN.

My point was that by using multisig on payment hubs I am buying into risk that such hubs are hacked and drained like a DAO, settling to my possible disadvantage.
Simply because I put my coins into a 2-of-2 off-chain limbo.

Will I be able to choose my hubs freely?
Why can't I choose my miners freely? After watching them for awhile I'm beginning to feel I need to be able to exert more control over who preferentially gets to mine my transactions.

 

[cypherdoc]

@freetrader

that's not how a LN channel works though, afaik. even if the hub gets hacked you can still publish your half of the updated tx (which both of you have signed) and theoretically you will get a refund at some designated point in time down the line. it's not a std multisig in that sense. someone correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[Zarathustra]

30-day market cap at new alltime high. The market seems to expect a crushing defeat of the full block strategy (gregidity) and an end of the cowardly collaboration of the big miners. Losing even more face seems not to be an option in China.

https://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap?timespan=all&daysAverageString=30

 

[cypherdoc]

i think that's the correct interpretation.

 

[freetrader]

@cypherdoc : I might be getting it wrong - afaik as participant in a channel I am holding on to a bunch of 2-of-2 signed breach transactions, the latest of which represents the last agreed state of commerce between the endpoints.
My bitcoins are no longer mine if an adversary gets their hands on that breach transaction, settles it and makes off with the hub's coins. I've yielded exclusive control of the settlement and increased the risk that my payment can be diverted by some hacker before it reaches its intended recipient (which is not the LN hub, that's just a middleman).

And if we look at a route of payments from hub to hub, a heist becomes a question of the weakest link.

The point I was trying to make is that this introduces significant risk which was not there in the on-chain, P2P model.

 

[cypherdoc]

>My bitcoins are no longer mine if an adversary gets their hands on that breach transaction, settles it and makes off with the hub's coins.

but they don't make off with ALL the coins in your individual channel. just the updated tx with it's divided amounts that you've (both of you) already agreed to and signed.
[doublepost=1468351169][/doublepost]really interesting. i ran into this problem the other day trying to clean out a wallet with a bunch of small inputs. the software wouldn't even process it. had to send some more coin into the wallet to pay for the high fees. it was a nuisance. fees are going too high b/c of jacked mempools and full blocks w/o enough of a price increase (in dollar terms). solution seems easy; unblock the stream to create lower fees and greater tx throughput to allow miners to make more per block in aggregate from greater user adoption and growth of the economy:

[doublepost=1468351330][/doublepost]@Zarathustra

there are reasons to be optimistic:

 

[Zarathustra]

@cypherdoc

Peak civilization = peak debt = peak wealth = peak government = peak protection money (tax) = peak psychotherapy.

As soon as the peak is exceeded, everything goes in the opposite direction.

 

[AdrianX]

@cypherdoc : I might be getting it wrong - afaik as participant in a channel I am holding on to a bunch of 2-of-2 signed breach transactions, the latest of which represents the last agreed state of commerce between the endpoints.
My bitcoins are no longer mine if an adversary gets their hands on that breach transaction, settles it and makes off with the hub's coins. I've yielded exclusive control of the settlement and increased the risk that my payment can be diverted by some hacker before it reaches its intended recipient (which is not the LN hub, that's just a middleman).

And if we look at a route of payments from hub to hub, a heist becomes a question of the weakest link.

The point I was trying to make is that this introduces significant risk which was not there in the on-chain, P2P model.

I think the risk is that you trust a centralized well financed Hub over writing the transactions to the blockchain to save a few bucks. the real risk leads to a diminished value of bitcoin on the blockchain as the LN network grows - while technical inflation is not possible, it's possible to mathematically determine how much inflation could be tolerated by a LN Hub when analyzing blockchain clearing transactions and it wouldn't surprise me if some dumb contracts introduce new risks over time to take advantage of the masses that don't clear on the blockchain.

 

[Zarathustra]

Xtreme poverty - the happiest tribe on earth

http://fameiva.com/happiest-tribe-on-earth/

 

[cypherdoc]

i'm sorry. i'm not prejudice. but i had to laugh . maybe b/c it doesn't look like they're all that happy; maybe just serene?:

 

[awemany]

@cypherdoc, @freetrader: Yes @cypherdoc, that's my understanding as well.

 

[Zarathustra]

Anyway, happier than our self-declared rulers ...

 

[Erdogan]

I bet they have access to aspirin, fishing hooks and knives. Ar you sure there is no attention whoring social anthropologist running around?

 

[Inca]

I would be surprised if we break much higher just yet @cypherdoc . I would expect some consolidation post-halving or a big induced crash and recovery with a base being set to launch from later this year in November or 2017. The market is still evaluating whether bitcoin is priced correctly after a fairly massive rise in the last few months.

There are three main drivers to the price I can see going forward from here:

1) post-halving supply reduction..(insidious effect which is like an invisible hand propping up the price going forward)
2) bitcoin ETF(s) coming online (finally giving access into crypto to the multi-trillion dollar capital pool that is the american market) could be epic and spark a bitcoinesque x10 rally.
3) resolution of the blocksize debate (this whole thing could be a charade designed to allow those parties stalling to accumulate as many coins as possible before announcing capacity improvements - who could be stupid enough to actually believe in running with full blocks and a limited blocksize is viable to grow bitcoin globally..really!?!)

That said I suspect we will consolidate or crash first for some time this year.