- Dec 16, 2015
- 2,806
- 6,088
The tragicomically insane u/pokertravis @NashGuy - whose two favorite words are "sincere" and "player" - is well-known for constantly spouting incoherent gibberish while calling other people "ignorant."
He thinks he's special because he uses words like "Hayekian" and "Keynesian" all the time.
But due to his weak grasp of logic and language (not to mention economics!), he has no idea what those words actually mean, and he tends to use them totally backwards - like when he claims that removing a 1 MB limit somehow constitutes "Hayekian central planning" - or that "scaling Bitcoin to be coffee money" would be "Keynesian central banking":
He likes to go around beating everyone over the head claiming that he's only one who has "read the literature" - which in his case means some stuff by his hero John Nash about "Ideal Money" which isn't re-levant to current Bitcoin scaling issues. (He also likes to put a hyphen in the word "re-levant" all the time because he thinks that's impressive.)
He actually is very "sincere" - ie, he is insufferably well-meaning and earnest in his delusions - and although he does have a reasonably decent grasp of English syntax, he seems to be blissfully unaware of the fact that words have meanings, so his arguments tend to be totally devoid of semantics and thus not even worth addressing, as can be seen from some of his earlier incoherent ramblings cited below:
https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4ic230/i_cant_fairly_participate_when_multiple_posters/
https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4id38k/i_call_the_communitys_attention_i_am_being_mauled/
https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4idhzg/this_player_spent_the_entire_day_researching_me/
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4idi8o/this_player_spent_the_entire_day_researching/
In all fairness, /u/pokertravis does not really seem to be a "shill" in the usual sense of the word - because in some sense, he is quite "sincere" in his posts, which sometimes have a veneer of lucidity, until he inevitably descends into incoherent rambling and pompous, pseudointellectual gibberish:
He is known for spamming forums with massively downvoted meaningless OPs which he thinks are deep and clever but which are actually simply ridiculous and bizarre - eg:
> Rethinking Babel
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3hm9b5/rethinking_babel/
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> Random patterns
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3uimnp/random_patterns/
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> If I told you we were going to build a pyramid this might not be so useful...
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3und3g/if_i_told_you_we_were_going_to_build_a_pyramid/
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> Theymos (and /rbitcoin) is the only moderator across MANY forums/sites that doesn't have me on perma ban.
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/412090/theymos_and_rbitcoin_is_the_only_moderator_across/
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> What happened to bitcoin.
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4g6wox/what_happened_to_bitcoin/
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He apparently believes that Bitcoin should be a "settlement layer":
> Are you sad Satoshi lied to you?
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/49cc0m/are_you_sad_satoshi_lied_to_you/
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> In regard to Keynesian Block-size manipulation vs a Settlement system, what is Ideal Money?
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/49f0zd/in_regard_to_keynesian_blocksize_manipulation_vs/
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> Block-chain Keynesians: The big banks, and the big bitcoin corporations don't want to let bitcoin become the new settlement system!
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/49du6i/blockchain_keynesians_the_big_banks_and_the_big/
As the titles of those last two OPs of his above show (where he manages to get confused between the elementary concepts of Keynesian money supply inflation - and transaction capacity LOL!) /u/pokertravis @NashGuy likes to name-drop in a misguided attempt to create the impression that he is not entirely clueless about economics.
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And finally: This is probably the stupidest post ever from u/pokertravis @NashGuy :
> If bitcoin's block's were "too small" your bitcoins would be worth far money than if blocks were bigger
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4bzvie/if_bitcoins_blocks_were_too_small_your_bitcoins/
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The five stages of u/pokertravis @NashGuy are as follows:
First people welcome him (like @cypherdoc innocently did earlier).
Then they debate him.
Then they ridicule him.
Then they pity him.
And finally, they simply ignore him.
As for what exchanges should do In a hard fork. I believe many of them took the correct course of action here."Yes, we need bigger blocks, but this ... what should we do when a fork happens? Will we have two coins? or three? Do we need to stop trading in that time? Do we need to double-spend coins for our customers? hopefully this madness doesn't happen."
11 days without newly positive sentiment from @Zangelbert BingledackNewly positive sentiment from Chinese government on Bitcoin:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/video/2016-07/08/c_129128997.htm
@cliff, you are an attorney, correct? what type may i ask? thanks for your always valuable and inquisitive input.These posts from YTDM resonate a lot more with today than before, thanks for posting them. By the way, if you're here, YDTM, your posts are usually a fun read. Keep it up, I wouldn't complain if they were more frequent.
@Norway - That's so cool about the debating opportunity. Let us know how it goes/how it went.
EFF on Blockstream's defensive patent strategy:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/blockstream-commits-patent-nonaggression
From http://techrights.org/2016/07/22/blockstream-swpats/
"We’re glad to see Blockstream taking this step, and it’s provided an excellent template for other software companies to borrow. We also admire the company’s acknowledgement that licenses and pledges alone can’t fix a patent system that’s all too easily exploited by patent trolls, nor can it stop the real root cause of the problems in the patent system, the flood of stupid patents."
Blockstream’s message is suggestive of unknown context (like something they know but are not telling us). It seems like shameless self-promotion or a publicity stunt with a “patents” angle. We have become accustomed to it. One company that should definitely do the same thing (but has not) is Red Hat. OIN membership does not guarantee this and if Red Hat got sold to some relatively hostile entity (like Sun to Oracle), there is no guarantee that Red Hat’s patents would not be used to wreak havoc (like a $10 billion lawsuit over a programming language alone, i.e. an order of magnitude worse than SCOversus IBM). █I would say that both quotes can be true; there's probably more good with the strategy than bad IMHO.
thanks for linking back to that valuable insight into @jonny1000's mind.80%? Pfftt..
"Firstly, to clarify, yes you are correct in that I absolutely would "hold on to strong consensus even if it destroyed the price".
https://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-562#post-20325
Yes, I think so too, the ethereum hf shows that, even if you have resistancy, a hf is not that big of a problem we have been told ... and yes, the easiest method would be to just follow the longest chain. This is why I think in case of a hardfork we would see exchanges drop core in minutes. Why should a company stay on the minor-chain from core and risk bitcoin to be die? Because of "A fork must not happen"-ideology?@Christoph Bergmann
As for what exchanges should do In a hard fork. I believe many of them took the correct course of action here.
Simply close all withdrawals for a period (say 6 hours) but continue trading. Until such time as it's clear which will be the dominant chain. Combine this with statement like "We will only have long term support for a single fork of the Bitcoin blockchain - this will be the dominant version that has the longest proof of work chain."
There is the advanced option too, which i'm sure some exchanges would go down. Whereby they run fork futures and deal with coins on the minority chain. I think even here it would be wise to close the exchange for withdrawals during the first few hours.
Needles to say, personally i don't think and minority fork would last long (in any significant form) so the whole exercise will probably be an anticlimax.
The biggest tragedy here is that there has been so much FUD and propaganda on two persistent chains 'controversial hardforks CANNOT happen" that it will have convinced many people that they must hold onto a loosing chain no matter what.
Its really terrible, and especially ironic that blockstream have been pushing the line -'controversial hardforks will cause people loose money'. This standpoint will actually cause more people to loose money. An intellectually honest company would have said "We do not believe a blocksize hardfork is the best course of action, but to avoid loss of funds we advise users to refrain from transacting during any such period of uncertainty"
The exchanges that are willling to put in the effort will be the ones to get the business and prosper.But there is a chance that we end up with two chains - what translates in three coins - and even if this chance is tiny, I expect from an exchange I trust to calculate the possible outcomes and be prepared. And than things get tricky ... as you know, a transaction itself has no indication which chain it uses, and as long as the inputs are correct in both chains, the transaction is valid on both chains ... splitting the coin, by mixing inputs with newly mined inputs or double spending the coins, is complicated, and most people fear the complications. A proof might be that there is no know trade on bitsquare where you can trade eth classic against bitcoin (= free bitcoins for useless eth classic) - it not worth the risk to split your inputs, so the risk is greater than zero.
KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON (releasing BU )I have never seen the /r/bitcoin and /r/btc topic divide so large. If you were a newbie you'd think they were different coins...