- Dec 16, 2015
- 2,806
- 6,088
Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.
- Thread starter cypherdoc
- Start date
cliff
Active Member
- Dec 15, 2015
- 345
- 854
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
"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.
Last edited:
lunar
Well-Known Member
- Aug 28, 2015
- 1,001
- 4,290
@Christoph Bergmann
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"
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"
Zarathustra
Well-Known Member
- Aug 28, 2015
- 1,439
- 3,797
@cliff, you are an attorney, correct? what type may i ask?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 your always valuable and inquisitive input.
cliff
Active Member
- Dec 15, 2015
- 345
- 854
@cypherdoc - real estate/land use/construction, business stuff* (formations, contracts, buying and selling assets and entities, strategy/idea testing/consulting, insurance), estates/trusts, and some litigation in these areas. I'm a generalist in a way. I think it would be awesome to work in-house somewhere or at company, not as an attorney per se, where I could merge all the various tools and skills I use into one area. This forum is good way for me to practice that - happy to be here.
*I say it like that b/c I do a little bit of everything and more - I have a few clients that can't be bothered some administrative and research-type things and they just tell me to fix or find it and to call when its done.
*I say it like that b/c I do a little bit of everything and more - I have a few clients that can't be bothered some administrative and research-type things and they just tell me to fix or find it and to call when its done.
thanks for linking back to that valuable insight into @jonny1000's mind.
what he wants to do is transfer the current imbalance of power in the existing fiat system into Bitcoin where he wants to continually allow a small minority of financial elite to control the large majority of common ppl. NO. he forgets that Bitcoin turns everything on it's head and imposes the opposite type of system where a majority (the economic majority=common ppl) can regain the direction of an entirely newly incentivized, more egalitarian system, where exploitation (at least theoretically) cannot exist. Bitcoin, IOW, wants to open up the financial system to a true free market. we know that Bitcoin relies on a simple majority decision making process as evidenced by the Nakamoto consensus mechanism of 51% hashing power and the longest chain. this mechanism is what determines which tx's are valid ultimately. theoretically, this 51% hashing also represents the economic majority or common ppl. i emphasize equate economic majority with common ppl b/c there is an assumption there (which i think is valid) that the current mining pool operators and their hashers represent common ppl who invested their time, labor, and savings into this entirely new and risky financial system at great risk to themselves because of unhappiness or skepticism of the current fiat system. i actually think this is correct; which is why the Chinese pool operators, to the extent they can influence the debate, don't have to feel as if they are acting unilaterally or alone if they decide to hard fork, like kore dev wants them to think. some of their pools still consist of individuals pointing their units at their pools. also, there's enough information out there (polls and general forum sentiment) to believe that the non mining economic majority would support these pool operators if they hard fork to Classic or BU.
Meni Rosenfeld takes it even one step further. he says that even if 40% of the hashrate does a hard fork, it will win if they represent the economic majority, such as exchanges, wallets, businesses, and large hodlers. he's right; the other 60% hashrate wouldn't be able to economically function theoretically. of course it would be better to know you have 51%, but his point stands.
so we don't need @jonny1000's "strong concensus". it's not achievable anyways since it is dependent on "signalling" which is a broken concept b/c of the frontrunning manipulation/intimidation/ddos/secret conferences/censoring/wine&dine tactics of small blockists once that they can see that they are behind :
Last edited:
Christoph Bergmann
Active Member
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?
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.
cliff
Active Member
- Dec 15, 2015
- 345
- 854
bitcoin collapsing, pokemon up:
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/07/22/insurer-offers-pokemon-go-protection-but-its-really-just-coverage-for-your-phone/?mod=WSJBlog
I haven't played this game, but the follks that do in my city definitely need to up their insurance coverage. I've seen a few wander into the streets while glued to their phones. I've been referring to the players (to my wife) as "Big Pokies" - it lets me remember a one hit wonder from too long along ago by Pall Wall (not a fan, but the song was catchy back in the day) - feel free to use phrase.
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/07/22/insurer-offers-pokemon-go-protection-but-its-really-just-coverage-for-your-phone/?mod=WSJBlog
I haven't played this game, but the follks that do in my city definitely need to up their insurance coverage. I've seen a few wander into the streets while glued to their phones. I've been referring to the players (to my wife) as "Big Pokies" - it lets me remember a one hit wonder from too long along ago by Pall Wall (not a fan, but the song was catchy back in the day) - feel free to use phrase.
sorry guys; the extent of my mod privileges only extends to "warning" spammers and "moving" spam threads out of the Economics Forum. if i could delete or simply move spam posts like the above, and in the other 2 spammed threads, i'd be all over it. but @Bloomie reserves that privilege for himself.
- Dec 16, 2015
- 2,806
- 6,088
The exchanges that are willling to put in the effort will be the ones to get the business and prosper.
Sooner or later someone's going to buy the first ETHC pizza. Or not.
My crystal ball says its value will drop, and the community has already decided on the Ethereum chain they want. And that this is all subject to ETH not being hacked itself. DAO be damned.
No reason to assume it would be a long fight over an *increased* vs. *1MB-limited* Bitcoin block chain. But different from Ethereum, I think the selling would start a lot sooner. An exchange that is prepared to support multiple forks (3 is a rather small integer) can make decent fee money, I'd assume. The value of exchanges is to make exchange convenient.
BTW, separating the transactions is the job of a (clean) fork. Not much an exchange can do about it.
Last edited:
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...
Bagatell
Active Member
- Aug 28, 2015
- 728
- 1,192
@all ignore is your friend
@Jihan i suppose you like this?:
[doublepost=1469204331,1469203611][/doublepost]@satoshis_sockpuppet
you/we have to take these types of arguments seriously. isn't open source itself plus the idea of global anonymous contribution supposed to take care of patent trolling by itself?:
http://techrights.org/2016/07/22/blockstream-swpats/
[doublepost=1469204331,1469203611][/doublepost]@satoshis_sockpuppet
you/we have to take these types of arguments seriously. isn't open source itself plus the idea of global anonymous contribution supposed to take care of patent trolling by itself?:
http://techrights.org/2016/07/22/blockstream-swpats/
- Dec 16, 2015
- 2,806
- 6,088
cliff
Active Member
- Dec 15, 2015
- 345
- 854
@cypherdoc and @theZerg
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. That ethereum hacker is not going to just lose. I suspect we'll see some more activity and chaos before too long. I mean, he spent all that time making those youtube videos - what a waste.
Just like w/ American politics right now, I think the btc and bitcoin division is somewhat engineered and aided with paid personnel. NashGuy is correct about the prevalence of symbols and subtle communication out there - I think about that RE: division. Ever heard of cluetrain? I ran across it about a year ago doing some digging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cluetrain_Manifesto It put internet marketing tactics in a new light for me.
Only thing you/we can do is critically assess the info being put out there, ask questions, put on the occasional tin-foil hat, etc.
EDIT - I would say there is likely some shenanigans w/ ether pumpers happening too. Clearly there have been [counter-]shenanigans against ether/dao.
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. That ethereum hacker is not going to just lose. I suspect we'll see some more activity and chaos before too long. I mean, he spent all that time making those youtube videos - what a waste.
Just like w/ American politics right now, I think the btc and bitcoin division is somewhat engineered and aided with paid personnel. NashGuy is correct about the prevalence of symbols and subtle communication out there - I think about that RE: division. Ever heard of cluetrain? I ran across it about a year ago doing some digging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cluetrain_Manifesto It put internet marketing tactics in a new light for me.
Only thing you/we can do is critically assess the info being put out there, ask questions, put on the occasional tin-foil hat, etc.
EDIT - I would say there is likely some shenanigans w/ ether pumpers happening too. Clearly there have been [counter-]shenanigans against ether/dao.
Last edited:
- Dec 16, 2015
- 2,806
- 6,088
>I think the btc and bitcoin division is somewhat engineered and aided with paid personnel
Understatement of the year award nominee.
Understatement of the year award nominee.
@cliff yeah, if there was one bug, there is probably another.
that's why Bitcoin uses POW, it takes real (expensive) resources to maintain it's security and likewise to hack. no lazy hacker or gvt is going to take the risk (spend the time and money) to organize/establish a 51% attack. contrarily, this is exactly why miners like @Jihan should never allow any system that depends on POS or likewise LN hubs to insinuate themselves into the tx fee game. all it takes is some random guy or gvt spinning up a server with some code. sure fire way to ultimate failure.
that's why Bitcoin uses POW, it takes real (expensive) resources to maintain it's security and likewise to hack. no lazy hacker or gvt is going to take the risk (spend the time and money) to organize/establish a 51% attack. contrarily, this is exactly why miners like @Jihan should never allow any system that depends on POS or likewise LN hubs to insinuate themselves into the tx fee game. all it takes is some random guy or gvt spinning up a server with some code. sure fire way to ultimate failure.
Last edited: