Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[lunar]

You miss the point, its not one particular minority, it is any minority

No. No I don't, I think you're being deliberately obtuse. Who is this 'any minority' who has a veto power over change you speak of, that cannot be rounded up and manipulated?

Bitcoins best defence against coercion is to have as many, as varied and as invested a userbase as possible.

It's network effect is paramount. Vires in numeris

 

[Justus Ranvier]

@Justus Ranvier
Origins of the word value are from old French - (n) value "worth, price, moral worth; standing, reputation" and first used in English as a Noun (c. 1300), "price equal to the intrinsic worth of a thing;" It's use as a verb didn't come until ~200 years later. Oxford Dictionary primarily defines value as a noun.

Humanity has learned a great deal of things over the centuries, and the fact that "value" as a noun doesn't make any sense is one of them.

Basically everybody who used the word "value" before Menger was doing it wrong.

That the error was so recently (on a historical scale) corrected is one reason why a lot of misunderstandings about money and economics persist to the present.
[doublepost=1469460885,1469460227][/doublepost]https://mises.org/library/subjective-value-theory

 

[jonny1000]

The only people who would worry about far future scenarios like when the block reward runs out are those who believe that if we hard fork to a bigger cap now we may be "committing" forever due to extreme consensus being the only way to change going forward. (Since in general 95% consensus simply won't be achievable; we'll soon be pretty much totally "locked in" according to that bizarre view.)

I think you are partly correct here. I would like to point out, that reducing the blocksize limit is only a softfork, so does not require as much consensus as a hardfork.

Nevertheless, getting the necessary consensus to softfork and increase fees can be very difficult, especially when people are used to lower fees and when the tragedy of the commons type arguments seem to go over most peoples heads. If we have learnt anything from this battle, its that many people are absolutely desperate for larger blocks, getting enough consensus for a reduction in the limit could be very difficult in the future. Therefore I think we need to defend the limit very carefully and not make it too big, without extra caution. Still, it would help if people like Peter R more explicitly acknowledged the risks of these tragedy of the commons type problems and how a blocksize limit could help, when the block reward is low.

Anyway, if you accept this may be a problem in the future, why make it worse now? Your argument is like saying lets increase the block reward in 2040 to 50 btc again, only to say it doesn't matter because we can always fork it down, as forking is not that hard.

if we can convincingly debunk the extreme consensus notion most of the other disagreements should fall away

Please appreciate that the network being resilient against rule changes goes right to the core of why many people are interested in Bitcoin. The hard rules need to be exceptionally difficult to change or I will lose all interest in the system. Would you rather half the users/investors/developers ect just leave or would you rather be pragmatic about the desire for a resilient system?
[doublepost=1469461115][/doublepost]

You seem to have written 100s or 1000s or words prefaced with an assumption not fully shared.

I was always explicit about the assumption.

 

[freetrader]

Markets are smart, they said.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/25/12269466/nintendo-stock-plunge-pokemon-go

So if its not Nintendo, who are the masterminds behind Pokemon Go?

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3099092/mobile-wireless/the-cia-nsa-and-pokmon-go.html

 

[jonny1000]

Who is this 'any minority' who has a veto power over change you speak of, that cannot be rounded up and manipulated?

I never said a minority cannot be "rounded up or manipulated". I think a HF should only be done in a calm, non contentious environment. People could be bribed, manipulated or whatever and this should be sufficient to block a HF. This is a defense mechanism and ensures the existing rules prevail in the event of any significant contention.

I know you disagree with this, however do you at least agree with the following:

The threshold for blocking a HF should be lower than the threshold for implementing one, since the potential damage one could do by conducting a malicious HF is worse than the damage one could do preventing a HF for malicious reasons.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

The threshold for blocking a HF should be lower than the threshold for implementing one, since the potential damage one could do by conducting a malicious HF is worse than the damage one could do preventing a HF for malicious reasons.

This is not true.

The potential damage of a malicious HF is zero.

Anyone can produce invalid blocks at any time and your Bitcoin node will happily ignore them as if they never existed at all.

A hard fork only affects the people who choose to use it, and has not effect at all on those who don't.

 

[jbreher]

Anyway, if you accept this may be a problem in the future, why make it worse now?

Because a concrete problem in the here and now trumps a theoretically-possible problem in some imaginable far-off future. I would think this would be obvious.

 

[Zarathustra]

Please appreciate that the network being resilient against rule changes goes right to the core of why many people are interested in Bitcoin. The hard rules need to be exceptionally difficult to change or I will lose all interest in the system.

Orwell speech again. All it needed to destroy one of the most essential rules (block limit has to be far above actual block sizes) was a company funded with enough fiat to buy some developers. That's the reason why people are 'losing interest in the system' and fork to altcoins.

 

[freetrader]

Who gives a shit if @jonny1000 loses all interest in the system? I'll pop open a bottle that day.

P.S. some good Port changes my vocabulary.

 

[Zarathustra]

It would be the salvation of Bitcoin if those that he is cheerleading would lose interest in the system. As long as those insincere players™ are able to play a major role, Bitcoin will lose further market share. The hardest of all possible forks.
[doublepost=1469470285,1469469301][/doublepost]

@Bloomie

tl;dr: my argument is this: if, as moderator of the Economics & Policy forum, you allow me to Move spam threads, why can’t i Move spam posts as well?



dozens? why do you exaggerate? below are the 11 PM’s i’ve sent to you about this spam situation covering 3 separate conversations since last October. note the first 2 (Oct, Jan) were simple inquiries by me triggered by my surprise that i couldn’t delete/move obvious advertising spam in this thread. the third did result in a back and forth disagreement btwn us on 5/9/16 and was triggered by my not understanding your reasoning. since i seem to be more present here in this thread, my only desire here is to allow me to deal with spam more immediately without having to wait the sometimes 24h or more for you to get to it. and i’m talking about the spam that the guys report to me or that is blatantly obvious. not @NashGuy or @jonny1000 type posts at all. i find it distracting and am concerned about some of the links leading to malware. i’ve already stated for many years that i am totally anti-censorship and have never demonstrated any tendency to want such a power. esp after what happened to this thread after thermos. so for you to infer otherwise to everyone here is a low blow. also after considering your arguments to my initial PM’s below, i thought it was reasonable not to have me delete spam posts but simply to be able to move it to the same part of the forum (Meta) where i move spam threads. i hardly find that an unreasonable request.



why would you characterize a simple request to be able to move posts out of GCBU as such? where did i ever ask you about having special access to a server or backend? everything i’ve said about this issue is below in my PM's. i simply want to be able to Move (not delete) spam out of this thread.



you’ve threatened me before about this. why the authoritarianism? of course, only after i brought the thread here that jump started this forum. which is the truth as barely anything was happening here before GCBU arrived. everyone should know that @Bloomie solicited me on XT-IRC several times last year July to bring this thread here after it got locked on BCT b/c he knew we could jump start his forum. after several overtures, i told him i would if i could be moderator of my thread so as to physically take the position away from a possible censor. now the issue for me is simply one of me being able to move spam posts out of GCBU. you say it would create more work for you; if that’s true, why the inconsistency btwn me being able to move threads and posts to the same Meta forum? also, why would thermos accept a situation where, by letting his mods delete/move spam, it would lead to more work for him? not that he and his mods should be a standard, mind you. the one good thing about those other places though is that we never see real spam posts or threads b/c the mods are allowed to delete/move that stuff. that’s kinda what i’d like to achieve here if possible. it’s only when they over step to censor opinion where the problems begin. and i would never do that.



really? what do all these ads we see around here do then?

here are my 11 PM’s over 3 separate conversations to @Bloomie about this subject. certainly not dozens. i can’t copy/paste his exact responses b/c i know he’d be pissed if i did: https://bitco.in/forum/threads/this-vs-forum-bitcoin-com.84/#post-1578:

10/31/15



1/2/16


1/2/16


5/9/16


5/9/16


5/9/16


5/9/16


5/9/16


5/9/16


5/9/16


5/9/16

@cypherdoc
Are you alive and well?

 

[priestc]

Please appreciate that the network being resilient against rule changes goes right to the core of why many people are interested in Bitcoin. The hard rules need to be exceptionally difficult to change or I will lose all interest in the system.

The people who feel that way are wrong. Name anything in life that is only good is it is never changed? Everything that I know of should be modified to be fixed when a defect is found. Even laws which are supposed to be set in stone have a process in which they can be changed.

It depends on the change that is occurring. Some changes should not happen, but some changes should happen. You have to use discretion to decide which ones should happen, and which ones should not. You can't just have a blanket "no changes should ever happen" mindset, thats absurd.

 

[freetrader]

While we're talking about 'value' and grammar:
This is only tangentially related, but I do wonder if EU governments think they can declare some cryptocurrency coins 'valueless', and to what end... (are they just planning burn them instead of auctioning them off as other agencies have?)

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Anyway, if you accept this may be a problem in the future, why make it worse now? Your argument is like saying lets increase the block reward in 2040 to 50 btc again, only to say it doesn't matter because we can always fork it down, as forking is not that hard.

Well, because of the obvious: there would be no point to deciding now to increase the block reward in the far future, but there would be a point to deciding now to increase the blocksize cap now.

Would you rather half the users/investors/developers ect just leave or would you rather be pragmatic about the desire for a resilient system?

If I am right that extreme consensus is unnecessary and counterproductive, these people are going to either leave eventually or change their view, as forks will happen (I believe quite beneficially) under controversy. Assuming their view cannot be changed (which I hope is not the case), it's only a matter of whether we take the hit now or later. Since we are already taking a hit from the tiny blocksize cap, which we never needed to take at all, taking the hit from loss of (I believe quite misguided) devs, users, and holders now is looking ever more appealing.

Yet of course I'd much prefer to show them all that there is nothing to fear from controversial hard forks, as Ethereum is showing right now (though I don't support altcoins nor would I support Ethereum even if I did).

It's especially instructive to note that the total Ethereum market cap after the split is significantly higher than before ETC started trading. Ethereum people are benefitting financially from the persistent split itself (even if they didn't take sides), the very thing people who fear hard forks seem most afraid of.
[doublepost=1469475034,1469474074][/doublepost]@lunar

On the term "value," the problem of reifying verbs into nouns is far older than the 1300s. Plato was probably the biggest influence toward this end, but the problem is as old as tribalism itself. It's at root due to the tribal instinct toward solidarity, which we retain in the modern world and interferes with our perception of how we should most beneficially interact with large populations as Hayek explains. Subjective valuation does not comport well with solidarity, which is why we feel that instinctual pull (sensation felt in our gut or chest) toward regarding valuation as objective, and as a thing rather than a process.

AFAIR, Pareto in his efforts to define objectivity ended up concluding it is nothing more than popular intersubjectivity. We instinctively feel "WHY U SPLIT HAIRS!?" upon hearing this. "It's just objective. Water is objectively valuable, since we all need it" (no, that's more accurately termed "universally valued by humans [who want to continue living]").

In general, turning verbs into nouns is an even sneakier way to hide agency, like the old trick of using the passive voice ("Mistakes were made"). If value is treated as a noun, it's much easier to fall into the trap of thinking objective value means something, which allows for all manner of economic fallacies that result in real pain for real people (see Marxism and its fallout for the starkest example).

 

[freetrader]

Yet of course I'd much prefer to show them all that there is nothing to fear [...]

I believe this would resemble the benevolent extraterrestrials teaching humanity about ideal money

<ducks>

 

[molecular]

Hei ...
If I send Ether right now to shapeshift, I make them for me to ETH and destroy the ETC part of them. Right?

If you send ETH (non-classic), the ETC part is *already* destroyed. If you send prefork ether shapeshift will have both ETH and ETC

If I, on the other way round, buy ETH with Bitcoin through Shapeshift, I just pay for ETH but I get ETH and ETC. Am I right?

No, assuming shapeshift isn't clueless (can be safely assumed) they will send you ETH that only exists on the fork, not on the classic chain.

 

[cliff]

@cypherdoc
Are you alive and well?

Correct question.

Need my dose of gold, market commentary and other analysis that @cypherdoc normally provides.

In that regard, gold is indeed down atm while btc is up:

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSEARCA:GLD&ei=o2KWV9mtA9HKjAGRy6HICQ
http://www.apmex.com/spotprices/gold-price

Also, wtf happened in the world over the last 48 hours? DNC busted w/ hands in the [media] cookiejar; emergence of clarity that ETH declared the hard fork a success and the mission accomplished way too early; suspicions finally start to trickle in about foreign manipulation in the US' election cycle; etc. Its brutal out there.

If BTCs scaling debates are a microcosm for the current political theater, then I'm left with no choice other than to believe it will soon be raining donuts. I suppose there could be a futures market for that.

 

[Zarathustra]

In general, turning verbs into nouns is an even sneakier way to hide agency, like the old trick of using the passive voice ("Mistakes were made"). If value is treated as a noun, it's much easier to fall into the trap of thinking objective value means something, which allows for all manner of economic fallacies that result in real pain for real people (see Marxism and its fallout for the starkest example).

Yes, but economic fallacies is a tautology. The homo oeconomicus is determined to fall after the rise. Economies are growing rampant until they collapse. They (eventually) always result in real pain for real people. The homo sapiens in contrast lived in a stable (anarchist) environment, until organized violence became the new omnipotent and omnipresent rule.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I just realized that to me, to hardfork is basically to undergo a small inconvenience in order to obtain the ability to harvest multiple realities in the future.

Is Ethereum better off undoing TheDAO or leaving it be? Is Bitcoin better off with a big blocksize cap or a small one? For a small price in inconvenience, each community of investors can try out both possible futures simultaneously and benefit if *either* succeeds. While not being harmed at all if the fork turned out to be pointless (except the minor inconvenience). In contrast, choosing NOT to fork during controversy and NOT to have a persistent split is subjecting the ledger to great risk.

Framed this way, doesn't it seem like hard forks (with persistent splits if there is traction) should be the obvious default thing to do in any controversy? Hodlers win because their bets are hedged with no downside, and partisans stand to win big if they bet correctly and be rid of their opponents. It's looking more and more to me that we should be taking advantage of every hardfork opportunity as it can only add value and resilience to the system. I believe in the future this will be obvious. The ledger is all. Copy it a hundred times and purchasing power is never diluted. (This also spells doom for the altcoin concept, since new ledgers are completely unnecessary, even as backups.)

 

[freetrader]

(This also spells doom for the altcoin concept, since new ledgers are completely unnecessary, even as backups.)

Is this ... self-evident? I don't think so.

I'm going to ponder it a little. But what about the progression in expressive / computational power from Bitcoin's script to full-blown Turing machine? (I am ignoring all other externalities)

Surely one would need to put these blockchains into different power classes.
Granted, there could be a HF evolution from one end of the spectrum to the other... but is there really no class that is so different that our current vision of a blockchain cannot reach it? I'm not sure. Where is Goedel when you need him.

 

[Bloomie]

I am only going to address a couple of @cypherdoc's points, since the spam and other issues have already been covered sufficiently.

[Maintaining this forum is tedious work that has to be done on the daily basis, and I do it for the good of the Bitcoin community,] for free.

really? what do all these ads we see around here do then?

The ads are subsidizing a portion of the hosting costs, not the time I spend working on the forum. I currently run the forum at a loss, and the costs come directly out of my pocket. I have turned down lucrative advertising deals from BTC casinos and faucets that didn't seem in the best interests of the site.

I have also turned down an offer from a deep-pocket buyer to buy the bitco.in domain outright. The proceeds of that sale could have bought me a decent-sized apartment. Please think twice before you insinuate that I am somehow running a gangbuster business here without telling anybody.

As stated publicly before, I welcome community input on who should be moderators on this forum. This is not an authoritarian stance by any stretch. cypherdoc has expressed before that he was not comfortable with this policy (presumably because too many people dislike him after his HashFast sponsorship fiasco) and has threatened to leave for Roger Ver's forum in the past. I personally haven't been able to trust him after being blackmailed, but my position on moderatorship is unchanged. If enough people in the Bitcoin community want a specific person in or out of moderatorship, it will happen.