Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[freetrader]

Has there ever been the idea for an Altcoin, that absorbs all top n cryptos?

@satoshis_sockpuppet : RussellCoin. I'm just kidding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_paradox

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

Ok we have a name.

No, I don't understand how this applies here. We start with Bitcoin, at some time Bitcoin absorbs Ethereum and becomes Bitthereum. Later it absorbs Monero and becomes Bithero...
Of course they would just absorb the ledger at the given time and maybe include key features. After that the absorbed chain dies

 

[sickpig]

WAT?

 

[Norway]

Jeez, so many trolls in the open now. Look at all the responses to Jeremy.

 

[freetrader]

Well, some people do contribute interesting angles, such as the author of this paper:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2579482

At 58 pages, something to consume in an idle moment...

 

[Zarathustra]

The problem with all these theories (including the many-world theory) is, that there are still no working experiments to show they are true. They tried, and so far they have nothing.

Btw, you can't break determinism.

I cannot. This is true! Nobody can.

Anyway, time to change the subject. I learned some new things so that is good.
I don't believe in determinism and from what I know there is no way knowing if it exists or not.
And I even believe in free will. Ha!

Human, All too human!

Schopenhauer, whose profound under-
standing of what is human and all-too-human and
original sense for facts was not a little impaired by
the bright leopard-skin of his metaphysic (the skin
must first be pulled off him if one wants to find the
real moralist genius beneath) Schopenhauer makes
this admirable distinction, wherein he comes far
nearer the mark than he would himself dare to ad-
mit : " Insight into the stern necessity of human
actions is the boundary line that divides philoso-
phic from other brains." He worked against that
wonderful insight of which he was sometimes
capable by the prejudice that he had in common
with the moral man (not the moralist), a prejudice
that he expresses quite guilelessly and devoutly as
follows : "The ultimate and true explanation of the
inner being of the entirety of things must of neces-
sity be closely connected with that about the ethical
significance of human actions." This connection is
not " necessary " at all : such a connection must
rather be rejected by that principle of the stern
necessity of human actions, that is, the unconditioned
non-freedom and non- responsibility of the will.
Philosophic brains will accordingly be distinguished,
from others by their disbelief in the metaphysical'
significance of morality. This must create between
the two kinds of brain a gulf of a depth and un-
bridgeableness of which the much-deplored gulf
between "cultured " and " uncultured " scarcely gives
a conception. It is true that many back doors, which
the " philosophic brains," like Schopenhauer's own,
have left for themselves, must be recognised as
useless. None leads into the open, into the fresh
air of the free will, but every door through which
people had slipped hitherto showed behind it once
more the gleaming brass wall of fate. For we are
in a prison, and can only dream of freedom, not
make ourselves free. That the recognition of this
fact cannot be resisted much longer is shown by
the despairing and incredible postures and grimaces
of those who still press against it and continue their
wrestling-bout with it. Their attitude at present
is something like this : " So no one is responsible
for his actions? And all is full of guilt and the
consciousness of guilt ? But some one must be the
sinner. If it is no longer possible or permissible
to accuse and sentence the individual, the one poor
wave in the inevitable rough-and-tumble of the
waves of development jvell, then, let this stormy
sea, this development itself, be the sinner. Here is
free will : this totality can be accused and sentenced,
can atone and expiate. So let God be the sinner and
man his redeemer* Let the world's history be guilt,
expiation, and self-murder. Let the evil-doer be his
own judge, the judge his own hangman/ 1 This
Christianity strained to its limits for what else is
it? is the last thrust in the fencing-match between
the teaching of unconditioned morality and the
teaching of unconditioned non-freedom. It would
be quite horrible if it were anything more than a
logical pose, a hideous grimace of the underlying
thought, perhaps the death-convulsion of the heart
that seeks a remedy in its despair, the heart to which
delirium whispers: "Behold, thou art the lamb
which taketh away the sin of God." This error lies
not only in the feeling," I am responsible," but just as
much in the contradiction, " I am not responsible,
but some one must be." That is simply not true.
Hence the philosopher must say, like Christ, " Judge
not," and the final distinction between the philo-
sophic brains and the others would be that the
former wish to be just and the latter wish to be
judges.

https://archive.org/stream/humanalltoohuman033142mbp/humanalltoohuman033142mbp_djvu.txt

 

[freetrader]

Comments on this proposal (loyal merge mining in a hard fork) ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4vm1pp/idea_for_hardfork_split_loyal_merge_mining_allow/

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

@freetrader
Very interesting idea imho.

 

[freetrader]

@satoshisbitcoin:

My initial reaction is that it's problematic in terms of implementation w.r.t. the current design of the fork, which intends to separate from the old chain's network pretty stringently. Maintain some kind of connection to it to assess it's empty blocks (!) seems ... kludgy.

I don't see the benefit as being *that* significant at the moment, but then again perhaps I don't fully understand the trade-offs vs. a clean break away from the other hashpower.

It also seems a bit underhanded, trying to encourage the other chain to mine empty blocks. I mean, it's like a censorship attack on the other, only by subterfuge / by design. Something about it rubs me the wrong way.

EDIT: It feels as if it would 'lock' a fork in a sort of 'deadly embrace' with its rival. It builds upon a supposed co-operation of miners mining the rival chain. Has this type of merge mining ever happened in any other fork where the chains actually contend?

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

I don't think it's necessary for the time coming and I think it's too new of an idea to implement it in the current situation. But it is interesting, it's a pretty aggressive strategy, like you say a "censorship like" attack. On the other hand, they can already mine empty blocks and if there is enough hashpower to distort the main chain, it means, that the new chain is on it's way to win.
In theory it makes it much easier for miners to mine the new coin as they keep their stable income from Core for the time being. But I'm not sure, that it would have as much as an effect in reality. If the pools can't decide to set a single flag signalling support for Classic I'm sure they won't make the effort to merge-mine a new coin with this method.

If F2Pool and Antpool keep mining Core blocks after wednesday and don't make an announcement to change that in the next weeks I'm all for a clean cut, including change of PoW. I don't think offering a SHA256 minority fork is necessary then any more.
Fork it and present the Classic roadmap as the way forward (and the possibility of a PoW change in the future ). Including a SW hardfork and for example Bitpay's scheme.
[doublepost=1470055681][/doublepost]Let's see if he answers when he is back in China:

 

[freetrader]

If the pools can't decide to set a single flag signalling support for Classic I'm sure they won't make the effort to merge-mine a new coin with this method.

This. Before considering any fork proposal involving any sort of 'loyalty' in the name, I would ask for a show of loyalty from the existing miners/pools. e.g. a clear double-digit support for BIP109 blocks. Tomislav's question is on the money.

 

[chriswilmer]

Anybody heard from cypherdoc?

 

[Justus Ranvier]

@chriswilmer I heard he's just taking a vacation or something like that.

 

[solex]

Massive kudos to @theZerg, @Peter Tschipper, @sickpig, @bitcartel and team for a fantastic release:

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/bitcoin-unlimited-v0-12-1bu-“xpedited”-official-bu-release.1350/

 

[freetrader]

Amazing work BU team, A+, congratulations on that release. I can only imagine the amount of hours spent.

If I can put in a request: a blog post or two explaining the new features in simple terms (esp. the relay stuff) would be very helpful to promote greater awareness of BU, and attract new users.

 

[Richy_T]

Human, All too human!

I do not necessarily believe in free will but I act as if it exists because to not do so provides no meaning (which may be true but you have to do something to pass the time). Also, if there is no free will, I have no choice but to act this way anyway.

As someone with a physics background, I have to say that the whole determinism question is quite interesting. Copenhagen certainly has its problems but it seems to me that multi-world does not avoid those same problems, it just packages them differently. It's like the magician who says "Look, the dove has gone" but you can see his jacket moving in odd ways. It seems more likely to me that our understanding of the universe is still missing something. It sure wouldn't be the first time.

 

[cliff]

Gold is up ~$6 since July 1.
BTC is down ~$50 since July 1.

http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/XAUUSD:CUR
https://cryptrader.com/charts/bitfinex/btc/usd
--------------------
In memoriam

 

[albin]

The discussion on this forum feels like the following

Can you please start providing evidence to back up your assertions and conjectures instead of spending your time condescending everybody about how they communicate? Thanks.

 

[Roger_Murdock]

I'm having trouble putting myself in the mind of one of these large miners who's still inclined to stick with Core. What exactly is their thought process? Here are some possibilities that jumped out at me, but there are probably others I'm missing:

• Promises of a huge increase in fee income - I can't find a link now, but I seem to recall the idea that Core has tried to sell miners on the notion that they'll be able to enjoy a huge increase in fee income if they continue to artificially constrain the supply of block space. But that argument strikes me as pretty terrible (for the reasons previously outlined here and here).
• They actually buy the small-blocker arguments about, e.g., "decentralization" and/or the "danger" of "contentious" hard forks - I suppose that's possible, but the arguments all still strike me as being pretty terrible (for reasons that have been rehashed here ad nauseam). Plus, haven't most of these miners made it clear that they would be comfortable with a blocksize-increasing HF if Core were the ones pushing for it?
• The threat of a PoW-change - Do we actually know for sure if Core has threatened to release a (1-MB) PoW-changing fork if miners try to raise the limit without their blessing? Assuming they have, I guess I don't see why it's a particularly scary threat. It seems highly likely that miners will also soon face a PoW-changing fork if they don't raise the limit. I'd view that threat as the more alarming one. Thus, if miners are worried about preserving the relevance of their hardware investment, supporting badly-needed on-chain scaling would seem to be the safer course.
• No viable alternatives to Core - Another possibility is that miners simply feel like they have no choice but to stick with Core because the other development teams aren't sufficiently large / experienced / well-funded. But as I've argued before, this "electoral party"-type view of Bitcoin governance strikes me as fundamentally misguided and unhealthy. There's no reason to expect that all of the current Core contributors will simply abandon Bitcoin development if miners opt not to follow their suggestion re: the block size limit setting. (And again, the appropriate response to any who do quit is "good riddance.")

Finally, here's the question I keep asking myself: where is the "organized resistance" to Core? It seems to me that the major Bitcoin stakeholders who support on-chain scaling should get together and do the following:

• commit to funding an alternative development team that supports on-chain scaling for a period of, say, the next four years (my preference would be a team centered around Bitcoin Unlimited);
• host one or more actual scaling conferences with the miners where this group makes their case for their vision of Bitcoin's future, explains the problems with Core's vision, and attempts to address any concerns that miners may have; and
• make it clear to miners that if they do not allow meaningful on-chain scaling in a timely manner (and no, SegWit-style accounting bullshit doesn't cut it), this group will be forced to throw its collective weight behind a PoW-changing fork that will enable Bitcoin to scale.

Unfortunately, I'm not a "major stakeholder" but to make this post slightly less "slacktivistic" ("rabble rabble! somebody oughta do something!"), I'd gladly commit to donating 2 BTC to any well-organized effort along these lines.

EDIT: Link to reddit discussion.

 

[Richy_T]

Mostly inertia I think. Though the threat of a PoW change is likely there.

If we assume that miners are interested in making money rather than the future of Bitcoin (i.e. not holding), a gradual slide into obscurity is doubtless preferable to the sudden loss of all income that a PoW change would bring about. It's probably not likely that Core could push that through but why take the risk while the money continues to roll in?