Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Tomothy]

@Inca https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4vyfvj/ama_bitfinex_hacker/ Not sure if any proof but something about wanting hacked peoples addresses and he might give robin hood like funds back, kindof surreal, most likely a troll

scaling, I think scaling is DOA currently in light of bitfinex hack. I really can't see anything happening now for 2-3 months. I dunno, probably being too doom and gloomish but this seems to derail a 2mb increase more than etc/eth did. At least that's how I'm currently feeling, fundamentals aside. I'll admit though, this could give strength to a fork since the price is lower

 

[freetrader]

post removed: ..... why?

My guess - was primarily/entirely an ETH/ETC related post, and probably removed due to the "no heavy altcoin stuff" rule. But the modlog doesn't show detail, a bit odd since I guess many would find BW's stance on such a fork interesting in light of Bitcoin's future.

 

[sickpig]

@Inca

I'm sorry for your loss, still I've found this on twitter:


hope it helps

 

[Justus Ranvier]

(By the way you cannot create more than 21 million coins with a softfork, from the perspective of the people running existing nodes. Sure you can create new coins that upgraded clients see (which you can do without a soft or hard fork by the way), but the existing nodes will not recognize them as valid coins.)

This is completely irrelevant.

As long as those counterfeit coins are being accepted as payment for products and services, they are diluting the purchasing power of the real bitcoins.

 

[Aquent]

I want to express my anger and frustration with the fact that there has been NO advancement on bitcoin's security for the past five years since the issue was first brought to the forefront and digital currencies biggest weakness was publicly revealed with a big bang in the 2011 hack which almost led to the complete death of bitcoin and dismissal of the concept.

Although digital currencies continue and, in many ways, thrive or are trying to, the outside public has formed an opinion that bitcoin, specifically, is too easy to steal and money in bitcoin is too easily lost, thus it is bad and dangerous for financial savings. That's why, on hacker news or r/technology or other public non crypto spaces, most are keen to disparage bitcoin and, in my view, not without good reason.

I am amazed there has been as good as no advancement on bitcoin's fundamentals since it was proposed. Merchants have accepted it, users have increased, etc, but I can't tell of any significant difference from bitcoin 2009 to bitcoin 2016 as far as usability and safety is concerned.

I had no money on finex. There were warning signs two months ago and I loudly called them out https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitfinex-market-freeze-bitcoin-crashing/ . Nobody paid attention tho, they didn't do any of the things I recommended, nor did the ecosystem place any pressure on them.

Although I have no funds there, I still feel hurt hearing of people like Inca who have lost so much and more than that, I'm angry that it was allowed, that no one did anything about it, that the community paid no heed, that no lesson whatever was learned from gox and that nothing at all is being done in this whole space to address the many real problems bitcoin has.

I'm sick of all these constant social arguments and philosophical debates and political ideologies and all that rubish. Bitcoin is tech first and foremost and like any tech it has plenty of problems that need addressing as well as many opportunities to build things.

Everyone in this whole space should be ashamed there has been no real improvement as far as end users are concerned in five years and everyone, collectively, in my view, holds blame for this latest terrible loss and destruction of so much wealth.

 

[priestc]

Though there may be a few other bumps (like the replay attack vector) that were certainly not raised w.r.t. the Classic fork (not even by Core luminaries) until after serious inquiry started into the viability of hard forks, and the actual ETH/ETC fork demonstrated this risk in reality.

If you look through my reddit posts during the time of the XT/Classic announcments, I spoke a lot about "replay attacks", except I never called it an attack because its not an attack. When people say there are going to dump their Classic coins, or that they are going to dump their Core coins, I always remind them that that notion is impossible because the TX will end up on both chains.

 

[freetrader]

@priestc : Your statement is correct for the Classic/Core case, and I shouldn't have used the term 'attack' to describe the Classic/Core scenario as-is.

Even generally, I agree with you that the usage of the word is unsuitable, since it conjures up the image of a threat to the health of the chain, which is not immediately the case. In cases where possible, it is a second-order effect through loss of confidence in transacting independently on both forks.

--- what follows is just an explanation of how i understand the problem, not specific to your comment ---​

To refresh the Classic/Core scenario: let's say Classic activates and remains the majority chain. Someone mines a >1MB block on it, and the blockchains diverge (let's say Classic even races ahead because the other chain is now so slow).

Someone sells their pre-fork coin on the Classic chain with a transaction T.
This transaction T is valid on the other network.
We certainly have to assume that T might reach the other network and be mined there.
I wouldn't entirely take it for granted (since the networks will diverge once Core clients reject chain data building upon >1MB block from the Classic chain).
So T might (or might not) get mined on the lagging Core chain. All we can say is there's no effective barrier since the signature is seen as valid by the other chain.

For the next step up in harder forking, the P2P networks are actively separated immediately upon reaching the fork condition (whether it's a block height or vote count etc).
Protocol data units from one side will forthwith be rejected by the other side, unless it's fed in specially by some bridge. In this way it is possible to 'attack' specific a transaction T made by a user on chain A, by intercepting them on some malicious bridge and feeding them into chain B. If the signature is accepted as valid by the other chain, T will be mined on the other chain.

Users whose funds are affected by such not-explicitly-sanctioned movement of their coins on the other chain may feel sufficiently upset to call this an 'attack', even though it's preventable by other means (using coins separated onto specific chains by combining them with post-fork coins from that chain).

 

[cliff]

Both BTC and Gold have slid a bit since my last post

BTC at $561-ish (compare w/ $566-ish earlier)
Gold at $1358 (compare w/ $1361 earlier)

Crude is back up over $40/barrel
See also: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks-idUSKCN10E1AA

ETC holding strong at .0055

GBTC up $8.00 so far today - trading at $90/share

Sirius XM Holdings, Bank of America, and Twitter are leading in volume on the stock exchanges at the moment.

------------
Afternoon shout

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@jonny1000

Glad to see you've moved from your whole-protocol extreme consensus position to the piecewise Schelling point position

 

[lunar]

I call my creation Mimblewimble because it is used to prevent the blockchain from
talking about all user's information

Bitcoin today there are about 423000 blocks, totaling 80GB or so of data on the hard
drive to validate everything. These data are about 150 million transactions and 5 million
unspent nonconfidential outputs. Estimate how much space the number of transactions
take on a Mimblewimble chain. Each unspent output is around 3Kb for rangeproof and
Merkle proof. Each transaction also adds about 100 bytes: a k*G value and a signature.
The block headers and explicit amounts are negligible. Add this together and get
30Gb -- with a confidential transaction and obscured transaction graph!

https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizardry/mimblewimble.txt

 

[Dusty]

The campaign has been aggressive. Had it not occurred the Core team would have done 2MB ages ago. The Core teams priority was ensuring Classic was defeated due to its dangerous implementation methodology. They could not HF to 2MB otherwise the network could have split into three

You seem to ignore the more obvious thing: if Kore would have prepared the code to allow an hard fork to 2MB with whatever strong consensus they prefer, this would have burned Classic to the ground.
Also, everybody would have been happy to implement segwit with an hard fork in a much cleaner way.
But they didn't because they don't want to increase the block size, so please stop to spread those false rumors.
[doublepost=1470253446][/doublepost]

@Dusty
I think all of them are at least on record as saying they want an increase "eventually." I'd like a list of what size each would support right *now* if it were a simple Core-issued hard fork via block height (flag day) with anything less than a six-month activation window.

You will not have it (and you will not have committed code to core), they spread those hopes to stall the development of alternate implementations like Classic and BU.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

Always stalling, always lying, always inventing new excuses for delay.

Now they've stooped so low they claim that the pro-increase side was too right and too convincing and somehow that's a bad thing.

They have no shame and will keep doing it as long as they're allowed to get away with it.

 

[Roger_Murdock]

I want to express my anger and frustration with the fact that there has been NO advancement on bitcoin's security for the past five years since the issue was first brought to the forefront and digital currencies biggest weakness was publicly revealed with a big bang in the 2011 hack which almost led to the complete death of bitcoin and dismissal of the concept.

Although digital currencies continue and, in many ways, thrive or are trying to, the outside public has formed an opinion that bitcoin, specifically, is too easy to steal and money in bitcoin is too easily lost, thus it is bad and dangerous for financial savings. That's why, on hacker news or r/technology or other public non crypto spaces, most are keen to disparage bitcoin and, in my view, not without good reason.

I am amazed there has been as good as no advancement on bitcoin's fundamentals since it was proposed. Merchants have accepted it, users have increased, etc, but I can't tell of any significant difference from bitcoin 2009 to bitcoin 2016 as far as usability and safety is concerned.

I had no money on finex. There were warning signs two months ago and I loudly called them out https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitfinex-market-freeze-bitcoin-crashing/ . Nobody paid attention tho, they didn't do any of the things I recommended, nor did the ecosystem place any pressure on them.

Although I have no funds there, I still feel hurt hearing of people like Inca who have lost so much and more than that, I'm angry that it was allowed, that no one did anything about it, that the community paid no heed, that no lesson whatever was learned from gox and that nothing at all is being done in this whole space to address the many real problems bitcoin has.

I'm sick of all these constant social arguments and philosophical debates and political ideologies and all that rubish. Bitcoin is tech first and foremost and like any tech it has plenty of problems that need addressing as well as many opportunities to build things.

Everyone in this whole space should be ashamed there has been no real improvement as far as end users are concerned in five years and everyone, collectively, in my view, holds blame for this latest terrible loss and destruction of so much wealth.

It's ironic because, in a way, these kind of thefts actually underscore Bitcoin's value proposition. They're a reminder that counterparty risk involves, well, risk. The perception that Bitcoin is "too easy to steal" is also ironic when you consider that Bitcoin is arguably capable of being more secured against theft (or loss) than possibly any other asset in history. You can't make a backup of gold or cash (let alone an unlimited number of backups). You can't encrypt them. You can't hide them secretly in your brain or teleport them instantly across the world in defiance of capital controls. You can't use the equivalent of Shamir's secret sharing algorithm or multisig to eliminate the loss of those unique physical items as a single point of failure. You can do all of those things with Bitcoin. The tricky part is that in order to take advantage of Bitcoin's full potential for security, you have to both know what you're doing and actually follow best practices. So some of the problem may be that we need better, user-friendly tools that make achieving a high level of security easier (e.g., better hardware wallets, better multi-sig solutions). And I fully expect those to continue to be developed. But unfortunately, I think a more fundamental problem is that "experience is the school of mankind, and he will learn at no other." Bitcoin is still young, and a lot of these early lessons are going to be painful ones.

 

[_mr_e]

@Justus Ranvier What happened to Open Transactions? I thought it was supposed to solve all our security woes with Voting Pools. It's been a very long time since I've heard anything, it's obvious that it is really the only viable solution at this point. Now would be a great time to get people cooperating on such a solution.

 

[Richy_T]

You disagree?

It only further exacerbates the divide in the country. The great healer Obama ain't.
[doublepost=1470256345][/doublepost]

I do agree my description of Trump was a bit bombastic.

It's not about your description of Trump. I think you're quite probably right. It's about the president overstepping the traditional bounds of political behavior.
[doublepost=1470256676][/doublepost]

it will allow the Trump team make electoral fairness a bigger issue than it probably is

I think it actually needs to be a bigger issue. Between Paul getting the shaft in '12 and what happened to Sanders (whose politics I dislike but still...) in California and many other things going on, I think stuff gets to slide way too often.

 

[Richy_T]

Kind of strange that a Hong Kong-based business registered in the British Virgin Islands has to kowtow to a branch of the US government though.

If you've been keeping an eye open, this kind of thing isn't strange at all and has become SOP if a bank wants to conduct any kind of business with US entities (including us citizens overseas)

 

[cliff]

@Richy_T Fair point - I agree w/ you on those Paul and Sanders examples. I also think voter manipulation is problem. I was mainly referring to Trump being able to say, "see, even the president is ganging up on me - this is so unusual that is unfair." Trump may be a good president if elected, but ffs - he talks way too much right now, he is his own worst enemy. He needs handlers w/ the ability to shut him down when he starts ranting on the wrong thing (he'd probably need to find someone he considers a peer first, which is a whole other problem he has (i.e., ego)).

 

[Justus Ranvier]

@_mr_e Voting pools were being developed by Monetas, but they decided to go in a different direction last year.

They are on the product roadmap for Stash Crypto.

 

[Richy_T]

@Richy_T Fair point - I agree w/ you on those Paul and Sanders examples. I also think voter manipulation is problem. I was mainly referring to Trump being able to say, "see, even the president is ganging up on me - this is so unusual that is unfair." Trump may be a good president if elected, but ffs - he talks way too much right now, he is his own worst enemy. He needs handlers w/ the ability to shut him down when he starts ranting on the wrong thing (he'd probably need to find someone he considers a peer first, which is a whole other problem he has (i.e., ego)).

Yeah. I'm no fan of Trump but I have to say that I have no idea of whether he would be a good or bad president. The act of electioneering is almost completely divorced from the job of running a country.

As to the handlers though, his process has got him this far. Whether it's appropriate when it comes down to the two horse race we have now is another question. I wouldn't rule it out. On the other hand, I'm going to put my tinfoil hat on and say that I have a strong suspicion that shadowy figures have already decided it for Hillary.

 

[go1111111]

You seem to ignore the more obvious thing: if Kore would have prepared the code to allow an hard fork to 2MB with whatever strong consensus they prefer, this would have burned Classic to the ground.

There is some truth to what Jonny is saying: the way that Classic was advocated pissed off a lot of Core folks, and they got into a mindset where they wanted to defeat Classic and Gavin. So any concessions on the block size issue turned into an unacceptable sign of weakness for them. Core wants to set a precedent that anyone trying to make changes outside of their preferred "consensus" mechanism will suffer for it.

I'm far from convinced that we'd have a block size increase by now if not for Classic, but I do think it would have increased the chances at least slightly.