Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Nat-go]

Monero has several downsides. ... 3.) the original mining-software had a bug / was not optimal, while some people kept secret a better mining-software and mined a lot of coins, ...

You are sure it was Monero? Monero claims, that bytecoin (the original cryptonote software) had this scammy mining. See for example here:
https://m.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/2636ca/so_whats_so_bad_about_bytecoin/
The BCN mining code shipped purposely crippled, presumably as a way of making the falsified blockchain seem legitimate. Not just weird or written by a cryptographer who doesn't know how to optimise, but purposely crippled for slow mining. Things like recalculating a static value in every iteration of a loop instead of just once at the beginning is not a mistake, especially when viewed in light of the claimed 2 year history. Did nobody care to optimise the hashing code in 2 years, not even to improve the amount of time it takes to download and verify a blockchain from scratch? I find that unlikely. On the other hand: if you glance at our Github commits you'll notice that in two iterations (26c1a8569c and 49d55d3c30, primarily) we first improved the hashing by 2x its initial performance, and then further improved it to 12x its initial performance. It appears that the BCN devs are so lazy they haven't even merged our changes in, so everyone mining on their network has either used our changes or is mining 12x slower than they could. Or they just have a significantly faster miner already and couldn't be bothered.

 

[Bagatell]

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

You are sure it was Monero? Monero claims, that bytecoin (the original cryptonote software) had this scammy mining. See for example here:
https://m.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/2636ca/so_whats_so_bad_about_bytecoin/
The BCN mining code shipped purposely crippled, presumably as a way of making the falsified blockchain seem legitimate. Not just weird or written by a cryptographer who doesn't know how to optimise, but purposely crippled for slow mining. Things like recalculating a static value in every iteration of a loop instead of just once at the beginning is not a mistake, especially when viewed in light of the claimed 2 year history. Did nobody care to optimise the hashing code in 2 years, not even to improve the amount of time it takes to download and verify a blockchain from scratch? I find that unlikely. On the other hand: if you glance at our Github commits you'll notice that in two iterations (26c1a8569c and 49d55d3c30, primarily) we first improved the hashing by 2x its initial performance, and then further improved it to 12x its initial performance. It appears that the BCN devs are so lazy they haven't even merged our changes in, so everyone mining on their network has either used our changes or is mining 12x slower than they could. Or they just have a significantly faster miner already and couldn't be bothered.

to be honest, I'm not sure and just talked from memory. As I remember, the bug was noticed after the launch of monero, what made me think that it was also part of monero

 

[Zarathustra]

Jihan Wu: "For the growth of Bitcoin, blocksize is a minor issue ...."

 

[cliff]

@Zarathustra - you beat me to posting. Bah. Full text:

"Hi I am fine. Thank you. I am pretty busy after the U.S. trip, and I don't have the time and mood to talk on the social media right now.

But I read on r/btc and r/bitcoin.

BIP109 is a compromise. They want to reach something by compromising, but it will not work. 2MB cap would bring us trouble in less than 1 year if it is selected by miners. I don't think I will vote for BIP109. We need a plan that will not drag the community into the blocksize issue from now on. For the growth of Bitcoin, blocksize is a minor issue that cost the community so much damage. It has given too much opportunities for some people who are altcoin developers but also claiming to be Bitcoin reference client software developers. We have more challenge to solve, for the future of Bitcoin rather than a blocksize thing. Bitcoin has a very long way to go to be a world reserve currency.

I think everyone reading this post should buy a mini PC, like Intel NUC, in his home, with 500G-1TB disk and wifi. It cost less than 500$. It is running a full node, so don't go extreme to try to run it on a 10$ worth second handed RasPi. It will be able to support the network for at least 2-3 years. By adding HDD on the USB port and some pruning, it will be lasting even longer. You can express your point of view by running a certain kind of full node you like. It will be much more cheap and stable than running in VPS in the long term."​

 

[albin]

The first paragraph makes me pretty sure that the Core plan is to stall so long that folks just desperately accept whatever illogical poorly-conceived "Flexcap"-type proposal they come up with.

 

[Tomothy]

I think Jihan has an excellent point however that we should be looking at adaptive scaling measures in order to not have this same scaling fight on a yearly or bi-yearly basis.

 

[pekatete]

@Tomothy - Indeed I believe that was the entire point that he was making (as opposed to the extracted headline in /r/btc of block-size being a minor issue). Add to that, on the back of the August 2016 HK agreement ultimatum, I think we are soon going to see movement in the flexible or 8MB cap direction from the miners soon.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

@Tomothy The 2 MB plan was a trap and a mistake based on the flawed premise that it was possible to negotiate with Core. Once the miners indicated a willingness to accept an 8 MB initial increase, the plan should have been to just do that and ignore the diversion and delay tactics.

 

[lunar]

@Tsontar This is really well articulated. Much like

When you lay it out so clearly, it's really hard to understand why this massive conflict of interest has persisted so long without a full scale miners revolution.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

New @Tomothy - Indeed I believe that was the entire point that he was making (as opposed to the extracted headline in /r/btc of block-size being a minor issue). Add to that, on the back of the August 2016 HK agreement ultimatum, I think we are soon going to see movement in the flexible or 8MB cap direction from the miners soon.

I think we won't see shit.

Core is on it's way to implement damaging features into Bitcoin and create even more obfuscating code only a handful of people really look trough.

Really, how patient can you be, to still think anything will happen? Jihan Wu is the only (big) miner who has shown, to have any interest and knowledge about Bitcoin. And he refuses to signal support for the existing scaling solution, because "something better would be better". That's exactly the fuckheadry of core: "That's not perfect, so we better don't do anything at all", while the status quo is even worse.

And honestly, my enthusiasm for Bitcoin (besides an "investment") isn't too strong any more. It is far from what the whitepaper suggested. A bunch of cronies flies around the world to meet. It's about a dozen people who decide, what should happen next. What they don't understand, is that their days are numbered anyhow. Bitcoin will be replaced. It is the first time in history, that we have a worldwide marketplace for currencies and the deciders for the oldest of these currencies have absolutely no understanding, what they are doing and that Bitcoin is just a product like everything else.

And remember, that complete lunatics like Luke-Jr are prominent members of that club.

I've been a "hardcore" Bitcoin maximalist and I'm not sure which Altcoin(s) might be the right ones, but I have the feeling, that Bitcoin atm only has one single advantage over a lot of altcoins, and that is it's age.
[doublepost=1472158831][/doublepost]

I think Jihan has an excellent point however that we should be looking at adaptive scaling measures in order to not have this same scaling fight on a yearly or bi-yearly basis.

Yes, please don't adapt the existing solution on the lowest common denominator. Wait for the spaceship to arrive with the perfect blocksize solution, that core accepts.

It is not an excellent point, it's more stalling.

If 2 MB wasn't a solution, why did he persist on the 2 MB HF from core? His arguments are irrational.

And I'm pretty sure, that he will vote for SegWit regardless of a "2 MB HF proposal" by Core.

 

[8up]

Self-regulation. A thing that nature does all the time. Introduced into currency markets by Bitcoin in the 21st century.

 

[molecular]

I think we won't see shit.
And honestly, my enthusiasm for Bitcoin (besides an "investment") isn't too strong any more. It is far from what the whitepaper suggested. A bunch of cronies flies around the world to meet. It's about a dozen people who decide, what should happen next. What they don't understand, is that their days are numbered anyhow. Bitcoin will be replaced. It is the first time in history, that we have a worldwide marketplace for currencies and the deciders for the oldest of these currencies have absolutely no understanding, what they are doing and that Bitcoin is just a product like everything else.

slowly but surely they are winning.

running towards the cliff, eyes wide open.

parachute! we need a parachute!

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

My strongest inclination here is that either forking away from Core happens or cryptocurrency is dead as a concept. We are now in the period, which might have always been in store for us, where we cannot know the outcome for sure, other than by theory.

We will have to see if theory plays out in practice; to me everything I ever believed about cryptocurrencies is on the line. I am pretty confident about the eventual outcome, but now feel we are in the murky territory approaching the limits of theorizing. One or a few big catalysts should precipitate a forking event. Ideally a post-halving price surge will be the catalyst.

 

[jonny1000]

A bunch of cronies flies around the world to meet. It's about a dozen people who decide, what should happen next

No, these "cronies" can only decide to keep things the same. (i.e. what will not change). This group cannot eliminate an existing network rule. This characteristic is what makes the Bitcoin system different to the FOMC for example, which can impose changes.

slowly but surely they are winning.

I agree. It has been a very long and difficult battle, including a lot of luck, but slowly more and more members of the community are starting to appreciate the requirement for widespread consensus across the entire community in order to conduct a successful hardfork.

either forking away from Core happens

You cannot fork away from a development team. The project is open source and anyone can be a developer.

You can hard fork away from the existing network rules. Please do not confuse this with getting rid of a particular team, which is a much easier thing to do. If you want to get rid of the development team, just run a different client, compatible with the existing rules, but written by a different team. This is very easy and you can go ahead and do this now.

 

[cliff]

I was doing some reading last night about some google projects RE: nanotech-based medicine and was reminded of some nanotech literature I read a long, long time ago (maybe 10 yrs +) and thought I'd see what I could dig up. I once quipped that Szabo + some nanotech folks (maybe Foresight people as well) could be behind bitcoin - I still think that's a possibility given that nanbots and other machines will need some kind of transactional and transnational currency and whatnot in the future.

Just look at the wisdom and Foresight here (Drexler is a beast . . . in case that's not as well-known as it should be):

http://e-drexler.com/d/09/00/AgoricsPapers/agoricpapers/aos/aos.7.html

7. The absence of agoric systems​

Market-style software systems are a fairly obvious idea and have received some attention. However, in considering any fairly-obvious idea with (allegedly) great but unrealized potential, it is wise to ask why that potential has in fact not been realized. When an idea of this sort neither lends itself to formal proof nor to small, convincing demonstrations, the difficulty of making a case for it grows. Support from abstract arguments and analogies can be helpful, as can an examination of the practical issues involved. But in addition, it helps to see whether the idea has been tested and found wanting. Considering this major category of possible negative evidence is an aspect of due-process reasoning.

Why have agoric open systems not been implemented already? In part, because the software community has lacked an immediate, compelling need. Advances have been made, through better programming environments and methodologies (including the encapsulation and communication of information and access), and through tools for making larger structures visible to programmers [64]-all without building markets. These environments and methodologies have extended the programmer's conceptual span of control, enabling one mind or a few closely-coordinated, mutually-trusting minds to build ever larger and more complex programs. These advances have decreased the urgency of enabling extensive cooperation without mutual trust or extensive communications.

Another problem has been the scale-sensitivity of the market approach. In small systems, the overhead of accounting and negotiations is unjustified; further, incremental increases in scale have thus far been possible without markets. Robust service-trading objects must have a certain minimum complexity, or have access to trusted business-agents of a certain minimum complexity. The virtues of markets are greatest in large, diverse systems.

There has, perhaps, also been a cultural factor at work. Large, research-oriented computer networks have focused on academic and government work-that is, toward non-profit use. Further, the academic community already has an informal incentive structure that rewards the creators of useful software in an incremental way, in rough proportion to its usefulness. These reputation-based reward mechanisms facilitate the development of software systems that build on others' work; the differing incentives in the commercial community may be responsible for its greater tendency to build redundant systems from scratch.

These considerations seem sufficient to explain the lack of agoric systems today, while giving reason to expect that they will become desirable as computer systems and networks grow. In the large, open, evolving software systems of the future, the overhead of accounting will be less important than robustness and flexibility. Further, the development of automated programming systems will introduce "programmers" having (initially) a sharply limited ability to plan and comprehend. This will re-emphasize the problem of the "programmer's" span of conceptual control, and increase the need for mechanisms that strengthen localization and system robustness.​

 

[Justus Ranvier]

More inexorable leaking of politics into Bitcoin:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4zo5zb/mike_cernovich_on_twitter_there_will_movement/

Cernovich is correct that Clinton would be good for Bitcoin in the sense that her administration would make Bitcoin more necessary for routing around political repression.

 

[Tomothy]

@satoshis_sockpuppet and @Justus Ranvier , Gentleman I agree with both of you that we need an increase and core is trying to stall. However, as things currently stand I think we are stuck in a waiting game regardless. I don't believe a fork will yet be successful yet until more foundation has been built. I think there needs to be like a shock and awe approach; with assistance from larger players who might not necessarily be everyday forum celebrities but also ones that are and were. I.e., Bank representatives, Large IT representatives, and members who are willing to create an Eth/etc like situation. I think the board/director members on the BU foundation will be critical and should contemplate trying to follow or stealing assistance from how Linux works.

I think an adaptive approach should be a goal but that also you would need to bring people like Gavin back into the fold, even Cracy Mr.Wright, maybe Hearn and Garzik too for some big name punch with controversial ideas, big named actors who indicate their willingness to commit to a scaling and long term effectiveness of BTC. More importantly though, I really think there needs to be corporate buy in or at least to allow for future corporate buy in and funding of the foundation. To try and learn from failures both of core and of the bitcoin foundation.

But ultimately i think there needs to be time to secure a sufficient mining base to prevent from being immediately destroyed following a fork. I think if you could secure mining power by MTG(mcaffee) and buyin from crazy KDC all of that helps. You need enough mining hashpower to prevent being attacked by malicious actors and regardless of anything i'm not sure if we would have enough power to prevent debilitating attacks if a fork happened soon. We saw what happened when trying to garner prior support with nodes attacked and ddosed before. If this is a serious venture which is quite obvious, there needs to be not only a plan of attack but also a plan of defense. I think bitmain's new S4 home miner will help fight this and allow some of us to voice our opinions but I think if this is going to happen we are probably looking at a year of preparation for a brutal war.

As an aside, does it seem to anyone else that Nullc has toned down his dickishness now that the BUF is coming? Just wondering. Also, I think Segwit vulnerability found by lerner has valid concerns that need to be addressed which will provide time for a ramp up for BU to prepare for war and I think that those concerns could result in a stalling war to prevent segwit implementation. I think this is going to get ugly.

 

[Aquent]

I think it is a bit drastic to suggest that if bitcoin can be mutated a certain way then the whole concept is worthless. Man learns by only one thing - experience. To expect bitcoin, as the very first product, to become the one used in say 2200, is highly ambitious and very much unrealistic.

I can't recall a first product that went to be used by granny. This idea of bitcoin or bust has no basis but delusional dreams.

Bitcoin brought forth a tremendous innovation which, necessarily, has many shortfalls, leaving it to experience to show what the shortfalls are, how they are to be improved, and through trial and error, reaching to something usable.

Let's take off emotions and look at bitcoin. It has a confirmation time of 10 minutes. Why? We constantly argue 0 confirmations are safe - how about having a 1 second confirmation to shut up Peter Todd?

There are reports bitcoin uses as much energy as the entire country of Germany. On what basis can that be justified when in practice it is nothing more than some two or three Chinese guys multisiging?

We have constant hacks and thefts, with even coders and hackers unable to keep their coins secure. What has been done to increase usability in now almost eight years?

Bitcoin is a pioneer and has a name in history, but in my view, that's where it should stay unless magically this community sees all the errors and learns all the lessons. As necessarily happens, however, through trial and error and a process of evolution, it is not the incumbent who sees the errors, but the new kid around the block who provides hope.

Today, that is ETH. We all knew a solution would come. It did. When you look at ETH and you look at bitcoin, it's night and day. Eth is so fast, as good as instant, their community is all tech focused and "politically neutral". It has so many projects of such breadth and speed it is incredible... it's all we dreamed with no breaks and it has no Peter Todd which I long said is ETH's killer app. Their team professional, and most importantly, they are slaves to the users, not masters, for now in any event.

Most certainly that will change as time becomes, but stop whining young man, stop dreaming what if, stop asking, go ETH, it is peaceful there, go ETH, in the open air, go ETH, where the sky is blue, go ETH, this is what I did do. Together.

 

[pekatete]

Bitcoin has a confirmation time of 10 minutes. Why? We constantly argue 0 confirmations are safe - how about having a 1 second confirmation ....

I can not see a need for 1 sec txs for bitcoin if 0-conf txs are widely accepted. The trade-off in decentralisation effect by keeping the block-chain size reasonable far out-weigh's the need for 1 sec txs.
On the other hand 0-conf txs, though valid, are not widely accepted and add to that, confirmation times (and tx fees) are increasing further deprecating the "TTL" for bitcoin txs and further undermining its property as money.