Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Justus Ranvier]

To expect bitcoin, as the very first product, to become the one used in say 2200, is highly ambitious and very much unrealistic.

When the French codified the metric system in the late 18th century, were they expecting to establish something that would last for all time, or a prototype that would be thrown away in a few years?

 

[Norway]

I once quipped that Szabo + some nanotech folks (maybe Foresight people as well) could be behind bitcoin

Most likely, it's Craig Wright, if you ask me. I don't think he tricked @Gavin Andresen when signing messages with Electrum. It's almost impossible to pull that off. The reasons for not doing it in public (which could be used in a tax related court) is another question.

 

[cliff]

@Norway - Like with a handful of folks, there are some persuasive arguments based on circumstantial evidence that CSW was involved. CSW has the fortune - or misfortune - of a weird PR campaign that appears to have flopped (and maybe that was intentional - who knows).

 

[Aquent]

@Justus Ranvier I don't think the boring metric system, a product of millenials, and at the time of initiation sort of a no brainer, can in any way be compared to bitcoin which is the most modern thing and by bitcoin I don't mean bitcoin, I mean the concepts underlying it.

Bitcoin itself is just a ledger among many and frankly, its a very rubbish ledger. It is so slow, all its capabilities have been culled - I mean read the dev list - they talking about mimble shimble nonsense rubbish - which wants to cut off ALL script (or smart contracts you wish) capabilities. And they can because they have the irc channels, they have the commit access, they have the brainwashing r/bitcoin, so you can cry all you like...

Go ETH mate, that's all I can say, and if you don't wish to do so that's fine too, but the bitcoin that was died in Feb 2016, now we have something else and what it is only experiencing time will tell.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

I don't think

I can not help but agree.

 

[cliff]

@Aquent - Its way, way too early to consider BTC a failure or success.

ETH seems more risky to me at the moment than BTC, even with the scaling-debate deadlock, given its young age and recent security-drama. Speaking of, I'm sorta hoping for some more Bruce Wanker videos in the future (just b/c of humor, no ill-will or harm desired) - they're pretty educational IMHO and the creator clearly has a knack for ELI5ing.

 

[Aquent]

I can not help but agree.

Lol, Justus the troll, who would have thought. What happened in your little sabbatical?

 

[Norway]

there are some persuasive arguments based on circumstantial evidence

WTF are you talking about?
[doublepost=1472241793][/doublepost]Kore be like:

EDIT: They have the poison (3tps) and the remedy vapour ware lightning.

 

[cliff]

@Norway - What are you talking about?

Just sayin' you could be correct - I haven't seen anything conclusive.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

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.

It's a deadlock. Nobody is going to buy a new miner if they don't believe in Bitcoins future. The miners should have send a fucking signal sometime to give people confidence, but they didn't. Maybe they expected people to run only classic nodes before switching and never understood, that a lot of people already left because there wasn't even the slightest hint, that the miners have an interest in Bitcoin.

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

They won't. Every miner will signal support for Segwit. Including Antpool. Because then they will say "better than nothing". (Of course, 2 MB by Classic "not being good enough".)
I've lost my patience with the miners and with no PoW fork in sight I am going to look into the Altcoin (excluding Vitalikoin) section for the first time. It kind of "breaks my heart", that Satoshis network degenerated into begging some producers of heating units to behave rational.

Gavin back into the fold, even Cracy Mr.Wright, maybe Hearn and Garzik

Gavin is burned, Hearn won't return and Garzik seems to have left Bitcoin development years ago.
Craig Wright, I don't know. That story is just satisfying a perverse interest for sensation by many people (including myself).

What has been done to increase usability in now almost eight years?

Until (including) this point I agree with you. And 8 years puts things into perspective if people still talk about Bitcoin being "young and new". It worked for 8 years and people still don't believe it can work, so Blockstream has to rescue Bitcoin from it's own success.
The rest of your statement: I don't like Ethereum for various reasons I stated often enough, but as I said, it's the first time I'm looking into other Altcoins. So far I have to say, that Monero seems to do a lot of things right and seems to have competent developers (without drama queen attitude).

I can not help but agree.

That was not nice.

Go ETH mate, that's all I can say, and if you don't wish to do so that's fine too, but the bitcoin that was died in Feb 2016, now we have something else and what it is only experiencing time will tell.

Eth is completely dead after the fork to save the funds of the devs. (They knowingly and willingly put into a high risk investment)

 

[cliff]

QUESTION: If the law described in the article linked below goes into effect, and given what the recent NSA hack revealed, would using Tor via TAILS + VirtualBox still have any utility?

https://news.bitcoin.com/update-bitcoiners-use-tor-warned/

 

[Norway]

Yellen: 4 hikes in 2016
Yellen today: Yes, and there will be a lot more in the future. But not just now.

It's going in one direction. End game is hyper inflation. Normal people don't see all the new money. They are stacked up in the derivates market. They don't trickle down.

Fun reading: Fed started their own Facebook page a few days ago. And they are attacked by everybody!

https://www.facebook.com/federalreserve/

 

[pekatete]

Normal people don't see all the new money. They are stacked up in the derivatives market. They don't trickle down.

Free market economies are massively rigged for the benefit of the asset rich. All / any interventions to rebalance in favour of the asset poor are handled by the asset rich and the trickle down is effectively negligible.

If only just a small fraction of the total of the sub-prime bail-out was directly handed to the real borrowers, the world would never have experienced such a deep recession, instead it was handed to the banks and the rest is history.

 

[AdrianX]

I've been listening to some Ted talks on the go, this one linked below struck me. It has some odd undertones of mediocracy but the underlying premise of support and helpfulness resonates with my experience of greater successes. It explains very well how bitcoin got into this situation. I was reminded of the early behaviors of the incumbent power hierarchy:

The following quotes are from this discussion https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=122013.0 I've abbreviated them, if you read the discussion you'll see where the development team is headed in hindsight, this Ted talk highlights one aspect of the bitcoin network that's breaking down at the moment the cause is obvious.

You're missing at least one important rule, ... I'm contemplating keeping this missing rule to myself for now so that it can function as a test of the testing... Does this sound reasonable to you?

Greg then goes on to explain why it's good not to be helpful and be an Asshole. Luke on the other hand, comes out the gate well ahead of Maxwell.

Not enough "bribe" to get more real-world mining testing? ... After it's proven to be reasonably reliable, I'd even make Eligius refuse to produce blocks your code rejects as a security measure - this way someone can't get Eligius to mine a block attacking bitsofproof users.

 

[Richy_T]

This group cannot eliminate an existing network rule

How about the rule that a spend_any transaction can be spent by anybody? If core get all the miners on board and you try to spend from a spend_any transaction without using segwit, your transaction will not be included in a block.

 

[Cconvert2G36]

For the PoW hard fork wish list... segwit transactions on the Core chain would really be anyone-can-spend. There would be no built-in attempt to protect Core users against replay...

For a minority chain to render itself irrelevant... by making itself ignorable via replay protection... is stupidity. This is like shooting yourself in the foot for your first move. There should be a real cost to ignoring the fork's implications. To engineer it otherwise is akin to entering battle... bestowing upon yourself, a nerf sword.

 

[Richy_T]

That's really one I can see pros and cons for and I really don't know which one would be best. Same with changing the POW.

The truth is though, anyone who cares to can avoid a replay attack and I think changing POW is unlikely to have much of an effect long term (though I suspect it's still worth doing short-term).

 

[theZerg]

My opinion on the recent testnet fork:
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4zupv2/my_bitcoin_unlimited_developer_andrew_stones_take/

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@Aquent

The ledger is rubbish or the protocol updating the ledger is rubbish?

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

My view on the proposed responses to controversial issues in Bitcoin: creating altcoins, launching sidechains, and forking (with or without persistent split, here assuming PoW change).

Bitcoin Unlimited can be seen as a smart fork/split/spinoff manager.