Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[AdrianX]

OMG I missed that Difficulty jump - over 10% https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

that's just so crazy - I am having trouble imagining such an investment in hashing, it is not a total supersize as we've had notice of ASIC efficiency improvements and plans for new data centers.

but still that's a fantastic - mammoth amount of growth.

To put that in perspective more hashing power just came on-line than existed just 2 & ½ years ago and we saw the equivalent of the first 5 & ½ years in hash rate added to bitcoin in just 2 weeks. A crazy thing is it looks like growth will continue over the flowing 2 weeks.

 

[adamstgbit]

brg444 has spent some serious time writing a blog post to explain why the block size limit is not artificial. I guess he is very proud of it. Feel free to comment below his blog here:

https://medium.com/@bergealex4/the-artificial-block-size-limit-1b69aa5d9d4#.ar31athx8

typical core logic nonsense arguments.
i posted a comment.
I bet it'll get deleted.
because propaganda + censorship = winning

 

[Roger_Murdock]

brg444 has spent some serious time writing a blog post to explain why the block size limit is not artificial. I guess he is very proud of it. Feel free to comment below his blog here:

https://medium.com/@bergealex4/the-artificial-block-size-limit-1b69aa5d9d4#.ar31athx8

Of course it's not artificial. Everyone knows that the 1-MB block size limit (also referred to as "Maxwell's number" in some of the scientific literature) is one of the fundamental physical constants of the universe, like the speed of light in a vacuum or the Planck length. Moreover, what's known as the "fine-tuned Blockchain proposition" (accepted by all reputable Bitcoin developers) posits that, had the 1-MB limit been even as much as 10% larger, the conditions that allow for the operation of a decentralized cryptocurrency would not exist.

 

[Norway]

@Roger_Murdock

 

[Richy_T]

Roger, indeed. I have been conducting a little research into the subject myself and I have found some interesting correlations that point to the 1MB as being a constant absolutely fundamental to life and the universe itself. To whit:

1MB = 1,000,000

We can write this as (10^2)^3. Note that the 3 explicitly references the three dimensions we live within. The 10 clearly references the 10 digits we *humans* have on our hands and the 2 references the balance of the universe, the yin and the yang, the good and the evil and, to get a little metaphysical, the hodge and the podge.

But we can go further. What *digits* are there in this representation? Why, 0,1,2 and 3. Clearly, the 1,2 and 3 represent the indexes of the x, y and z dimensions that we live in (showing up again indicates just how important this is). And the 0? Time itself.

Clearly there was no other choice of constant that could be made for the security of the space-time continuum itself.

My next endeavor will be to look for applications of the Law of Fives against this magical number. For verily, it is written "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look."

 

[albin]

Brg444 is an ineffectual moron with status that's propped up by censorship. Before Theymos's reign of terror he was just some crackpot you'd see on Bitcointalk (who just so happened to coincidentally pop up exactly when Blockstream was founded / sidechains were hyped).

I have no way of describing that article honestly as anything other than a flaming piece of shit. Whatever exact argument he's trying to make, I'm not going to spend the time necessary to decipher it.

The condescending graphic at the beginning of the piece basically tells me what category of argument the whole thing falls into. Core is filled with sophomoric talking points about imposing externalities, as though it's some genius new insight of the Maxwell Cult, but from day one all of us with any exposure to anything academic related to any of this recognized that the system worked by feedback loops of incentives created by the activity of participants creating positive externalities for others. This is literally what a network effect is! The emergent behavior of participants is to participate because they judge the utility of participating exceeds the cost of participating.

The Maxwell Cult would have you believe that we need to price all those positive and negative externalities (or at least just the negative ones, they apparently don't understand positive externalities exist?), when nobody has the foggiest notion how to do any of that in any way that isn't arbitrarily creating and moving levers. The genius behind their groupthink cult is that they don't actually have to ever solve any of these rigorous theoretical problems, but this position allows them to pseudo-intellectually shoot down any and all proposals of any kind ever.

 

[Norway]

@albin
Did some research on him earlier this year. He was supposed to be a social media expert at Soluvox, yet his Facebook account had a few years with no activity after his first two generic posts. I don't think it's a real person called Alex Bergeron. It's most likely a farmed identity.

 

[awemany]

Regarding LN and transaction malleability:

People like Jratcliff like to pound on the importance of that and how higher level solutions are impossible to do without fixing that, and how that makes SegWit such an urgently needed change.

Now, I have yet to see a definitive and water proof argument showing that certain desirable uses of the blockchain and desirable higher level contracting schemes are impossible to do with malleable transactions.

This might be out of ignorance, though, so that's why I ask: Can anyone point me to such an argument?

Of course, fixing malleability would be nice and it would make things simpler.

But many of these 'transaction malleability is absolutely crucial' arguments that I have seen depend on a state of the blockchain even worse than now, a very competitive bidding war to get on chain, with lots of CPFP and RBF transactions, having strings of unconfirmed transactions depending on each other.

Don't get me wrong, I think a canonical and thus non-malleable transaction format for Bitcoin makes sense and should definitely be implemented. I just think that a) we have some time to figure out the best way to do that and b) IMO LN proponents should fight the uphill battle here and prove the urgent need for it.

 

[Inca]

Bitcoin looking very strong. If segwit looks like activating it could signal the next bull run. I will be unhappy but richer. Such is life.

Anyone do any website design?

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

Bitcoin looking very strong. If segwit looks like activating it could signal the next bull run. I will be unhappy but richer. Such is life.

By now I doubt, that it will activate.

Wishful thinking maybe, but I don't see ViaBTC and Antpool signalling support.

 

[adamstgbit]

price is rising fast.

i think at the very least this means some poeple THINK there is soon going to be some resolution to the scaling debate.

I find it unlikely that poeple are buying thinking segwit will soon activate because ViaBTC
IMO its more likely that a lot minners are in agreement about switching to BU very soon.

but either way... the conflict will soon be resolved one way or an other. and thats bullish.
[doublepost=1479840663][/doublepost]i'm thinking low 900's ASAP and then blowing past ATH as the news comes out that ( one way or another ) there is finally & definitively some resolution to the longest most complex debate of all time.
[doublepost=1479840663][/doublepost]
on second thought.... this is wishful thinking. and price will tank again onces it becomes clear that segwit nor BU will activate anytime soon, the deadlock continues.

 

[adamstgbit]

Segwit support at 25% for the last 144 blocks.

IMO segwit support tops out at 30-50%
[doublepost=1479844225,1479843083][/doublepost]

Null dummy soft fork

Combined with the segwit soft fork is an additional change that turns a
long-existing network relay policy into a consensus rule. The
OP_CHECKMULTISIG and OP_CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY opcodes consume an extra
stack element ("dummy element") after signature validation. The dummy
element is not inspected in any manner, and could be replaced by any
value without invalidating the script.

Because any value can be used for this dummy element, it's possible for
a third-party to insert data into other people's transactions, changing
the transaction's txid (called transaction malleability) and possibly
causing other problems.

Since Bitcoin Core 0.10.0, nodes have defaulted to only relaying and
mining transactions whose dummy element was a null value (0x00, also
called OP_0). The null dummy soft fork turns this relay rule into a
consensus rule both for non-segwit transactions and segwit transactions,
so that this method of mutating transactions is permanently eliminated
from the network.

Signaling for the null dummy soft fork is done by signaling support
for segwit, and the null dummy soft fork will activate at the same time
as segwit.

For more information, please see BIP147.

oh look they threw in a HF

 

[molecular]

@adamstgbit

> oh look they threw in a HF

I don't think that's a hardforking change. Seems to be a tightening of the rules (Just noticed I don't even like the word "consensus" any more). Old nodes accept any dummy value including 0, so they wont be forked.

 

[adamstgbit]

@molecular

today a miner can mine a block with a TX who's dummy element isn't a null value.
tomorrow this same kind of block is no longer valid.

if >51% of nodes are not upgraded, this "soft fork" will end up forking the network.
imagine 25% of the network employs this new "soft fork"
a miner mines a block with TX+dummy element
75% of the network says its valid
25% (Forked nodes) disagree and fork off.

no?

to me anything that requires >51% of the network to upgrade is a HF

"old non-minning nodes wont break."
BS if there was a node creating TX+dummy element, it will most definitely break.

 

[freetrader]

@adamstgbit : BIP147 still needs to be activated using 95% threshold of BIP9 .
The "tomorrow this same kind of block is no longer valid" scenario which you fear is simply not going to happen.

What I do find a bit strange is that, since there are so many soft-fork bits, why not give NULLDUMMY its own bit. That way it would have an independent chance at life, other clients could let voting on it begin separately from SegWit. I think as a change it's sensible and deserves implementation.

---

I was just advised that the dummy SF is apparently only for segwit scripts
and might make some P2SH unspendable if applied to existing UTXO.

In that case, makes sense it didn't get released as an independent SF.

 

[adamstgbit]

seems i'm wrong, the difference between HF and SF is very minimal.
"change to the software protocol where only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid."
SF require majority hashing power, by definition.
remarkable they would split hairs like this.

what do you call a change to the software that is Fully compatible with old nodes?

"non-fork-change"

makes sense, i guess.

 

[Inca]

Anyone have any bitcoin address re-use statistics?

 

[lunar]

@Inca did you see this ?

 

[adamstgbit]

@adamstgbit : BIP147 still needs to be activated using 95% threshold of BIP9 .
The "tomorrow this same kind of block is no longer valid" scenario which you fear is simply not going to happen.

What I do find a bit strange is that, since there are so many soft-fork bits, why not give NULLDUMMY its own bit. That way it would have an independent chance at life, other clients could let voting on it begin separately from SegWit. I think as a change it's sensible and deserves implementation.

---

I was just advised that the dummy SF is apparently only for segwit scripts
and might make some P2SH unspendable if applied to existing UTXO.

In that case, makes sense it didn't get released as an independent SF.

i think there is a 32% chance segwit will get active with >75% hashing power ( they will lower the bar... )

if it dose it is my hope that there is a HF to 2MB simultaneously

i have serious doubts segwit +LN won't cause unbelievable exploits or at the very least make the whole "bitcoin thing" annoyingly complex and non-competitive to simpler less retarded alternatives.

 

[AdrianX]

Regarding LN and transaction malleability:

People like Jratcliff like to pound on the importance of that and how higher level solutions are impossible to do without fixing that, and how that makes SegWit such an urgently needed change.

Now, I have yet to see a definitive and water proof argument showing that certain desirable uses of the blockchain and desirable higher level contracting schemes are impossible to do with malleable transactions.

This might be out of ignorance, though, so that's why I ask: Can anyone point me to such an argument?

Of course, fixing malleability would be nice and it would make things simpler.

But many of these 'transaction malleability is absolutely crucial' arguments that I have seen depend on a state of the blockchain even worse than now, a very competitive bidding war to get on chain, with lots of CPFP and RBF transactions, having strings of unconfirmed transactions depending on each other.

Don't get me wrong, I think a canonical and thus non-malleable transaction format for Bitcoin makes sense and should definitely be implemented. I just think that a) we have some time to figure out the best way to do that and b) IMO LN proponents should fight the uphill battle here and prove the urgent need for it.

I've yet to be convinced typical work and relative risk done in the general economy should be offloaded and executed by miners as part of the bitcoin protocol. I'm sure there are lots of other ways to write and execute smart contracts other than through the bitcoin protocol. So for now I'm not even convinced that malleability is even a bug it may be a feature.

After all it's only transactions written to the blockchain that are, for want of a stone age metaphor, cast in stone. Better money doesn't have to make coffee or tell my coffee provider I'm in need of a refill, better money is simply better money nothing more nothing less.
[doublepost=1479862882][/doublepost]

Bitcoin looking very strong. If segwit looks like activating it could signal the next bull run. I will be unhappy but richer. Such is life.

Anyone do any website design?

I'm not convinced that's why we are seeing this demand, the war on cash in India, negative interest rates in Canada on accounts denominated in any currency other than CAD and USD, the devaluation of the yuan, the resent 10% increase in hash rate make for a fare more compelling reason to buy bitcoin.