Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[lunar]

Another thing I really haven't worked out yet is the economics of lightning network? (has anyone?)

I've heard that lightning can be used between chains (sic) ?? needs clarification.

Cross Blockchains. Cross-chain atomic swaps can occur off-chain instantly with heterogeneous blockchain consensus rules. So long as the chains can support the same cryptographic hash function, it is possible to make transactions across blockchains without trust in 3rd party custodians.

Most of us view bitcoin as a currency with a limited supply. However if you have a limited blockspace forcing Tx off chain and can somehow peg or (dynamically peg?) a lightning (btc) to say lightning (ltc) you now have a situation where the two main chains Bitcoin/Litecoin are in direct competition for the cost of a full blockchain entry into the ledger. ie mainchainTx fees are competing.

Situation is this --> Purchase Litecoin, (cheep fee) send to lighting and close out on bitcoin. (expensive fee) Now assuming they can also limit the blocksize on Litecoin too, you have effectively pegged Litecoin to Bitcoin becasue they have become economically the same thing. - An entry into the immutable ledger.

The broad attack here is simply fractional reserve. A big player can quietly purchase huge amounts of litecoin (and it's miners) price goes up wrt bitcoin. Once lightning is released and then they become pegged you now have 42+21 million coins and hence massive dilution the money supply?

Where has my saturday fuzzy logic failed?

Whether this attack works or not is a little redundant ,my point is the same.

If you have huge cost to transact on the BTC chain it becomes only a matter of time before some clever sort of fractional dilution occurs between BTC and other chains. Money can flood into cryptocurrency without effecting the BTC price thus digital gold becomes 'magically' inflated.

 

[theZerg]

so was that the "first selloff"?

 

[Erdogan]

@BldSwtTrs:

Common nouns are not capitalized while proper nouns are.

Common nouns refer to a class of person, animal, place, idea or thing, while proper nouns refer to a specific instance of that class. For example, "month" (not capitalized) is a class of time periods approximately 30 days in length, while "January" is a specific instance of that class (capitalized). Similarly, "man" (not capitalized) is a class of humans that have a Y-chromosome, while "Peter R" refers to the specific instance of a man who is writing this post.

The word "cryptocurrency" (common noun) refers to the class of electronic, decentralized, digital currencies that we like to endlessly discuss, while "Bitcoin" (proper noun) refers to our favourite instance of that class

The word "bitcoin" (common noun) refers to the class of currency tokens exchanged on the Bitcoin network. I could name one of my bitcoins "Henry" if I wanted to refer to that bitcoin specifically.

To answer your question, when we say "Bitcoin network" we mean the specific network of miners and nodes that are building the Bitcoin blockchain, and so we capitalize (it's a proper noun). Similarly, when we say "Bitcoin blockchain" we refer to the specific blockchain that starts with the Satoshi genesis block and contains more proof-of-work than any other competing chain, and so it is also capitalized. (One could argue that it should actually be "Bitcoin Network" and "Bitcoin Blockchain," as both terms could be considered proper nouns in their own right).

This seems to be correct, but...

Language itself is an organic system akin to life itself, and every actor can, by using the language differently, modify it.

I want to express the opinion that there is only one relevant form of electronic cash, I want to commonize it, therefore I sometimes (mostly) use bitcoin (uncapitalized) to denote it.

Coming from another language, I think the English use capitalization too much, it looks unesthetical on the screen.

therefore i can say that bitcoin is the invention of the century, comparable to the invention of the printing press.

(Press ... what press? Oh that press - the Printing Press, not the Cloth Drying and Smoothing Press - now I understand - you are talking of what is commonly understood by "the press"). Sorry for the word spew.

 

[Peter R]

@Ergodan: Yes! The "proper" capitalization or even the "true" definition of word is ultimately the result of a decentralized consensus process (logic and tradition be damned and much akin the question of "which chain is the real Bitcoin?").

Capitalize how you please, use the definitions you think are best, and argue your case. It is indeed how language evolves.
[doublepost=1483848483][/doublepost]In other news, more censorship on the Dev-list. They are scared of people discussing the fact that common nodes can safely begin accepting blocks larger than 1 MB any time they please.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/5mowfl/the_forbidden_truth_nodes_can_loosen_their/

 

[Erdogan]

Another thing I really haven't worked out yet is the economics of lightning network? (has anyone?)

I've heard that lightning can be used between chains (sic) ?? needs clarification.



Most of us view bitcoin as a currency with a limited supply. However if you have a limited blockspace forcing Tx off chain and can somehow peg or (dynamically peg?) a lightning (btc) to say lightning (ltc) you now have a situation where the two main chains Bitcoin/Litecoin are in direct competition for the cost of a full blockchain entry into the ledger. ie mainchainTx fees are competing.

Situation is this --> Purchase Litecoin, (cheep fee) send to lighting and close out on bitcoin. (expensive fee) Now assuming they can also limit the blocksize on Litecoin too, you have effectively pegged Litecoin to Bitcoin becasue they have become economically the same thing. - An entry into the immutable ledger.

The broad attack here is simply fractional reserve. A big player can quietly purchase huge amounts of litecoin (and it's miners) price goes up wrt bitcoin. Once lightning is released and then they become pegged you now have 42+21 million coins and hence massive dilution the money supply?

Where has my saturday fuzzy logic failed?

Whether this attack works or not is a little redundant ,my point is the same.

If you have huge cost to transact on the BTC chain it becomes only a matter of time before some clever sort of fractional dilution occurs between BTC and other chains. Money can flood into cryptocurrency without effecting the BTC price thus digital gold becomes 'magically' inflated.

I think the promise of Lightning is just that you will have cheaper transactions, albeit with slightly lower quality. That is not bad, and if it is useful, it will exist, the market decides.
[doublepost=1483849162][/doublepost]My own thought on that point is that it is presently not useful. The Bitcoin system is set to advance from something very small in the money universe, to something big. During this journey, it will enter stages where it is used for different things, where different properties are important. On this stage, and for the next few years, on chain scaling is the simplest, safest and cheapest option. When (if) we hit a wall, off chain solutions can take us further, Lightning is only one of many options.

 

[sickpig]

"The European Council seeks to introduce an anti-terrorism measure that will ensure a stricter handling on cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ripple. If the motion gets accepted by the heads of state and the governments of the member countries, the listed currencies will be managed by the EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive."
https://www.deepdotweb.com/2017/01/06/eu-council-requests-registration-bitcoin-users/

Direct link to the relevant section of Europen Council website:

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/12/20-money-laundering-and-terrorist-financing/

This catch my eyes while glancing the first pdf document linked in the above page:

"it is essential to lower the existing thresholds for general purpose anonymous prepaid cards and to identify the customer in the case of remote payment transactions where the amount paid exceeds EUR 50"

isn't 50 EUR ridiculous? but maybe it's just me.

 

[Bagatell]

@sickpig Uquid advise users to have multiple cards to circumvent their current limit of 2500 euro. The War on Cash is escalating quickly.

Is India’s Cash Ban A Test Case For The West?

 

[Bagatell]

http://www.coindesk.com/2016-bitcoin-year-politics-apolitical-money/ from Lombrozo.

"the parties must all go their separate ways." is about the only part I agree with.

 

[AdrianX]

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/5mowfl/the_forbidden_truth_nodes_can_loosen_their/?ref=share&ref_source=link

This was mentioned somewhere before I saw it on Reddit. But being a rather more comprehensive account of the incident I thought it prudent to add it the this historic thread.

It underpins the philosophy behind BU and this idea pins the moment this historic thread was censored and closed on bitcointalk.

It's this feature of the Bitcoin network the existing TPTB in bitcoin want buried.

 

[freetrader]

isn't 50 EUR ridiculous? but maybe it's just me.

No, that's not just you - it's totally ridiculous. They might as well just own up to the fact that they want to scrutinize EVERY transaction, because this threshold is sufficiently low to give away that they will eliminate even this ridiculously low barrier in the next step.

I think the Council is overestimating its position here.

If they turn into overt oppressors of the countries that keep the EU ticking, there isn't going to be a Council soon.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@lunar

Without thinking about it too deeply, my instinct is that you can't peg a BTC to an LTC arbitrarily. If a pegged LTC is convertible back into a BTC, but unpegged LTC aren't, then LTC are no longer fungible. Pegged LTC will trade at a much higher price than unpegged LTC.

Also, I suspect this doesn't allow for fractional reserve, since all you are doing is moving part of the Bitcoin ledger onto the Litecoin mining network, and therefore moving the part of the security/control for the Bitcoin ledger over to the Litecoin miners. The total remains the same and those non-pegged LTC might be worth very little...which presents a big problem as the Litecoin miners are only paid in non-pegged LTC, so they have little incentive to hash and can easily be 51% attacked, possibly making it so that those pegged LTC can never be unpegged and returned to the main chain.

Also, insofar as the longest chain in the Litecoin mining algorithm is Litecoin, the miners could conceivably even change the rules for those pegged BTC (though vetoable by forking away from the Litecoin miners with a PoW change).

So I suspect cross-chain transactions, at least in that form, will be a non-starter.

 

[albin]

@lunar

You don't need Lightning at all to do something like you're suggesting, cross-chain atomic swaps can be done right now.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

http://www.coindesk.com/2016-bitcoin-year-politics-apolitical-money/ from Lombrozo.

"the parties must all go their separate ways." is about the only part I agree with.

Does anybody know how Lombrozo got his fame? I'm absolutely clueless what he made / for what he stands, except of talking core in interviews ...

 

[freetrader]

@Christoph Bergmann : https://ybitcoin.com/people/eric-lombrozo/

 

[lunar]

Have a peep at the coinbase from the last eight blocks either I'm going mad or illuminati confirmed?

https://coin.dance/blocks#blockDetails

blocks 447280 to 447288

Will it be 9 ?

Edit .... it was duh duh daaa !

Edit 2 thanks @solex that's my something new for the day.

 

[yrral86]

@lunar

Very strange.

 

[AdrianX]

Am I correct in understanding Miners have actively predicted who would mine 10 blocks in a row and now every block since going alphabetically, it's now up to "L".

What is the Coin Base Text Description and who writes it?

 

[chriswilmer]

Uhh... that *is* strange. I can't think of why that would occur unless the miners are in agreement about it... could it be for fun?
[doublepost=1483946333][/doublepost]Even Gogreenlight is in on this alphabet thing? What is going on?
[doublepost=1483946481][/doublepost]OK, looking back through the block history, I see the alphabet thing recurs many times... so, maybe this is something really obvious like the first few characters of the coinbase encode the block number or something.
[doublepost=1483946541][/doublepost]Think of irony, if all of the miners in the world could come together and agree on a funny alphabet-prank-mining-protocol, but not a simple block size increase

 

[solex]

Haha, yes block height is in the coinbase txn,
Welcome to the wonderful world of soft-forks shoe-horning data into inappropriate fields in order to maintain the oh-so-desirable forward compatibility.

So, in the case of block 447288 (binary 1101101001100111000) what we are seeing is the ASCII value of the last byte (00111000) i.e. decimal 56 (hex 38)

 

[sickpig]