Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Richy_T]

Let's not forget that there is a trade off between UTXOs and privacy. It would be trivial to write a wallet that, for any transaction, took the inputs of *ALL* transactions available to the wallet and spend them on any transaction. This would have several effects.

1)High fee now, lower fees later. This should balance out in the long run.
2)Reduced UTXO size
3)Reduced privacy (though with the analysis tools currently available, might not make a huge difference).
4)Protection of low value transactions from becomng unspendable due to future fee increases

Indeed, a smart wallet might even wait for times of low fees and send a consolidating transaction as a money saving feature. My last big moves were to cold wallets where I no-doubt consolidated many smaller transactions into a few larger ones.

The tradeoff is privacy vs cost. These are two competing dynamics. The problem with Core appears to be they are unable to process the idea of tradeoffs and just pick one side and run all the way to the endzone with their conclusions.

 

[Richy_T]

There must exist an equilibrium where--for a given wallet under normal usage patterns--UTXOs are being destroyed as quickly as they are being created. That is, the average number of UTXOs in a given wallet no longer increases nor decreases regardless of how many additional transactions are made. Anyone see any problems with this argument?

In general yes, you are correct, there would be a somewhat steady state of UTXOs per user. However, it all depends on how the wallet selects transaction outputs to create a new transaction. If it tends to select the biggest transaction outputs first, it will tend to leave dust behind and create more. If it picks from smallest outputs, it will tend to aggregate outputs and reduce UTXOs (toward a low equilibrium). If it uses some other selection mechanism (oldest first or random), it will tend towards an equilibrium.

Again, as above, a smart wallet could bias one way or the other depending on whether fees were currently high or low. Though if they were what they currently should be, it would be pretty much a non-issue.

As with so many other things that we seem to bang our heads against under Core, this has been seen before in computing in the form of disk fragmentation. Typically one has solved this by waiting for a low-usage time and defragmenting the drive. Unfortunately, Core has turned Bitcoin into a 100% utilization system and there is no slack space for this kind of maintenance activity. Other disk formats such as EXT2/3/4 and NTFS have managed to mostly avoid fragmentation and perhaps this is a direction to look for guidance.

 

[AdrianX]

There's a widespread misconception on reddit and such about "BU activation". How to best answer?

There's also a lot of uncertainty (even angst) visible about what will happen and what people will need to do to "protect" their coins and "be on the right fork" hinting at a very low level of understanding. It's good to see in a way because it shows we're really tapping into new crowds here. It also makes apparent the need for more education.

Are there any easy-to-read concise explanations we can link to?

My take based on my understanding :

Anyone has always been able to change the bitcoin code. It's the network of users that preserve the rules not centralized control of the code.

The 1MB limit is a soft fork rule introduced in 2010. It was intended to prevent abuse of free transactions when finding a 1MB block was worth less than $4.00.

Today a block is worth over $10,000 and users pay a fee, the risk of abuse disappeared long ago.

There is no need for the soft fork limit any longer and it should now be removed.

There is no percentage that triggers the fork there is just the majority network - obviously anything below 51% won't be the majority network and it's important to realize that losing 49% of the network would affect the value of bitcoin and the rate at which a miner can mine it. So the incentive to split at a low threshold is low.

If you want an opinion of someone who believes we need 98% users, miners and business to all agree @jonny1000 can explain it better than I can as I don't understand how one will measure it or at what point you're allowed to say you're part of the 98% without being banned for signaling before that time for going against the consensus.

 

[lunar]

Can anyone translate and confirm??

 

[Peter R]

For the Chinese and Portuguese readers out there, we have translated @Mengerian's "The Market for Consensus" article to Chinese:

https://medium.com/@bitcoinunlimited/共识市场-1f0d29d89fc2

and we have translated my "The Excessive Block Gate" article to Portuguese:

https://medium.com/@bitcoinunlimited/um-portão-para-blocos-excessivos-como-o-nodo-da-bitcoin-unlimited-lida-com-grandes-blocos-c9de25bf519e

 

[AdrianX]

This is very exciting news:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irrational-exuberance-for-bitcoin-etfs-1486350601

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/5sc5ug/as_bitcoin_etf_nears_analysts_warn_of_trading/


It made me think the of this image. - the deviation triggered when the network started bumping into it's capacity, if the ETF is happening then the network may get a boost (an off blockchain boost) and it made me wonder if we could see a tripling in price and this divergence correct - ;-) overshoot.

*edit: This ETF is going to pump when people find out they can't move their bitcoin on the blockchain because its too contested. - ooooh I pity some poor people - I'm going to avoid exchanges that trade on margin, I think there could be pain, a shortage of BTC and a MtGox excuse - block chain bloat.

This mess if it comes to that falls square on Blockstream, and what gets me is they have designed a product to sell as a solution to this problem they created. such malice.

 

[Norway]

Chandler Guo, 100P​

 

[Zarathustra]

 

[solex]

For information release notes relevant to the BU versions 1.0.0 & 1.0.0.1 are now available.

 

[bluemoon]

Chandler Guo, 100P​

Flashing his bubies

 

[lunar]

It's a little bit confusing due to the crowd sale, but this appears to be the new pool.

https://xbtc.exx.com

current coinbase not showing BU support - fisher jinxin/xbtc.exx.com&bw.com/

most recent block 451,769

appears to be hashing @ 45PH with upto 10% of the network as a target.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

There's a widespread misconception on reddit and such about "BU activation". How to best answer?

BU merely lays bare the fact that activation was always in no one group's hands, and thank heavens for that.

Turn the question around: "Do you mean to imply that the method of activation you were comfortable with was 'Core devs decide the activation conditions'? That seems awfully risky for a system that is supposed to be decentralized."

 

[AdrianX]

So I woke up this morning with a concept to force the current trend of centralized control - I'm defining it as segwit for now as it's the only soft fork proposal to have a visual identity and millions invested in a PR campaign and to attempt a 51% attack that has a negative long term impact on bitcoin's growth.

Going to bed I saw this chart and was a little shocked at how segwit had jumped.

It looks as if they got a lot more hash-power, it got me thinking that Alex Petrov being rather hostile to bigger blocks, and Bitfury having some relationship with Blockstream and mutual investors. That new little uptick of segwit signaling is not hashpower moving but new hashpower.

So the concept is rather simple - in a gold rush the only people with a viable business are those selling shovels, or in a war the the banks and arms dealers don't care who wins - as they sell to both sides they get rich.

It dawned on me that miners are pawns in a race to control bitcoin. They will sell hash power to the highest bidder, and the higher the price goes the more they can sell - they are in the game of selling hashpower.

So there is an arms race for hashpower and Blockstream investors could be doubling down as the price goes up, leveraging the agnostic miners in there favor when it comes to taking on new risk and reinvesting.

 

[bluemoon]

@AdrianX
You could be right and I expect Blockstream will do all in its power to face down BU.

All the same there is a lot of variation in block mining success, suggested by recent temporary peaks in Segwit block production, so I'm hoping it's a bit early to attribute the latest spike to Blockstream machinations.

Though it maybe the recent price rise plus pressure from BU is causing Bitfury to run round their warehouse frantically looking to find all the old and new hashpower they possibly can to press into service.

I remain hopeful that the trend of the past couple of months will be sustained and BU will continue to add to its hashpower, i.e. that miners will continue moving into the BU camp. Recent successes should encourage them.

I had expected market pressures to resolve in favour of a blocksize increase a long time ago, but opinion does seem at last to be shifting, word is getting out, and momentum is building. The trickle has become a stream already and soon, I hope, the dam will burst in the face of a BU torrent and Blockstream will block stream Satoshi no longer.

Then we will begin the next stage in the saga ...

 

[bluemoon]

This mess [blockstream congestion] if it comes to that falls square on Blockstream, and what gets me is they have designed a product to sell as a solution to this problem they created. such malice.

Yes exactly, such malice. And they are, to use the 5th most popular of the OED's trending words of the moment, gaslighting: trying to convince us that the bad consequences of their own acts and omissions are our fault.

A particularly nasty example was Greg's excruciating personal attack the other day on @Peter R:

There is no substantive argument. It is intended purely to shake the victim up and cause self-doubt.

Peter is not the only one being attacked. Many, many people are. We see it on r/btc, on r/bitcoin, and on twitter, if not by Greg himself then by the rest of Blockstream's psychopathic army of trolls and 'moderators'.

The advice of the professionals in cases of gaslighting in personal relationships is to avoid all contact. That must apply in our world too: when Blockstream are finally broken they and their trolls cannot be welcome as partners: they are too toxic.

 

[Bagatell]

I've had the minions on ignore forever. So CTO and his inner circle too?

 

[lunar]

Thank you.

 

[sickpig]

latest from slush

 

[AdrianX]

my favorite response to that tweet:

Central planning has a history of causing malinvestment

and this indirect criticism of BS/Core fundamentalist censorship:

I honestly don't know. The community is so divided that it is hard to get reliable signal.

 

[adamstgbit]

There's a widespread misconception on reddit and such about "BU activation". How to best answer?

There's also a lot of uncertainty (even angst) visible about what will happen and what people will need to do to "protect" their coins and "be on the right fork" hinting at a very low level of understanding. It's good to see in a way because it shows we're really tapping into new crowds here. It also makes apparent the need for more education.

Are there any easy-to-read concise explanations we can link to?

it's one of the first things your learn about bitcoin that give you that "wow" factor. It's the heart and sole of bitcoin's decentralized nature.
get a quote from the white paper.