Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

 

[Mengerian]

Thus through the natural selection process, we can expect the top altcoins at any given time to include some that optimize for greatest pumpability (and thus dumpability), as you mentioned Dash may.

Yup, it is this "natural selection process" that worries me a bit. Perhaps Dash will not threaten Bitcoin's dominance, but the altcoin space is like an ecosystem of rapidly mutating organisms, fed and culled through successive pump-and-dumps. They will never stop evolving, iteratively testing different combinations of features until they hit on the most potent ones.

It's like when dinosaurs saw a few tiny mice scurrying about, it didn't look like much of a threat. I don't want Bitcoin to be like the dinosaur displaced by the nimbler more rapidly adapting competition.

Bitcoin also should be able to evolve and adapt quickly. It can do this by embracing the market at the protocol level (and all levels). Decentralization of development is a good step in this direction. Spinoffs and fork arbitrage may play a role too. If this happens, Bitcoin can evolve and adapt to fill many market niches, including the "digital cash" niche, leaving minimal habitat for alternative ledgers.

 

[AdrianX]

We are still very far away from these costs . And if a bitcoin is worth 100k's$, would you care if a node costed 1000's of dollars per year?

Paying $100 per month and $1200 a year for a state of the art computer is in that realm today. But it's not a barrier to entry. Most people with an investment of 10 BTC will be able to afford such a setup and it'll probably handle blocks well above 100MB in the next 5-10 years in today's value and projected technical innovation.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

Bitcoin also should be able to evolve and adapt quickly.

I don't think so. Imho if BU / BIP101 / any sane scaling idea gets implemented, Bitcoin is pretty much finished for the foreseeable future. There is still a lot of stuff to improve on the client side without messing with the protocol and a zillion nth layer stuff from smart contracts to whatever blockchain invention, that can be developed without changing Bitcoin.

Stuff like MimbleWimble etc. sounds great and if this finds it's way into Bitcoin I won't object but I'm satisfied with Bitcoin + unlimited bs. That's close enough to everything you want in money.
If someone develops a schnorr signature update - great, I hope it gets implemented. If not: Who cares. No altcoin will be a challenger to Bitcoin just because the transactions are a few bytes smaller.

Unlimited blocksize and nobody talks about altcoins any more. If the Blocksize issue is resolved this year, I see a very, very good chance for the Bitcoin blockchain to become the one blockchain that is used for every transaction in the whole god damn world in one way or another. Like a virus that spreads into every aspect of business and so on.

Ok, I start to sound like a cheap version of Andreas.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I agree with you both, @Mengerian and @satoshis_sockpuppet.

The blocksize is the only real millstone around Bitcoin's neck for now, but longer term we need that full market integration where Bitcoin can frictionlessly adapt to the best tech innovations and slip out of any attempts at centralized control. I think simply cracking the Core is enough to ensure we do the needed hard fork, and then we will be firmly set on the market-driven path as we will have removed the chief obstacle. Lifting the 1MB will show Bitcoin can change, can be dynamic, can adapt fast if need be.

The dynamic will be totally different as new investors come in to replace the mindkilled Core supporters. I feel like the pace of change is about to ramp up even further.

 

[AdrianX]

I don't think so. Imho if BU / BIP101 / any sane scaling idea gets implemented, Bitcoin is pretty much finished for the foreseeable future.

finished as in completed ready for prime time. - the BS/Core deves say the same thing but they attribute a different meaning to the word finished - more akin to the term doomed.

I totally agree when the block limit is removed we can call Bitcoin complete. BU V 1.0 is the first Bitcoin client to support the bitcoin 1.0.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

Bitcoin can frictionlessly adapt to the best tech innovations

I can hardly imagine what that could be. Again, client side there is tons of improvement possible, we've seen some great stuff like Xthin and so on. But protocol wise? As long as SHA256 is safe I can't imagine many scenarios in the foreseeable future, where Bitcoin (the protocol, the blockchain) desperately needed to implement anything new. Not saying, that there aren't good ideas. But Bitcoin is ready for primetime, ready to overtake the world.

@AdrianX Good point, "finished" was a poor choice of words. Complete is the right term I guess (as a non native-speaker).

BU V 1.0 is the first Bitcoin client to support the finished bitcoin.

Yep!

 

[adamstgbit]

Nah, that's not quite true imho.
We are still very far away from these costs . And if a bitcoin is worth 100k's$, would you care if a node costed 1000's of dollars per year?

I agree with the idea that decentralization is a sliding scale, based on adoption. If bitcoin is world reserve currency and nodes are ran by countries, cities, corporations, and motivated millionaires, i'm OK with that.

but right now, today, adoption is such that we need the miners, small biz, and motivated individual users to run the nodes. lets say we allowed for 100MB blocks Yesterday, without xthin blocks, without linear sig fix. at that point running a node would be cost prohibitive to all but the 20 odd chinese miners, this is clearly unacceptable.

we must air on the side of caution, and aim to be on the low end of this "decentralization sliding scale"

and also worth noting, that I have a buttload more faith in the network of nodes being able to determine what is an acceptable level of "node-cost/adoption", then core devs, BU devs, or any other small single minded group...

 

[theZerg]

You guys figured out why I suggested we call it 1.0!
[doublepost=1489367110][/doublepost]FYI, I am fine to merge the XT bip100 work into BU in the sense that the alg will dynamically set a node's EB. A BUIP allowing it was passed a long time ago...

 

[Mengerian]

@satoshis_sockpuppet I'd agree to the extent that once the block size impasse is breached, we're good for a couple more orders of magnitude growth without major changes.

But beyond that, I think we need market-driven evolution to achieve "world domination".

I can hardly imagine what that could be.

I'm thinking things like: sharding capability, compact fraud proofs, privacy/fungibilty improvements, Schnorr, improved transaction format (FlexTrans or BUIP037), etc.

 

[Windowly]

I don't think so. Imho if BU / BIP101 / any sane scaling idea gets implemented, Bitcoin is pretty much finished for the foreseeable future. There is still a lot of stuff to improve on the client side without messing with the protocol and a zillion nth layer stuff from smart contracts to whatever blockchain invention, that can be developed without changing Bitcoin.

Stuff like MimbleWimble etc. sounds great and if this finds it's way into Bitcoin I won't object but I'm satisfied with Bitcoin + unlimited bs.

Although the blockchain scaling issue is the biggest bitcoin faces right now, after that is suitably solved, I think we as a community have to seriously research the fungibility and privacy issues Bitcoin has as now. Even legit companies will want more privacy than bitcoin offers at the moment. I'm not sure stuff like mimblewimble will cut it.

 

[adamstgbit]

@Windowly
I think Zero Knowledge proofs will be the thing to do, if the zcoin experiment is all good, i would imagine this kind of TX will be merged into bitcoin.

 

[adamstgbit]

BU Membership Vote is Open on Four BUIPs​

Operational BUIPs

BUIP043: Exploring the Bitcoin Network
@S Nadarajah

BUIP046: Faster, Higher Quality Publication Process for the Bitcoin Research Journal Ledger
@chriswilmer

BUIP047: The Future of Bitcoin - Development & Scaling Conference
@Mengerian

Membership BUIP

BUIP048: New Members for Election #5

If you are an existing BU member please feel free to make your preferences count!
https://bitco.in/forum/threads/voting-is-open-for-buips-43-46-47-48.1888/

now that the ETF shenanigans are over, time to think about these BUIPs again

 

[Peter R]

Bitcoin Unlimited on Bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-13/bitcoin-miners-signal-revolt-in-push-to-fix-sluggish-blockchain

 

[AdrianX]

Although the blockchain scaling issue is the biggest bitcoin faces right now, after that is suitably solved, I think we as a community have to seriously research the fungibility and privacy issues Bitcoin has as now. Even legit companies will want more privacy than bitcoin offers at the moment. I'm not sure stuff like mimblewimble will cut it.

I like privacy, but in a more free world one governed by reputation and cryptography privacy takes on new meninges, James D'Angelo's did a great video on bitcoin privacy and how less is more. It reflects my views but unfortunately it's been made privet, it was probably highly criticized.

 

[molecular]

bip-segwit-flagday

https://gist.github.com/shaolinfry/743157b0b1ee14e1ddc95031f1057e4c

danger lurks?

EDIT: rbitcoin reddit thread: https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5z0dvr/flag_day_activation_for_segwit_deployment/

EDIT2: another popular rbitcoin reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5z0qff/shaolinfry_proposes_segwit_flag_day/

 

[Zarathustra]

I think I learned something very unexpected messing around with twitter that runs very counter to common-sense expectations.

Regardless of what they do in real life wrt Bitcoin, almost everybody wants to be an unchallenged talking head on twitter. Almost no one is willing to engage in good faith followup questions / conversation that advance the discussion. I think you need a forum structure for that. On twitter's format, threads seem to be mainly virtue-signalling, prestige-accumulation, and tribe-building.

My conclusion: the nature of the format pretty much forces you to troll to get anywhere substantive!

Exactly. Lopp, Todd, Antonopoulos et al.; they don't like to talk with the people. They like to talk to the people.

 

[awemany]

Interesting. On rBitcoin, I saw a comment along the lines of 'but but but, BU doesn't have a clear HF plan'.

Is it just me or is this the first mental step towards accepting emergent consensus?

I mean ... at that point, people should become aware of the fact that they're essentially longing for some authority to tell them what to do.

 

[molecular]

@awemany, I think the quote was "BU developers don't have a clear HF plan". I answered along the lines of "the devs are not the ones doing the HF. They are just providing a tool".

 

[Norway]

Former White House Budget Director David Stockman drops a bomb in his latest interview by saying, “I think what people are missing is this date, March 15th 2017. That’s the day that this debt ceiling holiday that Obama and Boehner put together right before the last election in October of 2015.“