Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[AdrianX]

@KoKansei: True, but the whole power dynamics could be the other way around as well: Maybe Bitfury is telling Core what to do? In that case, they simply 'want' SegWit now to get rid of Jihan's ASICBOOST competition.

I have been wondering all the time why they are signalling for SegWit w/o a blocksize increase, because honestly it doesn't seem to make sense incentive-wise.

Getting rid of a viable competitor could explain it, however.

Bitfury and Blockstream/Core have a complex relationship.

Bitfury's Board is not typical in bitcoin it has far more Whit House connections than any other company in the crypto space. :

Bitfury has a complex relationship with the Georgian Government

Bitfury is also one of the few company supporting Segwit. Could it be they actualy want to to engender and adopt segwit a solution to prevent BITMain from using ASICboost.

This whole incident looks like psychological projection on the part of Core and Bitfury, I think it is very possible they are the guilty party given the circumstantial evidence.

 

[awemany]

@AdrianX: Add to that that Georgia - which is a very small country- seems to be a hot spot for U.S. vs Russian influence and it all becomes even more eerie.

These are indeed some signs that governments might be involved behind the scenes, at least on one side of things.

 

[Bagatell]

These are indeed some signs that governments might be involved behind the scenes, at least on one side of things.

No question in my mind.

https://medium.com/@BitFuryGroup/the-bitfury-group-officially-launches-global-blockchain-business-council-in-davos-5e41a1932b28

 

[BldSwtTrs]

Just a random thought:

The debate about what Bitcoin is have been polarized between "an electronic P2P cash system" and a "high powered settlement network" but it seems that if one start talking about "money" then it becomes more consensual. All early adopters understood Bitcoin as money. Bitcoin is money, period.

With this in mind, does Core want to make Bitcoin the money of the future or some esoteric embodiement of cybersecurity perfection?

 

[Bagatell]

Core, DCG , GBBC et al are building govcoin.

 

[xhiggy]

Core sees Bitcoin as the enabling technology behind all their ideas that failed to be bitcoin.

 

[Mengerian]

Speaking of Bitfury and Georgia, this article looks into some of the links: http://ifact.ge/en/bitfury/

 

[xhiggy]

Hey look, all the alt-coins are going down. Let's hope those shorts pay off.
[doublepost=1491752923][/doublepost]I was reading here: http://nakamotoinstitute.org/research/economics-of-bitcoin/

And it mentioned a physical manifestation of bitcoin as a token made of precious metal. The public key was on the outside, and the private key was hidden in such a way that you needed to destroy the token to read it.

One could also put a mechanism like this within machine components. If the component is busted beyond repair, it's worth it to disable it and take the bitcoin. The private address would have to be encrypted, and only readable at the recycling/disposal facility.

 

[freetrader]

Wow, I missed where in the cypherpunk manifesto it spoke about assassination markets.

https://archive.is/asbZs

"We don't much care if you don't approve of the software we write."

"Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence."

We would do well to remember that as citizens of the world, as netizens, and as human beings, we are also part of a greater virtual "nation", and we need to remind ourselves from time to time that we, too, are capable of rash violence, if we lose sight of our principles.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Speaking of Bitfury and Georgia, this article looks into some of the links: http://ifact.ge/en/bitfury/

Great find. Reading this, I wonder how anybody can still support SegWit? (sarcasm ... nearly daily someone points me to a link to r/bitcoin, where some alleged ethic failures of Roger / Jihan are expressed and asks me: How can you still support BU?)

Seriously. Land for free, money for free. Did Georgia decide that it want to be a relevant place for Bitcoin-mining? I guess it makes more sense that BitFury is in Team White House. On the other side, considering all what they get, it is really hard to imagine that ANY party can maintain a large share (+10 percent) without nation state support. Seems like after passing the era of private mining, we leave the era of industrial mining and reach the era of nation state mining.

When I started becoming a Bitcoin journalist I thought: He, this will become interesting. Maybe dirty, maybe war, but interesting. Now it has become dirty, it seems to reach a hidden level of nation states competing over dominance over Bitcoin - which might be the only chance for all of us to not end in legal trouble - and I'm too invested, emotionally and financially, to enjoy the show I subscribed for nearly 4 years ago.

But maybe I'm just disappointed how easily the community can be played by professional trolling.
[doublepost=1491775924,1491775112][/doublepost]I want to tell something. Totally offtopic. Something beautiful.

Today me and my girlfriend inspected a house we maybe want to buy. An old and small farmers house with a nice barn in a little village in southern germany with three pubs and no supermarket. 800 meter away from the house is a garden, Asian style, it is open, for everybody, everytime. We stepped in, sunny day, the garden is 15,000 square metres, made with much love, ponds, bridges, pavillons, art, sculptures, tree houses ...

On a table was coffee for free. A man from Vietnam cooked soup and noodles, for free for everybody, the owner opened sparkling wine, for free, for everybody, you could take biere, coke, water, what you want, for free and for everybody, and when you leave the garden, you donate what you want in a box. This was not a special event, this is every sunday. We eat, drank, walked through the garden, everybody here was happy, smiling, making jokes, talking with each other ...

The garden was made by a dentist, some decades ago. He just thought that it would be a nice idea to have a public asian style garden here, and he thought that it would be nice if the people, which visit the garden, can drink coffee for free and eat vietnamese soup for free, and since he seems to have enough money, he just does it, spends the money with no return, and is happy every sunday when he sees that he makes other people happy. Live can be good.

 

[Richy_T]

Christoph, I always find that kind of thing very inspirational. Much more so than when government does it with other peoples money.

I've seen more than a few such things but one that always sticks with me is when I was walking the South Downs Way, there was a faucet that anyone could take water from. It was put there by the parents of a person who had loved to walk the way in his memory.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

It seems both sides want fork futures!
We may be close to the endgame. If they institute fork futures for the UASF (rendering the UASF pointless, since all miners will activate Segwit anyway *if* it wins in trading), that paves the way for fork futures for the blocksize cap, and then we have a market-governed blocksize cap.

This takes advantage of the fact that both sides believe the market supports them. Thus in an important way we are in a cooperative, not adversarial, relationship with Core supporters (at least the BTC bulls, not necessarily the Core/BS nexus). We both want the market to hurry up and speak, since we believe it will be in our favor.

So of course, not sure why I didn't see this before, Segwit is a great opportunity to get fork futures happening. Even though I hope it loses in trading, it will still open up the floodgates for market control of Bitcoin - a futarchy - rather than control by Core dev. (Well, the Core supporters believe the market will simply support Core dev "cuz they're the experts!")

 

[awemany]

@freetrader: Slush' comment was unacceptable. Even more astonishing is the cheering he got in rBitcoin. However, and to look on the bright side there as well, there are gladly some Core-supporters (even ones which I disagree 100% with) left, that are at least still know to staunchly stay on the civil side of things.

Given the screeching and screaming lately from that subreddit, I do find that noteworthy.

@Christoph Bergmann : What is ifact.ge? So they seem to be a specifically Georgian investigative journalism team?
[doublepost=1491817926][/doublepost]

Core, DCG , GBBC et al are building govcoin.

GBBC?

 

[Bagatell]

@awemany

Global Blockchain Business Council

http://gbbcouncil.org/

 

[awemany]

@Bagatell: Ah, thanks!

 

[albin]

There's something really germaine about the current hullabaloo that I totally forgot about.

The ASICboost shitstorm is basically being used to validate the narrative that it's totally inconceivable that miners would like BU, therefore there must be an alterior motive.

To that I ask: remember when miners were so eager for BIP100 that they were literally writing "BIP100" and their blocksize vote in the coinbase when nothing would even come of it?

And we're supposed to be surprised that they like getting to put their preferred EB/AD in the Coinbase?

Granted there is one significant difference of kind between BIP100 and BUIP 001 (BU gives non-mining nodes power to express their preferences and reject parameters they are not willing to cooperate with, whereas BIP100 gives non-mining nodes zero power over the result of applying arithmetic to the coinbase signals), but it would be crazy to not recognize that BU is in the wheelhouse of what miners were down with all the way back in early/mid-2015.

If anything, the question is really what has Core done to poison miners against their own preferences?

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Christoph, I always find that kind of thing very inspirational. Much more so than when government does it with other peoples money.

I've seen more than a few such things but one that always sticks with me is when I was walking the South Downs Way, there was a faucet that anyone could take water from. It was put there by the parents of a person who had loved to walk the way in his memory.

Have you been in Milan, for Scaling Bitcoin? I walked throught the city, long ways to the bus station, and here and there have been public faucets. That was nice. Like public toilets in Beijing. I like those things.

In Germany I can't remember that Mother State has ever given me a coffee for free. I did not even get a Christmans or Birthday card, which is somehow frustrating after I have to pay something like 50 percent inn taxes (including social security and VAT) ...
[doublepost=1491893715][/doublepost]

@Christoph Bergmann : What is ifact.ge? So they seem to be a specifically Georgian investigative journalism team?
[doublepost=1491817926][/doublepost]

GBBC?

Don't know. The link was not my find, and I just took it as real, as it confirms my thoughts about BitFury :/

GBBC was founded when BitFury attented the second times the forum in Davos.
[doublepost=1491893892][/doublepost]

The ASICboost shitstorm is basically being used to validate the narrative that it's totally inconceivable that miners would like BU, therefore there must be an alterior motive.

That's the real frustrating part. And people eat it. SegWit's slogan is: "There is no technical reason to not cheer me" - "Not signalling for SegWit is proof of Technical Incompetence" - "Only sinister motives can be brought up against SegWit" ...

 

[awemany]

If anything, the question is really what has Core done to poison miners against their own preferences?

Indeed. As I said, Bitfury signalling SegWit is curious, as that is against their own incentives and makes no sense. It would make sense if SegWit means getting rid of a viable competitor (Bitmain).

 

[Zarathustra]

BitClub not a ShitClub anymore? The news from @Norway some days ago don't seem to be fake news.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/64pf2w/bitclub_reduces_ad_to_999_signals_bu_only/

Off topic: The News from Spain

(dramatic sound, exponentially increasing until the end, like Bitcoin with the upcoming dramatic happy end with BU)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7gCujFSs6Y

 

[Bagatell]

Do we still have any gold bugs here?

"I have been hearing from the Austrian economic monetary theorists that the shaky dollar might crash NEXT year since 1971. I can’t find any flaws in their arguments, but after 45 years, I am convinced that our monetary theory is lacking if it can’t be more accurate time-wise."

http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/anthony-wile-bitcoin-the-other-crash/

Not really sure why I'm posting this, so take it as old news from south of Carvajal.