Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Richy_T]

it was @Richy_T that original made the point on reddit.

Now I feel bad that I upvoted you
[doublepost=1493600405][/doublepost]

It's funny how Tuur Demeester, a small blockist and Bitcoin maximalist, hedge his career by posting an article about ETH threat to BTC some weeks ago: https://medium.com/@tuurdemeester/im-not-worried-about-bitcoin-unlimited-but-i-am-losing-sleep-over-ethereum-b5251c54e66d

Small blockists destroy BTC dominance with their beliefs system and they protect themself in case they are wrong (probably piling up ETH also). No skin in the game.

That's not actually his real name, right?

 

[albin]

It's kind of hard to find the exact point to start here (and some of the material I'm really interested in occurs maybe 20-30 min after the point I linked), but I thought this show was fascinating.

Look how uncomfortable it gets when Paul Sztorc (who is admittedly unambiguously a proponent of segwit) even borders on some objectivity, especially from creepy creepy Rudolfo "McSmugGrin" Novak and the toxic twitter troll who hosts the show, uncomfortably trying to move on.

Apparently you can't even be pro-segwit anymore in these circles, you have to be crazy and toxic.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Oh to be a coder in this job market. Having control over the dominant implementation of a major cryptocurrency would be incredibly profitable from the insider trading opportunities (not to mention sweet consulting and "advisor" positions). I can't understand why more devs aren't stepping up. Or perhaps they are but instead they find it more profitable to develop their own premined altcoins.

 

[Zarathustra]

Politburo supporter @jonny1000 fabricated a counter video. He - surprisingly - doesn't understand swarm behavior.
He believes the society is not a swarm, something beyond the nature. #Science Fiction

 

[jonny1000]

@Zarathustra

Thanks for posting that.

In order to change the rules, it must be well planned in advanced with strong agreement across the entire community. Exchanges and business are incentivized to ensure this is the case, its simply an economic reality of how they need to run their businesses. As the exchanges put it:

As exchanges, we have a responsibility to maintain orderly markets that trade continuously 24/7/365. It is incumbent upon us to support a coherent, orderly, and industry-wide approach to preparing for and responding to a contentious hardfork. In the case of a Bitcoin hardfork, we cannot suspend operations and wait for a winner to emerge. Many of our platforms allow leveraged trading that requires markets to operate continuously. Due to operational requirements alone we are compelled to label an incompatible fork as a new asset.

Source: https://www.bitfinex.com/bitcoin_hardfork_statement

I know many here do not like this, but please try to respect the views of others. To me, the above is the key characteristic of Bitcoin that makes it interesting.

To repeat again, I am a large blocker. I want larger blocks ASAP.

Please join me in fighting for larger blocks, in a well coordinated and well planned way, with agreement across the entire ecosystem.

Once we have larger blocks, the debate about whether this planning and strong consensus was necessary or not, can continue, except we will have larger blocks.

If you guys continue to refuse to increase the blocksize in this safe way, the economic majority will have no choice but to rally behind the existing rules.

 

[KoKansei]

Like a creationist faced with a compelling textbook explaining the mechanisms underlying evolution, @jonny1000 tries to create his own "teaching materials" which end up being an embarrassing parody of the original. Massive kudos to the original author of the video: you clearly got under the skin of some of your less imaginative peers!

There are so many parallels between the early 1900s era evolution debate that happened in the US around the time of the Scopes trial and the debate regarding EC. On the one hand you have people who can wrap their heads around the concept of emergence and think "what a brilliant idea," and on the other you have a another group that cannot stop clinging to the comforting illusion of a central actor keeping everything in harmony.

"How can we reach consensus if everyone just does what they want?" is the EC debate equivalent of "how do you explain the human eye without God?" The person asking such a question betrays their inability to comprehend the underlying mechanisms involved and apply them to a real-world application.

 

[sickpig]

@AdrianX thanks for the link. Andreas even use "emergent consensus" at some point

 

[freetrader]

@Zarathustra
Please join me in fighting for larger blocks, in a well coordinated and well planned way, with agreement across the entire ecosystem.

Well, what's your plan now?

I can't resist pointing out that some of the "real experts" you cite in your video under the umbrella term of "Bitcoin Core" have claimed that 1MB blocks are too big and harming the network today.

Therefore, being a "big blocker" and supporting Bitcoin Core as a solution seems actually incompatible. This is further borne out by the group's inability to provide a 2MB HF release as agreed to by several of their key developers in Hong Kong, at a meeting in which you were present.

 

[jonny1000]

you have a another group that cannot stop clinging to the comforting illusion of a central actor keeping everything in harmony.

I do not think anyone is saying there should be a central actor.

The community and businesses are incentivised not to change the rules without planning and widespread coordination, due to the nature of the system, not a central planner.

As the quote from the exchanges said "Due to operational requirements alone we are compelled to label an incompatible fork as a new asset." This decision from them is not due to a central actor or the exchanges making a political decision. It is simply an operational requirement to ensure their businesses continue to function. For example, many exchanges offer leveraged products with Bitcoin as collateral. Any period of uncertainty in a hardfork situation could mess up these contracts, the exchanges therefore have no choice but to support the existing rules, unless the rule change is well coordinated.

 

[KoKansei]

@jonny1000

The more you talk, the more it is clear you have no idea what you are talking about. Emergence is a process whereby novel forms or functions manifest due to direct interactions between individual nodes in the system. Your consciousness does not wait for there to be a "consensus" among all neurons before moving to the state known as "consciousness," it simply emerges without any collective coordination between neurons at the highest levels.

The scheme that you describe is just simple hypermajority rule, which must necessarily rely on a central point of enforcement if it is to work over the long term. That is why you are so scared of competing implementations that do nothing except relieve nodes of the need to recompile their clients when they want to modify the parameters of the software they run: you must realize that your vision of hypermajority tyranny will collapse without an enforcement mechanism to maintain it. The sad thing is, you and the people that think like you actually think that gaslighting miners regarding their own interests is one such viable enforcement mechanism.

Bitcoin is not meant to function like a human government with "universal rules that everybody must follow." It is meant to function like a superorganism where none of the constituents need have perfect information regarding the state of all other constituents for the whole to function properly.

 

[Dusty]

Very interesting article by Falkvinge:
"Blockstream having patents in Segwit makes all the weird pieces of the last three years fall perfectly into place".

Some excerpts:

Based on Blockstream’s behavior in the Bitcoin community, I have become absolutely certain that Segwit contains patents that Blockstream and/or their owners have planned to use offensively. I base this not on having read the actual patents, for they can be kept secret for quite some time; I base this on observing Blockstream’s behavior, and having seen the exact same behavior many times before in the past 20 years from entities that all went bankrupt.

[...]

first, let’s compress the last three years of dialogue between Blockstream and the non-Blockstream bitcoin community:

[BS] We’re developing Lightning as a Layer-2 solution! It will require some really cool additional features!
[com] Ok, sounds good, but we need to scale on-chain soon too.
[BS] We’ve come up with this Segwit package to enable the Lightning Network. It’s kind of a hack, but it solves malleability and quadratic hashing. It has a small scaling bonus as well, but it’s not really intended as a scaling solution, so we don’t like it being talked of as such.
[com] Sure, let’s do that and also increase the blocksize limit.
[BS] We hear that you want to increase the block size.
[com] Yes. A 20 megabyte limit would be appropriate at this time.
[BS] We propose two megabytes, for a later increase to four and eight.
[com] That’s ridiculous, but alright, as long as we’re scaling exponentially.
[BS] Actually, we changed our mind. We’re not increasing the blocksize limit at all.
[com] Fine, we’ll all switch to Bitcoin Classic instead.
[BS] Hello Miners! Will you sign this agreement to only run Core software in exchange for us promising a two-megabyte non-witness-data hardfork?
[miners] Well, maybe, but only if the CEO of Blockstream signs.
[Adam] *signs as CEO of Blockstream*
[miners] Okay. Let’s see how much honor you have.
[Adam] *revokes signature immediately to sign as “Individual”*
[miners] That’s dishonorable, but we’re not going to be dishonorable just because you are.
[BS] Actually, we changed our mind, we’re not going to deliver a two-megabyte hardfork to you either.
[com] Looking more closely at Segwit, it’s a really ugly hack. It’s dead in the water. Give it up.
[BS] Segwit will get 95% support! We have talked to ALL the best companies!
[com] There is already 20% in opposition to Segwit. It’s impossible for it to achieve 95%.
[BS] Segwit is THE SCALING solution! It is an ACTUAL blocksize increase!
[com] We need a compromise to end this stalemate.
[BS] Segwit WAS and IS the compromise! There must be no blocksize limit increase! Segwit is the blocksize increase!

[...]

With that said, Blockstream has something called a “Defensive Patent Pledge”. It’s a piece of legal text that basically says that they will only use their patents for defensive action, or for any other action.

Did you get that last part?

That’s a construction which is eerily similar to “terrorism and other crimes”, where that “and other crimes” creates a superset of “terrorism”, and therefore even makes the first part completely superfluous.

Politican says: “Terrorism and other crimes.”
The public hears: “Terrorism.”
What it really means: “Any crime including jaywalking.”

The Blockstream patent pledge has exactly this pattern: Blockstream will only use their patents defensively, or in any other way that Blockstream sees fitting.

Blockstream says: “For defense only, or any other reason.”
The public hears: “For defense only.”
What it really means: “For any reason whatsoever.”

Let’s assume good faith here for a moment, and that Greg Maxwell and Adam Back of Blockstream really don’t have any intention to use patents offensively, and that they’re underwriting the patent pledge with all their personal credibility.

It’s still not worth anything.

In the event that Blockstream goes bankrupt, all the assets – including these patents – will go to a liquidator, whose job it is to make the most money out of the assets on the table, and they are not bound by any promise that the pre-bankruptcy management gave.

Moreover, the owners of Blockstream may — and I predict will — replace the management, in which case the personal promises from the individuals that have been replaced have no weight whatsoever on the new management. If a company makes a statement to its intentions, it is also free to make the opposite statement at a future date, and is likely to do so when other people are speaking for the company.

[...]

The owners of Blockstream are the classic financial institutions, specifically AXA, that have everything to lose from cryptocurrency gaining ground.

 

[awemany]

@Dusty: You don't even need the patent angle - SegWit is a lot of complexity that makes Blockstreamers more likely to be able to deal with the code and be ..drumroll.. 'experts' than others.

I think Greg said somewhere that 'patents can only be secret for up to 1 year' and so SegWit can't be encumbered with still-secret patents. In case he's right, I think I'd expect this (as usual) to be a deflection/smoke around the true issue:

No one has really checked the current SegWit code with the fine comb of a lawyer to see whether there might be any overlap with any of Blockstream's published patents, either!

And, as others have pointed out, if Blockstream is truly behind using patents for only defensive purposes, they'd create a free, transferable, perpetual license to all their patents, with the sole exception that the license is void if the party using them mounts a legal attack against Blockstream using their own patents.

 

[Dusty]

You don't even need the patent angle - SegWit is a lot of complexity that makes Blockstreamers more likely to be able to deal with the code and be ..drumroll.. 'experts' than others.

Yes, but apart from that, one thing remains very, very unclear: how is BS supposed to make money?
This is a simple question that nobody has answered yet (to my knowledge, at least), and Falkvinge theory seems to be sound.

 

[jbreher]

Bitcoin Exchanges said:
As exchanges, we have a responsibility to maintain orderly markets that trade continuously 24/7/365. It is incumbent upon us to support a coherent, orderly, and industry-wide approach to preparing for and responding to a contentious hardfork. In the case of a Bitcoin hardfork, we cannot suspend operations and wait for a winner to emerge. Many of our platforms allow leveraged trading that requires markets to operate continuously. Due to operational requirements alone we are compelled to label an incompatible fork as a new asset.

Yes. And BU provides a fully compatible platform with the freedom to accomplish this same goal through the same mechanism of coordinated change. So what's your beef?

 

[AdrianX]

Ho the hypocrisy.

In order to change the rules, it must be well planned in advanced with strong agreement across the entire community.

BS/Core changed the rules and released Segwit without consensus. @jonny1000 is in support.

I know many here do not like this,

surprising, you may think, but we do. Please try to respect the views of others and stop supporting consensus rule changes like segwit.

To repeat again, I am a large blocker. I want larger blocks ASAP.

To be honest no one here wants larger blocks, we want to remove transaction limits. Large blocks are a consequence of increased transaction capacity, they can't be avoided. If you want large blocks you need to explain why.

Please join me in fighting for larger blocks, in a well coordinated and well planned way, with agreement across the entire ecosystem.

are you kidding what have you done? I see you pushing a bunch of contentious rule changes bundled as sewit.

If you guys continue to refuse to increase the blocksize in this safe way, the economic majority will have no choice but to rally behind the existing rules.

Who are you talking too? What is unsafe about the way BU increases the bitcoin transaction capacity?

Users support the rules they support, One can choose to support the 1MB soft fork rule or not. It is optional.

Please stop supporting segwit, you support for segwit is preventing people from supporting segwit, we all want segwit to activate but while it is controversial it's not a good idea to support it, we need extreme consensus before you, we support segwit, if you support segwit before we have extreme consensus the economic majority will have no choice but to rally behind the existing rules.

Please join me in fighting for segwit, in a well coordinated and well planned way, with agreement across the entire ecosystem before we support it.

 

[awemany]

As @torusJKL said on reddit: It doesn't even need to be the case that Blockstream is the entity that owns submarine patents on SegWit, it could also be any shell company - even if that has been registered just for this purpose!

Which would be a cunning and underhanded way to launch a SegWit patent torpedo - and given their antics of the last couple years and their obvious intelligence, this might be a worthwhile angle to further explore?

Anyone familiar with U.S. software patent research wanna give this a try? I imagine familiar names associated with Blockstream would likely still turn up as inventors?

Hard to believe Greg handing the inventor role to someone else, given his ego. But then, the patent doesn't need to be Greg's and Greg might value monetary interest above his ego in rare cases like this hypothetical one.

 

[majamalu]

Hi guys. I would like to add subtitles in Spanish to the "Emergent Consensus in Bitcoin" video. But when I try to do it I get this: "The video you requested does not have community input enabled". Do any of you have the possibility to allow translations there?

 

[lunar]

@majamalu Remind us again, where do you publish most of your spanish articles? Interested to have a read and practice my spanish

 

[Dusty]

Hi guys. I would like to add subtitles in Spanish to the "Emergent Consensus in Bitcoin" video. But when I try to do it I get this: "The video you requested does not have community input enabled". Do any of you have the possibility to allow translations there?

The Spanish version is already online!


[doublepost=1493726684][/doublepost]@jonny1000
I have to wholeheartedly agree with @AdrianX:

To repeat again, I am a segwit proponent. I want segwit ASAP.

Please join me in fighting for segwit, in a well coordinated and well planned way, with agreement across the entire ecosystem.

Once we have segwit, the debate about whether this planning and strong consensus was necessary or not, can continue, except we will have segwit.

If you guys continue to refuse to activate segwit in this safe way, the economic majority will have no choice but to rally behind the existing rules.
===
EDIT: Source

 

[sickpig]

Jon Matonis joins nChain

https://nchain.com/news/jon-matonis-joins-blockchain-pioneer-nchain-vice-president-corporate-strategy/