Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[majamalu]

I totally agree, but the fact that such a controversial and bloated solution with unknown economic consequences, can get shoe-horned in, using social media manipulation, in preference to the obvious and much more beneficial one, tells me Nakamoto consensus is gameable.

If you accept that premise (complex sentence aside ) then TPTB have won the battle, for us to win the war, (Global P2P sound money) we must change the rules. My instinct tells me the solution is total cryptoanarchy on a protocol level. We are already there to a certain extent and this is working in our favour, multiple sound money coins competing in a free market forces them all to behave. You can't inflate one without the other noticing. Unfortunately this sets the whole revolution back maybe a decade, as first we have a battle of the uncontrollable protocols.

So thats one direction, the other is to keep fighting over the one true ledger, in some sort of eternal Herculean propaganda tug of war with unknown and incredibly powerful enemies hell bent on control. Take a break is the correct answer. Perhaps an extended hiking expedition.

If domesticating Bitcoin were an easy task they would have achieved it long ago. The resistance they have found is proof that the incentive system works to an amazing extent (at least compared to previous alternatives such as e-gold). We will see which of the two directions leads to the separation of money and state. I think we have a better chance of reaching our destination if we strive to defend the most mature ledger -- the one that went through more nerve wracking tests. In any case, the road will not be free of obstacles.

Have fun!

 

[Zarathustra]

Someone quipped on reddit (paraphrasing from memory, can't remember the exact quote) regarding this:

"So let's get shot to show that getting shot is bad and will lead to injury."

There's no sane reason why the supposed HF is so much later than the SF.

There are sane reasons.

Consequences and effects that seem obvious to you, the genius, seem to be not obvious to the child or to the swarm at the same time. They first have to learn that some things don't work. Learning by doing.

There is a sane reason to show to a child that a hotplate is indeed hot. In theory, a swarm could move fast and direct like the genius. In practice it can't.
[doublepost=1497765293,1497764644][/doublepost]

@mwilcox pointed out this great lecture by Prof. Robert Sapolsky on some of the theory behind naturally repeating patterns, and how they evolve into fractals and emergent complexity. If you're short of time the good stuff starts at ~40 mins, but I highly recommend the entire thing, it was fascinating. Should be a prerequisite watch for BU members, to understand why we need emergent consensus.

Enjoy.

Yes, and it shows that emergent consensus is not something that we 'need', it shows that it is something that we get, something that evolves, whether we believe it or not. It's 'history's hidden engine', Part 1 - part 7:

http://www.socionomics.net/hhe-part-1/

 

[molecular]

just a reminder: it's now relatively easy to contribute to the savethechain bigblock 1MB tx miner incentive to mine a > 1 MB block (reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/69318u/save_the_chain_enclosed_1_mb_transaction_with_273/)

Someone made a page to help with constructing contributing tx:

http://blockbounties.info/

It also gives an overview of contributions so far.

 

[solex]

@molecular,

Kudos to James MacWhyte for creating the website.
BU contributed to the cost from our outreach initiative.

 

[lunar]

@Zarathustra Yes 'need' is a poor choice of word, 'should accept and encourage' would be better.

I thought it worth paraphrasing his summation from the end of that vid:

What are some of the lessons learned? Some of the things to look for? Emphasis on quantity, if you want to get a very fancy system you should keep the constituent parts simple, you get quality, complexity and adaptive optimizations through local interactions with simple rules.

It's counterintuitive but the simpler the constituent parts the better, if you want to get swarm intelligence keep the building blocks small. More random interactions make for a better more adaptive network, you want lots of random noise. You also want to have gradients of attraction between the cells like magnets.

Generalists work better in these systems than specialists do. All we need to do is get enough people involved. "I will predict that within our lifetime, there's going to be a revolution in some country at some point where nobody leaves their living rooms. All they do, is do something online with some emergent bottom up thing and they collapse the government"

You don't need blueprints, and if thats true you don't need a source of top down instruction.


To me, much of this seems very obvious, but it's a key BU message that is not getting out very fast.

BSCore Devs looking at you... Why would you want design a decentralised system from the top down? Instead we should be offering simple tools, and user choice that rewards co-operation. Most importantly we must increase the number of simple parts ( I refer without intention of insult, to us the Users ) Nothing is more important than increasing the P2P user numbers - The idea of Bitcoin as settlement system must die a fiery death. We need increased direct communication between more of us "The simple constituent parts" the "magnetic force" is free/cheap transactions, that mutually benefit co-operation.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

There is a sane reason to show to a child that a hotplate is indeed hot.

Good point. Bitcoin as an antifragile system is like a child growing up. It does not merely get stronger by getting attacked, but may actually *have* to experience pain before it can learn.

This gives a whole new perspective on the Flippening: so what if we flip for a bit? The intelligence of the new frontrunner would be much lower in many aspects than Bitcoin with its stronghandedness from a history of weathering extreme ups and downs, hard lessons where we refused to compromise Bitcoin's principles, dev team capture and forced decentralization as a painful and bloody birthing of new teams, etc.

Ethereum has been raised like an undisciplined child, not made to feel the pain of its mistakes. It's the life of a rich kid with parents who use antibiotics for everything and coddle the kid whenever he makes a mistake. Bitcoin has lived the life of a sewer rat; its immune system and general fortitude are extremely high. The pampered kid running out into the real environment with all its perils is likely to soon get smacked back down to earth.

Meanwhile, Honey Badger eyes the Segwit quicksand engulfing his legs and thinks, "Hehe, what's another challenge? I am destined to learn to how to defeat *everything* sooner or later so it may as well be today." Even if he is wrong and sinks deeper than expected and closer to mortal danger than would have been optimal, if he escapes he gets another huge strength boost.

You will probably know when Honey Badger is about to kick the bucket. It won't likely be when the challenges appear to be overwhelming, but as @majamalu implied, it will be when Honey Badger stops rapidly responding and adapting in the face of such challenges.

 

[Jonathan Vaage]

https://coingeek.com/risks-segregated-witness-opening-door-mining-cartels-undermine-bitcoin-network/

 

[VeritasSapere]

The largest cryptocurrency also has the potential to be the most decentralized and secure. I am foremost a believer in the original vision of Satoshi so if that vision best manifests itself in Bitcoins children then that is where more of my focus will end up being directed

Hey you just copied my post verbatim lol, either that or it is one hell of a coincidence, or you must have a great mind, since great minds think alike.

The largest cryptocurrency also has the potential to be the most decentralized and secure. I am foremost a believer in the original vision of Satoshi so if that vision best manifests itself in Bitcoins children then that is where more of my focus will end up being directed.

 

[Zarathustra]

I told you so ...
EC/BU is alive and well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6i58ys/antpool_has_begun_signalling_segwit2x_still/
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6i3wmx/btctop_begins_signalling_segwit2x_in_conjunction/

By the way: I think all societies are ruled by emergent consensus (swarm behavior/autopoiesis). Switzerland, the only direct democracy on the planet as well as indirect democracies and even feudalist ones. In the end, it's always 'we the people' who decide whether we prefer to make decisions based on our direct involvment or via benevolent and non-benevolent 'representatives' (kings, war lords, clerics).

Yesterday, my neighbor village came to an 51.7% censensus to change the canton:

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/jurassic-future_in-moutier---bernxit--prevails-after-all-the-suspense/43268456

 

[solex]

Arguably the largest and most influential Bitcoin exchange bends to the market and makes a historic decision:
Corestream's crushing of Bitcoin's network effect has now reached crisis proportions.

 

[awemany]

Corestream's crushing of Bitcoin's network effect has now reached crisis proportions.

That's right. This is why we obviously now go and activate the "solution" that they provided for this very crisis that they manufactured. The "solution" that will suck away transaction fees both directly (4x discount) as well as indirectly (multi-hop off-chain) from the miners. Those entities that made Bitcoin successful in the first place and without them, Bitcoin would not even be Ripple. So let's make sure they won't get paid!

We furthermore activate that thing in a way that the people who caused this crisis have ample time and a very simple way to also maneuver out of the planned token blocksize increase that was the original, intended way to scale Bitcoin all along.

To further increase the movement of Bitcoin to off-chain solutions and into the hands of the banks, and to destroy the long term viability of the Bitcoin economic model.

All this, we do while everyone is looking up to the miners and their importance, where reverent murmurs are heard every time that there is statement of 'X% of hash power signed this'. Compared to the past collective laughter at a couple guys with camouflage-styled hats who soon can honestly say that Bitcoin consensus works by size of twitter bot army.

LOL FUCKING WUT?!?!?!

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

When I studies the SegWit Support table on bitcoin-wiki, I realized, that we can't win. Not in the field of public relations. They are genious. if paid or volontarily, they are masters in spinning the narrative. All this raging of the slacks and r/btc is just goal-less noice compared with this. There are a couple of individuals who spend their whole day to spin the public oppinion in coordination and orchestration.

Remember? Immediately after SegWit2x was announced, they minted the term "FrankenSegWit".

Then they started to build a table about "SegWit Support" under the authority of the wiki.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support

It has a strange system of votes, "prefer", "acceptable", "Wanting", an a strange color scheme to order them. They spin every quote until it fits their purposes. For example, Peter Wuille, who clearly rejected BIP148 in chats, is not against it, while people, which said "I don't like it, but if every economic node runs bip148, I'd be ok with it" are listed as "wanting".

Then they segregated the hardfork from SegWit, so that developers can support the activation of SegWit with bip91, but reject the connected hardfork of segwit2x. So Core's babies, bip141, bip148 and bip149, are green all over, while SegWit2x's bip91 is somehow accepted and the hardfork all over rejected and dark red. They even minted another meme, "lol", for it.

In another table they show the preferences of companies. Those who signed SegWit2x are in weak green, "acceptable until July" ... and so on ... I'm not sure, but maybe they list companies in support of bip91 as like they are in support of bip148, because it's compatible ... Eric Lombrozo is both as developers as with his company Ciphrex in the lists, and guys like btcdrak, who doesn't really contribute to core, has a say, also the lightning guys and blockstream elements devs, but nobody from xt, classic, bu, nor bcoin ...

 

[8up]

Once again humanity chooses the dystopian way when offered a choice. After segwit will be implemented expect governments and big banks to push for digital fractional reserve Bitcoin. In either case people who saw this all coming will get filthy rich in terms of money.

It's as if we humans are designed with a flaw that is easily exploited and maintained by the ones in the know.

Satoshi knew about this flaw and gave us a system designed in a way to make this flaw a strength. But as it seems people didn't understand that Bitcoin is more about philosophy (human tragedy) than economics or cryptography. Shame is on us. We basically are toddlers in grown-up bodies using only a small portion of our brain capabilities unaware of future consequences of todays actions.

Fuck. Why am I even here? Keep up the good work guys.

 

[awemany]

When I studies the SegWit Support table on bitcoin-wiki, I realized, that we can't win. Not in the field of public relations. They are genious. if paid or volontarily, they are masters in spinning the narrative. All this raging of the slacks and r/btc is just goal-less noice compared with this. There are a couple of individuals who spend their whole day to spin the public oppinion in coordination and orchestration.

But that is the whole fricking point of Bitcoin. That Bitcoin does not depend on the size of PR campaigns or manufactured 'PR-consensus' but simply on the direction hash power is taking.

If 60% of miners would go and announce tomorrow that 'we'll do 2MB at this date, eat it up", the rest of the community will eat it up, though maybe with some kicking and screaming.

The miners have all the power. AFAIR, they have been put on a physical pedestal even at the first infamous "Scaling Bitcoin" conference.

If they are now (fool me twice, yeah fool me hard!1!) repeat the same mistake as the first time and do not realize the power that they wield and are letting themselves instead be bamboozled by twitter troll armies and vote for decidely pushing transaction fees off-chain and away from them.

... then yes, Bitcoin is essentially dead, because POW simply does not work.

They are supposedly about to upend their business model and the viability of Bitcoin as a whole.

I still cannot believe this to be the case.

S2X will be Bitcoin growing up, but not in the good sense. It will be growing up in the sense of going from an eruptive, Nitzscheian stance of "we'll take over the world" to a petty bourgeoisie stance of "I gotta make sure my picket fence is painted white lest the neighbors will dislike me".

Bitcoin will not win in that scenario. Cryptos will not win in that scenario. The whole field will whither and eventually die, and 10 years down the road, the saying will be "do you remember the stupid crypto craze from the 2010s"?

Bitcoin needs to be eruptive, aggressive and bold to win. This is clearly baked right into its incentive system and is clear as day to anyone who can read (the whitepaper, among other things) and think.

Bitcoin will die if it is going to be managed by risk-avoidant corporate culture and if that risk (Uh oh, hardforks bad!1!) is defined by ill-willed PR companies.

Good luck, miners.

 

[majamalu]

Maybe they manufactured this crisis because they realized it was the only way to build a sizeable position in btc before unstoppable adoption. Maybe they always wanted (and still want) us to sell our bitcoins.

 

[AdrianX]

When I studies the SegWit Support table on bitcoin-wiki, I realized, that we can't win. Not in the field of public relations. They are genious. if paid or volontarily, they are masters in spinning the narrative. All this raging of the slacks and r/btc is just goal-less noice compared with this. There are a couple of individuals who spend their whole day to spin the public oppinion in coordination and orchestration.

Remember? Immediately after SegWit2x was announced, they minted the term "FrankenSegWit".

Then they started to build a table about "SegWit Support" under the authority of the wiki.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support

It has a strange system of votes, "prefer", "acceptable", "Wanting", an a strange color scheme to order them. They spin every quote until it fits their purposes. For example, Peter Wuille, who clearly rejected BIP148 in chats, is not against it, while people, which said "I don't like it, but if every economic node runs bip148, I'd be ok with it" are listed as "wanting".

Then they segregated the hardfork from SegWit, so that developers can support the activation of SegWit with bip91, but reject the connected hardfork of segwit2x. So Core's babies, bip141, bip148 and bip149, are green all over, while SegWit2x's bip91 is somehow accepted and the hardfork all over rejected and dark red. They even minted another meme, "lol", for it.

In another table they show the preferences of companies. Those who signed SegWit2x are in weak green, "acceptable until July" ... and so on ... I'm not sure, but maybe they list companies in support of bip91 as like they are in support of bip148, because it's compatible ... Eric Lombrozo is both as developers as with his company Ciphrex in the lists, and guys like btcdrak, who doesn't really contribute to core, has a say, also the lightning guys and blockstream elements devs, but nobody from xt, classic, bu, nor bcoin ...

It's not that we can't win, you are playing the wrong game if you think of wieners and losers. The goal is not to win its to succeed. Reddit today is full of finite players quitting.

Here is another way to look at the game theory of bitcoin.

 

[molecular]

But that is the whole fricking point of Bitcoin. That Bitcoin does not depend on the size of PR campaigns or manufactured 'PR-consensus' but simply on the direction hash power is taking.

Bitcoin assumes a couple of things about the miners, though, and I'm not sure these assumptions hold any water. For example it is assumed that they are rational and that they act in their own best interest (assuming a link of that self-interest with bitcoins well-being). It also assumes they are very smart about predicting the best way to go. This may have worked out as a kind of swam intelligence in the CPU/GPU days, but nowadays it seems to me more like central planning in a communist country: guaranteed to fail in the long run and guaranteed to get corrupted along the way.

I'm not sure wether I'm being too pessimistic. While the Chinese UAHF plan has given me some hope because the authors seemed very smart, foresightful and caring about bitcoin long-term, I cannot really make out what is up with that segwit2x thing. It just seems totally nuts to me for miners to go that route. No matter which way I look at it.

[doublepost=1497989890][/doublepost]

Maybe they manufactured this crisis because they realized it was the only way to build a sizeable position in btc before unstoppable adoption. Maybe they always wanted (and still want) us to sell our bitcoins.

This thought occurred to me today, also

I rememberd that some years ago I had been thinking what they could do to get our coins. This seems like a fucking elaborate long-ass con, but we're dealing with a very smart group of players here, so it's certainly possible.

 

[AdrianX]

Bitcoin assumes a couple of things about the miners, though, and I'm not sure these assumptions hold any water. For example it is assumed that they are rational and that they act in their own best interest (assuming a link of that self-interest with bitcoins well-being). It also assumes they are very smart about predicting the best way to go. This may have worked out as a kind of swam intelligence in the CPU/GPU days, but nowadays it seems to me more like central planning in a communist country: guaranteed to fail in the long run and guaranteed to get corrupted along the way.

I don't think these are assumptions - they are inevitabilities.

rational and that they act in their own best interest - or go bankrupt. no assumption necessary its an inherent feature.

It also assumes they are very smart about predicting the best way to go - I always think of miners as risk takers - above rational reasoning. - Miners need to be a certain type of stupid. Jihan being an exception. Investing in mining is a risky bet that is why we have so few, it is a bet that only wins if bitcoin wins, players today got lucky, rational players quit when the risk became uncertain. this will change over time. just watch what happens when bitcoin hangs around at $10,000 for 6 months.

but nowadays it seems to me more like central planning in a communist country: Miners are so stupid they followed developers into the abattoir, some happened to wake up just in time to realize the corporations funding development did not have their or the networks best interests in mind. Miners are leaders, up until a year ago both they and the developers beveled they were were supposed to follow developers. this shock hasn't fully sunk in.

Bitcoin functions on permissionless innovation, BS/Core and DCG all have to ask the miners for permission to change the rules. That is BS miners enforce needed rules Developers can do whatever they like no permission needed, but step into the domain of the protectors of needed rules and you see the Miners are in charge and not the developers. Miners are not confident or too stupid to realize this.

 

[awemany]

My SegWit fears in one simple picture:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6it63l/my_segwit_fears_in_one_simple_picture/

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

At this point I'm pretty optimistic about Bitcoin's future.

I see 4 possible outcomes for SW2X:
a) Segwit activated, no 2 MB HF later.
b) Segwit activated, 2 MB HF six months later.
c) Segwit activated, HF shortly afterwards.
d) Segwit and HF activated simultaneously.

c) and d) are acceptable outcomes for the next few months imho. Segwit is a unnecessary wart in the code but Bitcoin can survive that. And they are the likely outcomes because Antpool etc. is involved.

a) and b) would be deadly but highly unlikely imho. Jihan Wu (to name the most prominent) has shown to be an intelligent actor, he won't agree to any of these options.

A still likely outcome is a fight about the HF parameters which will kill SW2X completely, which is a very good outcome also.

So, I don't share the massive depression about SW2X. Segwit won't kill Bitcoin.
btw, I don't see a problem for Antpool etc. to just not mine Segwit transactions (as long as there are enough non-sw transactions in the mempool they won't lose much money by doing that.)

Also, we will not see multihop Lightning. If it will ever be something people use, it will be something that can be implemented today, a client hub model. Segwit doesn't change that.


Still, I think we need a Spinoff and I am very thankful to @freetrader and others who worked and are working on that front. If Bitcoin doesn't get it's shit together, an Altcoin will take over sooner or later. While I still don't really fear ECB-Ethereum I don't know where Monero or something else will end up.
So why shouldn't that Altcoin be a Bitcoin spinoff?
Something like:
- Hardfork at Segwit activation with 16 MB or 32 MB blocksize
- Merge minable with original Bitcoin (I'm now convinced that that is a good idea)
with the funny side effect, that original SW transactions would be anyone can spend on that chain and a free gift for miners
- Possibilities for "unthinkable" hardforks like support for MimbleWimble transactions
- Make it clear, that it is an Altcoin-Spinoff (still, something like Bitcoin-Original is an OK name) but avoid any friction about that issue

For hodlers there is nothing to lose (except for those, who use Segwit..). I changed my positions about the PoW fork and the fight about "what Bitcoin" is.