Preaching to the converted in here I know, but....
All this talk is so wearing, I've been reading less and less on the forums and thinking.
When I got into bitcoin I saw something with massive potential to be disruptive technology. It looked to me like it could basically replace fiat currency, an opinion that I think was shared by a lot of people back in the day. Sure there was the whole get rich quick thing, and the insane volatility and the less cynical more funny community.
I still believe this fundamental idea that bitcoin can take over the world.
To do that it needs to grow though, and that's why "I am SGBETT and I am a big blocker"... but you all knew that already.
What seems to have happened though, is that a new idea has arisen. The idea that bitcoin *can't* scale, and should instead be used as some kind of settlement layer. That other things should be developed to provide the 'currency' style features.
What I am finding difficult is the whole debate seems to be now centred around the pro's and cons of two exclusive camps. BTC can *only* be store of value and settlement. BTC can *only* be cash. The participants have taken these as axiomatic truths and are arguing the pro's and cons.
At worst this is an intentional strategy, by characterising the argument in this way its easier to justify one position by radicalising the opposing view and arguing against it. At best its just misguided passion for what you believe in. A cynic might think its the former, but I am going to assume its the latter.
Concerns about centralisation are being used as a way to justify not increasing block size.
Concerns about full blocks are being used as a way to justify increasing block size.
The common theme is that in both cases these are just hypothesis. They are predictions of the future and they are fragile. barge said something on reddit earlier about tale's black swan, and how humans are bad at predicting. So lets assume that in both the statements above "concerns about X" are likely to be invalidated by a black swan event.
Where does that leave us?
Well the followup work by Taleb describes Antifragility. This means positioning yourself to benefit massively/protecting yourself from loss should the unexpected happen, which it inevitably will.
Of course this perspective can be twisted to justify pro / anti block size increase. I'll leave it to the small blockers to give there explanation as to how keeping blocks small is antifragile.
My view though, is that having larger than you think you need blocks is antifragile. If there is an unprecedented surge in bitcoin use then transactions can increase massively, fees go up massively miners get paid, we all cheer because bitcoin adoption is taking off (we can surely agree that everyone would like to see adoption no?). If the blocks are much bigger than we need, and they are not needed, nothing happens. An antifragile view (imho) looks at both outcomes and checks to make sure neither results in tragedy.
Lets take centralisation. Massive blocks, really big regularly, means fewer people can run nodes etc. This could happen, but how badly? What constitutes unacceptable levels of centralisation, unacceptable as in 'terminal', can we define this? Is there an actual block size (not block size limit) that causes terminal centralisation? Do 8MB blocks cause this, 16MB, 32... ? Don't forget each doubling is 2 years, so we are already in 2020 before anyone could mine a 32 MB block.
Note, that is *could* mine a big block. If we don't need it, we don't use it, and thats the flip side of the centralisation argument. Nothing bad happens.
You can dissect all arguments for and against block size in this fashion, trying to figure out what course of action is most antifragile.
Fee market - in 2020 with 32 mb blocks. If they are full then a simple extrapolation may be that we have 32x the amount of current fees in a block (about 6BTC). Maybe average fee per transaction has declined tenfold and there is only 0.6BTC a block. Still, the block reward is 12.5BTC so we still aren't exactly in tragic failure mode. If we are still only doing the same volume as today then nothing bad happens.
The closest I think we can get to arguing 'something bad happens' is the terminal centralisation of mining. A hypothetical *extreme* scenario. The fee market argument doesn't hold up because we still have decades before the block size gets small enough that fees are relevant.
I can't fathom why anyone is trying to force a fee market right now whilst the block reward is still so big. The only reason I can see is greed, and that would perfectly fit with all of human history. Bitcoin is the goose laying golden eggs right now, and it feels to me like some people aren't happy with one egg a day.
Why reversion to the mean, because this is exactly what the banks are doing right now. The banks squeeze us for every penny, because they are greedy and we have no choice.
This fee market? Who do you think pays for it, and to whom?
Appeal to authority, yes.
Appeal to emotion, yes.
Isn't that the whole point, doing smart things that feel right. Learning from history. Don't make bitcoin 'the bank', don't let greedy men fool you - it was inevitable that once bitcoin started showing value it would attract those that seek to take that value for themselves.
Bitcoin should be for everyone. Bitcoin should replace 'fiat' money.
All this talk is so wearing, I've been reading less and less on the forums and thinking.
When I got into bitcoin I saw something with massive potential to be disruptive technology. It looked to me like it could basically replace fiat currency, an opinion that I think was shared by a lot of people back in the day. Sure there was the whole get rich quick thing, and the insane volatility and the less cynical more funny community.
I still believe this fundamental idea that bitcoin can take over the world.
To do that it needs to grow though, and that's why "I am SGBETT and I am a big blocker"... but you all knew that already.
What seems to have happened though, is that a new idea has arisen. The idea that bitcoin *can't* scale, and should instead be used as some kind of settlement layer. That other things should be developed to provide the 'currency' style features.
What I am finding difficult is the whole debate seems to be now centred around the pro's and cons of two exclusive camps. BTC can *only* be store of value and settlement. BTC can *only* be cash. The participants have taken these as axiomatic truths and are arguing the pro's and cons.
At worst this is an intentional strategy, by characterising the argument in this way its easier to justify one position by radicalising the opposing view and arguing against it. At best its just misguided passion for what you believe in. A cynic might think its the former, but I am going to assume its the latter.
Concerns about centralisation are being used as a way to justify not increasing block size.
Concerns about full blocks are being used as a way to justify increasing block size.
The common theme is that in both cases these are just hypothesis. They are predictions of the future and they are fragile. barge said something on reddit earlier about tale's black swan, and how humans are bad at predicting. So lets assume that in both the statements above "concerns about X" are likely to be invalidated by a black swan event.
Where does that leave us?
Well the followup work by Taleb describes Antifragility. This means positioning yourself to benefit massively/protecting yourself from loss should the unexpected happen, which it inevitably will.
Of course this perspective can be twisted to justify pro / anti block size increase. I'll leave it to the small blockers to give there explanation as to how keeping blocks small is antifragile.
My view though, is that having larger than you think you need blocks is antifragile. If there is an unprecedented surge in bitcoin use then transactions can increase massively, fees go up massively miners get paid, we all cheer because bitcoin adoption is taking off (we can surely agree that everyone would like to see adoption no?). If the blocks are much bigger than we need, and they are not needed, nothing happens. An antifragile view (imho) looks at both outcomes and checks to make sure neither results in tragedy.
Lets take centralisation. Massive blocks, really big regularly, means fewer people can run nodes etc. This could happen, but how badly? What constitutes unacceptable levels of centralisation, unacceptable as in 'terminal', can we define this? Is there an actual block size (not block size limit) that causes terminal centralisation? Do 8MB blocks cause this, 16MB, 32... ? Don't forget each doubling is 2 years, so we are already in 2020 before anyone could mine a 32 MB block.
Note, that is *could* mine a big block. If we don't need it, we don't use it, and thats the flip side of the centralisation argument. Nothing bad happens.
You can dissect all arguments for and against block size in this fashion, trying to figure out what course of action is most antifragile.
Fee market - in 2020 with 32 mb blocks. If they are full then a simple extrapolation may be that we have 32x the amount of current fees in a block (about 6BTC). Maybe average fee per transaction has declined tenfold and there is only 0.6BTC a block. Still, the block reward is 12.5BTC so we still aren't exactly in tragic failure mode. If we are still only doing the same volume as today then nothing bad happens.
The closest I think we can get to arguing 'something bad happens' is the terminal centralisation of mining. A hypothetical *extreme* scenario. The fee market argument doesn't hold up because we still have decades before the block size gets small enough that fees are relevant.
I can't fathom why anyone is trying to force a fee market right now whilst the block reward is still so big. The only reason I can see is greed, and that would perfectly fit with all of human history. Bitcoin is the goose laying golden eggs right now, and it feels to me like some people aren't happy with one egg a day.
Why reversion to the mean, because this is exactly what the banks are doing right now. The banks squeeze us for every penny, because they are greedy and we have no choice.
This fee market? Who do you think pays for it, and to whom?
Appeal to authority, yes.
Appeal to emotion, yes.
Isn't that the whole point, doing smart things that feel right. Learning from history. Don't make bitcoin 'the bank', don't let greedy men fool you - it was inevitable that once bitcoin started showing value it would attract those that seek to take that value for themselves.
Bitcoin should be for everyone. Bitcoin should replace 'fiat' money.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf said:
