Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 1102. (Read 2032266 times)

The point being that they are actually being run by a far more powerful entity, one that is capable of breaking these sorts of rules with no repercussions. They may have not started off that way but let's face it, that area of the world is filled with corruption and who wouldn't want to get their paws all over the most powerful global currency ever invented? Normal miner incentives don't affect these sorts of players the same way.

What you need to know about Ghash is they are just one part of a vertically-integrated operation.

BitFury is the manufacturer who builds the ASICs.
CEX is the retail side, selling shares of the hashing power and creating a commodity exchange for trading those shares.
Ghash.io is the pool where CEX points their hashing power. They constitute about half of the total Ghash.io network, with independent miners making up the rest.

The underlined portion is why the BitFury/CEX/Ghash conglomerate is doing better than everybody else. They get greater access to capital because they offer a commodity exchange which is  apparently what mining investors want.

The reason no one else does this is because the operators of CEX are in Ukraine, one of the few places where the SEC/CFTC can't easily get to them.

Sort of, but they are related.  The real limit is the 1 MB blocksize limit.  1 MB every 10 minutes is 10^6 bytes / (10 min x 60 sec/min) = 1,667 bytes per second and 1 MB every 8 minutes is 2,084 bytes per second.  The "seven transactions per second" concept apparently stems from the scalability wiki.  At 1,667 bytes/s, it implicitly assumes that each TX is about 240 bytes (or 300 bytes at 2,084 bytes/s).

The average TX in bytes is most certainly larger than both of these figures (although I don't have a reference on hand).  Simple 1-input/2-output TXs like this are 226 bytes.  Txs that have more inputs or more outputs, or more complex scripts, will be larger.  In other words, the network would likely hit the 1 MB/block bandwidth limit at less than seven transactions per second.  

In any case, the bitcoin community seems to think of the limit as "seven transactions per second."  Although this is an approximation, I think it is useful nonetheless.

well then, this should catch up with them too. 

i'm not recommending anyone doing this but you could report them if you wanted to stop them from doing this.

but isn't the speed (7 tx/s) different than the block size limit (1MB/block)?

and with many other controversial issues in Bitcoin, it comes down to your view of the motivations and game theory involved in miner choices.

i'm a little more optimistic than you.

Ya but you are a small piece. The majority of miners out there are for profit and nothing else.

I honestly don't know if it's true but I read somewhere that other companies cannot compete with ghash's model because it is actually illegal in many places of the world due to the trading platform and the contracts being deemed securities. This is likely why no one has shown up to complete with them yet.

With an open-source community it is difficult to know for sure, but I believe we already have a plan to deal with the blocksize limit:

    - move to a higher but still hard-coded limit when required (this requires a few new lines of code);

    - agree to work towards a "floating limit" to be implemented when ready (this is a more complex change).

Assuming the historical rate of growth in the number of transactions per day¹ holds, the network should approach its bandwidth limit sometime near Halloween 2015.  If the Metcalfe Value model continues to hold as well, bitcoin's market cap at this point in time would be in excess of 1/2 a trillion dollars.  






¹Actually, we would hit it slightly sooner as I'm plotting transactions per day excluding popular addresses to remove the "on-chain gambling bubble" of 2012 - 2013.  Also, the 7 TPS is an estimate based on a probably unrealistically small average TX size.

what's interesting is that i've been pool mining since March as the difficulty has risen too steep for me to continue solo mining.  but i wouldn't hesitate to restart solo mining if i thought it was necessary to protect the network.

the point i wanted to make is that i've used BTCGuild or Ozcoin exclusively b/c of their service.  the 0 fee Ghash offer never interested me.  i more happily support Eleuthria (BTCGuild owner) b/c he's shown constraint in the last run of his pool close to 50% by restricting new pool miners back in 2012/13.  he also gave up 20 blocks or so back early 2013 when we had the 0.8.1 hard fork just to re-merge the 2 chains.  that's loyalty and dedication to Bitcoin.  so he gets my hashing, no questions asked.

here's my economic solution to ghash:  why doesn't someone just duplicate their 0 fee model along with mining contracts?  with time and future growth of Bitcoin, this should happen naturally as competitors "see" a successful model they want to get in on.  competitors may already be organizing as far as we know.  no need to panic.  others are also planning ways to further decentralization: 

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/07/03/mining-decentralisation-the-low-hanging-fruit/

0 fee models aren't sustainable.  remember when BTCChina charged 0?  then along came Huobi.

it would've been really helpful if he spelled out exactly what his concerns were so we don't have to sit here and speculate.

but agreeing with Vitalik and cpu mining was just off. 

I recall him saying in more than one interview that the capitalization of bitcoin will have to increase by a couple orders of magnitude in order to support the use cases he sees. He always phrases such comments as secondary to his stated mission of bringing bitcoin to the global masses in a regulated structure, but he *does* understand that bitcoin's value needs to be a lot higher. It's just not fashionable for a guy in his position to be talking about >$10,000 bitcoin.

All these guys get the value argument... Marc Andreessen has made similar sideways comments. Talking about bitcoin's potential unit value, and therefore its value as an investment, is not the "interesting" or fashionable thing to talk about. So they don't. But they're not fools - they see what has to happen to market cap if any of their technological disruption theses are to play out.

...

Not sure what I'm trying to say besides pointing out that Allaire must actually understand the store-of-value proposition.

But I too was very dissatisfied with that last article/interview of his. He does indeed seem to miss a lot of important points.

fascinating, our NSA:

http://boingboing.net/2014/07/03/if-you-read-boing-boing-the-n.html

they're at 37% right now.  not ideal but certainly not anything to get alarmed about.  sure, if they get over 51% again we might consider some changes.  but then, it might never happen again, just like with Deepbit and BTCGuild.

do you have any evidence that they're "up to something"?  that by itself is no reason to make major protocol changes.  they may just be trying to build market share with the 0% fee structure.  if so, it is not a sustainable model in the long run and eventually they will institute a fee which would clamp down on their growth.  that's my guess as to what's happening.

Development is still moving slow as molasses, the blocksize limit isn't getting any attention, and there is no viable solutions the massive elephant in the room, ghash. Those guys are up to something, there is no way they can continue providing a 0% fee pool unless they are up to something. I don't know if they have been coopted by the russian mafia or what but they are likely amassing huge amounts of owned hardware and they are not doing it for the basic profit incentive... there is something much larger at play here. While the developers are off having their childish pissing matches we need people to step up and actually *solve* something.

i went back to look at the devs involved in the latest release of Bitcoin 0.9.2.1 and here's what i see in the credits:

Credits
--------

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release:

- Addy Yeow
- Altoidnerd
- Andrea D'Amore
- Andreas Schildbach
- Bardi Harborow
- Brandon Dahler
- Bryan Bishop
- Chris Beams
- Christian von Roques
- Cory Fields
- Cozz Lovan
- daniel
- Daniel Newton
- David A. Harding
- ditto-b
- duanemoody
- Eric S. Bullington
- Fabian Raetz
- Gavin Andresen
- Gregory Maxwell
- gubatron
- Haakon Nilsen
- harry
- Hector Jusforgues
- Isidoro Ghezzi
- Jeff Garzik
- Johnathan Corgan
- jtimon
- Kamil Domanski
- langerhans
- Luke Dashjr
- Manuel Araoz
- Mark Friedenbach
- Matt Corallo
- Matthew Bogosian
- Meeh
- Michael Ford
- Michagogo
- Mikael Wikman
- Mike Hearn
- olalonde
- paveljanik
- peryaudo
- Philip Kaufmann
- philsong
- Pieter Wuille
- R E Broadley
- richierichrawr
- Rune K. Svendsen
- rxl
- shshshsh
- Simon de la Rouviere
- Stuart Cardall
- super3
- Telepatheic
- Thomas Zander
- Torstein Husebø
- Warren Togami
- Wladimir J. van der Laan
- Yoichi Hirai


i guess by Mike Hearn's definition, "they didn't build that".

i'm wondering what it is that Allaire and Hearn's are unhappy about in the core protocol?  must have something to do with tx throughput if i had to guess.  maybe expanding the block size or tx speed?  that would make sense as Allaire has said before that he really wants to see Bitcoin being "used" worldwide.  and that would explain his willingness to exchange at no fee cost to customers.  he mainly sees it as a payment system and not as a store of value even though as the protocol stands now it can satisfy both those needs.  and this is what he is missing.

unfortunately, i'm beginning to see parallels btwn Allaire's Circle model and Back's Sidechain proposal.  although both these guys are smart, successful entrepreneurs they both missed Bitcoin early on.  they want to enter now but are looking to absolutely minimize their risk doing so.  at first, i thought in Allaire's case, this only involved stroking the regulators so as to be seen as a favored boy from that perspective.  now, we're seeing it is more.  the easiest way to ensure a risk free venture is to make a change to the rules core protocol to favor their own business models so as to gain some semblance of control of the situation and create a first mover advantage so to speak.  that's how crony capitalism works; co-opt the ppl in charge (a few core devs), change the rules to your favor, and off you go. problem is, in an open source protocol like Bitcoin, that is never how it should work.  any major protocol changes should favor everyone equally and not change everyone's investment assumptions who had entered before you.  maybe those 2 are just getting risk averse in their old age but the solution from day 1 for both of them is to "just get in NOW".  the growth in the Bitcoin system continues at a torrid rate and the longer you wait the further behind you fall.  both would be in a far better position to suggest changes if they were seen to have had a POS in the system as it stands.  i shouldn't pick on those 2 alone; there are plenty of others like Vitalik and Ethereum who complain about the way Bitcoin is structured currently and want to change it to their vision of how it should function. 

and don't get me wrong; i'm not in favor of stasis.  if any of these groups can convince me that changes to the core protocol are necessary and good for Bitcoin, so be it.  problem is, none of what they have proposed are "real" problems but instead "perceived" problems.  Bitcoin for some reason doesn't conform to their vision of the world.  until then, by all means, continue to innovate but do it on top of the core protocol as a higher layer.  but remember, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 

for every great investment, most ppl lose money. every day that goes by, it becomes clearer as to just who those losers will be. that's b/c in the times of adversity for that investment, their knowledge of that investment fails them and they bail.  in this case, these ppl's lack of true understanding of Bitcoin has paralyzed them to the point of inaction.  and it may be too late for them. 

The number of misconceptions running around on reddit (and among newbs here; and apparently even among the VCs) is getting so high now that I'm thinking some kind of "grand sweep" of myths is becoming necessary. Maybe a Bitcoin Myths website or resource, but focusing on the less obvious misconceptions that even otherwise intelligent people like Vitalik have.

Obviously a lot of these would be economics points, and due to long-running controversies such as "deflation is bad," there'd need to be some crystal-clear diagrammatic or video illustrations that put such fallacies to rest definitively. I'd recommend something done in a single Prezi-based zoomable wiki presentation format (via prezi.com), rolled out to many youtube videos showing certain tailored aspects of that same visual wiki to counter each specific misunderstanding, perhaps with some voice narration added. That is, each video would be a tour of a certain section or sections of the central Bitcoin Myths Prezi-based wiki with some additional voiceover for clarity.

Here's a halfway decent prezi presentation on Bitcoin, for an example: http://prezi.com/a9rkl6sifz5u/bitcoin/ ...but I think there is a lot more that the format allows for that people haven't used yet. A full visual wiki as video creation source material - I don't know if this has really been done.

That's not at all what they say in the article.

They say that at any time 100s of potential ETF are somewhere in the process and it doesn't guarantee anything. Just every hurdle they do take makes it more likely. November was just mentioned because November 2014 is exactly one decade after the launch of GLD.

COIN ETF likely in November (bloomberg)
Brace Yourself for the Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF