Author

Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 131. (Read 2032248 times)

legendary
Activity: 1414
Merit: 1000
July 09, 2015, 04:44:43 PM
Yes, but the ongoing spam shows clearly that all full nodes are handling the traffic just fine. We were told that they would crash and burn from overloaded memory. Not true.

Wait, wasn't that exactly Hearn's main argument in his "the sky is falling if we don't increase the blocksize" blog post?  So why do you see the fact that it did not prove true so far as supporting your position of increasing the block size?

b/c the congestion really has only just begun.  if it persists, yes, ppl will start to stop using Bitcoin.  the exit starts slowly at first and then will morph into a stampede; especially if the price starts plunging.  the mempool is a problem that does have to be fixed so that ordinary users can start getting their tx's through.  they won't be as patient as some of us here.

Yes people will stop using Bitcoin b/c they have to pay $0.5 per transaction. They rather use bank and will pay $20.
 
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1072
Crypto is the separation of Power and State.
July 09, 2015, 04:38:01 PM
Yes, but the ongoing spam shows clearly that all full nodes are handling the traffic just fine. We were told that they would crash and burn from overloaded memory. Not true.

Wait, wasn't that exactly Hearn's main argument in his "the sky is falling if we don't increase the blocksize" blog post?  So why do you see the fact that it did not prove true so far as supporting your position of increasing the block size?

b/c the congestion really has only just begun.  if it persists, yes, ppl will start to stop using Bitcoin.  the exit starts slowly at first and then will morph into a stampede; especially if the price starts plunging.  the mempool is a problem that does have to be fixed so that ordinary users can start getting their tx's through.  they won't be as patient as some of us here.

Tip your miner a dollar 'to insure promptness.'

There is no congestion, only load.  Congestion would be if tx with competitive fees were nevertheless delayed.

Wallets and exchanges are upgrading to adaptive fees, and Bitcoin will soon be all the stronger for the experience.

That's how antifragility works.  These encounters with adversity in the form of spam and crapfloods are already increasing Bitcoin's resilience.   Cool
hero member
Activity: 644
Merit: 504
Bitcoin replaces central, not commercial, banks
July 09, 2015, 04:19:31 PM
the exit starts slowly at first and then will morph into a stampede; especially if the price starts plunging.  the mempool is a problem that does have to be fixed so that ordinary users can start getting their tx's through.  they won't be as patient as some of us here.

It looks like the bull cycle has already started and investors are looking for alternatives, likely because of the 1mb attack that has gone unresolved for years now.  Hopefully its not too late to increase the limit and let the bull run... or maybe its time to jump ship.



Or maybe it's just another trick whales are using to get the last weak hands to dump their BTC. This "attack" is just part of their schemes.

You people need to stop with the paranoia and the scare tactics. All this money is gonna end up flowing back into BTC in due times. Lots of people are going to end up holding the LTC, PPC and NMC bag.

There is no problem with Bitcoin.
hero member
Activity: 622
Merit: 500
July 09, 2015, 04:12:25 PM
the exit starts slowly at first and then will morph into a stampede; especially if the price starts plunging.  the mempool is a problem that does have to be fixed so that ordinary users can start getting their tx's through.  they won't be as patient as some of us here.

It looks like the bull cycle has already started and investors are looking for alternatives, likely because of the 1mb attack that has gone unresolved for years now.  Hopefully its not too late to increase the limit and let the bull run... or maybe its time to jump ship.

legendary
Activity: 1414
Merit: 1000
July 09, 2015, 04:11:54 PM
Don't worry.  According to Mike Hearn Bitcoin can survive just fine with 4 or 6 (forgot which) copies of the blockchain worldwide.
Is he right or wrong about that?

Via what methodology would we test that hypothesis before arriving at a conclusion about its validity?

Who cares?  Before you ask that question you need to show reasonable likelihood that increasing the block size to 8MB will drop the number of full nodes to 4 or 6.

Frankly, I think that a dramatic reduction of nodes is more likely if Bitcoin becomes a settlement network than if the block size is increased to 8MB.  NOBODY will be interested in holding the data if they can't use the network, so the only full nodes will be those sponsored by the payment aggregators.  These aggregators are also perfect locations for governments to apply identity and green address pressure, destroying fungibility.


What do you think about reduction of nodes if the block size is increased to 8,000 MB ?
Why do you think "NOBODY will be interested" processing 100,000 transaction per day worth $1,000,000 in fees ?  (especially in the case, that it can be run on a phone ? -> almost no expenses )

Edit:
if you keep block size small then no sponsors are required to run full node b/c it is cheap and millions will run full node just for fun. (I'll be one of them)
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1001
July 09, 2015, 03:17:42 PM
the congestion really has only just begun.  if it persists, yes, ppl will start to stop using Bitcoin.  the exit starts slowly at first and then will morph into a stampede; especially if the price starts plunging.  the mempool is a problem that does have to be fixed so that ordinary users can start getting their tx's through.  they won't be as patient as some of us here.

In 5-10 years I can imagine having a handful of dominant blockchains that run in parallel. Today we have Visa, MC, Discover, and AmEx; tomorrow we have bitcoin, litecoin, monero, whatever. Actually we will STILL have Visa, MC etc but they will each utilize multiple blockchains as behind-the-scenes payment rails. If one blockchain goes down, Visa (or whoever puts Visa out of business) will switch to another until the problem is resolved. (All behind the scenes as far as John Q Public is concerned.) If not resolved in a timely manner, miners shut down due to reduced transaction fees (after days-weeks, maybe months of downtime), and that chain suffers. If all major blockchains are running smoothly, then the preferred chains would be the ones with the widest acceptance - just like credit cards today.

It would take a lot of downtime though to kill off a prominent blockchain. It takes time to build up lots of hashpower. And even if miners turn off, where are they going to go, and what prevents them turning back on, once the technical problem (whatever it is) is (hopefully) fixed? Presumably, the major competing blockchains will not use mining equipment that can be switched from one blockchain to another.
 
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
July 09, 2015, 02:55:16 PM
Yes, but the ongoing spam shows clearly that all full nodes are handling the traffic just fine. We were told that they would crash and burn from overloaded memory. Not true.

Wait, wasn't that exactly Hearn's main argument in his "the sky is falling if we don't increase the blocksize" blog post?  So why do you see the fact that it did not prove true so far as supporting your position of increasing the block size?

b/c the congestion really has only just begun.  if it persists, yes, ppl will start to stop using Bitcoin.  the exit starts slowly at first and then will morph into a stampede; especially if the price starts plunging.  the mempool is a problem that does have to be fixed so that ordinary users can start getting their tx's through.  they won't be as patient as some of us here.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
July 09, 2015, 02:29:58 PM
Another image from the Pantera Report:



If you ignore the late-2013 bubble as being entirely due to Willy Bot / fractional cash reserves at MtGox, it looks like we could be entering the next big run-up right on cue. Or perhaps a little late, with all the more pent-up momentum.

The stars are aligning: the mother of all stability crests, cyperdoc's Three Buckets with venture capital and mining topping out, years of good news that the price went down on that needs to be corrected, even EW analysis has turned bullish, and of course Greece (and China, and Puerto Rico...).

into the next Bull CYCLE?
legendary
Activity: 1036
Merit: 1000
July 09, 2015, 02:23:55 PM
Another image from the Pantera Report:



If you ignore the late-2013 bubble as being entirely due to Willy Bot / fractional cash reserves at MtGox, it looks like we could be entering the next big run-up right on cue. Or perhaps a little late, with a commensurate increase in pent-up energy.

The stars are aligning: the mother of all stability crests, cyperdoc's Three Buckets with venture capital and mining topping out, years of good news that the price went down on that needs to be corrected, even EW analysis has turned bullish, and of course Greece (and China, and Puerto Rico...).
legendary
Activity: 1036
Merit: 1000
July 09, 2015, 02:11:12 PM
And also speaking of volatility, it seems that I was indeed right in my predictions of a move up.

And it looks like there's a lot more coiled tension where that came from:

legendary
Activity: 1036
Merit: 1000
July 09, 2015, 02:04:40 PM
China threatening short sellers.  Shades of US back in 2008.  the volatility back then makes Bitcoin look like cake:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-09/china-soars-most-2009-after-government-threatens-sellers-arrest-global-stocks-surge

Speaking of volatility:




(From the very good Pantera Report)
legendary
Activity: 1414
Merit: 1000
July 09, 2015, 02:02:42 PM
With single node or 6 nodes we do not need POW. We already had this centralized services. ... but they are all down.
Can you rephrase your comment in terms of how the number of nodes is related to the number of copies of the blockchain in the world, and how both of those affect the ability of an attacker to perform double spending and censorship attacks?

If there is only 1 copy of blockchain then I expect it is located in 1 datacenter. (node)
legendary
Activity: 1400
Merit: 1013
July 09, 2015, 01:45:06 PM
With single node or 6 nodes we do not need POW. We already had this centralized services. ... but they are all down.
Can you rephrase your comment in terms of how the number of nodes is related to the number of copies of the blockchain in the world, and how both of those affect the ability of an attacker to perform double spending and censorship attacks?
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
July 09, 2015, 01:35:57 PM
Jeff Garzik has just posted 2 pull requests for bitcoin core on github:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6405
Remove TX priority and free transaction area from mempool, block creator.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6402
Floating network relay fee increase, if memory pool grows too large.

the latter will introduce, if merged, "a relay fee that adjusts to floods
which cause the memory pool to grow too large".

It seems that core devs start becoming aware of the lack of
of economic incentives for services provided by full nodes.


i hate to bring up an analogy from medicine since it may not be appropriate but i'll try nonetheless.

one of the greatest things i learned during my internship btwn med school and residency in eyes, is that too much intervention can cause problems for patients.  every 3 mo i'd rotate onto a new ward with responsibilities for about a couple of dozen gorked out patients.  i say gorked out b/c invariably all of them had at least a dozen meds onboard for a variety of reasons most of which had to do with sedation, pain, or anti-anxiety.  problem was, these meds unbeknownst to their previous physicians were preventing these ppl from getting better.  this was a repeating problem.  so the first thing i would do would be to cocentrate on stripping off as many of these unnecessary meds as possible.  much to everyone's amazement, these pts would perk up, turn around and start walking again, interacting with staff, feeling better, be more alert, and generally just get better to the pt i could discharge them.  and this experience happened over and over for me.  twas a great personal accomplishment for me and one i will never forget; don't over do it.

pt being, i still think the block size cap is the fundamental problem here.  more rules and limits that core dev piles on simply complicates the code and makes it more complex.  if anything, we should be stripping off rules and limits so that the free mkt can come to bear on many of these problems we are currently seeing.  the miners and users are perfectly capable of regulating the size of blocks and fees on their own.  if we lift the cap, the spam can actually help the network.  as long as spammers have to pay fees any spam attempts will line the pockets of miners and go back to growing the hashrate.  that would be a good thing and the last thing the spammers want to do.  no doubt they will try at first so we should expect even greater higher level attacks initially but in the long run, they will die off.  that's b/c their real objective is to disrupt new user growth which w/o a cap will be short circuited.  any further spam then will just help the tx mkt to grow, miners to profit, and yes, full nodes will eventually develop their own fee mkt too.  yes, full node capacities will have to grow but that should be viewed as a good thing b/c on the other end that will mean that miners are prospering (which is ok Greg) and user growth will be skyrocketing along with the price.  more merchants will come on board with new user growth and they will want and probably have a fiduciary responsibility to run their own full nodes which will add to network capacity.

so strip off rules and limits within reason, not add, and let BitcoinRun!

Yup, the parallels between economics and biology are striking. Introduce an arbitrary sacred cow "fix" (like the blocksize limit) into the mix, then all the machinery necessary to support it becomes a sacred cow as well. It takes a paradigm shift and a bit of a leap of faith to break out of that vicious cycle.

thx for taking the time to read that and understand it. 

if you look at everyone's own personal work around that we are now seeing come forth in this light, it soon becomes clear how complex and gorked out the system could become as a result.  Bitcoin's beauty is that it is relatively simple in it's function and why i favor simple solutions.
legendary
Activity: 1414
Merit: 1000
July 09, 2015, 01:30:53 PM
Who cares?
I care because there's an appalling lack of rigour going around and it's not helpful.

1. Does the network still provide strong double-spend protection?

2. Can users freely* publish valid transactions to the Blockchain (censorship resistance)?

*That is, subject only to marginal transaction fees.

I think that's a good start. The question can then be translated to "what are the minimum requirements needed to prevent double spending and censorship?"

I suspect the answer in terms of the number of world-wide copies of the blockchain needed has a lower bound of 1, depending on our ability to create efficient fraud proofs and to implement better privacy behaviour in wallets.

With single node or 6 nodes we do not need POW. We already had this centralized services. ... but they are all down.
legendary
Activity: 1036
Merit: 1000
July 09, 2015, 01:20:55 PM
Jeff Garzik has just posted 2 pull requests for bitcoin core on github:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6405
Remove TX priority and free transaction area from mempool, block creator.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6402
Floating network relay fee increase, if memory pool grows too large.

the latter will introduce, if merged, "a relay fee that adjusts to floods
which cause the memory pool to grow too large".

It seems that core devs start becoming aware of the lack of
of economic incentives for services provided by full nodes.


i hate to bring up an analogy from medicine since it may not be appropriate but i'll try nonetheless.

one of the greatest things i learned during my internship btwn med school and residency in eyes, is that too much intervention can cause problems for patients.  every 3 mo i'd rotate onto a new ward with responsibilities for about a couple of dozen gorked out patients.  i say gorked out b/c invariably all of them had at least a dozen meds onboard for a variety of reasons most of which had to do with sedation, pain, or anti-anxiety.  problem was, these meds unbeknownst to their previous physicians were preventing these ppl from getting better.  this was a repeating problem.  so the first thing i would do would be to cocentrate on stripping off as many of these unnecessary meds as possible.  much to everyone's amazement, these pts would perk up, turn around and start walking again, interacting with staff, feeling better, be more alert, and generally just get better to the pt i could discharge them.  and this experience happened over and over for me.  twas a great personal accomplishment for me and one i will never forget; don't over do it.

pt being, i still think the block size cap is the fundamental problem here.  more rules and limits that core dev piles on simply complicates the code and makes it more complex.  if anything, we should be stripping off rules and limits so that the free mkt can come to bear on many of these problems we are currently seeing.  the miners and users are perfectly capable of regulating the size of blocks and fees on their own.  if we lift the cap, the spam can actually help the network.  as long as spammers have to pay fees any spam attempts will line the pockets of miners and go back to growing the hashrate.  that would be a good thing and the last thing the spammers want to do.  no doubt they will try at first so we should expect even greater higher level attacks initially but in the long run, they will die off.  that's b/c their real objective is to disrupt new user growth which w/o a cap will be short circuited.  any further spam then will just help the tx mkt to grow, miners to profit, and yes, full nodes will eventually develop their own fee mkt too.  yes, full node capacities will have to grow but that should be viewed as a good thing b/c on the other end that will mean that miners are prospering (which is ok Greg) and user growth will be skyrocketing along with the price.  more merchants will come on board with new user growth and they will want and probably have a fiduciary responsibility to run their own full nodes which will add to network capacity.

so strip off rules and limits within reason, not add, and let BitcoinRun!

Yup, the parallels between economics and biology are striking. Introduce an arbitrary sacred cow "fix" (like the blocksize limit) into the mix, then all the machinery necessary to support it becomes a sacred cow as well. It takes a paradigm shift and a bit of a leap of faith to break out of that vicious cycle.
legendary
Activity: 1400
Merit: 1013
July 09, 2015, 01:19:09 PM
Who cares?
I care because there's an appalling lack of rigour going around and it's not helpful.

1. Does the network still provide strong double-spend protection?

2. Can users freely* publish valid transactions to the Blockchain (censorship resistance)?

*That is, subject only to marginal transaction fees.

I think that's a good start. The question can then be translated to "what are the minimum requirements needed to prevent double spending and censorship?"

I suspect the answer in terms of the number of world-wide copies of the blockchain needed has a lower bound of 1, depending on our ability to create efficient fraud proofs and to implement better privacy behaviour in wallets.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
July 09, 2015, 12:52:22 PM
Don't worry.  According to Mike Hearn Bitcoin can survive just fine with 4 or 6 (forgot which) copies of the blockchain worldwide.
Is he right or wrong about that?

Via what methodology would we test that hypothesis before arriving at a conclusion about its validity?

Who cares?  Before you ask that question you need to show reasonable likelihood that increasing the block size to 8MB will drop the number of full nodes to 4 or 6.

Frankly, I think that a dramatic reduction of nodes is more likely if Bitcoin becomes a settlement network than if the block size is increased to 8MB.  NOBODY will be interested in holding the data if they can't use the network, so the only full nodes will be those sponsored by the payment aggregators.  These aggregators are also perfect locations for governments to apply identity and green address pressure, destroying fungibility.


i'd agree with this.  altho i'd like to see the block cap removed altogether, certainly i'd go with Gavin's 8MB BIP101 proposal short term to ease into the long term goal.  i'm sure this interim solution would make many more ppl happy.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
July 09, 2015, 12:51:55 PM
Soon you'll see that nearly the entire discussion has been rendered an irrelevant pita.
legendary
Activity: 1246
Merit: 1010
July 09, 2015, 12:44:58 PM
Don't worry.  According to Mike Hearn Bitcoin can survive just fine with 4 or 6 (forgot which) copies of the blockchain worldwide.
Is he right or wrong about that?

Via what methodology would we test that hypothesis before arriving at a conclusion about its validity?

Who cares?  Before you ask that question you need to show reasonable likelihood that increasing the block size to 8MB will drop the number of full nodes to 4 or 6.

Frankly, I think that a dramatic reduction of nodes is more likely if Bitcoin becomes a settlement network than if the block size is increased to 8MB.  NOBODY will be interested in holding the data if they can't use the network, so the only full nodes will be those sponsored by the payment aggregators.  These aggregators are also perfect locations for governments to apply identity and green address pressure, destroying fungibility.
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