Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 280. (Read 2032286 times)

i appreciate the feedback.  i've already taken these types of thoughts into consideration.

thezerg once accused me of being a dinorsaur with regards to innovation in Bitcoin, which you kinda are above.  i don't think that's true.  this whole debate is consistent with my long held belief that all innovation should occur on the mainchain.  if Bitcoin fails to do that as an open source project similar to linux, which was supposedly the great promise it made imo, then the whole concept of cryptocurrencies has failed and we'll just go back to fiat for the next hundred years.  this whole movement of Gavin to go to XT, if necessary, is innovation on the mainchain as i see it.  he's simply going to upgrade the software to accept bigger blocks.  and that's a good thing.  if anything, the dinosaurs and fear mongerers are the one's wanting to keep Bitcoin artificially restrained.  enough about that.

as far as Monero is concerned, it is a completely new altcoin with a different signature scheme.  to be honest, it is so far off my radar and so insignificant of an alt that i hadn't paid much attention to it.  i still don't really care to understand how it works b/c i don't think it will go anywhere.  could be wrong.  i've always said i'd welcome more privacy in Bitcoin and it's possible Monero does that.  i know there was a big technical issue months back but can't remember what it was.  maybe someone could clarify.  but that's beside the point.  it is NOT innovating on top of Bitcoin which i quite frankly see as a problem for it.  it is not leveraging upon the huge network effect already achieved by Bitcoin.  does that necessarily mean it will fail?  no.  but i think we get one chance with this b/c the implications are so huge.  if Bitcoin fails, they all fail.  if it's not improved upon or upgraded, it will fail.  if we all don't stick together as a group, it will fail.  if that means the economic majority has to fork off and shed the likes of the Blockstream cabal, we have a chance.  the more i think about it, the better i like the idea of getting rid of gmax and luke.  i think they're toxic.  yeah, gmax is a brilliant cryptographer but he can't be trusted with the keys or to run a company.  he's a KNOWN Bitcoin bear and posts an XMR donation address.  that's his prerogative but i think a core dev should be all out pushing and working on Bitcoin like Gavin does to advance the project forward.  shedding those guys would be a good thing.

everything i say is said in the context of the broader markets.  we're probably heading into the next recession and in that environment i believer altcoins will be slaughtered.  if Bitcoin can hang on, or even thrive, as a safe haven alternative, a major shift in finance may be upon us.  Bitcoin has already survived an unbelievable 6 yrs and next yr we will halve.  the way all the charts have lined up, it's just a matter of time before we start the next advance to end Bitcoin's longest Bear.  this hasn't even been the greatest Bear, imo, which was from 32 to 1.98 in 2011.  that is a great sign.  i've always said that the majority of ppl investing in cryptocurrencies will lose money.  this is definitely playing out and includes Bitcoiners who bought high.  it also includes full node operators and miners, btw, and accounts for the decrease in their numbers too.  but that will easily reverse with new adoption and the next price rise.

Bitcoin is like threading a needle; it needs to stay private enough to prevent all out war with TPTB.  so far so good.  is Monero in that category?  i doubt it but i'm not saying it won't possibly find a niche with the iCELatte's of the world.  oh, btw, it took me a while to figure out what his agenda was with him coming in here and pretending to be all concerned about Bitcoin when his real agenda was to diss it and pump Monero.  even smooth, who offers up decent stuff, was confusing me a while back before i found out he was a Monero core dev.  i couldn't figure out why when i got skeptical about altcoins he'd always quickly negate anything i had to say on that.  also when we got to talking about the 49%-51% attacks against Bitcoin he was posting highly frequently against Bitcoin.  that's ok, he's smart and is entitled to his opinion.  but it was never clear until someone mentioned his Monero connection what was happening.  i like to focus on what ppl's motivations are, that should be clear.  i won't let that cloud my judgment however.  i really think Bitcoin is on the right path, even if it has to fork to XT.  to me, that would just mean a much easier path forward with a new group of devs.  then the market can be free of financial conflicts of interest from the likes of Blockstream.  i've heard enough complaints about how big players like Nasdaq won't entrust large amounts of money to a monetary system controlled by an unknown, anarchistic leaning group of new leaders.  i wouldn't either if i didn't fully understand the system.  that's why i would be willing to migrate to XT if need be.  how would it be for Gavin to initiate growth to 20x at least for Bitcoin?  not bad at all i'd say.  we will overcome the technical constraints, if there really are some.  the financial incentives to find a solution will be so great at that point that full node growth is bound to happen, bandwidth providers will be happy to accept more traffic and will be financially incentivized to find solutions, and Wall St will then jump in with both feet.  and if we need to, we'll just pair the block size back temporarily until a real solution is found.  Monero can't even be a part of all that b/c the big players won't be allowed to play.

we will thread the needle b/c we can guide it to be so.

The Jaws of Death are closing on gold and the Dow (large red arrow).  Bitcoin will benefit:

Lol! I almost poked you an hour ago to ask why we had not had our market report after the NFP moves!
Bonds taking a real pounding too ...

Ripple ftw! Hahaaaaa  

http://www.afr.com/brand/chanticleer/cbas-crypto-currency-move-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-20150602-ghee7i

edit:

Wright says the issue with Ripple is that it is a traditional trust model.

"If they are all working well, you can trust them. The problem is that no system is as secure as Ripple would like to have us believe.

"Ripple is in effect an IOU, the trouble is that this IOU can be misused. You can send things you cannot possibly have. For instance, it is possible to send a ripple IOU for 100 million Bitcoin. The problem is that there will never be more than 21 million Bitcoin."

"So, Ripple is using a lack of awareness of what they really are to fool others into the belief that they are a distributed network and Blockchain-based system."

plenty of bad news for non-Bitcoiners this morning:



i've been warning you.  Gold collapsing, Bitcoin soon UP:



breaking to new lows.  leading:



and if you don't believe a small miner, here's a large gold miner about to hit new lows:

Basis for my comments about Gregory Maxwell also derives from this interaction (wherein surprisingly I made the same judgement that I stated in this thread about his personality) and also the interaction the On the Longest Chain Rule and CoinJoin threads.

My prediction in 2013 for something like 21 Inc to arrive by 2016:

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3111/will-bitcoin-suffer-from-a-mining-tragedy-of-the-commons-when-mining-fees-drop-t/8686#8686

Seems Etlase2 incorporated my 2013 "Topic: "Spiraling Transaction Fees Destruction" of bitcoin  (Read 6785 times)" into his white paper.

http://www.decrits.net/decrits-consensus.pdf


And from my account on Bitcoin StackExchange wherein they banned me for several months in 2013...

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/876/how-much-will-transaction-fees-eventually-be/8749#8749

This is the most fascinating post I've perhaps ever seen from Armstrong. Amazing that his Trading Array model has INDEPENDENTLY picked up on the ECM 2015.75 Big Bang:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31361

Looks like the timing for the capitulation low in private assets (gold, bitcoin, and now the USA stock market too) will be in October.

Again I reiterate my 80% expectation for < $1050 and < $150 for the final bottom (price independent of timing). I assign 50% odds of a bottom < $850 and <$100. Ideally would be a bottom in the mid-$600s and < $50, as that would clear out all the dumb money.

As in 2008, the private assets will rally hard after the initial margin call selling has caused them to crater. Remember when safe haven panic contagion strikes, people are forced to sell their most liquid assets. I was buying 1000oz silver bars at $9/tr.oz.

The Blockstream white paper mentions interoperability, but afaics gives no details other than to say the chains share the same BTC unit.

I assume this means each side chain's money supply will fluctuate according to spending from one chain to the other and presumably not passing back through the Bitcoin blockchain as I had assumed. I suppose this is viable and what remains of my criticism is there is no investment model possible for the side chains unless there is some fee service that can be sold. So I guess the devs of a side chain would need seek their ROI by charging transaction fees but ongoing payment is a form of centralization.

I guess one could view moving BTC from the Bitcoin blockchain to a side chain as an investment in an ecosystem driving the value of BTC higher. Appreciation of the particular side chain will not be possible to capture.

The investment model concerns I think strongly disfavor side chains for any ubiquitous features. Thus side chains don't appear to do anything for the scaling problem of Bitcoin.

Side chains would be useful for isolating blockchain scripting where user programmability is the priority and not investment ROI.

Also I think my interoperability concern remains valid in at least one way. For example Monero as a side chain would presumably have different anonymity properties when spending to another chain than spending within the Monero side chain. Thus the interoperability doesn't scale the same as a single chain with ubiquitous features.

I potentially like side chains as a way of achieving hard forks democratically, i.e. anyone can stay with the old chain or spend off to the new chain (and come back anytime), but this could encourage fragmentation which could retard value appreciation.

I just don't think side chains address scaling and Gregory should either justify how they do or accept that isn't the market he needs to defend with this block size debate.

Edit: there is one way side chains enable scaling. That is the side chain is a centralized ledger. So if the masses can be enticed to spend their BTC into the Coinbase+Paypal+Circle cartel side chain, then it can scale easily. And then the hashrate of the Bitcoin blockchain will wane and can be attacked by the cartel.

Yeah a cartel side chain is great sell out to TPTB. Go! Good job!

Blockstream is (unwittingly?) enabling an easy path for the cartel to fork Bitcoin.

Gold failed to bounce in June, thus it looks like we are headed down. BTC likely to follow down.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31318

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31344

Safe haven seeking capital is flowing into the short-end of the bond yield curve in Europe. All in preparation for the contagion Big Bang 2015.75, likely Greece.

Armstrong noted that throughout history, peripheral markets counterfeit the reserve currency's coins because these are the widest accepted.

I view Gresham's law as basically saying that the most widely recognized money drives the other money out-of-circulation. I think it applies regardless of legal tender laws as we see throughout history where for example Roman coins circulated even where they weren't required to by law.

Your argument should instead be that Bitcoin is the most widely recognized and accepted crypto money.

This is the only retort I've seen in support of pegged side chains. The pegged attribute means the BTC is actually reserved on the Bitcoin chain so that no matter what happens to the side chain, the value can always be recovered back to BTC.

You are not using scaling[1] as the basis of your desire for side chains. Rather you are using the insurance of value relative to BTC. The difference between a peg on the Bitcoin blockchain and a hedging instrument are the zero cost and reservation guarantee of the former.

But I don't see why we need Blockstream to do that. Afaics, any altcoin could offer the feature where its coin supply is the number of BTC on specified reserve on the Bitcoin blockchain (using the methods devised by Blockstream).

But there is no incentive for the altcoin developer because their work doesn't get valued nor monetarily remunerated in terms of coin appreciation. No ICO can be done, because the coins are still reserved on the Bitcoin blockchain.

A risk-free investment does not exist. You are asking to take away all ROI to enable a guarantee but with nothing in return offered to incentivize the market and development. You also remove your ability to profit on HODLing the altcoin. In short, you don't want to invest and you don't want to profit (in anything other than Bitcoin).


[1] Which I argue is not aided by and probably harmed by side chains, because the only way scaling (and thus network effects) are solved by side chains is an unlimited numbers of side chains, else the complexity class is the same as needing to solve how to scale Bitcoin's blockchain. But innumerable side chains kills interoperability and thus the scaling of network effects.


Because you might meet the waitress of your dreams. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. No investigation, no knowledge. Ignorance is bliss. Home eating, boring men don't often capture the (attention of the) Playboy bunny and don't stay abreast of current trends outside.

I have been reading this thread since early 2013, it is one of the little gems this forum has left. I respect your thoughts and what you have contributed. Until now I have refrained from commenting on/about anything monero in the little posts i make here, since there's an altsection for that.

But what you're doing now is playing the exact same card that all the bitcoin sceptics are pulling to illegitimatize btc, which imo is a weak one. Bitcoin provided a mental exercise when it appeared on the scene. You've been able to make it to the other side and are one of the most forward thinking guys ion this subject(esp if compared to the rest of the world). There are a lot of viable arguments against alts or monero but the stance you've been taking is of the same sturdiness of the bitcoin-'haters' and have resulted in fallacies based on price.

Maybe that is because of the monero-proponents here who sort of force you into this position. But don't become like the btc-haters who arn't willing to at least try out other perspectives on the matter. You resorted into the same kind of tactics as the old status quo you once battled.

You've been getting a lot of shit here lately in all the debates. And although you are used to getting shit about these topics it almost seems that lately you're losing it a little. Call me a troll/newb/insignifact whatever. The paragraph i started with was genuine.

It must carve out a market that Bitcoin doesn't have or it is doomed. That is not necessary the same as competition. New markets means they are not competing. I hope the Monero folks aren't angered by this opinion. I do believe they think they can carve out a market in the anonymity space.


I refuted pegged side chains and no one has retorted.

I may have figured out why Doctor Frappe has recently been going off the rails in such an uncharacteristically frothy, grumpy, and ill-tempered manner.

The reason may be read in the implied lines between these two posts:

That articulation is incorrect and implies you don't have solid technological comprehension.

The generative difference with off-chain mixing is it doesn't scale because it is not autonomous and thus violates the End-to-end principle. There is no difference in the level of anonymity for any given anonymity set (all other factors equal which they may not be, such as IP address correlation in off-chain because the parties must coordinate).

All mix-nets are a form of "obfuscation". There is no such thing as 100% anonymity. It is always a measure of the anonymity set size. Obfuscation though is usually differentiated from anonymity sets such that obfuscation is a mixing of itself (e.g. a mangling of JavaScript code), whereas the latter is a mixing of numerous entities.

The semi-veiled Blockstream infection (attempted takeover) of Bitcoin is so obvious. You don't even try to obscure it well.

And you still haven't refuted my assertion that pegged side chains break interoperability (and have to transfer back through the Bitcoin blockchain thus don't solve scaling if maximum network effects and interoperability is desired), thus can't scale and lose network effects. $21 million down a hole. Seems Adam's former company is a source of many of the key members of Blockstream and that former startup accomplished what? There might be a pattern of failure. This is often what happens when you put academics and inexperienced venture capital together (the seed capitalist made his fortune by creating an ISP in Canada and selling it back in the boom of the dot.com era).

Gregory is an extremely talented cryptographer (who several times has reused hash trees for compression) but who apparently often doesn't raise his scope of vision over the tree trunks to reason about the forest. CoinJoin? Heuristic spaghetti for Sybil attacks? (or maybe he was just trying to make the best out of the worst?)

Blythe worked for JP Morgan and the banksters. I'm sure she wishes it would be so, since they plan to track and control us with public ledgers which are only decentralized in name but actually monopolized.

Bitcoin can never scale as the internet did because it violates the two key scaling principles of the internet, End-to-end and Principle of Least Power. They might be able to scale it as they did Facebook to most people on earth, but it will never scale to most economic activity on earth (and note the distinction). The only way they win with Bitcoin (i.e. for it to encompass most economic activity) is by oppressing the economic freedom that will drive most of the future economic activity.

Bitcoin is a (planted) ruse to entice people to agree to give up the anonymity of cash. It is leverage against governments and financial institutions that resist takeover by the NWO.

Right, you and the other buttcoiners should never risk anything on crazy new ideas like e-cash.  Better to wait until something has already been proven successful than befriend an emerging trend.   

When your analyzer thingy can't (even after a great first year) tell the difference between generic altcoins and the Bitcoin-type Holy Grail breakthrough of Monero, it's time to replace the batteries and update the firmware.

Wading back on topic, here's this:


^^Needs moar Monero!