Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 513. (Read 2032289 times)

Believe it or not, but seeing a centralized non-community based hard-fork process as a problem and opening up a discussion on a possible method to resist/hold off that centralized change until it is more community driven, is in fact offering solutions to problems. Here the problem is centralized driven hard-forks, not block-size limit increases.  If no one likes or is on-board with the proposal, then there is little point spending energy on it. But if it resonates with some people then maybe it is. Oh, and people have been talking about large blocks since before Gavin took on his maintainer role.

i believe sir, ISIS is using petro-dollar 

(besides USG supplies..)

... and yet here they are.

The Wall Observer thread has been sufficiently ruined so now like a plague of locusts they move to the next most viewed thread ...

Why would ISIS want to use bitcoin on a down trend and risk losing a load of money in a crash?

Speaking of trolls, here's Rickards in attack mode: www.darientimes.com/39695/rickards-fighting-the-islamic-state-with-special-operations/

Note that he never says there *is* terrorist financing via bitcoin, he just makes it sound like a really scary idea. Also fails to mention that ISIS has said they're using gold, and further, that it seems like a really bad idea to commit big crimes using a public ledger. If it wasn't obvious already, SR trial makes that clear.

And of course, he has a number of factual errors, but tries to come across as reasoned by giving btc props here and there. I'd be a lot more willing to accept his legit criticisms (eg, btc hasn't gone through a full econ cycle yet), if he'd quit it with the painfully obvious fear-mongering.

Poor tvbcof.  Still seeing shadows. Typical paranoia.

How about using your energy to offer a solution.  Sticking your finger in the eye of the process is counterproductive.  It seems that the most productive people in Bitcoin are offering solutions and getting conversations started.  Without Gavin coding and testing the very large blocks we would not be talking about it or working toward a solution.

The guy has poor cypherdoc all balled up.  Not long ago he seemed to say something that cypherdoc agreed with and cyph re-labeled him 'not a troll' and stated this agreement as the reason for his newly achieved standing.  Then a few days later he said something cypherdoc didn't like and was back to wearing the troll label again.

That's what I was talking about, some people here are like "no big deal, it's solved" while that scaling solution brings a plethora of other issues.

I'm pretty sure Gavin himself said that his solution "comes with risks" though.

Controversy IMHO is a good thing, it is the messy process of having a diverse set of individuals be responsible for their own destiny, as opposed to one of the many forms of centralized command and control.

What I do not like about the hard fork/scalability issue is bitcoin is not going through this messy process to make the change, but instead is having it's future be decided by a single individual by default.

Overall I have been very impressed by Gavin. I think his IBLT solution was brilliant, no change to the underlying protocol yet it incentivizes all miners to include all outstanding mem pool transactions. What's more miners are incentivized to switch to IBLT on their own since it lowers block propagation time in all cases.

But his hard fork proposal puts bitcoin on a dangerous auto pilot regarding block sizes. The initial 20x jump to 20MB blocks is fine, but automatically having 10 doublings to 20GB blocks is dangerous. What if we find out there is some scale issue at 128MB? It will take a hard fork to stop the ramp.

But what I really don't like about it is there hasn't been any real discussion. Gavin thinks everything will be fine, so it is. I work in tech and know processors really well. Compute scaling has slowed down and will further slow down, there are only so many cores that can be feed data to process. But the real issue is network, network does not double every 2 years.

I've been so bothered by it that I've started to contemplate building an affordable AWS node configuration that refuses to propagate the hard fork blocks and open that up. If enough people started such nodes then miners would see that the new blocks propagate more slowly and maybe stick to older blocks out of self interest.

Gavin's upgrade cycle requires 80% of blocks over 1000 block period to be new blocks, so if you can get a few pools to opt-out you can block the upgrade.

But dad! You just don't understand!  








Sometimes I have the impression that the users expressing opinions against BTC (what you call "trolls") understand bitcoin better simply because they are not biased by the greed that motivates bitcoin hodlers  
They can see things for what they are.
Sometimes  

I guess you would call JorgeStolfi a troll too, right?  

Different people have different understandings of 'bitcoin', 'gold', and for that matter, 'trolls'.

I would say that if one defines a 'troll' as someone who holds a different opinion or who understands something like Bitcoin from a different perspective than one's own, that is pretty retarded.  I see it a lot around here.  I consider this thread to be one of the more absurd because of this, but it also makes it one of the most fun.  Especially for trolling.

it's called troll fatigue. can't fight 'em by myself.  we're going on 4 yrs here.

anyways, should be obvious all the trolling is from ppl not understanding Bitcoin.

Regarding the hard fork/scalability issue: I have never seen so much controversy regarding the way to deal with a problem in bitcoin within the bitcoin community ever.

You guys are saying it's a "solved problem" or one with an obvious solution?

That chart sure looks pretty, but you should post a linear one, which shows a different picture  

Everything that started at near zero and had fluctuations when it wasn't worth much and was eventually pumped way higher will have a similar chart in logarithmic scale.

Price could go at double or single digits and still look like a decent uptrend in the chart you posted for someone who can't read a logarithmic chart like it's supposed to. You are saying there is nothing to worry if it even goes to double or single digits?  

I am somewhat surprised Cypherdoc allows obvious trolls to post on this thread.

It may well be the last vestige of intelligent conversation within the fora. What a great shame it would be for this thread to be derailed down to the depths like the rest of the forum!

Aha.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2t7e11/justus_ranviereconomic_fallacies_and_the_block/
Justus Ranvier--Economic Fallacies and the Block Size Limit, part 1: Scarcity by xcslerin Bitcoin

[–]theymos 6 points 11 days ago*
There's a hard protocol rule called the max block size which limits the number of network-wide transactions to a few transactions per second. The actual number of transactions per second depends on the size of the transactions, which varies. Removing or increasing this limit would require everyone who runs their own Bitcoin wallet to upgrade their wallet software. A change to the Bitcoin network which requires everyone to upgrade is called a hard fork.
Such a small limit on the network's capacity is obviously undesirable, and many people are a bit horrified that the Bitcoin network is limited in this a way when they first learn about it. The naïve response is to just completely remove this limit, which seems at first glance to be an utterly pointless restriction on Bitcoin's scalability. (Some well-informed people also hold this view and have reasonable arguments.) However, many Bitcoin experts believe that completely removing the limit is fairly likely to cause Bitcoin to become highly centralized, or become too weak against mining-based attacks, or be destroyed entirely. But even if Bitcoin can't handle as many transactions as we'd all like, that doesn't mean that Bitcoin is useless: there are several well-explored but not-yet-implemented ideas for using Bitcoin securely, cheaply, and easily without creating "actual" Bitcoin transactions.
I might try writing an easier-to-understand but still fairly complete and accurate summary of the issue, but that'll take several hours, and I don't have time right now. Until then, here's a propaganda video from someone who supports keeping the max block size at its current level for the foreseeable future, which is not what I support. The video also contains some exaggerated/controversial statements. But it's probably still an OK video for getting the basic idea.

Greece biggest challenge is to efficently collect taxes, actually the country has a 25% shadow sector in their economy. Also, the country still see Turkey as an existential threat hence the need for one o the most capable air force in Europe. Without them nor social security nor defence spending is possible.
As a Stratfor geopolitical analysis put it: "Succeeding in maintaining control of the Aegean, Greece's most important imperative, in the face of regional opposition is simply impossible without an outside patron." So, Greece is whether it will be able to accept its much-reduced geopolitical role? The country would be able to reach an understanding with Turkey even if this means becoming subordinate to its neighbour?

Collapsing in waves.

solid post. I'm guilty of the odd "what if it goes to a million" type post, but I'm generally speculating about how that manifests itself and what it means in a sense of bitcoin's place in the world. I usually always try to balance it with a "bitcoin could go to zero" caveat.

What you say is right though, what may happen is so complex that none can possible predict with any surety. Dust transactions, great analogy.