Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 562. (Read 2032291 times)

Options 1 and 2 are different coins, that will have different market prices and different expectations of survival.  Each old bitcoin user starts out with the same number of coins in both chains.  There is no option for him to take: if he does not spend or sell the coins in one chain, they will simply sit there, as if he had decided to hoard them.  He could burn them, but that would mean throwing some value away -- and would make the price of that coin to rise.

So the question is not "which coin would the users choose", but "what will happen to the market price of each coin".

Coin 1 is just the same old bitcoin, with the same network and protocol, minus a reward halving that was scheduled to occur and will be postponed.  It will keep working smoothly through the transiiton. Its price may fall considerably, but it is unlikely to become insignificant.

Coin 2 is a brand new coin that happens to start with the same coin assignments, but has yet to build its network.  There is a bunch of rich guys out there -- the old bitcoin miners and their investors -- who have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake invested in coin 1, and therefore are quite interested in having the price of coin 2 crash so that it will not steal market value from coin 1.

So, except for the ideologues, if someone wanted to invest some money in "bitcoin" after the change, which of the two bitcoins would he choose?

Except for the ideologues, once the cartel has announced his plans, how many bitcoiners would still wish for the Red Button to be pressed?  If the button is pressed, how many will do whatever they could to kill coin 2?

Perhaps, as you say, there will be smart guys who will wait for the cartel to stop jamming coin 2 and then will start mining it, or buy tons of it as penny stock, counting on its recovery.  But, if that strategy turns out to be profitable, what would stop other people from forking other Red-Button-style clones of bitcoin?  

Note that altcoins are created not because they can be better than bitcoin (which in some cases may be true), but because their creators think: "Why should I buy an existing coin, and see its early adopters become filthy rich at my expense, when I can create my own altcoin, and become filthy rich at other people's expense?"

It seems that you believe that the Red-Button coin 2 will prevail (or at least survive) for a similar reason, namely it would give to ordinary PC owners the opportunity to become early miners of "bitcoin" again, and amass a hoard of "bitcoin" with little cost. That cloned "bitcoin" would have a low price perhaps, but all users of the old bitcoin would automatically be its users too, and (by your belief) it would have a nonzero chance of conquering the bitcoin market.  

But, if so, what will stop people from creating more such clones, independently of any 51% threat?

These possibilities with two or more clones of bitcoin are already too confusing for me to reason about them.  After all, I am already unable to see why bitcoin would survive in the long term, even with no clones and no 51% shenaniigans.   Lucky for you that your beliefs a priori exclude the possibility of protocol changes, 51% attacks, hard clones, and anything that might be a problem for bitcoin.  

it's been obvious for months on end that no matter how thoroughly one of his arguments gets answered, he will attempt to refine it or come up with a different one to the same effect (that bitcoin will fail). this conclusion has been decided in advance and is immune to change. thus he is not engaging in rational debate.

which is also the reason why he is not going to take up that bet.

on the other hand, the fact that after the massive effort --whether individual or collective-- none of the arguments to the pre-established conclusion are convincing, is highly illustrative. so thanks for that.

This. I've come across several analyses over the years the compare the amount paid into the system to the amount taken out of the system by various generations (in real terms). The silent generation received something like 400% more economic value than they paid in, of course it's a great system! The boomers are getting more than their fair share.

However over the long run, economic value in can only equal economic value out. The silent generation and boomers are getting more than their fair share by creating debt to be paid by the next generations. This is not bond style debt, but debt in the form of unfunded liabilities. However now that the worker to taker ratio is around 2:1 this debt expansion will stall, generation X is guaranteed to receive less than it's fair share.

And the millennials? Those who overwhelmingly support the EU socialist model? They are in effect debt slaves and don't even realize it since it's not debt that shows up in their household balance sheet.

social security is the biggest pyramid scheme in history, it's just that it is a cleverly disguised long con, designed to appeal humanities weakest emotional reactions, fear, pity, altruism

oil was a pyramid scheme. only those early to the party made money by dumping on us latecomers! 

Yes. People's ability to transact fast and cheap over long distances.

That is huge ^

i take it as the powers that be want people out of commodities and into fiat. Once they setup their plan....scrap the paper and take all the assets. 

lol yeah it seems US Dollars or other fiat is the most important thing for people to have...not commodities or tangible assets. 

yes Chief FUD Tester ... if he can get some FUD to fly here he runs with it and disseminates it to the other FUDsters. It is immaterial if that FUD has valid basis in logic or has technical merit or not because the aim is to generate as much FUD as possible to discredit, not to actually critique cryptocurrencies or bitcoin technology.

the current FUD is mining "cartels" FUDing ... ummm where are they exactly and what have they ever done in 6 years (when the stakes and therefore the protections were much lower)??

wanted for evidence: 1 proven malicious mining cartel

There would be no point. Focus on users, not miners, for a monent. The have a choice:

Option 1. Hard forked chain that that pays more to miners

Option 2. Hard forked chain that does not pay more to miners

Users would choose #2. Miners would choose #1

Miners are by definition sellers of bitcoin, users are both buyers and sellers. Chain two would have both sellers and buyers. Chain 1 would have sellers but no buyers, and would therefore have no value. ASIC miners would face the choice to waste electricity mining a worthless coin or shut down.

Please go back and read the plan I outlined.  The one with chains (1), (2), (3). Then please show me how the non-conformant cartel would be "removed from the pool" (?).

Could you name them please? I am not aware of any minimally developed society that would not have some sort of government backed by some sort of police.

I have seen people cite ancient Ireland (which seems to be false, false, the tribes had chiefs and there was even a "High King" at some point) and Iceland (where the population was all isolated farmers and the first village formed in the 18th century).  Do you mean some other?

You are making a valiant effort smooth, but it is not one you are going to win with this one. He make the same argument with me, in that a mining cartel could "block" all transactions they want. He refused to acknowledge that a non-conforming cartel would simply be removed from the pool, and the network would continue with the remain honest miners. He refuses to understand that the network will continue as long as there are some remaining honest miners to generate blocks.

I refuse to believe that he can not understand this, and instead believe he is simply trying out and testing new FUD against bitcoin here. Some FUD is easily refuted, other FUD requires more discussion and understanding. He has already said that he is working with his government on educating the public on the scam that is bitcoin.

And, again, I never said that they would be a cartel of rebel-chain miners.  They would still be a cartel of miners of the old chain and the cartel chain.  In fact they would have 100% of the active ASIC miners on their side, because the old chain miners would have no other viable option except join them.

Love the passion there, will have to follow his blog. Overall his thesis is accurate IMHO, the majority prefers the safety of a stable and top down static system, even if that system robs them blind of their labor and liberty. This has been true across cultures and time. Exceptional societies were the few that rejected this and relied on self reliance and responsibility of the individual. I've read about them, but have never seen one in my lifetime. This is the real hurdle to bitcoin's adoption, luckily we have human greed of a handful working in our favor...

Yes, and what I'm saying is there is no cartel. A cartel implies there is some barrier to entry (for example by limited capacity of equipment). There is none here; everyone can mine, and in a protocol that hasn't reached the stage of specialized hardware, the startup costs are low and entry is very rapid. A huge amount of mining would come online within a day or two, and remember your proposal is for all this to be announced a month ahead, so plenty of time to get ready.

Come on, you know that "the cartel" there means "the cartel of old-chain miners who want to force a change in the block schedule".  It is not "a cartel of rebel-chain miners".  

Assuming that "the cartel" wants to kill the value of the rebel chain, it will try to put enough CPU power working on the rebel chain to jam it.  That should not be hard at first, because the rebels and opportunistic miners will not all start mining all at once.  If the cartel acts quickly, then the rebels who try to use or mine the rebel chain will be frustrated, and (so the cartel hopes) they will give up before others join the rebellion.

Note that, while this struggle is going on in the rebel chain, the cartel's chain (with old protocol except for halving) will operate normally all the time for everybody who upgrades to it, except perhaps for some temporary variation in the block rate.

i have a thought experiment on SC's.  Adam, if you're still out there, i would appreciate your thoughts:

the goal is to theoretically construct a SC that is equal in as many respects to the MC as possible and then predict the vulnerabilities of each.  for this, i am going to invoke 2 of the marketing tactics that the SC proponents have claimed to be advantages and givens, are in fact true.

1.  that of a firewall btwn the SC and MC that "protects" the MC from any failures or fraud on the SC.
2.  that the destruction of scBTC can only result in an increase in the price of BTC on MC.

we will use the op_spv as the model along with its 2 day 2wp clearing mechanism.  50% of all BTC will be on the MC and the other 50% BTC (scBTC) will be on the SC.  there is perfect 100% MM'ing of the SC.  the fiat exchange prices are equal.  the only apparent difference is that the SC has an innovation beyond the capability of Bitcoin which attracted usage in the first place.  

is this an equilibrium situation that is stable?  imo, no.

what has become clear over the last 6 yrs of Bitcoin mining is that even when an individual mining pool has gained close to or even exceeded the 51% hashing market share required to elicit a 51% attack, they have refused to do so. we have seen 3 examples of this:  Deepbit, BTCGuild, and Ghash.io.  i have explained this somewhat unexpected behavior (to some) in terms of the Nash Equilibrium which states that it would be in the attackers unfavorable self interest to attack the MC in that the immediate result would be to kill confidence in Bitcoin along with the price.  such a strategy would even likely be unprofitable as any short position or sale of stolen Bitcoin would be unavailable as exchanges would halt the attackers ability to cash out in any meaningful size on such a scheme.  also, the attackers would sacrifice the millions or so in hardware they were forced to expend initially, not to mention the time and labor required to set up such an operation.  so, in this sense, there is a severe if not catastrophic negative economic consequence to attacking the MC. this is nothing new to those of us who've been around for a while.

thus, i submit over the long run that in the theoretical construct made above with a SC involved, the MC would still not be attacked given the above game theory as it would amount to self destruction.  what about the SC?  the attacking miner, or coalition of miners, know that there is a firewall that will prevent any negative feedback effects back to the MC, at least, in terms of the protocol functioning.  and they will believe any attack that results in destruction of scBTC will only drive up the price of BTC on the MC.  there will be no negative economic consequences for the attack on the SC that feedback to the MC.  thus, i submit an attack is an inevitable consequence.  and this would be the lower bound expectation of benefit for the attackers.  the upper bound would include other economic inducements which aren't necessary to make my argument.  those being:  

1.  attackers could place a large fiat short position in place on a derivatives exchange to benefit from a scBTC price crash from an all out SC failure.
2.  they could try to immediately sell stolen scBTC.  
3.  they could be attackers who were not allowed to mine the SC because of illegality enforced by its gvt and thus benefit by destruction of this competing SC.

but my point is not to compare the upper bound economic benefits of financial gain of such an attack.  it is simply to illustrate that the lower bound minimal benefit or expectation, is that there are no negative economic consequences for the attackers and is enough, by itself, to expect an eventual attack.  one could try to argue that a coalition of miners would not want to destroy 50% of their tx fee volume on the SC.  but to this, i would say that, at the very least, the 3 above economic inducements would be enough to neutralize this argument.  

i believe this concept of economic self preservation allows us to compare the economic viability of SC's of tomorrow to the overwhelming evidence that makes a 51% attack on the MC an extremely low risk event today: a reluctance to destroy one's own business or seed corn.

have at it.

Perhaps this is part of the problem with oil (though in the very short term only a small part). Battery powered substitutes for many of those devices are becoming more readily available, practical, and cost effective all the time.

does this mean oil has failed?