You could probably afford to lose the price of a cup of coffee.
Bitcoin can not afford to have a billion people using a different currency/money substitutes to pay for their coffee. 
Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 581. (Read 2032291 times)
I'm new to this thread. Without reading all 989 pages of posts, can somebody summarize the prevailing Zeitgeist of this thread?
Shouldn't it read, "Bitcoin collapsing, Gold is steady"?
It reminds me, as a gold bug, of the 'collapse' in gold the last few years. Since my average price is well below $1000 an ounce, I don't really care if it falls from its all time high, as I'm still above water.
Is it the same with most of you BTC holders? Or did you buy at the peak?
TonyT
Shouldn't it read, "Bitcoin collapsing, Gold is steady"?
It reminds me, as a gold bug, of the 'collapse' in gold the last few years. Since my average price is well below $1000 an ounce, I don't really care if it falls from its all time high, as I'm still above water.
Is it the same with most of you BTC holders? Or did you buy at the peak?
TonyT
Justusranvier says that it is 'econ 101' that mining reward will fall to zero (and I say it's likely to dip below semi-regularly.)
I can't stop you from spreading misinformation, but I can point out when you're misquoting me.I said the profitability of mining will approach zero over time, just like the profitability of every productive enterprise in a free market approaches zero over time.
Just for the record, I did not produce the ascribed text (though I agree with it.) Also, kudos for taking the time to use tables to make a point more clearly.
Sorry, I have changed this.
Just for the record, I did not produce the ascribed text (though I agree with it.) Also, kudos for taking the time to use tables to make a point more clearly.
he points out flaws in some arguments that are commonly used to dismiss the risk of a 51% attack, e.g. that with cloud mining one could rent 51% of the power for 1 hour at much smaller cost than actually buying that much mining equipment.
Well there are three answers to that: a) cloud mining at scale on short contract is a bad idea; b) the cloud miner shouldnt rent out mining power to attack the chain any more than a country would rent out nukes to mentally unstable or psychopathic individuals; c) mining can be separated from voting, and some of the artificial centralisation reduced.
For (a), [...] the attacker could rent for the minimum period allowed by the company, mine honestly for most of that time (thus presumably recovering most or more of the rent paid), and launch the attack during one hour.
This is why it is dangerous for the mining company: they are sitting on $100m worth of equipment, on-demand renting it is dangerous to the network and to the hope of making a profit on their $100m investment.
Quote
For (b), how could the cloud mining companies tell that some entity that already controls X% of the network's hashpower is now renting 51-X% from them? This entity could pretend to be N diferent clients. And I bet that no company requires miners to undergo psychological fitness tests. 
Again a reason they should not do it.
Whichever way you look at it renting out cloud mining is a bad idea because the reason to care about the meta-incentives (of bitcoins security, reputation, functionality etc) is lost - the $100m investment.
The solution is to sell mining contracts so that the user actually owns the equipment, and often has also prepaid for the electricity as well. Its flash on-demand renting that is bad as then there is no investment incentive.
This is actually part of the meta-incentive: a cloud miner should be able to forsee the problems of flash renting and realise as the equipment owner his capital is at risk.
Quote
I suppose that (c) would require a substantial change in the bitcoin protocol, correct?
No its possible today. Luke-jr is working on it. Thats for the reverse problem that when you do buy a (long term) mining contract, you should control the vote. Otherwise we get articificial centralisation where the location of the physical mining data center artificially controls other peoples votes.
Adam
About cypherdoc particularly he said this:
So that seems a little inconsistent to me. ie if this is really a bad idea why would cypherdoc not have a problem with it regardless of whether it required changes or not. I mean if its a principle you'd be arguing to please not do it even though its possible. Or to remove something from the language to prevent it, or put a technical defense preventing it if such a thing existed (seems unlikely but I havent explored it much). Not saying "I have no problem with that."
Quote from: cypherdoc link=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg9989162#msg9989162
Quote from: adam3us
I am not sure if you are aware sidechains are nearly possible with zero changes to bitcoin. Its already programable via the script language. It may even be doable with zero changes with some chained contorted big script to validate compact SPV proofs.
great, then do it if it doesn't involve a source code change. i have no problem with that.This is an interesting point, Sidechains appear to represent a form of competition with Bitcoin as a distributed consensus mechanism or transaction system. The question is should Bitcoin try to defend against this competition or recognize that competition is a good thing and try to encourage it by making changes which could make Sidechains possible, as this type of competition is unlikely to be prevented in the long run anyway and if Bitcoin is to succeed it should do so because it is the best system. I am genuinely undecided as to what the best or most logical response from Bitcoin is. Bitcoin already has a lot of competition and I have tried to analyze the competitive landscape below:
Analysis of Bitcoin's Competitive Landscape - (For Financial Transactions)
| System | Examples | bitcoin unit | Chances of success | If Bitcoin losses in the long term |
| Traditional Systems | Paypal, Credit Cards, SWIFT, CHAPS | No | These systems are already dominant | No significant impact, Bitcoin could continue as a niche system |
| Off Chain transactions | Coinbase, Changetip, MT Gox, Circle | Yes | Unlikely to offer significant advantages over Traditional Systems in the long run | Potentially catastrophic for both Bitcoin and Off Chain Transaction companies. Security on Bitcoin could fall as mining incentives could be low, whilst the incentive to attack could increase. At the same time off chain credit expansion could occur, undermining the monetary policy of Bitcoin. |
| Alt Coins - Bitcoin clones | Litecoin, Dogecoin | No | Unlikely to offer significant advantages over Bitcoin in the long run | No significant impact, Bitcoin could continue as a niche system |
| Alternative consensus mechanisms | Peercoin (Proof of Stake), BitShares (Delegated Proof of Stake), Tendermint | No | Competition is interesting and these type of alternatives could eventually succeed | No significant impact, Bitcoin could continue as a niche system |
| Sidechains | Blockstream | Yes | Unlikely to offer significant advantages over alternative consensus mechanisms in the long run, except the use of bitcoin the currency could be an advantage in obtaining users and providing an early incentive to hack/test the system | Potentially catastrophic for both Bitcoin and Sidechains. Security on Bitcoin could fall as mining incentives could be low, whilst the incentive to attack Bitcoin could increase. The inherent value of bitcoin could be under threat, as one could do trust-less financial transactions in bitcoin without needing to spend bitcoin in fees |
| Layers on top of Bitcoin | Counterparty, Colored Coins, Mastercoin | No | Success likely to depend on Bitcoin's success | Bitcoin the system and bitcoin the currency cannot lose in this scenario. The success of these systems imply high transaction volume and high demand for bitcoin to be used as transaction fees. Bitcoin wins in this scenario |
CP = CounterParty. That doesnt bring anything to the chain, other than bloat, its a layered consensus system with its own alt-coin. If you valued the price of bitcoin, probably you'd be better pushing for sidechains than CP because its bitcoin denominated and increases demand and features for bitcoin.
Counterparty transactions are just as valid or invalid as any other transactions. Proof of existence transactions, drug deal transactions, gambling transactions, Counterparty transactions, transactions containing a Times Newspaper headline from 2009, "genuine" online shopping transactions or "fake" transactions created to increase transaction volume and dishonestly attract Venture Capital funding for a project are all just transactions. Once people start to evaluate the merit of the data and say they are just bloat, the validity of the system begins to break down. This is analogous to the Net Neutrality debate. Counterparty pay the fee just like anyone else. The success of Counterparty will create demand for bitcoin, which is required for every single action in Counterparty to pay transaction fees for miners. Systems like Counterparty therefore add value to the Bitcoin ecosystem and bitcoin the currency.
For a thing to be a sidechain I guess it would need to first be a chain. Can you point me to Bitstamp's blockchain?
They have a ledger but it isn't a block chain.Because the federated peg is a protocol adaptor - it translates the hash majority decision of the sidechain into something bitcoin can understand. It's not obvious, but it is the case that issued assets on the sidechain will already have full node security (up to the MM hashrate, and immune from any take-all coins attacks). For the purposes of issued asset trading, the sidechain works fine in this model, if we assume trade is issued - issued crosses; for that use pegged bitcoin is just transaction fees.
Adam
he points out flaws in some arguments that are commonly used to dismiss the risk of a 51% attack, e.g. that with cloud mining one could rent 51% of the power for 1 hour at much smaller cost than actually buying that much mining equipment.
Well there are three answers to that: a) cloud mining at scale on short contract is a bad idea; b) the cloud miner shouldnt rent out mining power to attack the chain any more than a country would rent out nukes to mentally unstable or psychopathic individuals; c) mining can be separated from voting, and some of the artificial centralisation reduced.
For (a), do you mean that short-time contracts are a bad idea for the client, or for the company that offers cloud mining? In the first case it does not matter, the attacker will spend only ~75 BTC/h while running the attack. In the second case, the attacker could rent for the minimum period allowed by the company, mine honestly for most of that time (thus presumably recovering most or more of the rent paid), and launch the attack during one hour.
For (b), how could the cloud mining companies tell that some entity that already controls X% of the network's hashpower is now renting 51-X% from them? This entity could pretend to be N diferent clients. And I bet that no company requires miners to undergo psychological fitness tests.
(By the way, I like to think of Dr. Strangelove as a rather bland documentary. Countries already put their nukes in control of mentally unstable or psychopathic individuals.
)I suppose that (c) would require a substantial change in the bitcoin protocol, correct?
I am not sure how "money. digital cash. digital gold." != "virtual commodity which can be used as sound money"
He calls it Bitcoinium in another thread. He's creating a unicorn to describe the indescribable rather than use common analogies. He uses a fictitious omnipotent AI to describe the unicorn and calls it "common sense." From there it's reifications all the way down.If readers want to look at that thread its https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/would-you-buy-a-marked-quantum-scifi-bitcoin-for-above-par-911339
(and reply to outahere is https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10033502)
Adam
I didn't say it *was* going to go up - as you noticed I used the word if (just like you did). There are a thousand other threads debating whether the price will go up or down.I'm not arguing that it will, so I don't know why you are bring that up.
By using if there is an implicit assumption that the contrary is also true - *if* people all sell the ETF and the price goes down it will force the BTC price down through arb.
By using if there is an implicit assumption that the contrary is also true - *if* people all sell the ETF and the price goes down it will force the BTC price down through arb.
Indeed; my apologies for the undue reading of your post.
d to explain it.
If lots of people buy the etf and its price goes up then the BTC price gets driven up through arb, so yes buying the ETF does affect BTC
If lots of people buy the etf and its price goes up then the BTC price gets driven up through arb, so yes buying the ETF does affect BTC
That is a non-trivial "if"...
What is it exactly that prevents those potential COIN buyers from buying BTC directly, or SMBIT shares? The fact that they are not traded on an exchange like NASDAQ? Or some intrinsic property of the asset?
Note that COIN shares will uninsured against theft or loss, besides being backed only by a "stock" (BTCs) that itself has no backing assets.
The Fortress investment group bought a bunch of BTC in 2013. Those BTC were the only red stain in their Q1/2014 report. So Fortress promptly swapped those BTC for equity in the Pantera Fund's managing company (not shares of the fund itself). If COIN existed in 2013, and Fortress had bought COIN instead of BTC, the result would probably have been pretty much the same.
What I mean is that COIN may not be much more attractive to large investors than BTC itself. Large investors are not likely to be impressed by a 5-year logscale plot with a red straight line on it. In case you have not been paying attention, to people outside the bitcoin community bitcoin does not look like the financial miracle that it seemed to be 13 months ago.
And it is a fact that no one who has some money to spare believes that bitcoin will be worth 3000 $ in 2015. Otherwise they would rush to buy those coins that are now being offered for sale at 290 $/BTC, and no one is buying.
You said "But if they buy the COIN ETF it in now way effects Bitcoin price or ecosystem" i'm saying it would affect BTC price. (be that up or down) and suggested there was plenty of stuff out there that explains why that is the case.
I didn't say it *was* going to go up - as you noticed I used the word if (just like you did). There are a thousand other threads debating whether the price will go up or down.I'm not arguing that it will, so I don't know why you are bring that up.
By using if there is an implicit assumption that the contrary is also true - *if* people all sell the ETF and the price goes down it will force the BTC price down through arb.
Asking "[w]ho really rules?" researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argue that over the past few decades America's political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy
you guys have to ask yourselves why they have so much power. the answer, if you're reading this, is that you already know: control of Money.
with Bitcoin, as it is, we are slowly taking back those reins of power. and now, we are being asked to change Bitcoin into a SC-enabled asset trading platform? speculative asset trading is NOT needed and distracts us from Bitcoins main function: Sound Money.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy
you guys have to ask yourselves why they have so much power. the answer, if you're reading this, is that you already know: control of Money.
with Bitcoin, as it is, we are slowly taking back those reins of power. and now, we are being asked to change Bitcoin into a SC-enabled asset trading platform? speculative asset trading is NOT needed and distracts us from Bitcoins main function: Sound Money.
People already are speculating with BTC on cryptsy, havelock (BTC denominated shares), just they are doing it in a less safe way because its not on-chain. Lets imagine gold or USD it was legally forbidden to use it for share trading, but share trading is very much legal. Do you think share trading would happen or not? Do you think that would be good for gold or the USD?
If share trading creates more BTC (or scBTC) transactions buying/selling with BTC, or paying transaction with BTC that increases utility and hence price of BTC.
Adam
I am not sure how "money. digital cash. digital gold." != "virtual commodity which can be used as sound money"
He calls it Bitcoinium in another thread. He's creating a unicorn to describe the indescribable rather than use common analogies. He uses a fictitious omnipotent AI to describe the unicorn and calls it "common sense." From there it's reifications all the way down. Indeed the paper had too much rhetoric and boldface for academic good taste. But he points out flaws in some arguments that are commonly used to dismiss the risk of a 51% attack, e.g. that with cloud mining one could rent 51% of the power for 1 hour at much smaller cost than actually buying that much mining equipment.
Well there are three answers to that: a) cloud mining at scale on short contract is a bad idea; b) the cloud miner shouldnt rent out mining power to attack the chain any more than a country would rent out nukes to mentally unstable or psychopathic individuals; c) mining can be separated from voting, and some of the artificial centralisation reduced.
Quote from: JorgeStolfi
I did not bother to read his proposed fix to the longest-chain rule because it seems to involve timestamping transactions, and I suspect that such thing is even harder to get right than achieving consensus about the chain. I will wait until someone tells me that that section is worth reading.
checkpoints are a bad idea, they are a form of centralisation. Bitcoin is working to remove the limited very slow anti-DoS check pointing that it has.
Adam
What do people think of this paper:
On The Longest Chain Rule and Programmed Self-Destruction of Crypto Currencies
Nicolas T. Courtois
(Submitted on 2 May 2014 (v1), last revised 10 Dec 2014 (this version, v11))
http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0534
His arguments are not backed up by his own citations and the rhetoric got ahead of the facts.On The Longest Chain Rule and Programmed Self-Destruction of Crypto Currencies
Nicolas T. Courtois
(Submitted on 2 May 2014 (v1), last revised 10 Dec 2014 (this version, v11))
http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0534
He is a capable symmetric key cipher cryptographer, but he's been known to go on fact disconnected rants. Bitcoiners seem to conclude he maybe thinks he'll get bitcoin consulting work if he claims the sky is falling in a loud voice. Either that or he just enjoys ranting.
Indeed the paper had too much rhetoric and boldface for academic good taste. But he points out flaws in some arguments that are commonly used to dismiss the risk of a 51% attack, e.g. that with cloud mining one could rent 51% of the power for 1 hour at much smaller cost than actually buying that much mining equipment.
I did not bother to read his proposed fix to the longest-chain rule because it seems to involve timestamping transactions, and I suspect that such thing is even harder to get right than achieving consensus about the chain. I will wait until someone tells me that that section is worth reading.
Quote from: adam3us
Quote from: cipherdoc
2. philosopically, do you see Bitcoin as Money or as an economic "system" for trading assets of all types?
Personally I guess I see [bitcoin] as a kind of virtual commodity which can be used as sound money. But bitcoin is programable and as I wrote somewhere on the thread I think the programability, smart-contracts are also a big deal as well as the sound-money which is by itself awesome if thats all bitcoin could ever do.
i think that's wrong. i view it as money. digital cash. digital gold. i think this is the biggest source of our disagreement.
I am not sure how "money. digital cash. digital gold." != "virtual commodity which can be used as sound money"
Adam
d to explain it.
If lots of people buy the etf and its price goes up then the BTC price gets driven up through arb, so yes buying the ETF does affect BTC
If lots of people buy the etf and its price goes up then the BTC price gets driven up through arb, so yes buying the ETF does affect BTC
That is a non-trivial "if"...
What is it exactly that prevents those potential COIN buyers from buying BTC directly, or SMBIT shares? The fact that they are not traded on an exchange like NASDAQ? Or some intrinsic property of the asset?
Note that COIN shares will uninsured against theft or loss, besides being backed only by a "stock" (BTCs) that itself has no backing assets.
The Fortress investment group bought a bunch of BTC in 2013. Those BTC were the only red stain in their Q1/2014 report. So Fortress promptly swapped those BTC for equity in the Pantera Fund's managing company (not shares of the fund itself). If COIN existed in 2013, and Fortress had bought COIN instead of BTC, the result would probably have been pretty much the same.
What I mean is that COIN may not be much more attractive to large investors than BTC itself. Large investors are not likely to be impressed by a 5-year logscale plot with a red straight line on it. In case you have not been paying attention, to people outside the bitcoin community bitcoin does not look like the financial miracle that it seemed to be 13 months ago.
And it is a fact that no one who has some money to spare believes that bitcoin will be worth 3000 $ in 2015. Otherwise they would rush to buy those coins that are now being offered for sale at 290 $/BTC, and no one is buying.
What do people think of this paper:
On The Longest Chain Rule and Programmed Self-Destruction of Crypto Currencies
Nicolas T. Courtois
(Submitted on 2 May 2014 (v1), last revised 10 Dec 2014 (this version, v11))
http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0534
On The Longest Chain Rule and Programmed Self-Destruction of Crypto Currencies
Nicolas T. Courtois
(Submitted on 2 May 2014 (v1), last revised 10 Dec 2014 (this version, v11))
http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0534
His arguments are not backed up by his own citations and the rhetoric got ahead of the facts.
He is a capable symmetric key cipher cryptographer, but he's been known to go on fact disconnected rants. bitcoiners seem to conclude he maybe thinks he'll get bitcoin consulting work if he claims the sky is falling in a loud voice. Either that or he just enjoys ranting.
Apparently even academics can troll. (Present company excepted of course
Adam
I'd evaluate #of transactions, mining fees generated, and # of BTC moved to the SC as primary indicators.
I am curious about how Blockstream get paid out though, just consultant fees for dev time?
I am curious about how Blockstream get paid out though, just consultant fees for dev time?
I said a few things about that and so did Greg on reddit (how we expect to make money).
Quote from: adam3us
Greg Maxwell (nullc on reddit) wrote some about how blockstream plans to make profit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhoo7d
I dont think making a profit is a bad thing - to hire developers & QA and UX designers and maintain software and design protocols and figure out how to use smart-contracts and find business partnerships to make those available to users all takes money. As those are good outcomes, and require more money, you have to have a profit to fuel it, you cant rely on investors to keep putting in more rounds!
Its quite feasible to make money without being controlling, proprietary, centralising or evil. We certainly aim to try.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhoo7d
I dont think making a profit is a bad thing - to hire developers & QA and UX designers and maintain software and design protocols and figure out how to use smart-contracts and find business partnerships to make those available to users all takes money. As those are good outcomes, and require more money, you have to have a profit to fuel it, you cant rely on investors to keep putting in more rounds!
Its quite feasible to make money without being controlling, proprietary, centralising or evil. We certainly aim to try.
and
Quote from: adam3us
You should view blockstream as a sort of hybrid. We are developing FOSS open IP much as a not-for-profit would. But we are also aiming to make a profit by selling services, doing partnerships, advising integrators etc this is all complicated stuff and people need help to make it work. Like was said its kind of like Mozilla.
and
Quote from: adam3us
Bitcoin has a lot to offer, and some of those things are not possible for the legacy systems to mimic. Particularly sound money, no counter-party risk, irreversable transactions (seizing and freezing basically prevent that outside of paper cash, though even that is partly relying on fungibility laws or it could have reversibility problems). Smart-contracts that are strengthened by no counter-party risk and irreversibility are one of the most interesting advantages I think. Without irreversibility and no freezability a "smart-contract" isnt smart, its just an electronic contract and we already have those. Ultimately if you combine it all you could rearchitect the financial system to largely remove systemic risk, add competition legacy systems cant react to (they intrinsically need their governance costs). This is why people gave us $21mil. Bitcoin all-in is a big deal. Sound-money is cool, but its only part of the picture.
Quote from: NewLiberty
If [blockstream profit plan] is something more arcane, it may be a cartel worthy of investing in, just in case they are able to run away with all the marbles.
Before we closed the seed funding round there were people who wrote asking how to buy in (I think some of them were confused and thought it was a "hot" new alt-coin ICO they could get it on the "ground-level" of). But also there were people who understood what a sidechain is. We do have one bitcoiner (non VC, tho qualified investor) who is an investor, and a number of the investors own BTC also.
What I said to people on twitter was "you dont need to buy into side-chains, you're already in, its called bitcoin"; well really we're invested in bitcoin & the value of stock representing a stake in our ability to profit as described above, but you get the point.
So for now I would buy more bitcoin
Also in the (mining) incentive section of the white paper there was a concept of a time-shifted fee.Adam
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