Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 600. (Read 2032266 times)

gimme a break.  you trying to smear Gavin for being paid by a NON-PROFIT organization is pure blasphemy.  he's paid a salary in BTC which is probably quite modest by ordinary standards.  AND he doesn't have any stock to try and pump or investors to please.  to think he has anything to do with any of the things you're talking about is ridiculous.  he's as apolitical as one gets and we all should be thankful he's lead.  you're still that little dog who nips at my trouser bottoms.

Sorry dude, I cannot imagine you making that strained argument with a straight face in light of the fact that we already rely on 'trust' in Bitcoin itself in exactly the same manner.  Lots of people are scratching their head about where you are coming from due to obviously nonsense statements like this.

This is especially the case in light of the fact that Gavin is paid, and relatively handsomely, by what a plurality of folks seem to now recognize (so it seems) as a loathsome institution which downsizes mainly when crooks get caught and belatedly kicked out.  It is no stretch to consider the Bitcoin Foundation as being blatantly crooked insofar as it takes funds and supports frauds like inputs.io, and just as bad, seems highly prone to such conspiracies as 'red-listing' which is near universally considered an abomination.  All under the cloak of quasi-secrecy, and god only knows what happens in the real core of the organization.

Even having two shit-bag organizations fighting one another is preferable to having only one, and I see a high likelihood that Blockstream will be anything but.  My only hope is that Blockstream stands up to the Bitcoin Foundation machinations and call them out as needed.  And hopefully bury them eventually.

Possibly and that was largely my argument about being inevitable. Inevitable doesn't necessarily mean good (or bad), but something that must be accepted as a matter of reality.

you're missing the point.  the act of leaving by those devs requires a conscious act and decision to do the "right" thing.  how can we keep trying to sell Bitcoin to the world as a "trustless" system when we have to "trust" Blockstream devs to do the right thing?

I seem to recall at least Maxwell pro-actively disavowing this supposed fiduciary duty to do what's right for Blockstream if it also does not happen to be what right for Bitcoin.  He gets to pick up his marbles and go home if he doesn't like how things are going (where as most people have to leave their marbles in such situations except for vested stock and the like.)  This is a novelty as far as I know.  And one I'm liking!  If this is simply a marketing gimmick it worked on me.  I've a favorable opinion both of the devs who write this into their contract, and the investors and managers of Blockstream who at least allow it as a term.

Of course, as always, I happen to see sidechains as not only 'right' for Bitcoin but basically Bitcoin's best hope for success.  Naturally this goes some distance toward helping build my confidence in the enterprise as well, and makes it quite understandable why this novel contract agreement bullet-point is acceptable to all.  It would be fascinating to see how the construct stands up in U.S. court (but I hope it doesn't come to that, of course, and am not expecting it.)

furthermore, imo for global adoption to occur, Bitcoin must be free from all conflicts of interest.  it has evolved to the level of a public good.

there was never a storage problem ive said many times that the efficiency of storage is increasing faster than the size of the blockchain by many factors

Despite all promises made, my question was never answered:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhni79

start here and come forward.  it was the day of the WP release:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9292756

we certainly agree there.  and just so you know, i own no altcoin (except for 2 physical LTC smoothie so generously gave me earlier this year) and have no investment in any company or start up.  i simply own bitcoin and am an early adopter from Jan 2011.

oh, and btw, i am honored you are infusing your views here on my thread as i truly believe that inventing the POW scheme is simply awesome.  but why you missed Bitcoin earlier than me is a conundrum!

my view has shifted somewhat but only in the area of block size expansion and well before October's WP release.  JR had alot to do with that.  it's still possible that block size expansion will never occur and in that sense i see Bitcoin evolving to become merely a global reserve currency used to settle international end of day settlements btwn nations.  similar to gold's role years ago but instantaneous and real time.  that would still be a great thing to happen to Bitcoin.  but as i said, Bitcoin does indeed have much potential as a payment platform and for micro tx's.  so if block expansion can be agreed to, then so be it.  i could live with that too as it would also be great for Bitcoin.

but as i said above, i would like to see these monetary innovations applied to the MC so as not to disrupt mining assumptions.  the 2d delay and unpredictable consequences of moving BTC to a less secure scBTC introduce friction in my mind and thus risk despite whatever potential innovation awaits on the SC's.

those projects are new to me, but yeah, homomorphic encryption sounds pretty cool.  anything to increase privacy.   the 2nd project, not as cool as it is pretty clear to me that pool hashing % rates are evening out in a beautiful display of the Nash Equilibrium so i don't think tx meddling is necessary

if it's so hard to get changes to the protocol, why are we seeing useful updates such as header syncing or constant time?  maybe they are more trivial but if something is truly valuable and necessary to get into the protocol, i'm sure the community would rally around that.  maybe the community didn't value your proposals nearly to the degree you did? (no offense intended).  we all have to live with rejection of our ideas sometimes.

no offense, but it's also hard to know how much this Blockstream IPO was affecting the minds of your core dev group over this last year when core protocol progress could have been made.  not saying this happened but ppl like me wonder about this.

and there is nothing wrong with feature coins other than i think they will all fail while cheating ppl at the same time.  at least they're competing on a level playing field with Bitcoin by not asking for source code changes that benefit themselves.  well, maybe they did ask, but they sure aren't getting them yet they plow forward.  and if one of them produces some innovation that is useful, by all means adopt it into Bitcoin.  there's nothing wrong with that process.  yeah, alot of ppl are going to get hurt and lose money along the way but who is a for-profit Blockstream to force  a source code change to eliminate them all?  that is the other way to look at it.

great, then do it if it doesn't involve a source code change.  i have no problem with that.

i'll be sure to try and do that, but yeah, i have multiple problems with SC's and Blockstream so it is hard to focus on one w/o jumping to another.  i do worry that SC's take away from allowing Bitcoin to focus on Sound Money.  you guys have advocated using SC's for all sorts of speculative assets.  that worries me and i think it is a distraction.  i also don't trust the economic assumptions behind the 2wp.  there's no precedent for that and to assume it has no feedback effects on MC is presumptious, imo.  those SC's are not the MC and it will be unrealistic to assume they will be 100% MM'd.  but then you'll say "don't use it".  that's fine for me but there will be ppl who only hear 1:1 100% backed by your original BTC".  those ppl can be duped.  just look at our first shark:  Truthcoin.

incredibly complex.  i have no doubt you can do it.  but does it make sense and will it bring value when presented to the market.  no one knows, including me.  but i do think it is a distraction and that the market won't like it. 

he wrote that article the day your WP came out, or close to it.  it would be interesting to see how his view has changed if any given all the discussion since.

i object and disagree with how you and Greg are now presenting/framing this argument. 

when i first got into Bitcoin back when, i was "sold" on the concept that it was "trustless".  i didn't have to trust any man or group of men (sorry women) to do the right thing.  the open source nature of the protocol was such that nothing would get done unless there was a consensus.   given my study of the rules at that time, i liked what i saw and made an agreement with myself that i would invest accordingly to my own risk tolerance.  i bought those principles hook, line, and sinker. i view Bitcoin as digital gold which is the principle behind this long thread.  but better.  no one can transmute gold atoms into SCgold.  they just are.   

now, i see in Blockstream, a for-profit group of 2 core devs and 3 of the top committers potentially being influenced by a $21M investment from ppl who expect at least a 10x return on their money from SC development for probably anyone willing to pay.  and it's clear this model depends on insertion of the spvp which i view as a transmutation of Bitcoin for the benefit of your company at the expense of altcoin and the platforms like Ethereum, Bitshares and CP.  i think that's unfair.  this guy over on Reddit stated pretty clearly exactly how i feel:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2qtdxi/thoughts_on_sidechains_by_lukas_ryan/cn9txk8?context=3

so i ask you, Adam, why should i do a 180 degree flip in what i was sold back then and now "trust" you to do what's right for Bitcoin when you have a fiduciary duty to do what's right for Blockstream?

I can see the argument.  But wouldnt that have effects on main chain also?  Wouldnt it be more prone to technical and policy / moral hazard failure?

You can view all the off-chain transactions (must be > 90% offchain) that are based on trust, governance and audit as also part of the economic system.  Prime example Mtgox.  Dont get much bigger than that $500m loss.

I think the economic system is at greater risk the longer this offchain model persists.  One of the motivations of some of the people interested in sidechains is to increase transaction volume, smart-contract capabilities to have the tools to migrate the security critical parts of the trust & governance aspects onto the chain - ie replace that trust and governance (which is prone to human failure) with smart-contracts (which are less so).

Its also kind of embarrassing and stupid given that the point of bitcoin smart-contracts is to avoid that risk!  Sort of because of tx volume, missing a few features and largely transaction volume limits, reinventing the mistakes of the past centuries early banking governance failures, with young people with no banking experience running $500m exchanges with basically no separation of duty and probably dumb security also.  Thats also a bad idea for inviting regulation - regulators are trying to protect users from losing money.

You can directly see that people are running scared of losing their money in anything that they are trusting with bitcoin.  Eg delays for wire transfers to clear because they dont want to leave money on exchanges with uncertain governance and security competence.  Thats not good for bitcoin either.

I think sidechains are a net win if its a choice between offchain or on sidechain.  Even if some people are focussed on slow velocity investment, the people that do want them, those transactions will go somewhere and offchain will be it until someone works to solve it.

Feel free to help also.  We're doing plumbing at this stage.  Early adopters could see uptake as people move to on(side)chain offerings in preference to offchain.

Adam

Well yes I have, to save time, you talk too much  Now if you focussed on constructively and impassively analysing the technology and implications, maybe it'd progress faster?


That is not realistically practical, that is exactly what motivated sidechains as an extension mechanism.
So you wont be against the idea of an extension mechanism per se, just the next bit:


You know, not that I am concretely proposing it, but one could shift the reward as a consensus rule into a singleton sidechain.  Or some proportion of it.  (Simple enough to do: use a peg transaction in the coinbase, and make it a sidechain consensus rule that this be the case).  That might address your incentive concern.

Secondly bitcoin transaction fees will need to surpass subsidy soon enough.  At that point there is little difference.

Bitcoin main needs to plan for that day anyway.

The incentive protection for bitcoin is not absolute: it just raises the cost.  If someone can commit a bigger theft (via double-spending etc) they can pay for the lost mining during their failed double-spends before success.  Bitcoin is already vulnerable to the same pattern of attack, and at times we've had the bad situation of near 50% miners, and certainly 2-3 miners that are overwhelming, and yet it doesnt happen.  Clearly there is meta-incentive at work.  It works because the honest majority want it to work, and miners particularly collectively have $500m+ of equipment at risk.


Another possibility to think about is some people talk about litecoin or whatever as backup plan to bitcoin in case of centralisation or catastrophic bug.  Well a sidechain can fulfil that kind of role also.


Yep.


I posted the article http://bitcoinist.net/the-two-ideologies-in-bitcoin/ which came before the podcast and covers more topics & is clearer IMO.

Adam

Coinbase alone has 2,100,000+ user-wallets, which will map pretty darn close to 1:1 with actual people (due to their KYC/AML). Obviously that says nothing about how many people actually have funds in their wallets, but Coinbase's off-chain user holdings probably do account for a significant percentage of the overall userbase that a pure blockchain analysis will miss. While it'd be nice if all users directly controlled funds on-chain, I still count Coinbase users will non-zero balances as "bitcoin users".

Furthermore, I'd count someone as a bitcoin user if they've made a bitcoin transaction in the past 60 days or so.

I think the user-count is likely 1M-3M.

The SnR of bitcointalk.org is so low these days that the only hope of finding useful conversations is in large, long-running threads like this one.

Spammers have completely taken over every other part of the forum.

Gold's liquidity as a MoE was limited by the fact that it had (a not inconsiderable amount of ) mass.

Bitcoin's liquidity as a MoE is limited, not by anything inherent to its capabilities, but due to the fact that its ability to process transactions is artificially constrained by a production quota.

This is not sustainable.

If that production quota is not removed, then Bitcoin will be replaced by another cryptocurrency that lacks such an artificial constraint.

The idea that you can keep the production quota in place and the market will tolerate transacting on sidechains while paying expensive the expensive settlement fees needed to keep Bitcoin around as a unit of account is a economic pipe dream.

If the Bitcoin's blockchain is forbidden from being used for transactions, then the market will replace both Bitcoin and any sidechains that depend on it for a less-restricted currency.

I think the conflict is that if one views bitcoin-plus-sidechains as being an economic system, then "just don't use it" is not a valid response to the concern that the system as a whole is being destabilized. Events in one part of the system may have consequences (including unforeseen consequences) in another part of the system.

As you say, it may be that side chains are implementable within the current bitcoin system without changes, in which case, this is inevitable. This is certainly true for some sort of bitcoin-backed-coin model that involves some sort of trusted intermediary/intermediaries (what the paper calls the federated model). Nothing prevents someone from making a bitcoin-backed-altcoin any more than a weed-backed-altcoin. Putting aside the rather large issue of backer trust, this is equivalent to a side chain.

Thanks.  Indeed, I found a couple of threads with more pertinent titles, but they seem to be dead, nothing like this one.

Should this thread be split and moved to develpment perhaps?

There was also https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pegged-sidechains-pdf-whitepaper-831527

This one is arguably in the wrong thread (speculation between gold & bitcoin?) but whatever.

Adam

go a couple pages back you'll find hundreds in a row

I am trying to find a thread or forum with a currently active discussion of sidechains.  Is this thread the only one?