Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 844. (Read 2032266 times)

I also like his responds and Adam Back's.

Now I can consider my original question, "provisionally answered."

So essentially, they want to move towards using the bitcoin blockchain as a timestamping service?  You publish block header hashes and bitcoin timestamps them.  If a court ever needs the records, they can prove that they are unaltered.

You know, when BTC is exploding in adoption I tend to agree with you and see that perhaps BTC will survive in a role almost solely as the world reserve and international value transmission currency.

But when adoption metrics like # wallets, # txns, etc are just barely breaking levels set a year ago, when price is in a persistent downtrend and has supposedly hit the bottom (really this time it really has) several times, when at a guess 99.9% of merchants use a trusted centralized 3rd party payment processor -- no different from paypal or VISA in their ability to freeze your funds... this is when I say it is still very premature to eliminate markets that Bitcoin could optimize or enable.

I liked this response from Greg:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhphi2

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhoo7d

We think there is a tremendous business potential in building and supporting infrastructure in this space, some connected to Bitcoin and some not. E.g. by acting as a technology and services provider for other businesses in helping them migrate to a more Bitcoin-like way of doing business.

I got chills reading this. I have been thinking about this idea for awhile but didn't have a clear idea for how to implement. I am so excited to see such a solid team working on this.

Alternate implementations don't really count unless they are capable of mining, and also used for mining.

btcd meets the first requirement, although AFAIK has not achieved the second (yet).

There are probably many projects which could achieve both goalposts with a bit more development, but have so far been discouraged from trying.

Also Kraken, they do libcoin.  It's basically a somewhat refactored Satoshi client, though, not a complete rewrite.

I think butcoin and gold will follow similar trends.  When the stock market falls off a cliff like I'm sure it will before too long watch gold and BTC explode.

So far, no good answers to the question of mismatched incentives:

https://twitter.com/JustusRanvier/status/525323754709458944

i don't believe that Bitcoin is suitable to take over all those activities.  i see the main problem in today's world to be centered on unlimited money for the few.  Bitcoin solves this and could replace gold as a world reserve currency.  in that sense, it doesn't need tweeking.

you're ignoring the financial moral hazard involved with them running a for profit.  it will distort more than you think.

if Bitcoin becomes a Bitcoin Standard, it will force down leverage in the fiat space, which would still benefit mankind greatly.  it's also the easier path of resistance to the existing TPTB.

i repeat,  it will force down leverage in the fiat space,

Sidechains contribute to this inability to reach agreement.

They just change the argument from "we don't need to raise the limit because altcoins" to "we don't need to raise the limit because sidechains."

If I was a tinfoil hat wearing type, I'd link to documents that show accusing people of being "conspiracy theorist" is a common disruption tactic employed by intelligence agents.

yes and much more :-)

- private sidechains
- sidechain what lives only 1 working day(any duation) - no need to store full transaction history because bitcoins are transfered back to main chain

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

I wouldn't care so much about Blockstream if it wasn't composed of so many of the people who can effectively veto changes to the Bitcoin protocol, and who suddenly have a financial incentive to block protocol changes that are good for the network but bad for their revenue.

If the network was implementation-heterogeneous, then it wouldn't be such a potential problem.

If you really believe in the potential of digital currencies to take over practically every economic transaction, you'd realize that the Bitcoin protocol CAN'T adopt every feature developed in sidechains because some will be conflicting (fast vs slow block times for example).

I'm glad that a significant portion of the dev community is coalescing behind sidechains and honestly I think that part of why they need a company is because of the impossibility of this community to arrive at consensus as individuals.  

We can't even agree to raise the block size limit -- a limitation that, if unchanged will either dramatically limit Bitcoin's applicability, or will cause such high txn fees that a worldwide Bitcoin will be limited to high value transactions.  Either case opens up all kinds of avenues for traditional finances, fiat currencies, etc.  And the only downside is that the home user MAY not be able to run a full node.  

Well let me break it to you, if Bitcoin is so unsuccessful as to not require greater block size then hobbyists will be gone -- the radical, money revolution that Bitcoin promises will be unfulfilled and these people will be on the the next new thing.  And if Bitcoin is wildly, globally, successful with today's block size a single transaction will be so expensive individuals will own zero coins and so be uninterested in running a full node.

I mean come on... If I was a tinfoil hat wearing type, I'd really begin to suspect some of you guys.

We're in violent agreement then.

I myself am in the process of setting up a full node, I wanted to try the latest improvements recently committed in the bitcoin core master branch. Maybe it's time to give btcd a try and if I'm quick I could set up an obelisk server too.

Though I think this is ortogonal to sidechains concept as long as every full node incarnation could implement such feature.

where is the AMA?  wasn't it supposed to start 12 min ago?

it already is the leader.  and i'm not fan of altscams as you should know.  they are taking much needed capital away from Bitcoin but this seems to be resolving itself slowly.  nothing wrong with patience is there?

i keep saying this but i don't think the market will like a constant loss of BTC over time from Sidescams.  we already have a perception of not having enough coins from mainstream economists.  just heard one say this last weekend at Hasher's United.

it could cause a paradox in price action; down.

Nobody would use that sidechain if those new coins/tokens were not backed in some other manner.


Just like everything else in this world from used cars to altcoins you can get scammed.  One "sidescam" does not mean sidechains are a bad idea.

The classic example of a valuable sidechain is one that allows native support for other securities, bonds, backed commodities, including atomic anonymous decentralized exchange.  This can be done more efficiently than overlay coins.

You could imagine geographically isolated sidechains that take alleviate the scalability issues with Bitcoin.

You could imagine a chain that orders potential transactions on an average of a 5 second window, potentially in a pseudo-centralized manner.  For example, the entity that found the prior block gets to order potential transactions until the next block is found.  This could solve the zero-confirmation problem.

You could imagine something supporting decentralized data storage, or any other collective enterprise from DACs to web forums.  Demurrage pays your monthly membership fees (which pay the developers of the system), but you can buy and sell data storage out of this account so if you offer enough storage into the system your monthly fees are paid and you even make money.

You could imagine "inverting" the bitcoin database so the UTXO set is what is mined, and the blockchain is the history of UTXOs.  This and other features could make a blockchain that is much lighter-weight for non-miners.  The advantage here is that hardware wallets could be made smaller, for less money and more functionality put on the wallet vs the POS.

I think that services that use microtransactions haven't appeared yet because it is a totally new concept, because it is inconvenient with bitcoin, and because they are accused of being blockchain spam.  But, I think we will start seeing them on the bitcoin ledger because altcoins are failing and because the SEC may start looking at appcoins (or at least pre-sales of them) as a security.  Then the blockchain will truly go exponential and you guys will get to experience the fruits of your labor to marginalize these technologies.