Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 19277. (Read 26606949 times)

It depends on what sort of decentralization we are talking about. Bitcoin businesses need a PREDICTABLE scaling solution to build their business models around.  Trusting Core to fill the need when the time comes is not decentralized at all. Smallblockers want to maintain node decentralization by centralizing code development.

There is a real need for bigger blocks if we want to use the Blockchain for anything more than a settlement ledger. Core only wants monetary writing to the chain. This is a waste of a precious resource that could be the greatest tool for freedom since the Internet itself.

What about mining centralization? That is the problem that nobody but me is talking about and it means Bitcoin is not censorship resistant to the ChiComs.

If there were businesses running bitcoin blockchain based stock exchanges, bond exchanges, currency exchanges, any equity, really, then those companies would have nodes. Anyone who's business involved writing to an immutable ledger would have a node. Bigger blocks mean more nodes.

Right now the only companies with the incentive to run nodes are onramps like Coinbase and Circle.  One of the Largest, Bitpay, will go out of business or switch to LN and won't run nodes anymore because any transaction under $10 will eventually be too expensive to process if the blocksize isn't allowed to scale. Bitpay sponsored a bowl game and brought Bitcoin awareness to millions. That's the kind of company  smallblockers want to drive out of business?

Todd implied a one line change in his interview

ANOTHER LIE?

You mean... bitcoin done right... I am afraid it is too late for the old bitcoin we are trading, too complicated to change... better start anew...

What he is really saying is he and Blockstream are blocking a 2MB HF even if everyone else wants one.

They keep saying a HF is bad if a small percentage objects to it.

What they are not saying is they object to it and so the 2MB HF should not happen.

Unfortunately Bitcoin is a democratic system.

That's the great thing about soft forks, they can be very contentious™... but rammed through all the same.

If we can't hard fork while a minority disagrees, we will never hard fork again = exactly what they want. Any change desired by the politburo can be soft forked in with enough hacking creativity.

The reason Todd and Blockstream want SegWit first is very simple.

LN requires SegWit in order to work, without SegWit LN is broken.

This is why they are pushing SegWit first. They know that if 2MB blocks happen, once everyone sees how easy it was it will become more difficult push SegWit onto the ecosystem. SegWit is a major overhaul and I could see many more miners and nodes dragging their feet on SegWit once they know the next 4MB change is easy too.

Wall Street doesn't give a toss about decentralization. If it turns out the market doesn't either, eventually a competing hard fork will take Core's place.

O.k.  If we are going to give some kind of meaningful weight to the words of Todd, then even listening to him in the LTB interview, you can also hear him saying that any kind of Hardfork and disagreement is a bad idea to attempt to hardfork with even a few percentage in the minority.

In that regard, even if he is talking about contentiousness in terms of increasing the blocksize limits, he really seems to be asserting the dangers of a hard fork and having people who oppose the hardfork working on the other side of such a hardfork.

So in that regard, even if Todd may be a bit less than artful in the way that he made his claims, he is voicing opposition to a majority forcing some kind of outcome on a minority (thus he is saying something like: "hardforks are dangerous no matter what and we should go through considerable efforts to avoid hardforks, if possible")

When you start seeing these blocks >95% full consistently (a few weeks from now at present rates), expect a market reaction. 

If we see a price increase of >20%, expect the blocks to fill up.

This will slow but not stop the price rise. 

If non-dust transactions quadruple (in a few months and present growth rates), expect a permanent and growing backlog. 

Of course we will see this happening and so it will never happen. People will just migrate to other coins until one of them gets enough market share to suck off most of the new money and Bitcoin will be a collector's coin. A hobby coin forever.  It'll still grow in value,  but at a much slower rate than the new Cryptocoin, the one where wallstreeters get to be early adopters. 

I imagine a coin where blockreward gets reduced by 10% a year instead of dramatic halvings. Blocksize scaling is built in at predictable intervals.  Mining is done on the the more secure SHA512 or something more quantum computer resistant. It may have a full Turing-compliant scripting language for smart contracts, etc.

Awww, isn't that cute.

Chief Scientist, Viacoin [Peter Todd] doesn't want any increase at all... but would be willing to "compromise" with this totally straightforward hack solution called SegWitSoftFork. A situation that would give a 75% fee discount to signature heavy LN transactions, potentially the bandwidth equivalent of 4MB blocks... for 1.3 to 1.7x the amount of transactions... Creating a large number of zombie nodes that don't understand or validate segwit tx is just a bonus.

This is what we are asked to adopt instead of changing a 1 to a 2:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/7404

He's also so principled that he would create an altcoin rather than work on a Bitcoin that HF'd to 2MB through classic.

His arrogance just oozes out, whatever the medium, that interview this week... his twattering...

LN will definitely create centralizing hubs for payment channels, if it is adopted at all... but the "decentralization at any cost" crew is pushing it like their livelihood depends on it. Sure glad we are sacrificing our competitive advantage for these visionaries.

Why the silly word games?


By that definition bitcoin died with the original 32Mb -> 1Mb drop. Its core protocol v. Classic protocol.

More or less, I think that all of your above points are largely fair; however, I don't get why so many people feel that it is necessary to frame the resolution of this scaling question as if a hardfork is actually a necessary component?  That push for a hard fork really means that there is not agreement and is part of the whole contention and resistance to some proposed blocksize increase proposals.

A hard fork, in itself (unless nearly completely unanimous consensus) creates a considerable amount of uncertainty that many core supporters want to avoid.

Therefore, if whatever resolution can be achieved via softfork (and not a contentious hardfork), then there seems to be a lot more flexibility and even acceptance of such proposals from a variety of the core supporters.

Adam, I think you are 100% correct. But I am big block biased. However, statements speak for themselves.




Samson Mow ‏@Excellion  8h8 hours ago
1/ So to talk about safety @digitsu @olivierjanss, first we need to establish a common understanding. What is the end game?
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 Samson Mow ‏@Excellion  8h8 hours ago
2/ Are we taking about switching to Classic to reach 2MB via HF, and then back to Core after they follow with increase?
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 Samson Mow ‏@Excellion  8h8 hours ago
3/ Or is this a permanent switch to Classic forever whereby we abandon Core?
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 Samson Mow ‏@Excellion  8h8 hours ago
4/ and Core keeps writing code & fixing security issues to give to Classic team so they can merge and change 1 to 2 before re-releasing?
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 Samson Mow ‏@Excellion  8h8 hours ago
5/ If it's the latter, we should ask @petertoddbtc @morcosa @pwuille if they are okay with that arrangement. It's the polite thing to do.
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 Olivier Janssens ‏@olivierjanss  8h8 hours ago
@Excellion 1/ We're not here to replace core but to compete on merits. Our priority/goal is to scale Bitcoin on-chain first.
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 Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc  8h8 hours ago
@olivierjanss @Excellion What's relevant here isn't Bitcoin Core vs Bitcoin Classic, but rather, Bitcoin protocol vs Classic protocol.
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 Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc  8h8 hours ago
@olivierjanss @Excellion Protocol competition is a winner take all, as there can only be one winning protocol w/o screwing up BTC economy.
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 Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc  8h8 hours ago
@olivierjanss @Excellion Alternative is protocol development _cooperation_, where compromises can be made between different parties.
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 Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc  8h8 hours ago
@olivierjanss @Excellion e.g. the Bitcoin Core scaling proposal is a significant compromise in how it uses segwit to increase blocksize.
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 Olivier Janssens ‏@olivierjanss  8h8 hours ago
@petertoddbtc @Excellion Compromise to who? Segwit is something Core proposed. Many people want 2MB HF first.
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 Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc  8h8 hours ago
@olivierjanss @Excellion Segwit didn't need to be implemented as blocksize increase; using it to increase blocksize was a compromise.
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Peter Todd
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@olivierjanss @Excellion There's many - including myself - who would prefer to do no increase at all for now. But we must compromise.


My understanding of Todd's position, is that Segwit IS the blocksize increase. /golfclap

What is that from? They look so uncomfortable/out of scale sitting on those (what are those, bar stools? Pool furniture?). Intentional?
Would be funnier if seated in little booster chairs *on top* of those giant ...stool things.

Also, that a '58? Screen partially clogged with dry vomit/things better left unknown? Are they *sharing* it?

I was under the impression core would bump limit eventually.
I was hoping Todd  would confirm that, he didn't, if anything i feel he never wants to touch it, and wants LN to be the solution, that seems to be his end game. and he's willing to use FUD to get people agreeing with him,  classic isn't acting with any more class, but thats no excuse to sink to their level.

I don't think we need 2MB NOW or everything is going to fall apart, but it has to be in the cards, or everything will eventually fall apart. thats my feeling, cheep TX is absolutely necessary for the network to keep growing, thats my view.

Short term, that would do it, but if he really has no intention of ever touching it and says so, then we could get on with this. We are being strung along. 

OTOH, If Core makes it clear that there will be a 2MB hardfork within six months, then both Classic and my short are dust.

What is most likely is that there will be more noncommittal hemming and hawing and a slow realization that we have been played once again. As Classic approaches 50% of nodes, expect a crash. 

Markets hate uncertainty. That is what you want to bet against, not any particular outcome.

Yeah, but Todd is just one of the voices of the core supporters.  Maybe he is vocalizing the general direction of core, but really if he were to assert "never" anything related to blocksize, he is going to be discredited, no?  I mean any "never" is conditioned on a large number of variables, and if he were just expecting that there are going to be other work arounds, he really does not know how it is going to play out 6 months from now or even 2 years from now.  So "never" may end up translating into 6 months, when conditions change, and when the situation needs to be reevaluated, no?



Adam, you really seem to be getting caught up on this Peter Todd thing and even this sense of emergency that we need 2mb now... it's as if you and BJA have traded accounts, because at the moment, even BJA is sounding a bit more measured.   hahahahahhaha

Actually I was far better (in Europe) than most parts of the world.

The only place where speeds were better than Europe was the US. But that didn't involve international traffic (which is what the Internet is about), only domestic traffic - because, in a sense, the majority of Internet content, websites, etc were mostly US-based so the traffic was local to the US.

Still, back in '95, dialup modems were pretty regular for home use in the USA too. There was no ...FTTH and ADSL was on the ...horizon: http://s29.postimg.org/q0hlsbb8n/DSC00023.jpg (Byte / Jan 1996)


You have to remember that user adoption is on a curve which is much faster than technological progression, so less than what the technology is able to give you won't cut it. But allowing spam won't cut it either. So I'd like to have as much as possible, the sooner it becomes technologically feasible, with one slight twist: Serious minimum fees that prevent network abuse for the lolz.

As for latency, latency of miliseconds in a network that operates in 10m windows, is relatively ok. If we are talking about propagation delay, then transmission speed (which has the tendency to scale) plays a huge role. If you have networks that transfer files 10x as fast, you get the job done quicker, thus lowering the propagation time singificantly.