Coin
Explanation
Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 19414. (Read 26610403 times)
February 07, 2016, 03:01:22 AM
February 07, 2016, 02:53:35 AM
The guy tried his best to help fix a problem and was treated as shit for it.
Maybe he should have tried harder to write some actual code.
February 07, 2016, 02:01:28 AM
February 07, 2016, 01:01:22 AM
February 07, 2016, 12:18:13 AM
We are nowhere close to "everything will suck soon" tm. You guys have been saying that for a year now btw.
Actually several years. We've been repeatedly pointing at the same stupid, unnecessary hard ceiling, and pointing out that the inexorable trend of increasing transactions has us on a clear intersect.
In the meantime, we have recently gone from things never sucking in regards to capacity, to things sucking for brief flashes of time. The issue is not how much one needs to pay to get a transaction through, the issue is that with the current block size, no more than about 350,000 transactions can be processed in a day. Period. No matter how much money is thrown at the transactions.
Here's what those two non-parallel lines would look like if the bump to 2MB occurs May 1:
February 07, 2016, 12:01:33 AM
February 06, 2016, 11:01:38 PM
February 06, 2016, 10:56:44 PM
February 06, 2016, 10:41:30 PM
So, yep, I already understood the concepts
I thought you probably did. Sorry for the use of unfamiliar jargon.
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At this point, I believe that the "emergency" is much exaggerated, and not as bit of a deal as it is being made out to be. That does not mean that NO action need be taken now, but it likely means that we do not need to rush into a solution that is imposed without considering various alternatives.
Look - I get that you're relatively new here. But rest assured we have been discussing this very issue for several years. Without that perspective in the rear view mirror, you may feel that the urgency is exaggerated. But to those of us who have been tracking this incipient problem for years, the situation does indeed appear dire.
I find it a bit curious that you want to suggest that I have arrived at my conclusion because I am "relatively new here."
No slight intended. I formed the impression that you thought the discussion over the max block size was a recent phenomenon. I just meant to point out that it has been ongoing for years.
The issue is that, once the lines intersect, growth is limited at the 'about 350,000' transactions a day level. The upward trending line of transactions a day flatlines - limited at the intersect to the system capacity. She can' take any more, cap'n'
Yes. I mostly agree with the concept that you are describing to be one of apparent increasing block sizes and limited capacity; however, your trajectory assumes that nothing is being done or that there is no implementation before or during that time that can adequately address the situation. We are certainly not at your tragic point yet, and from what I can tell, it seems that we are quite a distance, still from that point.. whether it is a year or some other time frame, but even if we have been crossing into that point of congestion during current times, I have not been hearing too many convincing stories regarding any current problems (besides some anecdotal claims and seeming exaggerations of problems that are not really attributable to currently full blocks). Too many ongoing exaggerations are being bandied about on an ongoing basis.
By 'trajectory' do you mean to denote the rate of growth in the transactions per day? For there is nothing that _can_ be done about this curve. It just is, and reflects all the multitudinous decisions that scores of independent actors arrive at in their usage of the blockchain. It is a reflection of the actual amount of use that people are getting out of Bitcoin. Accordingly, there is nothing to be done about the trajectory. What we can do something about is the capacity for transactions per unit time.
When should such a change come about? I would advocate ASAP. The 50% bet, based upon a 2x/year extrapolation, is somewhat less than a year. But what if we get a surge in adoption? For we don't know when the next great influx will arrive. If it happens next month, we will have scores of befuddled newcomers utterly unable to comprehend where there money disappeared to. With attendant widely-published horror stories. Which runs a very good chance of shunting these -- and future -- newcomers onto some other system. One without such a stupid artificial restriction.
You may claim that nearly a year is enough time to work things out. And that is the ~50% probability (assuming the 2x per year is a good curve fit). But those who have been around this for a while know that this animal seems to get adopted in fits and starts. If we had a proportional spike like we did in Jul, or in Sep, or in Dec, the system could not handle the volume. Period. No capacity whatsoever. If it was a spike, the backlog would eventually clear out. But how would the newcomers feel about their money being in limbo for a month? And what if it would have been Bitcoin's eternal September - we would kill all prospects of an explosion in adoption like the Internet experienced in 1993.
It seems to me that when you describe more or less exacting timelines of a year or some impending soon time into the near future, that is an oversimplification to suggest that this is largely a math problem that a certain number of usages is going to bring us into this filled up capacity... I'm thinking you must have thought something other than you typed here. A certain number of usages will indeed "bring us into this filled up capacity". This is pure math. The consequences that fall out of such an event can be debated, but the capacity is the capacity. The math is the math. It ain't even sophisticated math. Simple elementary school arithmetic will suffice.
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Yes, some evolving situations (whether expected or not) are going to cause a bit more senses of urgency regarding blocks fullness, but in the end, I feel fairly optimistic that the bitcoin blockchain is strong enough to survive a variety of attacks from a variety of angles... to adjust to the the attacks and to the overclogging, and likely bitcoin participants will also, from time to time, suffer from some delays in processing their transactions, here and there, and it will not be the end of the world or the end of bitcoin.
First, the problem is not "a variety of attacks from a variety of angles". The problem is simple usage of Bitcoin, in the manner it was designed to be operated, absent a change in the max block size, is limited to 'about 350,000' transactions a day. Period. If more transactions than this are attempted, for a sustained period, those transactions will not be simply delayed. The excess over 'about 350,000' per day will never clear.
February 06, 2016, 10:39:52 PM
I am genuinely looking forward to seeing what response you, brg444, icebreaker, hdbuck et al. provide for our entertainment if the network actually forks to classic and no disaster occurs. All that brazen supercilious venom spewed over the last year with potentially nothing to show for haha.
I'm glad you're finding it hilarious. I don't. Because I invested non-trivial portion of my portfolio into Bitcoin and I'd hate it all to go "poof!" if a hostile hard fork backfires and the net DOES split into two. Are you willing to bet ALL your BTC that this has a zero chance of happening? I would not be so sure.
Still got time to cut your loose
*Not much tho, look at them Classic nodes springing up! Like mushrooms after an autumn rain
Actually, those classic nodes are more like fungus spreading on the corpses of XT/unlimited nodes.
February 06, 2016, 10:27:04 PM
I am genuinely looking forward to seeing what response you, brg444, icebreaker, hdbuck et al. provide for our entertainment if the network actually forks to classic and no disaster occurs. All that brazen supercilious venom spewed over the last year with potentially nothing to show for haha.
I'm glad you're finding it hilarious. I don't. Because I invested non-trivial portion of my portfolio into Bitcoin and I'd hate it all to go "poof!" if a hostile hard fork backfires and the net DOES split into two. Are you willing to bet ALL your BTC that this has a zero chance of happening? I would not be so sure.
yes, best to allow some private company with their own and their VC's agenda to take over bitcoin and dictate its development. surely that's what you signed up for.
Some corporation or other will always be there to try to bareback our little network. I'm calling it the Fidelity problem.
February 06, 2016, 10:22:13 PM
I am genuinely looking forward to seeing what response you, brg444, icebreaker, hdbuck et al. provide for our entertainment if the network actually forks to classic and no disaster occurs. All that brazen supercilious venom spewed over the last year with potentially nothing to show for haha.
I'm glad you're finding it hilarious. I don't. Because I invested non-trivial portion of my portfolio into Bitcoin and I'd hate it all to go "poof!" if a hostile hard fork backfires and the net DOES split into two. Are you willing to bet ALL your BTC that this has a zero chance of happening? I would not be so sure.
yes, best to allow some private company with their own and their VC's agenda to take over bitcoin and dictate its development. surely that's what you signed up for.
February 06, 2016, 10:14:53 PM
where's dev
Are we on fork?
Maybe I will have to measure more preciselyin the future to see how long it is taking in actuality- [...]
Or stop making shit up. That works too
Yeah right. A rough estimate can be different from precise timing, and yep I agree that no one likes anyone who exaggerates.
I think that I tend to not worry whether it takes 15 minutes or an hour or perhaps a day in some instances for the bitcoins to actually be available because I tend to maintain a sufficient balance in Bitcoin and dollars to provide a bit of a cushion for possible volatility. Therefore if I'm really worried about having some bitcoins locked up in one place for an extended period of time (more than 15 minutes, for example), I could sell an equal or proportionate amount of bitcoins in another place.
And, yep I can imagine instance in which the cushion of bitcoins would not be there for me for one reason or another, or possible the amount of bitcoins in the pending transaction is really high, so it's more difficult to maintain a cushion or to sell somewhere else .
I suppose if I were dealing in some hypothetical situations in which I needed access to the bitcoins more quickly then I would need to measure more the amount of time more precisely for actual availability versus the bitcoins just showing up as "pending."
I also recognize that other people may experience other kinds of use cases that make it better to have actual access to the coins more quickly, and there are some people who do not operate their lives with various cushions in their finances, so they get a bit more anxious through either inadvertence or lack of preparations.
One of the USPs of Bitcoin is its fluidity. Being able to move funds in less than an hour, instead of (business) days. No need to maintain "cushions", of your own or rented (credit cards). Creating blockchain traffic jams sacrifices that huge advantage of Bitcoin.
I'm not sure about whether we may be talking about two separate things.
Surely, I do not expect people to engage in the same kinds of practices as me; however, for almost two years before October 2015, I mostly was in the mode of accumulating bitcoin, and whenever I made any transaction, I would replace whatever bitcoins that I used.
Since October 2015, I have begun to trade bitcoin, and in essence I believe trading bitcoin (to some degree) helps to protect my investment from some of the up and down volatility.
Some day in the future, we may be able to measure bitcoin in terms of some other thing rather than the dollar; however, in current times, bitcoin remains quite volatile in terms of the dollar. Yes, in a lot of instances, there is much more upside potential in being about to move bitcoin around a lot cheaper than the dollar, yet I am still at a point, in my bitcoin investment, that I feel that it is necessary to have these various cushions in place in order to protect me from some of the volatility.
Actually, also, since I have these various systems in place, I also find it to be the case that I can buy and sell bitcoins at a profit no matter what is the price direction, but I sill am involved in quite a bit of record keeping and juggling a variety of bitcoin accounts in order to achieve such profits in trading and in engaging in bitcoin transactions.
Accordingly, I agree with you that in a large number of cases (and the various systems that I use on a regular basis), in most cases it is way way way faster to move around bitcoins in a fairly low fee way than to move around dollars. The only exception seems to be if there is a transaction going from accounts within the same bank or cash transfers into banks. Otherwise, bitcoin is much faster and less expensive.
February 06, 2016, 10:01:32 PM
February 06, 2016, 09:36:44 PM
Any minute now...
February 06, 2016, 09:31:49 PM
I am genuinely looking forward to seeing what response you, brg444, icebreaker, hdbuck et al. provide for our entertainment if the network actually forks to classic and no disaster occurs. All that brazen supercilious venom spewed over the last year with potentially nothing to show for haha.
I'm glad you're finding it hilarious. I don't. Because I invested non-trivial portion of my portfolio into Bitcoin and I'd hate it all to go "poof!" if a hostile hard fork backfires and the net DOES split into two. Are you willing to bet ALL your BTC that this has a zero chance of happening? I would not be so sure.
Still got time to cut your loose
*Not much tho, look at them Classic nodes springing up! Like mushrooms after an autumn rain
Core will merge BIP 102 or whatever and boom, straight to the moom.
February 06, 2016, 09:19:43 PM
Accordingly, I still have troubles understanding when the blocksize and/or scaling issues are presented as "an emergency."
Do you understand the principle of non-parallel lines in a two-dimensional cartesian coordinate system?
No. I don't understand: "non-parallel lines in a two-dimensional cartesian coordinate system."
Do I need to understand "non-parallel lines in a two-dimensional cartesian coordinate system" ...
In order to have an informed position of the severity of the problem, yes.
But first, let me step back. I may have befuddled you with jargon, and jargon may differ from time to time and from place to place. But the concept is pretty simple, and I imagine you grasp it intuitively, if not intellectually by the jargon I employed.
After reading through the explanation of your post, I surely do seem to understand the concept of these two line trajectories coming together.
One line is an upward trajectory of the level of fill of the blocks and the other line is a maximum limit of the blocks (which is described as historically being flat).
So, yep, I already understood the concepts and they dynamics of the various arguments for quite a while there has been a considerable amount of discussion on the topic, and I understand the basic aspects of the claims being set forth, otherwise I would not chime in here at all, if i did not understand the basics.
In a two-dimensional plane, two lines that are not parallel will eventually intersect. This is a geometric mathematical law. Let us illustrate the concept with an example: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions
What we are looking at is a chart of the number of Bitcoin blockchain transactions per day, plotted against the time axis of the last year. While it is very noisy, we can see that the trend over this year interval is that the number of transactions is clearly rising.
If we wanted to, we could engage in a process called 'curve fitting', where we kind of average out the high-frequency highs and lows, to show more of the trend, and less of the day-to-day variation. Even a moving 7-day average filters out a lot of spikiness: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints=false×pan=&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=
As we filter out the day-to-day noise, we get a curve that we can use to extrapolate into the future, to make educated assumptions about what is likely to happen to that quantity as time passes.
Yes, I more or less agree with you regarding the fact that when we make a projection of the future, we make a variety of educated assumptions.
We make educated assumptions about the future trajectory based on the past and present conditions and the expected future conditions. The degree to which those assumptions are correct depend upon a variety of factors including whether we take into account all of the factors and if we are very good at understanding the whole situation including whether behaviors are going to change based on the trajectories.
We also may incorporate too many conclusions about various anticipated trajectories, if we inadequately explain the reasons for various past or present performance (for example, if there have been some purposeful spamming of the bitcoin network in order to make the blocks appear larger, then that could falsely make the blocks appear to be more full than they actually are, on average).
Let us now perform a curve fitting to a straight line - while this may not have great fidelity to the past, in the absence of additional info, it is about the best we can hope for as a prediction tool. Eyeballing the graph, we see that we have gone from 'about 90,000' transactions a day one year ago to 'about 180,000' transactions today now. Or roughly doubled in a year.
So let us mark a point today at 180,000, and another point one year ago at 90,000, and draw a straight line through these points.
So there is one of our non-parallel lines. For the other, we need a representation of the max transactions per day that can be processed, based upon the max block size. Today, that number is 'about 350,000'. A year ago, and in all the intervening time, that number is 'about 350,000'. Before that, dating back to the time the 1MB limit was put in place as a temporary DoS avoidance scheme (back when bitcoins were cheap as pennies, BTW), that number was 'about 350,000'.
To represent this on our graph, let us draw a mental line straight across from left to right at the level above the current graph, where 350,000 would be if we preserved the Y axis scale. This is our other non-parallel line.
So with the max block size fixed at 1MB, yielding a hard limit of 'about 350,000' transactions a day, we can project the slope of our actual transactions per day line into the future. We find that they intersect at a point somewhat less than a year away.
So let us mark a point today at 180,000, and another point one year ago at 90,000, and draw a straight line through these points.
So there is one of our non-parallel lines. For the other, we need a representation of the max transactions per day that can be processed, based upon the max block size. Today, that number is 'about 350,000'. A year ago, and in all the intervening time, that number is 'about 350,000'. Before that, dating back to the time the 1MB limit was put in place as a temporary DoS avoidance scheme (back when bitcoins were cheap as pennies, BTW), that number was 'about 350,000'.
To represent this on our graph, let us draw a mental line straight across from left to right at the level above the current graph, where 350,000 would be if we preserved the Y axis scale. This is our other non-parallel line.
So with the max block size fixed at 1MB, yielding a hard limit of 'about 350,000' transactions a day, we can project the slope of our actual transactions per day line into the future. We find that they intersect at a point somewhat less than a year away.
I appreciate your detailed and well presented explanation. I am pretty sure that I had already understood the various arguments regarding the factual claims, yet there is no harm done when you present various details in order that we all understand that we are talking about the same thing, more or less.. or at least we have various reference points to determine the extent to which we may disagree regarding some of the underlying facts.
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At this point, I believe that the "emergency" is much exaggerated, and not as bit of a deal as it is being made out to be. That does not mean that NO action need be taken now, but it likely means that we do not need to rush into a solution that is imposed without considering various alternatives.
Look - I get that you're relatively new here. But rest assured we have been discussing this very issue for several years. Without that perspective in the rear view mirror, you may feel that the urgency is exaggerated. But to those of us who have been tracking this incipient problem for years, the situation does indeed appear dire.
I find it a bit curious that you want to suggest that I have arrived at my conclusion because I am "relatively new here."
Yes, surely forum members have varying levels of experience and participation in bitcoin, and also people who participate in forums have a variety of life experiences. You have no real information regarding the level of my experiences that may well inform my conclusions and opinions in different ways from you.
Furthermore, in bitcoin years, I am NOT exactly a newbie, even though from time to time, I may ask some basic question or present some naive ideas...
In any event, I am not claiming to be any kind of expert in the scaling debate, but I also know enough about the matter in order to express my current opinions.
I remain of the conclusion, based on the evidence that I have to date, that there is quite a bit of hype and exaggerations in the claims of an emergency... Surely, Mike Hearn is one of the representative examples of exaggeration, hype, temper tantrums and unnecessary hype and whining, and there are some others who have also suggested that they want to engage in various kinds of sabotaging and denigrating efforts of bitcoin in order to make their points that scaling needs to take place in an expedited way and also to attempt to get the attention of core developers... blah blah blah...
I'm not really taking sides, even though some people would assert that I am because I am not currently seeing an emergency need for some immediate increase in the block size limits, but I still believe, all in due time, and various efforts are being made to address some of these block size issues.. and even if some worse case scenarios (of continuously full blocks) were to take place, then at that point various emergency measures could be taken (whether temporary or permanent).
So, anyhow, some of the spamming of the block activities and other denigrations of bitcoin seem to be quite premature and seem merely attempts to drive bitcoin prices lower for selfish or anti-bitcoin reasons, rather than reflective of any impending emergency in bitcoin or any kind of meaningful defect in bitcoin.
Bitcoin is an amazing and powerful phenomenon in spite of some of the weaknesses of decentralized decision making.
So, whether we have been tracking the problem for a long period of time (such as 5 years) or for less of a time (a few months), we are able to have opinions and to express our opinions and the bases for our opinions, and even to adapt the opinions to the extent that the circumstances change (or if we need to adapt our opinions because of otherwise unknown facts or logical conclusions that we have subsequently learned).
The issue is that, once the lines intersect, growth is limited at the 'about 350,000' transactions a day level. The upward trending line of transactions a day flatlines - limited at the intersect to the system capacity. She can' take any more, cap'n'
Yes. I mostly agree with the concept that you are describing to be one of apparent increasing block sizes and limited capacity; however, your trajectory assumes that nothing is being done or that there is no implementation before or during that time that can adequately address the situation.
We are certainly not at your tragic point yet, and from what I can tell, it seems that we are quite a distance, still from that point.. whether it is a year or some other time frame, but even if we have been crossing into that point of congestion during current times, I have not been hearing too many convincing stories regarding any current problems (besides some anecdotal claims and seeming exaggerations of problems that are not really attributable to currently full blocks). Too many ongoing exaggerations are being bandied about on an ongoing basis.
You may claim that nearly a year is enough time to work things out. And that is the ~50% probability (assuming the 2x per year is a good curve fit). But those who have been around this for a while know that this animal seems to get adopted in fits and starts. If we had a proportional spike like we did in Jul, or in Sep, or in Dec, the system could not handle the volume. Period. No capacity whatsoever. If it was a spike, the backlog would eventually clear out. But how would the newcomers feel about their money being in limbo for a month? And what if it would have been Bitcoin's eternal September - we would kill all prospects of an explosion in adoption like the Internet experienced in 1993.
It seems to me that when you describe more or less exacting timelines of a year or some impending soon time into the near future, that is an oversimplification to suggest that this is largely a math problem that a certain number of usages is going to bring us into this filled up capacity...
I really don't recognize the purported fullness of the bitcoin blocks as a pure math problem that exists in some kind of isolated social political vacuum, because we continue to have actions and reactions of a lot of individuals. There are bitcoin users deciding whether and how to use bitcoin, there are miners deciding whether and how to mine bitcoin, there are software developers deciding whether and how to write and attempt to implement code... there are investors and infrastructure developers and politicians and the list goes on and on regarding the variety of influences on bitcoin and its decentralized public ledger with a currency and a variety of adjustments along the way and likely continuing to be a lot of adjustments along the way with regards to the many players... oh and also price speculators... hahahahaha
Yes, some evolving situations (whether expected or not) are going to cause a bit more senses of urgency regarding blocks fullness, but in the end, I feel fairly optimistic that the bitcoin blockchain is strong enough to survive a variety of attacks from a variety of angles... to adjust to the the attacks and to the overclogging, and likely bitcoin participants will also, from time to time, suffer from some delays in processing their transactions, here and there, and it will not be the end of the world or the end of bitcoin.
In other words, the problem is not as black and white as many of the naysayers are making it out to be or the importance that they are giving to this scaling "problem."
The end of bitcoin and negativism seems to be moreso described by the various folks that assert that bitcoin "has to scale" or "bitcoin will die" or lose out to competition or somehow develop into an inferior product.
Bitcoin remains resilient and strong and there is going to be an ongoing influx and outflux of people into bitcoin, and surely, an overclogged network of blocks is not a bad problem to have. It's like going to a packed bar, and saying that the bar must not be successful because it is so full of people......
Yes, the bar of bitcoin will expand and yes, bitcoin is going to be able to serve more and more and more people and purposes.. without having to jump into any rash and ill thought out directions (even though some people may feel adamant that bitcoin needs to develop in the ill thought out direction of scaling immediately (without any further thought to the matter) ).
note: this is a napkin analysis. Quibbling on the actual numbers does not affect the outcome of 'we are indeed running out of time'.
yes, I understand that you are making a quickie analysis and presentation of the scaling issue and your perception of the urgency of such issue, and don't expect that I am going to get caught up upon the various technicalities of your assertions in order to engage in disingenuous arguments with you.
There is nothing wrong with people having different opinions on these topics, and we will certainly see how the scaling matter and all plays out in the coming months and years.
I do get a bit bothered, sometimes, when posters attempt to describe the problem in black and white terms in order that they can assert that they are on the right side of the debate, and TLDR:::: the problems of bitcoin scaling is not as black and white as it is made out to be.. and it is not as emergent as it is made out to be by the ones trying to rush implementation of some kind of immediate block size increase.
February 06, 2016, 09:01:24 PM
February 06, 2016, 08:48:02 PM
I am genuinely looking forward to seeing what response you, brg444, icebreaker, hdbuck et al. provide for our entertainment if the network actually forks to classic and no disaster occurs. All that brazen supercilious venom spewed over the last year with potentially nothing to show for haha.
I'm glad you're finding it hilarious. I don't. Because I invested non-trivial portion of my portfolio into Bitcoin and I'd hate it all to go "poof!" if a hostile hard fork backfires and the net DOES split into two. Are you willing to bet ALL your BTC that this has a zero chance of happening? I would not be so sure.
Still got time to cut your loose
*Not much tho, look at them Classic nodes springing up! Like mushrooms after an autumn rain
February 06, 2016, 08:41:31 PM
I am genuinely looking forward to seeing what response you, brg444, icebreaker, hdbuck et al. provide for our entertainment if the network actually forks to classic and no disaster occurs. All that brazen supercilious venom spewed over the last year with potentially nothing to show for haha.
I'm glad you're finding it hilarious. I don't. Because I invested non-trivial portion of my portfolio into Bitcoin and I'd hate it all to go "poof!" if a hostile hard fork backfires and the net DOES split into two. Are you willing to bet ALL your BTC that this has a zero chance of happening? I would not be so sure.