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Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 20972. (Read 26610008 times)

hero member
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When Alex talks, just shut up and listen. It's a great post and it deserved to be bumped.

So which is it? You want smaller block size so we only use bitcoin for settlements or you want people to be their own banks? You can't have both.

I'm just pointing out that even with not so many transactions, you don't simply "die" - and evidence of that is the marketcap and mobility of gold, because bitcoin is not simply a payment system, but also a store-of-wealth system.

BTC's transaction capacity was always small, and even with 8 or 32mb blocks, it's still small.

If just 10% of the global population used BTC, and they did an average of just 1 transaction per day, we'd need blocks larger than 1 GB.

Suppose we make it 1GB per block, to "scale". What will happen then? Will it "scale", or will it simply become unusable? It's a bullshit argument that "bigger is better" in this case. It isn't.

And what if we take the scenario of the entire population using it, with an avg of 2 tx per day, which requires >20gb per block?

Bitcoin will not scale to the level you want it to and definitely not by simply increasing the block size. It needs smart methods to do so.

The fact that BTC requires a lot of resources to scale, should make it expensive to use those resources. Seeing dust transactions that take up space for minimum fees, is already too painful to watch.

Quote
This is like the people who worried that browsers would clog up internet traffic back in the early nineties. or  worries about picture files. or sound files. or video.  1TB hard drives are cheaper than a carton of cigarettes. Next year 10 TB drives will be.  It's a bullshit argument.

Nobody in the Elite would benefit from abusing network resources back then. However, the situation is different with the blockchain which, if you supply the tools to abuse it, it will be abused and bloated and rendered unusable.

Have you asked potential bitcoin users, whether they are interested in downloading TBs of blockchain before using it?

We'll send all these potential guys to use online wallets or online-based wallets, meaning a centralized ecosystem?

Besides, the cartel in the HDD industry, reminds me of the stagnation in the CPU industry after AMD lost the plot and Intel didn't rush things much in terms of evolution.

I think it was early 2011 when I bought my WD 1TB for like 60 euros, and it still costs nearly the same: I'm not seeing any serious price reduction. So HD prices don't scale as much as we'd like.

Quote
The urgency isn't even in block size or scalability. The urgency is in fixing the goddamn decision-making process among the core devs.  You think Hearn was wrong about that?

Yes he was. There wasn't any urgency or crisis that demonstrated a breakdown of the decision-making process. The dev team acknowledged that scaling improvements can be done, they issued BIPs and were debating what's the best.

Is it some kind of best practices when someone comes along and says, yes, we'll do this, and if we don't, we'll fork it? 

If Hearn's dictatorship plan passes, there will be no core devs remaining to even have a decision process. I doubt any will stay to be ordered by the "dictatorship" of Andersen/Hearn. Who will maintain bitcoin then? Hearn -who isn't very active- and Andersen? That's not going to work and it's extremely bad for the future of Bitcoin.

In the end of the day, if you ask me what Bitcoin-dev-team will do the best for the currency, it's a no brainer that current core-devs are far better, active and responsible than XT's devs.
8up
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Satoshi's vision originally was that eventually block subsidies and fees would likely not cover the costs of mining, but that institutions with an interest in keeping the network secure would spend funds to secure it. Even so, 10% of market cap yearly seems like an unreasonable cost. The end user must pay that in the end.

if bitcoin becomes the new reference standard (in 20 years+) there will be enough incentive to secure the network even if return is negative.
legendary
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Quote
1) Bitcoin block rewards will eventually become infinitesimal, at that point transaction fees will be the only rewards miners get. Right now transaction fees are around 0.1-0.5 BTC per block, which is nowhere near enough funding to secure the network by itself. We need transaction fees to go up, and the only thing that will force them up is the blocksize limit. Increasing block size might cause fundamental damage to Bitcoin due to this.

2) Currently average block size is less than 0.4 mb now that the stress test bullshit is over. Gonna be a long time until we even hit the 1 mb limit.
[Snip chart, you've seen it already...]
3) Once we hit the 1 mb limit free and nearly no fee transactions will be forced off chain. There is TONS of dust, spam, and gambling that can be done off chain. Over half of all Bitcoin transactions right now are basically dusty junk. This will make plenty of room for legitimate transactions.

4) Once almost all the junk is forced off chain the rise in fees will be very gradual, and it will take a long time for the fees to become an issue for people. In any case the blockchain will function perfectly fine regardless of transaction data volume, fees will simply rise.

If fees ever do get too crazy I'd support a block size limit increase too, but I don't expect that to happen for over a decade if ever.

5) Hard fork of Bitcoin is dangerous and can result in mass confusion, double spends, and loss of Bitcoins. It will damage the value of Bitcoin at least temporarily.

6) We need to maintain a group of scientists which reach a consensus, not just centralize Bitcoin under a couple of developers.

Feel free to add if I missed any.


1: A limited block size is not the only thing that can force fees up. Miners can choose to not process 0-fee transactions, and likely would if they find rewards aren't sufficient to cover their costs. That's the whole idea, isn't it? Miners choose what fees they require and the market sorts it out. The block size limit was put in to prevent bloating of the blockchain itself. Setting a hard limit on transactions per second was not the goal.

2:
From that chart, and the longer-term version of it, it looks like we'll probably hit 1 MB some time in 2016, assuming the rate of growth remains the same.

4: I'll address this more generally below

5: Hard fork isn't great, I think we can agree on that. Consensus would be better if it can be found.

6: The problem is, there's no consensus on design goals: How many transactions per second should Bitcoin support? Should it be a backbone for serious financial industry or a payment network for Joe Q. Public? Lacking a common vision on that, it's no wonder there's difficulty agreeing on engineering solutions.

I'd recommend reading these posts by DeathAndTaxes and jl2012:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/permanently-keeping-the-1mb-anti-spam-restriction-is-a-great-idea-946236 - DeathAndTaxes :"Permanently keeping the 1MB (anti-spam) restriction is a great idea, if you are a bank."
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/what-is-the-optimal-block-size-1054482 - jl2012: "What is the optimal block size"

The more salient points:
-currently the network supports about 2.3 TPS. 7TPS average is an estimate based on every transaction being the smallest possible size, which doesn't happen in real life.
-If you wanted Bitcoin to grow, say,  to half the size of PayPal, you'd need it to handle about 70 TPS.
-Given we're likely to hit or get close to the 1 mb ceiling within a year or so, and given you really want to have a solution that's announced well in advance and tested thoroughly, it seems time to start doing something.

Another point that relates to miner costs is that currently blockchain maintenance costs (as per DeathAndTaxes) roughly 10% of the Bitcoin market cap, each year. Maintaining that cost does not seem like a good goal. The question is: How secure does the network need to be? Currently, looking at the amount of money spent securing it vs. the valuation of the currency, it seems pretty damn secure - but is there any reason to assume we're at an optimal point? Why should we try to keep miner profitability up if the result is decreased cost-efficiency? Efficiency is supposed to be a main marketing point for Bitcoin, right?

Satoshi's vision originally was that eventually block subsidies and fees would likely not cover the costs of mining, but that institutions with an interest in keeping the network secure would spend funds to secure it. Even so, 10% of market cap yearly seems like an unreasonable cost. The end user must pay that in the end.

legendary
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Bitcoin Legal Tender Countries: 2 of 206
Ideally a 2MB bump by 2016 with some serious vetting viability of the lightning network.

to lift the blocksize to 2MB may be enough for the next years. a automated lift mechanism in the code may not be suitable because of the fragility of the economic parameters. this should be watched by humans.
legendary
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legendary
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I personally think the limit to block size is not the one in code, but mining and propagation.

Larger blocks are slower to propagate, and have a greater chance of being orphaned. SPV mining and 1 transactions blocks are already regular.

IMHO that's where there is the greater risk in terms of bitcoin scalability: it is currently risky (in terms of profit) to pack too many transactions in a block, as block rewards go down, all low-fee tx will be filtered out by miners, and they will strive to make small blocks packed with high fee tx.

It just does not make sense (from a miner PoV) to have large blocks (higher risk of orphans) unless fees are sufficient.

So  the blocksize may ultimately be irrelevant in terms of fees, propagation speed will be the name of the game (at least for profit-oriented pools).
legendary
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Viva Ut Vivas
Anyone in support of a blocksize increase is a moron, a plague to Bitcoin.


Quote
1) Bitcoin block rewards will eventually become infinitesimal, at that point transaction fees will be the only rewards miners get. Right now transaction fees are around 0.1-0.5 BTC per block, which is nowhere near enough funding to secure the network by itself. We need transaction fees to go up, and the only thing that will force them up is the blocksize limit. Increasing block size might cause fundamental damage to Bitcoin due to this.

2) Currently average block size is less than 0.4 mb now that the stress test bullshit is over. Gonna be a long time until we even hit the 1 mb limit.



3) Once we hit the 1 mb limit free and nearly no fee transactions will be forced off chain. There is TONS of dust, spam, and gambling that can be done off chain. Over half of all Bitcoin transactions right now are basically dusty junk. This will make plenty of room for legitimate transactions.

4) Once almost all the junk is forced off chain the rise in fees will be very gradual, and it will take a long time for the fees to become an issue for people. In any case the blockchain will function perfectly fine regardless of transaction data volume, fees will simply rise.

If fees ever do get too crazy I'd support a block size limit increase too, but I don't expect that to happen for over a decade if ever.

5) Hard fork of Bitcoin is dangerous and can result in mass confusion, double spends, and loss of Bitcoins. It will damage the value of Bitcoin at least temporarily.

6) We need to maintain a group of scientists which reach a consensus, not just centralize Bitcoin under a couple of developers.

Feel free to add if I missed any.


So please feel free to go f#ck yourselves along with gavin and mickey the usurpers.

Anyway, such fork will just never become reality, as miners wont simply let their revenue crushed.

This my last post on the matter. Moving on.

(sry OT, needed to let it out one last time)


ps: will put any whining blocksize increase noob on ignore from now on.

What's the worst about self-censorship is, that  one can easily lose connection to reality.

Most of the big miners and exchanges already announced they will support 8MB. XT is something different.

IMO: We will get a Bitcoin Core implementation of either 2 or 4MB until the beginning of 2016 -> Dispute will be settled by then. Market uncertainty will be replaced by euphoria and fully supported by global markets trending down.

Ideally a 2MB bump by 2016 with some serious vetting viability of the lightning network.
8up
hero member
Activity: 618
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Anyone in support of a blocksize increase is a moron, a plague to Bitcoin.


Quote
1) Bitcoin block rewards will eventually become infinitesimal, at that point transaction fees will be the only rewards miners get. Right now transaction fees are around 0.1-0.5 BTC per block, which is nowhere near enough funding to secure the network by itself. We need transaction fees to go up, and the only thing that will force them up is the blocksize limit. Increasing block size might cause fundamental damage to Bitcoin due to this.

2) Currently average block size is less than 0.4 mb now that the stress test bullshit is over. Gonna be a long time until we even hit the 1 mb limit.



3) Once we hit the 1 mb limit free and nearly no fee transactions will be forced off chain. There is TONS of dust, spam, and gambling that can be done off chain. Over half of all Bitcoin transactions right now are basically dusty junk. This will make plenty of room for legitimate transactions.

4) Once almost all the junk is forced off chain the rise in fees will be very gradual, and it will take a long time for the fees to become an issue for people. In any case the blockchain will function perfectly fine regardless of transaction data volume, fees will simply rise.

If fees ever do get too crazy I'd support a block size limit increase too, but I don't expect that to happen for over a decade if ever.

5) Hard fork of Bitcoin is dangerous and can result in mass confusion, double spends, and loss of Bitcoins. It will damage the value of Bitcoin at least temporarily.

6) We need to maintain a group of scientists which reach a consensus, not just centralize Bitcoin under a couple of developers.

Feel free to add if I missed any.


So please feel free to go f#ck yourselves along with gavin and mickey the usurpers.

Anyway, such fork will just never become reality, as miners wont simply let their revenue crushed.

This my last post on the matter. Moving on.

(sry OT, needed to let it out one last time)


ps: will put any whining blocksize increase noob on ignore from now on.

What's the worst about self-censorship is, that  one can easily lose connection to reality.

Most of the big miners and exchanges already announced they will support 8MB. XT is something different.

IMO: We will get a Bitcoin Core implementation of either 2 or 4MB until the beginning of 2016 -> Dispute will be settled by then. Market uncertainty will be replaced by euphoria and fully supported by global markets trending down.
legendary
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legendary
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legendary
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If Bitcoin survives this it will come out way stronger, there is however also a significant chance that block size issue will turn Bitcoin into a failed experiment.   

quoted from ArticMine, 2013.

Right. This isn't an existential threat (yet), but it does show just how long core devs have been squabbling and their inability to reach their beloved consensus.  I don't know the players or the code well enough to know who wants to scale slower and who is merely using this issue to obstruct any improvement, but the status quo clearly will not do.  I suspect Core devs have until the end of the year at the latest to release their counterproposal until the major players defect and go to XT.  If the price continues to tank, they'll have far less than that. 

 

ironically one of bitcoins strengths - that it can be viewed in so many different ways (currency, store of value, payment system, digital gold, speculation vehicle, etc., etc.,) turns out to be something that makes consensus upon devs, users, start-ups, etc. difficult.
bitcoins versatility boosts the fantasy of people with a wide range of different agendas. 
scalability and versatility seem to get into conflict. poor devs... 
hero member
Activity: 748
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Anyone in support of a blocksize increase is a moron, a plague to Bitcoin.


Quote
1) Bitcoin block rewards will eventually become infinitesimal, at that point transaction fees will be the only rewards miners get. Right now transaction fees are around 0.1-0.5 BTC per block, which is nowhere near enough funding to secure the network by itself. We need transaction fees to go up, and the only thing that will force them up is the blocksize limit. Increasing block size might cause fundamental damage to Bitcoin due to this.

2) Currently average block size is less than 0.4 mb now that the stress test bullshit is over. Gonna be a long time until we even hit the 1 mb limit.



3) Once we hit the 1 mb limit free and nearly no fee transactions will be forced off chain. There is TONS of dust, spam, and gambling that can be done off chain. Over half of all Bitcoin transactions right now are basically dusty junk. This will make plenty of room for legitimate transactions.

4) Once almost all the junk is forced off chain the rise in fees will be very gradual, and it will take a long time for the fees to become an issue for people. In any case the blockchain will function perfectly fine regardless of transaction data volume, fees will simply rise.

If fees ever do get too crazy I'd support a block size limit increase too, but I don't expect that to happen for over a decade if ever.

5) Hard fork of Bitcoin is dangerous and can result in mass confusion, double spends, and loss of Bitcoins. It will damage the value of Bitcoin at least temporarily.

6) We need to maintain a group of scientists which reach a consensus, not just centralize Bitcoin under a couple of developers.

Feel free to add if I missed any.


So please feel free to go f#ck yourselves along with gavin and mickey the usurpers.

Anyway, such fork will just never become reality, as miners wont simply let their revenue crushed.

This my last post on the matter. Moving on.

(sry OT, needed to let it out one last time)


ps: will put any whining blocksize increase noob on ignore from now on.

I want to raise the block size just because of your post
legendary
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legendary
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Anyone in support of a blocksize increase is a moron, a plague to Bitcoin.


Quote
1) Bitcoin block rewards will eventually become infinitesimal, at that point transaction fees will be the only rewards miners get. Right now transaction fees are around 0.1-0.5 BTC per block, which is nowhere near enough funding to secure the network by itself. We need transaction fees to go up, and the only thing that will force them up is the blocksize limit. Increasing block size might cause fundamental damage to Bitcoin due to this.

2) Currently average block size is less than 0.4 mb now that the stress test bullshit is over. Gonna be a long time until we even hit the 1 mb limit.



3) Once we hit the 1 mb limit free and nearly no fee transactions will be forced off chain. There is TONS of dust, spam, and gambling that can be done off chain. Over half of all Bitcoin transactions right now are basically dusty junk. This will make plenty of room for legitimate transactions.

4) Once almost all the junk is forced off chain the rise in fees will be very gradual, and it will take a long time for the fees to become an issue for people. In any case the blockchain will function perfectly fine regardless of transaction data volume, fees will simply rise.

If fees ever do get too crazy I'd support a block size limit increase too, but I don't expect that to happen for over a decade if ever.

5) Hard fork of Bitcoin is dangerous and can result in mass confusion, double spends, and loss of Bitcoins. It will damage the value of Bitcoin at least temporarily.

6) We need to maintain a group of scientists which reach a consensus, not just centralize Bitcoin under a couple of developers.

Feel free to add if I missed any.


So please feel free to go f#ck yourselves along with gavin and mickey the usurpers.

Anyway, such fork will just never become reality, as miners wont simply let their revenue crushed.

This my last post on the matter. Moving on.

(sry OT, needed to let it out one last time)


ps: will put any whining blocksize increase noob on ignore from now on.
legendary
Activity: 1484
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Strange, yet attractive.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions. To understand what prompted me in my decision I suggest reading this article https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/confessions-of-an-r-bitcoin-moderator and the following thread https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/confessions-of-an-rbitcoin-moderator-1157912. There is a serious sickness in the Bitcoin community which goes far deeper than the fear of a drop in price. The recent closure of the following thread going back to 2012 is a perfect example. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up-68655.

Edit: This thread has a poll. Let me guess: "CIA" is code for Gavin's proposal, in order to avoid this thread from being closed.

Since you're long enough here to judge from a advantageous POV, here's a thought you might want to read:

Trying to understand how the world runs on its wheels, nobody should disagree, that these wheels are called "money". Regardless of what people think about Bitcoin, it's a new set of wheels & suspension system at the same time. Technology wise, it's nowhere near whatever all these hundreds of years of civilization has presented so far. It's ingeniously engineered, wisely implemented and uses scientific concepts that nobody would've thought about 20y ago.

Now, there's the current "system" that several people (you can use the word "corporations" here) have been using to control their field of interest, whether this is medical, IT, Engineering, Communications etc. They will simply won't let their car on some other hands other than their own. At least, not without a fight. Funnily enough, it seems that the world is running out of time (monetary wise). So, a federalization model for the whole planet that would use the old driver, seems to run to an end. Some say a few months, others say less than a year - doesn't really matter. This is over.

Coming to the present day, I've written elsewhere, that "Everybody Has His Price". If the XT fork is orchestrated by a fraction of people that want control over BTC, then it was only a matter of time to "pwn" its "chief scientist". We're talking about the next wheels here. MORE car - MORE secure - FASTER than ever. So, no; this won't be the end of Bitcoin. Forked or not, there are more than the half of coins mined so far. If the consensus won't come, TPTB can keep the remaining ones and still be happy.

I *still* don't know if we should be happy with it though...
legendary
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Everyone is entitled to their opinions. To understand what prompted me in my decision I suggest reading this article https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/confessions-of-an-r-bitcoin-moderator and the following thread https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/confessions-of-an-rbitcoin-moderator-1157912. There is a serious sickness in the Bitcoin community which goes far deeper than the fear of a drop in price. The recent closure of the following thread going back to 2012 is a perfect example. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up-68655.

Edit: This thread has a poll. Let me guess: "CIA" is code for Gavin's proposal, in order to avoid this thread from being closed.

This sickness is caused by greed. Stagnation with bitcoin's technological development has been caused by the greedy get-rich-quick schemers who will start to cry as soon as some new development has been proposed that could cause temporal uncertainties at the market. This has been going on for some time already, only now clashing into a bigger public conflict of interest between different community members.
This is why it has been a lot more interesting to observe the coming of new altcoins that are based on the blockchain technology. They are free to use brave and necessary solutions without a pack of monkeys yelling at them, that this could cause their bag to become heavier.
legendary
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legendary
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Monero Core Team
If Bitcoin survives this it will come out way stronger, there is however also a significant chance that block size issue will turn Bitcoin into a failed experiment.    

quoted from ArticMine, 2013.

Thanks for the quote. All I can say is that I just finished selling the bulk of my remaining Bitcoins for a mix of 80% CAD (Canadian Dollars) and 20% XMR (Monero)

thanks for playing. One less weak hand.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions. To understand what prompted me in my decision I suggest reading this article https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/confessions-of-an-r-bitcoin-moderator and the following thread https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/confessions-of-an-rbitcoin-moderator-1157912. There is a serious sickness in the Bitcoin community which goes far deeper than the fear of a drop in price. The recent closure of the following thread going back to 2012 is a perfect example. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up-68655.

Edit: This thread has a poll. Let me guess: "CIA" is code for Gavin's proposal, in order to avoid this thread from being closed.
legendary
Activity: 1106
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Hide your women
If Bitcoin survives this it will come out way stronger, there is however also a significant chance that block size issue will turn Bitcoin into a failed experiment.    

quoted from ArticMine, 2013.

Thanks for the quote. All I can say is that I just finished selling the bulk of my remaining Bitcoins for a mix of 80% CAD (Canadian Dollars) and 20% XMR (Monero)

thanks for playing. One less weak hand.
legendary
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