Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 3335. (Read 26715566 times)

Now, mesh networks are definitely worthwhile. I was kinda hoping that Bitcoin would drive their development. The internet is far too vulnerable if the feds should decide to get nasty. There are some improvements that could be made to the networking layer (and, indeed, I believe that the networking, along with the wallet, should not be part of "core" Bitcoin) that could get around some of the basic blocking actions but it really needs its own physical layer option too.

I propose a new WO poll:

What should be done with the peculiarly vicious breed of nocoiners who get their jollies off seeing Bitcoin low—not from any wish to buy low, but from Schadenfreude and a happy confirmation bias towards evidence that Bitcoin is a scam?

What of the ones who take the opportunity to ooze faux concern, while merrily mixing up BTC with garbage?  “I told you that BTC and Yield Farming and Bored Ape NFTs and all that stuff was a scam.  Wise men saw this coming.  It was predicted.  It was known that this would all go away.  Please take this as an opportunity to turn your life around.  Forget all those scams.  Do something productive.”

I don’t see anything wrong with happiness at the price being low—if you want to buy, because you expect for Bitcoin to flourish in the long term.  (I admit such a thing myself right now.  Not for the first time—by far not; my approach, previously with better planning to have purchase funds, was always “buy when there is blood in the streets”.)

I don’t condemn people who simply admit that they don’t understand the thing, and back off.

I don’t have adequate words to describe the wrongness of someone who is just desperate to see Bitcoin fail, to say “I told you so”—to see BTC finally go to zero as it somehow mysteriously failed to do in 2018, in 2015, in 2013...

Polls are never binding on me.  I don’t believe in polls.  I say “poll” for the lulz.

Worst:  Someone happy that you lost your BTC in liquidation, because that means an opportunity to help you escape from the Bitcoin scam on which you’ve been wasting your life.  A message for your own good, delivered as to a cult member—or to a drug addict who needs to quit self-destructive behaviour:  You don’t see it now; but later, you will realize how lucky this is!  Now, you will be able to see some sense.  The rat-poison-squared is purged from your mind and soul.  Now that you are not invested, you can now stop believing in that nonsense, stop being brainwashed, stop fooling yourself.  Give up on it.  This is the first day of the rest of your life not being tied down to the Bitcoin scam. 🌷

This post involves some rhetorical hyperbole.  But not much.  In substance, not much.

Explanation

excellent prognosis (based on the article data), Phil..knock on wood!

65 years old

60 second left leg
25 seconds right leg

I will practice and see if I can do 2 minutes on each

The purpose here is to transmit the blockchain to people who lack sufficient Internet access.  (Or who want to receive the entire blockchain with total anonymity.)  As long as we don’t all suddenly start depending on Blockstream for this, Blockstream Satellite only increases the availability of Bitcoin.  It is strictly an improvement:  An addition to ground-based Internet, which is not all controlled by any one party, as well as off-grid communications such as mesh networks, etc., etc.

Incurring a centralized dependency on Elon Musk for anything is a bad idea.  Musk essentially boosted/launched the current wave of “Bitcoin uses too much energy” nonsense in 2021.  Musk wants to dox all Twitter users.  I do not trust the man.

I do not want his Internet.  I shall petition the CEO of Internet to ban this loser.

Twitter official onion: https://twitter3e4tixl4xyajtrzo62zg5vztmjuricljdp2c5kshju4avyoid.onion/elonmusk/status/1517215736606957573
Clearnet: https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1517215736606957573

Explanation

Sorry if I am not understanding this, but the "teleports" still rely on the traditional ground internet to get the block data which they proceed to send to the satellites which proceed to send it everywhere on earth? Why can't we just use Elon Musks satellites to access the internet and basically do the same thing once the costs justify the means?

Blockstream Satellite coverage:
https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/articles/900004174286-How-do-I-find-out-if-my-area-receives-Blockstream-Satellite-coverage-


It’s not fast.  Best estimates I can find for IBD from Genesis to tip run about a month (see below).  The point is to make it feasible.

Saturating one’s downstream bandwidth (thus probably being unable to do anything else) for “many months” sounds totally infeasible for real-world use.  Note that in addition to the question of time to sync, the satellite takes the load off of an Internet connection that may be metered/expensive, and that may be needed for other things!  It doesn’t sound like “visiting the local library” to mooch hundreds of gigabytes of their bandwidth is much of an option here, either.

In the past, I’ve run on hardware that takes weeks or a month to validate/index/reindex (CPU and IOPs bottlenecks).  So...

Your estimates of bandwidth are not very useful.  The v2 satellite system uses special encoding to compress the blockchain transmission.  This is reversible, so you wind up with the same data that you would get from the Internet.  Here is a highly informative post from Greg Maxwell (nullc) about the encoding, dated 2020-05-04; I don’t know if anything has changed since then:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/gdlk46/were_excited_to_announce_blockstream_satellite_20/fpif0ni/
^^^ The thread contains further interesting discussion, including some brief comparison of Blockstream Satellite to Starlink.

A quick non-Google web search found this blog post from 2021-10-03, also published in Bitcoin Magazine:


I observe that it is a way to broadcast a message to a completely untraceable recipient.  To send the message, your Internet connection could still be traced if Tor is broken, or whatever; but there are various specialized scenarios where message recipient anonymity is the top priority.  Compare dead-drops, or old-fashioned alt.anonymous.messages.

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I do NOT want to ask any potentially private/revealing details about your circumstances.  But I have a feeling that someday, you may find this very handy.  Even as a backup for your multiple backups of the precious, precious blockchain.

Happy to help.

Explanation

uh, you guys do know im lazy af, right?

ill get right on that after a nap. priority one.

hahahahahaha   jk

realistically i have always been interested in it. if i ever do give it a shot i will post it here for sure.

The file option is actually interesting to me. The ability to broadcast data over a wide area for effectively a low one-off fee could have interesting use cases, particularly if the size of the satellite dish required could be minimized. Of course, that's not really a Bitcoin thing. It doesn't appear to be a source of income for them though. They have an info page and it looks like they're currently averaging 1-2 messages a day and I bet most of those are of the test message type. https://www.blockstream.com/satellite-queue/


Presumably a "just for fun" proof of concept type thing but fair enough.

As to not hearing about v2 and not being able to tell how many users... Well, it's not exactly all over the news and one would assume Blockstream would be crowing about it if it was a roaring success.

Unfortunately, it's a bit tricky digging the info out of their site so I'm not sure what the bandwidth looks like. They say 25x what it was for v1 but that was only pushing 6MB/hour. I'm sure it wasn't saturated (unlike Bitcoin) but it seems likely that grabbing the full blockchain would take a while. Vapourminer might be better off visiting his local library. It definitely sounds like it isn't as completely useless as v1 but it's not clear by how much.

Explanation

I like the videos of that guy, most aren't about crypto, but this one is : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJElqtqgC5c

At the end some inconvenient truth about BTC (no BTC bashing).

I am not a bigblocker, but I am a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig poster.

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Game theory AI here, modified tit-for-tat.  Batslapping seems uncalled for.  He’s been civil to me, and not outrageously horrible in other ways; therefore, I prefer rational discourse.  I win better that way By taking the high road, everyone benefits.

Explanation

I don’t know.  In the worst case, it is not necessary to buy their kits.  The system is designed with standard components.  The kits are a convenience.  It is intended that if necessary, poor people in poor countries can scratch things together on the cheap.

DIY (info about kits on the same page):
https://blockstream.github.io/satellite/doc/hardware.html#diy-hardware-requirements

Important link:
https://github.com/Blockstream/satellite

I don’t claim expertise on the satellite system.  If anyone needs setup help, I recall having seen some threads in Development & Technology.  A quick search finds only this—full of WO regulars, not updated in a few years.  (What happened to V8s?)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/blockstreams-bitcoin-satelite-www-w-outernet-usb-reciever-2091860
There may be other old threads; or a new one could be started in Development & Technology or Bitcoin Technical Support.

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I should correct or clarify two things I said earlier:

It is not purely an altruistic loss-leader for BTC adoption.  Blockstream also offers some paid services over the satellite network.  (Payable only via Lightning, in BTC.)  The service to download the blockchain is free; and they have no way to charge for it, because it is broadcast.  You can also broadcast your own messages over the satellites, for a fee.  I have no idea how much money they do or don’t make from these services.

My question about usage stats was inadvertently a trick question.  Of course, there can be no reliable usage stats:  The system is the most anonymous possible way to obtain the Bitcoin blockchain.  Although Blockstream themselves surely must have stats on how many kits they have sold, there does not exist any way to track who uses it with DIY hardware.  It is a way to obtain the blockchain even more anonymously than through Tor.

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Additional information:

I see that they now offer download of the Bitcoin source code via satellite.  No Internet required to get the source!  LOL.  Craight Wright must love that.

They keep improving the satellite service, adding things.  Those here who run Lightning nodes may be interested in the Lightning Network gossip snapshots.

Needless to say, over the years, Blockstream Satellite has seen plenty of FUD.  Much of it from the usual suspects.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=494856
The Wall Observer, 2017:

What are the odds of that particular scenario?  Surely less than 22.4367911%, no?

Even the April to June 2019 price run went up from $4.2k to $13,880 - Ie 3.5x, but ended up coming back down to $6.2k - even absent our March 2020 covid downity bonus... I am thinking that we had more positive macro circumstances back then and also just a wee bit less froth the the shitcoin space and also in the various leveraging catastrophes space... lot's of insolvent entities still seem to be faking their solvency... so maybe they won't have to sell any more of their BTC to cover, perhaps? perhaps?


I have to stand up for Richie_Teeeee here.

He is a recovering BIG blocker nutjob, and accordingly he has relapses from time to time, including but not limited recalling: 1) what year it is, 2) what epoch we are in, 3) what block chain (and/or thread) he participating in  4) CB is not his best friend in the whole world and/or 5) the sheer power of my lil precious.  

So, he just needs some kind of batslappening or something equivolent once in a wwwweeeee while and thereafter he will be as good as new (well kind of like refurbished, but still) for a few weeks.


Don't be trying to ween yours truly nor dat dere udder peep nedur!!!!!!  

 

That wuld be no way to be winnin friends in dees here parts.  if you know what is good for uie pooie.  And that's not no threat, nedur.

shoulda clarified. blockstream would suffice for my bitcoin needs and thats it. but i need starlink speeds to be able to download the bitcointalk forum now with JJG and DW sized post increasing as my regular crappy slow internet may not suffice soon.

OK vapourminer, the challenge is on. Let us know how it goes, I'm genuinely interested.

death_wish, do they actually have the hardware available? The info page talks about preorder and when I go to the hardware they do have available, it doesn't mention if it supports v2 or not.