Topic: Why the Bitcoin rules can't change (reading time ~5min) - page 5. (Read 12031 times)

You idiot.

You really didn't understand anything did you? Did you even read my OP? Did you understand what it was about? It's not about a rule change btw..


The problem isn't that we, as you call us "A few die-hard curmudgeons who don't want to change the rules", don't want to change any rules. The problem is that this particular rule change is likely going to have consequences that will change Bitcoin from what it is today to something else. Right now Bitcoin is a decentralized peer to peer payment system and a currency without a central authority. By removing the block size limit there is a very real chance it will change into a centralized payment system with a currency with a central authority, a system that you no longer have any control over like you do right now.

If you're fine with that, then I don't understand what you're doing here. Paypal meets your how many transactions you think Bitcoin is suppose to handle on a daily basis just fine. Just don't cry to them if you don't like their rules because if you let Bitcoin become impossible to be in your personal control that's exactly what will happen, other rules that you wont like.

And that, you idiot, is the point of my OP. To remind people that if you can't somehow validate what rules are being validated on the network, if you aren't an equal peer on this network, you don't matter and what you want doesn't matter.

I don't understand the argument some people are making that the block size limit is OK because the main chain will only be used for relatively rare high-value transactions while new blockchains will arise to serve the masses.  Why would Bitcoins on the main blockchain hold their value if new blockchains are popping up left and right?  A few die-hard curmudgeons who don't want to change the rules isn't enough to keep the market price propped up.

I think mobile (smartphones) is going to take up internet in Africa. They can already pay their bills via SMS. Africa is a different animal than the rest of the world when it comes to internet. Eventually mobile will take over in every country.

The recent chatter about it has given me extra incentive to explore cracking open some of my dusty deep storage wallets.

If we stay on the current price trend I'll probably want to dump around $12k worth of BTC in a month or so, and do it face-to-face, incrementally, in a bank, and in the NW part of the US.  I'm willing to take a certain amount of a hit in order to avoid supplying Mt. Gox with an identity theft kit.  Almost all my coins came through Tradehill.  Anyone who is potentially interested is welcome to PM me.

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BTW, good post ~hazek.  I agree significantly with most of it.

Agreed.  Bitcoin is how it is used. Crippling it because you don't like how it's used means you want it to fail.

 

First, I have a really hard time reading and understanding your posts... I usually skip over them.
 
" Blockchains are not ideal for retail sales payment processing, but for large transfers with small percentage fees they should be reasonably competitive."

 So reddit, mega, wordpress are not what bitcoin is meant for? That's what you are saying because those are all retail transactions baby. If bitcoin isn't "meant for" small transactions it's only because there is a minority of people that want to keep an artificially low transaction limit. And I don't even think those people are miners (or bitcoin miners) . I think they just want bitcoin to fail for whatever reason. Maybe they own a bunch of litecoins .

There are people out there with whom things that go up in value faster than inflation, faster than a savings account, faster than pretty much anything short of a Ponzi, are not popular, it is true. It is a large part of why some communities on the web are very fond of claiming bitcoin is itself a ponzi. But long term I suspect what drove us down from $2 last time around was not people's lack of interest in small block size cryptocurrencies but, rather, the massive onslaught of major hacks and the lack of time tested value storing utility that left us short of past performance evidence with which to refute the "bitcoin is a ponzi" / "bitcoin is a scam" claims so many vocal detractors were making.

Blockchains are not ideal for retail sales payment processing, but for large transfers with small percentage fees they should be reasonably competitive.

Since we do not know which, if any, output of a transaction is change, nor even if a transaction with between someone and themself rather than someone and someone else, we really only have the price per bitcoin on exchanges and the number of bitcoins paid in transaction fees go by in measuring useful (as in paying for our infrastructure and operating -expenses) adoption.

We need to be adopted by money. Lots of money. People are less and less important in that regard the less and less money they bring in. The more money they bring in the more in fees and/or more in exchange rates, provided circulation involves fees. CIrculation that does not provide fees is mere churn, not useful in paying for the infrastructuire and operating-expenses of the network.

We should be looking to retain value, to store value, not to throw it away to freeloaders in the form of free transactions nor increase the cost of storing it by catering to decipayments nor even decapayments. We should aim at the centapayments and kilopayments markets not the centipayments and millipayments markets.

Lets store amounts of value that are actually worth going to the trouble and expense of storing them, while providing also the ability to transfer such amounts in and out of storage.

-MarkM-

And now imagine Satoshi-dice translated in 100 languages and used daily by 100 million people. And now imagine imagine another 100 Satoshi-dice type of service. That's going to be a problem, no matter how big the block size is.

This is not correct.  The coins on the two chains will not have the same properties and will not be valued the same.

Some of my view:

Fast online payment is just an additional feature for bitcoin, not core value, and it will never be. People comes to bitcoin because of it's value (generated from its unique properties), not because it is 2% cheaper than CC (with CC consumer have the advantage of performing a charge back if the seller is a scammer), people will spend fiat instead of bitcoin since they know the value of fiat is going down constantly and btc price will rise in long term, if bitcoin's value holds, they even can get a fiat loan backed by bitcoin and spend

If we really reached the status that many transaction can not be done quickly, then satoshi's idea about "phase in the change" is a good implementation approach, and it may require several intermediate versions, the process should take at least one year. But the core question now is wether we really need such a change

Actually many people here are just hoarding coins, there are not really a lot of transactions happening everyday, especially miners who connected to a pool. If we remove satoshi-dice, I think at least in the latest 2 years it will still work fine. Satoshi-dice is just an execellent example of no matter how big the block size is, there will be applications flood that space with meaningless transactions

A fork means the amount of coin will get doubled immediately, a 100% inflation in the whole system, and this directly destroyed the promise of there will never be more than 21 million coin. If this happens once, it will happen again, then bitcoin is not in any way better than fiat today, just the inflation control has been shifted from FED to a couple of programmers, people won't have incentive to hold their coins, they will sell before these programmers come up with a new idea to improve bitcoin and inflate the system again with new coins

Bitcoin is not only some software code, it is a spirit, if it split itself into two personality, then it essentially lost the soul

Great. Like I said I don't care how it's done, just that it is.

hazek, I had your notion of "sovereignty" from this thread in mind when I wrote this post: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1545885

It appears to be achievable with an SPV client to a similar degree that most people currently achieve it with a fully validating client.  I don't see any reason why even smart phone clients can't be "sovereign", at least practically speaking.

+1

The ideas about this are so spread out. Search my posts in the other thread for the full details, but a 10 meg block, miners could still do that today. That's a 10x increase over current limits and sets the TPS in line with Paypal. The average user can easily download a 10 meg block every 10 minutes and verify the chain. That's not a 10 meg block 24/7, that's just at peak when we eventually get there. Unless something crazy happens, that will be several years.

56k modem couldn't keep up with the block chain. It would take them 20-30 minutes to download a full block. Someone on 256k DSL shouldn't have a problem running a full node if every block were jam packed full. They couldn't mine, but they could with 100% certainty verify the block chain.

And there would still be NOTHING stopping a group of peers or even just by themselves from renting a VPS for $15 a month, and running a full node and using a light client with bloom filters. In places like Africa, that might be the cheaper way to do it and is still a valid option at 10 meg block sizes.

And you really think the masses care about Bitcoin non-inflationary nature? You're the minority there, my friend!

A thing that people do care, though, is relative appreciation of currencies. They tend to migrate their money toward safer currencies. Just check how the Swiss Franc was going up in value before being tied to the euro. But people don't really understand monetary policy, and most that eventually accept using Bitcoin, will either be due to its appreciation, or because it's cheaper, or due to its privacy, or due to its censorship-resistance etc. The majority of people don't even know what "monetary policy" is.


Please, are you claiming that letting bitcoin be useful to millions by dropping this hard limit of 7tps would create a "central authority"? First you believe in 'dumping techniques', now this? Do you realize what "central authority" actually means? Do you understand that Google, for instance, is not a central-authority of internet search and videos? And that it would be practically impossible for a single pool operator to aggregate the same "market share" in bitcoin mining than Google has in internet search and video?

Where are you taking these fears from? I thought you were more versed in economics. You're sounding like people who have never heard of spontaneous order.

+1

Also, running a MOBILE full node is bullshit. If someone wants to run a full node, individuals should set up a home base and VPN into that if they need to validate a transaction. (It also helps with keeping the blockchain in sync and avoid delay times during the validation process).

So by virtue of "drawing" a line, we should only consider workstation solutions, not laptops, phones and stuff.

There is also the possibility to host your own validation node in the cloud. However, cloud services are not decentralized enough, so I'd be wary of that option.

No. You will never convince me this is true. What the monetary authorities in the world today do is all pretty much open and for everyone to see and yet people don't care. Bitcoin is different, there are no monetary authorities and I don't want there to be any, ever. Otherwise I just don't have a use for Bitcoin.

If this isn't the case, or wont be the case that there is no central authority then I'm done and will sell my bitcoins immediately and move on to better things. So please do let me know if I'm mistaken in thinking that there is no central authority right now.

Good! Now hold bitcoins, enough bitcoins that if exchange rates continue to grow as fast as people want the max block size to grow you'll not find the cost of the stuff you'll need to be a full node "unreasonably" expensive.

-MarkM-

Thanks Hazek. Brilliant post. We, the users, want to be able to run full nodes. That's bitcoin, and that's why we are in.

Even in retep "successful dumping" scenario, it would still be easier to have a full node than to understand the entire complexity of bitcoin source code.

But... wait, even you believe in "dumping techniques to rule out competitors"? Seriously?


Are you a peer in Bitcoin development? Do you review and understand each line of the source code?


No, they can't give a "rats ass", that's what I'm trying to say. Seriously, just look the amount of noise any little thing can provoke around here. The same way that would be extremely difficult to get away with silently tampering the source code, it would be extremely difficult to get away with silently tampering with the blockchain. Actually the latter would likely be more difficult (without having >50% of course). Every attempt to change anything would have to be open and public, and once again you'd have your freedom to choose without being lied to.